Thoughts on the new 5.4 pets

[Poofah]

The first Kovok spotted so far is H/H, but with funny base stats -- it's really fast for some reason, not what I'd expect for a Kunchong.

H/H is 1644 health / 260 power / 276 speed at level 25.

if there is a P/P, which might not be the case, it would be 1319 health / 325 power / 276 speed.

This is good and bad, because Kovok potentially is the most powerful moveset pet in 5.4 in terms of raw damage output, but the odd base stats are going to hold him back regardless what breeds he ends up having.

Even so, if there's a P/P, it can Pheromones for 173 damage per backrow pet per turn, over 4 turns. 1380 total damage for one move. The H/H would be 140 per backrow pet per turn, for 1120 total.

[Luciandk]

Hrm, interesting thoughts on Kovok. EU undermine journal lists a single HP Kovok was sale on horde side, but what are your oppinions on blackfuse bombling, poofah. Does it have potential at all?

[Iskren]

Cant believe no one mention the Jademist dancer S/S , the all might Bonkers S/S and especialy Dandelion Frolicker witch i am trying to get atm but even without having it i can tell you that its crazy OP in the right hands.
BTW Cheers to the new Valk with haunt ....only those that have it knows how strong is she at the moment
About Xu-Fu i think this pet is a complete joke and super easy counterble ;D
Question remains how powerful are Blackfuse Bombling and Kovok.

[Vista]

I know the Skunky Alemental's moveset isn't amazing, but if I were planning to use one just for fun, which breed should I keep?

[Luciandk]

Cant believe no one mention the Jademist dancer S/S , the all might Bonkers S/S and especialy Dandelion Frolicker witch i am trying to get atm but even without having it i can tell you that its crazy OP in the right hands.
BTW Cheers to the new Valk with haunt ....only those that have it knows how strong is she at the moment
About Xu-Fu i think this pet is a complete joke and super easy counterble ;D
Question remains how powerful are Blackfuse Bombling and Kovok.

Jademist Dancer seems to have really weird stats. Dont think ive seen a 317 speed SS pet before, whereas most other speedy pets are 325. But I guess you are refering to the Rain Dance critbuff and Geyser for damage?

Also, killed a single Jademist and an SS drops! Debating if its worth leveling up.

[Luciandk]

Made an observation about [pet]Ruby Droplet[/pet] today. [ability]Drain Blood[/ability] ignores bosspet damage reduction and deals full damage. So if a boss have 1960 hp, they take 196 damage.

[pet]Lil' Bling[/pet] have a suprisingly good combo with [ability]Make it Rain[/ability] followed up by [ability]Inflation[/ability]. I still question if its worth casting [ability]Extra Plating[/ability] first, as it means you take a hit, thusly negating your speed advantage. Or taking [ability]Blingtron Gift Package[/ability] for either a crucial heal or to finish off a target, though it might simply be smarter to hit Inflation one time more to have a guaranteed hit benefitting from the double damage debuff.

Edit: Scratch that. Tested it out on Greyhoof. Going Extra Plating, Make it Rain and casting Inflation, Lil Bling nearly soloed the boss! Yep Extra Plating is extremely potent for durability during this, despite taking a little more initial damage.

Edit2: On non beast bosspets, Lil Bling can usually knock out half their health before popping. Only bosspets with shield moves like Gorespine or Tiun renders him impotent.

[Poofah]

EU undermine journal lists a single HP Kovok was sale on horde side, but what are your oppinions on blackfuse bombling

I really like this guy -- now there's 2 breeds that have been seen, P/P and H/H, and both should be excellent due to the low base speed. Flame Jet is exceptional for damage (30 base, with a 50% chance of getting 20 more as a field effect over 4 turns)--with a 4 round cd, the H/H could probably get off 2 of these. Armageddon is just flat out amazing when it hits all 3 pets, and it's very hard to mitigate/avoid because a dodge effect will only protect the frontrow pet. So your only option is to control him with stuns/cc and try to kill him before he can Armageddon, but with decent-to-high health and a mech rez, this isn't easy either. And, he can fit solid elemental and mechanical attacks in the same moveset and therefore is excellent against both beasts and mechs, which are both extremely popular right now--formerly only Clockwork Gnome could do that.

