So who here is actively Battle Pet PvPing?

[Abbotta]

I've been doing plenty of procrastination on my PvP achievements (I know there is a pet out there I can get). Just curious who is actively doing Pet Battle PvPs (let's say an average of 5-10/week).

I need to just dive headfirst in there and PvP although I would prefer actually gaining some insight on how to do it and not just run a slew of healing teams or bone serpent teams.

Thank you!

[Sile9]

/raise

I'd say start with a highly synergistic team that looks fun and incredible on paper, e.g. bleed maul and mine swap, and let pain be your guide. Sooner or later you'll run into situations where your team will practically get soloed by a single pet and it'll just make sense to substitute counters for the worst offenders. My usual strategy for PvP teambuilding is to take two pets that complement each other's effects then find something that will counter the widest range of ability and family types that could threaten the combo while playing to the combo's strengths.

I would recommend multiple teams to swap between depending on the queue climate, it'll stave burnout.

[Gráinne]

My advice starts with: give yourself time to get used to the mechanics of PvP battling.

You are completely anonymous. Just hop into the queue, pretend that the image you are seeing is actually the Unknown Tamer that the game has generated to trick you, and focus on making accurate choices.

You get instanced and transported, which is disorienting,

Then you have to quickly size up how your team matches up against the opposition team. Your opponent is doing the same. So which of your pets do you want to meet which of his? and what pet is he going to lead with? so what pet are you going to lead with? This decision is critical: it sets up the rest of the battle. Coming from PvE, it's hard to remember that your first pet isn't necessarily the one you will lead with, and your first move is to choose a pet to lead off with.

So your opponent has S/S Anklerender, Valk, P/P Crab

and you have Idol, Teroclaw, P/P Starlette.

What's his plan? How's the battle going to go? What does he want to lead with? After seeing your team, will he change his mind? Where do you want to take the CoD & Haunt? How do you want to take down the Crab's health + heals? What do you see as the ideal matchup for each of your pets?

Take your time, what you have of it, to choose your starter. If you know your team, and you know what the opposition team can do, you will make a good battle of it.

Sometime around the second pet you need to be asking yourself what you want the last matchup to be. Maybe you will backline your pet because you want to save it for the end. Most PvP battles come down to the third pet, so a strong finish is commonly the difference between winning and losing.

You will lose at the start. Quite a few, actually. Just getting used to the mechanics will take you several battles. That's fine; pay your dues learning the ropes.

Here are some videos showing some battles with strong teams to give you some ideas.

Discodoggy: The Very Best, parts 1 and 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPMelI9OZ5Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDzfQbIDk6o

Llennoca: All Tier 1 Pets in Legion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUzIwmvr27w
The Best PvP Teams for Legion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDpvLn96ea4

Rosqo: My Best Tier 1 Teams
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc8o_a0deBA

[Drlambda]

The tips Gráinne gives above are really good. I just can talk about my experience in the central EU meta (which includes Germany and Russia, but not the UK from what we were able to find out). I binged on pet battling a bit for the last week when i was on sick leave and logged 110 battles in 4 days.
Good times to que are ~3pm-11pm on weekdays, except friday which for some reason has really long queue times and mostly teams of people who want to do their 10 win weekly quest asap. If you want to get frustrated, friday would be the way to go. Saturdays and Sundays are usually pretty calm because of more people queing, so you will see more unusual teams then. This also is be true for Tuesday evening, because there seem to be a lot of players that want to get their quest done in the last minute, but don't run the strong teams that are running around on fridays.
During critter week, you can expect your que to fire pretty much at any time unless it's really deep in the night (like 3am-9am?) The average team is also quite a bit weaker in that time. If you want to get started, this would be a good time, but don't get cocky because you win a lot with good teams during critter week. If every week was like critter week, i'd pay my subscription for PVP battles alone, because you can play weaker fun teams with some success, making PVP really enjoyable for those team architects out there.

Last but not least, don't let yourself get frustrated. There is no shame in running away from teams you just can't beat. Unless my team happens to accidentally counter them, i just run away from anything with 2 or more Bone Serpents and quite often from Sunny Day teams too. The good thing about that is that i'm pretty sure noone who plays 2+ Bone Serpents actually enjoys the game, so you put him one closer to his goal and remove him from the queue faster.

[Drlambda]

110 battles in 4 days? Nice!
We better be seeing some videos on your channel soon then.

