I know Im a poor looser, BUT this is ridiculous...

[Vondeb]

Now for two days I´ve lost every single match in the PVP petbattles!!!! I think there is about 40 now in a row!!!!! I know Im a bad looser BUT c´mon is this possible?!?!!?

What am I doing wrong...how I hate the DAH, Valkyr teams!!!! aaaaaaaarrrrrgggghhhhhhhhh Im goint to quit this IF I dont find a resolution in what Im doing wrong....I know I just want the title but its just so far away, I dont think Im up to that. So the easiest way is to quit.

blaaahhhhh poor looser

[Trece]

I feel you pain I lose more than I win for sure. I got so tired of losing that I became one of those jerks who runs a Valk, Death adder, Lil Rag team just to get my 10 wins in a week

[Kel]

Lucky for you, there's some good information in this thread on beating Death Adders.

I'm not fond of facing them either. But it's what I get for having a DA/Valk team of my own. If you can't beat em.....

[Vondeb]

I just feel like I DONT WANT TO "give in" to the Valkyr and DAH might which is going on atm and I really want to show them that there is sooooooo much more to the petbattles than just the Valkyrs and DAH´s and that ppl should try something else.

Im just so bored of the situation atm....I have to admit, I ALSO have this team setup BUT still, Im not comfortable with it and want to do something else...maybe Im a fool and someday I have to start doing all of the battles with that team.

Im a HUGE fan of Dicodoggy and been following her/his blog and trying to form same teams but in away it seem like Im "cheating" cause I cant create my own teams....I dont know Im just totally lost...dont know how to continue and who to follow, or should I just continue my own way and loose, or what?

thanks for your reply, and hug to you...lets see what I think of next....Vondeb

[Vondeb]

Lol I have to thank Kel for the post...I made a team of Skywisp, Gnome and lil´bling....and I won!!!! wohooooooo!!! thx

[Kpb321]

What team or teams are you using for PvP? What teams are you loosing against?

It could be that you are using a poor team that doesn't send up working well. There isn't a right way to build a team necessarily but there are still teams that work or don't work. Sometimes it's picking a common theme, such as a darkness team with ravens/crows you can cast darkness and use Nocturnal strike. Other times it's synergy of pets, for example a Clockwork gnome with a Zlandalari raptor for black claw because the black claw adds it's damage to each hit from Turret to deal a huge amount of damage. Sometimes it's just three really strong pets that don't necessarily have anything in common.

If you are facing a number of similar teams (Unborn Valk, Death Adder Hatchling, other) then the key might be putting together a team that you know will work well against that team to beat it. For example a P/P Emperor Crab is pretty good against both the Valk and the DAH. The Aquatic racial and Shell Shield greatly reduce the damage the Valk does and Surge and a heal mean that you can get more hits in because you go first and can always heal/refresh shell shield when blinded so you aren't loosing many turns.

[Genome]

What am I doing wrong...how I hate the DAH, Valkyr teams!!!! aaaaaaaarrrrrgggghhhhhhhhh Im goint to quit this IF I dont find a resolution in what Im doing wrong....I know I just want the title but its just so far away, I dont think Im up to that. So the easiest way is to quit.

First off, you may not be doing anything wrong in particular, it's just that Valk/DAH, Valk/Stitched/Blighthawk, and clonedancer teams (and to some extent Murk/Bombling/Whatever teams) are completely overpowered and require almost perfect counters to have a chance, and even then it may require a mistake on the Valk/DAH user's part for you to nab the win, even with a hard-counter. In short, they are a strong tool for the "high end" player, and a crutch for those just seeking to easily win/frustrate their opponent/seek revenge. Scroll down to the AoE oh My thread a little ways down. This problem gets talked about quite a bit actually towards the end. If it helps keep you playing (we need more pet pvpers!), just do not consider a loss to one of the aforementioned comps a loss if you are not using the proper counter. I certainly don't. Would you feel bad losing a duel to a player decked out in arena gear if you tried beating him in quest greens? Even if you play well, you are hopelessly outgunned by said player.

