The Murkapult

[Highmitsu]

Except the fact that this damage is night unhealable by most teams. Hell, if you wanted me to, I could stick the bombling out first and lay down an attack or two but it's not nessicary against most teams because the damage is so high. Basicly if you're not running pets above 1500 health, they WILL die unless they have some sort of block or dodge running. And backrow pets don't do this.

Besides, that's just the general rotation for quick games that I linked. It's not like I don't adapt to the other player.

Edit: I don't think you understand that it affects ALL ongoing damage. Any dot that's up will also increase in damage for two rounds with RI, this is why Black claw + fang is enough to kill the frontrow pet during your rotation.

[Luciandk]

Kovok (HP)
Murkalot
Blackfuse Bombling (PP)

This is not a good team to utilize the murkalot.

The AOE skill from Kovok will ignore any speed buff and you will only get 1 round of AOE buff from the 100 dmg, which is close to a total waste.

And using a bombling pet doesn't help also, as someone already pointed out, the switch skill of the murkalot will only pull out your pet with most HP, this alone will defeat the purpose you want to AOE bomb your opponent with buff when you are very close to death.

This is why you use a H/H bombling and start with kovok.

Poison fang -> Black Claw -> Pheromones -> Switch to Murkalot->Righteous Inspiration -> Switches to Bombling -> Armageddon. If anything is left up it can easily be cleaned up by what you have left on Kov/Murkalot.
This way, 2 ticks on the pheromones are affected by RI which result in an insane damage spread.

You are assuming your opponent is just a dummy npc, for the 6 rounds you mentioned above, your opponent's front pet will not have any skill such as dodge, evasion, stun, delay damage ect to break your rotation?

Putting all the eggs into a one hit Armageddon especially when your pet is in almost full health is not a very good move.

I agree its not a very good setup for pvp, very easilly interupted. But it is sick levels of damage if allowed to run freely. Fossilized hatchling appears to be the better aoer, less upfront damage, but your pet survives. But as I said, Im seeing people using Shieldstorm to counter a big nasty aoe hit comming in.

Infact Ive seen variants of Barrier+Shieldstorm as opening moves to hinder the opening burst of many murkalot teams.

[Highmitsu]

Idk. Been playing this comp for the last 100 games and I've lost roughly 10 of that.
Not a lot of people play a good counter team for it.

Edit: I guess it differs from group to group. I just have not seen a lot of decent counters today. Personally I just want to get the last of my wins before everyone's using it. Almost there!

[Quintessence]

Senior Game Designer, Jonathan LeCraft, is [url=https://twitter.com/TheCrafticus/status/398492335366881280]welcoming any feedback[/url] you may have on Murkalot.

Constructive feedback and maybe some suggestions on changes/updates might help "balance" this pet (if it does indeed need some balancing). You can either reply on Twitter or head to the official [url=http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/7388394/]Pet Battle[/url] forums where there are already a number of threads on Murkalot.

Keep up the discussion! I haven't fully leveled mine yet, but I can already tell that he's a strong pet.

[3wd]

Fossilized hatchling appears to be the better aoer, less upfront damage, but your pet survives.

This is my choice for a murkalot team.

My preferred setup will be :

Fossilized Hatchling
Murkalot
325 speed S/S Qiraji Guardling

Start with the murk, shieldstorm if your opponent does not have any aoe skill, then inspiration and switch to the hatchling, do your heavy aoe damage for 1400+ dmg, switch to the Qiraji, check your health level between Qiraji and the hatchling, make sure the next inspiration will get the hatchling out, then stun, switch back to the murk, and inspiration again and use the second round of aoe, now since your hatchling also have a heal and its an undead, you can probably survive another 3 round of CD and use the 3rd aoe of bone storm.

from these 3 rounds of aoe, you will have dmg of : 1458 + 1458 + 729 = each pet will get hit by 1215 dmg.

You will be in a much better situation with a S/S Qiraji and the murk left to clean up the rest.

A creepy crate is also a good sub for the hatchling because it has more HP and more reliable for inspiration and it can also force your opponent to switch their front pet if needed.

[Poofah]

Putting all the eggs into a one hit Armageddon especially when your pet is in almost full health is not a very good move.

