PVP Teams

[Vapid]

Hello All,

I am an avid fan of this forum and the numerous insights that have been posted. Thanks to your help I have collected over 655+ pets, made them all rare and level 25, Plushie achieve, and many others. At this point I have changed my goal to accumulating my 5000 pvp wins (currently at 1400+). As I like to maximize things I am doing this on an alt that I got summoned to Warspear thereby getting battle xp, pvp win, and draenor win (since we need 2000 for the monument and the garrison battles don't count ... sigh).

I was hoping to crowdsource some fun/good teams for more pvp variety. Since I have almost all the pets this allows for great diversity.

Here are current teams I use - I will admit they are fotm/slightly OP, but then I am more concerned with winning.

Darkness Team:
I have an S/S Gilnean Raven, a P/S and a B/B variety. I also have two P/S crows, and the P/P Dread Hatchling.

Clonedance Team:
P/S Blighthawk, S/S Jademist Dancer, and I use the P/P Junglebeak as a sweeper (rain dance + noc strike = wicked fun)

Cleave Team:
Kovok, Weebomination, and MPD - also OP except against Sandstorms

Older Teams:
Unborn Valk (H/H or B/B), S/S Death Adder Hatchling, Qijari Guardling (P/P or S/S)

I would be interesting in learning about a switching team (Warbot minefield + Fiendish Imp). Also I have heard interesting things about healing teams (especially with Son of Sethe + Blossoming Ancient). I do not have a Murkalot, but that pet doesn't really need any help in team creation imo.

I imagine this thread being a useful discussion on PVP teams for everyone to use and learn from. To that end I would ask that any feedback or team ideas be constructive and perhaps modelled as follows:

Team Name (if you care)
Pets, the pet Breed, and pet Abilities
How you play the team, what type of synergy it has, why it works, what makes it fun
Counters or weaknesses to be aware of

Finally let me give credit specifically to Discodoggy, Vek, Elfuego, the pvppetbattle blog, and this forum. Many of your teams/ideas are what made me interested in doing pet battles. Also Pokemon.

Cheers,
Vapid

[Skavenged]

This is a good idea, but most people don't like sharing their teams. There's nothing like coming up with a great team, sharing it here, and within a few days, everyone else is running your own comp against you. The absolute best way to find creative new teams is to watch what others are running against you. Sometimes, you can run it just like they do. Other times, you may find that one tweak that can really put it over the top.

[Celya]

most people don't like sharing their teams.

^This.

A couple of months ago (?a year) we had a thread here called "Battle that pet" which had a lot of people trying out unusual pets for pvp and building teams around them. People were willing to share those teams, but if I remember correct most of those teams did not do very well in practice. I'd link the thread, but I don't really know how, and too lazy to figure it out.

There's nothing like coming up with a great team, sharing it here, and within a few days, everyone else is running your own comp against you

Although sometimes different people hit on the same idea, and it can be hard to prove who came up with it first. In the aforementioned thread, I was assigned the [pet]Rabid Nut Varmint[/pet], and I came up with a fairly successful all-squirrel team which I was pathetically proud of (I think it was the first team I came up with on my own that won sometimes) ... and then I discovered pvppetbattles.com and saw that someone else had "used my idea" way before I even had it.

Heck, I'll share the team here just in the spirit of what the OP requested, even though I haven't tried it out in months and suspect it may not perform well against AOE teams:

[pet]Rabid Nut Varmint[/pet]: I switched out between 2 breeds: when using the H/P I would use [ability]Metal Fist[/ability], [ability]Extra Plating[/ability] and [ability]Repair[/ability]; when using the S/S I swapped out to [ability]Thrash[/ability] instead of [ability]Metal Fist[/ability].
H/P [pet]Infected Squirrel[/pet]: You can sub a H/P [pet]Blighted Squirrel[/pet] with the same moveset but the Infected Squirrel hits harder with its higher power. I used [ability]Stampede[/ability], [ability]Creeping Fungus[/ability] and [ability]Consume[/ability].
S/S [pet]Squirrel[/pet]: [ability]Scratch[/ability], [ability]Crouch[/ability], [ability]Nut Barrage[/ability]. I just used the fastest squirrel I have, happens to be 341 speed, and it lives surprisingly long with [ability]Crouch[/ability] active.

I would be interesting in learning about a switching team (Warbot minefield + Fiendish Imp).

