Five Wins Or Bust
I was getting smoked when I played earlier today. I’m feeling the desire to take my revenge out on the queue.
Battle 1: Obvious Dragon
Fiendish Imp, Warbot, Bronze Whelpling
vs. Thundering Serpent Hatchling, Servant Of Demidos, Rocket Chicken
Usually if the Warbot lays down two sets of mines it’s game over. The Warbot got two down, it was indeed game over. After all this time the Fiendish Imp and Warbot still kick some serious butt. The Rocket Chicken did a good job against me, which I was glad to see since I really like that pet. The 25% damage decrease it can cast along with Extra Plating make it somewhat tanky for an S/S pet. It wasn’t enough to get past my power combo, though. My opponent ended up fleeing after the second mines went down.
Record: 1-0
Battle 2: Rich Girls
Bone Serpent, Nightshade Sproutling, Junglebeak
vs. Anubisath Idol, Emerald Proto-Whelp, Unborn Val’kyr
Oh yeah, seeing the smelly dog face laying face down after a loss never gets old. Beating EPWs is always fun as well, same with Unborn Va’kyrs. This was a satisfying win for sure. Having two Call Darknesses helped my cause against the EPW. I’m still in shock every time I play this team due to the fact that I enjoy playing a darkness team so much. Having an elemental that can’t miss in darkness takes some of the frustration away, as does having two Nocturnal Strikes. Plus it keeps on winning and winning. After losing earlier I’m enjoying the wins, more good teams is what I want!
Battle 3: Slitherbolt
Jademist Dancer, Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling, Slitherscale Elver
vs. Celestial Dragon, Corefire Imp, Personal World Destroyer
What two words commonly follow the phrase “my opponent cast Repair…?” If you said “then lost” you are correct. After back to back crits I thought that the Personal World Destroyer was going to send my elver to an early grave, but instead of finishing the aquatic the PWD cast Repair… then lost. It was quite a disastrous mistake since not only did it allow the elver to live, it allowed Deep Bite to ramp up to 420 damage and Clobber to refresh. After that turn of events I was almost able to two-pet the battle with the MPD and elver, but all of the elemental damage resulted in a dead MPD when the dragon only had 7 health left. Almost.
Record: 3-0
Battle 4: Axe Me Later
Ghastly Kid, Ore Eater, Mechanical Axebeak
vs. Netherspace Abyssal, Ore Eater, Son Of Sethe
When you’re hot, you’re hot. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t pat myself on the back too much because this was more of a case of my opponent being cold rather than me being hot: they let the Netherspace Abyssal die way too easily to my Haunt and Acid Touch. After that it was still not easy task taking out the P/P Ore Eater and the Son Of Sethe. I let my Mechanical Axebeak die earlier than I could have (by not casting Decoy) so that I could get my own Ore Eater in and put up Shell Armor on the Son OF Sethe’s immortal round. That allowed me to take out the opposing Ore Eater with a (self damage free) Body Slam before it could get it’s Shell Armor going.
Record: 4-0
Battle 5: Battlegropers
Jademist Dancer, Snarly, Blighthawk
vs. Netherspace Abyssal, Death Talon Whelpguard, Death Talon Whelpguard
Are you kidding me? Back when I used to face a lot more clonedance teams I tried to theorycraft a good team with a magic pet in the front and dragons in the back. That way the Cyclone would do weak damage to the back line and the Jademist Dancer would do weak damage to the front. I gave up because any team consisting of a magic pet and two dragonkin pretty much sucked. I don’t know if I would say that this team I had to face is horrible, but I don’t seeing it winning a lot… except against clonedance teams!
It was fun to try and stick to the clonedance strategy to see if I could just brute force my way to a win. It was close, it came down to the last round but Snarly was too slow to get off a BITW before getting hit by a dragonkin-racialled evenly-split AoE doing single target damage. Sad that a team that looks to be built to counter clonedance teams still comes down to the last round against one.
Record: 4-1
Battle 6: A New Hope
Warbot, Fiendish Imp, Sen’Jin Fetish
vs. Emerald Turtle, Wildhammer Gryphon Hatchling, Oily Slimeling
A thirteen round faceroll not worth reporting. I’m going to pet battle hell for today’s bullying session.
Record: 5-1
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Rather disgusting teams you put out there this time. You managed to only run pets that I consider the top 20 strongest in the game right now.
Where’s the beef?
You should make something fun and new, like a Ghostly Bite team in Arcane weather so it doesn’t get stunned. A team that uses Sandstorm and Skunks etc. to lower opponent hit chances to suicide levels. A team that prevents the opponent from swapping pets out (Muddy weather, Sticky Goo), ideally after forcing a wrong pet in first. Team Blind that permanently blinds the opponent (but can’t win or something). Team farm animals (cow, chicken, rabbit or something). Team Allahu Akbar (Stone Rush, Bone Storm, and all explosion mechanics etc.). Team Direhorn reborn.
This was so corny. You get minus 50 dkp.
There are all different types of attitudes about what types of teams are acceptable to queue with. You have people at one extreme like Zunde from the US forums who plays to win every time with top pets and has no shame about it. He queues to win with the top pets and will play whatever strongest strategy is available, having no qualms about it and making no apologies for it. I’m sure there are many others like him. Then you have the other end of the spectrum comprised of people who are disgusted by the overuse of these same powerful pets. They complain about the top pets regularly and wish that they would see more variety and different strategies in the queue.