Well, i wasn't recording for some reason or another, but i found a few fun teams i'll show off in the future. I'll probably try to record tomorrow and/or saturday.

[Gráinne]

Hey, Drlambda, when are you going to do a "best of" video to add to the list?

I appreciate that it can be difficult to get a good vid out when you run into some teams that won't make for good battles.

Here's a suggestion I just made on the Discord:

Step 1: Recruit an Accomplice with a good stable of pets

Step 2: Pre-agree teams you will both use that will allow you to show off the main points of both teams

Step 3: Battle! both commenting separately as the battle goes on

Step 4: Merge the videos, switching from one viewpoint to the other, and stopping to allow the insertion of post-match commentary

It would take a lot more work than the usual stream-of-queue vid, ofc, but I'd like to see it.

P.S. Hmmm. Alternative that might be easier. Two of you do separate vids of the same duels, each with your own commentary. Then post both, each with a link to the other. Maybe one vid per duel? I have a hard time watching the Tournament videos because despite the commentary I never do get a feel for the battles. And of course those restrictions make the videos less interesting for the general audience.

[Drlambda]

Hey, Drlambda, when are you going to do a "best of" video to add to the list?

I appreciate that it can be difficult to get a good vid out when you run into some teams that won't make for good battles.

Here's a suggestion I just made on the Discord:

Step 1: Recruit an Accomplice with a good stable of pets

Step 2: Pre-agree teams you will both use that will allow you to show off the main points of both teams

Step 3: Battle! both commenting separately as the battle goes on

Step 4: Merge the videos, switching from one viewpoint to the other, and stopping to allow the insertion of post-match commentary

It would take a lot more work than the usual stream-of-queue vid, ofc, but I'd like to see it.

P.S. Hmmm. Alternative that might be easier. Two of you do separate vids of the same duels, each with your own commentary. Then post both, each with a link to the other. Maybe one vid per duel? I have a hard time watching the Tournament videos because despite the commentary I never do get a feel for the battles. And of course those restrictions make the videos less interesting for the general audience.

I've never played a lot of true tier 1 teams - my 10+ wins tab has literally 0 Bone Serpents and 2 Teroclaw Hatchlings. The only pets in the top 5 that i play a lot of are Wicked Souls and Vengeful Porcupette. I'm more of a "trying to counter the meta" guy. So my most-played teams are strong teams with a 70% win-rate, which doesn't exactly make a good "my best teams" video.

About the other ideas: There might be something just like that coming pretty soon. I have to admit that i'm not exactly experienced in video editing though.

PS: To the author and everyone reading this - sorry for hijacking this thread, i'll try to keep it to a minimum in the future.

[Abbotta]

Hey, Drlambda, when are you going to do a "best of" video to add to the list?

I appreciate that it can be difficult to get a good vid out when you run into some teams that won't make for good battles.

Here's a suggestion I just made on the Discord:

Step 1: Recruit an Accomplice with a good stable of pets

Step 2: Pre-agree teams you will both use that will allow you to show off the main points of both teams

Step 3: Battle! both commenting separately as the battle goes on

Step 4: Merge the videos, switching from one viewpoint to the other, and stopping to allow the insertion of post-match commentary

It would take a lot more work than the usual stream-of-queue vid, ofc, but I'd like to see it.

P.S. Hmmm. Alternative that might be easier. Two of you do separate vids of the same duels, each with your own commentary. Then post both, each with a link to the other. Maybe one vid per duel? I have a hard time watching the Tournament videos because despite the commentary I never do get a feel for the battles. And of course those restrictions make the videos less interesting for the general audience.

I've never played a lot of true tier 1 teams - my 10+ wins tab has literally 0 Bone Serpents and 2 Teroclaw Hatchlings. The only pets in the top 5 that i play a lot of are Wicked Souls and Vengeful Porcupette. I'm more of a "trying to counter the meta" guy. So my most-played teams are strong teams with a 70% win-rate, which doesn't exactly make a good "my best teams" video.

About the other ideas: There might be something just like that coming pretty soon. I have to admit that i'm not exactly experienced in video editing though.

PS: To the author and everyone reading this - sorry for hijacking this thread, i'll try to keep it to a minimum in the future.

If you keeping posting the info like this and your other posts you may hijack all you want!!!

Hijacjing is when someone comes in and starts acting like an a**hole. Your posts have been great reads and informative!