PvP Pet Battles - achieving 10% win rate?

[Mrbeankc]

I despise PVP in all it's forms, so for blizz to lock a pet away behind it (along with heroic raids and massive grinds, but that's another issue) is a poke in the eye.

TLDR: Paraphrasing the Pandaren philosophy - "Slow down, enjoy the journey."

I understand your frustration, I love the collecting aspect of battle pets, mounts, etc. I just don't understand what the point is complaining about pets that you find difficult or near impossible to get. If you don't want to go after that pet, don't go after the pet. There are going to be pets that are exceptionally hard to get.

If one nerfs all of these hard to get pets, they lose a lot of the value that is associated with the effort in getting them. In addition, there will always be people that wish that pets were easier to get. Taken to the extreme, would it be good for pet battles if everybody started with all of the pets prelearned at lvl 25? The point being that the difficulty and RNG is part of the fun.

A lot of these hard to get pets are boe so even if getting them is ridiculously difficult you can always get them via the auction house at some point. I could not get the crawling claw for the life of me no matter how hard I farmed. I finally got him from the auction house.

[Index]

OK, I'll rephrase.

I don't raid, and I hate PVP. Pet collecting is supposed to be a fun off-shoot of this game, something that anyone can enjoy with a little bit of time. I know that some pets are hard to get, but have a look at my other post. Do you see the problem?

This patch has added a MASSIVE amount of "hard to get" pets, and I appreciate your point on value, however I feel that for the dedicated socials such as myself, locking pets away behind heroic raids and PVP is basically writing a cheque for the people that have access to heroic raids and / or are good at pet PVP.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not just sitting back QQing at the whole thing, I'm out there, killing dino's, getting BUTCHERED in pet PVP winning maybe 1 in 12 matches, and lugging around wood and meat. My point is that they're making this off-shoot off the game far too integral to the main game itself, instead of letting people who only want to focus on it do exactly that.

It's a shame. If it continues in this direction, then an aspect of the game I so desperately wanted to hate, yet came to love will be left behind, along with my interest.

peace out!

Index

[Khayah]

But Pet Battle Pvp is really or better say rather simple and beside it is really fun. Destroying double klr teams, Blizzard shop pets etc makes me smile ... i'm mean

right now you have father winter helper klr and a spider active, if that is your team your are battling with it is not that hard to beat just because there are to many disadvantages

If you want to win just invest some time in research or contact me ingame as i wont post my team in public until i've got the acm, I'm at 90 wins since 5.3 Wednesday/Europe and my ratio is roughly 80% win. If you erase my losses due to miss rng i've lost maybe 5-10 matches to counter setups or mistakes i've done by pet swapping.

At least you will be able to farm ten wins per week without getting your ass kicked

As you are from EU yourself if you want to contact me (it is just an offer) add khayah#2740 or chayah - aegwynn EU / Shova - anub'arak EU

[Tiggindy]

If you don't want to go after that pet, don't go after the pet.

Not to be snarky here, but this is one of the kind of statements that sets me off.

Think of where you're posting. There are no pets that peeps don't want to go after.

When peeps speak of being forced to do something in the game, that doesn't mean Blizzard is putting a gun to their head and saying "do this unpleasant thing!" It means that if they want this thing in the game, they have no option but to do this thing that they dislike. Ignoring this thing that they want because it's tied to their enjoyment of the game doesn't make it go away, or remove the want. It lowers their enjoyment of the game.

For example, (I'm probably an extreme case) I spent most of Cata not playing WoW.
Why? Because archeology just sucked that much.

The mechanics were exactly as bad as I predicted a couple weeks after release, and none of their fixes ever addressed the core problems. I collect pets. It's what I do. My first priority is always pets. I simply could not do more archeology, but I also couldn't focus on alts, raids or anything else because the crawling claw was there eating away at my enjoyment. For me, there was no lie back and think of England, grin and bear it, grit my teeth and get it over with. Faced with the concept of doing archeology, I would rather not play WoW at all.

MoP and tradeable pets changed that, since I was able to get the claw without having to resort to archeology again.

I understand your frustration, I love the collecting aspect of battle pets, mounts, etc. I just don't understand what the point is complaining about pets that you find difficult or near impossible to get.

