The Quick Three
I have a lot of POTM battling to do so I’m gonna keep it quick here.
Battle 1: One Died
Tiny Twister, Macabre Marionette, Tol’vir Scarab
vs. Clockwork Gnome, Lil’ Tarecgosa, Lil’ Ragnaros
I’ve been having more success with the H/H Tol’vir Scarab than any of my previously played beetles. It’s fast enough (260 speed) to out speed most undead and has enough health (1644) to allow it an extra round of Swarm before it dies. It doesn’t out speed the Ghastly Kid, so if I start seeing more of those I’m considering the H/H Twilight Beetle which gives up some health for 276 speed, or even the H/B Scarab Hatchling which has 273 speed, 289 attack and 1465 health. For now I don’t plan on changing it.
This battle was nice and quick just like I wanted. The Macabre Marionette won an important coin toss to deny Lil’ Tarecgosa a dragonkin racialled attack. The gnome was doing weak damage against the Tiny Twister, the final match-up was looking to be critter versus Lil’ Ragnaros. My opponent saw the writing on the wall and fled. I decided before the battle started that I wasn’t going to use lightning since there were too many ways is could work against me.
Record: 1-0
Battle 2: Falling Sky
Westfall Chicken, Macabre Marionette, Tol’vir Scarab
vs. Spiny Terapin, Albino Chimaeraling, Sunfire Kaliri
My opponent refused to swap out of bad match-ups, which was very bad. The chicken destroyed the turtle and the undead slaughtered the dragon. Remember, the Macabre Marionette is a double counter against dragons since it takes weak damage and does strong damage. The Macabre Marionette ended up finishing off the Sunfire Kaliri so I two-pet this battle. I battled this opponent recently with the same team; the battle went down in almost exactly the same way, interesting. I should mention that the hardest part of having a pet battle blog is remembering how to spell “chimaeraling”.
Record: 2-0
Battle 3: Less Skin, More Hat
Lil’ Bad Wolf, Macabre Marionette, Tol’vir Scarab
vs. Blossoming Ancient, Unblorn Val’kyr, Albino Chimaeraling
Even-split AoE was a horrible idea. Clonedance needs to be changed. Murkalot is wrong on so many levels. Shell Armor is too powerful. Traps are OP. Frog Kiss and Sleeping Gas are stupid. I still passionately hate the Magical Crawdad and Anubisath Idol. However, if the Blizzard devs called me right now and asked “Hey Discodoggy, what one pet would you like to see removed from pet battles?” I just might say the Blossoming Ancient. Sunny day combined with Photosynthesis is lame enough on its own, but add Barkskin to the mix and you have a pet that makes for long and annoying battles. It takes all the fun out of battling for me.
I rarely flee from battles, the exception being when I face sunny day teams. I don’t know that I’ve ever fled during the write-up, but I just couldn’t see the point of sticking around. The only way that I was going to take down the Blossoming Ancient was with a Howl, and it was clear after 20 rounds that my opponent wasn’t going to let that happen. I estimated by the remaining health of my pets that we were headed for a fifty-rounder. I had the choice between fifty rounds of futility and fleeing. I fled, sigh. I immediately requeued up with a Jademist Dancer team, but I faced a Weebomination, Lil’ Ragnaros and Infinite Whelpling team. It was a satisfying win, no doubt, but I would have much rather watered a tree down to a stump.
Record: 2-1
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hah! That looks like the Groot team. I was requeing all morning against him with my Jademist clone dancer team and made him run and run at least for a while. I find it funny that this guy is willing to go infinite rounds to win but runs like a b itch when he will surely lose.
I started requeing with all sorts of other counter teams to this guy once he wouldn’t face my clonedancer. Luckily, I got my revenge with 3 totally different but specially designed for Groot teams.
Could not agree more how lame the Blossoming ancient is.
Yes, it was Groot. I’m glad to hear you made him run away. YYou beat me on this same day with an imp/fetish/bronze team. I remember because there were a lot of excellent moves. You played so well that I knew it was someone good, so I looked at your armory and, yep, imp/mask/bronze lol.
What team were you playing?
I think it was serpent/nightshade/jbeak.
You have a way to identify the people you play against? I really hate not being able to see people’s names.
I came across a new player on my meta today who was using a Zandalari Toenibbler – not a pet I often see as his Zandalari brothers are normally preferred. And he used it effectively with a P/P breed (Flank, Primal Cry, Black Claw). The combination of those three moves were quite potent against undead pets and frankly I almost never see the move Flank since it sits on beetles, bad raptor pets, and murloc pets.
Side note: the Rich Girls team (serpent, nightshade, right?) was hilarious fun against some teams in the queue this morning.
I recently leveled a P/P Zandalari Toenibbler and used it a few times. I made an imp/cow/toenibbler and an animus/serpent/toenibbler team. I don’t really rememebr how well they did, I only remember stampeding cows. Win or lose that always cracks me up
Rich Girls is probably my best team right now. It has trouble with imps, but other than that it usually wins handily. I love it versus MPDs.
