January 1, 2015

Today’s Team: Dreadfuller
P/P Droplet Of Y’Sharrj (Swallow You Whole, Acid Rain, Dreadful Breath)
H/H Scourged Whelpling (Tail Sweep, Call Darkness, Dreadful Breath)
H/H Weebomination (Cleave, Consume Corpse, Haymaker)

Rationale:
Welcome your new AoE overlords! Seriously, all these new even split AoE moves have been really hard for me to deal with. I’m not yet at the “I hate them so much that I only live to see them countered” stage, but I may eventually end up there. Actually I’ve been using them quite a bit myself. If the meta does shape up to be as AoE heavy as it seems it will then I’m not sure how we will deal with it. Later for that, for now I’ll continue to rack up the wins.

The plan is to cast Acid Rain then Dreadful Breath with the Droplet Of Y’Shaarj, then bring in the Scourged Whelpling to spam Dreadful Breath, then bring in the Weebomination to finish off any back liners who still live. It should be able to get off a Consume Corpse if it needs to. I found myself wanting a harder hitting single target move so I’ve been using Swallow You Whole instead my usual Corrosion. So far this team hasn’t lost yet, it even beat out a team that had Brittle Webbing up the entire game, doh.

Concerns:
DoY/Dreadful Breath teams used to fail miserably if the elemental didn’t get off to a good start, but I’m not as concerned with that since Dreadful Breath is now evenly split. A strong critter attack might prove too much damage to deal with.

The Opposing Team:
H/B Singing Sunflower
H/H Magical Crawdad
P/S Son Of Sethe
Die in pet battle hell, troll! (a bit too much?)

The Battle:
Whenever I see a Singing Sunflower and Magical Crawdad team my heart drops. It was immediately raised up when I saw the pretty green arrows (strong attacks) on my DoY against the flower. Plus I had two weather changes. I thought it should go well, it did.

Round 1:
Swallow You Whole / Sunlight
Round 2: Acid Rain / Photosynthesis
Round 3:
swap to crawdad / Dreadful Breath
Round 4: Dreadful Breath / Wish
Round 5:
swap to flower / Dreadful Breath

At this point I had take very little damage while both the Son Of Sethe and the crawdad had taken over 400 damage each. The flower was almost fully healed but it was going to receive more of the same strong damage. Another Swallow You Whole was enough for my opponent to show me their back side. Whenever sunlight teams run away angels throw kittens cocktail parties, it’s true.

Bonus Battle:
B/B Yellow-Bellied Frog
P/P Servant Of Demidos
H/P Doom Bloom

If I were going to counter my team I would probably use a frog. Although I wouldn’t use a frog of poor quality (gasp!). The frog stayed in the whole time, Frog Kiss never proceed the polymorph, the two Dreadful Breath pets took out the whole team. A real frog may have given the Weebomination a tough time at the end of the battle.

What a hollow victory, especially after as much as I’ve been losing today. I’m realizing that having a defined meta makes it easier to keep a high win rate. When 20-25% of the teams you face have an Unborn Val’kyr I made sure to have an Unborn Val’kyr counter. When 33% (I don’t have any 5.3 data to back that up) of the teams you face have direhorns then I ran a direhorn counter. You get the gist. Without a defined meta I’m not sure what to bring anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not asking for another valk, adder or direhorn. It’s a lot more fun and dynamic this way, I just haven’t been winning as much. I can live with that.

Bonuser Battle:
H/H Unborn Val’kyr
S/S Fiendish imp
S/S Death Adder hatchling

So I thought to myself “here’s some real competition”. I started with the Scourged Whelpling. I figured that If the Fiendish Imp starts it might gate out the undead dragon for the elemental. If the valk starts I can cast Call Darkness to mess with the imp’s healing and also eat the CoD and Haunt. The valk started, I cast Call Darkness and it cast CoD. I cast Dreadful Breath, it missed Haunt and the team fled. What a day this is turning out to be. I think I’m done.