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Been playing around with the grave golem in pve vs various Draenor trainers. He really brutalizes humanoid pets. But his premier move [ability]Grave Destruction[/ability] will not destroy shields prior to applying damage. As the item destruction seems to be dependent on inflicting damage first hand.

Grave Destruction deals 668 damage at lvl 25 to nonhumanoids, 1000ish to humanoids, which is an intelligent aoe like thunderstorm, and split between the targets. Opening with Murkalot with Righteous inspiration, lets Grave Destruction deal 445 damage to all nonhumanoids. Which you can followup right after with another 250 damage to all enemies from Bonestorm.

Graves then seems to last for about 2 skull toss more, before he is destroyed. The skulls can usually kill the badly wounded main pet, while the remaining 2 is left at half life each from the aoe attacks. Consume doesnt seem powerful enough for a sustain, and leaves you cd locked.

Grave Destruction's behavior seems pretty consistent with other similar effects as far as I know. Use Magma Wave for instance against an enemy with a Decoy set up - and you'll see the decoy block two applications of damage instead of being destroyed first and then Magma Wave damaging the whole team.

Hrm. I could imagine it would be popular to swap out Graves after using his 2 aoes, and bringing in another aoe pet while his moves cools off. That would certainly play more to his force of having 2 nasty aoe moves.

Graves and Fragment of Anger makes for a very nasty aoe switch duo. Plus, having different family moves keeps them diverse. Been destroying multiple trainers with that setup.

Edit:
Hrm. As long you have 3 enemy targets, you get more damage out of doubling Bonestorm with Righteous Inspiration, as Bonestorm exceeds the damage of 3split Grave Destruction.
Grave Destruction also benefits from a slight delay, as it gives enemies time to put up any objects, which you then can blow from the field. Wasting that potential for strategy upset if you blow it asap as an opener.

Edit2: If not switching Graves, he can usually get 2 bonestorms and one grave destruction off, as well a couple skull tosses. The weebomination making for a great followup with a spammable aoe attack, a corpse to munch and a great going away present in corpse explosion.

I've faced this guy in PvP quite a few times today with several different teams. Made a point of having at least one Humanoid on my team just to do some testing when facing Graves. It really didn't go well. Ore Eater and Anubis (two of the stronger humanoids, and both with significant damage mitigation) were both utterly destroyed while barely doing any real damage to the enemy team. Shell armor, Sandstorm, and stoneskin did little to slow down the damage. Deflection was useful, but it's a one trick pony, since Anubis was dead before the CD even expired. Even tried carrying a rabbit to help out, but still no use. Before the rabbit could take Graves down, any humanoids in the back row were crushed, and the other back row pet was seriously hurting. Even running a decoy pet was little help, since Grave Destruction also clears objects in addition to hitting really hard. It's early still, but from the look of things, this guy is going to be a repeat of the Murkalot problem, where we have one really OP pet greatly unbalancing the meta because of it's move set.

I've been running the typical scummy team of Murkalot/Graves and a MPD to clean up afterward and it's gone pretty predictably.

You can't ask for a better target for Righteous Inspiration with Graves' moveset and favourable breed to boot (1668/314/211, just what you want in an undead pet). Feels like RI into Blackbuse Bombling all over again except with better abilities and race (undead > mechanical).

Skavenged wrote:I've faced this guy in PvP quite a few times today with several different teams. Made a point of having at least one Humanoid on my team just to do some testing when facing Graves. It really didn't go well. Ore Eater and Anubis (two of the stronger humanoids, and both with significant damage mitigation) were both utterly destroyed while barely doing any real damage to the enemy team. Shell armor, Sandstorm, and stoneskin did little to slow down the damage. Deflection was useful, but it's a one trick pony, since Anubis was dead before the CD even expired. Even tried carrying a rabbit to help out, but still no use. Before the rabbit could take Graves down, any humanoids in the back row were crushed, and the other back row pet was seriously hurting. Even running a decoy pet was little help, since Grave Destruction also clears objects in addition to hitting really hard. It's early still, but from the look of things, this guy is going to be a repeat of the Murkalot problem, where we have one really OP pet greatly unbalancing the meta because of it's move set.

