Battle with that pet

[Celya]

Strongly agree with Harpua - this thread is a really interesting way to get out of your comfort zone!

On to the [pet]Wanderer's Festival Hatchling[/pet]. Somewhat difficult to obtain on higher population realms, comes in 3 breeds: H/H, H/S and B/B. Mine is a H/H I caught and stoned, which translates into 1887 Health, 244 Power, 244 Speed.

My first thought when looking at this pet was "Ah-ha! Valkyr counter!" It's aquatic, so resistant to DOTs and Undead damage, and on its second slot it also has the [ability]Shell Shield[/ability] ability. I chose [ability]Grasp[/ability] and [ability]Pump[/ability] on the first and third slots respectively. This pet only does strong damage against Elementals now, of course, so I added the [pet]Jade Oozeling[/pet] with [ability]Absorb[/ability], to cover humanoids, [ability]Corrosion[/ability], to cover flyers, and [ability]Acidic Goo[/ability], because I usually use [ability]Expunge[/ability] and I wanted something different. This left me with 2 slow pets and no way to really mitigate damage except for the magic racial, so I added [pet]Chi-Chi, Hatchling of Chi-Ji[/pet], with [ability]Fire Quills[/ability], to cover mechanicals, [ability]Tranquillity[/ability], and [ability]Feign Death[/ability].

After this - unusual - amount of planning on my part, I put this team to the test. I then had one of Those Nights: Lost to an Idol/Scourged Whelpling/Wild Crimson Hatchling team. Lost to a Chi-Chi/Zao/Idol team. Lost to a Snarly/Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling team. In some cases I had bad RNG, but I also kept making one mistake after the other. So after the third time I switched my Jade Oozeling in to face the Dragonling with its strong anti-magic attack, I called it a night.

On day 2 I found myself reluctant to try this same team again, so I decided to try something different - a [ability]Dreadful Breath[/ability] team. I don't usually like AoE teams, but I've never actually tried this ability before, so why not? I only had 2 pets at max level with Dreadful Breath, so that meant automatically the team got filled with [pet]Hopling[/pet] and [pet]Scourged Whelpling[/pet]. My Wanderer kept [ability]Grasp[/ability] and [ability]Shield[/ability], but switched to [ability]Cleansing Rain[/ability] instead of [ability]Pump[/ability].

First team - Snarly/Blighthawk/Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling. I lost so fast I barely had time to write down the opposing team's pets! Second team - Imperial Eagle Chick/Jademist Dancer/Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling. I lost so fast I barely had time to write down the opposing team's pets... Yes, I wrote that twice, because I lost that fast. Twice. I then faced a Chi-Chi/Zao/Mojo team, and Mojo went on to leisurely chomp and sleep his way through all three my pets. At this point I decided that either (a) I don't like Dreadful Breath, or (b) I should level different pets with that ability to max level.

Tonight, just before posting, I decided to give my first team a shot again. I faced a Jademist Dancer/Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling/Polly team the first time, and lost after making some serious mistakes. I then switched out [ability]Feign Death[/ability] for [ability]Ethereal[/ability], and tried again.

The next team was a Kun-Lai Runt/Clockwork Gnome/Crawling Claw. When Chi-Chi blocked his Deep Freeze, and proceeded to kill him, my opponent forfeited. Requeued - Kun-Lai Runt/Frosty/Frigid Frostling. Chi-Chi proceeded to shine and after I had killed 2 of his pets using mostly Chi-Chi and the Oozeling, opponent forfeited again.

Ultimately, I don't think the Wanderer is as good a pet for pvp as other aquatics out there. If you want resistance to DOTs and Undead damage, use a frog or a crab with a heal instead. The 1887 health goes up to a whopping 2012 when you use [ability]Perk Up[/ability], but in practice it felt like that was not as useful as it sounds on paper. It might have been different if I actually saw a valkyr on any of those nights, but I didn't. Maybe someone else can make something work with this pet, but I'm throwing in the towel here.

Harpua, show me what you can kick with your [pet]Summit Kid[/pet]!

[Genome]

For anyone who is lurking but has not joined in the thread, please take the chance. It's good to get out of your comfort zone and you can really learn a lot.

This is very true Harpua. It is great that some people are posting strats with these dust-covered pets as well. It is nice to actually scroll through the journal to look for new counterparts for a change, not just running a FotM counter 95% of the time ;-P

Ok Vek, I finally got a chance to drag out my [pet]Sunfur Panda[/pet]. To be completely honest, I was dreading it as I never really cared for his skill-set. Still, on with the show!

I had some difficulty pairing him with anything as he doesn't really have much synergy with other pets, other than maybe a sunlight stall team which I absolutely refuse to run. So I decided to make him something of an uber-tank. His abilities were [ability]Scratch[/ability], [ability]Hibernate[/ability], and [ability]Crouch[/ability]. I paired him with [pet]Yu'la, Broodling of Yu'lon [/pet] running with [ability]Breath[/ability], [pet]Celestial Blessing[/pet] and [ability]Lift-off[/ability]. The third pet changed around a lot depending what I was running into, but was normally a [pet]Jade Oozeling[/pet] set up for DoTs. Blessing gave the Oozeling some staying power to actually apply said DoTs multiple times.

My first few matches didn't go so hot, mostly because of Adder-spam. The Panda was actually fairly valuable though. My strat was to open with Yu'La, CB then switch in the Panda. For two-three rounds, I would Scratch, then apply Crouch. With this setup, he had six rounds of 50% dmg reduction, which is pretty sweet. Depending on what my health looked like, I would hit Hibernate on my last round of Crouch protection, to get healed up pretty well. Rinse and repeat. I would also sometimes shield the Oozeling and let him do his thing. The Oozeling can really wreck other pets, and it is immensely satisfying watching crows get decimated by him. The weak link in this team was really Yu'La, as he isn't too great outside of laying down CG and his health is way too low.

With this team, I also discovered that the Panda is pretty strong against Valks as well! Scratch hits undead hard, and if you time Crouch/Hibernate well, you can pretty much neutralize CoD/Haunt. Most Valks always go the CoD -> Haunt route, so simply Scratch the first and second round against them doing 900+ dmg total to the Valk, then Crouch to mitigate a lot of the Haunt dmg (and also CoD when it goes off hence the delay in applying Crouch). Hibernate the round before CoD and you should be golden, always depending what the other pet is doing to you of course.

While I wasn't looking forward to using this pet, I was actually pleasantly surprised.

Celya, live the good life and break out your [pet]Water Waveling[/pet] (I have one I am trying to utilize and need a fresh perspective...been running him with Pengu and Kun-Lai Runt but he doesn't really fit well)

[Nefigah]

For anyone who is lurking but has not joined in the thread, please take the chance. It's good to get out of your comfort zone and you can really learn a lot.

This is very true Harpua. It is great that some people are posting strats with these dust-covered pets as well. It is nice to actually scroll through the journal to look for new counterparts for a change, not just running a FotM counter 95% of the time ;-P

Alright, you guys have talked me into it. Go easy on me though, I'm new!

Genome, I love your Filthling's name. Care to give her a spin?

[Vek]

Come and take the Magic Carp(et) ride. This little fish is similar to my favourite Purple Puffer, but with three Magic attacks. Psychic Blast, Wild Magic and Mana Surge. Aquatic that has strong attacks against fliers, but the downside to choosing these attacks is the cooldown on them and Mana Surge locks you for three turns. I don’t really fancy being locked for three turns but needed to try something different from my Purple Puffer. So Psychic Blast, newly buffed Healing Stream and Pump.