To maximize Armageddon, you'll almost always want him as your starting pet, and your opponent will know this. That's probably his main weakness--if your opponent has a counter for him, they'll almost certainly start with it. But you can always pull tricks like starting Val'kyr and Haunt-swapping to him. And it's not like Armageddon is bad if it only hits 2 pets -- it's still 40 base damage total, which is comparable to Explode.

If there's a H/P Kovok on EU, then there's 3 breeds seen so far for him -- H/H, H/P and H/S. H/P would be 1465 health/289 power/276 speed. Speed is completely wasted on this guy because his damage is almost all end-of-turn (Poison Fang and Pheromones). But still, with 289 power and the beast passive presumably affecting some of the later ticks of Pheromones, he needs very few turns to be devastating. Once this guy is available, there's going to be some hilarious Kovok/Val'kyr/Crawdad-type teams that Haunt your front guy, Pheromones your backline, and then stall while you rot away.

Cant believe no one mention the Jademist dancer S/S , the all might Bonkers S/S and especialy Dandelion Frolicker witch i am trying to get atm but even without having it i can tell you that its crazy OP in the right hands.
BTW Cheers to the new Valk with haunt ....only those that have it knows how strong is she at the moment
About Xu-Fu i think this pet is a complete joke and super easy counterble ;D
Question remains how powerful are Blackfuse Bombling and Kovok.

Jademist is neat, presumably with Steam Vent/Rain Dance/Geyser. Geyser/Dance/Vent/Vent (Geyser goes off) is brutal damage. The issue with him is that the opponent knows exactly what you're trying to do and it's telegraphed 3 turns ahead. And because Geyser is end-of-turn, any avoidance move counters it regardless of speed, similar to Xu'Fu.

Bonkers S/S is kind of like a moth--devastating when you get lucky with Tornado Punch (ie Moth Dust). Then you get to hit 4 times without retaliation if you're faster, which is about 1260 damage unanswered for the S/S. For reference, when a Yellow Moth gets lucky with Moth Dust and can do Moth Dust, Alpha Strike, Cocoon Strike, Alpha Strike, it's 1588 unanswered damage. Like the moth, he's pretty vulnerable when the blitz attack doesn't come off. But Bonkers is nice because he has the humanoid passive; he's healing up while bonking you, and can sometimes recover from a very bad position (the aforementioned Tornado Punch, Jab, Dodge, Jab, Jab would give him back 236 health).

Frolicker I'm really not sold on -- Frolick+Kick can make for an extremely annoying rabbit-type pet, with the humanoid passive to heal up while evading and kicking you, *if* it gets consistently lucky with Frolick. But so far there's no S/S, so he tops out at 289 speed, while Kick and Frolick both desperately depend on being faster. Frolick is objectively worse than Dodge--it's only better if you dodge all 3 turns (ie 12.5% chance of being better than Dodge; 87.5% chance of being equal or worse; and it's not reliable evasion against a huge bomb like Geyser or Prowl+Feed).

Totally agree on the new Haunt. Valk is a superstar right now. She's on the level of 5.3 Direhorn: forget about strategy, just toss her in your team and your team probably got better. At least the mechanics of Haunt make 2x and 3x Valk worse than 1x. But still, I really hope they take another look at Haunt.

I know the Skunky Alemental's moveset isn't amazing, but if I were planning to use one just for fun, which breed should I keep?

For PvP purposes, you're probably aiming to use Skunky Brew to trap the opponent in a bad matchup and then duke it out. Swaps happens before moves regardless of speed, so being faster doesn't benefit Skunky Brew, or any of his other abilities. So the main thing is to outlast whatever you end up trapping, and power and health are roughly equal when it comes to simply trading blows. Since there's no P/P, I'd say H/P and H/H are both good choices (I chose H/P, because health is most valuable when facing mech damage, but he's already overwhelmingly good against mechs and doesn't need the additional edge).

