Today’s Team: Brony Express
S/S Fiendish Imp (Burn, Immolation, Nether Gate)
P/P Sen’Jin Fetish (Flame Breath, Wild Magic, Sear Magic)
H/P Vengeful Porcupette (Powerball, Spirit Spikes, Flank)
Rationale:
I’m late to another party. This party being the Vengeful Porcupette party. After hearing respected and experienced battlers talk it up for so long I gave it another chance. This is probably the third or fourth time I’ve tried it. Every other time I’ve been like “yeah, that’s okay” but after using it yesterday and today I’m saying “where have you been all of my life”. It’s a fun pet to use and it can be wildly successful. I’m sure I’ll have more to say in the future but right now my fingers are rope burned* so typing is difficult. You know the drill, the imp and mask are a dynamic duo, the Vengeful Porcupette brings its own brand of butt whooping. Anything called Spirit Spikes has got to be cool.
Concerns:
Even with Wild Magic a well played sandstorm idol could shut me down. Wait, are idols ever well played?
The Opposing Team:
P/B Droplet Of Y’Shaarj
H/B Singing Sunflower
P/B Spawn Of G’Nathus
The Battle:
I force swapped out the Spawn Of G’Nathus and in came the Droplet Of Y’Shaarj. I expected an Acid Rain/ Dreadful Breath combo but instead I got hit with a CoD. Dang. I quickly back lined the imp and brought out the Sen’Jin Fetish. The mask killed the elemental but got dropped to 0 hp (somehow Swallow You Whole hit for double when I wasn’t expecting it to). The CoD did around 900 damage to the imp on the back line. Spawn Of G’Nathus came out to take a Flame Breath from the mask. It was force swapped again, this time being replaced by the annoying flower. Not to worry, the imp can do really well against some sunlight teams if it can get Immolation going then get to the back. That’s exactly what I did so the imp was gaining around 100 hp per round thanks to Immolation and the humanoid racial. The Vengeful Porcupette took a Solar Beam on the swap then cast Powerball to get a speed advantage. It hit the flower hard enough with Flanks so that when my opponent surprised me with an early second Solar Beam kill shot it wasn’t a game changer. The imp was able to clean up the two remaining low health pets thanks to its swap and its speed.
*I got the rope burns from running in my first Spartan Race today. Climbing the rope was easy enough, but sliding down… very bad idea. Besides that the race was incredibly fun, I think I’ve found a new hobby.
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I’m glad you are starting to enjoy the Vengeful Porcupette. Wild Magic(or similar abilities) are a good match. While Anubisath Idols/Qiraji Guardlings are not a good matchup they are not really that bad since they mostly do weak Crushes in return. Absolutely worst matchup I can think of is pets with Shell Shield combined with Surge(read Crawdad or Crabs), there just is no way. Mechanicals are of course also an issue, as with all beast pets, but at least with Spirit Spikes you can go down fighting(especially against Clockwork Gnomes).
nice matches Vek. That was my non clonedancing clone dance team. I am assuming it was you that brought out the qiraji, spirit crab, crab snipe team. Well done!
Hi Rhon. I’m on EU so sadly I doubt we will ever square-off against each other.
weird. fought someone with a vengeful porcupette named Vek. You must have a fan!
Lol. Perhaps because I have talked it up so much.
I guess sometimes you just have to stick with it or like you have done here, revisit pets again. I had similar experience with the Spirit Crab, I just didn’t get why you were praising it so much it just never worked out well for me. But a couple of months ago something changed.
Vengeful Porcupette is an absolute monster, and few people I’ve run into seem to respect the kind of damage Flank can do with the speed advantage.
Being able to drop a Unborn Valkyr down by ~1200hp in 2 turns while they do usual Valkyr things is VERY satisfying. I want to get a Pierre for the AoE cleanse some time so the porcupette doesn’t get smacked by the Curse.
I totally forgot that High Fiber is an AoE cleanse until someone used it on me the other day. It was very effective.
What other teams are the vengeful porcupette used on? I’ve never seen one in a battle.
I must admit that I don’t have any really good teams that just make the Porcupette get that much better. Generally if I during an evening start running into lots of Valkyrs/DAH/Birds and the teams I use can’t handle it I switch in a Vengeful and it can take care of any of those three(and often at least one or two of them during a single battle).
But if I start building a team with the Vengeful then there are three things you should take into consideration.
1. Mechanicals. These can really be a problem, so you might want to bring something you can face them with instead of the Porcupette. For me I am pretty satisfied with only a Poison Fang attack, this will kill them pretty quick and still damage them if they switch the mechanic pet back to save it for the Porcupette. If you run into lots of minefield pets then you might instead want to bring an elemental to be able to take the minefield hit, or bring a sear magic-type ability.
2. Aquatics with shell+surge. These will totally block the Vengeful. So if you keep running into these kinds of pets you will probably need a powerful flying attack. H/P Turkey with Peck and Food Coma can be useful, well there are lots of other flying pets(or Blighthawk with slicing wind) to use. Otherwise it might be enough with a Wild Magic-type ability to help tip the scale in your favour.
3. Sandstorm pets. I don’t think I have ever faced the Living Sandling with a Vengeful, but I would not look forward to that match-up. The Idol and the guardling will take weak damage and even less during the Sandstorm. But they will do weak damage with crush and with spirit spikes to do damage and a lucky triple-hit Flank when the Sandstorm has dropped off and things are not all bad. Still also here a Wild Magic-type ability will help.
Looking at these points Voodoo Figurine is a good partner since it can have Wild Magic and a Sear Magic as well. The only real downside is that the Voodoo Figurine and the Vengeful Porcupette are both good counters to Valkyr/DAH so they will sort of overlap in usefulness. If you run into lots of mechanicals an Imp might be better, Corefire Imp can use both Wild Magic and Immolation.
I do like using Black Claw to counter Shell Shields and Sandstorms, but then you will have two beast pets which makes you vulnerable if you run into Mechanicals.
If you don’t run into many mechanicals/crawdad/crabs/sandstorm pets, well then you can pretty much bring any other two pets. The Vengeful works well as a finisher for a Clonedancer team(well lots of pets can fit that bill).
Suggestion by Liwei above to use Pierre sounds quite excellent. Can be especially useful if you run into an opponent that like to use Valk and then Imp to gate the Haunted pet to back line. Then you can get their Gate to work against themselves.
I’ve been teaming it up with the usual suspects: Yu’la/Spirit Crab, Sen’Jin Fetish is a good partner, a third for a Minefield team, etc. I haven’t been able to build a good team around it yet, but it augments some existing combos well.