Today’s Team: A Bloody Trap
S/S Darkmoon Rabbit (Huge Sharp Teeth, Dodge, Stampede)
H/P Snarly (Rip, Surge, Blood In The Water)
P/P Curious Wolvar Pup (Punch, Snap Trap, Maul)
Strategy:
Josh reminded me of this team in his comments on 12/13/13. This team is based on the bleeding effect. While an enemy pet is bleeding Blood In The Water goes from 50% accuracy to 100% and Maul will hit a second time for an extra 345 damage. Both Rip and Huge Sharp Teeth can apply the bleeding effect. Sometimes I go with Stampede instead of Burrow to keep things interesting. Taking Stampede creates some good synergy with the DoT.
Concerns:
I don’t like the random nature of traps and I think they need to be tweaked a bit. Right now traps do damage, interrupt and stun. That’s a lot bang for one move. Some make the argument that traps are “balanced” by their random nature (you don’t know when they will detonate) but I don’t think this is a valid argument. Sure, you don’t know when it’ll go off but when it does go off it still does all three of the the things mentioned above.
The Opposing Team:
P/P Infinite Whelpling
P/P Kun-Lai Runt
H/P Ghostly Skull
The Battle:
I started with my DMR while my opponent started with the KLR. My opponent realized that the KLR would be slower and unable to stun so the KLR was immediately swapped for the dragon. I was hoping to take out the dragon with the rabbit and then use Dodge for the next pet but I was this was a greedy plan. I used Dodge, Huge Sharp Teeth, Stampede then Huge Sharp Teeth again. I came within about 100 hp of a kill when the DMR died. Snarly was able to Surge the Infinite Whelpling for the kill but now one of my two bleed applications is gone. Not well-played by me. The KLR came out to Frost Shock then Deep Freeze Snarly, who was able to get the bleed going before getting stunned. I swapped to the Curious Wolvar Pup and now it was my opponent’s turn to make a mistake. They kept the KLR in to take a bleeding Maul for around a 900 damage death, ouch. A Snap Trap was laid for the Ghostly Skull. Not wanting to be outdone by my 900 damage Maul it hit a Ghostly Bite for 996 damage, yikes! My Curious Wolvar Pup was able to get two Punches off before dying, now it was up to the trap to save the battle for me. Snarly was able to bring the Ghostly Skull to 0 hp with a Rip and Blood In The Water but only had around 230 hp left. I was hoping for a lucky trap detonation but I assumed the battle was going to be a draw. There was no detonation but luck came through anyways when rng decided to make the Ghostly Skull miss. I’ve complained plenty about losing to rng but here I owe the win to luck. I’ll try to remember that next time I want to rage over an rng loss.
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The Wolver pup is the first pet I levelled to 25 and still my all time favorite. He was excellent for levelling other pets against the critters around the farm (until I discovered the zandy Dino’s. He can solo Lucky Yi. His two big problems are that he’s not a great team player except in BitW teams, and his trap is very unpredictable.
I’d love to see other possible teams he could star in.
Cat, monkey, cwp? I’ve tried it and it was meh at best.
I just made a team that I feel really guilty about, a little too OP but fun if your having issues on you meta any one day. People will hate you and likely run after facing you once.
Peddlefeet 325 speed (S/S) (Bow shot, Lovestruck, Love Potion)
Death Adder Hatchling (S/S) (Poison Fang, Puncture Wound, Blinding Poison)
Unborn Val’Kyr (B/B) (Shadow Shock, CoD, Haunt)
The key is to get off your Haunt, and maybe CoD. Bring in Death Adder and Blind. Swap in Peddlefeet and Lovestruck. You can swap back to DAH or attack with Peddlefeet for one round, and then bring back in your Unborn when he pops up.
Your opponent will do one of two things.
a) Stay in and eat all of haunt (and maybe COD) and be stunned for 4 whole rounds.
b) Swap to the back row and eat all of haunt.
It’s a win/win since who ever is in the front row is likely stunned/blinded for 4 whole rounds until it pops. Alternatively you can use a Qiraji Guardling (S/S) 325 speed to stun with Kick.
It’s almost unfair, but if you are hitting OP opponents bust this team out to make them hurt. Even great against mineswap teams as you just start with DAH and blind on the round he’ll likely drop mines.
Yes, Haunt + stall team = very strong
Unborn Valk + Death Adder = very strong
Everyone knows these are among the strongest pets and teams now.
It would be more interesting if you suggested teams without the most commonly used/strongest pets that everyone sees all the time.
It would be like saying in 5.3 ” Hey, I came up with this great team. You start with a Direhorn……..”
Oh pet breeding, how I long for you… 😛
I’ve fought the Qiraji Guardling version (replacing Peddlefeet) and it’s truly a PITA.
Ooh, my main team is a variant on this, but it uses an electrified razortooth in snarly’s place. What advantages does Snarly have over the razortooth? Does he bring something more important to the table?
First difference is that Snarly is Aquatic while the Razortooth is Elemental. This is very helpful against the popular Unborn Valkyrs, Haunt will do 50 damage per tick instead of 150. But on the other hand Snarly will be an easier kill for the also popular Call Darkness birds(Crow/raven/dread hatchling), while the Razortooth will not be affected by the darkness or even take strong damage from the birds. To me it seems that Valkyrs are still a bit more commonly used than the Darkness-birds(or any flyer other than these three birds).
But most importantly Surge is just a superior tactical move to Devour/Lightning Shield. The priority move from surge just have so much benefit. It negates stun from things like Horn Attack. It removes bonus attacks from things like Flurry and Alpha Strike. And finally when in the end game with just two pets left going first becomes quite useful, you can often finish off your opponent with no retaliation.
I wont say that either Devour or Lightning shield are useless, they are just much more situational. Surge has a much larger window of use.
Great analysis.