July 20, 2015

Seeking A Third: Aqua Terror & Vengeful Porcupette
P/S Aqua Terror (Water Jet, Clobber, Dive)
H/P Vengeful Porcupette (Powerball, Spirit Spikes, Flank)

The Vengeful Porcupette is a pet that I’m finally starting to get. People have been praising it for a long time now, yet whenever I had tried it it didn’t perform well for me. Oddly enough, my admiration didn’t come until I paired it with another underused yet desirable pet that hasn’t seen a ton of action on my teams: the Puddle Terror. I put them together and have had a blast.

The Vengeful Porcupette is so great because of its undead killing ability. It has a hard-hitting (289 power) Flank, and Powerball for when it’s slower, which at 252 base speed is often. The Puddle Terror is great at absorbing undead AoE on the back line from Graves. The 1400 health may seem like a liability, but it hasn’t been as much of an issue as I thought. The terror provides a lot of control at 289 speed with Clobber and Dive.

I’ve been making and using these teams for a few days now so I’m a lot deeper into “seeking a third” than usual. The best part about this experience is that I’ve been having a ton of fun. Using two lesser used pets and having so much success is rewarding. I’m actually quite shocked at the over all record of this pair so far, which is 57-8. I have been using many first and second tier pets as a third, but still, that’s pretty damn good consistency for two non-tier pets. Hmm, maybe that should change.

As far as choosing a third pet goes I haven’t been too technical about it. I’ve been throwing in first tier pets to increase my chances of winning; I’ve also tried some just for fun. Let me show you…

Pet 1: H/P Macabre Marionette (Macabre Maraca, Death And Decay, Bone Barrage)
With out any dedicated decoy removal Bone Barrage is a blessing. And I just really like the undead puppet lately.

Team 1: The Warriors (3-0)
vs. Darkmoon Tonk, Emerald Turtle, Emperor Crab
072015EThankfully neither the turtle nor the crab had a shield, or I would have had trouble using my porcupette effectively. I ended up winning by a lot, but it was not an easy battle by any means. I had to think about how to deal with the Minefield, Ion Cannon and the healing crab. It turned out that my opponent had Shock and Awe instead of Minefield, and I was able to juke the Ion Cannon by putting in my beast for one round as bait then swapping to the puppet. I was already off to a good start thanks to my terror using Clobber and Dive optimally in the opening rounds. Sounds easy, but a lot of thought went into it. The juke was big.

Pet 2: H/P Fragment Of Anger
This is my favorite top tier pet; I use it shamelessly on many, many teams. You can almost always get off Spirit Beam twice before expiring, which means you are way ahead if you’ve taken no AoE damage yourself.

Battle 2: The Turnbull AC’s (14-1)
vs. Pandaren Water Spirit, Son Of Animus, Crawling Claw
072015PThe Pandaren Water Spirit is sort of a joke to me, as it can never seem to win a battle when I’m recording wins and losses on my spreadsheet. It’s 0-22. The problem is that the double whammy of Geyser and Whirlpool is just too damn easy to avoid. This player had the right idea with the Crawling Claw forcing a back line pet into the damage. The problem was this was also pretty obvious, so I was able to juke it.
Round 1: Clobber Crawling Claw
Round 2: swap to PWS / Water Jet
Round 3: Water Jet / Geyser
Round 4: Whirlpool / Water Jet (PWS dies, claw in)
Round 5: swap to FoA / Death Grip brings Puddle Terror back in
Round 6: Dive / sawp to Animus, miss, miss
…runaway!

Pet 3: P/P Mechanical Axebeak (Peck, Haywire, Decoy)
The misnamed bird is pretty damn useful. I’m trying out the P/P instead of my frequently flying H/P just for something different. I know, I know, P/P is everyone’s preferred choice.

Battle 3: The Van Cortlandt Rangers (9-1)
vs. Pandaren Water Spirit, Son Of Animus, Stormwing
072015BIt looks like we’ve got ourselves a runner. This time they stayed until round sixteen, so we did a fair bit of battling before they fled. Stormwing is pet that’s totally off my radar. It’s very uncommon on my meta; this is the second time in over seven hundred documented battles. It fit in my opponent’s plan, which was to lay the double whammy then use Flock for a “lolnotinpvpbomb”, which is a phrase I just coined. Err, not really that catchy, I’ll try to come up with something else. I suppose that my opponent thought I wouldn’t bring in my aquatic against the flier. They thought wrong. I was able to avoid the double whammy with Dive, then swap to my porcupette. The Pandaren Water Spirit came back in to use Whirlpool again, but the timing was bad: my porcupette died on the turn it went off.

Pet 4: Trunks (Smash, Ethereal, Avalance)
I had no other thought than using a pet that enjoy when making this team.

Battle 4: The Savage Huns (13-2)
vs. Lil’ Bling, Zandalari Toenibbler, Infinite Whelpling
072015CLil’ Bling, as bad as that pet has been performing recently (2-19), has been a difficult opponent for the terror and porcupette combo. The terror is gimped against Lil’ Bling due to the speed, and the porcupette can’t afford to stay in and ramp-up its speed against all the mech damage. Since I’ve been running more of the Vengeful Porcupette I’ve seen more of Lil’ Bling, so someone out there is using their thinking cap. I can still beat it with a third pet that’s good against mechs, but Trunks doesn’t really fit that bill, with the exception of end game. The Zandalari Toenibbler also was hard to deal with due to Primal Cry messing with my speed. I played it as well as I could, but I had too much going against me. The battle ended with the dragon surviving the terror’s stun and Water Jet with three hundred or so health.