S/S [pet]Fiendish Imp[/pet] is brilliant against the [pet]Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling[/pet], of which I see a lot.
[pet]Warbot[/pet] lives for a long time with [ability]Extra Plating[/ability] up, and his [ability]Minefield[/ability] hits for harder than other [ability]Minefield[/ability] pets; however, the [pet]Blue Clockwork Rocket Bot[/pet] is faster I think and can sometimes be more "guaranteed" to get a third [ability]Minefield[/ability] off.
I had fun combining those two pets with a mixture of [ability]Howl[/ability] pets: are you going to eat the [ability]Howl[/ability] or the [ability]Minefield[/ability]? However, that was a bit of a one-trick pony which never won much.

[Skavenged]

I can tell you an old swap team that always did well for me. Not sure that it would work now, due to changes for Valks though

Blue Clockwork Rocket bot
SS Fiendish Imp
Unborn Valkyr

You start by dropping minefield. Switch to Valk, and haunt. Next comes the imp. Swap the opponent pet. Immolate. Switch to the bot, and start the process over again. The team still works, but with the valk nerf, you have to use the rocket not to stall until haunt CD is done

[Erdinger]

I must be approaching 1000 pvp pet Battles and am yet to see the engineering crafted Pierre in the opposing team, so I'm trying to be original and looking to build something around him. He's a huge asset defensively, surely frustrating the opponent, with abilities like a 2-round sleep and a 4-round decreased hit chance. In addition, he's quite fast so you'll often get the initiative rightaway, while he also has a bleed attack which I guess opens for a partner pet with an ability like Blood in the Water (like el. razortooth, perhaps, who also has other powerful attacks). And most importantly, Pierre's the only pet that had me really laughing out load during a pet battle and that's worth a lot!

Dunno if that's exactly what you asked for but, regardless, Pierre deserves a mention !

[Vapid]

Thank you for the replied - the Swtich team information was helpful. I will look into teams with either the warbot or BCR. I like the idea of using my valk again with that team, but in the interest of learning which pet with Howl would you recommend? My thoughts on a good howl pet would be:

Arctic Fox Kit P/S (speed up team and howl)
Chrominius or Core Hound Pup (They have high health)
Lil Bad Wolf (P/S - has a dodge and humanoid racial)
Stitched Pup (has howl and consume for longevity)

Another team I have been interested in making is to use the newer Magic pets. Specifically the P/P Servant of Demidos and P/P Eye of Observation. While love health they have powerful move sets, moves that go first, can clear objects, and have the Magic racial. Trunks is a silly pet with the Moonlight + first move ability that can do 761 damage (only 50% accurate tho). Perhaps to compensate the low health would be a combination of an aoe heal (like the frostwolf ghostpup or the alterac brew pup).

[Beast_mast0r]

I must be approaching 1000 pvp pet Battles and am yet to see the engineering crafted Pierre in the opposing team, so I'm trying to be original and looking to build something around him. He's a huge asset defensively, surely frustrating the opponent, with abilities like a 2-round sleep and a 4-round decreased hit chance. In addition, he's quite fast so you'll often get the initiative rightaway, while he also has a bleed attack which I guess opens for a partner pet with an ability like Blood in the Water (like el. razortooth, perhaps, who also has other powerful attacks). And most importantly, Pierre's the only pet that had me really laughing out load during a pet battle and that's worth a lot!

Dunno if that's exactly what you asked for but, regardless, Pierre deserves a mention !

I think Pierre could go well with an Eternal Strider and a Droplet of Y'Shaarj/Crawling Claw/Zomstrok.

Pierre looks like a stall piece to me, so my idea would be to combine it with a dotter/AoE and nuker(Skimmer). There is also they synergy with cleansing waters, for example:

Pierre: Frying Pan, Stench, Food Coma
Eternal Strider: Water Jet, Cleansing Rain, Pump
Droplet: Corrosion, Acid Rain, Curse of doom (but Dreadful breath could do too) ,or
---
Crawling Claw: Shadow Slash, Death Grip, Curse of Doom ,or
---
Zomstrok: Infected Claw, Shell Shield, Carpnado

I have the droplet as first option because of weather immunity + defense vs flying. In spite of self gimping corrosion with the rain.

