Pet Focus: Tiny Twister (part one)
I’ve been using the Tiny Twister a lot lately and I use it for one purpose: Call Lightning. The Pandaria dragons used to be my main source of lightning but this little stormy fellow has become my go to shocker. The reason I like this pet so much is because of Bash. Imagine the weather is lightning and there’s a field effect or DoT up when the Tiny Twister casts Bash. If cast by a faster pet Bash will interrupt that round plus stun for the next round. That’s two rounds of the opposing pet being unable to perform any moves and taking a lot of damage from the DoTs. Then the twister gets to take another turn since it is faster. I’ve made many unbelievable comebacks thanks to all this unanswered damage. Let’s take a look at its available moves.
Slot 1: Slicing Winds or Wild Winds
I used to go with Slicing Winds but I got really tired of only hitting the first of the 100-66-33% attacks. I switched to Wild Winds and never looked back. Wild Winds does some initial damage then applies a field effect for two rounds. There’s some nice synergy with Call Lightning and Wild Winds because of this.
Slot 2: Flyby or Bash
I’ve never been a fan of Flyby on any pet (although I’m sure someone out there has found a good use for it) and as I already discussed I like this pet for Bash. If you are slower then Bash isn’t so great so you really want to have the Tiny Twister face a slower pet.
Slot 3: Cyclone or Call Lightning
I use the Tiny Twister almost exclusively for Call Lightning, but it can find a home on a clonedance team. In that case I would go with the Cyclone, but otherwise I’ll be sticking to Call Lightning.
This pet comes in only four breeds (health/power/speed):
H/S 1546/260/289
H/H 1725/260/260
H/P 1546/289/260
P/B 1465/289/260
Since I use Bash I’ll be going with the H/S breed since it has the highest speed. It’s still not all that fast, but when I first started using it I was surprised at how many pets it is faster than. All right, enough chat, let’s Bash some pets!
Team 1: Party Party Party
H/S Tiny Twister (Wild Winds, Bash, Call Lightning)
H/P Macabre Marionette (Macabre Maraca, Death And Decay, Bone Barrage)
S/S Lil’ Bling (Inflation, Extra Plating, make It Rain)
The dancing Macabre Marionette reminds me of this episode of ATHF:
Now whenever I play the Macabre Marionette I get that stupid “Party Party Party” song stuck in my head. Hopefully I’ve now infected you with this nonsense muahahaha. I’ve recently talked about using Lil’ Bling so I should actually do it, although I’ve had less success with him than I’d like to admit. Both the Macabre Marionette’s or Lil’ Bling’s moves will do well in lightning so this team has some flexibility.
Battle 1
vs. Gilnean Raven, Crow, Darkmoon Tonk
I started with the Tiny Twister so that I could change the weather to lightning and so darkness wouldn’t effect the hit chance of Nocturnal Strike. I held off on casting Call Lightning just in case my opponent wanted to play head games with the weather but they cast Call Darkness on the first round. That’s fine, it only had a 40% chance of landing the Nocturnal strike against my elemental. Too bad it hit anyways. I changed the weather to lightning, cast Bash then swapped to the Macabre Marionette. All the little ticks added up to a lot of damage to the fragile birds. The Darkmoon Tonk ended up running away prematurely after the birds went down. Cool, I won with Lil’ Bling.
Record: 1-0
Team 2: Mariornette Barry
H/S Tiny Twister (Wild Winds, Bash, Call Lightning)
H/P Macabre Marionette (Macabre Maraca, Death And Decay, Bone Barrage)
S/S Fiendish Imp (Burn, Immolation, Nether Gate)
The same lightning strategy is used here: get the DoTs and field effects going and have each tick bring down lightning from the sky. This team is a little better than the last thanks to the functionality of the Fiendish Imp.
Battle 2
vs. Golden Wild Hatchling, Fossilized Hatchling, Gahz’rooki
Party party party… dammit. This battle started as Gahz’rooki versus my Tiny Twister. They both had strong damage going for them (Wild Winds and Tail Swipe/Swallow You Whole) but those hard-hitting aquatic moves would wreck my elemental faster than I would like. I did have a stun so I used Bash then Call Lightning before getting out of there. I brought in the Fiendish Imp to force out Gahz’rooki for the Fossilized Hatchling. That may seem like a bad idea but I wanted to not take any damage this round so I could later eat the Geyser with the imp and survive. The plan worked, my imp survived the Geyser and I swapped back to the Tiny Twister. Another Bash, some more lightning and Wild Winds left only the dragon. The partying Macabre Marionette easily finished it off.