Why not? It's massively efficient damage and it happens with 450+ speed, ie it is low risk. Sacrificing a full-health Bombling is not efficient in terms of hitpoints, but it's very efficient in terms of turns. Ie you are sacrificing material for tempo, if you like chess terms.

Start with the murk, shieldstorm if your opponent does not have any aoe skill, then inspiration and switch to the hatchling, do your heavy aoe damage for 1400+ dmg, switch to the Qiraji, check your health level between Qiraji and the hatchling, make sure the next inspiration will get the hatchling out, then stun, switch back to the murk, and inspiration again and use the second round of aoe, now since your hatchling also have a heal and its an undead, you can probably survive another 3 round of CD and use the 3rd aoe of bone storm.

This is 11 turns, for 3645 total AoE damage: 331 damage per turn.

Here's what Kovok/Bombling can do:

turn 1: cast Pheromones; Pheromones ticks for 140 at end of turn.
turn 2: swap to Murkalot; Pheromones ticks for 140 at end of turn.
turn 3: cast RI, swapping to PP Blackfuse Bombling -- RI buff is active, and Pheromones ticks for 280 at end of turn.
turn 4: cast Armageddon with RI buff (754 damage to all pets); RI buff is still active at end of turn, and Pheromones ticks for 280, and then Pheromones fades.

754 frontline, 1594 backline, for 3942 total damage in 4 turns: 985 damage per turn.

[Moritsume]

Blessed Hammer absolutely wrecks moths! Since it's 3 hits, the first one will break cocoon allowing the other 2 to hit. Gave the guy running a 3 moth team I ran into a very nasty surprise =x

[3wd]

Apparently I was wrong about the mruk to team up with the Kovok because of a stupid fact :

after you cast your aoe or dot on your opponent's front pet, and then switch to your murk to cast the inspiration,

In that round when you cast your inspiration and the next round when your second pet actually can do action, for those 2 rounds, the 100% increase of damage buff will actually work on whatever dots and AOE currently you have on your opponent's team, this is insanely OP.

[Luciandk]

Apparently I was wrong about the mruk to team up with the Kovok because of a stupid fact :

after you cast your aoe or dot on your opponent's front pet, and then switch to your murk to cast the inspiration,

In that round when you cast your inspiration and the next round when your second pet actually can do action, for those 2 rounds, the 100% increase of damage buff will actually work on whatever dots and AOE currently you have on your opponent's team, this is insanely OP.

Righteous Inspiration is a teamwide buff lasting for 1 turn and thusly buffing all current damage on the turn its applied and the following turn.

[Highmitsu]

Apparently I was wrong about the mruk to team up with the Kovok because of a stupid fact :

after you cast your aoe or dot on your opponent's front pet, and then switch to your murk to cast the inspiration,

In that round when you cast your inspiration and the next round when your second pet actually can do action, for those 2 rounds, the 100% increase of damage buff will actually work on whatever dots and AOE currently you have on your opponent's team, this is insanely OP.

That's what I said earlier. :I

[Poofah]

In that round when you cast your inspiration and the next round when your second pet actually can do action, for those 2 rounds, the 100% increase of damage buff will actually work on whatever dots and AOE currently you have on your opponent's team, this is insanely OP.

Constructive feedback and maybe some suggestions on changes/updates might help "balance" this pet (if it does indeed need some balancing). You can either reply on Twitter or head to the official Pet Battle forums where there are already a number of threads on Murkalot.

Murkalot's biggest issue is Righteous Inspiration, and RI itself has multiple issues. Currently the implementation doesn't match the tooltip -- instead of buffing only the swapped-in pet, it buffs your whole team's damage. This version is clearly insane, e.g. with the Kovok example a few posts back.

If it's fixed so that RI works as the tooltip suggests, then it may or may not be overpowered -- double damage is very dangerous when you can combine it with Armageddon or Surge of Power or etc. It may be counterable, but it's impossible to evaluate with the current version of RI.