Needed something with Arcane Storm, to boost Psychic Blast(and perhaps later Mana Surge). Nexus Whelpling it is and rounded off with a Wildhammer Gryphon Hatchling.

This team went 1-3. Won versus a lightning cyclone team. I guess Psychic Blast actually took the Skywisp Moth by surprise. Then I started running into Fossilised Hatchling, Kun-Lai Runt, Xu-Fu. Not a good match up, and with no avoidance(one turn lift off is not enough), there was little to do but be eaten by Xu-Fu in the end.

Changed skills to Surge and Pump, my regular Puffer outfit. And partners to Warbot and Blighthawk. Yea I was getting bored of Runt and Xu-Fu. Alas I didn’t get to face them. This team went 2-1. Faced Idol, Tonk, Blighthawk. Warbot handled Idol, and in the end the Carp could heal and take care of the Blighthawk. Also had a strange fight against two level 23 and a level 24, never had that happened before. Warbot could solo the team, but I had to try the Carp. It didn’t even manage to kill a level 23 Horned Lizard. Last fight was against Valk, Deah Adder and an Imperial Moth. Nice setup, but sadly the Moth hurt the Warbot too much and I didn’t have enough health to finish the Adder.

Switched team mates for five straight games and went 3-2. Highlights were beating a Raven/Sunflower team. Win against a Valk/Idol/Custodian team, were the Carp handled the Valk by itself. And a fun win(with Azure Crane Chick and gahz’rooki) versus Fossilised/Creepy Crate/Death Adder Hatchling. Here the carp finished the DAH nicely.

The lows. Got that Fossilised/Runt/Xu-Fu team again and ended the same way, but the Carp did three-shot the Fossilised with Mana Surge. And also lost against a Fossilised/Mechanical Pandaren/Death Talon Whelpguard. Damn I dislike that Dragonling.

I felt like I was in much need of some CC and avoidance if I was going to keep running into Xu-Fu, therefore I brought out old trusty Scalded Basilisk Hatchling. And that damn Mechancial Pandaren Dragonling needed a counter, lets try how the Lava Crab works.

Now I ran into Fel Flame/Lava Crab(!)/Raggy. If only I had Pump instead of Mana Surge, but regular Surge would have to do. Basilisk and Carp dominated the team. The Lava Crab also did well, some back line damage and also fooled my opponent who thought it was on fire due to Scorched Earth and wasted a Conflagrate.

I gave this team a final shot before calling it for the evening. Emperor Crab/Death Adder Hatchling/Lil’ Bling. I believe Bling thought it was a regular crab, but he started to feel the Bruns and went to hide. Emperor Crab vs Lava Crab, he should have finished this faster. By not being faster with his Whirlpools he allowed me to Magma Wave Bling to death and do some real damage to the Adder. He tried to make a move with the Adder but the basilisk avoided the blind and the Carp took the Adder out. The final stretch here was annoying. But in the end two well placed Pump hits took the Emperor Crab out.

It’s a good aquatic pet, if you run it as such, can handle death adders and val’kyrs and other undead well enough. And though it might be interesting to have the magic attack options I just could not make them work well. Perhaps it’s the meta, or probably just me.

So Nefigah, your first assignment is Death Talon Whelpguard.

[Celya]

Ah, a challenge - use the [pet]Water Waveling[/pet] without the [pet]Kun-Lai Runt [/pet]at its side! I can almost hear the battlehorns blazing in the background...

Let's have a look at him: elemental pet, newly hotfixed to benefit from positive weather effects, and double bonus against mechanicals (increased offense and defense). Two breeds: H/S and B/B. I'm not sure if it would make such a big difference here. I myself prefer the slightly higher speed from the H/S that I have, but that is still 289 which is slower than a lot of other pets out there.

My first team was an attempt at a Cold Weather team. Since I sidelined my Runt for this one, it meant that once again I was limited to my stable of level 25 pets (man, I really have to go level some more!). I decided to pair him with a [pet]Tranquil Mechanical Yeti[/pet], using [ability]Metal Fist[/ability], [ability]Call Blizzard[/ability] and [ability]Ion Cannon[/ability], and [pet]Mr. Bigglesworth[/pet] with [ability]Pounce[/ability], [ability]Frost Nova[/ability] and [ability]Howling Blast[/ability]. In this setup my Waveling used [ability]Ice Lance[/ability], [ability]Frost Shock[/ability] and [ability]Geyser[/ability].

First opponent: DAH/Direhorn Runt/Amber Moth. I lost, but it was a very close battle. [ability]Geyser[/ability] came in useful, but otherwise the Waveling didn't shine here.

Second opponent: Brilliant Kaliri/Crow/Gilnean Raven. If I remember correctly, the pets were named "Need Xp, Let Me, Win Ty. I won, but again it was a very close battle. The triple Darkness team missed a LOT under his own debuff, whereas I had hardly any misses. RNG, right?

The Cold Weather team didn't really have the synergy I was hoping for, so I went for Ironic Contrast instead: Waveling with same abilities as above teamed with [pet]Fel Flame[/pet] using [ability]Flame Breath[/ability], [ability]Scorched Earth[/ability] and [ability]Conflagrate[/ability]. Since my double-elementals would get eaten alive by most aquatics, I added a flyer - [pet]Chi-Chi, Hatchling of Chi-Ji[/pet], using [ability]Alpha Strike[/ability], [ability]Tranquillity[/ability] and [ability]Ethereal[/ability].

First opponent: Crawling Claw/Jungle Grub/Idol. I won, but the Fel Flame was the star in this battle.

Second opponent: Amber Moth/Yellow Moth/Fungal Moth. I think sleep procced from almost every use... RNG getting back at me for the previous win. I lost, oh-so-very far.

I then tried the same concept, but switched out my team mates: [pet]Pandaren Fire Spirit[/pet] instead of Fel Flame, and [pet]Crow[/pet] instead of Chi-Chi. Faced a Jademist Dancer/Hopling/Fungal Abomination, and lost.

My last idea was to try the Waveling as an elemental killer, using its aquatic abilities combined with a pet that can use [ability]Cleansing Rain[/ability]. Out came my [pet]Leopard Tree Frog[/pet], using [ability]Tongue Lash[/ability] and [ability]Swarm of Flies[/ability] to cover any undead opponents. After some browsing through my pets, I added the [pet]Pterrordax Hatchling[/pet] - [ability]Slicing Wind[/ability] to cover aquatics, [ability]Ancient Blessing[/ability] for the team buff and self-heal, and [ability]Lift-Off[/ability] to have some damage mitigation.

First opponent: Dancing Water Skimmer/Scourged Whelpling/Celestial Dragon. For some reason my opponent kept his Skimmer in against my Pterrordax with its high damage Slicing Wind, so I really thought I might win this one. Turns out, spamming weather effects on your Celestial Dragon can be more effective than I thought - I lost with the last opposing pet having only 26 healthpoints left! I really missed [ability]Geyser[/ability] in this fight, so I dropped [ability]Tidal Wave[/ability] again and went back to it.

Second opponent: DAH/Spring Rabbit/Fossilized Hatchling. I thought I was doomed for sure, but I won and for a change I think I may have played it well instead of just being lucky. My Pterrordax faced off against the Fossillized Hatchling, used the team buff, sliced a bit, then used the team buff again when my opponent switched to his rabbit. I then switched to the Waveling and timed the [ability]Geyser[/ability] so it would go off when the Rabbit's dodges were all on cooldown. A lucky crit killed the rabbit, forcing my opponent to switch in a pet to take the [ability]Geyser[/ability] damage and stun. He chose the low-health pet, which makes sense, but the stun caused the undead immortal round to be wasted. My frog was able to swarm the DAH with flies before it died, and [ability]Lift-Off[/ability] saved my Pterrordax from [ability]Blinding Poison[/ability]. Opponent forfeited when it became clear I was going to win anyway.