If I am trying a new comp, and not set up to counter a FotM and I queue into one, I just leave right away and don't even give them the satisfaction of beating me. Once you learn pet skillsets, you pretty much know when you will have a chance or not. If seeing me run without even trying gives them satisfaction, well, there is nothing that I can do about that, but if they have any semblance of intelligence, they should know that I am not running from them personally, and only from their "crutch" pets.

Now, maybe we can find out a way to improve your win ratio. What pets are you using? Can you give us an idea of your overall strategy when PvPing (i.e. I open with the Warbot to lay down minefield, then switch in the Fiendish Imp to put up Immolation and force a swap into the minefield, etc). This community is very helpful and is great at giving answers to problems.

Whatever you do, don't join the ranks of those that are frustrating you out of a need to win. Play these pets because you really want to, not just because you think you have to. It will just perpetuate the cycle if you start using the OP pets too for no other reason than to win easily. Time and skill will cause the wins to come, trust me .

[Kel]

Lol I have to thank Kel for the post...I made a team of Skywisp, Gnome and lil´bling....and I won!!!! wohooooooo!!! thx

Naw, all the props go to Genome. But I'm glad you got a win in there!

Like listed above, P/P Emperor Crab works really well against the DA/Valk combo. There's a few ways to go about it. Keep poking around on these forums and you'll find the answers you seek.

[Vondeb]

I so appreciate these replys and thank you so much ...always a little help is good, I really do like this pet pvp´ing and really want to learn more.

May I ask a question, do you play with the same team many times in a row or do you change teams often in between new battles?

I usually change teams, when I notice that my "normal" team doesnt work for the teams I´ve been confronting, or do you play with the same team more than 10x in a row or what?

[Genome]

You know, I meant to include some of my fave counters to FotMs in my long-winded post to help you out. Here are a few:

vs. Valk/DAH/Fiendish Imp - P/P Emp Crab / Fossilized Hatchling / S/S Cogbalde Raptor. The first two are self-explanatory, but the key to making the cogblade work against the DAH is using overtune to try and help overcome the BP advantage. When faster, the Cogblade tears up Adders. The Imp can be tough to deal with though, so be warned.

vs. Valk/DAH/Crow,Raven,DH - P/P Emp Crab / P/P Warbot / Lil' Bling. This one is a bit tricky. Start with the Warbot and eat the Valk's CoD (normal opener with most Valk users, especially the H/H breed of Valk), while putting up minefield. The key here is to use Extra Plating most effectively. Wait a turn and use it so it lines up with CoD hitting and almost last for Haunt's duration, and get him into the backrow. You could soak with the crab, but the goal here is to get two minefields out during the match. Save the crab with Surge for last for cleanup duty, and to duel down the Valk. If the player brings the bird into the minefield, Bling will be faster and can do his thing. If the player brings the DAH up, lol. The minefiled will take off 3/4's off the Adder's life in one hit. If the Valk smells what is cooking and decides to stay out and duel you in hope of waiting out the minefield, just swap the crab in, or duel him down with the Warbot (just make sure to refresh Minefield if you ar going to go down).

vs. Clonedancer - No easy answers here. You need some sort of "Wave" type skill to clear the cyclone asap, but you certainly don't want to use an Elemental to do so as the Jademist will murder one left out. I would think the Harbinger of Flame would be best, or MAYBE Rags or the Terrible Turnip with Magma/Tidal Wave to clear the cyclone and then retreat from the buffed Dancer underground with a Sons skill. Sandstorm also counters the cyclone somewhat, so that is another option. Try to overwrite AR with it if you can though. You don't want to excessively swap here, and getting the Dancer down is priority one.

vs. Valk/Stitched/Blighthawk - Have a darkenss comp and pray, lol. DO NOT let the Stitched Pup Howl your pet with CoD and Haunt running on it. That is a death sentence so switch the pet out if you think he will survive in the backrow and can be used later. Darkness MUST be kept running to counter the Consume Corpse exploit somewhat.

