The Murkapult

[GilroyKilroy]

I've been playing today with a Kovok(H/P), Murkalot(-) and a Pygmy Direhorn(-) team.

I start with Kovok using Poison Fang to damage the front row pet and get him ready for a Puncture Wound combination.
Pheromones afterwards, switch to Murkalot. Murkalot casts Righteous Inspiration asap, which switches to either Kovok or Direhorn.
If Kovok, simply use Puncture Wound if it's the same front row pet. If the opponent switched out his pet, use a buffed Poison Fang and follow up with Puncture Wound.
If the Direhorn is switched, use Primal Cry to do more aoe damage and get the opponent pets ready for some Direhorn action.

Because I do not have the Stunted Direhorn yet, I'm really interested to see what this team could do with him in it.
I will probably find out soon though, since even with the Pygmy Direhorn I've been raking up wins like crazy.

I tried this team with a [pet]Stunted Direhorn[/pet] and I kinda, almost, feel guilty I might just get my Trainer title yet (not even halfway atm.)

[Brisela]

Inyeresting
Which breed is your kovok with the poison fang and puncture wounds combo
I woild like to take you on with my all time winniest team in 5.3

[Brisela]

I hope nliz does not nerf the strongest pvp murk yet
Even tjough I own one and I do not use for pvp yet cuz I want you take your tesm with it on my winniest trsm in 5.3
I want to know how it competes against it
I have already over 5000 pvp wins before 5.4 out and I really wamt to see iy

[3wd]

Inyeresting
Which breed is your kovok with the poison fang and puncture wounds combo
I woild like to take you on with my all time winniest team in 5.3

it really doesn't matter which breed, the buff is so powerful and everything just doesn't matter that much, I used the H/P breed but actually think the speedy one should be a little bit better.

as long as you can lay down a dot and aoe, switch to the murk and inspiration, that's pretty much about it,

if you want a sure win, use the bone dino, and cast a bone storm right after the inspiration and you will see your opponent's whole team collapse right before your eyes.

[Audana]

Yeah, he's gonna get nerfed. On the upside, I finally got the No Time To Heal achieve without needing to win trade or forfeit. I'm running the Kovok/Murkalot/Fossilized Hatchling setup and it is just brutal.

I'm thinking fix Righteous Inspiration so it only buffs the incoming pet, and get rid of the speed doubling part of the buff. Double damage is still devastating to an opponent who has no reactive plan, but gives a much broader set of reactive tools.

[Slog]

if you want a sure win, use the bone dino, and cast a bone storm right after the inspiration and you will see your opponent's whole team collapse right before your eyes.

Yes, it's ridiculous. I was screwing around with this earlier and was happy to see one of my opponents save his blind for the turn my Fossilized Hatchling swapped in. It was a good play, and at least gives some hope for playing against this combo. Other teams simply vaporized.

It's not fun as the person playing it, and I'm certain that it's a highly negative experience for the person having to face it. Direhorns were stupid, because they hit hard and went fast. So now we get a pet that gives you a full-team double damage, shields for all, and double speed? Did anyone playtest this thing?

The nerf approaches for certain. Until then the metagame is going to be extremely shallow.

[Waveryn]

I don't pvp but tried some, thinking if it is so great maybe I can win some. I did not have kovak or blackfuse or my fossilized hatchling at 25. But tried murkabloo, murkalot, chromius and won a few. I thought scorched earth up first then inspiration may keep its damage going but I do not think it worked. I also tried him with double pets with Thunderbolt since it damages frontand back pets it worked ok maybe I suck but it took a while to get 10 wins. I won against kovak blackfuse once but was reamed badly by teams having a Valk and various combos I forget there were so many. The worst was three diehorns the first one out was a stunted it wiped out all three of my pets by itself.
I can see it being fixed where it is broken (doing more damage than tool tip implies) but do not think it needs a huge nerf as I believe there are quite good counter teams that veteran players have already figured out.

[Itsmnevis]

if you want a sure win, use the bone dino, and cast a bone storm right after the inspiration and you will see your opponent's whole team collapse right before your eyes.

Yes, it's ridiculous.

RI+Bone Storm is heavy damage (~1350 for two turns, subtracting what you take yourself; it's high damage for sure) but it's not quite ridiculous (IMO). When combined with Pheremones it's really off the charts. RI definitely needs to be applied to only one pet when cast. I can see how stealth buffing the entire team with it seems like it solves a problem (which pet will end up in play next turn? screw it, just give it to them all), but it causes more.

Pheremones being buffed too is just unfair (and I say this as someone with a Kovok, who thinks Kovok+Jademist Dancer is fair).

[Brisela]

Wave
Yes I do have a team counter their combo in general and dont nerf this pet
With over 790 pets and only pvp to level pets I throw in tesms easily. I do have a mukalot and I will not pl it to lvl25.
I have teams to throw in to counter you. Also a guy mentioned h/p breed and I do agree thats best breed for the kovok pheromone build
H/s got me thinking a bit more

Brisela

[Slog]

if you want a sure win, use the bone dino, and cast a bone storm right after the inspiration and you will see your opponent's whole team collapse right before your eyes.

Yes, it's ridiculous.