This last team worked best of all the ones I tried - [ability]Water Jet[/ability] hits for around 380 under [ability]Cleansing Rain[/ability], which is not bad for a 95% hit chance. I think the problem with using the Waveling is not that it's a bad pet for pvp, but that for everything you might want to use him for, you have a better pet available. Want an anti-elemental elemental? [pet]Jademist Dancer[/pet] is faster and brings its own [ability]Acid Rain[/ability]. Want the [ability]Geyser[/ability]? [pet]Pandaren Water Spirit[/pet] has [ability]Geyser[/ability] AND [ability]Whirlpool[/ability]. Want some AoE? [ability]Tidal Wave[/ability] even under [ability]Cleansing Rain[/ability] is not high damage, and the remove objects ability is situationally useful at best.

Nefigah, welcome to the thread!

Vek, I really want to see a marmot let out of its cage with the sad little spinning wheel and join in on some real action - you have a [pet]Brown Marmot[/pet], a [pet]Borean Marmot[/pet] and a [pet]Yellow-Bellied Marmot[/pet] at max level, so let's see what you can do with one (or all) of them!

[Nefigah]

Alright, cool, [pet]Death Talon Whelpguard[/pet]. This was for some reason one of the first pets I got to level 25; I like how he looks!

PVP-wise, he's not a superstar, but I imagine you could do worse. The recent buff to Spiked Skin makes it a viable slot 2 choice. He also has some good versatility in damage schools. However, his flaw is that he's slow, and a couple of his moves are really only good when they go first. Oh, and no healing or evasion.

To start, I just subbed him into the team I was having good luck with on my first night of PVP. So that made Blighthawk, Spirebound Crab, and the Whelpguard. Thinking I wouldn't be fast enough, I originally went with Shadowflame and Darkflame. I wanted some form of protection, so picked Skin over WW.

First opponent: Droplet of Ysaarj + 2 Scourged Whelplings. He changed the weather to Rain, and then did nothing but AOE spam. Rain-buffed Surge is nice, and crabs are beefy, so I just stuck with the crab while I waited to see if he'd change up his game plan. Unfortunately during the wait, the Whelpguard died in the back row. But he never ended up doing anything different, so my crab plodded his way to victory anyway.

Round 2: Pterrodax Hatchling, Kun Lai Runt, some sort of otter. I felt bad I didn't even get to play the Whelpguard last time, so I started with him. Opponent fielded his otter first, and DTW did well--he has hard hitting moves and dragonkin buff access, thus destroyed the otter. Runt was next so I switched to Blighthawk. I saw the freeze combo coming, but didn't really have anyone else I wanted to soak it with anyway. Last was the pterodactyl; my crab barely won.

Round 3: Nexus Whelp, Clockwork Gnome, Tiny Harvester. I got destroyed. His whelp schooled me pretty hard with a never-missing Mana Surge, and me not having a humanoid attack hurt. No way to change the weather, either. Gnome was equipped with Blitz and mopped up. After this defeat, I decided to switch to Blitz despite my speed; Shadowflame is low accuracy and no one plays Magic pets anyway.

Round 4: Alpine Foxling, Water Skimmer, Clockwork Bot. He tried an elaborate setup with lots of switches. The Whelpguard found this pleasing, as it allowed him to do a ton of damage. Still, Minefield and Pump hurt. In the end, it came down to an aquatic-off, with my crab barely winning.

Round 5: Rabbit from Kun Lai, Valk, annoyingly fast DAH. Started with crab who did admirably against the DAH. Whelpguard did surprisingly well against the Valk, as he was faster and so Blitz hit 3 times. I switched out Whelpguard once he was doomed and haunted, and he ended up surviving in the backrow with no visible health bar. Blighthawk did cleanup, and it died but killed everything else. Thus I won due to that Whelpguard clinging for dear life back there

Well, I was 4 and 1 at this point, so I decided to switch things up a bit. I wanted to give Whirlwind a shot, and so went with a loose AOE theme by exchanging the Blighthawk for a Fossilized Hatchling.

6: Chicken, Scourged Whelpling, Tideskipper. Weird team, and I don't even know what moves the Tideskipper has. But the Whelpguard ate him anyway. However, I underestimated the unassuming-looking chicken. Specifically, I didn't realize that a chicken's egg attack was not, in fact, flying damage, so my fossil took more damage than it should have. The fight ended in a tie thanks to the invuln round of his Whelpling.

7: Valk, DAH, Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling. I got smashed. Like, it wasn't close. Why is that damn snake so fast...

8: Same matchup, though I'm not positive it was the exact same opponent, since I did better this time. I managed to kill the DAH and 1 life of the dragonling, and the valk was almost dead too. Unfortunately, "almost" doesn't win battles!

9: Decided to try one last game. This time faced an odd team of Warpstalker, Arctic Hare, and Crimson cloud serpent. I opened with the Whelpguard and got a good WW in, and soaked his rabbit's armor debuff. Then switched to the crab, who absolutely laughed at that rabbit. His dragon hit pretty hard and had a flying attack. I was overanxious to try out the Whelpguard against a real dragonkin, so I swapped him in, but this caused him to eat a breath followed by a dragonkin buffed breath. He wasn't faster than the dragon anyway, so I don't know why I bothered. But it's all good, the fossil was strong vs. the breath attack, and killed the dragon and even most of the warpstalker. Crab came in to mop up, and he forfeited.


That was really fun! As you can see, I'm not experienced enough yet to go toe-to-toe with the popular team, but I was at least pleased at the Whelpguard's performance vs. valks. Ironically he performed better against the non-dragons, it seems.

Ceyla, it seems like people have adders on the brain these days. But Death is overrated. Why not take your [pet]Adder[/pet] for a spin? (You can even change its name to Death Adder Hatchling to see if anyone is fooled )

[Vek]

After seeing the Sunfur Panda report I had decided to try it out myself. I paired it up with Voodoo Figurine and a Mechanical Chicken. This team went 16 wins, 3 losses and 1 draw. Each pet found a way to shine during these 20 fights, only one loss was a total wipe, the draw was against triple crow. Anyway I found the Sunfur Panda very tanky and useful with Crouch/Hibernate, stuff like rabbits couldn't even make a dent. But the team had two glaring weaknesses, first no avoidance since it relied on the panda taking hits and surviving. Secondly it had some trouble dealing with elementals.

Why am I talking about Sunfur Panda when I should try out a Marmot? Well I decided to use the same team but switched the Panda for a Marmot. Suddenly I had a pet that had avoidance(burrow), elemental attacks are weak(being critter), does not get stunned/cc'ed and still have Crouch to mitigate damage. Seemed like a perfect fit.

Borean and Brown Marmots have the same abilities, the Yellow-Bellied Marmot also have the same but in different order. One thing I find pleasure in is using the P/B Yellow-Bellied Marmot(273 speed) against faster opponents. Then do Leap to be faster and then Burrow, your opponent will then more often than not miss two attacks. Well thats just a novelty. I had also used Marmots a bit in 5.3, but they felt very weak and I have not really tried them since. The reality is that they were only weak since every opponent had a Direhorn and those just ate Marmots or any other critter.

