Topless Battles
It’s time for penance. I’ve been running an awful amount of FoA teams; I’d have to do an immense amount of topless battles to make up for the number of times a Spirit Beam has waylaid an unsuspecting fun pet hanging out on the back line. I’m only planning on doing three or four…
Battle 1: Union Of The Blight
Infected Squirrel, Mechanical Scorpid, Alpine Foxling
vs. Restless Shadeling, Bone Serpent, Ghastly Kid
After just beating an idol in a sandstorm my team had some momentum. Then I saw three undead… and smiled. Both the Blighted Squirrel and of course the fox have strong critter attacks. Thanks to a really bad swap by my opponent that left the Bone Serpent to bleed to death on the back line my squirrel almost went two for one, taking out the serpent and bringing the goat to 0 health. After getting blinded the Restless Shadeling left. I’ve been experimenting with different breeds of fox, this team is using the P/B that Tekulve suggested for his POTM entry. So far, so good.
Record: 1-0
Battle 2: Black Bones F
Mechanical Scorpid, Macabre Marionette, Alpine Foxling
vs. Fragment Of Anger, Stunted Direhorn, Zomstrok
Variety be damned; Black Claw is just too much fun. Well, I thought it might be until the FoA completely ripped me apart. I made a horrible decision in the beginning by not taking the FoA down with the fox. I should know better. Instead I tried too hard to force the Black Claw and Bone Barrage combo. The puppet took high damage on the swap then got stunned, then took high damage on the stunned round, bye bye health, hello immortal round. I was too far gone at that point to make a comeback. Plus direhorns have been pounding me lately. This makes direhorns 6-2 against me since I started keeping records. My rabbits are in therapy at this very moment. Normally I would go to a high powered team for some revenge, yet right now my penance prohibits it. And it’s time for dinner.
Record: 1-1
Battle 3: Jaguero Intensified
Sen’Jin Fetish, Baby Ape, Tiny Twister
vs. Tainted Waveling, Fel Flame, Thundering Serpent Hatchling
It appears that I’ve landed at some sort of topless party! With two lightning pets I was in DoT heaven with my fetish. I could have also been in heaven with my ape, but the 50% hit rate of Banana Barrage wasn’t kind to me. If I remember correctly it wasn’t always a 50% move. Despite the missing bananas it was a fairly easy victory. Both of my stuns were faster than the dragon and the flame so my opponent missed a number of turns. Post meal has left me with few words, so I’ll call it a night.
Record: 2-1
On a different note, I was wondering if anyone would be interested in keeping track of the pet frequencies in your meta. I’ve been doing it with google sheets for about the last week and I realized that it would be easy for others to add data as well. It wouldn’t be hard for me to set up. This was actually chibimage’s idea long ago when she found out I was keeping a spreadsheet. I should warn you though, it gets tedious after a while. I’ll make a page with instructions later; right now I’m just throwing it out there to see if anyone’s interested.
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@Furykins and Jurgen (if you are a reader):
That was me you faced as Union Of The Blight. Just wanted to tell you that it would have been better to take the bunny out instead of being out sped by the scorpid. Bunnies are quite useless when slower.
Yep, that was me. Union of the Blight ripped me apart. I immediately wrote the team down. I was just so shocked that the Scorpid was faster than my rabbit. I’m so accustomed to always being fastest that I never even check. Shame on me! After my my dodge utterly failed in the first round, it was a lost cause. You didn’t even get any poison procs with your scorpid, and you still didn’t need the squirrel! Thanks for the lesson…I was pretty sure it was you. 😉
Other than that how is the Trunks team working out for you?
Quite well. Probably 17-3ish. I still like Rich Girls better. Funnily enough, I used Trunks quite a bit in the first few weeks I had him (after the first DMF of the xpac) with the exact same configuration (teamed him with Idol and Emperor Crab). Went 30-2 before people started to figure out his moveset.
EDIT: I should point out that I really only use Trunks as a sweeper, with occasional critter-killing and nuke dodging. The Fragment and Rabbit are more than enough to 2-pet most teams I encounter.