The game is supposed to be fun, and you're supposed to have choice in how you spend your time playing. The problem is that you can't please everyone all the time.

Some people like Pet PvP, and want rewards for doing what they like. Blizzard says "we like happy customers" so they put rewards in for the peeps that like that aspect of the game. Then other peeps show up and say "do not like!" If the internet has taught us one thing, it's that people can (and will) complain about everything. You can't please everyone all the time.

People enjoy different things, and there's some things that they simply do not enjoy, and will never enjoy no matter whether they are good at it or not.

I'm part of the group that detests PvP in any form. I did PvP to get the olympic pet, that was unpleasant. I did PvP to complete the holiday metas. I've currently got a pet team that's not roflstomped, so I can win sometimes, but it'll be a long long slow slog to the required wins for the pet (and the title).

That doesn't mean I won't improve at it and have a better win ratio, and it also doesn't mean that I'll ever like doing it.

All it means is that this particular pain is not above my threshold of unpleasantness where I'll stop playing the game again, that threshold may be different for others. At least the raid pets are tradeable.

I can't speak for others, but the point of complaining (about things that aren't broken) is less to have things made easier, or even necessarily have Blizzard implement a "solution". It's a way to communicate with others that have similar likes and dislikes. It's to get some of the frustration at having to do this unpleasant thing out, so the burden is not so heavy because others hear you, understand you, and commiserate with you.

[Yellowlab]

I didn't do much in the way of pet PVP before 5.3. I wanted to wait until I could get that adorable dinosaur as a reward. My suggestion to you if you aren't very good, is to use pets that put RNG in your favor. I kind of just threw together a team that seems to really compliment each other. I use an s/s Nordassil Wisp, Speedy the turtle, and Frosty. I understand Frosty is kind of rare and not everyone has him, but another undead pet with high HP and a weather changing effect should also work well.

Anyways, the strategy behind this is using the wisps blind attack. Your opponent will have to swap out his pet unless he wants to take severe damage from your wisp. Also, the blind makes his attacks miss A LOT! Those misses can save your butt if you arent very good at pvp. It essentially gives you a few more turns to win if you are lucky. While these abilities are on CD, you can spam arcane explosion until they come up again. It really forces your opponent to deal with your wisp. And when he decides to, take out your other pets. Speedy is great imo, because his speed is very high for a turtle, he has headbutt which can really change the game if a stun lands, shell shield to prevent damage against dot teams, and a solid beast attack. Frosty is great for changing the weather, landing stuns, and dealing with humanoids. Basically, he rocks at dealing with the anubisath idol everyone plays with. The wisp I may add, deals with kun-lai runts, just ruins their combos unless they get lucky.

Anyways, this went on longer than I thought it would, so, TLDR, use pets that put RNG into your favor! And always remember to play defensively. It is hard to get in the habit of switching pets, but if you don't switch out when you get bled, burned, blinded, chilled....you are just asking to lose!

Also, feel free to use this team I suggested. I won 10 out of 11 with it and got the brawlers bag.

[Guest]

Last night I won my first 2 fight, draw on the third and then helped the next 30 or so work towards their Dino. First time I've done pet battles since I got that win 10 battles achievement awhile ago. I loved the variety I saw, last time everyone had the same pets. Had fun even losing. This morning went a lot better, the team I built must have been scary 4 people white flagged, and won more than I lost for those that stayed. One fight made me laugh, we both ended with just a magical crawdad left, 86 turns later he finally won. -K

[Katzbalger]

This morning went a lot better, the team I built must have been scary 4 people white flagged, and won more than I lost for those that stayed. One fight made me laugh, we both ended with just a magical crawdad left, 86 turns later he finally won. -K

It's nothing to do with 'scary' it's time management. If you don't have darkness or flying attacks, facing a crawdad is going to take a looooong time, I really really hate facing people with 'stall' teams. Sometimes I just leave, sometimes I go afk and leave them to it, in fact right now I'm posting here while I wait for a battle vs a crawdad, turnip and celestial dragon to end. I figure if these people are happy to have a pet battle last forever, I'll go afk and let them.

