November 16, 2013

Today’s Team: Antisocials
H/S Tiny Twister (Slicing Winds, Bash, Cyclone)
P/P Sen’Jin Fetish (Shadow Slash, Immolate, Sear Magic)
S/S Death Adder Hatchling (Poison Fang, Puncture Wound, Blinding Poison)
More Kovok and Murkalot counters, along with an anti-Val’kyr component.

Strategy:
There’s not a lot of synergy going on with these pets. What they have in common is that they are all counters to the most common enegate Shieldstorm with Cyclone and also negate RI with some good timing. The Fetish can cleanse both Pheromones and Haunt. The Death Adder can also negate RI with a well timed blind.

Concerns:
There aren’t many attacks that put up big numbers which means Sandstorm can shut me down. If it turns out to be a problem I can replace the Adder with something else.

The Opposing Team:
B/B Electrified Razortooth
H/H Anubisath Idol
H/P Anodized Robo-Cub
Demolish abusers, lovely.

The Battle:
This battle brings up an interesting question. Is it okay to use Demolish when everyone knows that it’s broken? Ok, that may be too extreme of a statement. I’m sure there are some people who are ignorant of the fact that Demolish is hitting at too high of an accuracy (around 70% when it should be 50%). I think most experienced battlers know that it’s broken. To me it feels like abuse to use a broken move when you know it’s broken. However, when you look at some other moves floating around the meta right now Demolish hitting at 70% seems rather harmless. Is using Demolish worse than using a move that can do over 1100 damage for one round of application? Is it worse than using a pet that has a triple shield move, the most ridiculously powerful buff EVER and a pseudo-feign priority move? No, Pheromones and Murkalot are much worse than an overly accurate Demolish. The problem is one is supposedly a mistake by Blizzard while the other one is poor balancing. One is sanctioned and one is not, even though the sanctioned move and pet are far more powerful. I’m not saying we should all rush out and spam Demolish, I certainly don’t feel right about using it. I’m just saying that is feels silly to not use it when there are much worse moves out there that are “legal” in a sense. I guess issues with Demolish are just bringing up some of my frustrations with the current meta. Oh crap, it’s late and this is supposed to be a walkthough of the battle…

It actually started out pretty well. The Twister stunned the Razortooth and got a Cyclone up. I swapped to my Fetish because I thought the Idol would be in next. Instead the mech bear came in and took a strong Immolate. Then the painful Demolishes started hitting. After the bear did some nice damage the Idol came in to put up Sandstorm and give me some more Demolishes. Sandstorm shut down my DoTs and caused some misses. Back when I used to run a Fetish a lot more I liked the Fetish versus Idol match up, unless the misses got the best of me. The misses definitely got the best of me. Come to think of it, I haven’t had a good Sandstorm misses loss in quite awhile. The Death Adder made a valiant attempt at putting up some big numbers with Puncture Wound but a Demolish put him in his place to win the battle. I lost and all three of the opposing pets survived with a little bit of health. On a totally random note my wife saw my screen while I was playing and asked “why is one of your pets a brown paper bag”? From the right angle the Fetish really does look a brown bag.