As you know, you only get to pick 3 small buildings, 2 medium buildings and 2 larger buildings and already now I can tell you that this will cost some heartache if you like me want to get all pets available in the game.
But before we get to that let us have a look at which small buildings to pick if you are a serious pet battler.
Small Buildings
There aren't any small buildings which directly gives you new pets however I very much recommend getting the Engineering Works. If you do not have engineering on your character, picking this building will give you access to the crafted engineering pets of WoD. This means you can get your very own Lifelike Mechanical Frostboar, Mechanical Scorpid and Mechanical Axebeak.
You will not be able to create the Blingtron 5000 with the Engineering Works, however you will be able to get it faster and as such get your hand on Sky-Bo earlier.
Other than the Engineering Works it doesn't really matter which building you pick for the small lots, however if you are a tailor I would recommend getting the Tailoring Emporium.The reason? The Elekk Plushie.
While you will not be able to create the Elekk Plushie if you do not have tailoring, getting the Tailoring Emporium will help you get it faster if you do. It currently requires 50 Hexweave Cloth and 10 Sorcerous Earth to create and the work orders of the Tailoring Emporium will help you get there much faster.
So those are the small buildings to consider if you want to build the best pet battle garrison. Now let's move on to where the tough choices lie at the medium buildings.
Medium Buildings
You only have 2 plots for medium buildings and that is where the trouble starts, because there are 3 that grants you vanity pets.
First up is the Inn. If you create an Inn you will get access to daily dungeon quests from random people dropping by. One of these quests is given by Mylune and is called For the Birds. It requires you to go into the Everbloom dungeon and pick up a Peachick from a nest. This will get you, your own little Everbloom Peachick.
If you are horde, the second choice is the Trading Post. Getting this to level 2 will unlock access to
the Laughing Skull faction and getting revered with them will give you the option to purchase a Bone Wasp. If you are a Alliance you will not get a vanity pet option from the Sha'tari defense so you actually have the space for all the medium buildings you would want to pick as a pet battler.
The last building you want to get is the Barn. Once you get the barn to level 3(which requires you to get the master trapper achievement by placing 125 work orders) a glass of warm milk will spawn and this will teach you the Pygmy Cow.So 3 buildings and 2 plots, hmmm. Provided your main character is horde, the smartest thing would probably be to get the Inn and the Trading post on your main and then get the stable on an alt character.
Large Buidings
You can have 2 Large Buildings and there are none that provide you with any vanity pets. However there are still some that could provide some benefits to pet battlers.
The Mage Tower gives you access to portals so you can travel to other areas of Draenor faster. In theory this would make doing tamer dailies easier so it might be a good choice to make.
The Stables are another potential choice. At level 2 you no longer get dazed when riding mounts in Draenor and at level 3 you get a 20% increase in mount speed while in Draenor. Both things should help you get around to daily tamers and if you get the building leveled fast enough, it could also be helpful when doing the 500 pet battles needed to get the Menagerie to level 3.
Others
Other than these there is of course the Pet Menagerie which is a no brainer both because it has it's own slot that doesn't compete with any other building and because at level 3 the Pet Battle daily (opened up by the quest Pets vs Pest) starts grating a Big Bag of Pet Supplies, which has a chance to contain on of 7 different vanity pets: Albino Chimaeraling, Firewing, Ghastly Kid, Puddle Terror, Sun Sproutling, Sunfire Kaliri and Weebomination.
So what are you waiting for? Go build that Garrison and let me know which buildings you ended up choosing.