I have no store pets, I'm at 125/250 wins right now and most of my teams (i have various combos I switch around between to combat boredom or negate someone if I keep getting the same team and my current setup isn't doing well vs them) are pretty easy to obtain pets. A few examples:-

Crow, Gilnean Raven, Wild Crimson Hatchling.
Ghostly Skull, Blight Hawk, Hopling.
Sunreaver Micro Sentry, Fel Flame, Baby Ape.

Right now, Kun-Lai Runt is pretty stupid, especially combined with a Tiny Snowman, and seems to be the setup 60% of people in pvp battles are using. So having an undead or a critter with undead attacks in your team is a good idea to counter the KLR.

Most of the store pets aren't really OP. The only ones you see much of in 25 pvp are rag and the monk and they're easily handled if you have the right pets.

Pet PVP is 30% getting queued vs a team that doesn't counter yours, 10% mind games, 20% OMFG WHY DID THAT MISS?! NOOOO and 40% knowledge. Knowing what abilities your opponents pets have available, the cd's on them, what 'conditions' they may need (such as 'he has a pet with blood in the water available, that always hits when you're bleeding and he's just put a bleed on my pet....I'll switch pets so it misses!') is something you learn as you go, and mind games are fun! Faking out opponents, trying to predict their next move, it's all good.

Remember...try not to be predictable. The block or evade you used 3-4 rounds ago just came off cd? If they're good, they know that, so the big attack you're expecting to dodge? They might delay it a round so you waste your cd, so maybe attack them instead! Or they might be expecting you to expect that and use their attack when your cd is up..or 3-4 rounds later...also, they might be new to the whole thing, have no idea what your pets can do or what the cd's on your abilities are and just carry on trying to do whatever they planned at the start without adjusting anything no matter what you do. I had one guy 4-5 times, always starting off the exact same way, with Mr Bigglesworth -> ice tomb > ice barrier. And every time, I giggled, hit pass and watched his ice tomb get blocked by his own ice barrier because I'd passed instead of breaking it with my attacks.

Main thing to keep in mind is that these aren't AI opponents, they're people just like you. They might be smart, dumb, experienced, new, predictable or completely insane, you can't just have a strategy like a tamer battle and do the same thing every time because unless they're really really slow*, they will learn, adapt and counter.

*Ok, some are, I do occasionally wish I could see names of people so I could talk to them and point out mistakes, give a bit of advice, I feel bad sometimes when I come up against someone who's clearly new to it, with a team and strategy they've been using on wild pets or tamers and annihilate them, I just have to hope they read forums or ask a friend rather than get discouraged. There were a lot less people pet battling prior to this patch and especially when I was doing a few fights at lower levels, I'd see the same teams multiple times in a row and actually end up switching my own team to give them a more even fight. Apart from certain balance issues (which they are trying to get right, they keep tweaking and adjusting things) and some people either deliberately or unconsciously being annoying with 'stall' teams, I find it pretty fun for a minigame I can do while waiting on queues or whatever, I don't want to discourage people I want to help them enjoy it so they keep queuing!

Wow.....wall of text, I got carried away sorry.

[Valielina]

I think practice is key here. I haven't had any problems with misses, and I haven't seen anything that I would call cheating..how would one do so anyway? Get a friend and pet duel each other for awhile. It's how I learned, I think I probably have a 80%-90% win ratio right now. I have noticed people swap their pets around a lot. I was shocked. I stick to one til its dead lol. Maybe I will try swapping them out next time.

[Khayah]

Valielina, if you aren't use pets who support each other you don't have to swap unleast the opponent comes up with a pet that is a strong counter to the one you are currently using. But there is only a small number of pets that are really doing well without prior weather etc. one example would be infinite whelpling in 4/14 but these are rare and yet you should swap if your opponent comes up with a human. An oily slimeling is doing well but only against unexperienced players as you always should swap if you are poisoned.

I'm at 107 wins right now and really like it, there is a lot of variety in pets, no obvious triple FFF Team in sight and most people using KLR, crawling claw or Lil'Rag don't play them right so they are easy to handle. It is just fun and beside an easy way to level twinks, you get plenty of xp doing pvp pet battles.

Most annoying right now are green polished battle stones^^ i get the thought i had luck to get loot but these stones are just crap imo.

Katzbalger, i also tried a deepfreeze team with snowman, klr and mr biggle but that was awful. actually i don't know what went wrong but i lost several times so i switched back to my standard setup. most important q here is, do you play that setup with blizzard or frostnova regarding the snowman.

