Today’s Team: Knifey Toady
H/P Fragment Of Anger (Seethe, Spiritfire Beam, Soulrush)
H/H Huge Toad (Water Jet, Cleansing Rain, Swarm Of Flies)
B/B Lifelike Mechanical Toad (Tongue Lash, Cleansing Rain, Frog Kiss)
Rationale:
I haven’t faced one yet, but I expect to see a Graves soon. I expect to see a lot of them. Wiff has already dubbed this “the Graves meta”. I read a post on Warcraft pets where someone is using a Murkalot and Graves combo. It’s time to start thinking of ways to counter this ugliness until it gets nerfed, assuming it does. I assumed that Shell Armor would get nerfed and we still have that OP shield so I’m not holding my breath.
My team is built around the H/H Toad, as funny as that sounds. I want a high health aquatic on the back line to absorb some of the undead damage. The next step was to give it some coverage in the form of the near ultra (if there was such a thing) FoA. Flyers definitely need to watch out for angry face. For a third pet I decided to go with the mech toad for another AoE heal (albeit a weak one) and another 25% stun chance. Maybe I can get lucky against a Righteous Inspiration.
The Opposing Team:
H/P Graves
H/H Scourged Whelpling
H/H Weebomination
The Battle:
So I was going to “cheat” (and let you know of course) by waiting until I got a Graves team to do the write-up on rather than take whatever the queue gives me as I usually do, but I didn’t have to; this was the first team that I came across. Here’s how it went:
Round 1: Soulrush (stun)
Round 2: Spirit Beam (2 crits)
Round 3: Seethe / Bonestorm
Round 4: Seethe / Grave Destruction (Toad took crit)
Round 5: Seethe / Skull Toss (Graves to 0 health)
Round 6: Spiritfire Beam / Skull Toss
Round 7: Soulrush / Dreadful Breath
Round 8: Seethe / Dreadful Breath
Round 9: Seethe / Dreadful Breath (Scourged Whelpling to 0 health)
Round 10: Spiritfire Beam / Dreadful Breath (FoA to 0 health)
Round 11: Seethe / Consume Corpse
Round 12: Tongue Lash / Cleave (triple hit)
Round 13: Tongue Lash / Cleave (triple hit)
Round 14: Tongue Lash / Cleave (Weebomination to 0)
Round 15: Tongue Lash / Cleave (Lifelike Mechanical Toad to 0 health)
I was very lucky with the stun proc and Tongue Lash hitting triple twice in a row, with a team designed to counter, yet it still wasn’t that decisive of a victory. The mech toad had 296 health and the aquatic one had around 500. This is going to be tough. Maybe I should just quit battling now so I can say “I’ve beaten Graves every time that I’ve faced it” when the inevitable (and probably warranted) cries for nerfs come.
For a first attempt at a counter team this wasn’t bad, but it’s hardly optimal, and it’s hardly a good team in general. Back to the drawing board. Actually, it’s going to be back to HotS, I’m only level seven!
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Second battle against Graves was my Rich Girls team versus Graves, Weebomination, Murkalot. Opponent started with Weebomination? A buffed Nocturnal Strike crit from my bird later sent murk to an early death. Graves fled after getting blinded to deny Grave Destruction. I hope all Graves users play like this
I’m only level 8 now in HotS lol
EDIT: I was using a Huge Toad, not a Toad. It’s huge!
In my experience, most Murkalot users play super predictably and don’t tend to make allowances that their opponents might actually use strategy.
Maybe throw a stunner in there so you can get extra explotation of poor play :3
Graves isn’t auto-win, but he is definitely something to watch for… in the hands of a good player he will be a handful.
Saw Graves yesterday and was taken by surprise. Three Graves encounters later, it looks like this guy will be very popular. Went back to my rabbit / mongoose / extra teams and blew Graves teams out of the water.
It’s good to see someone still uses the Mongoose Pup. I put mine away due to it’s low health not working well with all of the AoE, but it sounds like it’s working well for you. Do you usually start with it?
It depends…If the opposing team uses an undead, like Valk or Graves, then yes. Otherwise, I’ll usually start with the rabbit and bounce between them. Once the AoE is down, I can save mongoose for Survival and get a couple more attacks off. I’ve also tried Hydra / Ore Eater combo for their Shell Armor to a pretty good track record. You could pull either back with a shield up and negate some dmg on the back line.
So there are some interesting pets to counter undead and make a quick grave for Graves..
a combo that had a lifelike toad, p/p moonshell crab and a healing pet like the hyjal wisp or a dazzling dance pet to ensure arcane slash has major dmg output could work
that moonshell crab could really be interesting with trunks..you could go all in with amplify magic and WEFly …then just watch to see if rng smiles on you
Meh…Moonshell looks good but i had no luck with it…i may grab a heathier breed and try again
btw ..
Graves is the most OP pet ive seen in a long while, if paired with murkalot especially. ..in one match, the RI setup actually knocked my opponent’s backlined Anubisath to 68 hp before Graves died! Essentially, a stun or sleep or blind is needed to mess it up
My strategy against Graves so far has been brute force. I have been running infected squirrel, direhorn, and nexus whelpling. Arcane storm + direhorn can be a bad mix, but I have done reasonably well against Graves teams even with FOA and murkalot. By reasonably well, i mean ties. The Graves teams that aren’t combined with 2 other really strong pets, I have beaten.
Against me Graves is now 4-7, but I’ve only faced a Murkalot/Graves combo once. I finally got mine and it does seem pretty damn strong.
I’ve gone 17-2 with it, which isn’t that far off other teams with top pets. The two losses were to a son of dem/soul trader/Xu-Fu (I suck) and a direhorn/MPD/zom team. Idk if it’s because of my bunny spam or not, but I’ve seen more direhorns and the beast is spanking me (it’s 5-1).