WarcraftPets Forum

Okay guys. I've always hated PVP in general so I've never done any PVP but I'd like to try PVP pet battles but I have no idea how and where to start? Any PVP pet battle tips for a complete newbie? I've done a grand total zero PVP pet battles since MoP. What's a good newbie team for someone who's never PVPed before? And any other tips would rock!

If you want to build a PVP team, I tend to have the best time if I pick a pet I like and kind of build a team with a bunch of synergy around it. Like if I pick Xufu with Spirit Claws, it's a good idea to pick a pet that benefits somehow from moonlight, applies dmg debuffs, etc.

Another really important rule of thumb is to not get frustrated if you lose! Especially just starting out, and especially since you can't really plan for your opponent like you can in PVE. If I queue with Xufu, I might have a team full of gazelles or a team of all mechanicals. Over time you'll get a feel for whether or not a team is 'right.' If you have some pet-minded friends on btag you might want to duel them first to kinda break the ice.

Good luck, and have fun (OR ELSE ).

For anyone whose new to PVP,

I normally will suggest them to start with an undead team with lots of HP.

The idea is this : undead team basically will ignore your opponent's speed because of the racial of undead, hence for a newbie pvp player, you can concentrate more on the calculation.

when I say calculation, basically it means you can calculation the damage of your output against the enemy's pet HP against the opponent's damage against your HP. The bigger the HP you have, the linear and easier the calculation will be.

How to calculate the damage and then make your next move by using which skill is the first key to understand PVP.

After you get used to this, change your team to include more different kind of skills combo, which could include weather change, X skill combine with Y skill, such as bleeding + blood in the water, immolation + gate ect.

Eventually, you will start to mix different pets to form a good team and you will be fine in pet PVP.

A good undead team for starter will be :

a HH spirit crab
a HH Lost of Lordaeron
a Frosty if you have one or a HH Infested Bear Cub

Just a warning; if you get frustrated/hate regular pvp, pet pvp can be just as infuriating, though far less dependent on twitch

That being said, starting out pet battling in pvp is rough. When I started, I think I had like 15 lvl 25's, and a weird mix at that. I didn't have an understanding of what some of the more popular pets use that I didn't have, and had to learn through a lot of trial-and-error. When I first started, I probably lost 3-5 matches for every match that I won. But then I began to understand synergy a bit, and began building up a stable of useful pets and experimenting with different setups. Also, I knew nothing about breeds at first, which led to some sub-optimal performers. I do not advocate tons of addons, but a Pet Breed ID I would consider a must-have. Knowing the breeds that have/want can save you SOOOO much time collecting and leveling the pet you want, and not having to go back later to get the breed that you actually want.

I think my most successful starting team was Son of Animus/Yellow-Bellied Bullfrog/Magical Crawdad. I was lucky and already had leveled the P/P breed of frog. The SoA is pretty strong vs. just about anything, the frog is great against undead (racial and Lick) and elementals (Frog Kiss), and the crawdad speaks for itself. While I don't use this team anymore, it helped me a lot getting started. For a new pet pvp'er, I would recommend getting a good flyer such as a moth, a good aquatic such as a crab (a P/P Emperor Crab is easily captured and a very strong pet), and a strong undead. The reasons being that the moth will help with speed comps (flyer racial gives big speed boost when they are over half health), the aquatic is strong against undead dmg (you will see TONS of Unborn Valkyr's in the queue) and crabs have offensive and defensive spells, as well as a heal, and Undead are strong against humanoids and have the free "rez round", which to me is the strongest racial.

Whatever pets that you decide to use, prepare for a steep learning-curve, but ultimately a very pleasing diversion to the monotony of WoW. At this point, I enjoy pet battling far more than any other activity in this game. Enjoy!

You have very good range of level 25’s to chose from, so you have really done your PvE.

First and most important thing, this is NOT PvE. If you play like you do against the trainers you will find it hard to win. For example, if you use a move to boost your damage by 100% next turn, in PvE your opponent won’t react to that. An opponent in PvP would, if their pets allow it of course. They would preferably try and avoid being hit by using Doge/Lift-Off/Burrow/Deflection, or Stun/interrupt you or last resort use damage reduction/switch in pet that takes less damage/switch in close to dead pet. In essence you have wasted one or two turns.

I am not dissing bonus damage moves, they do have their place in PvP as well especially in the end game with the last pets or when opponents pet don’t have any defensive moves(or they are on cool down).

So be prepared for thinking opponents.

