Unborn val'kry haunt

[Digem]

This is my first post and I have not seen this addressed yet and if so I am sorry.

Since they redid how haunt works it seems way overpowered to me.
Seems a Val can cast this and either kill or seriously damage ones pet be reborn and do again.
How does one counter this move now?
It has been tearing my teams up lately.
Before one had to survive and the Val died right?
Am I missing something?
Seems to be the new direhorns of pvp now.
Any tips would be appreciated.

[Luciandk]

[ability]Haunt[/ability] was buffed yes. Before 5.4, if the Haunted creature died before Haunt expired, then the Valkyr would never ressurect. Its much less risky to use now, and could arguably use a nerf for being too good an ability for delivering safe damage.

But using an aquatic pet will pretty much amputate a Valkyr. Beside taking 33% less damage from undead abilities, dots are reduced by 50% on aquatic pets.

Plus I sometimes see Haunt being played badly, like someone playing it while they have one dead pet, and reducing their numbers to 1 active but wounded pet. If you can manage to kill it before Haunt ticks down, then youve won because all their pets are 'dead'.

Or in other cases, people throwing away their victory by Haunting my wounded last pet, while they had no other pets left. Big Oops there!

[Digem]

Thank you for confirming by suspicion.
I haven't been pvping as much since 5.4 and the first few weeks seemed most played with what they always did or tried out new pets.
But, last weeks seems all I see is a least one Val per team sometimes more.
So this will be the move of annoyance to get my 10 wins per week.
Guess this means I must unleash my frogs or panderan water spirit.

[Luciandk]

[pet]Pandaren Water Spirit[/pet] is Elemental, not Aquatic!

[Hootstwo]

The only time I've seen Haunt really sort of backfire (I admit to using it myself) is when there are two Val'Kyr that use Haunt on the same round. First haunt in wins, second Val'Kyr that runs it dies - permanently. It's fantastic when it happens to your advantage, it means your Val'Kyr resurrects immediately only to allow you to immediately haunt the next pet that comes in.

[Shagina]

Swap teams can deal with the valk pretty well in my experience. Either he spends a lot of turns trying to get the valk out, or she's parked on the backline for most of the fight. As mentioned previously the trick is to take down at least 1 of the opponents pets before the valk really gets into play. That way the use of haunt can be very risky, as you can simply burst down his last pet with little regard for your own safety, due to number advantage. Even if you lost a pet (or two) as long as his pet dies and your haunted pet lives, it's a win.

I run a rather disgusting combination of Fiendish imp (S/S), Bone Spider and the Val'kyr myself when I feel like getting my wins quickly, it picks apart a lot of teams (though it suffers vs aquatic and general healing team) efficiently and I've had very little trouble with opponents using the valk. I'll either park her on the sideline with my swappers, or better yet get a haunt on her by going valk vs valk at the start. They'll use curse of doom first, most of the time, so I just open with haunt. My next pet just swaps their valk the backline while haunted and there she stays. As long as I get my own valk out immediately haunt has ended, doom might not tick until the end of the match since she stays haunted.

The third option is rabbits. They can more or less kill her before she can even land a single hit on them, but it depends on how many beasts you see around. Direhorns hurt them pretty badly, but they deal with both Zao and Xu-Fu pretty well.

[Avalee]

I had varying success with the Sumprush Rodent, using (2,1,2).
Stench reduces accuracy with 25%, Mudslide is strong against Undead AND makes it impossible for it to be swithced. Tail Slap, though having a low accuracy, is a pretty strong attack.

[Sharleendk]

I'm countering it with a faster Unborn Val'kyr + Rabbit. If I face a Val'kyr with the same speed, I will use Haunt as my first move, usually my opponent will do the same. If I hit first, his pet will die upon using his Haunt, otherwise I will die and lose .

If my Val'kyr is faster, I start with Doom then Haunt and switch to my Rabbit for Dodge > Flurry > Burrow (when Burrow hits opponents Val'kyr will die.


But yeah it is very overpowered, I'm winning close to 95% of all my battles thanks to it. I lose if I face Water pets + pets with Surge or similar attacks.

[Jerebear]

What does an ability that removes debuffs/buffs do if you are under haunt? Is it a viable counter or just a waste?

[Vek]

Sear Magic would remove Haunt, wich in essence would cause it to expire and the valk to resurrect. Though Haunt has no cooldown so it can be cast again as soon as the valk is in the frontline.

The true power of Haunt is that you get a free switch and the Valk cant be damaged during the duration.

Other than that it is just a dot, and not too overpowered as such. Treat it as other dots. Aquatic racial/Shell/Standstorm pretty much negates the damage it does. I think that the Rain weather is not working properly though, I don't seem to be getting the -1 round at least. So perhaps Haunt doesn't "count" as a dot for that.

