January 18, 2015

Today’s Team: Roarbat Grrr
H/H Tiny Sporebat (Shadow Shock, Leech Seed, Confusing Sting)
P/S Son Of Sethe (Plagued Blood, Touch Of The Animus, Drain Blood)
H/H Fel Flame (Flame Breath, Scorched Earth, Conflagrate)

Rationale:
As I was browsing pets on the auction house today I noticed the Tiny Sporebat. It reminded me of the few unsuccessful attempts that I’ve made at using this pet for PvP. I decided to give it another shot, maybe it could work well with some of the new WoD pets. I swear it wasn’t initially my intention to pair it with the Fel Flame and Son Of Sethe, but that’s where I ended up. Leech Seed seems like a great heal for a flyer to have, but it’s never been significant enough to make the Tiny Sporebat keep its racial long enough to make a difference. Hopefully Plagued Blood and Touch Of The Animus can change that. I looked at other Scorched Earth pets and just couldn’t resist using the Fel Flame again; it’s been so damn good as a partner for the Son Of Sethe. When you think about it the Fel Flame is a really impressive pet due to it’s longevity. It’s been around a long time, since the inception of pet battles if I remember correctly.

Concerns:
The Tiny Sporebat has never done well for me, hopefully that will change. I seem to be in a rut this week, it’s been all Ore Eaters and SoS/Fel Flames.

The Battle:
I wasn’t sure how this was going to play out. I didn’t feel confident enough about the Tiny Sporebat to think I had a good shot at winning against this good team. There was strong damage going both ways so I was hoping to use that to my advantage. I wasn’t sure which pet was going to start, the valk or the adder. I incorrectly guessed the adder so I brought the Tiny Sporebat out to begin. I cast Confusing Sting then Shadow Slash before taking a Curse Of Doom and a Haunt. I was now in the same position as yesterday’s daily: I had to get my pet to the back line so that the Son Of Sethe’s heals could hopefull take effect. Of course for this to work I had to get my DoT going on the next pet, which was the wisp.

My Tiny Sporebat cast Confusing Sting, then rather than hit me with strong damage the wisp decided to block instead. Ok, that works for me. I swapped in the Son Of Sethe who had to deal with the block and the incoming 50% blind. There was a block, then a miss, but the move that my entire strategy is based around, TOTA, landed. That’s the problem with 50% moves, even 50% blinds: when they work they’re great, when they don’t, oh oh. By now the valk was on my opponent’s back line so it was swapped back in. Nice, it still had the DoT from earlier. After another Plagued Blood my Tiny Sporebat is getting healed some more. I can’t tell exactly how much my flyer was healed for since the logs don’t back that far; I do know it had absorbed the CoD on had it’s flying racial back when it came in later.

The Son Of Sethe then killed the valk but would only have one round against the next the next pet since the valk hit a Shadow Shock crit for 657. The next pet was the wisp, which used Soul Ward to block TOTA. I brought in the Fel Flame for some strong damage against the magic pet. My opponent wanted none of this and swapped to the adder as my Fel Flame cast Scorched Earth. That was fine by me, if we get into a swap fest the weather will slowly chip away at my opponent’s pets. I swapped back to my flyer, which took a blind on the swap. The wisp came right back in, and although it was protected by the adder’s blind from Confusing Sting it still had to take a strong tick from the weather. Leech Seed gave my flyer some heals as it took a Flash. I brought in the Fel Flame one last time. It was able to finish off the wisp, then the adder due my opponent not using Blinding Poison again. They must have thought I was going to swap.

There’s a lot of healing going on here. I don’t want to be the guy that people run from due to fear of a prolonged battle. That’s just lame. This battle took 23 rounds, which is nowhere near Magical Crawdad and Singing Sunflower troll status. I’ll keep an eye on it, though.