Recently I’ve found myself getting into collecting the color variants of the pets, and it made me think, what are the motivations for other people’s collections?
Are you trying to collect one of each pet? Three?
Are you collecting all the ones that fit your main’s aesthetic but don’t really care about the others?
One of each for me. Whenever I’m motived or in between seasons.
I collect for battling capability.
I started back in the Misty days of the past, when bandages were few, to have a couple of copies of the most useful pets so that I didn’t have to burn bandages, and to have duplicates for the Celestial Tournament,
When there was a limit on total pets, I kept one of most, and two or three of the most useful, with, possibly, different useful breeds.
Since we now can collect three of everything, I sometimes stone and level extra wild pets I pick up while farming for the best breed.
I don’t really go for different skins. I got the Blue variant of Microbot because it looks cute, but that’s the only one I can think of.
I’m shooting for 3 of each, preferably different breeds and hopefully different colors or appearances if possible. But I have compromised on those latter to get three of the rarer catches, and will continue to do so.
I just want them all…every one of them in my stable …cleared 1600 last week…
Depends on the pet. In general, if the pet only comes in one breed, and isn’t particularly useful, I stop at one or two.
There are useful pets, however, that only come in one breed, that are still great to have in threes. For instance, Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling, or Timeless Mechanical Dragonling. Ikky is another good one. I have three of each, despite the fact that they only come in one breed.
In pet dungeons, there’s no opportunity to heal (unless you want to use the Red Cricket trick or log out and log into another toon and click a bandage). And it is useful to have three of the same. For instance, in the Black Rock Caverns pet dungeon, Therrin (the pompous Night Elf who believes he can predict the future) can be defeated with three Mechanical Pandaren Dragonlings. Just do Decoy and Thunderbolt, then switch to the next one, repeat. By the time you get back to the first Dragonling, Decoy and Thunderbolt will be off cooldown.
And if there are multiple breeds of useful pets, obviously, I want to collect one of every breed. Iron Starlette actually comes in five breeds, but I have slots only for three. But P/P is my usual go-to.
There are always new strats coming out for older fights especially the legion fights which are the most useful for leveling which at times can be breed specific. So it is always a good idea to try for 3 of each type while analyzing the breeds of the pet to what would be the most useful based on the moveset.
It’s a combination of things. At first I collected for utility. I wanted pets because they were good for collecting other pets, for winning against Pet Trainers, PVP battles, etc. I’m still doing a bit of this as I haven’t done all the dungeons yet. I need to review my collection and strategies and get that finished. Then, I collected for Achievements, and that is also still ongoing. Particularly when it comes to wild pets, I am keen to collect the best breeds. The color variants aren’t something I’ve gotten into yet, but I could see myself doing that. The cute factor also appeals to me, of course I’m going to favor pets that are aesthetically pleasing, but I am collecting to have “one of everything” so I don’t pass on things just because I think they’re ugly. I collect multiples when there is a utility for them (a three Grumpy team in Emerald Dream is tops for wild pet collecting) and/or they are valuable on the AH. I’m not a serious pet trader, but I do dabble. Recently, I downloaded a spreadsheet from Xu-Fu cataloguing my collection, and after a quick sort I figured out which were the pets I didn’t own that were the most rare, and I’ve been going through figuring out how to obtain those and planning out my own little Safari. I’ve still got some catching up to do on wild pets, too, which are more of the low-hanging fruit on the way to building out my collection and racking up those Achievements.
Stay away from B/B breeds where possible.