[Topaz]

Thank you for the replied - the Swtich team information was helpful. I will look into teams with either the warbot or BCR. I like the idea of using my valk again with that team, but in the interest of learning which pet with Howl would you recommend? My thoughts on a good howl pet would be:

Arctic Fox Kit P/S (speed up team and howl)
Chrominius or Core Hound Pup (They have high health)
Lil Bad Wolf (P/S - has a dodge and humanoid racial)
Stitched Pup (has howl and consume for longevity)

Another team I have been interested in making is to use the newer Magic pets. Specifically the P/P Servant of Demidos and P/P Eye of Observation. While love health they have powerful move sets, moves that go first, can clear objects, and have the Magic racial. Trunks is a silly pet with the Moonlight + first move ability that can do 761 damage (only 50% accurate tho). Perhaps to compensate the low health would be a combination of an aoe heal (like the frostwolf ghostpup or the alterac brew pup).

Eye of observation is really weak, even with 366 attack. with 260 speed Counterspell will only be useful combined with Powerball, leaving Arcane Blast as the only attack the deals real dmg (which will takes 3 attack to reach its max dmg). this pet lack the diversity demidos or trunks have.
I've battles demidos a few times and with its low HP Siphon Anima is a must combined with Magic Sword and Soulrush it has a high burst potential, I would say having Yu'la with Celestial Blessing and another pet that can you sunlight (both yula and demidos have an extremely low HP.
Trunks can be paired up with Mr. Wiggles - Uncanny Luck + a spamable attack like When Elekks Fly works well together, and Avalanche will benefit the 25% + crit from Uncanny Luck in case there a mech pet at the back row. paired with a Clock'em to counter beasts (for wiggles) and dragons (for trunks) - Haymaker will benefit Uncanny Luck making sure you dont stun yourself and Overtune + Kick combo will help against beast

[Svycke]

A fun team that I used in a tournament recently, based around Valentine's Day.

It's crucial to be faster than the enemy for this team.

Team Ugly
Flayer Youngling S/S - have deflection and the interrupt chosen as spells.
Deathadder Hatchling S/S - it's blind and poisons are just to strong. Fortunately quite a few amount of people don't understand its spell list so they won't swap out when they get blinded for two rounds.
Fiendish Imp - works really well in this comp too. The swap out is like an amped up interrupt if you're faster.

The team doesn't really deal high amounts of damage, except the DaH; however, it really withers down the enemy team and hash lot of ways to avoid damage.

[Taerie]

I only use one team; I have about a 85-90% success rate with it. I got it from pvppetbattles and I've never seen it used by anyone else- probably because it's a little quirky to get used to but hey, I dig it.

Stormwing- Quills, Call Lightning, Thunderbolt
Macabre Marionette- Macabre maraca, death and decay, bone barrage
Lil' Bling- Inflation, Extra plating, make it rain

This team relies pretty heavily on building dots- but I don't recommend compulsively switching to get them all applied at once, it's not necessary. Stormwing is sort of the star of the show with the weather change that boosts the dot damage and aoe ability- I usually leave it in the first slot to make my opponent -think- I'm going to use it first but I never do. 9/10 times they'll bring in their bird nuke (usually a dragonkin) and the marionette will make short work of it. It's important to save Stormwing to change the weather if you're facing an anubisath idol since sandstorm can mitigate about half the damage attacks the team can deal and it will totally ruin your day.

The biggest weakness for this team is pets with a decent shield ability- i.e. crabs, anubisath idols using stoneskin etc. since they don't have a lot of burst damage abilities to break through it. Going against one pet with a shield is painful but doable; going against two is a guaranteed loss.

[Stella3]

I must be lucky, on my server I win about 9/10 of my battles because its always against the usual team:

Anubisath Idol.
Kun-Lai Runt.
Elder Python.

Most teams are a close combo of this and I will keep my team secret for now but I only have to adjust it once I figure how they beat me if they ever do that is.

[Homura_akemi]

I have a pretty good team. It involves using a valk and two weebominations. You do standard valk things with the valk, then you use the weebs to do team damage. The weebs also have a stupidly large heal with consume corpse (~700hp), which works on the valk while it's using haunt. It's also helpful to note that corpse explosion will not kill you if you use it on the same turn the enemy kills you on (kinda how the valk can benefit from it's own unholy ascension if it uses it on the turn it dies).

