I'm in a huge need of assistance

[Ginzel]

Could anyone give me a recommendation on some PvP team comps that are not going to get annihilated by the current Meta?

I've been out of the game for a good year, and I'm coming back and getting torn up!

Or should I just run an undead heavy team like everyone else?

[Gráinne]

Discodoggy is the main source of team and tactic ideas:

http://pvppetbattles.com/daily-battle/

http://pvppetbattles.com/wod-teams/

Here is an excellent thread about a non-meta team
http://www.warcraftpets.com/community/f ... =3&t=15874

One battler recently opined that we should all play three H/H Bone Serpents. That seems to be where the current game is heading, though a Graves and two Bone Serpents would probably be better if you can stand to play HotS.

Another viable option is Blossoming Ancient, Singing Sunflower and another healer like Ruby Droplet or Son of Sethe.

I recently started a new battler in the queue with Nexus Whelpling, Iron Starlette and Bone Serpent, and he did OK with it. Brute force and ignorance is always an option.

But I see you have Graves, MPD, Murkalot, Weeb. Level that Fragment of Anger and Bone Serpent and Teroclaw, and you, too, can join the boring, boring, BORING meta, with options for a few grace notes on the side. Playing an interesting team yourself does you no good when you are meeting the same faces all the time.

[Ginzel]

Thank you!

[Paladance]

Sorry for the intrusion, but could someone compare for sure the H/H and P/S breeds of [pet]Bone Serpent[/pet]?
Maybe it's just a Murphy's Law paranoia but I can't get rid of a feeling that the additional round of the former one has no direct damage anyway and can provide only some indirect soaking.

[Logansfury]

Sorry for the intrusion, but could someone compare for sure the H/H and P/S breeds of [pet]Bone Serpent[/pet]?
Maybe it's just a Murphy's Law paranoia but I can't get rid of a feeling that the additional round of the former one has no direct damage anyway and can provide only some indirect soaking.

The Bone Serpents always get stuck on that cooldowns across the board with the typical 1,2,1 moveset and ive seen it land on inconvenient rounds forcing a pass or swap very often, but from my experience, the 325 additional health of the HH breed has allowed a pass/soak to victory as the HH serpent survives a low end hit and delivers a finishing move just as often.

The 29 additional attack power of the PS breed is allowing a 716 dam Noc Strike compared to the HH's 658 dam hit. I wouldnt say the 58 pts of extra damage qualifies as enough of a "nuke" hit to surpass that extra round survivability the HH breed can enjoy.

Just my observations from my corner of the meta. Your mileage may vary against your opponent pool, but I hope this helps

[Milotha]

Here are some of my teams:

Iron Starlette
Ghastly Kid/Bone Sepent
Fiendish Imp

Son of Sethe
Clockwork Gnome/Bone Sepent
Fiendish Imp

MPD
Weeboomination
Kovok

Bone Sepent
Crow/Nighshade Sproutling
Junglebeak

Fragment of Anger
Weebomination
Fiendish Imp

Fiendish Imp
Ghastly Kid
Scaled Basilisk Hatchling

Weebomination
Droplet of Y'Sharrj
Scourged Whelpling
(I think this team is like 99-1 for me)

[Vakeetah]

Sorry for the intrusion, but could someone compare for sure the H/H and P/S breeds of [pet]Bone Serpent[/pet]?
Maybe it's just a Murphy's Law paranoia but I can't get rid of a feeling that the additional round of the former one has no direct damage anyway and can provide only some indirect soaking.

I spent a bit longer than I should looking into it, but here are my findings...

Logansfury is right in that, in most situations, the HH will last 1 round longer - and this is almost universally a guarantee of more damage (there's one exceptional case, though, will show it below!)

This is just theoretical, but let's translate Health into "rounds", based on incoming damage. I'll call it TTL (time-to-live). Since the Serpent is Undead, its minimum TTL is always 2 even if it gets one-shot (not dying + Damned).

TTL is shown below. The image is kinda cropped on the side, but you don't miss much (after all, it's the "instant death" zone of 1200+ damage) but you can inspect it with right click if you want :p

Probably hard to see anything I guess... There are 3 bars, one for each breed, and a "ruler" of sorts on top that measures incoming average damage. Knowing which enemy you face, and baring crits, you will be able to estimate how long your Bone Serpent will live, and the rotation to apply.

While this includes up to 10 rounds of TTL, such situations are highly unlikely. A reasonable estimate is between 5 and 7 rounds.

It is obvious that in most cases, at same incoming damage, the HH will invariably get an extra round over the PS - but there are a handful of incoming damage thresholds where its TTL is the same, making PS immediately superior. These thresholds are shaded in grey, with red numbers on their boundaries.

The first one is an average of exactly 329 damage per round (unlikely to ever happen), but the 411-439 incoming damage threshold is a reasonable and plausible situation. Further thresholds (548-639 and 822-1318) are unlikely, except maybe against PvE bosses with OP abilities.

