Raiding With Leashes IV breeds

[Lolfixheal]

Very nice with many new unique models, moves, movesets. Hopefully in the clusterfuck of randomness we can find potentially new pets that we end up actually using I particularly like the Boneshard moveset for the option of going BONESTORM 24/7 - just because.

However the point of this thread is to discuss breed options for these new pets. I'm basing my thoughts of recently updated Battle Pet BreedID addon. Only pets with multiple breeds available are being listed.

Trial of the Crusader:
Nerubian Swarmer P/S - not much difference I do prefer the semi-breed over X/B for slight increase on statbudget
Snobold Runt* S/S - Ice Spike doesn't have hitchance on but Kick interrupt is always nice. Not much difference on power and health so might as well go first. 2nd pet in game with Weakened Blow, perhaps new improved Turnip for us?

* Actually not part of the achievement apparently, but still a pet in the same boat as the others.

Ulduar:
G0-R41-0N Ultratonk H/P - I personally prefer power wherever I can find it, but H/H is just as compelling. If this mechanical pet had a heal/repair I'd opt H/H, but with the amount of hard-hit / long-cooldown abilities I'm leaning more towards extra power.
Ironbound Proto-Whelp H/H - with Tail Sweep you want to go slow, slot2 abilities speak endurance together with that Ancient Blessing. Also pure breed > X/B breed statbudget.
Sanctum Cub P/P - annoying to get these movesets that screams speed but no breeds for it. We all know Black Claw is baws so perhaps Black Claw - Leap - Rend ? Both slot1 abilities requires speed regardless and the Dodge can become 2-turn if using Leap. Seems very Leap dependent.

Icecrown Citadel:
Blightbreath H/P - no fast breeds so we optimize power and health whilst keeping low speed. Good value. Even the H/S is only 273, 3 short of 276 plateau.
Blood Boil ?/? - no idea to be honest as I haven't seen that copy thing in action. At least I know we will land on a purebreed S/S, P/P or H/H.
Wicked Soul S/S - a fast undead? What, am I dreaming? IMPOSSIBRU! 337 speed and a Haunt, now this becomes interesting with Agony as well. Alternatively P/S isn't bad in PvE I guess, but for PvP S/S all the way. Wonder if it even would fit in any team.


Let me know your thoughts gents and ladies

[Fhina]

Blood Boil seems to come in EVERY breed. So far, I've only gotten mixes - H/S, P/S, H/P. Not sure what to keep.

[Paladance]

The breeds ambiguity makes me lose a motivation a bit, though on the other hand, most of the time better a choice than a lack of it.

RNG god is very intriguing to me. Got not one, but two Dreadmaws, that can have only a B/B breed, a Snobold Runt (yay?), but an S/B one and a Nerubian Swarmer, that has happened to be S/B aswell. All of these, save the first Dreadmaw, in a single run.

Went through ICC and half Ulduar with no pets at all.

On a topic, I haven't noticed any flaw in the original post, unless there are any new breeds of course.

[Discodoggy]

Wicked Soul S/S - a fast undead? What, am I dreaming? IMPOSSIBRU! 337 speed and a Haunt, now this becomes interesting with Agony as well. Alternatively P/S isn't bad in PvE I guess, but for PvP S/S all the way. Wonder if it even would fit in any team.


Let me know your thoughts gents and ladies

The S/S is the most amazing of the bunch for PvP, given the prevalence of imps in the queue. It fits well in any Haunt team, it can replace either the kid or the valk. I haven't decided if the Wicked Soul is better than the Ghastly Kid in general, but against imps I'll take the speed of the S/S Wicked Soul. Haunting Song has been great for my basilisk/imp/soul team since both of the other pets have such low health.

[Vakeetah]

My experiences with [pet]Blood Boil[/pet] and [ability]Split[/ability] lean towards H/H breed, or maybe even S/S - but definitely not a Power breed.

