Today’s Team: Space Cowboys
S/S Fiendish imp (Burn, Immolation, Nether Gate)
H/P Infected Squirrel (Stampede, Creeping Fungus, Consume)
P/S Ominous Flame (Spiritfire Bolt, Scorched Earth, Forboding Curse)
Rationale:
Rhonstifor has often praised the Infected Squirrel, and I usually give it a whirl with a few teams after he does. It never seems to stick, but I definitely win a lot with it when I use it. He recently talked up the squirrel so here I am again. The plan for Space Cowboys is to stack the DoT/field effects along with the debuffs from Forboding Curse and Stampede. I’ll most likely start with the imp to swap if it suits me, then get immolation going and head to the back line. Either pet can come in to apply a debuff.
Concerns:
Sandstorm and shields are often problematic for teams like this; luckily there haven’t been as many idols around. Forboding Curse will help in that case as well. Also, my meta has been extremely tough this morning. I had to resort to my FoA and Trunks combos after getting pounded with lesser teams. I’m scared.
The Opposing Team:
H/H Anubisath Idol
P/S Fossilized Hatchling
S/B Clock Em’
The Battle:
Great, an idol. I knew this opponent, I knew they start with the Fossilized Hatchling and I knew they will let me swap it out. That’s what I did. In came the idol. I decided to get Immolation going even though I knew a sandstorm was coming. The idol cast Rupture then I swapped to my Ominous Flame. Sandstorm came, but was changed right away by my Ominous Flame. The idol got out of there for the undead raptor, then my elemental did a good enough job of getting the raptor down to kill range for my imp.
The imp swapped it out to negate the undead racial, but now there was this idol to deal with. It still had one round of Foreboding Curse on it, this helped the imp take it down to 181 hp before dying. My squirrel came in to finish off the idol with a Consume (which hit hard enough even through sandstorm). Now it had face what I thought was a Clockwork Gnome, but instead turned out to be Clock Em’. Damn, thanks for giving it the exact same icon. I may have played it differently rather than be left one on one against a faster pet with Dodge. The faster avoid was too much to deal with, I lost. This team is now 5-4, which isn’t so much a reflection of the Infected Squirrel but more of the Ominous Flame. Please give me Foreboding Curse on a better pet!
Latest Tweets
Nothing like an idol to ruin Infected Squirrel and Fiendish imp fun. Throw in a fossilized hatchling, and you were up against it. Hindsight being 20/20, and assuming the fossilized hatchling was going first, I might have put in the squirrel against it. Squirrel does huge damage to undead, and probably only one bonestorm would have occurred, with the possibility of a double damage consume for the squirrel on the undead round.
I only brought the infected squirrel out of retirement to counter trunks. When there is no shell or sandstorm, the infected squirrel is almost always a 2 for 1 or close to a 2 for 1 pet.
I ran the infected squirrel a few times today since I had very little experience with it. I used Rabid strike in slot 2 and it was handy against the idol in sandstorm..
I figured with the extra rounds and hp this undead offers..who cares about the extra dmg to it ..esp. late-game
Barring a nerf, there will have to be a solution for Graves and his undead AoE buddies.
Im thinking that maybe some new pet racial could be changed- It could penalize any pets that switch to the backline when facing them (like a debuff or dmg) … or a new strong vs undead AoE attack
There is a renewed surge in popularity of undead pets in pvp right now. I see many many FoAs and Bone serpents. The Valk , Weebom and Ghastly kid still show their ugly faces as well …so expect to see little but undead in the queue for a while
What I don’t get is how there are currently 21 different types of Team Damage attacks in the game and exactly 0 are strong vs undead!!
Undead get their ‘damned round’ advantage and many undead pets have lots of health so why not a ‘strong vs undead’ team damage attack ?!?
I’d like to see something that puts undead things in their graves straight away if it hits them on the undead round.
Something that can punish the undead ability.
doesn’t need to be that drastic… just some better critter moves, preferably on a variety of non-critters, which seems to be the direction that blizz is taking.