Anyway, that aside, based on your pet's TTL, you can also adjust the damage rotation to maximize DPS. This is a way of speaking, since Pet Battles aren't (or shouldn't be) DPS races - but yeah, it's the way to dish out the most raw damage anyway. Most of the time, this involves "weaving" Barrages instead of spamming everything on cooldown and getting locked out. The Max-DPS rotations (based on rounds alive) are displayed below:

Purple-shaded cells are rounds where Darkness is up, green border means Bone Barrage DoT is up. While it is tempting to just unleash [ability]Call Darkness[/ability] + [ability]Nocturnal Strike[/ability], opening with [ability]Bone Barrage[/ability] delays the ever dreadful idle round where everything is locked out.

Also, note that this is a theoretical max, that includes "lingering" bone barrage damage even after the pet is dead, and assumes everything hits (which may not be the case with 70% hit chance...). Still, it proves that Bone Serpents do indeed deal a lot of damage!

Again, as said above, it's fairly clear that the HH is better whenever it gets an extra round, with one exception - and that is when PS gets a TTL of 5 - as the extra 6th round the HH gets is an idle one, being only good for soaking. This is important, because it means that the PS will deal more damage than the HH if the incoming damage is between 330 and 439, and this includes the 411-439 damage threshold where their TTL is actually the same (and in which case the HH wouldn't even get a "soak" round).

In short? If the average incoming damage is between 330 and 439, the P/S deals more damage; otherwise, the H/H does (outside of the same TTL thresholds, which require massive damage income).

What about the BB, and the SS? I've left them out of the argument because they don't make a lot of sense.

The B/B just falls in between the HH and the PS both in damage and durability, there will be thresholds where it will live 1 round longer and some where it won't. With mediocre speed as well, this should be taken on a per-case basis (such as PvE encounters where you can predict the incoming and outgoing DPS).

As for the SS, it has the same TTL as the PS, with the damage of the HH - so gets the worst of both worlds. The only advantage is that, if it is faster than the enemy and can kill it before the enemy does, its TTL increases by 1 - and this is cumulative, for each pet that it can kill, it gets an extra round of life. However, since it doesn't hit very hard, is relatively frail, and slower than most "fast" pets, it's hardly a good choice. Might still be useful with a [ability]Lift-Off[/ability] build I guess.

[Logansfury]

Excellent post Vakeetah!

I was relying on recollection for my advice, its fantastic to see the more authoritative numbers of the theory.

I wish I was at this level of mathematics and theorycrafting!

[Paladance]

Wow! I'm speechless. Thank you so much.
Are you a single? Because I'd like to hug you!

Perhaps there's another story with shielded pets or [ability]brittle webbing[/ability]. Add an incoming resurrection sickness to that.
So in a fact, you're going to hate me anyway!

Going back to the general overview, I've recently figured out that [ability]Spiritfire Beam[/ability] has the same amount of output as [ability]BONESTORM[/ability], yet the first one isn't harmful for a caster. Add some [ability]Seethe[/ability]-ing to that and you can think about kicking MPD's tailside.

I still wish magic pets were more viable. Who needs a partial nerf to bursts when you have sustaining mechs/undeads and [pet]Teroclaw Hatchling[/pet]?

Perhaps this is an approach issue -- they've recently admitted that there is too much PvE factors in PvP when in comes to regular characters. But putting an effort to so thin branch of pet-related activity? Impossible!
(It also matches the recent Gráinne's post in the chocolate forums.)

E: slight typo
E2 (2017): Dismissing an out-of-date statement.

[Milotha]

Weebomination
Droplet of Y'Sharrj
Scourged Whelpling
(I think this team is like 99-1 for me)

IF this is true, consider yourself extremely lucky.

Frogs (which must be non-existent on your server) will decimate this team.

One of the advantages of playing on a shitty server with everyone playing the same teams over and over. Even then most people screw up the counters. M ost people are too busy playing their sexy pets, but hey call me a liar.

[Gráinne]

Wow, Vakeetah! Just .... wow. /applaud

I often find an opportunity to use the H/H with CD->NS->BB->swap out - depending on opposing team, ofc. Especially if the Serpent is at half-health or better, or if I have a team heal or Wish to perk it up, the extra damage from using the big cooldowns twice is worth the swap round. A H/H commonly has the raw HP to survive two innings, where a P/S or S/S doesn't.

Also, would frogs really be so good against a Dreadful Breath team? It's a Humanoid attack, so they take full damage. And while the Elemental won't long survive Frog Kiss, unless they get lucky with their kiss RNG the Whelpling will be OK, and any Cleansing Rain helps the Dreadful Breath. Granted, the Weeb won't be a star there, but still ... I dunno.

I've only ever seen maybe two or three triple-frog teams in all my (1500?) battles, so it doesn't seem far fetched to me that someone would go a hundred battles without seeing any.

