Today’s Team: Don’t Bite Me Bro
S/S Fiendish Imp (Burn, Immolation, Nether Gate)
P/P Sen’Jin Fetish (Flame Breath, Wild Magic, Sear Magic)
H/H Spirit Crab (Snap, Surge, Shell Shield)
Rationale:
This is my new go to team. It hasn’t lost much. It can beat adders and valks quite handily. Mech dragons watch their Decoys burn. Thanks to Wild Magic it can even take down idols occasionally. Lil’ Ragnaros traps are still unstoppable but that’s because only critters and arcane winds can beat the trap that’s a different story. I’ve mentioned my new found love for a Spirit Crab with Surge a lot lately so I won’t go on and on about it, but this pet has really rounded out the imp/mask combo well. Of course it can’t beat everything all the time, but what can? It is good against most teams on my meta.
Concerns:
Nether Gate misses can still be catastrophic. Besides knocking out the MPD’s Decoy this team isn’t great against AoE teams, but can still pull it off if played well. I wish I would have given this team a better name but I was still in shock from Suarez’ third attempt at cannibalism when I made it. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if I made this team before and gave it a different name.
The Opposing Team:
H/H Unborn Val’kyr
S/S Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling
S/S Death Adder Hatchling
Welcome to my meta.
The Battle:
19 out of 20 Unborn Val’kyr users will stand there and let you gate them out. Ok, fake statistics are fake, but you get the point. If I start with my imp most likely I’m going to use Nether Gate if I don’t like the match-up. I didn’t used to do this because, well, players would anticipate the swap and choose their pet accordingly to get the match-up they want after the swap. I don’t even bother thinking about it most of the time if I don’t know my opponent. I just assume most people will play bad with their valks and adders. Sad. This player didn’t let me down and watched the valk go straight to the back line. Not only that, it swapped right back in while I cast Immolation. To the mask! Now what would you expect to happen? If you guessed CoD, Haunt and Blinding Poison you would be absolutely right! Guess what? I guessed that, too! All gone with one Sear Magic. I could go into more details about the rest of the battle but it was more of the same. I even back lined the valk for its undead round. Please don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of good battlers out there who really know what’s going on and can stick it to you with a good team. But there are even more who don’t. I have to remember that most people casually battle and don’t take it all that serious. Or maybe not; a valk, adder and mech dragon team is serious business. Oh yeah, my opponent ran away when it was clear that there was no hope.
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It’s a bit sad to see. New/Less experienced players want to get some wins, and pick pets that will increase their chances to win. Which of course is very understandable. At least I hope your opponent learned something from that fight.
I for one am sick to death of this range of pets(Val’kyr,DAH,MPD,Idol,Crawdad, still better than non stop Direhorn only), there is so much more to pet battles than this. Don’t think there is a great solution to this since a lot of people just like to win no matter what.
Perhaps some PvP pet cooldown could be used to increase diversity, but I could image the rage it would cause.
Great idea Vek however, what you will find is 3 pets of the same category running 3 different battles. i.e. 3 Valks, 3 DAH, 3 MPD. People have become creative to be non creative.
The other day, I kept running into just about the cheesiest (and luckiest) AoE team of all time. It had a Blighthawk casting Cyclone, a Fossilized Hatchling and a Mech Dragonling. Don’t get me wrong, I expect to get a decent pummeling from the Fossil…but this Blighthawk had a horseshoe where the sun didn’t shine. Not only did it hit quite often with no buff, but it Crit ridiculously often without a buff. I was able to finally wipe the floor with him using my Droplet/Scourged Whelp/Lil’ XT team, heh. Do you get that (or similar) team in the queue, Disco?
I run into a lot of Fossilized Hatchling and mech dragon combos but I don’t see a Blighthawk as a third. The most common thirds are Spawn Of G’Nathus, direhorns and Scourged Whelplings.
Just did my 10 wins quest, EVERY game had a Lil’ Ragnaros in it lol and not one Val’kyr. I fired up the ol’ Azure Crane Chick, Eternal Strider and Jademist dancer.
Of course I hit 3 crows right after that
I’m really glad I don’t see more of Lil’ Ragnaros. Trap really, really needs to be changed.
“Of course it can’t beat everything all the time, but what can?”
That’s an understatement. I tried this combo and it’s been just garbage against everything in my battlegroup – haven’t won once. Saving an Emperor Crab for clean up just wrecks this team, and in fact given the poor speed I’m hard pressed to even theorycraft what this is good against, unless your opponents are just awful.
That’s unfortunate. This team does quite well for me as a take all comers. The imp and fetish combo is just grand. Backline immolation along with Wild Magic is amazing. I’ve only recently started using the Spirit Crab again but it does well on my meta against adders and valks and generally takes down pets with health to spare. If my meta was heavy on Emperor Crabs then I might have do things a lot differently but unfortunately it’s not. What teams are successful on your meta?
