Cleave Based Teams

[Svycke]

Just when pet PvP seemed somewhat balanced...the only teams you'll find in the queue are undead and undead counter teams

The odd Mpd, Anub. and elemental maybe...

Short of a change to the undead racial, we'll never see the end of them

I'm hoping it's just a flavour of the month kind of thing... I'm sure some people will stick with this strategy for quite sometime, but hopefully a strong counter will surface that can deal with either the undead and the mechanical cleave teams.

[Stella3]

I once versed this team that always played 3 weebominations and was just wrecking me left and right. Out of frustration I brought in 3 rabbits and absolutely destroyed him lol.

[Poofah]

I'm hoping it's just a flavour of the month kind of thing... I'm sure some people will stick with this strategy for quite sometime, but hopefully a strong counter will surface that can deal with either the undead and the mechanical cleave teams.

As it stands right now, the 3 best pets coming in 6.1 are UD, and two of them have strong AoE.* There's no new pets with Sandstorm, and no new pets that are any better against UD or AoE than what we have currently. The AoE situation predictably got worse going from 5.4->6.0, due to Weebom and the unwarranted buff to AoEs such as Thunderbolt/Avalanche, and the lack of any new counters. 6.1 looks set to get worse again.

Looking at the 6.1 pets, it seems pretty clear that they are designed from a flavor point of view, with little attention given to pet battle quality or balance. Most of the RwL pets have abilities that fit thematically, but have no synergy in pet battles (Sister of Temptation, Stinkrot, Abyssius, etc). So most of them are bad. Fragment of Suffering even has Darkflame and Breath of Sorrow in the same slot, which have different names but are mechanically identical. But a handful have thematic abilities that happen to be too good. Stoneform for example is very flavorful but hilariously overpowered. Fragment of Anger has Spiritfire Beam, which is an overpowered ability that was designed for a boss pet (Lil Oon). And Graves obviously is absurd, with the 2 best AoEs in the game on one pet that is also UD and has extremely good base stats.

@TheCrafticus on twitter used to be the point man for pet battle balance, but apparently he is doing other things now, and I don't know who (if anyone) is responsible any more. I've sent feedback on Stoneform/Fragment of Anger and Graves (going back to when it was ZZ02 and then 'My Special Pet'), but unlike 5.4 I've heard nothing back and these pets have not undergone any changes on PTR.

* http://ptr.wowhead.com/npc=91226/graves
http://ptr.wowhead.com/npc=90203/fragment-of-anger
http://ptr.wowhead.com/npc=90200/grotesque

[Myon]

Hoo boy, I can see it already, RI > Grave Destruction and then most likely at least 2 bonestorms before you can take it out, looks like fun times ahead. I can't say I'm very glad to see AoE comps get even more love

At least bonestorm is still a vanilla AoE that doesn't redistribute damage and most of the popular AoE pets are undead, looks like my Ghastly Kid with access to Hoof and Haunt is going to get a lot of use in 6.1.

[Poofah]

Hoo boy, I can see it already, RI > Grave Destruction and then most likely at least 2 bonestorms before you can take it out, looks like fun times ahead. I can't say I'm very glad to see AoE comps get even more love

Or maybe

turn 1: RI
turn 2: Bonestorm
turn 3: Consume
turn 4: Grave Destruction
turn 5: Consume
turn 6: Bonestorm
turn 7: Consume
turn 8: swap
turn 9: did you know RI has an 8 turn cd?

[Kpb321]

Yeah I looked at graves and I think it would depend on what you are facing. RI into Grave Destruction is going be max ae dmg quickly but then you are pretty much locking yourself into passing one round with GD, Bonestorm and Consumption all being on CD. That order should be the higher damage long term if you can make it to the second bonestorm. That might not be easy even with consume being used to heal and the undead racial ability given that you are doing damage to yourself with bonestorm. Since you will be slower with out RI you are basically taking 6 rounds of damage before get the second bonestorm off so I'd expect that to be either your first or second round of undead racial but you do still get the abilities off with the UD racial and if it is your first round of UD racial it means your swap back to murkalot for RI again is a free swap from the first pet being dead. RI into some fast sweeper with an ae would be brutal at that point if there is anything left of the other team.

[Poofah]

RI into Grave Destruction is going be max ae dmg quickly but then you are pretty much locking yourself into passing one round with GD, Bonestorm and Consumption all being on CD.

Bonestorm is higher damage than Grave Destruction, assuming it hits 3 pets.

Let's assume Graves is the worst possible breed, BB. His base stats still make him very very good: 1603H/301P/227S

With those stats, Bonestorm is 241 per pet (723 total vs 3 pets), and does 160 back to Graves,
Gravestorm is 642 split evenly,
Consume is 193 dmg/heal.

So with that rotation, Graves is dealing 3390 total damage in 7 turns (1516 frontline plus 937 to each backline pet), while dealing 320 back to himself via Bonestorm and healing 579 via Consume. If you want to kill him before the 2nd Bonestorm, you have to deal 1862 damage to him in 5 turns.

[Kpb321]

You are right. You'd think with the higher CD Grave Destruction would do more damage but it doesn't. Yeah, that combo is looking brutal. The odds of killing him off before he gets the second bonestorm is going to be low and his death may end up just being a free swap back in for Murkalot. You are either going to need a pet with pretty high critter damage to take him down quickly or a pet with sandstorm on your team to have any chance it seems. A S/S Bronze whelpling seems like a good third one for this combo. Would be a good finisher to take care of the rest of their team and has an ae weather changing ability if you are facing sandstorm.

[Svycke]

What about using pets with stuns to delay the use of their aoe CDs? Or even a strong sunlight heal team to court react the cleave? I have a team that I've been using with Blossoming Ancient, Zao, and Nether Faerie and I've gone against a few cleaves team in which through smart swaps and heals I've come out on top.

[Robotusch]

I must admit, I went into my very first PvP battle ever this morning, and was mighty amused when my somewhat random cleave team (Death Talon Whelpguard, Weebo, Chrom) beat what appeared to be an equally random team (Draenei Micro-Defender, Valkyr, Chrom)

[3wd]

Lost of Lordaeron is a very powerful pet against most of the cleave based team, especially the one like Mech Dragon.

AE will destroy any decoy in one hit.

Curse of Doom is extremely effective if your opponent likes to switch pets and it is also very effective against heal because of the burst damage.

Please the fact that its undead and with tons of HP also.

I almost never lost to any cleave team in the old school era except for that unbalanced Kovok.