I will try this team as well, I only have a H/H Tiny Twister (And don’t want any other until Blizzard fucks off with their ridiculous limitations in how many pets we can have), I imagine you used a faster one with Bash.
Currently trying:
H/H Tiny Twister: Wind Shock, Bash, Call Lightning
H/H Tol’vir Scarab: Flank, Hiss, Swarm
H/P Macabre Marrionette: Macabre Maraca, Death and Decay, Death Man’s Party
Tiny Twister is probably a far cry from the Hydraling in terms of Lightning Caller, that shield is so strong, but today it seems the queue isn’t filled with the same asshat with his Ragnaros, Dread hatchling, and Fragment of Anger op-ness scaring everyone away, so why not run something less optimal
Personally I think the Skywisp Moth is a nice contender for the Tiny Twister’s spot. Or Stormwing, quite underused as well.
The main reason that I like the H/S Tiny Twister is because of the stun. Having 289 speed and a stun is very useful, especially when there are field effects in place and lightning is active. The enemy pet will take a bunch of damage while stunned in that scenario.
Ran into more Fragment of Anger teams. Frequency of that thing is going up in my battlegroup now.
Beginning to wonder if there’s anything that can beat 3x Fragment of Anger >.<
I don’t have a Fragment of Anger, and don’t plan to get more than one either. Perhaps someone here can try running 3x Fragment of Anger and report results? Be sure to use that spiritfire beam that kills the backline on at least two of them.
A triple FoA team would be annoying, but I can also see why someone would like it. In general I would see any critter, aqua, or beast being useful against this team. Combine that with a heal (preferably aoe) or a sandstorm to negate the spitfire beam.
Off the top of my head I would pick a S/S Rabbit, S/S Leopard Frog, and H/P Silithid Hatchling as a useful counter/revenge team. Also the afore mentioned P/P Zandalari Toenibbler with Flank would be extremely potent or the Young Talbuk with Flurry and Tuff n’ Cuddly.
I just fought one, haha, the third Fragment seems less strong – as I anticipated – as the Spiritfire Beam does less damage if not all 3 pets are alive. That thing is dynamite as long as all 3 are though. Pretty much guaranteed 2x Beam per Fragment. They’re fairly fast as well, my Dark Phoenix, Brew Pup, Kovok team was no match for it (Although I did kill 2 fragments).
Umm, you’re going to love April’s pet of the month >.<
If it’s the Fragment of Anger I may have to see if there’s any affordable tickets to the USA. In what city did you say you lived again?
Why would you do this 😛 Why!
I suspect a pretty annoying team would actually be 2x FoA and a Teroclaw Hatchling with Claw, Dodge, Nature’s Ward.
a note for people who need to counter undead:
I always wondered if you used howl on a pet ..then that pet retreated to the backline, if the pet would take double damage on an aoe..
It does. I howled a pet ..watched it scoot to the backline ..then i switched to stormwing and hit the thunderbolt aoe and it did double dmg to the ‘howled’ pet
this might be relevant.. I was facing so many undead this week, I ran 2 howl pets..when my opponent kept swiching after howl i would just throw an aoe it get more damage..it was a difference maker but to be honest im not a fan of switching so much
For anyone that cares, there’s currently a severe bug effecting pet battles.
Any effect replaced by another effect with the same name, does not replace it, but resets its duration instead.
This means if you Scorch Earth when the opponent has a Scorch Earth active, you will refresh THEIR Scorched Earth (and thus will not get heals if you damage something that would trigger a healing etc.).
Similarly, if you refresh your own low power Swarm of Flies, you will only reset its duration, nothing else will change.
Writing it here because we all know Blizzard doesn’t listen to Europe in particular, and definitely not to bug suggestions. Perhaps someone in the USA can report it?
You can tweet @warcraftdevs and @thecrafticus
I usually find that works better long term (not always, but more often than other means). Make sure to include both of those twitter accounts
Should work for EU and US alike.
AoE Howl?
Basically yet more AoE. Getting a bit sick of all the AoE, it’s ubiquitous here. Mostly Undead that do it as well. Like Fossy the Fossilized Hatchling and his stupid team >.<
And Fragments of Anger.
And Weebomination (Who I don't feel is OP (anymore?) I think)
Usually with some added flavor of Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling, since it is probably one of the most powerful sweeper pets that isn't really a sweeper. That AoE that hits single pets for 700 damage, I'm beginning to get the idea it's stupid in PvP.
I’ve been trying to make the Dark Phoenix (And Dark Rebirth) work, to no avail. The darned thing is too slow to use it properly without help from other pets. I’m not sure how a Health/Speed pet ends up with 257 speed either. It needs at least 4 more speed to even be marginally viable
If only there was a better way to use it.
It also doesn’t allow you to do the action you were going to die if you hadn’t died, unlike the undead and mechanical rounds.
It’s basically a rather terrible version of survival on a slow pet
Like it or not, aoe is huge in pet pvp..
I took the toenibbler for a spin after reading about it here..it can go 1-1 with the tanky weebom and beat it…then it can apply black claw to the next pet (if opp.is slower )
..it limits the weebom’s turns thus less aoe DMG… so definitely worthwhile..though sandstorm is surely better