February 2, 2014

Gone Wildin’
This has become my most favorite type of daily. It’s fun to come up with good teams with the strongest pets but it’s equally fun and more challenging to come up with good teams with the restriction of only using wild caught pets. If the pets all have to come from the same map then that adds even anther level of challenge. That’s exactly what I’m going to do today. In order to fill out some of the “map buddies” as I have started calling them I went out and leveled a few pets to 25 by doing the whole Pandarian tamer circuit. Somehow losing to npc tamers by rng is somehow much worse to me than losing to players. Pandaren Fire Spirit took me five tries due to Idol misses. Really, five tries. I was very close to rage quitting. The victory of the day was finding the Dandelion Frolciker and Jade Owl strat for Aki at Pet Charge. That’s a vast improvement over how I used to battle Aki with the Idol.

So now that I have some new level 25 pets I can make some more map buddy teams. Wish me luck.

Battle 1: Ghostlands Gladiators
Rat, Spirit Crab, Toad
vs. Nexus Whelpling, Electrified Razortooth, Spirit Of Competition
The Rat and Toad are two common and solid wild pets that I leveled up today. These two will be able to replace some weak links from the last time I tried, such as the Snake and Maggot from this team. The Maggot isn’t bad but man, that Snake needed to go. Someday I will find a use for you Snake! As far as the battle went, I thought it would be a lot easier than it was with my two aquatic attacks versus the two elementals. I had to watch out for the Rip against my Rat so I always had to be cautious. In the end the Rat beat out the Spirit Of Competition but it needed Survival to do so.
Record: 1-0

Battle 2: Deepholm Philosophers
Emerald Shale Hatchling, Twilight Beetle, Twilight Spider
vs. Unborn Val’kyr, Fiendish Imp, Scalded Basilisk Hatchling
This team would be better with a Fungal Moth, but those dusty rng fliers are silly to me. A team full of all P/P breeds isn’t my usual modus operandi but it seemed fun to try. This turned out to be a frustrating battle. When I first saw this team I thought that there’s no way I could ever pull it off. It turned out I was facing a new player (at least I hope lol). They made bad swaps, they Haunted at a very odd time, they swapped instead of going for a kill shot, there were a lot of mistakes. Yet I still lost to the sheer awesomeness of their pets. The Basilisk was too much to handle for my slow team. Too bad I didn’t bring that Fungal Moth after all.
Record: 1-1

Battle 3: Darkshore Deathsquad
Darkshore Cub, Squirrel, Shimmershell Snail
vs. Jademist Dancer, Xu-Fu, Nether Fairie Dragon
This team might be nice for a new player since all of the pets come from such a low level map. Once again I was scared by seeing some great pets across from me. Xu-Fu started against the Squirrel. Oh oh. I didn’t panic, I used Crouch and Xu-Fu cast Prowl. Oh oh again. I really need the bleed but a Prowled beast attack on my Squirrel could take off massive hp, even while Crouch is up. Luckily a Moonfire came instead after I applied the bleed. The Darkshore Cub came in to Maul and then Bite Xu-Fu for the kill. It died to the Jademist Dancer. Then the four remaining pets went back and forth. The difference was the Shimmershell Snail being able to Absorb in Moonlight. It missed one Dive against the Dancer but killed the elemental with the second. I still thought I lost this one. The Squirrel had 35 hp versus the NFD’s 400. All three Nut Barrages hit and the final one crit for the win. Talk about close.
Record: 2-1

Battle 4: Hillsbraddies
Infested Bear Cub, Squirrel, Huge Toad
vs. Lil’ Deathwing, Foe Reaper, Restless Shadeling
Another map buddy bleed team for your bleeding pleasure. This time I was a bit more comfortable knowing I had the undead racial to help me out. I assumed Lil’ Deathwing would start so I brought the Squirrel out first. Instead it was the Restless Shadeling as the first enemy pet. Did I want the soft counter Toad or the hard counter Squirrel? I would have preferred the Toad so I could save the critter racial for Elementium Bolt but the Squirrel was already here. Crouch, Woodchipper then Stampede didn’t really get the results I wanted. 1806 is a lot of undead hp to take down. I went to the Toad after all. One thing that ended up going well for me was timing the death of my Squirrel to coincide with the Bolt hitting. Who needs a critter racial when you’re dead? The Toad got a few heals off which helped my cause. The Infested Bear went head to head with the Foe Reaper and lost but did enough damage so that my Toad finished things off. No bleeding pets were Mauled.
Record: 3-1

Battle 5: Blade’s Edge Livers
Cogblade Raptor, Scalded Basilisk Hatchling, Squirrel
vs. Fiendish Imp, Alterac Brew Pup, Macabre Marionette
Damn there are a lot of good wild pets out there roaming around Azeroth. This is fairly solid team hailing from Blade’s Edge. My new meta really loves the 297 speed Imp. I see it all the time. I also run into the S/S of course, but the 297 speed P/S Imp is much more common than on my previous meta. In this battle it made a difference. I kept my Cogblade Raptor in against the Imp even though the Burns were painful. I did this because the Imp stayed in with Exposed Wounds applied. Since I was faster I didn’t need to use Overtune to hit all the Batters, which did 200+ damage each. The Imp perished fast. The Basilisk was faster than all of the opposing pets making it a CCing nightmare for my opponent. The Basilisk survived with over 1k hp.
Record: 4-1

This is really fun by it’s getting late. There are still so many maps out there to design a team around but they’ll have to wait until next time.