froststorm breath

BM Battle Beastie: The Razza

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The Razza

All of this talk about BM PvP pet builds and such has caused me to realize that there are other choices out there besides Spirit Beasts. 😉

During the first few months of Cataclysm, I tried out a few different pets for PvP, but ended up settling with Ghostcrawler as my go-to PvP companion. The DPS, the Spirit Mend, the stealth ability… there’s just too much awesome there for me to not want to use him. Spirit Beasts are without a doubt, one of – if not the all-around best, BM PvP pets in the game right now, but I think another reason I’m so attached to using them is because we were deprived of their usefulness for so long. Apart from the thrill of acquiring one, Spirit Beasts served no real purpose for me back in WotLK. I never raided with one… I very, very seldom would PvP with one, and I hardly ever used one when out farming or questing.

I would have liked to, but there were always better pet option for just about any aspect of play. That all changed when Spirit Strike got replaced with Spirit Mend and SB’s received Roar of Courage. All of a sudden, Spirit Beasts were the ‘it’ thing. So, after having been deprived of using one for so long, I’ve been getting my fill. 🙂

However… this past week I decided it was time that GC and I discuss the possibility of me PvP’ing with other pets now and again. I’ll still be bringing him out of the stable, but I felt it was time I started mixing things up a bit.

First on the list… a Chimaera

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BM PvP Guide – Part Two: Pets

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Chimaera for Beast Mastery PvP

In part two of my Beast Mastery PvP guide, I’m going to discuss BM PvP pets and ways to spec them. Here we go…

Beast Mastery PvP Pets

Part of the benefit to investing 51 points into the Beast Mastery tree is the ability to tame exotic pets. Although currently they’re so-so for PvE, the PvP benefits of an exotic pet are fantastic in my opinion.

First off, Beast Mastery grants us access to arguably the most overpowered pet of them all, the Chimaera.

Chimaera

Chimaeras are great for a variety of reasons. First off, they have what I consider to be the best all-around special of any pet. This is of course, Froststorm Breath.

Froststorm Breath

  • 30 yard range.
  • applies a 50% movement speed decrease for 5 seconds.
  • is on a 7 second cooldown (with 3/3 Longevity), which can conceivably allow for over 70% uptime on the movement speed debuff.
  • cannot be dispelled.
  • does non-armor mitigated nature damage.

Froststorm Breath owns. Period. It is a great spell for both offensive and defensive purposes. It not only makes kiting melee easier, but it’s also a great tool to slow down casters, making it harder for them to LoS you.

Next, Chimaeras are part of the Cunning family of pets. Cunning pets have a variety of tools available to them that are very useful for PvP.

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Blizzard fixed my Chimaera

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Hooray! Blizzard fixed the Chimaera stutter-attack problem.

About a month ago I decided to try out a Chimaera for PvP. Froststorm Breath looked so good on paper I had to give one a shot. As if a 5 second 50% slow on a 7 second second cooldown (with 3/3 Furious Inspiration of course) wasn’t enough… it also has a 30yd. range and does a decent amount of nature damage.

Being the rare pet obsessed freak that I am, I headed out to Netherstorm for Nuramoc. With the exception of my Grimtotem Spirit Guide, who’s actually much rarer than rare, all of my pets have to be rare spawns. Chimaera is no exception, so I flew into area 52 to seek out the two headed purple monster with the unique skin.

I did a few quick patrols through his spawn areas over the course of an hour or so then logged out by Forge Base Oblivion. The next day he was flying right in front of me when I logged back on, so I laid a trap and tamed him. He’s real easy to spot at that spawn point if you have Track Beasts on, because he’ll be the only red dot on your mini-map.

I fed him up and then headed out to Northrend to power-level him. After sicking him on a few mobs I noticed this really annoying characteristic of Chimaeras – they would move forward to attack, then stop, move forward, then stop, etc… until they got within range to cast Froststorm breath. So for instance, if I was 50 yards out from my target and sent the Chimaera at it, it would stop every yard or so until it got within 30 yards.

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