Core Hound Pup underappreciated?

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Luciandk
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Core Hound Pup underappreciated?

Post by Luciandk » May 17th, 2013, 6:02 am

Ive for a long time been considering Chrominius as one of the more powerful pets with a quite nasty two-punch in Howl+Surge of Power. Plus Chrominus have a considerable healthpool to allow him to take the hits in the two turns of recovery right after.

Howl+Surge of Power doing 1480 damage to nonvulnerable targets at the cost of 2 turns of free damage on him.


But recently I had a closer look at the Core Hound Pup, and after leveling up one to 25 to try it out, I feel my hunch was right about it. It also have a significant pool of hp, nearly as much as Chrominius. Far stronger and far less points wasted in speed. Comming with Howl and Burrow for a 3 turn setup including a round of evasion, clocking in at 1196 damage done for the combo. With far less damage taken compared to Chrominius. The minus however is the 80% accuracy on Burrow, unlike SoP's 100%.

But as Ive tried it out, the Corehound Pup will last a lot longer than Chrominius and can pull of its combo more often. Making it more suitable for a first or a second pet. Whereas Chrominus makes a far better third pet for a brutal finishing blow to decide a pet battle to lessen the impact of the forced downtime.


Howl is the strongest damage debuff out there, and the Core Hound Pup is the only pet packing it with Burrow.

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Poofah
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Re: Core Hound Pup underappreciated?

Post by Poofah » May 17th, 2013, 1:28 pm

Howl is really strong when you get to use it on your terms, ie against a tamer or when your opponent is down to their last pet. It costs 1 turn but potentially gives you 2 turns' worth of extra damage. But it's really easy to counter, which is probably why the Pup is underappreciated (correctly, imo).

Howl + Burrow is 3 turns to get 1196 damage (80% accuracy). If you use those 3 turns on Howl+Scratch+Scratch, you get 1368 damage with 100% accuracy. You also get a turn of evasion when you Burrow, which can be very advantageous when you know that the opponent will attack on that turn. However against a player, they will almost certainly swap their pet out after getting Howled, and then the Burrow won't dodge anything anyway.

As you said, Surge of Power is especially good when it's the killing blow on the last pet, because then the downtime doesn't matter. Howl has exactly the same issue though: it's good against the last pet, because that pet can't swap. If the Howled pet can swap, then you've traded 1 turn of Howl for 1 turn of swapping, which is not to your advantage. So if the Pup is using Howl, then he probably doesn't want to be a 1st or 2nd pet anyway.

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Luciandk
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Re: Core Hound Pup underappreciated?

Post by Luciandk » May 17th, 2013, 1:44 pm

Hrm, good words about howl and scratch, hadnt thought of that. But Ive mainly looked it from a PvE fighting view as Ive no interest in pvp pet battling. The CHP is still the strongest pet with Howl, meaning max damage potential from 2 turns of Scratch.

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