vs. Blossoming Ancient/Singing Sunflower/Ruby Droplet - One crab with Surge, Heal, and Shell Shield should be all you need, the best being the P/P emp crab methinks for the extra dmg to surge. With SS running, none of the elementals will have the firepower to take you down, and you can whittle them away slowly. The key here is to play it safe and not get greedy. Do not skip chances to heal, and don't let SS fall off unless they are down to their last pet and you are going for a sure kill. Of course, they can keep retreating the ancient and flower to the backline to heal up, but when they do this, I just reapply SS every turn and Heal when it comes up and stop attacking. Eventually,, the other team will see that I can out-stall their cheese comp and flee. Smart players would let Sunlight drop and try to kill the crab, but I have never seen the other team forego Sunlight weather, which is really the only thing that makes this comp work anyway. Another option is some sort of frog (I like the P/P Yellow-Bellied Bullfrog here for the added oomph), using Water Jet, Heal, and Frog Kiss. When used enough, FK will be hitting for 500+ per hit, which is more than even Sunlight/Photosynthesis can deal with. He isn't as durable as the crab though, so care must be taken with Solar Beams.

vs. Valk/DAH/Qiraaji - Not a lot you can do here. You can try the same setup as vs. the Valk/DAH/Fiendish, but Sandstorm is a killer here and it is almost impossible to get the tempo back in your favor after the first Haunt gets out because of the speed of the DAH and QG. I would probably go with a Minefield or a Flyer heavy team here and hope for the best.

[Vek]

Some things that worked for me to complement Genomes post.

vs. Valk, Stitched Pup, Blighthawk. One thing I like to use is any Stun or Food Coma. This will make force them to heal early or be stunned and the Valk will ress and they are our of one corpse and can't heal. Use this with critter attacks and you got them. Fly Swarm is excellent and wolves/foxes with Howl or crouch are great.
I also like the Death Talon Whelpguard with Dragon Racial and healing debuff.

Vs. Blossoming/ruby/sunflower. My Kovok soloed this team, have not had a shot at a rematch. Poison Fang + Black Claw workes wonders and Digest Brains heals for more than that team can damage. A jademist dancer should also put a huge dent to that team and deny them sunlight.

Vs valk/DAH/Guardling. I love to use baby Ape against valks. With the stun you will hurt them alot before any return damage. Beast pets work well against the Guardling too since Crush is weak. My latest star is the Elder Python, it can take out a DAH as long as it does not switch and can easily go head to head with the Guardling. The main problem is that its attacks can miss a bit.

[Awq]

May I ask a question, do you play with the same team many times in a row or do you change teams often in between new battles?

I usually play a team for 10-20 matches before I start making changes to it. I sometimes instantly dismiss a team, where I know that my idea did not work.

[Kpb321]

Vs. Blossoming/ruby/sunflower.

Xu Fu is another one that will destroy that type of team. The ruby droplet does give them options with bubble but it's CD is too long and a prowled feed heals for a ridiculous amount with Sunlight up. Xu fu easily soloed a Blossoming ancient, Unborn Valk, Crawdad team I ran a few times with no way to avoid the feed.

[Wilderness]

I so appreciate these replys and thank you so much ...always a little help is good, I really do like this pet pvp´ing and really want to learn more.

May I ask a question, do you play with the same team many times in a row or do you change teams often in between new battles?

I usually change teams, when I notice that my "normal" team doesnt work for the teams I´ve been confronting, or do you play with the same team more than 10x in a row or what?

I tend to stick with a team for at least 10+ matches in a row unless I'm running into the same team a lot and want to try and counter. For me personally I need to keep with it so I can get down the nuances of the team and figure out how it works and what I should or shouldn't do with it. More experienced battlers probably don't need near that much time with a team to see if they like it or if it will work.