Record: 2-0
I had some more Tiny Twister teams that I wanted to use but I started watching a movie and now it’s late. I think I’ll continue tomorrow rather. Consider this part one.
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Way back when you mentioned this pet I went out and farmed an H/S Tiny Twister and leveled it but I never really had much success with weather teams. I always seem to get the sunlight Blossoming Ancient / Magical Crawdad / Ruby Droplet teams when I do so (or someone was getting the No Time To Heal achieve).
It seems in my meta I need a) a shield for multiattacks and Val’kyrs, b) a sweep objects for all those decoys, gun turrets, mines etc and c) an elemental because the enemy team seems to always have multiple mechanicals.
Reading your blog I realize this all comes in waves, will be interesting to see what’s coming next. Still waiting for Summer so I can get a Qiraji Guardling and try out the sandstorm abuse.
I’ve been doing really well the past few days with the Tiny Twister but it’s been a relatively calm meta. Out of 69 battles I’ve seen 11 valks, 10 adders and 9 idols. Not too bad. If I was facing more top-flight pets it might be a different story.
Just had a sweet Tiny Twister moment.
Me:
Corefire Imp(Burn,Immolation,Wild Magic)
Darkmoon Monkey(Smash,Clobber,Banana Barrage)
Tiny Twister(Wild Winds,Bash,Call Lightning)
Opponent:
Warbot, Unborn Val’kyr, Magical Crawdad.
Darkmoon Monkey managed to bring down the Valk to 200 health before it Haunted. I switched in the Imp while Warbot put down a minefield. Even with Extra Plating it was a bad match-up since Wild Magic was up. So Crawdad came in, but once again Wild Magic really helped to nullify the Shell Shield and Burn+Immolation really took a toll. Haunt ran out and the Valk died to a Burn switching in. I had not managed to outstay the Minefield so I switched in my 50 health monkey(that had survived CoD and Haunt) to take the undead turn haunt, but it of course died to the critting minefield.
Imp vs Warbot again. Was not very worried about the Minefield since Tiny Twister is elemental. Imp managed to kill the Warbot, both missed Burns and Missiles in equal amount, but strong attacks with Wild Magic won out. Wild Magic on Crawdad who healed up full with Wish. Tiny Twister time. Wild Winds being strong, sweet, Wild Magic and Immolation up. Bash ready to use. Crawdad didn’t have surge. After a Wild Winds and a call lightning the Crawdad fled. So sweet.
Thanks for making me rediscover this pet. But grabbing a H/S breed was the way for me to make use of this pet.
Nice win! In my recent exploration of Bash/Clobber I have yet to use a monkey or ape. That looks like a pretty sweet lightning team overall, which you showed by beating such a powerful team. Apes are on the menu today :).
I did have strong abilities against both the Warbot and the Crawdad, but on the other hand the Warbot and the Val’kyr had strong abilities against me.
It just goes to show you that you just can’t pick any three top tier pets and expect to win, you actually have to play well too. Which of course can be a bit daunting for newer players. Also nice to beat three strong pets with pets not considered as powerful.
Always nice to get to stick it to a Val’kyr and a Crawdad.
After todays “what we have been training for” the Tiny Twister has become my new favourite Crawdad killer. 4 on his tally during that quest. Though I didn’t face anyone with Surge, still Bash and Wild Winds are great.
That’s awesome. Four times is far from a fluke. I’m really grateful sometimes that I don’t see too many Magical Crawdads on my meta. If they ever do start showing up I’ll remember the Tiny Twister.
Definetly no fluke. Tiny Twister tallied up 3 more after that, 2 with Surge and those were not a problem at all.
The only one that gave the Twister a bit of a problem was one with Shell Shield. Had that one had Surge I’m not sure it would have been as easy.
Very nice to have a new counter to Crawdads. I do like the Qiraji Guardling but it is damn annoying with 80%/70% hit rate of Crush.
So Party Party Party just managed to beat an Emperor Crab, Ore Eater, Hydraling team. Yes, they were all using Shell Shield/Shell Armor. Yes, this theoretically should have shut down a dot-based team hard, but the combination of the initial Wild Winds hitting hard enough to go through Shell Shield and Bash on the faster elemental letting me prevent them from shielding was enough for the win (prevented a shield twice on the Emperor Crab, letting the Tiny Twister chew it up, then once on the Ore Eater, which expired to Bone Barrage and Death and Decay). (The Emperor Crab having Snap instead of Surge also helped.)
It was hilarious. I love this team so much.