[Shakesbeard]

...use pets that put RNG into your favor! And always remember to play defensively. It is hard to get in the habit of switching pets, but if you don't switch out when you get bled, burned, blinded, chilled....you are just asking to lose!

Main thing to keep in mind is that these aren't AI opponents, they're people just like you. They might be smart, dumb, experienced, new, predictable or completely insane, you can't just have a strategy like a tamer battle and do the same thing every time because unless they're really really slow*, they will learn, adapt and counter.

those 2 quotes pretty much nail it.

it's not about Blizzard's store pets or "cheating."

[Katzbalger]

Katzbalger, i also tried a deepfreeze team with snowman, klr and mr biggle but that was awful. actually i don't know what went wrong but i lost several times so i switched back to my standard setup. most important q here is, do you play that setup with blizzard or frostnova regarding the snowman.

I don't play that setup at all, personally I think the deepfreeze setups are a bit cheesy, I only have one KLR and I use it exclusively on a few tamer battles, haven't even leveled my snowman to 25 I don't think. Almost everybody I've seen with it uses blizzard, as it renders everybody chilled and negates pet swapping to avoid the stun, unless you have an elemental pet, not seen anyone use biggles in a klf/snowman team yet myself. That's mainly why I find it cheesy tbh. Unless you have a weather change yourself, plus at least 1 avoidance AND an elemental or critter (snails good vs this, undead attack and aquatic plus dive works for avoidance), if they use it properly it's pretty much impossible to avoid.

[Khayah]

In theory Mr biggle is used to destroy the critter. Critter are the biggest threat to deepfreeze teams but Mr biggles has 325 speed and is an awesome counter to critter, although fast rabbits like spring rabbit have 357 speed but the rhapanawelk in 5/15 has only 260 speed and is the fastest snail. you can also block dive and burrow with ice barrier, as i said in theory awesome but i couldn't get along with it. Maybe i should give another try.

I played a lot with a darkness team Gilneas raven in 8/18, skull in 7/17 and a lantern, synergy is awesome as flash is really a good counter for pet switches but due to darkness my nocturnal strike missed so often, perceived 1/3, and i lost too many matches to decisive misses of that move. moreso as darkness has 5 rounds cooldown you lose every "weather war" to lightning oder blizzard

so ultimatively i play without weather and just destroyed a klr+anub idol+Lil'Ragnaros team with two pets still alive sweet taste of awesomeness, i gonna stick to that team for a while

[Luciandk]

Ive had pretty good success with a Darkness build. Had 0 pvp wins a couple hours ago. Up to 55 now.

Crow, Gilnean Raven, Ghostly Skull


To above poster: You do realize that undead takes increased damage from critters? And biggles is undead..

[Khayah]

Best counter against deepfreeze teams are very fast critter or sth with avoidance etc

yes mr biggle is undead but has a strong attack against critter and snails for example have just one strong attack against undead and that is Goo ... against a fast rabbit you are screwed up anyway, mr biggle ought to be just a backup. you could also use a beast with primal cry but that doesn't fit as good as mr biggle as he can also provide a chill effect and a stun. Maybe i should try double klr and choose a faster second one but right now i'm happy with my other team. Just looking for a good alternative for greater variety, to avoid boredom and as my realmpool isn't that big it is likely possible that you encounter the same player more often during late night.

[Misstrina]

Ive battled about 30 teams or so in the past few days and have won 2 battles. I've used several different teams, swapped out pets,, and nothings helping. then i read on the forums that "so and so" pets good, spend time leveling it up,, then it fails in pvp just like the last 40 pets i've tried. i miss my moves about 40% of the time and max 4 times in a row so far. Feeling hopeless at this point.

[Yellowlab]

Ive battled about 30 teams or so in the past few days and have won 2 battles. I've used several different teams, swapped out pets,, and nothings helping. then i read on the forums that "so and so" pets good, spend time leveling it up,, then it fails in pvp just like the last 40 pets i've tried. i miss my moves about 40% of the time and max 4 times in a row so far. Feeling hopeless at this point.