Re: learning more - if you have the time, read through: pvppetbattles(dot)com/daily-battle (I can't post links yet)

I hope its ok to link that, its a blog run by an avid pet pvp'er that has been a huge source of information for me. He likes to put together all kinds of different comps using whatever pets he is in the mood for or experimenting with, and then he explains how it went and why it worked or didn't. Its given me a TON of insight into how different pets and abilities work together and strategy to use during battles. Can't say enough good things about it. I don't have the skill or the sheer variety of max level rares that he does, but just reading about it has been really interesting and informative.

Whatever you do, don't join the ranks of those that are frustrating you out of a need to win. Play these pets because you really want to, not just because you think you have to. It will just perpetuate the cycle if you start using the OP pets too for no other reason than to win easily. Time and skill will cause the wins to come, trust me .

You are definitely right about playing things just to win and not have fun. After getting very frustrated during my first forays into pet pvp, I went out and got a Valk. Then a stitched pup, and finally a DAH. I tried using a Valk for a while but I really didn't enjoy the way those teams played. DAH can be fun, but its more of just a really strong pet than a pet that has good synergy with a whole team (at least that was how it felt to me) so I wasn't a big fan of that either. Then I spent a lot of time looking around for good comps and saw Disco's blog, where I found my favorite team of a Fetish/Spirit Crab/Imp and I started to win more before getting a Jademist Dancer last week and rolling with Clonedancer.

I have to admit that I love my Clonedancer team, and I play it far more than anything else. I enjoy the play between the different pets (I use snarly as my 3rd and man that little guy is amazing) as well as how each pet is strong individually and I can use them just to try and counter specific pets that the other team has if I don't think the straight forward clonedancing strat will go well. Because I'm still new new to pet battles (my first lvl 3 pet achievement is on 6/21/14 so its not been much more than a month), playing a strong team has allowed me to learn a lot while still winning as well so I don't get completely frustrated and want to quit. I know its an OP team, but I still lose with it fairly regularly because I make all kinds of mistakes. Obviously you see a lot of the strongest pets overall, but I still often run into pets that I have never seen before and have no idea what they can do. I can look at their abilities and guess, but half the time I don't see how all those abilities play together within the team or I underestimate them because I'm unfamiliar with them.

I'm sorry for the rambling response to what was probably just a small offhand comment from you, but in all th time I've spent searching various places online for pvp pet information, comps, etc, I've seen a lot people who tell those who are new to pet pvp "don't play the OP stuff, don't add to the repetitiveness of the meta" but I don't think that's great advice. I think you should start with a team that's made up of some of the stronger pets, particularly those that can be played fairly straightforward like an Idol or DAH. It gives you a fighting chance while you learn, because with sooooo many pets out there, and abilities, and ways that different things can work together, its really a lot to take in at first and getting crushed over and over and over and over again makes it that much harder to learn those things along with being incredibly frustrating.

I'd rather have more people doing pet battles, even if its running a lot of the same team over and over, than have people quitting it because they get too frustrated and upset by their attempts at it. A larger community of people who are interested in it and actively engaging in pet pvp can only be a good thing in the long run

[Genome]

I'm sorry for the rambling response to what was probably just a small offhand comment from you, but in all th time I've spent searching various places online for pvp pet information, comps, etc, I've seen a lot people who tell those who are new to pet pvp "don't play the OP stuff, don't add to the repetitiveness of the meta" but I don't think that's great advice. I think you should start with a team that's made up of some of the stronger pets, particularly those that can be played fairly straightforward like an Idol or DAH. It gives you a fighting chance while you learn, because with sooooo many pets out there, and abilities, and ways that different things can work together, its really a lot to take in at first and getting crushed over and over and over and over again makes it that much harder to learn those things along with being incredibly frustrating.