Made an observation about Ruby Droplet today. Drain Blood ignores bosspet damage reduction and deals full damage. So if a boss have 1960 hp, they take 196 damage.

All %-based abilities work this way -- in 5.3 they also generally ignored weak/strong interactions and shields (but I haven't tested Drain Blood yet).

[Luciandk]

Poofah, you are wrong about [pet]Dandelion Frolicker[/pet], it comes in breed 5. S/S. I have it and it caps out at 325 speed.


Edit:
Aquired [pet]Zao[/pet] today. Cute, if noisy pet. Wish and Niuzao's Charge are two quite noticeable abilities on it, the later capping out at 772 damage for a 2 turn ability with 100% hit. His slot 1 attacks is fairly weak tho, and feels rather hampered by his bad breed of P/S. Speed seems wasted on him, and seems fairly hard to keep alive with Wish thanks to his slightly above average life of 1481. Zao would have been a lot better as H/H or H/P. Blizzard was fairly unimaginative with the breeds for the celestials, 3 of them having P/S. :/

[Poofah]

Interesting. I always go by petsear.ch, which hasn't seen a S/S Frolicker yet. If you go to http://petsear.ch/Pets and update your collection there, it will add the S/S to their database.

Also, that means there's at least 4 breeds for this annoyingly rare pet (S/S, P/S, H/S, S/B).

Agree on Zao. Sometimes I wonder if they intentionally use bad stats to help balance out an impressive moveset (Zao, Kovok). But then sometimes you'll get great movesets with ideal stats (Blackfuse Bombling, Lil Deathwing, Emerald Proto-Whelp, Anubisath, Crawdad, S/S Fiendish Imp, etc etc). So clearly they know how to make a 'good' pet. And then sometimes there's pets like Yu'la, which is a high-profile pet with a scatterbrained moveset and terrible non-complimentary stats. I know they don't spend all day balancing pet battles, but in a lot of cases I wonder if their implementation of a pet comes anywhere near the power level of what they intended.

[Luciandk]

Whats wrong with the breeds for kovok? HH and HP seems fairly decent for him. Not outright bad by having too much speed.

Im still torn on what breed of blackfuse bombling to shoot for, HH or PP. HH gives stronger mech rez and lets you milk the most from explode. A 722 unmitigated explode. Whereas PP packing 341 power have a quite nice vallop with its abilities and even have a decent amount of damage with Zap. Plus one big ugly armageddon hit.

[Poofah]

Whats wrong with the breeds for kovok? HH and HP seems fairly decent for him. Not outright bad by having too much speed.

The breeds are good, but the base stats are bad. There's nothing in that moveset that wants speed, but he's stuck with at least 276 speed regardless of breed. Compared to Bombling, that's 48 wasted speed that could have been power, or 240 health.

If Bombling is affordable, I'm going to get both HH and PP. Armageddon is the big reason to use him, so PP would be my priority if I have to choose just one. Even with HH I would probably choose Armageddon over Explode (296 per pet versus 722 for the frontline pet). The upside with HH is he rezzes with 360 health, which lets him survive a full extra attack versus most speed-based pets, and that should help him more reliably get off the Armageddon. Whereas PP would rez with 296 health, which nearly anything can 1-shot.

[Luciandk]

Ah, thank you. Ive only been collecting one of each unique pet for a long time.

And I see about Kovok, shame about the bad base stats. Ah well, cant be perfect everytime.

[Luciandk]

Aquired a PP [pet]Blackfuse Bombling[/pet] as you recommended, Poofah. Im pretty pleased with it. Flame Jet hits for a ton and Armageddon is a great finisher with a rather impressive animation. A huge fireball smashes into the pets from above.

[Luciandk]

Im starting to think [ability]Armageddon[/ability] is overrated. Sure it deals a lot of damage to the whole enemy team if you can end with it as your final cast. But more often than not it wont finish off a troublesome enemy pet, due it indiviually dealing fairly low damage. Plus it looses potency if you for some reason have to delay the Bombling.