Secondly, try not to be obvious. A main culprit since 5.3, at least in my battle group, has been the Kun-Lai Runt. It has a nice move set that just boosts itself if cast in a certain order. Most opponents, the less experienced crowd at least, just do Frost Shock -> Deep Freeze. This combination is really powerful in that you slow your opponent and then get a 100% stun. Problem is that it is signalled in advance and I for one just switch the chilled pet out. The 100% stun just went down to 25% again and I got 75% chance to not lose a turn. If I had a critter pet I could switch that in for less damage and no stun chance.

This is also just an example to tell you to mix it up. Be unpredictable, otherwise it is easy for experienced opponents to take advantage of you.

I will check through your collection and try and give some easy to get into teams.

This team is still one of my favourites:
Scalded Basilisk Hatchling(305 speed) - Crystal Prison, Feign Death, Thrash
Blighthawk(I would get the 273 speed instead) - Infected Claw, Consume Corpse, Lift-Off
Imperial Eagle Chick(341 power) - Slicing Wind or Thrash, Cyclone, Lift-Off
I usually go with Thrash to eat fast rabbits but this makes the bird even weaker against other fliers(since it’s already a bit on the slow side). Slicing Wind on the other hand is more random 1-3 hits, but you won’t lose anything by being slower.

I feel it’s a pretty well rounded team but it will suffer from faster opponents. Especially all flier teams or 325 speed mechs.

More often than not 305 speed is faster than your opponent. Only nowadays are people in my battle group starting to use faster pets. Before the most popular pets were slower/tougher ones. Basic strategy:
Start with Basilisk. If you are faster use Crystal Prison - Thrash - Feign Death in that order. Depending on opposing pet you might as well do thrash for a few more turns before using Feign Death. Even better if your opponent uses some delayed attack like Curse of Doom, Ice Tomb or Lift-Off/Burrow. Then just use Feign Death on the turn that move is about to hit and you will avoid it.
After Feign Death your Bligthawk will be in play. You can start with Lift-Off to evade your opponents next attack and threaten with a huge hit, then start using Infected Claw. After going to about 50% health switch in the Basilisk again and do Crystal Prison - Thrash etc. When you next Feign Death the bird comes in play. Don’t be afraid to sacrifice the bird, this will allow your Blighthawk to heal up.

This is just the basic plan that will probably need to be changed on the fly depending on how your opponent reacts. If your Basilisk is the fastest pet always try to save it for last, the stun and dodge from Feign Death(you can still dodge even if you can’t switch pets) makes it a good end-game pet(not so good vs faster pets).

Here is a couple of other teams to try:
Tiny Snowman - Magic Hat, Call Blizzard, Deep Freeze
Father Winter’s Helper - Ice Lance, Call Blizzard, Ice Tomb
Kun-Lai Runt - Takedown, Frost Shock, Deep Feeze
Keep Blizzard up and you will always have the option to Deep Freeze, not easy for your opponent to predict when you are going to use it, unless you are hot on the button and use it immediately. Just remember if you use Ice Tomb or Deep Freeze your opponent will be immune to stun for two turns.

Purple Puffer - Surge, Healing Wave, Pump
Jademist Dancer(would prefer the 317 speed one) - Steam Vent, Rain Dance, Acid Rain
Sprite Darter Hatchling - Arcane Blast(to save the Puffer from birds), Evanescence, Cyclone.
Puffer takes less damage from undead, and with Pump it can really put the hurt on others. Also it’s nice to just use Pump once for 10% bonus to Surge. Acid Rain gives a nice boost, 25%, to Surge(starting to hurt for real now), Pump(ouch) and Steam Vent(crits for quite a lot).
Start with Sprite Darter, if you are faster use Evanescence then Cyclone. Switch to Jademist Dancer and try using Rain Dance before cyclone is down to 3 turns, no need to rush and get no healing. Use acid rain to remove sandstorm or just for extra team damage. Use Puffer vs undeads.

Once I met a guy that had three tough pets but just pressed no 1 attack for the whole fight. First fight he got me just by surprising me, I thought he was going to use other moves so I switch a bit and lost some turns that way. In the end it came down to last two pets but he just had an advantage from racials and me losing turns to win out. Requeued and got same guy again, didn't make any mistakes this time. But I'm sure he could win some fight just doing that.