Pet 5: Graves (Skull Toss, BONESTORM, Grave Destruction)
Yeah, I’m a noob. I’m going with the AoE burn Graves with BONESTORM rather than the smart Graves with Consume Corpse.

Battle 5A: The Punks (5-1)
vs. Electrified Razortooth, Thundertail Flapper, Fel Flame
072015NOne uncommon and two common pets on the opposing team. A round seven flee that would have ended in round eight anyways. I call do over.

Battle 5B: The Punks (6-1)
vs. Bone Serpent, Weebomination, Graves
072015MNo do overs! When I saw this team I freaked, but then did a quick checklist. Way to absorb backline AoE…check. Way to pound undead pets in their stupid undead faces… check. FOTM pet that makes wins with lesser used pets lose all credibility… check. Oh, wait, scratch that last one. The battle started as Bone Serpent versus Graves and I knew that I wouldn’t get my third AoE off. I didn’t. My opponent swapped to Graves as my Graves was enjoying its last bit of undeath. I brought in my Vengeful Porcupette and the pounding of faces began. Graves got hit hard until expiration, the Weebomination got hit hard before swapping to the Bone Serpent, the Bone Serpent killed my beast on its undead round. My Puddle terror came in and I thought “the only way that I can lose is if my Clobber misses”. You can guess what happened next…miss. All was not lost, the Weebomination missed its Haymaker, so the result was exactly the same. I should mention that Spirit Spikes contributed a lot of damage.

Oh, can you imagine Graves in overalls and roller skates in a subway? If you have no idea what I’m talking about it’s totally fine :)

Pet 6: H/P Zomstrok (Infected Claw, Shell Shield, Carpnado)
I can’t get out of the habit of using Shell Shield, even though I find it less useful than it once was.

Battle 6: The Boppers (3-1)
vs. Bone Serpent, Weebomination, Graves
072015JI made a mistake this time by starting with Zomstrok. I wanted to start with my Vengeful Porcupette but I was afraid that it would face the Bone Serpent. I didn’t want to sacrifice my main weapon against all of that attack, so I started with Zomstrok instead. I should have known better than to keep him in, the porcupette was just taking too much damage on the back line a Zomstrok slowly damaged the opposing team with low hits. By the time I got around to swapping the beast in it was too late. This is not the first time that Zomstrok as a starter against multiple AoE pets has been a problem. Shame on me, I should have learned from past mistakes. The battle was still close, but the lack of the porcupette’s damage contribution left me a couple hundred health short of a win or draw.

Pet 7: Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling (Breath, Thunderbolt, Decoy)
I’m totally getting over my aversion to using the MPD.

Battle 7: The Gramercy Riffs (5-0)
vs. Kun-Lai Runt, Spawn Of Onyxia, Mud Jumper
072015LDamn I hate fighting Kun-Lai Runts! At least this person was kind enough to cast Takedown both times that my pets were stunned by Deep Freeze. This allowed me the chance to get off an attack before I was slowed again when I swapped in. Still, I was actually worried that I was going to lose. Boy would that have been embarassing. I finally swapped in my MPD as the KLR used a Takedown, which allowed me to cast Decoy and take out him out. After that it was easy.

Pet 8: Ghastly Kid (Hoof, Ethereal, Haunt) (0-0)
I was about to call it a night when I started having visions of painted faces and baseball bats. I knew that I was missing something essential. I tried to find an epic pet for an epic finale, but I went with the comfort of the comfortable kid.

Battle 8: The Baseball Furies
vs. Lil’ Bling, Zandalari Anklerender, Tree Frog
072015KDamn you Lil’ Bling! Luckily it was essentially a two versus three pet battle by the time I had to face the flashy mech. How? The raptor cast Black Claw on round one before I cant Haunt. My Puddle Terror came in to use Clobber, Water Jet then Dive. Thanks to the kid’s spooky ticks the raptor was finished and I had taken zero damage. Due to my Puddle terror’s ineffectiveness against a faster pet, multiple low Hoof hits and a few polymorphs from the frog I still had a hard time winning. In the end the frog killed itself when Spirit Spikes was up. I love when that happens.

That’s it for me, here are the third pets that I couldn’t get to:

The Saracens, Robo-Chick, 0-1
The Lizzies, Enchanted Broom, 1-0
The Orphans, Infected Squirrel, 1-0
The Rogues, Grotesque, 1-0
The Electric Eliminators, Stonegrinder, 2-1

Any recommendations?

5 Responses to July 20, 2015

  1. Josh says:

    How about a fast Cogblade Raptor? It could dish out a lot of damage itself (against all but elemental opponents, for whom you have plenty of aquatic damage) and then leave exposed wounds up for the Vengeful Porcupette to exploit.

  2. Vek says:

    Love this battle-post. Guess you had me at vengeful.

    There are a couple of things that can severly hamper the porcupette. Fast stuff, but somewhat countered by powerball. MPD decoy, if only it had flurry instead of flank. Dog-face sandstorm, weak damage and shield.. Sigh. And my all-time favourite hate to face surge-shell-wish crawdad.

    I guess a teroclaw would not be much of a problem with powerball, since teroclaw is a slow bird, paired with the aquatic damage from the terror. Lil Bling can be a pain, spirit spikes can help you gain speed advantage. I find the rocket+surprise to be the most dangerous one to face with the vengeful.
    Not sure how often you face idols and crawdads nowadays.

    Perhaps an elemental like Fel Flame or Pandaren Fire Spirit?

    Great post!

  3. Liwei says:

    What about the frostwolf ghostpup for some AoE healing support?

  4. Josh says:

    Or maybe Yu’la/Harmonious Porcupette for Celestial Blessing, which would allow your VP or PT to get more damage going.

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