It's a new expansion. We're all grinding world quests. But some of them involve pet battles -- ew.

Thankfully, there is one team you can put together to win half your pet battles... and a quick strategy you can use to beat the rest.

Why pet battle?

Pet battles are very fast world quests.

This means very fast faction rep, and very fast special assignment progress.

This makes pet battle world quests great on alts, specifically.

(There are many good uses for pet charms, too. But that's another post.)

Do I need to level my pets?

No.

I will show you how to get a bunch of good pets later on in this post.

But you should know that all pet battle content scales to your pet level.

So... if you go into the battle with all level 1 pets... so will your opponent.

This means you can start to do these world quests with the pets you already have.

(And not waste any time leveling them up.)

Team One: This beats almost every "Boss" pet battle

Pet battles come in two kinds -- your team v one "boss" pet and your team v another trainers' team.

This team beats almost every boss in the game:

1. Unborn Valkyr - Turn one, "Curse of Doom". Turn two, "Haunt."

2. Ikky (Buy on the auction house) - Turn three, "Black Claw". Turn four, "Flock".

3. Pet of choice (from the auction house) - This pet isn't usually needed, but you can bring a nuker just in case. Try Chrominius or Microbot XD

That team will get you through half or more of the pet battle world quests.

For this team and this team only, you will want all three pets to be level 25. (Since some of the moves take unlocking.)

Easy Strategy for "Trainer" Teams

The other type of battle you come across are "Trainer" battles.

These are battles where your 3 pets fight 3 pets from a given trainer.

They often share the same typing, and so there is not really one team that can beat all of them.

Luckily, there is a pretty easy way to beat all of the "trainer" world quests:

1. Select the trainer in the world

2. Open Rematch - my favorite add on for pet battling

3. Scroll to the middle column - it should have the name of the trainer you've selected, and pictures of his three poke- I mean battle pets

4. Look slightly up and to the right (the top right corner of the middle column.) You will see a blue dice that says "Random Pets' or similar, when you hover over it.

5. Click that button.

When you click that button, Rematch will select pets & skills which are strong against the trainer.

I tested this a bunch today and it almost always gave me a team that beat the trainer. If you have more pets, you will be more likely to get a good team... but even a new "trainer" should be just fine.

(After all, the trainers scale down to your pet levels. So you are equally likely to win with 3 x level 25 pets as you are with 3 x level 1 pets.)

What if my blue button keeps picking the same pets?

If you have a limited selection of pets, the above method might give you the same pets, over and over.

This happens if, for example, you only have three pets above level 1.

In this case, you can simply use the Rematch filters to build your own "strong" team.

Simply go to the left column, click the filter, and pick "Strong Against" the type of enemy you're facing.

Remember: You can preview their pets in the center column.

Just hover over each pet to find their type.

Then check that box in the "Strong Against" filter.

Where do I find these pets???

First of all... you probably already have tons of pets.

Lots of quests, raids, world content... lots of things drop pets.

And there's a good chance you're not selling your pets on the AH. So you probably already have a bunch of cool looking pets with decent type coverage.

So what can you do to enhance your team?

Well, first and foremost, you can farm Unborn Valkyr. (Use the guide, linked above.)

Unborn is just a killer pet with lots of unique moves. You don't need her, but you can quickly farm her. And she is the ONLY pet you have to farm.

... You can just buy the rest:

Specific pets worth buying include Ikky, Chrominus, Anomalus, Microbot XD, Zandalari Anklebiter (most of the Zandalari pets are decent)... and if you have some cash, Anubisath idol & Iron Starlette.

You can also buy a bunch of 30 - 50g pets, just to make sure you have decent type coverage.

If you really want ONLY THE STRONGEST PETS TM... you can use this list of the most used pets.

Just start typing them into the Auction House from top to bottom, and you'll have a bunch of the most commonly used pets.

Finally... if you want free pets... you can fly around and capture whatever pets you see.

As long as you're catching new pets (as opposed to catching the exact same pet, over and over and over) any pet you catch is a pet worth catching.

In summary

Not only is collecting pets cool --- you get neat dudes following you around --- it can be pretty rewarding for very little work:

Simply:

1. Spend anywhere from 500 gold to 10,000 gold on the auction house - buy the pets we listed above

2. (Optional) Farm Unborn Valkyr

3. Get Rematch

4. Target the pet or trainer you're going to battle

5. Open Rematch

6. Click the little blue button that says "Load Random Pets" or similar. (It is the top right of the middle column.)

7. Use that team to beat the pet battle.

After all, pet battles can be some of the quickest world quests. So you can get the world quest rep & special assignment progress very quickly.

Ok, now I'm hooked. How do I dig deeper into pet battling?

As mentioned in the comments, Xu Fu is a great resource for all things pet battle related.

Also... leveling your pets is very rewarding. Pets eventually unlock six attacks by level 25. So you gain a strategic element, which is pretty cool.

There are difficult trainers like Pet Battle Dungeons which offer you portals to them, once you beat them.

There is some pet coin arbitrage; where you buy level 1 pets, buy level 25 stones, level the pet to 25 and resell at a profit.

... And there are just a ton of cool, useful, rare pets that you can collect.

The sky is the limit.

But if you only want to smash world quests, all you need to do is get rematch, hit the auction house, and roll up some random teams.