Pet of the Month - Lil' Bling

[Quintessence]

Many thanks to [profile]Liopleurodon[/profile] for writing the battling portion of our newest feature, [url=http://www.warcraftpets.com/news/lil-bling-pet-of-the-month-april-2015/]Pet of the Month[/url]. Here are some additional points on [pet]Lil' Bling[/pet] that she wanted to share!

How Do You Use Your Lil' Bling?
Lil' Bling is a favorite of mine, and not just for his sparkly disposition. If you've read past Pet of the Months, you know I have a soft spot for pets with heavy damage over time abilities, especially the ones like [ability]Swarm[/ability].

Lil' Bling is toward the top of my list for pets like this, because we see single-pet Beasts fairly frequently. [ability]Inflation[/ability] is both multi-hitting and Mechanical so I frequently prefer [ability]Make It Rain[/ability] for the additional DoT. When I use Inflation, I usually like to stack buffs and debuffs to buff it, and those buffs tend to play nicely with Make It Rain as well. Lil' Bling with Inflation and a [ability]Call Lightning[/ability] buff or Expose Woundbuff and a Make It Rain to close out the combo is my choice for most single-pet Beasts. I pull him out every week for Zao in the Celestial Tournament.

Because of Inflation's associated debuff it is always going to be preferred over [ability]SMCKTHAT.EXE[/ability] unless there's an encounter where you need to time things reactively. Inflation is harder to control but gives a lot more potential throughput. If you're in a situation where your opponent has a per-hit shield both abilities are fairly useless and Lil' Bling is at a severe disadvantage regardless, but if you have few other mechanical options, Bling can still use [ability]Launch Rocket[/ability] to break through them.

Launch Rocket also makes an excellent combo with Inflation, though it does require that your Lil' Bling (or another pet with Launch Rocket) lives long enough to activate it. This works out pretty well when your opponent has a dodge or shield. You can use downtime to prime the rocket, then begin your Inflation, and you can usually let off the rocket after the fact without worrying that it'll be blocked again.

That said, if my opponent has a straight-up dodge move like [ability]Deflection[/ability] or avoid move like [ability]Burrow[/ability], I like to use my [ability]Blingtron Gift Package[/ability] as a heal. It's a little deceptive just reading the tooltip, but the Gift Package heals any time it misses, so if you force it to miss you still get that decent heal. I use this daily against Gargra's dodge-happy second pet. For that fight, I use a [pet]Tranquil Mechanical Yeti[/pet] as my partner for that Call Lightning synergy we talked about earlier.

There are a lot of really easy ways to counter Lil' Bling, so I don't like to use him in PVP all that much. He's pretty much shut down with a per-hit shield or a swap just as Inflation ends. [ability]Extra Plating[/ability] is preferable in most cases, but that also makes for an easy counter, when you can do swaps and use some heals while it's up. Launch Rocket is harder to counter, unless your opponent has a dodge or a sweep-type ability like [ability]Tidal Wave[/ability]. Then, Lil' Bling can pretty much just lie down and wait to die.

So, how do you use your Lil' Bling?


Written by: [profile]Liopleurodon[/profile]
Check out [url=http://battlepetroundup.com/]battlepetroundup.com[/url] or [url=http://blizzardwatch.com/tag/pet-battles/]Blizzard Watch[/url] for more of Liopleurodon's Pet Battle strategies and pet analyses.

[Djleeds]

To be honest, I don't think I've ever used this pet other than when I power-leveled him to 25. Anubisath Idol is one of my primary pets for battle in both pvp and pve. I have nothing against Lil' Bling but I prefer Warbot, Darkmoon Zeppelin, Clockwork Gnome, and Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling for my mechanical pets in battle. To be fair, with 700 pets to choose from, many fall to the wayside.

[Beave]

I love little bling. He's one of my go-to mechanicals for PVE trainer or garrison dailies like Brutus and Ruckus today. He's also part of my 2-pet strat for Christoph VonFeasel.

Extra Plating, build rocket, inflation, launch rocket. With the 2x damage debuff from inflation the rocket alone does over 2k against beasts. For more fun combine him with a Golden Hatchling or Sunreaver Micro Sentry and throw up Lightning storm first so every one of those inflation hits get's a mechanical lightning boost too. Lots of fun. Plus he's cheap. You can buy him in the AH for 300g or less on most servers.

[Kel]

I too don't recall the last time I used Lil' Bling. I use to use him plenty. But Tonk, Zepp and MPD have become my go-to mechs for pretty much any situation. And when it comes to garrison beast dailies, Iron Starlette just plain wins! Period!

[Jerebear]

For PvE, I use bling quite a bit. For Jeremy Feasel, I use him as a sweeper (smackthat.exe, extra plating, make it rain) to follow up my AoE fest. With high speed and extra plating he can survive for quite a while and finish off lots of low health pets.

I also pair him with a nuker and use inflation to setup some serious damage on some teams. He also works well on DoT/Wild Magic teams when using inflation.