Make quick work of these five new Legendary pet battles

High level battle pet encounters can be deceptively tricky to defeat. The latest group of fifteen legendary pet battles in Tanaan Jungle is no exception. We already made a big map to help you find your way there, but if you’re having trouble scoring your bags of Fel-Touched Pet Supplies after you arrive, here’s a guide to help. If you’d like to puzzle out a strategy on your own, our guide to team building is a good place to start, too.

There’s one thing common to the first five boss battle pets I’m going to discuss in this first installment of strategies, and that’s their speed. The speed stats of these 5 pets is low compared to the rest, at 319 speed. This stat is still low enough that we can get a little clever with our strategies. What you’re looking for is a pet with a speed stat higher than this and a force swap mechanic. A force swap is an ability like Death Grip which forces your opponent’s active pet to the back row, and another on the team to take its place without your opponent getting to choose. Which one enters will vary based on the specific ability, but for our purposes it really isn’t important — we just want that boss pet out.

The Enchanted Broom, the Fiendish Imp with S/S Breed, and Molten Corgi are your three choices for pets with speeds above that 319 benchmark with a force swap. I prefer the Corgi because its heal gives it a bit more staying power than the others. In most cases I was able to use the Corgi by its lonesome to dispatch both extra pets with ease, leaving two slots for a big combo on that boss. Using the other two sometimes left me high and dry, depending on the abilities the extra pets rolled. And of course, the Corgi has the squishiest little face, yes she does.

Keep in mind as you’re running through all the new bosses that you can forfeit in order to avoid less favorable outcomes with no consequence (not even a small pet HP hit) if your opponents didn’t choose the best moves for your setup. The pets you’ll be facing will randomly pull moves from the tables of the pet type they are, meaning that some Aquatics may try to wreck your Corgi with all-Aquatic moves one match, and then if you restart the battle they’ll come at you with Critter stuff, making your life far easier. The one I really had to watch out for was snakes with Hiss, which made me slower than the bosses and tanked my cheeky force swap shenanigans.

The reason we’re trying to go with said cheeky shenanigans is that all of the boss pets have an ability which AOEs your pets and gives their wild compatriots a big buff to both damage and defense for a lengthy 9 turns. This is the very first thing the bosses do whenever they act, so if you can swap the big boss out immediately those hangers-on don’t get a chance at that big buff. This makes these specific five legendary pets quite a bit easier than the others. The only issue in trying to pull off the force swapping is that now you have only 2 slots for your big combos as opposed to 3, but the trade off is not having to limp toward the finish line when (if) you can destroy the boss.

Defiled Earth

Elemental — Fel Corruption – Stone Rush – Quake

This fight is quite straightforward. After you do your little swap dance and kill off the back row, Defiled Earth‘s main move is the AOE Quake. I had a lot of luck using a garden variety bullfrog with Cleansing Rain to keep my back row healthy, with the added benefit of increasing my Aquatic damage. Frog Kiss packs both good DPS and a chance to stun, which is always nice in single-pet situations. A second frog using the more robust self-heal was a good pick for the anchor leg, but just to ensure victory, another Aquatic with Swallow You Whole is an excellent way to clinch. I used my Spawn of G’nathus, but you have a few other alternatives here, including the highly anticipated Left Shark.

Corrupted Thundertail

Beast — Fel Corruption – Devour – Tail Slap

The obvious counter to the Corrupted Thundertail, a big Beast, is a ton of Mechanical damage, but there’s a bit of a wrinkle here. Fel Corruption does a lot of damage against Mechanical battle pets, 500-600 damage per AOE, with a mere three round cooldown. When I tried to create a combo with my Tranquil Mechanical Yeti‘s Call Lightning with the DOTs and Inflation from Lil Bling, the Thundertail just wrecked everything before I could even get set up properly. Swapping out the mech for the Dragonkin Wild Golden Hatchling made for more survival while preserving that big combo. There are a few other options for this combo you could try here, but mixing family types is very helpful.

Dreadwalker

Mechanical — Fel Corruption –Sticky Grenade – Haywire

Dreadwalker, the first Mechanical boss we face, gives the elemental Corgi an extra chance to shine with a bit more damage dealt. For the heavy lifting, I just picked a couple pets with Conflagrate for burst. I used the Fel Flame with the Scorched Earth weather effect as my first heavy in order to make for a fuss-free setup for that Conflagrate. I liked the Phoenix Hatchling with both Conflagrate and the Cauterize heal to make sure it would live long enough to be a good anchor. Other than that, this fight was relatively easy. Just don’t get cocky and forget about that Mechanical family resurrection mechanic!

Netherfist

Humanoid — Fel Corruption – Haymaker – Crush

Netherfist is the one fight in the whole of Tanaan Jungle which is RNG prone. In writing a strategy I have to assume that an ability like Haymaker will always hit and never give me a lucky break. Therefore, after the Corgi-related swapping, I used the Wild Magic and Flame Breath abilities on my Sen’jin Fetish, and stacked those with the DPS multiplier of the Macabre Marionette‘s Dead Man’s Party. Netherfist never made it to his second Haymaker. The Unborn Val’kyr would probably make a good choice in place of the Fetish for raw DPS, but the Fetish’s additive debuff and Marionette’s multiplicative one work so well together HR never hears a peep out of the two of them.

Felsworn Sentry

Mechanical — Fel Corruption – Fel Immolate – Repair

The Felsworn Sentry is one of the hardest-fought battles out of all of them, oddly enough, though the Sentry’s slow speed still puts it in my first five to conquer. After your little Corgi dance, you’re faced with one big issue, namely the ridiculous amount of health the Sentry is going to heal back up if you allow it to Repair. You have two options. One is to time a stun or other CC move after it begins to Repair so it doesn’t get the chance to trigger. I had middling success with this, because the Elemental pets I’d use as hard counters didn’t have a ton of other strong moves to choose from to build good combos, and due to timing issues multi-turn abilities are a difficult sell. However, since we were able to use that Corgi to completely nullify the rest of the pets we’re left with two slots, which affords us the luxury of being able to Howl Bomb if we want to.

I’m not sure we’ve discussed the Howl Bomb in a previous column, but if not it’s very overpowered for these purposes and really bears repeating. It mostly centers around one single pet: the Pandaren Water Spirit. It was designed in such a way that if you use the ability Geyser and then the ability Whirlpool, one turn later both will erupt at once, making for two huge hits (circumventing the per-hit ceiling present in many Boss buffs). You can use that turn in between to swap to a different pet with the ability Howl, which applies a 100% damage multiplier, Shattered Defenses. There are several pets with that Howl ability to choose from, but because Surge of Power is such a big hit and can be cast fresh on the heels of that Howl, Chrominius is usually the prescribed pet.

In this particular fight, once those hits start coming the Sentry will be quick on the heals, so if you can Chrominius is my recommendation here. If you’d like to tough it out with a Fox or something, more power to you. Once again you’ve got that Mechanical family resurrect to deal with, and once you explode the Sentry’s face with your other abilities he’s not going to take it lying down. On that ‘Mechanicals’ front, if you do go with Chrominius, save that Surge of Power for after the Sentry resurrects. If he only has a little health left before that point, you’ll just waste that huge hit and then have to spent a fruitless couple of turns recovering (which the Sentry will use to heal). In that case Bite, then Surge and you’ll get your bag of fel-tainted goodies no-fuss. Just don’t eat them. Consuming things tainted with fel energy kinda has Gul’dan written all over it.