I'd rather have more people doing pet battles, even if its running a lot of the same team over and over, than have people quitting it because they get too frustrated and upset by their attempts at it. A larger community of people who are interested in it and actively engaging in pet pvp can only be a good thing in the long run

You make some very valid points. Losing is hard to do, especially at first. Still, if you come up through pet PvP on easy-street by using the OP pets, what have you really accomplished, other than hanging around? I guess a case could be made that you learned something, but you often learn more from defeat than an easy win. I could have 5k wins easily by now (I think so anyway!), but I refuse to use the nonsense pets. If I had my 5k wins using the OP pets, in my mind I wouldn't have earned half that number. Also, someone who becomes accustomed to using the OP pets (i.e. winning most of their matches), is not going to want to stop winning. There was a post a long time ago about this, about how the player base finds itself always reverting back to the OP pets when the losing starts. Having an easy fallback hampers creativity. Also, if the new player using the OP pets so he can learn whilst coming up queues into new players who aren't using them (or do not know about them), and crushes them, isn't said player taking actions that could cause the other new players to quit?

For me, I would rather have people quit if all they are going to do is run FotM constantly, so that is one reason that I don't advocate starting off with the OP pets. I would gladly wait 5 mins each time in the queue if it meant that I wasn't going to constantly run into the same FotM nonsense that we have now, because people are so afraid of "losing". I will take a much smaller pvp community any day if it meant more creativity and cerebral play. There is an old saying; Don't poison the well. We have HUNDREDS of pets to choose from. Do you really mean it when you say you would rather have more people running the same teams (and by that we can assume FotM teams) over and over, as long as it meant a larger community? A larger pvp community using the same percentage of FotM pets is of no help to anyone. Not knocking your opinion here. I realize that I am in the vast minority when it comes to my take on OP pets .

[Kpb321]

One quick thought. On average you should be winning half the team. Think about it for a bit. You are playing someone else so the overall average has to be that a player is winning half the time. Anything above that means someone else is loosing more often and as a new person to pet PvP that's probably you. Unlike the CT or the other pet battle stuff your goal really isn't to win 100% of the time.

[Jazeel]

The major problem causing lack of variety is the way the achieves are structured. the amount of time a player has to sink into pvp just to get the pet, then the title and later on the 5k win achieve is ridiculous. Players are forced to only play the OP teams if they don't want to waste hundreds and hundreds of hours. I will probably give up pvp once i get 250 wins for the pet, as it is I rarely do any, cant be bothered investing the time looking for the perfect breed combo's as i do not have enough game time to waste on what is a poorly balanced part of the game. I am first and foremost a pet collector and cannot see that changing anytime soon.
So far my win % is sitting at about 33% of battles fought, i don't use any of the OP combo's preferring to run pets i like that are useful against a variety of opponents, and like the original post i have had runs without a win that went for hours. PvP might be a lot more fun if team combo wins were capped at a certain number counting towards achievements, or they added achieves were wins using different combo's counted for more than just pure number of wins.

[Skavenged]

I've learned that a Fiendish Imp S/S, when played well, can throw a monkeywrench into a lot of team plans. He's fragile, but heals from the back row, and if you team him up well, he can be a very heavy hitter. Throw in that he's extremely fast and has a forced swap, and you can really build some nice teams around him. Makes for a nice pet to counter some of the "crutch" teams out there

[Digem]

The major problem is,while yes there are a lot of pets, most in the same family or type have almost the same exact moves.
So in reality not as many pets to choose from to begin with.
Secondly, a few pets in families or types will have some unique moves or come in the breed needed to take full advantage of their move base.
These then become the OP pets that are seen over and over in pvp pet battling.
The counter to these pets lead to the next OP pets and so on and so on.
Pets like the dah and valk were a counter to healing pets with there big hitting attacks.
Crows and darkness teams then countered them.
So the rise of the clone dancers to counter them.
Which leads to aquatics to counter them.
Which leads back to flyers and the cycle continues.
Biggest key is knowing what works against what and basing teams off of that.
There is always a counter.

[Drudatz]

I've learned that a Fiendish Imp S/S, when played well, can throw a monkeywrench into a lot of team plans. He's fragile, but heals from the back row, and if you team him up well, he can be a very heavy hitter. Throw in that he's extremely fast and has a forced swap, and you can really build some nice teams around him. Makes for a nice pet to counter some of the "crutch" teams out there

But as soon as you throw up sandstorm and learn to read your opponenets WHEN they will switch you out one of the easiest pet to make you loose because of