When [ability]Split[/ability] says it costs half your HP, it means half of your total Health, not your current value. This certainly means that it's more "expensive" for a H/H (862 Health) than it'd be for P/P or S/S (700 Health), but at the same time, given how vulnerable you are left, you want a larger HP cushion to ensure that you can survive a round or two. Still, as a neat side-effect of being Magic, apparently its cost gets capped at 35% health (not 50%) thanks to the passive!
(603 health for H/H, 490 for P/P and S/S)

Secondly, the clone uses your [ability]Blood Boil[/ability]'s abilities at random, at the end of each turn (including the turn its summoned) and it'll only use the moves you have set up. Or well, actually it "makes" your active pet perform them, but I digress... In combination with [ability]Drain Blood[/ability], it heals your active pet instead of the clone when it triggers (even if you switch [ability]Blood Boil[/ability] out) helping you heal up or recover the health cost relatively quickly. Also, seems to ignore its cooldown, sometimes draining several turns in a row, healing whoever is in the front line at the time.

Aside of the random ability behavior, the clone behaves like [ability]Build Turret[/ability] at most effects. It's an "object" that attacks at the end of the round, will not protect your active pet in any ways, and can only be destroyed by things like [ability]Clean-Up[/ability], [ability]Grave Destruction[/ability], etc.

The clone keeps attacking even if [ability]Blood Boil[/ability] dies. In fact, you can kill (accidentaly or not) your own pet by using [ability]Split[/ability] at low health; but it'll still summon the clone and do its stuff. This gives it a different kind of value, as you can use it in a similar fashion to [ability]Explode[/ability] and other suicidal moves... if you see [ability]Blood Boil[/ability] is about to die, just use Split and it will "live on" for 3 more rounds.

Since [ability]Split[/ability] and [ability]Drain Blood[/ability] don't scale with Power whatsoever, it makes it a relatively unnecessary stat which will only make your first ability ([ability]Ooze Touch[/ability]/[ability]Diseased Bite[/ability]) hit slightly harder. So it's probably better to have a greater health pool, or the speed to react and adapt to events.

Of course, this is for a [pet]Blood Boil[/pet] with [ability]Split[/ability]+[ability]Drain Blood[/ability]. Other ability combinations may favor different breeds, but they are too similar to regular oozes to matter.

[Mawder]

My experiences with [pet]Blood Boil[/pet] and [ability]Split[/ability] lean towards H/H breed, or maybe even S/S - but definitely not a Power breed.

...

Good analysis. I bought a Blood Boil on the AH because I figured I'd never get the breed I want. I chose P/S, since for me that's the default best breed. Should I buy the H/H and sell mine? There's an H/H for 7000g, but lots of other breeds for 2000g.

[Vakeetah]

Good analysis. I bought a Blood Boil on the AH because I figured I'd never get the breed I want. I chose P/S, since for me that's the default best breed. Should I buy the H/H and sell mine? There's an H/H for 7000g, but lots of other breeds for 2000g.

To be fair, I see it as a gimmicky pet, but not nearly a game-changer, so I'd hold off trying to min-max its breed just yet. Keep the one you have, see how it fares, and maybe in time you'll get a drop for a different breed or be able to grab it at AH at a more reasonable price.

To tell you the truth, I got an H/H as a drop and liked it, and simply dismiss Power due to [ability]Drain Blood[/ability] not needing it - but I'm sure you can get decent mileage from the others as well; particularly while the Magic passive lowers the cost of [ability]Split[/ability] (inadvertedly or not) :p

[Mawder]

Icecrown Citadel:
Blightbreath H/P - no fast breeds so we optimize power and health whilst keeping low speed. Good value. Even the H/S is only 273, 3 short of 276 plateau.

I would suggest the H/S because you have Bash (stun) that benefits from going first. I realize that 273 is not great, but I see many slow undeads and other pets with 260 speed where that stun will come in handy.

PS: On a side note, this being the 2nd week of RWL IV, the AH has plenty of inventory with most pets going in the 2000g range.

[Lolfixheal]

Yeah prices will come down and then people will eventually stop running the raids and prices will sorta stabilize. Worth buying if you're unlucky with certain pets. I'm so busy with stuff I'm leaning towards buying as many as possible for reasonable price

A heads up, this isn't in yet for EU live at writing moment, but apparently the wobblyness with the new Clone-like abilities has forced Blizzard to completely remove them from the game. At least I assume that is the reasoning. Did get to try the Hatch on my Falcosaur and its as Vakeetah explains.

"Clone"-type abilities on Blood Boil, Bloodgazer Hatchling, and the 2016 BlizzCon pets have been exchanged for other abilities.

I'm not really happy about the change, it was a new nice idea that could have potentially led to some more object-removing ability pets coming into play as well.