Also, since RI is so crazy, it's overshadowing Shieldstorm. Shieldstorm is essentially Decoy with 3 charges instead of 2, in a slightly less convenient form. Decoy was already nerfed for balance reasons and remains very strong, so a stronger Decoy seems rather powerful -- especially considering how it synergizes with RI (it protects the incoming pet from any CC that might prevent the buffed attack). But because Shieldstorm is always in the same moveset as RI, it's hard to tell if Shieldstorm is too strong or if it's simply along for the ride.

[Vek]

Playing around with counter ideas. Root type moves seem useful. Fossiled hatchling with prison worked decently. Guess mines can be useful to remove the shield when a pet is switched in so you can at least do something, like blind or stun if lucky. Other than that guess you need a shielded or magic pet to switch in. But that does not really work for armageddon.

[Luciandk]

Cleanse pets remains useful to purge even a doublebuffed pheromones or a stack of whirlpool and geyser

[Dakaf]

The hammer smash with lightning storm is pretty awesome! Three hits with a p/p pet? Yes please!

[Poofah]

Playing around with counter ideas. Root type moves seem useful. Fossiled hatchling with prison worked decently. Guess mines can be useful to remove the shield when a pet is switched in so you can at least do something, like blind or stun if lucky. Other than that guess you need a shielded or magic pet to switch in. But that does not really work for armageddon.

The best* I've got so far is Anubisath Idol, Demolish/Sandstorm/Deflection. Deflection is the only thing that reliably counters a RI-powered nuke; Sandstorm is fairly effective against the AoE, especially since shields subtract before RI multiplies. So those 280 ticks of Pheromones go down to 128. And it helps that Demolish is currently bugged (75% accuracy despite the tooltip saying 50%).

Roots can work, but that relies on the opponent putting Murk out against your rooter long enough for you to get an action. This will discourage Kovok/swap/RI/Bomb, but that same team could opt to start Murk and RI straight away (since it's a priority move and will avoid the root). Then you're fighting Bombling who opens with double-damage Flame Jet for 1130, and Hatchling can't prevent Armageddon.

Cleanse/Sear Magic are narrow, and mediocre because they don't deal any damage. You're trading your turn to partially undo the damage they set up on their turn -- you can't come out ahead, and you're not dealing damage to pressure the opponent. And if you end up facing an opponent that doesn't rely on debuffs, it's dead weight.

* Not including another Murkalot team.

[Shagina]

I think it's safe to say that we've only seen the tip of the iceberg so far in regards to Murkalot. He is going to affect the metagame heavily and will spawn a ridiculous number of comps that are all broken in their own unique way. Anyone who thinks he won't be nerfed for "PR" reasons is in for a surprise. It might take a while, but he will be nerfed.

[Brisela]

wow you guys came up with so many different ways to utilitz the murkalot. I personally have the deadly brawler title and my first response when i see your team is sandstorm to provide a blanket for everyone on my team and ready for your swapped in pet to deflect the 2x bonus attack and just crush to death. At same time keep sandstorm up to protect the teammates in the backline

[Brisela]

Hmm but with the exception of I will use the elemental air pet to provide the sandstorm since someone has already mentioned of using a fosssil pet for the aoe which is a natural killer for an idol or any humanoid that can sandstorm.

[3wd]

This is what you need for a overpowered murk team.

Kovok
Murk
whatever ( suggest a spirit crab due to high HP to avoid extra miss and surge for extra fast, but basically anything will work)

start with the Kovok
Poison Fang
black claw
Pheromones

then switch to the murk

Inspiration

then your crab will be out (or whatever)

at this time, the front pet will be close to 1 hit dead, both back pets will be less than half hp

even with a slow crab, you will have zero problem to close them out, or if you prefer, use a fly pet like a crow will doe it too.

This pet (the murk) needs to be fixed, this kind of combo will kill the whole PVP activities.

Yes I know there will be ways to counter above like sandstorm, but hey, I am not even using the shieldstorm yet also.

Blizz really need to fix this.

[3wd]

The inspiration buff should NOT be team wide, it should only apply to the next pet will be coming out.

because this buff is team wide, or to be more exactly, this buff will apply to EVERYTHING currently in effect and also for the next round regardless of which pet will be coming out, any kind of skills that will force you to switch pet is just useless.