January 26, 2015

Today’s Team: Flying Twerkus
H/P Trunks (Smash, Ethereal, Avalanche)
S/S Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling (Breath, Thunderbolt, Decoy)
S/S Ore Eater (Acid Touch, Shell Armor, Body Slam)

Rationale:
I finally got around to completing the “An Awfully Boring Adventure (with a lot of traveling)” achievement. Ok, maybe it wasn’t that boring. Having never leveled pets using the Celestial Tournament I didn’t have any two pet strategies in place so that took some work, but otherwise it just seemed like a lot of flying around. I shouldn’t trivialize it; I’m sure it must be difficult for entry level battlers.

I wasn’t too excited about getting Trunks from the achievement since I always hear the letters “rng” in any discussion about the magic elephant. Indeed, most of the time that I have faced Trunks the move set used was When Elekks Fly, Moonfire and Headbutt. That’s pretty damn rng heavy, which of course isn’t something that I’d get excited about. However, the complete opposite move set is pretty solid in my opinion; there’s a decent normal attack in Smash, there’s an avoid, there’s an even split AoE. Seems good enough to me. There’s really no move on Trunks that lends itself to obvious synergy so I was free to pick any pets that I wanted as partners. I went with two really good pets that would diversify my family attacks. With these three pets I have beast, elemental, dragonkin, aquatic and humanoid attacks. There’s a block, an avoid and a shield. It’s survivable, fast, and may hit hard enough to be good.

Concerns:
Smash has a really wide damage range. The magic racial on a high health pet like Trunks is worthless.

The Opposing Team
B/B Ore Eater
H/H Ghastly Kid
S/S Mechanical Axebeak

The Battle:
For the second day in a row I’m facing one of my own teams. Not just one of my own teams, but one of my own really good teams. When I first started blogging about pet battles one of my concerns was that someone from my own meta was going to read this blog and use my own teams against me. That time is here, albeit a year and a half later.

The good news about facing Axe Me Later is that I know how it’s going to be played. Most likely the Ghastly Kid would start with Haunt. I decided to bring the decoy-laying MPD first. I didn’t really think Haunt would be cast right into the decoy, but one can hope. Hoof was blocked, then my Thunderbolt did some AoE damage as a second Hoof took down the decoy. Now that the Haunt was coming I swapped to the Ore Eater. It took 209 damage before popping Shell Armor on the next round to shut down the Haunt. The Mechanical Axebeak replaced the undead goat. Rather than go straight for the block move the bird decided to get in a Haywire before the armor was in place. After Haywire ran its course the bird cast Decoy. I used a couple of rounds to take it down then switched to Trunks after the shield expired and the Ghastly Kid returned to the back line.

Trunks took a Peck on the swap then cast Avalanche as the Ghastly Kid returned to the front. I went right back to the Ore Eater. Hoof was weak against my humanoid, the Shell Armor shuts down Haunt, it’s a really good match up for me. I should have held off on the Shell Armor, but I cast it right away in case a Haunt was incoming. No Haunt came, which meant my opponent was going to wait until my armor expired to cast it. No problem, I’ll take off some health while we wait for the shield to drop. Ethereal resulted in one wasted round for me, but the Body Slam on the next round did some good damage. After the armor dropped the Haunt came and the opposing Ore Eater replaced the Ghastly Kid. Swapping wouldn’t do much for me at this point so I decided to stay in to let my humanoid die. After it died I brought back the MPD to block a Body Slam then cast Thunderbolt. Both of my pets had most of their health at this point so my opponent decided to flee. A well earned win against a good team.