This is an interesting point raised by Nyccine. Disco, I play in the EU and am currently playing all of your teams (from September last year onwards) to see how they work on my meta. I have a large document with every date listed and either SUCCESS or FAILED filled in. I am currently up to April as I obviously play my own teams etc. The truth is that some of the teams you list are very poor when I trial them on my meta. I have just come to accept that my meta is subtley different to yours. The FOTM pets are constant across all the realms but certain combinations are more rare or common. I hardly ever come up against clonedance teams and when I run them they usually triumph. The same with consume corpse teams – rare and very successful when I run them.
One thing I definitely agree with is that a lot of your opponents are either new to the game or unskilled. I literally whoop with delight when I face a ‘normal’ team whereas you come up against them in your dailies quite often. My win rate and I are more than a little jealous!
I would imagine that most fall into the failed category. Besides the past few days (when I’ve been using the DAH and Spirit Crab) it’s not usually my intention to make a top-flight or competitive team. Most of the time I’m just trying to come up with teams that use a pet that I like or have some sort of interesting synergy. I just took a look back at the daily battle page and scrolled through June through April. Out of all of the “Today’s Team” dailies for three months I only counted six teams that I would classify as competitive. That’s not a lot of great teams. If you look back on the 5.3 section of the “My Teams” page there are only seventeen teams that I gave “top-flight” or “second tier” status. That’s through a whole patch lol. My point is that it’s not always my intention to come up with competitive teams. At one point I used to make that known regularly but that point must have been lost along the way. These past few days of my recent DAH endeavor might be confusing, too.
What’s funny though about Nyccine’s post is that I would consider Don’t Bite Me Bro to be a competitive team, but to them it’s garbage.
Sorry about the delay in response, been busy.
My meta’s not too terribly different than yours; aoe running Mech Dragon/Fossilized Raptor/Crate and Adder/Valk/Emp Crab. At least, that’s what the serious kids run; I see my share of completely random garbage, of course.
I just don’t see how your team even competes – my jaw about dropped when you said you wipe up valks and adders because I can’t even theorycraft a way to stop them with this team. You can’t win against Adder because it’s flat-out impossible to bait out the blind (the most broken ability in pet battles, bar none. There’s no excuse for this ability to exist at all), you *have* to preemptively Sear Magic which means the Adder player can just poison first, blind second, and win.
After I read your comment I fired up this team (I haven’t been using it much lately). I was lucky enough to get a valk, DAH and Lil’ Ragnaros team on my first try. I won. The adder started against my imp, it immediately blinded as I cast Immolation. The Sen’Jin Fetish didn’t face off against the adder. My opponent let the Spirit Crab fight the adder, which is the best match-up I could hope for. The trap gave me more of a problem than anything. A few battles later I fought this same team. The battle was different, this time I lost a mind game to the adder and didn’t cleanse at the optimal time, but the mask was still able to contribute nicely by getting Wild Magic up to enhance immolate. In both battles my opponent let my imp swap out the valk. My opponent didn’t make the best calls, I’ll admit that.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this team is made to beat DAH/valk combos. My favorite valk counters are the Warbot, Sen’Jin Fetish and just recently the Swamp Croaker. My favorite DAH counters are the Mongoose Pup, Fledgling Buzzard and lately Spirit Crab. These probably aren’t even the best counters overall, but they are good enough for me to win with. I think the imp is questionable against both the valk and snake.
This team is a solid team in general that can also beat these top fotm pets. Does it own valks and adders every time? Of course not. There’s always head games involved when playing against an adder and sometimes I come out on the losing end just like everyone else.
I gotta say this is a very solid team. Fiendish Imp is still one of the best pets in the game, and immolation + wild magic can be devastating, and wild magic gives you a chance against sand storm and shields that would otherwise shut down immolation.
I love the senjin fetish, but against a good valk or adder player, it loses. Against most valk players, who suck, it is pure win. Against many adder players, it does well. Against so many other pets, Senjin is very powerful especially in combination with the imp.
I like throwing a stampede pet as my third with the imp and senjin just cause my favorite thing in all of pet battles is to stampede a pet that is debuffed with wild magic. My favorite is the infected squirrel, but actually, a direhorn makes a really nice third pet with its stampede and shield moveset.
I have to agree with Josh, EU’s meta seems totally different to US’s. I’ve never came up against a clonedance team in my meta. I rarely see spirit crabs or warbots, and when I run with a sunlight team it always seems to be a long drawn out loss.
I have a US account, but with no pets on it. I might have to re-sub it and do some collecting.
Irony of ironies – after I chose to post on this thread about my SUCCESS and FAILED list, this team was a clear SUCCESS. When played well it does well against most combos. To say you couldn’t even theorycraft a win is harsh – this team is competitive.
Any Disco, don’t be so harsh on yourself. My list is now up to the end of June (obviously) and has exactly 74 successes. Your teams are always creative and often competitive, that’s why we love you!
Thanks :). I still have success with this team as well.