February 19, 2015

POTM check-in
I’d like to occasionally check in to show how the POTM teams are doing. I finally have time today. I don’t know if I’ll get to all ten teams today; if I don’t then I’ll do this on another day so that no team gets left out. Before I start let me tell you a few things. First of all I’m way behind on the POTM, I’ve only done seventeen battles so far. I plan on catching up over the next few days and hope by the end of the month I’ll have done at least six battles per team. Second, I’m having one of my worst pet battling days in quite a long time. I think I’ve lost five out of the last six battles that I’ve done. Once because I was outplayed, but otherwise rng has been getting the best of me. Darkness misses, sandstorm misses, enemy crits and multiple low hitting attacks. It’s been bad. Let’s hope for all of our sakes that things turns around.

Battle 1: Zero
Frostwolf Ghostpup, Royal Peacock, Ghastly Kid
vs. Unborn Val’kyr, Death Adder Hatchling, Stitched Pup
The two Haunts made this an interesting match up. I hoped to bait my opponent into Haunting my Ghastly Kid right after my own Haunt but it didn’t work. This resulted in my opponent gaining the upper hand for a few rounds. I brought my ghost puppy in to face the adder so that I could perform a useful action (Haunting Song) when it was blinded. I’ll say again what a great job was done on the DAH. It was nerfed, but not so much that it became a bad pet. Now it’s a powerful pet that takes some skill to use instead of a pet that you could blind, drool, then win with. My opponent backlined the DAH with around 100 health left which was a bad idea. They must not have realized that the Royal Peacock has an AOE.

Battle 2: Necro At Night
Qiraji Guardling, Servant Of Demidos, Frostwolf Ghostpup
vs. Soul Of The Aspects, Clockwork Gnome, Mini-Diablo
I should probably not be doing the POTM today with my luck. I had this battle all planned out in my head and I saw an easy victory in front of me. The priority was leaving a sandstorm for when I had to face the stupid gnome and its turrets. The battle started as dragon versus human, great, even easier. I held off on Crush until the second round, the dragon used Deflection to block it. Ok, still not a big deal. I’ll finish off the dragon, head to the back line, then let the Frostwolf Ghostpup heal the Qiraji Guardling. The only thing that would stop me is a lucky crit. The lucky crit hit me for close to 900 damage with the dragonkin racial. My cat is still suffering from the shock of my exclamation (“wtf!!!”). She should know not to lay next to me when I’m having a bad rng day. I was unable to recover.

Edit: On the next battle with this team (on this same unlucky day) I lost to a Sky-Bo that triple chain stunned the ghostpup then got a coin flip win that led to a stun on the Qiraji Guardling. What can I do?

Battle 3: Thrash Or Dash
Stormwing, Imperial Eagle Chick, Frostwolf Pup
vs. Murkalot, Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling Blackfuse Bombling
The battle would have been won with a triple hitting Quills. Quills hit twice and the battle was lost. Murkalot survived with 81 health. Seriously? At least no cats were disturbed during the course of this close battle. You would think I would care less about losing with other people’s teams but the opposite is true; I feel like I’m letting people down with every loss. Actually there should be no shame involved to losing to Murkalot and the Blackfuse Bombling. I think that every person who has ever done pet battling agrees that RI is the most broken move in pet battles. The fact that it has remained unchanged this long makes me think that the pet battle devs just don’t care.

Battle 4: Metal Speed
Iron Starlette, Lifelike Mechanical Frostboar, Frostwolf Ghostpup
vs. Anubisath Idol, Terrible Turnip, Pandaren Monk
The Iron Starlette was able to get its speed up pretty fast thanks to being a P/S, that was a good call by Vek. When I noticed that the idol had Demolish I thought “oh on, here we go again”. Instead of rng screwing with me again Demolish didn’t hit at a particularly high or low rate and Rupture only stunned on one out of three. I can’t say that my opponent played this one particularly well. Letting an idol take a Ghostly Bite to its smelly dog face is never a good idea. The two heals were really useful, I was able to use Rebuild once and Haunting Song twice.

Battle 5: Clonestorm
Royal Peacock, Frostwolf Ghostpup, Blighthawk
vs. Murkalot, Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling Blackfuse Bombling
Murkalot and BFB again. I lost.

Battle 6: Duck and Weave
Frostwolf Ghostpup, Alpine Hare, Murkalot
vs. Murkalot, Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling Blackfuse Bombling
This battle, or more accurately, this lack of a battle was hilarious for two reasons. First, I was queueing with evil AoE overlord teams in order to see how they would fare against this Murkalot team. It was an experiment to see who would win in the battle of the dummy teams: the grossly overpowered Murkalot/BFB combo or the less overpowered even split AoE spam. Unfortunately all I managed to do was to grief some poor pet battlers who had the misfortune of queueing with balanced, creative teams. Then I tried a few creative, but most likely unsuccessful anti-Murkalot teams. They won, but I never got to test them out against the Murkalot/BFB combo. So five battles later, I go back to the POTM and here we are again, facing dirty murk. EVEN THE RNG OF THE QUEUE IS AGAINST ME TODAY MUAHAHAHAHA!

What’s even more funny, though, is how this battle went down. It started as Murkalot versus Murkalot, my opponent cast RI and I cast… Shieldstorm. Have fun wasting your RI! Rather than stay and finish the battle now that a wrench was thrown into their plan, my opponent showed their lack of spine by fleeing. Thanks Liwei for that gem. With that fond memory I think I’ll quit and continue tomorrow with the other four POTM teams.