So I’ve moved house and it took probably 2.5 weeks to get decent Internet. That kind of makes it hard to blog about pets. Especially since I didn’t really get to do any pet battling that whole time.

But I’m back! And I’ve got better hardware and faster net so it’s extra fun. The most amazing thing so far is that now that I’m playing with the effects on, I get to hear all the cute—and sometimes pitiable—noises the pets make while battling. Kind of makes me feel bad when I beat up some of them now, but it’s still fun!

Warning: this is alot of repetitive stuff. If I do this again, I’ll likely summarize it quite a bit. But this should give some idea of how things went and what kinds of teams I faced those two evenings.

Session #1

I decided to try a few different teams from the post in #1 and see how I liked them. I also kept records over the two sessions I got to play before the move. Unfortunately, I lost the records for one of those sessions. So it goes… but I still remember enough to at least give you an update on the second session.

The Team:

This team was very similar to one of the suggestions I mentioned last time (Blind Team 2). Though I really didn’t get the hang of it.

The first three teams it faced were:

The main issue with these is that I had nothing that matched up well and they all did enough damage that my Blind didn’t seem to matter.

I decided to swap out the Moth for:

One of the great things about this pet, is its ability Surge of Light. That ability does double damage during the weather effect Darkness, which isn’t caused by the Blind debuff itself, so Elementals do not avoid it.

Then I faced:

It was a very close match mainly because of how hard it is to kill those Emperor Crabs. After seeing more KLRs, I decided to swap my Spectral Porcupette for:

Ghostly Skull with Slash, Spectral Strike, and Unholy Ascension.

Unfortunately, the next team I faced was:

This team swapped continually and eventually had three pets at 20% health when I lost. It was very frustrating and made me wish I had a way to stop the swaps.

I decided to swap the Skull for

This was one of my go-to pets with previous Blind teams.

I faced the same Imp, Spiderling, Custodian team and this time I won because I had a way to burn down the Mechanical. It was close though as they missed twice in a row one time.

So to recap, my current team is:

I stuck with that for several matches. I next faced:

This was a close matchup, but my opponent swapped out a nearly dead Sunreaver for the Whelpling and ended up with a ton of buffed humanoid damage from Surge of Light. I next faced:

This was close as Animus had 10% left on his failsafe when he finished me off. Next was:

This was someone pretending to be a newb (they didn’t even name their pets) but the team was well put together and had enough healing, especially from the crab, that I couldn’t finish them even with Call Darkness. Next was:

This team had lots of DoTs from the eggs, bananas, and nuts that were raining down, and it might have been smart if they had a Lightning dragon to go with it. I had a small setback when Surge of Light missed, but managed to win on my Lantern vs. their Chicken.

I had faced this team earlier, but it wasn’t even close this time as my Lantern rocked them.

Another repeat, only this time I led with my Beast to try and draw out their Mechanicals. They still started with the Valkyr, but my Beast wiped it out pretty fast and the Lantern destroyed the rest of their team.

No Mechanical or Undead damage on my end made this a tough loss.

Their swap attacks missed twice the first battle due to the Blinds being thrown around, and I think frustrated them a bit. They led with the Abyssal the second time instead of the Imp and then I lost.

At this point I was seeing so many Beasts that I decided to swap out the Feline Familiar for:

Crow with Alpha Strike, Call Darkness, Nocturnal Strike.

The text team I faced was:

I lost that very closely with their last pet at 10%. Then I faced:

The Anubiseth was too hard to kill, again.

I then decided to do a complete swap to one of the Lightning teams suggested before:

The first team this faced was:

This team seemed to be very laggy the first round so it wasn’t a very good test. I faced them again in the next round and a bad swap at the end cost me a very close match. I then faced:

The claw was a huge difference maker and makes me wish I was more lucky with my digging. I decided to swap my Shadeling for:

Firefly with Slicing Wind, Cocoon and Swarm.

The next team I faced was:

They fled after my Swarm + Storm managed to wipe out the Direhorn. They led with KLR the second time which was a much better match up for them.

At this point, I swapped in my Clockwork Gnome for Peddlefeet so my team was:

The next team I faced was:

The first round was a close loss with a few misses on my side making a difference. I won big the second round by swapping a few extra times to keep my Gnome alive until the end.

For those keeping track, my overall W/L was 10-13. With the best team being the Feline Familiar, Soul of the Aspects, Festival Lantern which went 6-4.

The most common pets I faced were the Kun-Lai Runt, the Fiendish Imp, and the Stunted Direhorn or Pygmy Direhorn. Those were often pair with another swapper like Netherspace Abyssal or Crawling Claw and I also saw Anubiseth Idol several times.

In summary, I’d say I was most impressed by the Soul of the Aspects + Darkness combo and the Lightning Storm + Turrets combo. The Festival Lantern is still very strong as well. The Spectral Porcupette didn’t seem to work the way I played it. Peddlefeet was kind of a mixed result, and neither of the Undead pets I tried panned out.

Session #2

Again, I lost the notes I had for it, but the overall record was much better.

The Teams:

This team did well, but Lil ‘XT never really felt like he pulled his own weight. It was difficult to get a Heartbroken combo off and when it did, it rarely survived to get the tantrum off. Swapping to Boom Bot didn’t help much.

So I swapped Lil ‘XT for:

Scourged Whelpling with Tail Sweep, Call Darkness, and Plagued Blood/Dreadful Breath.

This did much better but, again, the Whelpling would rarely survive long enough for Dreadful Breath to do that much damage and there were too many swaps involved to get Plagued Blood to stick to any one target. Facing all of these swap teams makes it more difficult.

I tried swapping the Whelpling for a Pandaren Air Elemental, which worked a bit with all of the extra dots, but it felt a little fragile. So I swapped it for a Pandaren Fire Elemental.

My final team was:

This team rocked the rest of the night. I would open with the Golden Hatchling to do Lightning Storm + Cyclone, then the Gnome to Build Turrets, and then I would sometimes swap to my Elemental and sometimes not depending upon the match up.

The Flame Wave was very good as it hit their entire team with Lightning damage. I just had to time it so that it wouldn’t remove my turrets. One time, I faced another Lightning + Clockwork Gnome team and being able to wipe out their turrets when I felt like it made it feel much easier. The same for the Lil’ Rags + Fire Trap teams I was facing. Toward the end of the night, I dropped Cauterize completely in favor of Conflagrate and it made the combo seem even more powerful.

I still managed to lose to a few teams, but it made the swap teams less of a problem since forcing me to swap to either my Elemental or my Gnome were actually a bonus as they both teamed up well with Lightning Storm. The only tough teams were the Anubisath Idol with Sandstorm, but even those weren’t that bad as long as I made sure to use Lightning Storm after their Sandstorm and then just bring in the Elemental which completely negated Sandstorm when they reapplied it.

By the end of the second session, I had more than made up the deficit from the first session, had gotten past the 50 Level 25 PvP wins achievement, and still wanted to play more.