Anyway, the Borean Marmot is slightly speedier than the Brown Marmot. Especially the S/S version with 341 speed, but it only comes with 244 power. So I decided to find and level up a S/S Brown Marmot, 325 speed would have to do, medium 260 power. Abilities Chomp(though 85% hit can screw you, it hurts a lot, especially undead who get hit for over 500), Crouch and Burrow. The other abilities are really a strange, you have two speed increase skills and Comeback. I for one has never gotten any good use out of Comeback, but I guess the thinking is that undead has such huge health pools that you will get the bonus damage, but this ability nerfs itself if you do better and that does not really go well with Crouch.

All in all this team did really well, and the pets really did complement each other. Voodoo Figurine can shine against humanoids, mechanicals and has the ever so useful Sear Magic. Mechanical Chicken, batter for many hits, overtone to be faster to boost batter and get one up on fliers and death adders, rounded off with huge hits from Wind-Up. And the Marmot, strong against undead, can avoid and takes less damage from elementals. I got on a really nice winning streak, and the crowning moment was when I came up against triple Fossilised Hatchling. Marmot with Crouch and Burrow(to avoid undead retaliation turn) just ate them up, left the last one with half health so it was easy pickings for my two remaining pets.

I can actually really recommend the Marmot feels like a solid all-around pet, with Crouch it also did well against the pretty weak death adders. And with 5.4 abundance of undead it really shines, just watch for certain beasts though but that was why I had the chicken.

Nefigah show us the power of the Ashstone Core.

Edit: This team just beat triple DAH, so that felt nice.

[Celya]

Ceyla, it seems like people have adders on the brain these days. But Death is overrated. Why not take your [pet]Adder[/pet] for a spin? (You can even change its name to Death Adder Hatchling to see if anyone is fooled )

I laughed so much when I read this, thank you.

The [pet]Adder[/pet] was actually my first lvl 25 pet. I happened to catch a rare while trying to level my Mini Mindslayer in Hellfire Peninsula, and fell in love when I saw it fanging down critters viciously - at this stage I had no clue about class strengths and weaknesses, so I just thought this was a really strong pet. To this day I use it daily in my 2+carry pet strategy against Aki.

But I digress. The Adder is a beast with 3 breeds: P/S, P/B, B/B. It's worth mentioning that there are 24 different types of snakes in the game, all with slightly different stats, but 22 types all have the same moveset. The two exceptions are the [pet]Elder Python[/pet], from Thunder Isle, and [pet]Death Adder Hatchling[/pet], from Timeless Isle. If you want to focus on power, the Tree Python is the only one that comes in a P/P breed, with 325 power at lvl 25. If you want health, the H/H King Snake is your reptile with 1644 HP. And if you want 341 speed, you can pick from any of the following snakes that all come in S/S breeds: Coral Adder, Grove Viper, Rat Snake, Rock Viper, Sidewinder, Snake and Temple Snake.

My Adder is a P/S, with 1319 HP, 289 power, 305 speed. I don't see much room for experimentation with his abilities. In the first slot is a choice between [ability]Poison Fang[/ability] and [ability]Bite[/ability], which really comes down to whether or not you want a DoT. I like my snakes to be poisonous in battle. In the second slot you can [ability]Hiss[/ability], to slow down faster targets, or use [ability]Counterstrike[/ability]. At 305 speed not a lot of opponents are going to be slower than my adder, so I used Hiss by default. In the last slot [ability]Burrow[/ability] is a nice avoidance move (and if it doesn't miss, nice damage too), whereas [ability]Vicious Fang[/ability] needs a ramp-up which you are not likely to get when you have only 1319 HP.

For my first team, I thought I should add some way of increasing the damage from my poison, so I teamed him with a [pet]Nexus Whelpling[/pet] that has [ability]Wild Magic[/ability]. I didn't really have any good ideas for a third pet, so I just added some coverage for my beast with a [pet]Electrified Razortooth[/pet] running with the anti-mech moveset. I did toy briefly with the idea of a Lightning team, but luckily came to my senses (extra mech damage against my already low-health beast - probably not smart!).

First opponent: Tranquil Mechanical Yeti/Frigid Frostling/Corefire Imp. My Adder was faster than all 3 those pets, so I started with him only to end up facing the Yeti. I burrowed to avoid the damage from Call Lightning, but then got two shotted when I thought it might be smart to dot up the Yeti under the lightning weather effect. It wasn't, and I lost.

Second opponent: Emperor Crab/Deweaponised Mechanical Companion/Mountain Panda. My Adder took out the Panda. I won, partly because Demolish missed 4/5 times for my opponent, and partly because it ended in a Crab vs Whelpling situation, and his Surge-spamming kept giving my Tail Sweep a second hit.

This team didn't really work though, and I had no really good ideas for a second team, so I went ABC-themed: [pet]Adder[/pet], [pet]Baby Ape[/pet], [pet]Clefthoof Runt[/pet]. Yep, all beasts. Don't know what I was thinking.

First opponent: Dark Talon Whelpguard/Amethyst Spiderling/ Kun-Lai Runt. I won. His AoE was weak against beasts, and I kept switching so he never got a stun off with his Runt.

Second opponent: Father Winter's Helper/Swamp Croaker/Terrible Turnip. This turned into a really fun fight, where I lost but his last pet (the Croaker) had only 29 HP left.

I then tried a "Things Found Under Rocks" theme: Adder/Resilient Roach/Spirit Crab. Okay, the last one was a stretch, but let's just pretend crabs live under rocks. I just wanted an undead pet for no real reason.

First opponent: Minfernal/Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling/ Scourged Whelpling. I took out the dragons but could not get the H/H Minfernal down fast enough - loss for me.

Second opponent: DAH/DAH/Spawn of G'nathus. Lost, with the only DAH left having less than 10% of its own health.

Third opponent: Same as above. Lost again.

I was about to log off and type something along the lines of "Why can't I come up with a good team for this pet?" when I decided to try a triple snake team. Yes, all beasts again. I used the [pet]Elder Python[/pet], with [ability]Poison Fang[/ability], [ability]Huge Fang[/ability] and [ability]Burrow[/ability], and (after some deliberation) my own DAH with [ability]Poison Fang[/ability], [ability]Crouch[/ability] and [ability]Blinding Poison[/ability].

First opponent: Emerald Whelpling/Xu-fu/Tolai Hare. Close win, with both Burrow and Huge Fang playing a strong part in me being able to take down the Whelpling through his Moonlight-buffed Emerald Dreams, and the rabbit through all its dodges. Fun fact: If you are slower than the rabbit, and you burrow on the same turn he does, he is guaranteed to miss on the attacking round and you have a 80% chance to hit him with strong-against-critter damage. Yes, that happened, and it was awesome. It ended with a face-off between DAH and Xu-fu. I kept expecting my opponent to hit me with Moonlight-buffed Spirit Claws when Blinding Poison was up, but he didn't and in the end that won me the game.

Second opponent: Murkalot/Tiny Snowman/Shimmering Wyrmling. I won this fight using only my Adder and the Elder Python - the DAH was watching from the sidelines eating popcorn (or whatever the snake-equivalent for that is).

Ultimately, I don't think the Adder is a bad pet, but it is severely limited for pvp. If you are able to predict what your opponent is going to do, then you can use the poison dot and the dodge extremely effectively. Unfortunately, it's not always that easy to predict what your opponent is going to do...

Vek, I thought that giving you a choice between the different marmots would prevent you being stuck with a worst-breed one, but I really didn't expect you to go level a fourth one! Since critters seem to be shining in this thread, how about you show us what you can do with [pet]Mr. Wiggles[/pet]?

[Nefigah]

Thanks for the information about snakes! I'm sorry yours got a bum rap, but maybe Someone Upstairs wanted you to use Vicious Fang (it looks so cool!)