Judging from this post, you seem to be doing something wrong. Using pets that people suggest are powerful isn't the complete solution. You have to pair them with pets that compliment them. So when someone suggests that you use a crow pet, its good to use another pet that also thrives in darkness. Pandaren monk for example. Also, lets say you bread and butter pet is a beast. Try using an elemental pet to back it up, since elemental attacks do a lot more damage to mechanical pets, which counter beasts.

I am stuck at work all day just trolling the forums til 7pm, but I am more than happy to help you out in game if you need it. My realid is Yellowlab#1493. You can add me and duel me. I can explain what you may be doing wrong, or better pets to compliment your team.

[Misstrina]

I really like my Lil'deathwing he is what ive used since the start. The team i was building with him was a:
Clock'em: Haymaker, overtune,, dodge
Mr.wiggles: diseased bite, crouch and uncannychant(my plan was a higher chance to hit team)
Lil deathwing" tail sweep, roll, and cataclysm hitting for 100%

Needless to say the dream team failed in plractice. clockem's movepool seemed to shallow and mr wiggles didnt have the beefy defence to keep switching in for uncanny chant, and even though i love deathwing, his back broke trying to carry the rest of the team.
So i see ppl using the typical darkness team instead.
deathwing
Raven(B/B) or crow(P/S) since i didnt catch a (S/S).
(havent decided the third)
Im just worried that the new dream team" will fail like my last. Sick of starting from scratch

[Shaytan]

I admit I play one of the "cheesy" Blizzard teams I hear Katzbalger whining about.

I named the team "Winter is Coming"
Frosty, Tiny Snowman, Kun-Lai Runt, I have a 50% - 75% win/loss ratio, but all in all I enjoy the team and the way it plays out. All 3 pets have a synergy and build off each other.

Pet PVP is 30% getting queued vs a team that doesn't counter yours, 10% mind games, 20% OMFG WHY DID THAT MISS?! NOOOO and 40% knowledge.

Is an extremely true statement. I've come up against teams that were counter to my own and still won because the other player lacked knowledge, and I've lost games I should have had in the bag because of "OMFG WHY DID THAT MISS?!?!?! NOOOO"


Most everyone here is posting some excellent information for you to follow, or offering to help you out in-game. You should look into taking them up on the help if you want it.

Shay

[Luciandk]

I admit I play one of the "cheesy" Blizzard teams I hear Katzbalger whining about.

I named the team "Winter is Coming"
Frosty, Tiny Snowman, Kun-Lai Runt, I have a 50% - 75% win/loss ratio, but all in all I enjoy the team and the way it plays out. All 3 pets have a synergy and build off each other.

Pet PVP is 30% getting queued vs a team that doesn't counter yours, 10% mind games, 20% OMFG WHY DID THAT MISS?! NOOOO and 40% knowledge.

Is an extremely true statement. I've come up against teams that were counter to my own and still won because the other player lacked knowledge, and I've lost games I should have had in the bag because of "OMFG WHY DID THAT MISS?!?!?! NOOOO"


Most everyone here is posting some excellent information for you to follow, or offering to help you out in-game. You should look into taking them up on the help if you want it.

Shay

I can only agree. Seen so many bad teams today, even if they had kun lai runts. I never found those to be much of a problem, just switch out after they do their first attacks. My refined team: Crow, Enchanted Lantern and Ghostly Skull is having a very high level of success. Since I started with it last night where I got 50 wins, Ive racked up another 100 wins today. Just another 100 to go and the Stunted Direhorn is claimed! But ill do those tomorrow, then I am out of pvp battling for a while. At least until they add another pvp achievement pet.

Educated guess: I speculate that darkness/blind have an extra dangerous edge with the accuracy changes in 5.3. With many abilities trading accuracy for extra damage, and thusly being far more suspectible to accuracy debuffing.

[Khayah]

I played my first 100 wins exactly with the same team raven skull lantern, i could only recommend this setup to anyone here looking for improvement, but (and there is always a but) in germany lightning teams are quite fancy and so i quitted my darkness team, as stated also because miss rng wasn't in my favor. There is only one limitation, if you have just one darkness cast in your line up i had problems against other teams using weather but i think this is not true for other players.

to avoid that you could also use deathwing (elementium bolt is another good ability) or scourged whelpling which is very common.

In general - good thread here with lots of information