Wanna try something to that extent(be prepared to be bored out of you mind) do:
Anubisath Idol - Demolish, Sandstorm, Deflection
Darkmoon Tonk - Missile, Shock and Awe(minefield could be more fun here), Ion-Cannon
Ghostly Skull - Shadow Slash, Ghostly Bite, Unholy Ascension

As have been said, it takes some time to get the 'feel' of a PVP battle. When I started, I lost like 9 out of 10 battles. Now I win about 60% to 70%.

- Take every move of your enemy serious, a simple DOT may not look dangerous, but it may kill you in the end.
- If you have an attack that slashes the enemy's defense in half, use it for his/her last pet as else they will just switch in another pet, making it a lost turn.
- If you know you're going to lose a certain pet in the next round, make your last move count; Don't do a simple attack, but use the DOT.
- Know that you just cannot win every match. Some teams are just the opposite of yours and no matter how good you are, if they half your health with 1 move, just understand it's not your fault for losing.
- If you're getting the same opponent several times in a row, switch out a pet and most likely your next battle will be against another, hopefully weaker, team.
There are a lot more tips to be found in the 1.001 Battle tips topic.

Be versatile! For long, I held onto my Darkmoon Tonk, but it just wasn't winning me matches. One time I just randomly picked a few pets, a Fox, Spider and Toad and suddenly I won 3 matches in a row. Some teams are not seen much and may surprise some people.

One last tip, play at times when not many people are online. On busy times, the pro PVP teams will really going to give you a headache. I win most of my matches on slow hours.

Vek wrote:You have very good range of level 25’s to chose from...

Holy cow, batman! Lots of info! Thanks! <3 PvP doesn't frustrate me. I'm just terrible at it and I feel baf about killing people. XD! I think it's the girl in me.

When I started out, I tend to copy and look at a lot of people's teams and discodoggy's blog. After a few cookie-cutter plays, you'll eventually get used to seeing patterns of the other players and play accordingly. You will also learn to swap out pets for other pets to make it work for you.

It might also help to experiment during the time of the day. When I first started, I was super frustrated just because I don't like to lose. I used to play after raid and found that it felt like I was getting the same person over and over again. So, I started playing before raid - now, I play at like 5 my time since there is a lot of people on queue and it seemed to have more variety. You can also go from Pandaria to an alt on Durotar. I do think that it pulls you to different opponents, which makes it easier.

The only thing I can suggest is make a daily goal obtainable. I just aimed for 5 wins a day and if I got those fairly quick, I bumped it to 10-15 and no more than that.

Another general tip. Putting all eggs in one basket. I wouldn't reccomend this.Three Moths, for example, sound good on paper. Very fast, hard hitters. You will probably win battles, but then a single wrong pet will screw you, like a dragon with magic attacks, and you might as well forfeit.

Just recently I have had my Leopard Tree Frog completely solo teams of 3 elementals, 3 undead and even a mix of both these pets. Given not many people run frogs or even aquatics, not that I face at least, so these teams would probably do ok most of the time. Just think of an all mech team running into Lil Raggy, ouch.

Thanks all for your help! <3 You all are awesome!

So the various teams I see people are talking about is out? I've wondered about those teams (like having an undead team.) Since you don't know what you'll get, how do you know if those teams will be any good? Is it just the luck of the draw? If I put together an undead team and I come up against a critter team, should I just throw in the towel? Or maybe have two pets of a breed than have the third be of another breed?

Don't throw in the towel very often. I learn a lot more from my losses than from my wins, so even if it looks bad, stay with it and fight. I have seen more moves, more synergy and more great combination ideas from playing than from reading the forums, and I read everything I can get my hands on.

The key is to start playing. I wanted to build a really strong team before I started taking pet pvp seriously, and like you, I was not a big fan of pvp in general. But you'll drive yourself crazy over-thinking your team. Just put together any combination posted here, they are all going to win some games. When you lose, figure out why. What did your opponent use and how did he use it? That's where most of the learning takes place.

Even a great team that wins a lot is going to get boring, just like the stagnant pve we have access to now does. After you have played for a while, you will want to switch teams just to be doing something different, or to react to an annoying opponent with a specific combination that always beats you. Winning is great and is the reason we come back to pet battles every day, but I'll exchange a few wins for a lot more fun any day.

Kendrah wrote:Thanks all for your help! <3 You all are awesome!

So the various teams I see people are talking about is out? I've wondered about those teams (like having an undead team.) Since you don't know what you'll get, how do you know if those teams will be any good? Is it just the luck of the draw? If I put together an undead team and I come up against a critter team, should I just throw in the towel? Or maybe have two pets of a breed than have the third be of another breed?