I understand both of these sentiments. I like to think that I fall somewhere in the middle of this broad spectrum, but my position is not static. There have been times when I have been so sick of adders, valks and more recently AoE spam that I’ve spent way too much energy (and sometimes frustration) trying to come up with non-top-tier teams that can beat them. There have also been times when I want to come up with a super competitive team that can stomp everything. I started using a DAH more often at the end of 5.4 to accomplish this. Of course I prefer to make teams out of lesser used pets and win with them over winning with top-tier pets, but getting face rolled with those same teams every battle is not very fun.
I would describe the way I queue as reactionary. If there aren’t many top teams and pets in the meta then I will queue with interesting teams comprised of lesser used pets. If I start losing too much then I’ll come with more competitive teams. Sometimes I’ll run a specific revenge team in the hopes of running into a team that I don’t like that beat me earlier. Don’t let me run into a sunny day team or you’ll see a Jademist Dancer in the queue for the next half hour! Sometimes I’ll put in the extra effort to try to come up with a really competitive team that doesn’t rely on the top pets.
On this particular day I had been getting stomped by numerous teams with top-tier pets. It wasn’t fun to lose that many battles so I decided to run with my top teams myself. Luckily I had the pleasure of running into Torturer’s Tools (battle 4) but other than that I faced lesser quality teams, that’s just how it went.
I mostly mind the combination of an experienced pet battler playing the same thing over and over and over and over (you get the idea) again.
Not only does it kill my enjoyment, I expect it will likely put off new players from the queue. It kicked me out of pet battle pvp for a year or so in MoP. I didn’t have much understanding of how things worked back then, neither did I have the best pets.
I feel it’s also our responsibility to allow new players to have fun opponents (this is something intrinsically wrong with the pvp queue). Sometimes I queue with a Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling in my team, only to find a … level 23 pet on the other side.
At times like that I could shoot myself in the foot. If only I could swap out this stupid Dragonling for a level 23 pet of my own.
Currently the pet battle queue isn’t very highly populated in my battlegroup (Kazzak-EU obviously), and I do think people going for 10 easy wins are to blame.
If you build a fun team, or just one of your first, you will get annihilated and think thrice before ever queuing again.
I’m not sure this is solvable in the current system. We’d need some kind of arbitration method, or pet banlisted queue for this to go away.
I think it’s a vicious cycle, a run to the lowest common denominator.
And an empty queue.
PS. I still don’t know where you queue.
(On this note, I also think this is the easiest ‘solution’ Blizzard could implement. One request (per hour?) to swap a pet out for another shown pet, one yes/no from the opponent.)
PPS. Have you ever used the Rascal Bot? I’d recommend it.
No, I didn’t like the 50% blind. After looking at it again I wonder why I would even take the blind when it has a 289 speed stun. I’ll give it another shot.
Edit: I paired it with a beetle and undead puppet. It (barely) beat a corgi/valk/KLR team.
Edit: Won three in a row until I came across a sunny day/crawdad team. I fled lol. Screw Photosynthesis.
I agree that it’s not pleasant for new battlers to run into teams that leave them with no chance of winning at all.
I queue from both Terenas-US and Area 52-US. Lately it has been from Area 52 because I’m leveling my Tauren Druid through PvP pet battles. I’m using the Pandaren tamers for my Terenas alts.
Edit: You know what I would like? A queue system more like Hearthstone’s. A competitive queue, a fun queue and an “arena” queue, where we get to pick three pets from a given set then try to win as many battles in a row as possible. I doubt it’ll happen anytime soon.
If you’re putting anything like an opinion on the Internet, expect people to complain. This was a classy response, though, kudos.
No shame, Disco. Sometimes cutting loose with our best is a good way to put that smile back on…
Yes, winning was good. If you were looking for some wins what team would you have used? Just curious as to what one of your current “best” teams is.
A few, lately. The Imp/Fetish/Ghostpup trio just really seems to work well for me, and I think most of the ‘newbies’ entering the PvP que have overlooked the power of the Fetish, so they aren’t really prepared for what it can do.
I like to educate.
Or I’ll fall back on my Haunt-n-Stall, Arcane Bite, AoE, or Sethe healing teams.
Or I could lie to you and tell you about my cockroach/goat/spore team that hasn’t lost yet….
You know I love the imp/fetish combo but I don’t think I’ve tried the Frostwolf Ghostpup as a third. I’ll give it a whirl.
Edit: Tried it and beat a Fossilized Hatchling/MPD/Curious Wolvar Pup team handily
For some reason I’m not allowed to reply to your other posts, so this will have to suffice:
A hearthstone-like queue might be nice, it might be fancy to indeed draft-pick some pets into a team, and then play that. You could purchase a pass for a battle-stone or something, haha
I’m coming to Disco’s defense here too… I haven’t seen anyone, anywhere on the internet who describes, in full, the dynamics of pet PvP.
Better yet, if you take the time to read all the pages of this blog…you’ll come across his usage of pets nearly nobody takes our of the stables!!
Post your specific teams Sibel ..or start your own regular blog and do better…BTW, I’m not a disbeliever in debuff possibilities like mudslide.. I have put a post to this effect on WCPets long ago
I don’t mean to be snarky but I think people should only encourage and promote Disco’s brilliant and creative blog work here
Thanks for the encouragement
Check youtube, there’s a pvp/pve battle pet channel that reports in detail
There is actually another battle pet website as well, but it isn’t as alive.
wowpetbattle.com
I think
Different style though, I like it here better.