I did some battling with the [pet]Ashstone Core[/pet] tonight. I meant to do more (specifically to try out a wacky team based on [ability]Instability[/ability]), but it's getting late and I wanted to post before I forget. (Also, my original idea for Instability was to combine with [pet]Golden Pig[/pet], but since Vek is going to be using his twin brother, I'll do that another time.)

I started with my usual boring team (to say, not to play): Blighthawk, Spirebound Crab. Added the Core with Burn, Stoneskin, and Prison stun.

First up was a Darkmoon Zep, Mechanical Panda Dragonling, and a Clockwork Gnome. Opened with my Ashstone Core, eager to burninate some machines. He opened with Gnome. I stunned him, then applied my armor. He switched to the dragonling, but before even attacking, he FLED IN TERROR from the awesome might of my Core

Next was a Rabbit, Nordrassil Wisp, and one of those ugly Tideskipper giants. My team was pretty well-equipped to deal with these pets, so I won handily. The wisp was the most annoying, so I used the Core to power through the blinds and blocks. He was acceptably tanky, and hit through the half-blind sometimes. Crabs are rock to rabbits' scissors, and Blighthawk even has a flying attack. Woo!

Then there was Valk, Idol, Xuen. I won, but it was fairly close (though the last pets were Blighthawk vs. Idol, which really isn't that close). Crab soaked a valk, then I brought in the Core to duke with his Idol. He didn't like that he was missing during sandstorm and my Core wasn't, so he switched to the tiger. I laid some stuns and burns on the kitty, but I got nervous when he prowled--switched to the crab, and thankfully was able to shield due to his stealth slow. Xu Fu then scored a massive crit prowl moonclaw that hit for like 1200 notwithstanding my shield. So I lost my main valksoaker, but the Core did fine as a substitute. It's really, really stupid that I can kill a valk, it rezzes and haunts, and then apparently still gets an invuln round. Sure, leave the DoT, but don't let them get a free CoD also. I hereby vow to never use that dumb pet.

Celya, I didn't even realize [pet]Spawn of G'nathus[/pet] existed. Care to G'ive it a G'o?

[Vek]

One little piggie. Mr. Wiggles has very slightly above average stats across the board, so no real weaknesses. In first slot it has two 90% hit attacks to chose from, they both do same damage, but one is critter damage(strong vs undead, weak vs humanoids) and one is Undead(strong vs humanoids, weak vs aquatics). I started out with Hoof for greater damage against undead. In second slot we have crouch or a 25% heal, no contest Crouch. I have used Uncanny Luck before(back in the reign of direhorns) but wanted to try without for starters, so Headbutt with a chance to stun it is.

Mr.Wiggles(Hoof, Crouch, Headbutt), Voodoo Figurine, Mechanical Chicken. First fight Figurine used Immolation on a Chrominius, got a Howl back. I switched to Mr.Wiggles and got a Surge of Power for my trouble. So while not a true fight as such since Chrominius didn’t “do” anything for two turns, but Hoof, Hoof and Headbutt, while Immolation was ticking, and Chrominius was dead. The little Pig went on to also leave a Idol with 700 health, due to crouch. I won this fight as the Idol and Son of Animus that was left was both weak to the Figurine.

I did one more match with this team, and Mr. Wiggles really shined again. Two Hoof attacks on a Val’kyr, really hurts, then Crouch and still had life left when the Val’kyr ressed. Well I won this game too and called it a night.

Today I really felt the need to mix things up, had been running Voodoo Figurine and the Mechanical Chicken quite a lot. I picked up some new partners, Pierre(Chop for bleed, Heat up for strong vs mech and High Fiber) and a Darkshore Cub(Bite, Bash and extremely strong Maul). I had also done some thinking about Hoof vs Diseased Bite. Though I love how hard Hoof hits undead it is also weak, and that is a problem versus Idols and Runts for example. Diseased Bite is only weak against Aquatics and those still seem to be quite rare, except the occasional Crawdad/Crab. So I went with Diseased Bite instead.

Another day and lo and behold, same team as in my first fight. Chrominius, Anubisath Idol and Son of Animus. I started with Pierre and did Heat up, while his Son used the heal. After a couple of turns of Chopping my opponent realised his Son was going down, Heat up was excellent damage(sadly no damage reduction). Idol came in and since I had one turn left on Heat up I chopped and got a sandstorm in return. Time to try out Mr.Wiggles “new” attack. I switched in and got crushed. After crouch went up the Idol hit for less than 200, while Diseased Bite took huge chunks out of the Idol. The Idol went down fast and even though I switched into a hit Mr.Wiggles still had 700 health left, Nice! Next turn hit Headbutted Chrominius and it got stunned. Solid performance from the pig in this win.

Next up was. Lil’Bling, Scourged Whelpling, Kovok. I got this in the bag as well, Mr.Wiggles was rock solid. But funniest thing here was that this Lil’Bling used Inflation(stampede type move), I just had to try Heat up to see the effect. It was quite excellent, I got hit 3 times and my opponent received 600 damage in return(3 x 200 damage since it was strong). Perhaps Toxic Skin, on Gulp Froglet, will be as useful but it’s not that often that I run into opponents using stampede type moves.

Strike three. An old friend Frosty, Infected Squirrel, Jademist Dancer. I have faced this guy a couple of times before. He fancies Ice Tomb then switch to Squirrel for Stampede so you get double damage from Ice Tomb and get stunned, can really oneshot you. I made a mistake in applying Heat up to early, but no matter. I Heat up, Chop, and then High Fiber to remove the Ice Tomb(which then removes heat up, should have chop’ed instead). Anyway I get a bleed on the Squirrel as well and then switch to bear for a Maul. Frosty gets back in, still bleeding, but my Maul misses dammit. I bash and then bite twice while frosty is stunned, and he casts another Ice Tomb. I switch to Pierre again, while he of course tries the squirrel again. High Fiber removes Ice Tomb, I get stampeded. Now I just have to try Heat up again, works really nice(3x160 for two turns) while I Chop away. I switch to Mr. Wiggles to avoid the stampede debuff healing the squirrel too much. Mr.Wiggles kills the squirrel and kills frosty as well, but pays with it’s life. I get a bleed on the Dancer, and the bear survives one Rain Dance/Cleansing Rain boosted hit, I bash in return so it will waste it’s last turn of Rain Dance. And while it is stunned and bleeding it gets hit by 325 power Maul boosted by Beast racial, 650+500(got a crit on bonus damage).

Time to try Uncanny Luck. Partners Imperial Eagle Chick and Blighthawk. Hmm Uncanny Luck didn’t boost Cyclone(tested twice didn’t work). Scrap that idea then. Rain Dance still does though, I guess 4 turns buffed would make Cyclone a bit too good. Still Diseased Bite boosted with 50% hit and 25% crit for four turns really hurt(not jademist hurt, but close enough), and will easily hit Idols during Sandstorm. One nice thing about Uncanny Luck is you got more leeway, to switch about. since it lasts 4 turns. All in all I just feel it’s a solid pet, critter that took down an Idol with ease can you not love that?

Edit: I mean it, this guy truly eats Anubisath Idols, try it!
Edit 2(2014 9 Mars): Mr. Wiggles has become one of my go-to pets. The only problem is to chose between power vs undead or power vs humanoids. Sometimes you are just screwed, as I ran into a Crawdad having weak attack vs Aquatics, or always getting humanoids when you switch to be able to take undead down faster, still think it is better with strong vs humanoid. Just now I faced a Kun-Lai Runt. Cast Crouch, his Frost Shock hit for 50. Then Deep Freeze hits for 150 and it won't stun due to critter racial, in return he starts taking above 500 hits from the bite. Same with an Idol I faced, it tried Rupture two times, with crouch up it hit for 150 and can't stun. Love this. Really watch for hard hitting beasts though, Xu-Fu mangles this little pig.