I only recently came up with this strategy, so I haven't used it too much yet. I have only lost once with it out of about twenty games (I don't keep very good track, I just know I use it a lot). You really do need a hyper-specialized team full of critters or aquatics to counter it, and just one critter isn't enough. You'll probably never have to worry about fighting such a specialized team, since a team filled with critters or aquatics is just terrible for normal PvP and would get eaten alive by more orthodox teams (thank god for random matching XD).

[Vapid]

@Homaru
I think I remember reading something similar, but instead of a Valk people were using the other new WoD pet; Ghastly Kid since it has Haunt and comes in a H/H flavor. Having never used the corpse explosion ability, how exactly does it work when you use it on the last round with the Weebomb.

@Taerie
Thanks for the idea, I have actually been trying to come up with some sort of team with my Stormwing ever since I got it at 600+ pets. I also have never used the Marionette, so it will be fun to test him out. I'm curious about using a pet with Whirlwind as your anti-dragon protection for Stormwing. Perhaps the P/P Curious Wolvar Pet with 1/2/1. Maybe the Pandaren Air Spirit.

For others interested in pvp teams - I have been reading the WoW EU and US battle pet forums along with the pvp pet battle blog and then trying out what I can on my server (I really need to get a S/S Ore Eater, by B/B is limiting). Anyway here is one team that has been effective and comes in two varieties:

Normal Rag Swap
Lil Rag 2/1/2
some Direhorn (I use the Stunted Direhorn since it is P/P) 1/1/1
Your sweeper pet - I like to use Son of Sethe cause he is new! 1/2/1

Basically the idea is to start with Rag, lay the trap, then swap to your direhorn and cast the slow, then trample (50% to stun), then horn attack and repeat direhorn moves until dead. Then bring back rag and lay trap, cast wave to trigger it, then sons of flame to hide for 3 turns, then trap and wave (if alive). Sethe with self heals is there to take the rest.

Alt Rag
After using the above with some success I wanted to try another beast pet and decided on my P/P Zandalari Ankle since he also has a aoe slow. I cannot decide with I like more in the third slot: Black claw for extra damage per turn or Devour for extending his life. The reason I can't decide is because I haven't lost with either setting yet on this team yet ...

Lil Rag 2/1/2
P/P Zandalari Ankle 2/2/(1 or 2)
Sweeper - I use Son of Sethe here 1/2/1

Same as the above strat: Rag first for trap, then swap to ZA for aoe slow, then I do the Black Claw (if selected) or Hunting Party. If I picked Black Claw, then I followed it with Hunting Party, then aoe slow (then usually dead). If I choose Devour, then it goes Hunting Party then Devour for heal, then aoe slow (then usually dead). Then rag again ... see above. Both slot 3 seems to work since black claw does more hunting party damage and kills the opponents pet OR after hunting party is done the ZA is below 50% health and gets the Beast racial bonus to Devour + hunting party debuff on opponent to kill it and get healed.

By far my favorite game was the first time I tried the team and played against a triple MPD and just laughed when all I did was magma wave and trap.

@Topaz
I have tried playing around with the Trunks, Mr Wiggles (for Uncanny Luck), and Clock'em. It wins pretty consistently, but isn't as much fun to play as I thought it would be even with 100% Elekks hitting. I have been thinking of changing the setup so that a Moonlight pet goes first with Mr Wiggles and that leaves Trunks as the sweeper (hopefully with a moonlight and uncanny luck buff up). That would seem overly deadly, but also unrealistic against a marginally aware opponent.

@Stella3
I have run across the team you mentioned while doing my battles or a slight variation of it. The Anub's sandstorm is great against AoE teams and the KLR has always had a good setup, but in the end I almost always win against it in my servers current meta. I will try testing this team out myself, though I might use my Death Adder instead or something that counters having two humanoids in a team (like say a Weebomb).

[Vapid]

Another Update - got to 1500 pvp wins last week and started making a list of things I notice.

Like most pvp pet battlers out there you probably are running into more AoE abilities (I will admit that I like abusing the new system to great advantage). But that in turn has made me consider counter teams that might be fun to play and also winnable against not AoE teams too.