Does Grave Destruction clear out Decoys before doing damage? I thought it needed to deal damage to apply its wiping effect. Or just that shieldbubbles isnt counted as items.

Sandstorm and aoe heals seems to be to be key in countering the incomming aoe damage. But yes, Graves is a hefty meta shift like Murkalot. Though not as bad as Murkalot, as everyone with a bit of time can aquire Graves. Murk was just too exclusive and needed to be bought down, or he would just dominate too much in the hands of those few that bought him in the limited time.


Edit: Regarding the aoe power of Graves
Murkalot RI'ng a P/P Blackfuse Bombling using Armageddon = 722 damage to the enemy team, and loosing the bombling

Murkalot Ri'ing Graves, using Bonestorm, followed by Grave Destruction on the next round. = 722 enemy team damage as well. 500 damage from doubled Bonestorm, plus 222 from 3split Grave Destruction to each enemy pet.

But taking one turn longer, and you do not loose Graves. And he may survive long enough to drop a second Bonestorm.

Not to mention that it wipes out the Clonedance competition on top of its monstrous teamwide damage. And CD lock with Consume only becomes a problem if you don't use it with a Murkalot; RI will be up by then as long as you space out Grave Destruction.

I never found Sandstorm helpful in any meaningful way even versus the AoE undead we already had. Being forced to use low damage pets to maintain it while also protecting the enemy with damage reduction and miss chance allowed for more AoE CDs to be used (especially if you wasted turns swapping your Anubisath out of Bone Bite) and having a Humanoid on your team on top of that compensated for any damage mitigated. I'd imagine Sunlight to be the far more potent counter.

In any case, until Graves gets the Murkalot treatment I don't really picture any Humanoids other than Anubisath, Fiendish Imp, and Murkalot being remotely usable in these next couple of weeks. AoE undead were already pretty out of control to the point where you could use pets doing strong damage on every turn and still maybe just barely pull out a win, and now many will be taking out their fresh Graves for a spin.

Sile9 wrote:Not to mention that it wipes out the Clonedance competition on top of its monstrous teamwide damage. And CD lock with Consume only becomes a problem if you don't use it with a Murkalot; RI will be up by then as long as you space out Grave Destruction.

I never found Sandstorm helpful in any meaningful way even versus the AoE undead we already had. Being forced to use low damage pets to maintain it while also protecting the enemy with damage reduction and miss chance allowed for more AoE CDs to be used (especially if you wasted turns swapping your Anubisath out of Bone Bite) and having a Humanoid on your team on top of that compensated for any damage mitigated. I'd imagine Sunlight to be the far more potent counter.

In any case, until Graves gets the Murkalot treatment I don't really picture any Humanoids other than Anubisath, Fiendish Imp, and Murkalot being remotely usable in these next couple of weeks. AoE undead were already pretty out of control to the point where you could use pets doing strong damage on every turn and still maybe just barely pull out a win, and now many will be taking out their fresh Graves for a spin.

Im taking from what you are saying, you would swap Graves to MPD as soon he fires off his 2 aoes, so he can cooldown on the backrow, while MPD stalls with decoy and adds its own aoe with thunderstorm? Or are you eating a single hit with Consume to tick another turn before swapping out?

I'm talking about leaving Graves in until he finally becomes CD locked, which is when RI comes back up.

Round 1- RI to Graves
Round 2- Bonestorm
Round 3- Consume
Round 4- Grave Destruction
Round 5- Consume
Round 6- Bonestorm
Round 7- Consume, finally CD locked on all three abilities
Round 8- Swap to Murkalot
Round 9- RI to MPD

That's how it usually plays out for me - I typically just let Graves stay in till he's dead and then finish up with Murkalot and the MPD, unless of course the opponent has managed to play in a way that forces me to adapt a little.

I'd be hard pressed to think up a team that could go toe to toe, it certainly ruins Clonedance's day due to the field destruction utility it has.