A recent favourite counter for me is Death Adder. Just Blind the Valk. It can still spam Haunt but when it finally can cast it you will have done about half the Valk's hp in dmg and you will be ahead of any damage Haunt will do to you. Also when the Valk resurrects it will have a dot on it in backline.

The most dangerous thing a Valk user can do is buff the Haunt dmg with something like Howl/Stampede/Black Claw/Wild Magic. But if you see that coming you just need to switch your pet to back line.

[Jerebear]

That's not too bad then. Sear Magic only has a two round cooldown. It'll take two rounds to swap the valk back in and use haunt, so that can mitigate the damage quite a bit as well as frustrate some non seasoned pvp'ers. Maybe not a great long term strategy, but perhaps a team could be thought up to leverage this.

Still I think Haunt does need the dot damage tuned down a bit. Its damage should be low enough to use a shield ability to negate it given that it is so easy to apply + easy swap + no cooldown.

As you alluded, I do find the S/S Death Adder a pretty good pet to use on a starting Valk. Blinding Poison + Puncture Wound and then swap to the pet you want to tank haunt. The only problem is he needs to be out for when the the valk is brought back in because you won't be able to swap him in and use blinding poison again.

Do DoTs put on the valk still count down while the valk is haunting or do they pause? Your above post implies they pause until the valk is back out.

[Vek]

Yes. Stuff cast on the Valk is put on hold and start ticking again when it ress.

[Ligre]

If Haunt had, say, a 3 or 4 round CD, there'd be a lot less complaints about it. It CAN miss, be dodged or blocked...but the Valks already have a spammable in Slot 1. IMO, Haunt does not need to be spammable.

[Poofah]

If Haunt had, say, a 3 or 4 round CD, there'd be a lot less complaints about it. It CAN miss, be dodged or blocked...but the Valks already have a spammable in Slot 1. IMO, Haunt does not need to be spammable.

Agreed, the lack of cooldown is left over from when the mechanics of Haunt made it naturally have a cooldown -- ie if it was avoided or ended early, the Valk simply died. Now there's no risk at all associated with Haunt, unless you're facing another Valk. It's way too much damage to be so user-friendly.

[Shagina]

3-4 round cooldown would effectively kill the ability, but 1-2 rounds isn't unreasonable. While I most definitely agree she needs a nerf of some kind, I would be sad to see her broken completely (as I would with any pet).

[Jerebear]

I would disagree. I don't see a 3 or 4 round killing the ability. It would keep people from spamming it at the beginning of a match and make them think a bit, especially against pets that can avoid it, but it would still be better than a lot of other abilities that do less damage with longer cooldowns (CoD for example).

[Ril]

it should definately be blockable. i often anticipated the haunt pretty well and was prepared to counter it, only to have it casted on my pet on the next round. on top of it, haunt once hit my pet but the death effect missed the enemy pet so that i would end up with a haunted pet and a living valkyr opponent. good times...

[Shagina]

As I said, I do agree that a cooldown would be a good way to go about balancing her, I just think that 3-4 rounds is too much. When she is out and unable to haunt (say she's the last pet left on her team) she's a rather weak pet actually. Curse of Doom is good, but not spectacular. Many ways to counter it. Other than that she is left with a standard 90% (or 85%) nuke and mediocre stats. The chances of her even staying alive long enough to get haunt off (if the first one misses) are actually not that great, and haunt is really the only thing that makes her special. There are already several ways of dealing with her (standard dot counters, healing teams, force swap and other disruptions), at this point her biggest impact on the metagame seems to be the fact that she limits you to using comps that can deal with her in some way (which is still a bad thing, of course).

Simply ask yourself this: Would you take her in a team if Haunt had a 4 (or even 3) round cooldown? Would it be worth the risk?

[3wd]

There are many ways to counter the haunt :

1. Use an aquatic pet is the most simple way, most of the haunt damage will ne reduced to minimum.

2. Sandstorm helps a lots.

3. Shield helps a lots.

4. Pets like the imp that can force your opponent to switch pet helps.

5. Use a valk against them also, let them haunt you first, and you haunt his next pet, so that his haunt will only last 1 round.

6. use dots helps as it will damage the valk when she get up in back row.


Skills you should NOT use against a valk :

1. do not use any delay damage spell, such as seed / ice tomb, the valk will just wait for that round to haunt you and your spell is wasted.


If you are using a valk team, and you know your opponent is going to use an aquatic pet, you can still use certain setup to kill their pet :

- Use a valk + naxx dog combo.

your valk cast curse of doom before haunt, and then your dog will cast hawl with 2 rounds left for the curse to to damage.

with the 100% plus dmg and the help of curse, you will be able to kill most of the aquatic pet unless they have shield also or its a lobster.

[Ligre]

4 rounds miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight be a bit much...but 2 rounds isn't enough. 3 would be fine with me, and I still maintain that it would not "kill" the validity of the pet or the ability at all. And, btw, god forbid people should use Unholy Ascension anymore. That's another reason to fix Haunt a bit.