The fox/worg PotM is timely with the onslaught of undead all over pvp..the frag of anger is the new Valk(popularity -wise) and Graves will slowly increase as more people get it…
I had a look at the Talbuk again and though it may not generally be preferred, I nabbed an h/h to level up…1725hp/260/260 should play really well with tough n cuddly/flurry/ and horn gore as part of any trio..(some use stampede to force switches)but especially vs undead and all the aoe
@Disco
How would one go about recording the pet battle statistics? Using Rematch (I have never played around with that addon)? I would be interested in tracking my battles as I work my way to 5000 pvp wins, so if you can create a blog post about the necessary steps, addons, data recording, etc necessary I would certainly give it a try.
Perhaps this might even encourage a more robust addon to track things more effectively if someone with the right programming skills were so inclined.
I’m keeping track of my own records by changing the name of each team in Rematch after each battle. For example, right now I have a team named “28-4 Frosty Cold Rats”. If I win I’ll change the name to “29-4 Frosty Cold Rats”.
I really wish there was an addon that did this.
I am not seeing very much game time ATM but would certainly be willing to record what I can get in (not sure if that would be helpful or not)
I was going to make another page for instructions, but right now I’m lacking the energy. If you would like to keep track of the pets you encounter then send me an email at discodoggywow@gmail.com. I’ll add a sheet with your name on it and give you permission to edit. Just make sure to only use your sheet.
2nd paragraph deleted
As I am spending 90% of my free time coding at the moment I will take a look at the code instead and see if there is a quick way to get something done.
It looks a lot less suspect having a tab of lua open than a pet battle ):
Just to make sure I have it right. You want win/loss/draw and opposition team composition, right? Is that all or are there other things I am missing?
I also think it would be interesting to include your own team composition (maybe not useful)?
Probably more beneficial:
Opposing team breed and moveset (more fun to know you beat a bonestorm/grave destruction Graves then not).
I would also guess a handy export or reporting feature? Excel, blog addon (Disco would love you perhaps), etc.
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Random thoughts: I know Disco and others here have decided what pets are top or high tier, but depending how the reporting or records are kept it might be possible with better stats to help decide if something like a Nightshade Sproutling is actually good or only good because it groups with teammates like the Bone Serpent.
Also by tracking breeds we can see if really say S/S Rabbits are the most popular or if S/B, etc breeds are. I guess the same logic follows for a pets move set too.
Might be worthwhile to track date of battle played – over the long term you could see or evaluate how your meta changes.
The Sproutling is fairly okay, because it can swap for free, is strong vs. Darkness. It’s damage is so-so perhaps, but it can call darkness, which is often strong.
I think it’s mostly strong in concert with another Darkness or Darkness user.
As for Rabbits, I’d say S/S breeds are strong (top), and S/B breeds are strong enough (probably high). A P/P rabbit should probably not even register anywhere on the list, so I too feel that this needs to be specified for pets where it matters.
I mean, if you build a team with the last POTM with the team speed buff, and you run a P/S rabbit or something. That rabbit isn’t dynamite on its own, you’d be penalized without cause.
I also agree with Vapid’s moveset argument. It makes sense to tie the tier-status to a moveset. Currently you couldn’t run a stupid rabbit without Dodge or Burrow if you wanted to. And it’d probably suck ass. Rabbits are fairly one-dimensional, but there are strong pets with alternative moves that are far more random/weaker. I’d be nice to see them played (and they’re not because of the tier list 😛 )
It’s additional work though. But it’d be hell of a lot more interesting.
The more functionality the better, of course. I think tracking enemy pet frequency and win % is important, as is tracking your own team records. If enemy teams could somehow be stored and records kept that would be great as well.
I wish I knew lua. I started off as a computer science major before switching to math so I know the basics of coding. The program that I was in taught us Pascal first lol. Then we moved on to C++, but hearing Pascal sometimes makes people snicker.
LUA is mostly just C++. And Pascal is nothing to sneer about, it is one of THE early languages. Many newer languages are heavily influenced by it, and when I stopped coding Borland Pascal was still going strong as well.
Should have time to look at this this weekend… been a cow of a week. Pascal
used (Object Pascal) a lot coding Delphi in the 2000’s still have a soft spot for it.