[ability]Explode[/ability] feels consistently more useful in pvp. Especially if you cue it as the enemy smashes you into your auto rez. Plus the fact that Explode ignores damage resistance, and that you have more flexibility in when to use it unlike Armageddon.

And as mentioned in the other thread in the collection forum. [pet]Jademist Dancer[/pet] is a quite strong battlepet, plus swaps cant evade its combo of Geyser, Rain dance and Steam Vent.

[Poofah]

For PP Bombling, Explode is 592 damage to the front pet, and Armageddon is 361 damage to all their pets. Even if you just hit 2 pets, Armageddon is numerically better.

But, you're right that Armageddon is less convenient. There's several pets like this in 5.4: huge damage potential but only under the right circumstances (Armageddon, Pheromones, Prowl+Feed). If you can manufacture the right circumstances, ie Bombling does some damage then Armageddons while your opponent still has 3 pets, then he's amazing. If your opponent can control him, ie force-swap him out or scare you into swapping with a bad matchup, then Armageddon will be less potent.

My bias is to play objectively strong pets/abilities, and then try to control the circumstances to make them work. That's why I think Xu'Fu is so potent, even though a lot of people say he's easy to counter. Yes, he's easy to counter, but if I can defeat your counter then he becomes incredible.

Similarly with Bombling: you can expect force-swap pets to still be prevalent, and Valk is running rampant (Haunt is a bummer for Bombling, since Valk can't be hit by Armageddon while she's haunting). So it takes more work to make the most of Armageddon, but when you do, it's a huge advantage.

I don't have a Bombling yet, so I can only theorize. But basically, I would aim to use my other pets to force the opponent into a bad situation (ie a low-health Bombling getting Armageddon on all 3 of their pets, while your other pets are mostly full). So for example if you open Valk, optional Doom, Haunt, free swap to Fiendish Imp, optional Immolation, Gate, now either stall for Valk to come back or swap to Bombling and aim to trade pets while Armageddoning with a low-health Bombling. Or, if they have no particular tricks, then you can just Haunt->free swap directly to Bombling. If they opened Fiendish Imp, they probably Gated the Valk straight away to avoid Doom/Haunt -- which swapped in your Bombling, and now Gate is gone for 5 rounds. If they opened Valk, well, that's why you play BB Valk nowadays; or you could hedge and open with your Imp if you see Valk on the other side.

[Luciandk]

Some good words there. Personally Ive grown to like [ability]Flame Jet[/ability], an unique and highly damaging ability. And [ability]Burn[/ability] scales well with high power. I agree [ability]Armageddon[/ability] have nummerical superiority over [ability]Explode[/ability], but if it doesnt kill the enemy pet and if it are faster than your next pet, youve set yourself up for a free hit, loosing your advantage. Even worser if your next pet misses.

[Poofah]

Sure, but that's why I would always include a fast pet in a team with Bombling. A general AoE strategy would use the high-speed pet as a sweeper, ie the guy who comes in last and finishes off all the low-health enemies for the win. Bombling gives you a chunk of AoE in one ability, and you could team him with another AoE pet plus a sweeper, or try to force backline damage with tricks like Haunt->Nether Gate. I expect to see similar nonsense with Kovok: Pheromones, Black Claw, swap to Imp to force the Black Claw'd pet to the back for some big Pheromones ticks. In these cases the Imp is pulling double duty: he's enabling backline damage, and he's waiting for those weakened pets to come back out so he can 1-2 shot them with Burn, while taking very little damage in return.

[Luciandk]

Have to agree to disagree, just dont find Armageddon to be very flexible. I think Fossilized Hatchling makes for a better aoe pet with its buffed Bonestorm.

[Poofah]

Sounds good. Please trade me Bombling in that case. I have a Fossilized Hatchling with your name on it.

[Luciandk]

Already have it. Not going to get rid of the bombling, lol. I like using burn, flame jet and explode.