WarcraftPets Forum

Hey everyone. At the title states, I'm looking to get into PvP pet battles. I'm really not sure where to start though. I have no idea what works against players, what the meta is, etc. Of course I could just queue up and see what happens, but I'd prefer to be a little more prepared than that. If anyone would be willing to share some tips or suggest a team, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

I definitely recommend checking out Discodoggy's and Hirus' youtube sites:

Disco: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtnv7ByMGzSMziCIX-wK0jg/videos
Hirus: https://www.youtube.com/user/HirusGames/videos

And Disco's webpage: http://pvppetbattles.com/

It'll at least give you some perspectives and also an inside look at some enemy team comps.

Jerebear has already pointed you to the best source of information available. Here are some opinions:

1. For every win, there is a loss. People lose 50% of the time, on average - a bit more when you consider that every draw is a loss for both sides. Expect to lose most of your first 50. If you do better than that, it will be a pleasant surprise.

2. The mechanics of PvP battles - the loading screen, that you have to choose your first pet at the start of the battle, the move timer - will distract and disorient you for your first few battles. Watching some of those videos will help prepare you, a bit. Popping into the queue is no big deal. You don't lose rating or anything else if you lose a battle. I'd suggest doing 10 battles, not trying to win particularly, just to get a sense of how the mechanics go, without waiting to be fully schooled on metas and combos.

3. Metas change. Some days, you meet nothing but wolves; other days, nothing but lambs. It's not like the bad old days of Graves and The Evil Undead (feat. MPD).

4. For a beginner, I'd suggest that it's more important for you to be comfortable with the pets in your own team than to be using the latest and greatest combos. Disco's Legion Tier List http://pvppetbattles.com/legion-tier-list/ will suggest some pets that are strong, but strong pets won't help you if you don't know how to use them effectively. I started off an in-game friend with Iron Starlette, Bone Serpent, Nexus Whelpling, raw offensive power with no avoidance or mitigation. He did well, getting his first weekly 10 wins quest in 13 battles.

5. Above all, read your opponent's intentions. This is something that will come only with practice, and watching how people use their teams.

6. From the first moment of the battle, keep figuring what you want the end game to be. Which will be the matchup between your last pet and your opponent's last pet?

If you aren't already using Derangement's Pet Battle Cooldowns addon, try it. It's especially valuable in PvP, when pets are swapped out. Knowing when their cooldowns are back give you a sense of when they will be swapped in again.

Great info in both of those posts, thanks a bunch!

Hi,

I have not done any PvP as yet, and might in the future, but I was thinking that learning how to prevent the big bombs 75% and more of the time, would probably be a really good idea, if not a good start.

In other words, make sure that whichever pet you are playing you can mitigate a reasonable amount of damage ... I imagine that if you can mitigate better than 50%, you will win more often than not, but this is just thinking on my part. Others might be able to tell you more on that.

That would mean any addon that keeps track of the pets and their abilities are important. Plunk the CoD and Feign Death for another. Howl and die/switch immediately so another pet can take advantage of the Howl with a really big hit, that kind of thing.

I'm thinking that anyone that can string two or three of these bombs in a row, and land 2 of them ... that the fight will be over fairly quickly! As I do the Pet Battles now, even in Legion, maybe one bomb lands, out of these fights, but then, I know the battle some, and am not exactly facing surprises, and that helps. Knowing your pet's abilities, though ... is really valuable ... so you know how to counter and use them somewhere.

Mordrathyr wrote:Hey everyone. At the title states, I'm looking to get into PvP pet battles. I'm really not sure where to start though. I have no idea what works against players, what the meta is, etc. Of course I could just queue up and see what happens, but I'd prefer to be a little more prepared than that. If anyone would be willing to share some tips or suggest a team, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

Its like chess - forget sites like the mentioned above - you learn through experience and THAT is the important factor to get a win rate of over 80%

There's a couple ways you can approach battle pet pvp.

One method is using the strongest pets all together on a team stuff like double bone serpents with vengeful porcupette, double magma rageling with bone serpent or triple teroclaw. It's not really very imaginative to play these but pretty easy to have a high win rate. Generally you will only lose with these teams if someone is running another team of extremely strong pets or a direct counter team.

The other method is building a team with synergy that boost each other as an example of this blighthawk (1, 1, 2), blackfuse bombling(2,2,2) and jademist dancer (1,2,1). This team provides the cyclone with raindance combo and also Armageddon with consume corpse combo. Teams like this will still win a lot of match ups but rely more on decisions you make throughout the battle.

There's no right or wrong way to approach pet battles so you can use either strategy. Although I feel there is more mileage and fun in building your own teams and seeing them be successful. Maybe I'm just a pet battle purists!