[Vakeetah]

Also, would frogs really be so good against a Dreadful Breath team? It's a Humanoid attack, so they take full damage. And while the Elemental won't long survive Frog Kiss, unless they get lucky with their kiss RNG the Whelpling will be OK, and any Cleansing Rain helps the Dreadful Breath. Granted, the Weeb won't be a star there, but still ... I dunno.

Actually, they may be. Just like with [ability]Early Advantage[/ability], the 2nd and 3rd turns of [ability]Dreadful Breath[/ability] are counted as a DoT and deal half damage to Aquatics.

Or well, at least this was still the case prior to 6.0 (I loved my [pet]Droplet of Y'shaarj[/pet]!). Haven't really used Dreadful Breath that much, but it's possible that it still retains this odd behavior despite moving to the split-AoE paradigm, making Aquatics indirectly good against it.

[Gráinne]

Just like with [ability]Early Advantage[/ability], the 2nd and 3rd turns of [ability]Dreadful Breath[/ability] are counted as a DoT and deal half damage to Aquatics.

Or well, at least this was still the case prior to 6.0 (I loved my [pet]Droplet of Y'shaarj[/pet]!). Haven't really used Dreadful Breath that much, but it's possible that it still retains this odd behavior despite moving to the split-AoE paradigm, making Aquatics indirectly good against it.

I never knew that.

Channels a dreadful toxic breath which deals 413 Humanoid damage split across the enemy team. Deals additional damage if the weather is Cleansing Rain.
Your pet continues performing this attack for 3 rounds.

Gotta love these clear and complete tooltip descriptions.

[Vakeetah]

Just like with [ability]Early Advantage[/ability], the 2nd and 3rd turns of [ability]Dreadful Breath[/ability] are counted as a DoT and deal half damage to Aquatics.

Or well, at least this was still the case prior to 6.0 (I loved my [pet]Droplet of Y'shaarj[/pet]!). Haven't really used Dreadful Breath that much, but it's possible that it still retains this odd behavior despite moving to the split-AoE paradigm, making Aquatics indirectly good against it.

I never knew that.

Just tested. Seems it's no longer the case, sorry for 2-year outdated information!

[Paladance]

As pet event is up, I'd like to ask for tips myself. I've tried or created some of teams myself, but I'm booooored by picking up same and same pets just to counter the meta or take a part of it (MPD blah blah Despair the Weebomination blah).
I don't have a DAH or a DoY. Boo.

Well, I'd like to get more fun and still be competetive, if it's possible.
Name it a C-B rated, or 80% gameplay.

[Logansfury]

As pet event is up, I'd like to ask for tips myself. I've tried or created some of teams myself, but I'm booooored by picking up same and same pets just to counter the meta or take a part of it (MPD blah blah Despair the Weebomination blah).
I don't have a DAH or a DoY. Boo.

Well, I'd like to get more fun and still be competetive, if it's possible.
Name it a C-B rated, or 80% gameplay.

Have you worked with Clonedance teams? You have the Jademist dancer, Blighthawk, and Axebeak all in rare 25s to field immediately if that synergy appeals to you.

[Paladance]

I've tried that before with Terky instead of a Bloodbeak (poor humanoid! But 4 rounds are so encouraging and I haven't levelled my piglet!) but definitely can try it out again, even just avatar sake! Thanks.

It's morning here, so not right now, I'm still open to tips.

[Gráinne]

I'm still open to tips.

You had to say that, just when I was doing so well...

So make a game of it. Do it an odd way.

So I took the quest - like I need another purple stone. Those things should be BoA and they should stack. Oh well, some alt will have space.

My first thought was to tame a whole new team from Wild Pandaria and run with that, but I didn't have that much energy.

I remembered Virgilioar's team Equlilbrium. I tried it out a bit when I was last playing, but it takes a bit of concentration, which was in short supply at the time, so I didn't do it justice. My challenge to myself - the game - was to buckle down and calculate, use it properly, and play until I get a streak of 5 wins in a row.

My first opponent was a Consume Corpse Graves team. Of all team types, this is the one I find hardest to deal with. I was about to throw in the towel at one point, but that Sproutling heal is a life-saver - literally - and I was comfortable at the end. One of the others was noteworthy - a very well played Celestial Dragon/Rabbit/Xu-Fu team (Moonlight/Spirit Claws). Lot of swaps. I really enjoyed that one, apart from being on the wrong side of a Spirit Claws crit. So I went 5-0 straight, and can virtuously say I've done my duty for this month. Being event week, only 2 of my 5 opponents ran Graves, which left me with that pleasant feeling you get when the battles have variety.

So my suggestion is to go out with a team based on trickery - swapping, blinding, feigning - so that you can at least feel you're befuddling the opposition even if they're playing a really boring team, and then assign yourself a specific way to do it. That preserves some interest, however dull the meta.