Nefigah again, now you get to team up with the Fire Beetle.

[Duroxas]

Allright, time to finally jump into this thread.

Vek, do you have the fortitude to handle [pet]Zao, Calfling of Niuzao[/pet]?

[Tuatha]

Tuatha speed is king show me the speed of the Cheeta Cub, and pray you face some critters.

Blech. I used the Cheetah Cub last week and, as far as I recall, was reasonably successful with it (at or near 50% win percentage). The problem is I waited so long to write this up I completely forgot how the fights went. So I pulled it out again this week, only to have what may have been my worst 30-ish games since I started pvp pet battling.

The Cheetah Cub is fast, and really shines against most critters since it is faster than all of them and makes good use of its strong, speed dependent beast attack, pounce. The downside is that it has 1075 health. The further downside is that you can't even consider it a glass cannon with its 260 power.

But, off I went to construct a speed freaks team (I had a previous speed freaks team I still sometimes pull out consisting of a rabbit, a molten hatchling, and a silver dragonhawk hatchling; with so much speed, it's just a fun team, and reasonably successful). I knew I'd need to be able to counter mechanicals and flyers for the Cub to have a chance at being the center of the team, so I started by looking for an elemental and either a dragon or a magic damage pet. I didn't want anything with scorched earth, as my poor Cub could only withstand so much damage, so conflag teammates were out. In fact, I kind of wanted something that could bolster the Cub, and the only way I could do that was with healing. So I set him up with a Singing Sunflower and Yu'la, thinking the sunlight would benefit both the dragon and beast racials, Yu'la's Celestial Blessing would help make the Cub more resilient, and Inspiring Song could help the Cub survive longer.

A couple things about this team. It's a great theory, and I maintain that pair with a glass cannon beast would be solid. But with 305 power, Yu'la was the primary damage dealer, and he couldn't benefit from CB, causing him to be the first pet down in most instances. Also, even buffed by sunlight, inspiring song is less than inspiring. 200 health won't even allow them to switch in before they've taken more damage than what was healed. Couple that with the fondness for backline damage in the form of bonestorms, quakes, dreadful breaths, etc., that little Cub just couldn't survive.

Back to the drawing board.

I still needed to look out for mechanicals and birds, so I combined them with one of my other speed freaks, the Silver Dragonhawk Hatchling. With quills, conflag, and flame thrower, and taking less damage from flyers, this guy added aquatics to the list of covered pets. And I toyed with the idea of a frog for all the valks and some elemental coverage, but I had to go with my favorite aquatic, the Emperor Crab. Although surge would have given me more coverage, snap does so much more damage against non-elementals, I doubled down on my beast attacks.

As with most times I use the Emperor Crab, he really was the star of the team. Valks were nothing more than an heal to erase CoD, Rags couldn't touch me with sons of flame, and the 357 power snap was deadly against anything that wasn't flying, which is where the dragonhawk came in. I was able to get devour off with the Cub twice, buffing his health and letting him get an extra attack or two in, but really that skill was disappointing. I did try a few fights with prowl, and it was fun being able to use it and still be faster than my opponent, but boosting a weak attack gives you a boosted weak attack. And I ran into a snail a bunch of times, showcasing the weakness of the Cub with its 1800 health pool. I would net about 100 damage as it would absorb me for 200, making me lose the beast vs critter battle handily.

The 2 games I won were all about the crab. The Cub never stopped being a liability, with its miniscule health and power. Even the close games centered on the crab or dragonhawk getting very favorable matchups and letting the Cub play for 2-3 rounds while conflag or healing wave were on cd.

If breeding allows us to make the cub 358+ with some more power or health, I might play with him again. But for now, he will collect dust.

Duroxas, welcome to the torture chamber. Let's see what kind of damage you can cause with your Emerald Turtle. One bonus point for each flyer you kill with it!

[Awq]

Tuatha. I am a fan of the Molten Hatchling. I will be kind.
I will give you one of the stronger pets out there. Play with your Spectral Porcupette!

I do not have an profile linked to my account. Feel free to assign any wild pet to me (no TCG or collectibles, any other pet is allowed)

Edit:
I do have a Spirit of Competition

[Nefigah]

[pet]Fire Beetle[/pet]? Challenge accepted. I leveled this for a specific (admittedly non-pvp) purpose (I find it fun to level pets on tough trainers, using 1 or 0 level 25s. The highest level pet is picked very specialized to the encounter. Don't do it, it's not efficient at all; merely fun).

I decided I would NOT use my crab or blighthawk this time. Thus my first setup:
Fire Beetle (burn-heal-scorchedearth), [pet]Ruby Droplet[/pet] (dot-bubble-drain), [pet]Lil' Ragnaros[/pet] (hammer-conflag-sons)

1: Xu Fu, Chi Chi, Nether Faerie Dragon. This fight was a blast! The Beetle was quite useful, being able to change the weather and set up conflag, as well as being strong vs. Chi Chi's fire quills and having a decent heal. Xu Fu hits like a truck so I mostly used the Droplet to whittle it down. A satisfying win.

2: Kun Lai Runt, Elementium Geode, Valk. The valk and geode were no match for Beetle + Droplet, but I severly misplayed against the Runt, and the opponent won with just a couple HP left (damn human racial!)

3: Sunreaver Microsentry, Clockwork Gnome, Clefthoof. This one was super close--in fact our last pets were the same speed, and whoever got first attack would win (fortunately it was me). His team was weak to mine in general, but again I botched things a bit, so it came down to luck.

4: Fossil, some Moth with standard mothy moves, and a Giant Bone Spider. Despite having a critter on my team, it doesn't have critter damage so I'm not super equipped to deal with undead. Also I've never messed around with a bone spider, so I had no idea what moves to expect. Turns out it has deathgrip, which is super annoying. I lost by about 40% of a moth.

Time to change it up. The lure of [ability]Apocalypse[/ability] is too strong...
Beetle (flank-heal-APOC), Droplet as above, [pet]Living Sandling[/pet] (punch-sandstorm-quicksand)

5: 3 rabbits. I made a horrible mistake and tried to block my own apoc with Bubble. Even so, it came down to the wire: beetle vs. his last rabbit. My 2nd apoc missed him, and he finished me :\

6: Some moth, valk, idol. I killed the moth with apoc, and the valk with critterism. Who cares if I lost to half an idol? (btw, demolish can still very much hit during sandstorm!)

At this point I changed up the Droplet's skills to 2-1-2.

7: Gulp Froglet, Fossil, Bandicoon. Highlights of this battle included him switching to his full HP Froglet right before apoc and applying Bubble, thinking it would block it. Don't feel bad, mister--I can sympathize (and laugh maniacally when I saw what was going to happen). His Bandicoon was unable to finish the Droplet, and so he ran away after seeing how much damage 1 beetle flank did to his fossil.

After officially winning via a decisive Apocalypse, I believe I can call it a day. Overall, it was fun to screw around with, despite the sub-50% winrate (and that without seeing any DAHs).

Tuatha, I thought you might want to know that you have over 470 pets at max lvl One of them is an awesome-looking dragon. I know nothing about [pet]Spirit of Competition[/pet], but I'm sure you can kill something with it! (Unless you already used it before I came into the thread, in which case I'll pick something else.) Too slow!

Do you have said Spirit of Competition, Awq?

