How To Beat Haniko In WoW: Dragonflight

If you’re into WoW’s battle pets, you might want some tips on beating the Terrible Three.

World of Warcraft Dragonflight has added a healthy number of new battle pets to the game, and with these new pets, come plenty more pet battles to partake in. While some of these pet battles are against a single boss-level pet, others are against trainers with full squads of companions ready to fight.

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Among these pet trainers is Haniko, a vulpera who is part of the Dragonscale Expedition. While you can battle her whenever you’d like (perhaps for practice), the best time to do so is when her world quest, The Terrible Three, is active. So, let’s get into a couple of ways you can beat her without too much trouble.

Haniko’s Pet Lineup

Haniko’s battle pets are three different baby proto-drakes that are of the Dragonkin family, each of a different quality and with some different abilities that you should keep an eye out for:

Fade and Feign Death allow Haniko’s pet to dodge the next attack and swap out with another one of her pets, Death Grip forces you to swap pets, and Proto-Strike lets her pet fly up for a turn, dodging your next pet’s attack. It is important to keep track of these abilities, as you don’t want to waste your own pets’ heavy-hitting abilities if Haniko’s pets are just going to evade them.

Recommended Battle Pets

There are two general strategies to beat Haniko. The first is drafting a team of pets that can pump out good single-target damage against Dragonkin pets, and the second is drafting one with area-of-effect abilities that are strong against Dragonkin pets so you can knock out all her pets nearly simultaneously.

When it comes to the first strategy, there is a nice chunk of pets that have good single-target abilities that are strong against Dragonkin. Typically, most Humanoid pets will have abilities that are strong against Dragonkin, but there are some others that can do the same in other families. Either way, here are some you should consider:

Regarding the second strategy, you’re going to want to bring at least two pets that have area-of-effect abilities that are strong against Dragonkin. Your third pet can be on with good single-target damage to finish them off. This is good because, due to the varying health totals of each of Haniko’s pets, they won’t actually all die at the same time. As such, having one strong single-target hitter on your team from the aforementioned list can work very well. Now, for the easiest time, you should have at least two of the area-of-effect pets listed below:

All you really need to do is spam the area-of-effect ability until the pet dies. However, note that aside from Sunborne Val’kyr, all the pets listed above have access to Acid Rain, which is an ability that turns the battlefield’s weather to Cleansing Rain and buffs Dreadful Breath’s damage. As such, you will always want to take both of these abilities without worrying too much about your third ability because you’ll never be using it in this pet battle anyway.

General Tips

• After your first pet dies, you should swap in your pet that excels at single-target damage to account for Tina’s Death Grip. After all, you want her to pull in your second area-of-effect pet while there are still two to three enemies remaining, not your single-target pet.
• All of the pets listed under the single-target category have an evasion/deflection ability that allows you to dodge an attack. Save these to avoid any Proto-Strike. Ruffle has soul Ward to block an attack, but it doesn’t always go first, like the evasions/deflections, making it a tad bit weaker.
• If you take Clock’em, you can take Haymaker instead of Jab as your first ability if you’re feeling lucky. Just be mindful of its 50 percent hit chance.
• If you’re running one pet that has access to both Dreadful Breath and Acid Rain, and one that only has Dreadful Breath, try to make the most of the bonus damage during Cleansing Rain (it lasts nine rounds). That said, chances are it won’t last the full nine rounds due to Tina’s (the epic pet) Starfall ability which shifts the weather to Moonlight, therefore causing you to lose the damage buff to Dreadful Breath.

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