Pick My Team Experiment

Discuss pet battles, strategy and theorycrafting.
Post Reply
User avatar
Jesjbrown
MVP
Posts:69
Joined:September 27th, 2013
Pet Score:4219
Realm:Garona-us
Contact:
Pick My Team Experiment

Post by Jesjbrown » June 2nd, 2016, 5:56 pm

I'm delving into PVP for the first time, and thought it might be fun to let you all pick some teams for me. If you want to, suggest a 3 pet team and I will do 10 PVP battles with them, and then report back on how it went.

I ask you to adhere to the following, please:

1. Pets I have

2. Pets that are 20 or higher (I have some stones to get a few to 25)

3. Pets that are blue quality

Anyway, I'd love to try out some of your suggestions!

Thanks,

Jes

P.S. If I totally fail with one of your favorite teams, I apologize!

User avatar
Gráinne
Posts:955
Joined:July 7th, 2015
Pet Score:13747
Realm:Magtheridon-eu
Contact:

Re: Pick My Team Experiment

Post by Gráinne » June 3rd, 2016, 6:29 am

Since you're just starting PvP, I'll give you an overpowered, and rather easy, team. It's very discouraging to get hammered for battle after battle when you're just starting.

Magical Crawdad - Surge, Shell Shield, Wish
Bone Serpent - Bone Barrage, Call Darkness, Nocturnal Strike
Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling - Breath, Thunderbolt, Decoy

P.S. I suggest putting the pets in that order in your team, to muddle expectations. People do first think you're going to lead with your first pet. Experienced battlers know better of course, but I think even they are affected or slowed somewhat by first impressions.

What you do depends on your opponent, of course. If he looks like he's starting with Lil' Rag, for example, you would lead with your Crawdad for the strong damage, and shield and heal yourself appropriately.

However, a lot of what you meet will likely be the typical Graves and the Evil Undead (feat. MPD) teams. Against these, you will probably:

1. start with the Serpent
Bone Barrage, Call Darkness, Bone Barrage, Nocturnal Strike
for some big single target damage and to make the skies unsafe for MPDs

2. then swap to the Dragonling with your Serpent at half health. The Dragonling will stall with
Thunderbolt, Decoy, maybe a Breath

3.finally you bring in your Crawdad, and just as Darkness ends do Wish...

4. and then swap back to your Bone Serpent, which receives the Wish heal, puts up the Bone Barrage again, and carries on.

You do have a call to make when swapping out the Serpent in the first place. If it has low health, and the opponent has an AoE team that will kill it on the back line, it may not make sense to swap the Serpent out. If it has taken a crit early, it might even make sense to swap it out before its Nocturnal Strike, if you're sure you can revive it with Wish later.

User avatar
Jesjbrown
MVP
Posts:69
Joined:September 27th, 2013
Pet Score:4219
Realm:Garona-us
Contact:

Re: Pick My Team Experiment

Post by Jesjbrown » June 3rd, 2016, 10:15 am

Gráinne wrote:Since you're just starting PvP, I'll give you an overpowered, and rather easy, team. It's very discouraging to get hammered for battle after battle when you're just starting.

Magical Crawdad - Surge, Shell Shield, Wish
Bone Serpent - Bone Barrage, Call Darkness, Nocturnal Strike
Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling - Breath, Thunderbolt, Decoy
Thank you so much for the suggestion! I went 7 and 3, which is WAY better than anything I'd been doing. I had the most trouble with Fragment of Anger / Graves teams, which seems to be expected. I even had someone flee at the very beginning of one of the rounds (the probably thought I was way more experienced than I am. Haha). I will definitely play with this team some more.

I also am grateful for the suggestion that you order the pets differently than you might pull them out! Tricky.

User avatar
Gráinne
Posts:955
Joined:July 7th, 2015
Pet Score:13747
Realm:Magtheridon-eu
Contact:

Re: Pick My Team Experiment

Post by Gráinne » June 3rd, 2016, 11:28 am

I'm glad it went well for you. :)

Bone Serpent and Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling are two of the most overpowered pets in the game, so I was fairly confident you wouldn't do badly.

With the typical two-AoE Graves, you want to take him out FAST, before he can get his second round of AoEs off. Even so, he will do a lot of damage before he goes down. I find the Consume Corpse Graves more dangerous, but thankfully it's harder to play, so fewer people do. He's another of the most overpowered - I would say the most overpowered, though I know some disagree - pets in the game. Happily, he's getting something of a nerf in Legion.

Even so, I wouldn't be afraid of Graves on his own when playing that team. Graves will soften you up, but it's his posse that will come in for the kill.

More important, though, is knowing the pets your opponent is playing, and guessing how they plan to use them. A match can be decided based on the two players guessing what their opponent will do and selecting which pet to go first, and that comes with experience.

You could also go into the queue with any set of The Evil Undead that you have - Bone Serpent, Weebomination (with Consume Corpse to gain health after another pet dies), Fossilized Hatchling - and simply bludgeon your way through, using the extra rounds from the Undead racial.

I'm looking through your pets to find more interesting teams. Discodoggy's Tier List
http://pvppetbattles.com/2014/12/22/top-high-tier-list/
will give you some ideas for pets to collect and level, and his WoD Teams
http://pvppetbattles.com/wod-teams/
some ideas for teams to aim for.

Some pets you just have yet to collect. Other pets you do have, but their Breeds are not ideal for PvP. For example:
  • I'll note that your [pet]Fiendish Imp[/pet], which you have favourited, is not an S/S breed. If your aim is to level him for PvP, I'd hunt for an S/S instead. Speed is critical for the Imp.
  • Similarly, while I love the combo of [ability]Blinding Poison[/ability] and [ability]Spectral Strike[/ability] on the [pet]Spectral Spinner[/pet], your Spinner is rather slow, so the Poison will not be effective against faster pets.
  • A [pet]Junglebeak[/pet] is a powerful nuke, with [ability]Rain Dance[/ability] providing a quick heal and buff, followed by [ability]Nocturnal Strike[/ability], which has a 100% chance to hit while the buff is still up, and then [ability]Peck[/ability] to get the most from the buff. Yours is a B/B breed. It's still usable, but the P/P breed would deliver both a bigger heal and a bigger nuke.

Post Reply