February 1, 2015

Today’s Team: Twilight Ghostriders
P/P Frostwolf Ghostpup (Scratch, Haunting Song, Ghostly Bite)
H/B Mud Jumper (Water Jet, Swarm Of Flies, Bubble)
H/H Twilight Fiendling (Creepy Chomp, Leap, Siphon Life)

Rationale:
Don’t laugh at my Twilight Fiendling! Well, ok, laugh if you must. There is a reason behind this madness. The meta super villains are beginning to emerge, and it’s not a pet or two this time, it’s a strategy. That strategy is AoE spam. Many AoE moves were changed from doing a set amount of damage to each pet to doing a fixed amount of damage split evenly between all living pets. This means that moves like Dreadful Breath and Thunderbolt that were basically worthless against a single target at the end of the battle are now still extremely useful against a single target at the end of a battle. Teams with these even split AoEs have become extremely hard to beat without a counter.

I’ve been trying to come up with counter teams and the Frostwolf Ghostpup has been at the core of them. Haunting Song is a powerful AoE heal that results in a net gain of health for my three pets when one of these even split AoEs is used. I’ve been using the Mud Jumper (or Swamp Croaker) as a partner due to the prevalence of the Weebomination on these teams. The frog has reasonably high health to withstand back line damage plus it takes weak damage from Cleave, the Weebomination’s AoE move. So what about this Twilight Fiendling madness? It has high health and an undead mov, which is necessary due to idols. I’ve been having a lot of trouble with the ghostpup and jumper against Anubisath Idols since both Scratch and Swarm Of Flies do weak damage against humanoids. Hopefully the fiendling’s Chomp will put a hurt on any idols that I encounter.

Concerns:
The problem with specific counter teams is getting them to perform well in general. How will the Twilight Fiendling do against all comers?

The Opposing Team:
P/P Droplet Of Y’Shaarj
H/H Scourged Whelpling
H/H Weebomination

The Battle:
I had a chance to put my team to use against one of my own teams, Dreadfuller, a team that it was designed to counter. It worked perfectly. In fact, I only needed to use the Frostwolf Ghostpup. All I did was spam Scratch, use Haunting Song when available and use Ghostly Bite once to take out the Droplet Of Y’Shaarj. It makes for quite the boring report, but at least I know that my team does what it was built to do. I did get two crits against the Scourged Whelpling, but I don’t think that’s why I won. None of my pets were close to death at the end due to the four Haunting Song’s that were sung by my spectral puppy.