And best of all, Blizzard has once again created an extremely OP pet that isn't available to everyone. I personally have no problem with rewarding people for playing other Blizz games. Nor do I mind paying a few bucks for store pets, but pet rewards for events or games outside of WoW should simply be cosmetic.

I do wonder how in tune they are with our little metagame though, what I mean is, I don't figure they lose too much sleep stressing over the breeds and abilities of to-be-released pets and whether something is going to end up overpowered - probably a bare minimum sanity check that nothing is too crazy and that's it.

Murkalot of course got nerfed but I just figure pet battles in general gets a lot less oversight than PvE and PvP balance.

Skavenged wrote:And best of all, Blizzard has once again created an extremely OP pet that isn't available to everyone. I personally have no problem with rewarding people for playing other Blizz games. Nor do I mind paying a few bucks for store pets, but pet rewards for events or games outside of WoW should simply be cosmetic.

Not true. Anyone can get Graves with a bit of effort, without paying a dime. Hots is free to play and you can easilly power to lvl 20 without buying anything.

Skavenged wrote:And best of all, Blizzard has once again created an extremely OP pet that isn't available to everyone. I personally have no problem with rewarding people for playing other Blizz games. Nor do I mind paying a few bucks for store pets, but pet rewards for events or games outside of WoW should simply be cosmetic.

Murkalot is the unobtainable (for most people) version of that combination.

Heroes of the Storm is an alright MOBA and even if you hate playing against other people, you can level through doing AI matches, I believe.

I would be shocked if we do not get some sort of bonus for playing Overwatch or going to the WoW Movie/buying the DVD/BR when they come out.

Skavenged wrote:And best of all, Blizzard has once again created an extremely OP pet that isn't available to everyone. I personally have no problem with rewarding people for playing other Blizz games. Nor do I mind paying a few bucks for store pets, but pet rewards for events or games outside of WoW should simply be cosmetic.

What do you mean by "not available to everyone"????

You need to play a FREE game to get him... How is that "not available to everyone"?

Skavenged wrote:And best of all, Blizzard has once again created an extremely OP pet that isn't available to everyone. I personally have no problem with rewarding people for playing other Blizz games. Nor do I mind paying a few bucks for store pets, but pet rewards for events or games outside of WoW should simply be cosmetic.

You can even level up by using the training module (slower) but it is such a cakewalk... besides the game is actually a lot of fun... for best results you can go Vs AI but dont choose AI team mates... more XP and chances are you will get some people who know the game... also (and the best part) Chat is turned OFF by default so you dont get toxic comments if you dont do EXACTLY the right moves...

Glancing at the US wow pet forums, I am already seeing whiners demanding that Graves be nerfed. Though I think they forgot that Graves only will hit that much on already undead vulnerable humanoids.

People sure doesnt cope well with meta changes. Make use of all the aquatics for once!

Well, looks like I'll be PvPing while the wins are good. And it's true--you so rarely see aquatic I think it'd be nice to bring some variety.

OK, allow me to clarify my comment. I play WoW. I raid two nights per week. I do my dailies to keep my toons up to date. I do the upkeep on my garrisons. And between all that, I try to keep my pet collection up to date. I also used to pvp, but with all the other game stuff taking up my time, I had to give something up. PvP had to go. Basically, in order to improve myself in WOW, I have to stop actually playing WoW, and spend that time playing another game? Now as I said, I don't mind rewarding other people for finding the time to play other blizz games, but the reward should not be a game changer in THIS game.

Skavenged wrote:OK, allow me to clarify my comment. I play WoW. I raid two nights per week. I do my dailies to keep my toons up to date. I do the upkeep on my garrisons. And between all that, I try to keep my pet collection up to date. I also used to pvp, but with all the other game stuff taking up my time, I had to give something up. PvP had to go. Basically, in order to improve myself in WOW, I have to stop actually playing WoW, and spend that time playing another game? Now as I said, I don't mind rewarding other people for finding the time to play other blizz games, but the reward should not be a game changer in THIS game.

I think you are overreacting. It took me a mere -four- days to get level 20 in hots to aquire the pet. Plus its a good time to do it now, as theres an event exp buff that will stack with stimpack and friends bonus.