Anti AoE Pets
There is really only one pet ability that falls into this category - [ability]Sandstorm[/ability] (other abilities like Murkalot's Shieldstorm only stop one attack). Which means we end up having limited options, but of those options the 'best pets' arguably are:
[pet]Anubisath Idol[/pet], H/H, 1/1(1 or 2 depending on how you like to play Avoidance or Damage)
[pet]Qiraji Guardling[/pet], P/P or S/S, 1/2/1, Power if you want a larger AoE negation or Speed if you want greater use of the Stun
[pet]Silithid Hatchling[/pet], H/H or H/P, 1/1/2, Scratch against undead and a slow
[pet]Enchanted Broom[/pet], S/S, 1/1/1, Clean-up is useful against MPD Decoy usage but remember the Broom is faster so casting Clean-Up the first round would be silly and instead cast Sandstorm first
[pet]Living Sandling[/pet], H/H or H/P, 2/2/2, This has two slows along with Sandstorm and being an Elemental

Anub and QG have the benefit of the humanoid healing racial. If you combine two of these pets (say Anub and Silithid) you end up with some decent coverage with 5 family type attacks, two weather changes, stun and slows. Then you just need a useful Sweeper pet. A number of AoE pets exists, but I would strongly argue that Undead (Weebomb and Fossil) and MPD are the most common that I see. So before I go to my list of useful general sweepers let me first suggest that the third pet in a double Sandstorm team to fight Undead/MPD should be a frog.

Frogs - Anti Undead Pets
[pet]Leopard Tree Frog[/pet], S/S, 2/1/1, fastest frog that exists in game with undead tongue lash will hit an extra time which is great and it has a heal/weather change along with kiss for the possible effect
[pet]Yellow-Bellied Bullfrog[/pet], P/P, 2/2/1, only power frog that exists with same abilities and the 244 speed is same as Weebomb so you might sill get the extra hit on a coin toss or if the Silithid or Sandling slow is present
[pet]Gulp Froglet[/pet], H/P, 2/1/1, unique abilities with frog kiss an undead nuke/weather change in mudslide and swarm stampede

Actually my sweeper list will have to wait until after my meeting, but I would be interested in other thoughts on Anti AoE teams. Especially ones that don't used Sandstorm.

-edit
And on a last note, Sandstorm teams with a frog end up also being quite useful against the 'healing' teams people dislike (Blossoming Ancient and Singing Sunflower).

[Melfice]

Frogs - Anti Undead Pets
[pet]Leopard Tree Frog[/pet], S/S, 2/1/1, fastest frog that exists in game with undead tongue lash will hit an extra time which is great and it has a heal/weather change along with kiss for the possible effect
[pet]Yellow-Bellied Bullfrog[/pet], P/P, 2/2/1, only power frog that exists with same abilities and the 244 speed is same as Weebomb so you might sill get the extra hit on a coin toss or if the Silithid or Sandling slow is present
[pet]Gulp Froglet[/pet], H/P, 2/1/1, unique abilities with frog kiss an undead nuke/weather change in mudslide and swarm stampede

I like your Frogs team! I wonder if switching out a frog for the Azure Crane Chick would work well? It can heal up his frog buddies, and add some good damage too (or weather change)

[Melfice]

Thank you for the replied - the Swtich team information was helpful. I will look into teams with either the warbot or BCR. I like the idea of using my valk again with that team, but in the interest of learning which pet with Howl would you recommend? My thoughts on a good howl pet would be:

Arctic Fox Kit P/S (speed up team and howl)
Chrominius or Core Hound Pup (They have high health)
Lil Bad Wolf (P/S - has a dodge and humanoid racial)
Stitched Pup (has howl and consume for longevity)

Another team I have been interested in making is to use the newer Magic pets. Specifically the P/P Servant of Demidos and P/P Eye of Observation. While love health they have powerful move sets, moves that go first, can clear objects, and have the Magic racial. Trunks is a silly pet with the Moonlight + first move ability that can do 761 damage (only 50% accurate tho). Perhaps to compensate the low health would be a combination of an aoe heal (like the frostwolf ghostpup or the alterac brew pup).

Thinking of Arctic Fox Kit, and it's speed up move. I'm working on using Wolpertinger on a team with the Fjord Worg Pup, Wolpertinger and a third pet. I like the Lil Bad Wolf might be a good third, or the Stitched Pup. The Wolpertinger's Flyby move and howl's might be a lot of fun to use. Sleep gas is good when it lands, but starts out a bit too weak.

I need to find a comp setup for my Wolpertinger!