PvP Broom/Skull/Direhorn Guide

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Ishad
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PvP Broom/Skull/Direhorn Guide

Post by Ishad » September 8th, 2013, 11:10 am

I'm around 1.5K PvP wins and like 1K of them with this team, I'll try to describe now. It wins 9 of 10 PvP battles and most looses are due to bad luck (miss, miss, miss, miss, miss - blizzard's rng is so awesome). Sure, 2 of 3 pets will be nerfed in 5.4, but that's not big deal actually.

1. Pets and abilities.

1.1. Enchanted Broom S/S with Batter, Sweep, Clean-Up. Broom is best PvP pet over here and there is no reason not to use it. It provides some control with Sweep, removes all them turrets, rockets, decoys, raggy's sons etc with Clean-Up and Batter hits 3 times in most cases due to speed and it some conditions can do more than 1K damage per turn (more on the below).

1.2. Ghostly Skull H/P with Death Coil, Ghostly Bite, Unholy Ascension. Well, we need undead in the team due to crazy amount of imps and idols used by all the nabs. You can replace Death Coil by Shadow Slash - it doesn't matter much, but Ghostly Bite and Unholy Ascension are mandatory.

1.3. Stunted Direhorn P/P with Trihorn Charge, Horn Attack, Primal Cry. You can also use Stampede instead of Horn Attack, but multiturn attacks are generally bad idea in PvP. Also, you can use any other direhorn or even completely different pet like Crow S/S - you only need it to be fast (or have 1st strike attack like Trihorn Charge) and with hard-hitting ability.

2. General Tactics

Start with Broom, Sweep, switch to Skull, use Death Coils & Bites, try to time everything that you'll use Ascension at the turn when Skull will be killed and Bite on extra turn. It'll need some time (like 20-30 battles) to adjust, but it's not hard by all means. Sometimes you'll need to sacrifice Skull earlier. E.g. when you face a team with 3-turns swap - it's better to start with Death Coil, get swapped, switch back, Ascend, Bite and swap hand with your Broom to die in back line. Anyway, you'll learn it as you'll play this combo. After that, bring in your Broom and when it's dead - finish remaining forces with Direhorn.

3. Imp Tactics

If opponent got imp, you have good chance (4 of 5 approx, according to my experience) to finish battle in two turns. Start with Direhorn and Charge. Most likely he'll swap your Direhorn to Skull and will cast that aura next turn, but Bite will finish him.

4. Lightning Tactics

If you are facing lightning team, your Broom can dispose of 2 enemy pets. Just let him cast storm, Clean-Up tornados and Batter to death.

Any combos like 3 imps or 3 crows or 3 direhorns - no problem as well - just use normal tactics.

Have fun ;)

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Elysoun
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Re: PvP Broom/Skull/Direhorn Guide

Post by Elysoun » September 8th, 2013, 5:38 pm

Now to the deck, I've won and lost to it. It comes down to match-ups. Last Wednesday I played someone using it that didn't want to try anything different, so I swapped in a Darkmoon Rabbit and later on I put in a rare s/s Alpine Hare to completely wreck my opponent's morning. It got so bad that he resorted to stalling out as soon as he saw it was me. I didn't mind taking longer on the wins and after the next patch that stalling won't take as long.

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Re: PvP Broom/Skull/Direhorn Guide

Post by Quintessence » September 8th, 2013, 5:57 pm

I may try out this team (if I ever stop hating pet PVP lol), but with the changes to Direhorns in 5.4 I'm wary of getting too comfortable using them.
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Ishad
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Re: PvP Broom/Skull/Direhorn Guide

Post by Ishad » September 8th, 2013, 11:22 pm

2Elysoun: sadly, we can't do battles US <-> EU but I don't see how rabbit will help you. I can open with direhorn (which can eat rabbit in 2 turns) or I can even just ignore it, open with Skull, wait for CDs on your rabbit, ascend, bite - doesn't matter. Purpose of skull is to debuff opponent and do _some_ damage if possible.

