Team Focus: All The Kids Grow Reefer
H/H Ghastly Kid (Hoof, Ethereal, Haunt)
H/S Scalded Basilisk Hatchling (Crystal Prison, Feign Death, Thrash)
P/S Chaos Pup (Bite, Consume Corpse, Nether Gate)
Damn this kid is good! Not only have I been winning a lot with it, it’s been doing great against me as well. The Ghastly Kid has a relative ratio of 2.54, which means it’s two and a half times as likely to beat me than a random pet encountered in the queue. “Kid, Look What You Done Did” (imp, basilisk, kid) still hasn’t lost yet. I used to despise these kinds of Haunt and stall teams in 5.4, but in WoD I’ve been more open to trying new things. This is one of them.
I wanted to see how the basilisk and kid could do without the amazing imp. I was looking for other swap pets when I came across the Chaos Pup. It fits well with the kid (or valk) due to it’s synergy with Haunt: it can force swap out an inflicted pet and it can consume the “dead” goat numerous times. I’m not too excited about Bite or the magic racial. Those may be what holds this team back from being decent. I don’t expect this team to do anywhere close as good as the imp version, I’m just glad to find a use for a pet that I haven’t used much. Right now it’s 3-0 against mediocre teams.
Battle 1
vs. Weebomination, Ghastly Kid, Ghostly Skull
Yikes, another kid! I started with my basilisk against the kid. I cast Crystal Prison figuring that I had nothing to lose; if the other kid cast Ethereal then I would just feign to my own kid. The other kid didn’t avoid the imprisonment so I used Thrash then feigned to avoid Haunt. Great start. I waited a turn before casting Haunt to try and force the use of Ethereal from my opponent, but it didn’t work. I tried it on the next round even though it could be avoided. It landed, I bought in my Chaos Pup to swap out the opposing kid, then the Ghastly Skull was stunned (probably both literally and figuratively) when it used Ghostly Bite for low damage thanks to the magic racial. The kid was about to die on the back line, after that poor start my opponent fled.
Battle 2
vs. Elfin Rabbit, Bone Serpent, Crusher
Oh oh, am I that guy now? The stall guy that people run from because they don’t want the battle to be too long? My opponent fled after fifteen rounds, I think we were about half way through. I would say that I was was winning due to the initial drubbing of the Bone Serpent with Haunt, Crystal Prison, Thrash, Feign Death then Nether Gate. The rabbit came in and I was able to do well enough against it by bringing in the kid to avoid its emergence from underground then spook it (Ethereal then Haunt). Crusher came in then got forced out after the Shell Armor went up. That was enough to make my opponent flee. Hey, you were avoiding too!
Battle 3
vs. Fiendish Imp, Graves, Ghastly Kid
I’ve only beaten this team once or twice without my own Graves with Consume Corpse or Frosty Cold Rats (the two teams that I counter it with). This time was no different. I made a valiant effort, I even denied Graves the use of Consume Corpse. The imp was just too much to deal with. The result might have been different had I won the head game on round one; the ballsy imp stayed in and cast Immolation with a Haunt staring him in the face. I cast Ethereal and lost the head game.
This player is pretty good and I would hold them in higher regard if they didn’t flee from Rick Frostly (Graves/kid/g-pup) whenever I revenge queue with that team. Let’s see, you faceroll people left and right with one of the most powerful pets around, then run when you encounter some resistance? That’s just sad. What was even more sad is that I did indeed try to revenge queue with Rick Frostly and had to face some poor soul running a Grinder, Direhorn Runt and Pandaren Monk. It was ugly.
Battle 4
vs. Weebomination, Bone Serpent, Ghostly Skull
The same player from the first battle, this time the Ghostly Skull started off for them. The skull received the brutal sequence of Haunt, Crystal Prison, Thrash then Feign Death. I waited one round before using Nether Gate so I could make sure that the skull died on the back line. After that happened my opponent fled again. It seems like I’ve done a lot but there were two quick flees, one less quick and one loss. Not the most interesting night. I was hoping to do another video but it’s quite late now. Good night!
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I have always wondered about something. We all know that Flurry is a great Decoy clearing move, because it will hit twice and take away both charges of Decoy (also works against Bubble etc). But why is it that other Multi-Hit Effect abilities don’t work. The most notable I find is Lash.
With a S/S Nightshade Sproutling at 325 speed and the ability Lash (100% Hit Chance, Lashes the enemy 1-2 times, dealing 197 Elemental damage per lash. Hits an additional time if the user attacks first), it has the same wording as Flurry and yet it never clears Decoy in one go even though the NS speed is greater then an MPDs.
Why does Flurry work and not others? Anyone know? Cause I would be more inclined to diversify my Decoy clearing pets if I knew that Blitz, Fire Quills, Flank, Quills, Rend, Slicing Winds, Spark, Trash, Tongue Lash, or Triple Snap worked.
Edit: This wow forum post also touches on my question.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/17347675877
There’s another link within the link that you provided which sheds some light on why Flurry works differently. It’s coded slightly different than all of the other similar moves.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/8892470086?page=3#48
I have thought about trying to bring this to the attention of the devs in order to try and make all of these behave the like Flurry, but my fear is that they would make Flurry behave like the other moves. I would cry if that ever happened.
Hi Discodoggy. I’ve been following your battles for a few months. It has been a great resource to make sense of pet PvP.
Because your Daily Battles are not on RSS, I catch up on them only every few days, and so just discovered your starting experiments with YouTube.
They’re great!
Thank you for these. I know you’re not comfortable talking and thinking at the same time (neither am I!) but they still give insights into your process that are not clear from the written description. I was especially struck by how you frame the battle in terms of its endgame – which last pet do you want to be playing against the opponent’s last pet.
Inspired by the videos, I hopped into the queue, to find waiting for me: Graves, MPD, Spawn of G’nathus. Oh well, they’re not all like that.
It’s simply encouraging to watch you do battle. I’m sure it will take some experimenting, but I hope you can find a method to keep up some videos to supplement the blog.
Thanks for the encouragement. There’s definitely a lot that gets left out when I write a just one paragraph about a battle, so I understand why watching a video can be much more informative. I’m feeling more comfortable each time and don’t plan on stopping the videos.
I added the “meta” section under the Twitter comments, which contains an RSS feed (I think?). Is this what you’re talking about? I see that on other blogs an I’ve never been sure what it’s for. There’s a lot about interneting that i don’t know
Since where on the topic, is there anything else that would make the blog more useable / more convenient for people. I don’t really think about that aspect much, just the pet battling part.
Don’t worry about RSS. I’m not only a nerd, for following so many sites I need RSS to keep track of them; I’m an old-fashioned nerd for using RSS instead of twittifying, or whatever dem dang young’uns are doing on my lawn these days.
I doubt that many people are following by RSS; it was just by way of explanation for replying to an older post. I’ll be checking in every few days regardless!
The site is fine. I really can’t think of anything I’d want to change about it. And as tekulve says below, you have an eye for choosing and framing the shots of the battles.
I recommend your blog at least once a day to new pet battlers I chat with. One reason I’ve always been impressed with the blog is your impressive screenshots which show the closeup action and battle animations.
The videos are great and all but your screenshots are unique and I hope you pop one on the Disco’s Battles segment once in a while. The artwork of pet battles is undervalued imho but your blog has always done a great job showing it off
Thanks for the reminder about the screenshots. I’m enamored with the video thing right now because it’s new, I hope to eventually find a balance between the two methods.