[Wootzy]

Wicked Soul S/S - a fast undead? What, am I dreaming? IMPOSSIBRU! 337 speed and a Haunt, now this becomes interesting with Agony as well. Alternatively P/S isn't bad in PvE I guess, but for PvP S/S all the way. Wonder if it even would fit in any team.


Let me know your thoughts gents and ladies

The S/S is the most amazing of the bunch for PvP, given the prevalence of imps in the queue. It fits well in any Haunt team, it can replace either the kid or the valk. I haven't decided if the Wicked Soul is better than the Ghastly Kid in general, but against imps I'll take the speed of the S/S Wicked Soul. Haunting Song has been great for my basilisk/imp/soul team since both of the other pets have such low health.

Few days ago I totaly wrecked my current meta Kid, Imp, Tero with this team:
(I dare to say I came up with Tero as a third, after replacing your Basilisk)

Knight Captain Murky
Wicked Soul S/S
Graves

Fiendish Imp got haunted by Wicked Soul --> massive AoE on Teroclaw ---> game over.

Not fair I know, but it gave so much satisfaction!

[Lolfixheal]

The Blood Boil got Expunge now instead. With a PP you can do quite a dent against Flyvers with Drain Power -> Expunge -> Ooze Touch in 3 round combo. A PP Jade Oozeling just almost already covers that and perhaps more. Common for Oozes (model) is that a few abilities come and go. Some substituted with 1 ability only to make them different like Living Fluid. Others have more dot/tick orientated abilities.

Blood Boil differs with having 3 undead attacks. Can't really make proper use of Plagued Blood without a multiattack. Drain Blood is breed-independant, but strong heal actually. Rough estimate is that of a PP Healing Wave, around the 500 mark but depends what you're up against. Higher health mobs, the better nomnom. Divide by 10, multiply by 3.

I've quickly gone through our "ooze" model based pets, and correct me if I'm wrong, but Blood Boil seems to be the only blob can surpass the 289 speed which currently is highest. So for the sheer sake of things, get an SS so you can say you got a fast blob?

x / Expunge / Drain Blood setup??

[Rabbia73]

Interesting.

Going down the thread, I'd say:

- Agree with the breed suggestions made by Lolfix, to the extent those are concluded, and the reasoning given in each case, except I honestly can't see much use for Boneshard, ever. I don't think it's going to get anyone very far in PVP. But okay I get the point, that it's for fun - at least I think that's what he/she's saying.

- Vakeetah's analysis on Blood Boil was excellent, but of course that has now changed significantly. Personally? Right from the off I gravitated to the S/S breed there. Hmm why...well first of all I also agree with Vakeetah in that it smacks of being a bit gimmicky, so I can be a bit flippant about it, and gravitate to the SS simply because there's nothing else like it. But there is a bit more to it though, in terms of reasoning. I think the slot 3 moves are the most significant, and you've got one option which doesn't rely on Power at all, and the other option where... Power is probably the least significant part of the move. I'm not convinced Expunge would necessarily be the go in slot 2 and the alternative - Plagued Blood - Power is the least portion of what's involved there. All up, I don't see it as a Power pet. So Health? It's Magic, so proportional damage obviously, plus there are other Blob variants with that theme that would do as good if not better a job, if you were inclined that way. But as I said, my feeling at this point is, it's gimmicky this one. As an aside, I got two SS, one after the other, so okay that comes into play, but view on it remains, as above ( I now have others as well, kicking around).

- The Wicked (for some reason I always type 'Wicket" - am Australian maybe that's why idk) Soul. THIS is the best of all the pets I've used this Xpac, so far. Teams with it are all 100%, at over 20 wins (3 teams I think). And it MUST be SS. There are some other good pets now, don't get me wrong - Magma say is pretty good. I realise you guys posted about a week ago, so maybe you have come to the same view, by now. In any case yeah I absolutely agree with Disco's (as ever overly mild but meaningful) suggestion and comments on this one, and Wootzy, absolutely. It's pretty damn handy, especially, but not only, with the plethora of Fiendish Imps around.

All I can think of for now. And Disco, if you read this: if you want an SS Blood Boil to check it out, let me know. It's the least I can do.

EDIT: I just checked, messaging is enabled, so don't be shy, kind of thing. But I expect you have one already, so w/e. I would be interested to see what you think of the pet in SS, regardless.