[Celya]

I'm going to try toning down the wall-of-text crit thing after that monstrously long snake post

It took me seven minutes (after several tries) to solo G'nathus for his offspring, so having put in that effort I felt obliged to level the [pet]Spawn of G'nathus[/pet]. I've never even looked at it for pvp, though. It's aquatic, P/B breed with 1302 health, 305 power and 289 speed. It has two aquatic abilities: [ability]Swallow You Whole[/ability], and [ability]Dive[/ability], as well as four elemental ones: [ability]Jolt[/ability], [ability]Lightning Shield[/ability], [ability]Paralyzing Shock[/ability] and [ability]Thunderbolt[/ability].

I thought Swallow You Whole seemed like the most interesting ability, so I ran with that, Dive and Paralyzing Shock for most of the night. I ran several variations of a [ability]Cleansing Rain[/ability] theme, with mixed success. It did really well as a third in a Clonedancer team, but then so do most pets so I figure that doesn't really count. In two battles the extra damage from Swallow You Whole did win me the fight. The Spawn went one on one with [pet]Toothy[/pet], and won. I like Dive, but tonight it seemed to miss a lot! I saw a lot of undead tonight, and having the aquatic resistance was probably more useful than normally.

I also switched out and ran with all elemental abilities for a couple of fights, but that didn't work well - I guess partly since I didn't really see any mechanical pets tonight, except the (feels like) ever-present [pet]Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling[/pet]. If your run with Jolt and Lightning Shield, sometimes you end up having a round with all your abilities on cooldown, and I found that too frustrating to play with.

Finally, just to round things off, I went with themed team again: all aquatic, with a P/P [pet]Emperor Crab[/pet] and P/P [pet]Spineclaw Crab[/pet] just for fun. Went 2-0 on this team, and then stopped because I was getting the same opponent and I figured he was due to add a moth to his team.

The Spawn didn't feel like a bad pet, like some others in this thread, but neither did it shine. Perhaps, if I play around with it some more, I can find a team where he fits in better.

Nefigah, I love my [pet]Restless Shadeling[/pet], but I have never seen one in an opponent's pvp team. Since the Undead racial is so strong, perhaps you can find a way to make him work?

[Vek]

Cute little Zao, never used it before but come across it a number of times. Mostly it never posed any real trouble, but on one or two occasions I had been crushed by Charge and Headbutt. So what to do with this one. I wanted to give Trample a shot, to make this more effective I would need Sunlight. Hopefully this would also work in favour of Wish. And round off with Niuzao’s Charge.

So were do I find some Sunlight. Some pets I just don’t have, I quite loathe the Sunflower and I had recently used Sunfur Panda, and two beasts would just beg to be smashed by mechanicals. So either Terrible Turnip(Tidal Wave could be useful to remove mines and turrets) but I would have to skip Sons of the Root which I really wanted use. That left one pet I haven’t used before, Venus. Hmm interesting. I switched the third pet around every now and again(things like Mr.Wiggles, Lil’ Bling, Voodoo Figurine, Wildhammer Gryphon Hatchling, Purple Puffer etc), I couldn’t really settle for any one perfect match.

All in all it went pretty ok, about 50% win/loss ratio. Some times Zao was spectacular, especially when you get a 1300 wish and in the turn after get a crit with the Charge for over 1000. But in other fights it didn’t do nearly as well. One trouble with Charge and Wish is that both are multi-turn moves, so you have to make sure to not use them too late. Trample worked really well under Sunlight, it has 100% hit and did more damage than 90% Horn Gore. Also the 10% damage part hurts through shields like Sandstorm/Trihorn Shield. But outside Sunlight Trample feels a bit on the weak side sadly. Wish worked very nicely under Sunlight. But things you have to watch for is if opposing team has healing(or things like Xu-Fu) and one thing I discovered(that I didn’t know at least) was that when Mechanicals resurrect with their racial they come back with a nice chunk of bonus health under Sunlight. Too bad it was the opposing Mechanical that did it. Nearing the end I switched to Horn Gore, but didn’t notice much of an improvement, at least I didn’t have to use Sunlight.

Zao is slightly above average speed which helps a bit, but even 276 speed pets will make you suffer. One avoidance move can really screw your plans up since you telegraph it way in advance, which is why I prefer Pump/Wind-Up. It does take some planning to use, and can actually hit really hard, but for me this pet is below average in PvP, it’s just too easy to counter.

I also used Venus, a pet I have not used before. 276 speed is not really fast enough to make the best of Lash, though there is a range of 260 speed popular mechanicals often in play. I ran with Poison Lash, for the dot, Sunlight and Stun Seed. This pet actually did surprise me. It worked really well in a couple of fights. Dot and then Stun Seed, switch to Zao and charge up. Opponent gets stunned and charged in the turn after. All Venus attacks are strong versus Mechanicals so that was some kind of protection for Zao. I won’t say that Venus is a top pet, but was not as bad as I thought when I got it. Good to try out stuff, it might surprise you.

Sorry about the Cheeta Cub Tautha. Celya you now have the dubious pleasure to fight with your Tiny Sporebat.

[Nefigah]

Come and hear my tale of sorrow. [pet]Restless Shadeling[/pet] seems quite mediocre, as was the random-ass team I put him with.

Shadeling (2-1-1), [pet]Eternal Whelpling[/pet] (2-1-1), [pet]Pterrordax Hatchling[/pet] (1-1-2)

I went with this because it covered a decent amount of pet families, and I figured the annoying nature of the other 2 pets would benefit from the Shadeling's healing curse.

1: Wolpertinger, Worg Pup, Wanderer's Festival Hatchling. I won this, mostly because this guy had the weirdest team ever.

2: Rapana Whelk, Blighthawk, moth. Did well here, too. I think this was the only flyer I saw, so the Shadeling got to blast him into oblivion. The blighthawk was annoyed by sleeping gas, and the snail didn't have the offensive output to pose the pterrordax much threat.

3: tiny harvester (I think), idol, marionette. I lost this, mostly to bad play on my part. The Shadeling did ok against the idol, but still took a pretty significant net health loss. Star of this fight was Infinite Whelpling getting off a massive [ability]Early Advantage[/ability] on the mech, but in the end I lost during the last pet's extra life.

4: 2 basically identical crabs, snow cub thing. None of my pets died Was able to feign death the Prowl, and RS's Plagued Blood combined well with Slicing Winds against the crabs.

5: valk, spirit crab, stitched pup. The pup had a critter attack and a TON of heals. (Just looked up his moves--apparently it was Consume Corpse he was using, even though he used it when he shouldn't have been able to. Probably another broken-ass valk bug.) I killed everything, but the valk finished me off after rezzing. I was definitely hurting for not having critter damage in this fight!

Because of that, I switched out the Whelpling for [pet]Mr. Grubbs[/pet] (chomp-dot-burrow) afterwards.

6: valk, DAH, pandaren water spirit. Yay, the first DAH of the day! Stupid Grubbs missed his potentially epic Chomp on the opening Valk, which turned out to be pretty decisive; I limped through the DAH, basically got through the spirit thanks to FD, but the Valk had just enough oomph left to finish me.

7: Peddlefeet, Giant Sewer Rat, Mojo. This one went well. The giant rat's swarm move looks hilarious. He got hit by Burrow, though, and his days of comedy were ended. I made sure not to fight Mojo with the Shadeling, and sent Grubbs in to soak after the Pterrordax got polymorphed. Now Peddlefeet is the perfect target for the Shadeling: the racial damage bonus combined with the goblin's low health pool meant I could actually deal significant damage in addition to dying slower.