2Quintessence: this team isn't centered on direhorn. On contrary, direhorn can be replaced by like dozen of other pets (S/S crow e.g.). To add more, that nerf will not affect this team much.

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Re: PvP Broom/Skull/Direhorn Guide

Post by Spary » September 10th, 2013, 2:09 am

ok that damned forum ate my long post, bah. ...

However, what you describe is not that special as it sounds, in fact it really IS reliant on your Direhorn although you don't want to see it (and the fact that you mentioned the s/s crow as viable alternative shows what I mean).

You need that special fast and hard hitting pet that can do the first hit and can bring another pet to Zero without risking its own death - else there are alot of pets out there, that would destroy your tactic - on the other hand thre are not a handfull that are like any direhorn or a s/s crow.

My argumentation was way longer but atm I dont feel like typing it again just to see it go another time ... maybe later :P

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Re: PvP Broom/Skull/Direhorn Guide

Post by Ishad » September 10th, 2013, 6:07 am

It is not special of course. Actually, I wrote this guide for a friend but decided to post it here, just in case. I see your point, but I don't share it.

1. Direhorn isn't used in like 50% of battles at all. And it's usually used for 1-2 turns to finish opponent.
2. I tried several pets in place of direhorn (S/S Crow to start with, P/P Yellow Moth, P/P Baby Ape and even S/S Rabbit) and all of them worked. I keep direhorn as "core" pet for this team only due to enormous amounts of imps. I'm pwetty sure I'll replace it by moth in 5.4.

If you are on EU server - we can try to duel and find weaknesses in this team.

Anyway, there are not much PvP guides around here and most players either don't PvP or use <censored> and not fun teams with imps, idols and kun lai runts.

PS. My biggest victory spree with this one was 47. What's yours? :)

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Spary
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Re: PvP Broom/Skull/Direhorn Guide

Post by Spary » September 10th, 2013, 7:42 am

OK, so its my turn I guess :P

Well, I used a similar team, with the p/p direhorn just for the exact reason You described - to finish the opponent off or at least to put some pressure on him if necessary (more than one switcher, more than one direhorn, 3 undead f.e.).

I used Direhorn/Grell/Bone Spider. Comes down to similar tactics, but I wouldn't call the Direhorn the core pet - the Grell it is! He can be ridiculous frustrating if you are slower than him (has 289 speed, so faster then most pvp pets). 3 out of 5 turns he is just imune to your damage, he can eat all the big hits on occasion just to cauterize conter them, and the human racial helps too. Bone spider is there just to annoy the enemy and destroy his tactics, as undead and with lifedrain it is fairly hard to kill her fast enough. There were teams that the Grell did solo (although I would say the players behind had to be new to pvp or at least were not that experienced).
9/10 win ratio with this team is np (same as yours I guess).

But as there was the direhorn fix announced I tried some different pets - and got to the Basilisk (305speed) instead of the direhorn: I LOVE it. Just another underestimated yet really strong pet. And I can also win the 9 out of 10.

PS: Before the Direhorns I used Idol/Broom/Stinker - (Sandstorm, deflect, forced switch, wind up, Double Heal on p/p). This Team is extreme hard to kill and had nearly no weaknesses, sad part was that now Stinker is just a pushover for any of the zillions of direhorns out there - but this team got me the first 1000 pvp wins with a rate even better then 9/10 I would say. Should be even viable still today, but not as much as before.

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Re: PvP Broom/Skull/Direhorn Guide

Post by Shikon01 » September 10th, 2013, 9:34 am

On my server last night the direhorn,imps and swap teams were out in force so I decided to be different and tried a combo of broom, clock gnome and DM tank and got 5 wins w/ them. Since I don't have some pets level to counter the common teams out there I've just been hitting w/ power and hope for a win. Every time I would see a fire pet I would whip out the ole broom lol !! A win is a win. :lol:

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