RI+Bone Storm is heavy damage (~1350 for two turns, subtracting what you take yourself; it's high damage for sure) but it's not quite ridiculous (IMO). When combined with Pheremones it's really off the charts.

That's what I was doing. I wanted to see how bad this could get.

[3wd]

The problem with the murk is : I can see how this pet was designed to counter most of the ways to counter this pet.

EG. someone said if you have a 341 speed snake, you can wait till the round the murk to use his inspiration to blind the next heavy hitter, well then the designer give the murk also the shieldstorm, which you can cast it under blind without any issue, so when your murk will be facing a snake and expecting you will be blinded first, no problem, shieldstorm and more protection for your next pet.

what's more ridiculous? Blessed Hammer. This is the only skill in the game with a guaranteed 3 direct hit regardless of your speed. How many ways you can utilize this skill? 3 hits means more damage in lightning weather, 3 hits means you can leech back more HP with buff from other pets, and more importantly for this murk, 3 hits and with a 253 speed will make the DECOY from a zep looks like a complete joke (Decoy is one or the more effective way to counter the inspiration and Kovok AOE if use properly) .

See now? all these skill set was designed by purpose, and that purpose is to create an absolutely OP monster, that's what your 40 bucks paid for.

I am kind of sad to see this.

[Slog]

I am kind of sad to see this.

I am as well. The code arrived, he was level 25 18 minutes later, and it was exciting. Then I started building pvp teams around him, and I realized that the metagame was about to be utterly destroyed. PvP should be fun and varied, not a battle between the one obviously best team and the team that tries to hard-counter it.

[Brisela]

I disagree
When direhorn was op in 5.3 I didnt abuse it
Stunted pygmy and runt are still low levels
I have 4 ss imp still st lvl1 todsy in 5.3 they are op
I use wild pets and old nerf pets eg ss flayer ifol and other pets
In wild to make counter teams for the op petd im 5.3
Now evrryone has and 40 dollar pet do everyone is equally op
So lets hsve fun enjoy the pet and op against each other
I hsve teams running 9/10 weekly cknsistrntly in 5.3 wiyh hswks snd unborn
I hit 5k pvp wins a month ago needless to say I can tske on any of your teams and dont nerf the pet and wesken
The competiton

Brisela

[Poofah]

Yes, it's ridiculous. I was screwing around with this earlier and was happy to see one of my opponents save his blind for the turn my Fossilized Hatchling swapped in. It was a good play, and at least gives some hope for playing against this combo. Other teams simply vaporized.

That opponent had to correctly guess when you'd RI, and it didn't prevent the double Pheromones ticks. You're also in a position where you can wait out the Blinding Poison -- they can't win a 1v1 Death Adder vs Murk unless they use Blinding Poison, and they also can't play a stalling game because Pheromones is ticking down their backrow. And anyway you can Shieldstorm before RI like 3wd said: you lose one buffed Pheromones tick, but you're not in a position where you need to optimize Pheromones.

This is not really to critique your play, just to point out that things really had to break well for your opponent for Blinding Poison to be an effective counter. Ie, so far, even the best suggested counters don't seem particularly effective.

[Brisela]

Fine since you want to do it that way. The team that will never lose is the thunder hatchling with call lightning, h/p kovok with pheromone build and murkalot. Do your normal op murlak rotation and send off pheromone and call ligtning asap. watch the back roll pets in your opponenet team die faster than the front row.

Brisela

[Slog]

This is not really to critique your play, just to point out that things really had to break well for your opponent for Blinding Poison to be an effective counter. Ie, so far, even the best suggested counters don't seem particularly effective.

Oh, most definitely. I wasn't claiming this to be a real counter at all. It was unfortunately the only speed bump that I ran into.

[Brisela]

Just defeated a murkalot team with a fossil and pandaran mech dragon as predicted

I was not that difficult so please dont nerf the pet as mess with the quality of the murkalot

I used the team that was 9/10 wins weekly and now a 10/10 wins with the buff in 5.4

Brisela

[Slog]

Just defeated a murkalot team with a fossil and pandaran mech dragon as predicted

I was not that difficult so please dont nerf the pet as mess with the quality of the murkalot

I used the team that was 9/10 wins weekly and now a 10/10 wins with the buff in 5.4

Brisela

If you do this again, a pet battle log would be quite interesting.

[Maleric]

I went a sort of disappointing but sort of ok 3-5 against Murkalot teams tonight (all Murkalot/Fossilized Hatchling/Kovok or variations) with the super defensive Sandstorm team I've been playing for months, consisting of:

-S/S Quiraji Guardling with Crush, Sandstorm, and Blackout Kick;
-S/H Reckless Shadeling with Arcane Blast, Plagued Blood, and Phase Shift; and
-P/P Emperor Crab with Snap, Healing Wave, and Shell Shield.

The games felt winnable enough if I got a Blackout Kick/Crush/Sandstorm combo off against the Murkalot at the start. After that I just swapped to my crab and played super defensive. Only issue seemed to be that the Murkalot could solo my crab if it regained enough life, and the rest of my team was dead about five turns in and so wasn't around to support.

Hopefully this junk gets nerfed.

[Brisela]

Just won 4 in a row but none are murkalt team at level 25
I queue lvl1 thru lvl23 as well

Brisela