Pet of the Month - Fel Flame

[Quintessence]

Many thanks to [profile]Liopleurodon[/profile] for writing the battling portion of our newest feature, Pet of the Month. Here are some additional points on the [pet]Fel Flame[/pet] that she wanted to share!

How Do You Use Your Fel Flame?
The Fel Flame is a glass cannon with an emphasis on the cannon. [ability]Conflagrate[/ability], even after a significant nerf, is an extremely potent Elemental nuke. Because of the way it deals damage, with a huge hit up front and a relatively smaller bonus hit, it can take the teeth out of a Mechanical's resurrected turn before they get a chance to act twice. Not that the rest of its offense won't eviscerate any mechanical it comes across.

My preference for moveset is typically to use both [ability]Immolate[/ability] and [ability]Flame Breath[/ability]. If you've been reading along you know that DoT movesets and I go together like peanut butter and chocolate.

However, I find Immolation to be less than stellar. With a lot of buffing you can make something of it, but it generally takes more moves to activate it and send your Fel Flame to the back row than it's worth. Flame Breath also gives you a different family of damage to work with, which is especially helpful in PVP.

The Fel Flame is almost always on my team when I'm facing down a Tamer's Mechanical. When I'm writing strats, it's usually the very first trick I try. If there's a mechanical with a bit more defense, like the Blingtron fight at the Celestial Tournament, I'll swap to something with a bit more longevity. The fight on which I feel he shines brightest is Jeremy Feasel. Since the Flame has both Dragonkin and Elemental moves, he makes short work of both the Magic and Mechanical pets in that fight.

In PVP the Fel Flame has seen better days. Mechanicals aren't as popular as they once were, and since Blind teams are, those can take care of that pesky Conflagrate rather easily. I have found that I can sometimes sneak in a win, because Conflagrate in PVP against a pet with some kind of dodge or long cooldown ability is basically a game of Chicken, except your opponent is on fire while you wait for each other to flinch. Of course, the DoTs are a bit irrelevant against our old enemies, per-hit shields. The 'Burning' requirement of Conflagration gives us an edge against these, though, in a way many other DoT setups don't.

The 3 available breeds for the Fel Flame are H/H, H/S & H/P. Because they are such glass cannons, I tend to go for H/P. Bigger the Power stat the better the cannon, right? Their base speed stat is so slow that H/S usually won't make any difference.

There are two other options with a similar moveset. The [pet]Spirit of Summer[/pet] is tradeable & relatively cheap as it's from the Midsummer Festival, but only available in B/B. The [pet]Searing Scorchling[/pet] comes in only P/B, with the highest Power stat of any option. It's also tradeable, but it originates from Molten Front dailies. My AH estimates put it in the same rough price bracket as the [pet]Son of Animus[/pet] for many servers, so though the Scorchling may be preferable for the battling minigame, it's not preferable for my pocketbook.

So, how do you use your Fel Flame?

-Tamer Liopleurodon

[Vek]

I sometimes run a decently successful PvP team with a H/H Fel Flame.
It can't really stand up to too many top pets on the same team so I mainly use it for a nice change of pace.

H/H Fel Flame(Burn,Scorched Earth,Immolation)
Kovok(Poison Fang,Digest Brains,Black Claw)
Son of Animus(Metal Fist/Batter,Touch of the Animus,Extra Plating)

The idea is to start with the Fel Flame and get the two 9 turn DoTs up, Scorched Earth and Immolation. You can often do a Burn or two before switching. Now you either switch to the Kovok if you want something dead quick, Black Claw will stack up quickly. Or you switch to the Son of Animus and use Touch of the Animus. This will make the Fel Flame heal for about 300 for 3 turns. If the opposing pet is alive of course and don't switch, but you will at a minimum get one round of healing. This can make your Fel Flame come out close to full health to start all over.

Of course this is just the basic plan that can be messed up in any number of ways.
When I started this team I used Flame Breath instead of Burn, to get triple Black Claw/Touch, but often the opposing pet died too fast so I didn't heal enough. Burn also gives the Fel Flame a better duke it out attack.

Nice article as always.

[Kpb321]

One thing that I found was really nice about the Fel Flame is that it is the only Wild pet that is strong against Magic pets that isn't a dragonkin. With both Flame Breath and Scorched Earth you have a decent big attack and a spammable attack with two dots ticking on the opponent. As a elemental pet it also ignores the weather so it doesn't even take damage from Scorched Earth. This ends up being really handy for things like Patience or Chaos.

[Jesjbrown]

Mine was one of the first three pets I leveled to 25 recently with the main purpose of defeating Jeremy Feasel. One of my favorite pets to battle with now. And one of the cooler looking.

Nice article!

[Nagini]

(First: The last sentence of the article on the first page mentions 'Crow' instead of felflame. Copy paste from August? i just had to mention it >_>[edit] got fixed )

I love my little felflame. The double DoT+conflagrate shreds any pet, not only mechanics, and like stated above, he is a staple in my jeremy Feasel team (Nexus Whelpling, Fel Flame, any moth) and he sees use in some of the other PvE pet battles aswell.

The glass cannon status makes him a little less usefull in PvP. While i've seen them used well, I rarely think of a team using a felflame as a big threat. Players are smart enough to anticipate a conflagrate, and to time them after the first one is used, thus preventing damage to their pets when individual DoT's are used. the weatherchanger ability is more usefull, but i feel like there are better elemental pets. The common-ness of good counters for the felflame in PvP battles doesn't help the pet either.

I still think it's a must-level, as it is an asset to any pet-stable. But it most likely will see most of its use in PvE.

[Quintessence]

(First: The last sentence of the article on the first page mentions 'Crow' instead of felflame. Copy paste from August? i just had to mention it >_>)

Thanks for pointing that error out! Fixed now

[Genome]

I believe that the FF is one of the better elementals, actually. I use mine in a few different comps. His attacks span a nice range of direct dmg, and DoTs, giving him pretty good synergy with many other pets. My fave use for him by far is in a DoT/Regen team. If you pair him up with a Scourged Whelpling/Restless Shadeling (or anything with Plagued Blood really), you can set up some pretty monster regen with the FF. Scorched Earth, Immolation, and Flame Breath can all be ran at the same time, and if the other opponent doesn't switch, tossing a PB on him will result in three ticks of regen (unless the other guy is an elemental of course) per round, which will heal up the dmg he took getting setup pretty well. It surprises me how often an opponent will leave something out that is debuffed for regen, letting the FF get massive backline healing, perhaps because they are only used to seeing the CG used in this manner. Of course, smarter opponents will not let this happen much, and shields can neutralize this setup easily.

Overall, I think the FF has great visual design, a very good moveset open to multiple playstyles, a great choice of breed options, and is easy to get to boot. The FF is a great pet, and a worthy addition to any stable.

[Beezledrop]

I personally find myself using him against the Darkmoon trainer battle. His Dot along with Conflagration I'm able to make short work of the Darkmoon Tonk. The nice thing about Conflagration is that if i use as the finishing blow. In most cases the secondary hit bonus will usually finish him off after the revival.

[Zimmy910]

Love the fell flame . He does so much damage. Use him every time I am in doubt what composition to use.