To some extent it is just luck of the draw and an all undead team vs a critter team is probably an unfortunate match up but I wouldn't give up right away. As was pointed out you can still learn things from the fight and things might not be as bad as you'd think if you built your team well. Undead pets tend to have a pretty good variety of abilities with usually at least one or two abilities tying back to the "living" pet type. Sure the critter has critter attacks that are strong against your undead but a Fossilized Hatchling or stitched pup would have beast attacks that are strong against their critter and have heals and an undead round to attack. Or their aquatic pet with critter attacks can be taken down with a Blight Hawk.

This also gets into the so called "meta game" where you figure out what teams or pets are popular in your group and design a team that works well against them. A p/p crab seems to be a good example of this as it does a good job of countering a unborn val'kryn as the aquatic racial and shield really hurt the dmg of haunt. Surge will also do a good job of handling most elementals.

Kendrah wrote:So the various teams I see people are talking about is out? I've wondered about those teams (like having an undead team.) Since you don't know what you'll get, how do you know if those teams will be any good? Is it just the luck of the draw? If I put together an undead team and I come up against a critter team, should I just throw in the towel? Or maybe have two pets of a breed than have the third be of another breed?

Well, if you do decide to run triple undead (more common than you would think actually), you won't have to worry much about queuing into an all-critter team as almost no one uses them. It is a shame, but critters for the most part just don't have the firepower to keep up with the high-end pets out there that everyone uses. I would say the lone exception would be rabbits. Rabbits are pretty great (at least the S/S types) at fending off dmg, and their fast speed normally ensures that you go first unless you are up against a flyer over half health.

As to whether you should flee when you meet your hard-counter, I guess it depends. Sometimes there is something to be learned even from an almost guaranteed loss, and from time to time the other player will be so bad that you can pull out the win anyway. Sometimes, I will play a few rounds to see if my opponent uses the spell/ability that will pretty much neuter my comp. For example, when I am running a DoT team and I queue into a team with an Anubsith Idol I will normally wait and see if he is the first pet brought out. If he Stoneskins/Sandstorms on his very first turn, I just jet and queue up again as his mitigation would completely negate the vast majority of my attacks, making playing the fight out pointless and frustrating. The same goes for my Trap team when up against, say, a Valk (or really anything with Deflection/Dodge). If the Valk jukes me and uses Haunt to dodge my trap barrage, I just leave because any further actions would be pointless as my offensive pressure will be gone.

Kendrah wrote:If I put together an undead team and I come up against a critter team, should I just throw in the towel? Or maybe have two pets of a breed than have the third be of another breed?

I usually like to play with critters and often come across a team that has 2 undeads. I must say, even though I do have some strong attacks against them, it's often a very tough fight. Especially that last move where they ressurect and you're just taking hits, waiting for it to die. The 3rd pet may also be a critter killer which evens up the fight.

Critters often have strong attacks vs undead and some avoidance moves. But some undead have strong attacks vs critters. Frogs though has critter attack and takes less damage from undead attacks, and a heal, but you miss out on the avoidance moves.

Found a couple of links to what I used for teams. Again, it doesnt work for everyone but it's fun to pick and choose your style.

http://www.warcraftpets.com/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8627
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/10786799042
http://pvppetbattles.com/my-teams/
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/10262506480#1

I went through them and tried out the ones that seemed to fit my play style. Not all guarantee 100% wins but you get to experiment with what works and doesnt for you.

Like, a conflag team and a sunlight team doesnt work with my play style. No idea why but they never clicked for me but the clonedancer and a bleed team works for me and thats actually how I get most of my wins. Some people would have certain pets on their bleed team and I would switch out one or two to make it work for me.

It's a really big trial and error process but eventually you'll get it

Genome wrote: Well, if you do decide to run triple undead (more common than you would think actually), you won't have to worry much about queuing into an all-critter team as almost no one uses them.

I think this is pretty true, not many people use critters and/or aquatics(except for the occasional Crab/Crawdad). So triple undead, also due to undead racial, is probably one of the safest same-family teams to run.

But just in the last couple of days I have come up against some people, probably trying stuff out, with different same-family teams.

3 Anubisath Idols. My opponent quit after my Bligth Hawk ate up the first one while taking minimal damage.
3 Aquatics. Could have been a nice synergy, except he ran into my 341 power bird who chewed them up by itself.
Have also faced the usual 3 flier(either 3 moths or 3 crow/raven), and 3 mechs. But those times I didn't have a true counter in my teams, so not so one-sided.

Kendrah, would be fun to hear how things are going for you.