Today’s Team: AK 3
P/S Terrible Turnip (Tidal Wave, Leech Seed, Sons Of The Living Root)
H/H Magical Crawdad (Surge, Shell Shield, Wish)
H/H Unborn Val’kyr (Shadow Shock, Curse Of Doom, Haunt)
Just look at the dirty things Kovok is making me do!
Strategy:
This is the third team in what is soon to become a long line of anti-Kovok teams. The plan is to get the Val’kyr Haunting as soon as possible, then get the Turnip out. This will leave the Crawdad on the back line to soak the Pheromones damage. What if I face a Murkalot and Kovok team? I’ll take the shields down with Haunt and just have to eat the RI with my Val’kyr. With its large health pool hopefully it can survive long enough to get a Wish granted later. I’m using two pets that I’ve really come to despise, the Crawdad and the Turnip, but these Kovok teams are really difficult to deal with and require desperate measures. Oh, what if I don’t face Kovok? I’ll stick to pretty much the same plan.
Concerns:
Aquatics are soft counters to the Val’kyr and hard counters to the Turnip. There a lot more aquatics around due to so many Kovoks, it could be a problem.
The Opposing Team:
P/P Murkalot
H/P Kovok
P/S Fossilized Hatchling
What a surprise, Kovok and Murkalot.
The Battle:
Once again the pressure is on, if I can’t beat this team with a team specifically designed to counter it then I got problems. Well, the whole meta has problems thanks to Murkalot and Kovok. I can acknowledge the stupidity and quit or do my best to counter it. For now I choose the latter. As expected my opponent starts with Kovok. I stick to the plan and bring out my Val’kyr. Kovok uses Poison Fang and I Haunt. So far, so good. I bring in the Turnip who takes another Poison Fang on the swap. My opponent is no dummy and uses Puncture Wound before my Turnip goes under with Sons. Then the Pheromones come. Now Kovok is taking damage from Haunt and Sons. My opponent keeps Kovok in for one turn then swaps to Murkalot, who immediately uses RI.
The Fossilized Hatchling gets the RI buff upon entry. I’m not sure about the exact sequence since the logs were inaccessible due to a long game, but I’m sure that the Hatchling used a buffed Bonestorm and did some massive damage to my team. At least the Crawdad took weak damage. The Turnip took out Kovok with Tidal Wave on the back line then swapped to the Val’kyr. The Poison Fang ticks and the buffed Bonestorm seriously weakened the Val’kyr, so it was easy to kill with the Hatchling. It did Haunt the Hatchling before expiring. The Turnip came back out to get off a Tidal Wave before dying. Now it’s Crawdad time. It’s now round 12 and the battle lasted 27 rounds, so I’m not gonna give the blow by blow. I’ll just say that the weak attacks from the Hatchling and the triple hitting (and triple blocked by my shields) Blessed Hammer could not take down my Crawdad and its Wish. Shieldstorm and RI made no difference, the Crawdad finished with over 1000 hp. I don’t know if I should be proud or ashamed.
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You should be proud. Maybe Murk/Kovok teams will be used less if they get matched up against a crawdad every match.
I don’t enjoy playing the Crawdad too much but paired with the Val’kyr it’s been doing great against Kovok teams. I’m trying to add in a good anti-Murkalot component as well, something with a Bash. Right now I’m playing around with the Tiny Twister and Tiny Bog Beast. I’ve had some initial success but I’ll have to see how it goes after people figure it out. It would be nice to see less Kovoks.
I hated Idol/crawdad all last patch, but I am thinking about running it to beat murk/kovok teams. I’ve never played either before so I don’t know how enjoyable it will be.
Rock on, man. Great stuff with these combos. I’m never one to back down from a challenge…so I’m probably gonna end up trying out my Emperor Crab (P/P) and possibly my Crawdad with all the Kovok nonsense out there. Do I have a Kovok? Yes. Do I think he needs a nerf? Eh…nah not really…it just forces people (like you and I) to think outside the box at times. I’ve had great success lately with my Y’shaarj/Scourged Whelp/Lil’ XT team…and that includes going against Kovoks.
I do, however, believe that Annimosity could be right, and Murkalots could possibly stand to receive a change to R.I. – as in, remove the +Speed component. If it happens, it happens…if not, oh well. But it wouldn’t make Murkalot suck by any stretch of the imagination, that’s for sure.
I have to admit it’s getting harder to come up with teams that counter both Murkalot and Kovok. Countering Murkalot is limiting, countering Kovok is limiting, countering them both at the same time is extremely limiting. Any team that you create to counter these two also has to have enough synergy to do well against other teams as well. Blizzard has really put us pet battlers in a bind.
I should mention that the best team I’ve come up with as counters to both and as a stand alone good team is AK 5 (Twister, Crawdad, Val’kyr), but that can get pretty boring to play.
Yah, I can understand that. Crawdads…snorrrrrrrrrrrrre, lol. I’m not a big fan of stall-type games…but I guess it beats losing to FoTM puppets. Again, not that I don’t use my Kovok and Murkalot…but not to the extent some others do. I like variety on my side.
I can see the Twister making quite a few folks pull their hair out, and I look forward to that.
People are staring to get used to it now so I can’t use the surprise factor anymore. Murkalots are being smarter about when to use RI. It’s still doing well.
I can attest to that. Got quite a few quality wins with Valk/Twister/Crawdad already. 😀