8: Fossil, Murkalot, Alterac Brew Pup. Never seen the last 2 pets before, but they spanked me HARD. Murkalot did a buff thing that made the Fossil hit each of my pets for 500+. The dog also had some disgusting AOE, and I didn't have a mech answer to its shield, so I hit it like a wet noodle.

9: Valk, idol, Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling. I received another spanking; guess I was a bad boy today. Think that's enough PVP for now!

Vek, it's Faire season, and I have my eye on your [pet]Darkmoon Eye[/pet]. However, I remember someone did Arcane Eye earlier... if that was you, then try out your fez-wearing monkey instead

[Celya]

Dubious pleasure indeed! I think I can confidently say that the [pet]Tiny Sporebat[/pet] is the first pet I've been assigned in this thread that I absolutely did not like at all. Not even a little, no how, no way.

To start with, mine is a B/B (it was a gift, and I'm not rude enough to go and complain about its breed!). In the first ability slot, you have a choice between [ability]Slicing Wind[/ability] and [ability]Shadow Slash[/ability], both of which are a bit RNG-dependant. Second slot chooses between [ability]Creeping Fungus[/ability] and [ability]Leech Seed[/ability], and third slot is a choice between [ability]Spore Shrooms[/ability] and [ability]Confusing Sting[/ability].

My first, probably obvious, choice for a team was centered around Moonlight. I took my [pet]Sprite Darter Hatchling[/pet] and [pet]Sporeling Sprout[/pet], and added the Sporebat as a third. At this stage I was still feeling fairly optimistic about it, and even thought the extra speed from the racial might be a useful addition to this team.

I went 2-2. Both games where I won the Darter and the Sprout were the true stars, and the Sporebat felt like a tag-along. And both games where I lost, things were really close and a stronger pet (or possibly ANY other pet) than the Sporebat might have won me the match.

Shrugging off the Creeping Fungus idea, I then tried a Lightning team - vaguely thinking that the DoTs from the Sporebat should at least be helped by lightning. I paired him with my [pet]Wild Golden Hatchling[/pet] and [pet]Jade Oozeling[/pet] at first. Won 1, lost 1. My hero in both fights was the Oozeling. Sporebat barely got in 2 hits before it died.

Switched out the Hatchling for the [pet]Skywisp Moth[/pet], and the Oozeling for a [pet]Fiendish Imp[/pet]. Won a fight against another Lightning team (Wild Golden Hatchling/Clockwork Gnome/Pocket Reaver) where my Imp basically soloed all 3 pets until my opponent forfeited. Went on to lose 3 more games, all really close.

Went back to the Creeping Fungus idea, and tried to combine it with a [ability]Stampede[/ability] pet - in this case, [pet]Infected Squirrel[/pet]. Lost two fights, both pretty meh. By this time I think I was just going through the motions, letting the Sporebat die first so the really useful pets can try to finish things more gloriously.

In some fights I tried [ability]Confusing Sting[/ability], but it never procced against my opponents' pets that I'm aware of. Somehow, this pet manages to feel really slow after the racial drops, and really squishy even before that, and to top it off hits like a *fumbles for adequate expression* wet paper towel!

I toyed with the idea of trying to combine the DoTs from Sporebat with something like [ability]Wild Magic[/ability], [ability]Black Claw[/ability] or [ability]Exposed Wounds[/ability]. I tried him with my [pet]Treasure Goblin[/pet] and [pet]Emperor Crab[/pet] - the intended strategy was to put up Wild Magic, use the Portal, automatically switch in Sporebat since it has higher health, put up Creeping Fungus and Spore Shrooms, and then tank things out with my Crab - rinse and repeat.

It doesn't sound too bad on paper, but I couldn't make it work. Switched out the Goblin for [pet]Cogblade Raptor[/pet] and found out that [ability]Exposed Wounds[/ability] combined with two DoTs from the Sporebat hits slightly harder than a wet paper towel - but it's a lot of bother to set up and too easy for your opponent to just switch out. And if you want to do that, combine Expose Wounds with the double-dots from your Oozeling instead - that works so much better!

TL,DR: Any pet that comes with the adjective "Tiny" in its name is warning you beforehand that it's going to be a pet that looks cute, not one that fights hard!

Nefigah, I think your [pet]Aqua Strider[/pet] wants to come out and play.

[Nefigah]

The Aqua Strider was the first aquatic pet I got to 25. Nowadays I mostly use a more powery breed of strider instead, but for pvp I won't mind the Aqua's speed at all!

Initial setup: [pet]Lil' Ragnaros[/pet] (1-1-2), [pet]Blighthawk[/pet] (1-1-1), [pet]Aqua Strider[/pet] (1-1-2)

1: Xu Fu, Pandaren Water Spirit, Clockwork Gnome - Poor guy didn't have a chance. While he labored to set up delayed damage with his Spirit, my Strider nearly killed him. A quick switch to Blighthawk and Lift Off negated those anyway.

2: Lil Bling, Restless Shadeling, Macabre Marionette - Won by goodish margin again. Thanks to my participation in this thread, I knew I had nothing to fear from Restless Shadeling I love Lil Bling, but he's not so great against Lil Rag. The Marionette seems pretty decent though--definitely picking one up next Day of the Dead.

3: Son of Animus, Willy, Alpine Fox - I'd never faced Willy before, and I don't think I've fought Animus either. So I didn't know what to expect. The Animus seems to have a way better version of Plagued Blood. Surprisingly, the Strider ended up being key against him.

Change Lil Rag for [pet]Golden Pig[/pet] (1-1-1)

4: Soul of Aspects, Murkalot, Lil XT - I lost, but I guess I should have, considering how much more money my opponent's pets are worth.

5: Feline Familiar, Jumping Spider, Infinite Whelp - I'm currently not very well equipped to handle beasts, and it showed. However, by far the most damning thing was that Pump, a 2 round move with a 95% hit chance, missed twice (vs. different pets, no accuracy debuffs active, though Uncanny Luck wasn't active either). It was uncanny. In a bad way.

Change Golden Pig to Jademist Dancer (2-2-1)

6: Scourged Whelpling, Kun Lai Runt, Elfin Rabbit - I actually won this, but at first I didn't think I was going to--his Whelpling did a tremendous amount of damage to me, killing my Dancer and bringing my other pets down somewhat too. Unfortunately for him, his rabbit being slower than the Strider took the fangs out of his Flurry. Switching my pets between healing CDs was pretty key I think. His Runt got hit really hard by the Blighthawk, thank goodness, so he kept having to field the rabbit.

7: Rematch! This time he beat me, just barely, even though overall I think I played better than I did the previous game. Rough to avoid the Runt's 1-2 punch when you don't have pets left to swap to, since the first half of it slows you so you probably can't use evasion in time. Use evasion early, and he just waits.

8: Valk, Jade Owl, Magical Crawdad. Though I gave it the college try (with the Strider doing particularly well, actually), I didn't have the oomph to both out-dps his Wish and keep myself up from his Surges, so his Crawdad was left standing.


Closing thoughts: The Aqua Strider actually did better than I expected, considering its low power, average hp, and lack of evasion. I think the key is that most people who bring fast pets to a battle do so because they rely on that speed. Since the Aqua is one of the fastest pets in existence, it messes with those teams.

Celya, I was talking to your pets, and your [pet]Scorpid[/pet] feels a bit neglected. (If he was lying to me, let me know.)

[Helbrecht]

Okay, I think I want in on this thread. Feel free to call out just about any rare pet I have, I'll level it if need be. Good motivation for that too.

Nefigah, winter's almost over so why don't you try out Mr. Chilly before his ice floe melts?