Other side of the Valk/Murk coin

[Genome]

This may sound odd, but I have began to feel a bit sorry for Unborn Valk'yr and Murkalot habitual users. While this may sound pretty lame, hear me out.

It seems that these two pets above all others cause severe stagnation for the user. Each pet seems to become something of an anchor/crutch to the player, especially with Murk. In the case of Murk, it seems that every single time that I see him, he is paired with a Fossilized Hatchling, and often Kovok in the third slot (though I do run into one player who always uses a Mechanical Pandaren Hatchling in the third slot almost solely for the Decoy). Without a Nether Gate or one round stun (i.e. Crystal Prison) used on your very first turn, you are going to get hit with the Murk player's RI boosted Bonestorm every time. The point being, the Murk user is ALWAYS paired with a strong AoE type pet, without fail. In the last three weeks, I have yet to see a Murk opener without an RI into an AoE, where an RI boosted high dmg single-target type attack would literally one-shot a pet without Deflection, and would come out first to boot, resulting in zero retaliation dmg. Of course, the AoE total dmg may be more advantageous, but then again, 3-2 pets is not exactly bad either. To me, it seems that this dependence on one pet dictating your team's makeup is ultimately self-defeating, at least when it comes to enjoyment of different pet compositions and strategy.

Valk users are a bit more varied, though far too often front-loaded to take advantage of the broken Haunt mechanic. Valks paired with Blighthawks or Stitched Pups are pretty much the norm, and seeing them teamed with something more strategic is fairly rare. For example, a Haunt boosted with something like Acidic Goo would be very effective, but I have yet to see it. Valk usage also becomes extremely predictable as well. Unskilled Valk players simply rely on casting Doom on round one, and Haunt on round two (even worse players simply use Haunt on the first turn), and behavior like this is easily juked. If Haunt ever received a CD (like it desperately needs), then players like this would have to abandon it in favor of something easier. Skilled Valk users can wreak Havoc on a team by anticipating jukes and using Haunt to avoid dmg intentionally (for instance, in waiting one extra round before casting Haunt to dodge traps about to go off or the like). As for other spells, I do not recall ever being hit with an UA by a Valk in pvp, and this is a very potent move. Once again, this locks the user into using only one pet/spell type, which to me seems pretty boring.

I know that people like to win and I am not taking away from that, but to me, half the fun of pet battling is constantly tweaking comps and trying out different ideas. I find it rather constraining to think that I can only consistently win with one comp. By the way, this isn't an "OMG THAT PET IS TOO OP" type of thread, just observations that I have made. I would like to hear from frequent Murk and Valk users about their thoughts on this as well.

[Tuatha]

I don't own Murk, but use Valk quite often. Almost all the time, but not all the time.

I somewhat fall into your anchor/crutch theory. I've tried to set up other teams and it becomes increasingly frustrating to not find a reason to put a valk in there. I need a humanoid or kovok or lightning storm counter... what's better than a valk? I find myself "settling" for other pets, just so I don't have a valk on every competitive pvp team I run. And when I lose, it's hard not to imagine how it would have turned out if I had a valk instead of that 2nd tier pet. But I do win without a valk.

As to your critique of how a valk is played, well, I guess I don't fall into that category. I generally use haunt first and rarely rely on CoD, which will only go off vs mechanical or huge health pets--or pets that get swapped out. And I have used haunt to avoid too many delayed damage spells to count. I suppose that makes me more skilled than average. I'll take that.

Fwiw, I've never used a valk with a blighthawk or a stitched pup. But I also haven't used UA on my valk this patch.

And I love my anti-valk team, which gets destroyed by Murkalot. I only bring it out when I find other valk teams queuing up frequently--weekends mostly.

Not completely off the mark observations you made.

[Avalee]

I haven't even seen a murkalot since it was nerfed a few weeks ago. But yeah, the valkyr is so extremely predictable, it's very easy to beat. Must have won 9 out of 10 battles against it.
Now I'm thinking about it. A lot of people use predictable teams these days. My win ratio has never been higher.

[Genome]

[quote="Tuatha"]I don't own Murk, but use Valk quite often. Almost all the time, but not all the time.

I've tried to set up other teams and it becomes increasingly frustrating to not find a reason to put a valk in there. I need a humanoid or kovok or lightning storm counter... what's better than a valk? I find myself "settling" for other pets, just so I don't have a valk on every competitive pvp team I run. And when I lose, it's hard not to imagine how it would have turned out if I had a valk instead of that 2nd tier pet. But I do win without a valk.

quote]

Great points Tuatha. With the proliferation of Idols and Turret/Lightening Storm teams out there , the Valk is even more attractive as a choice. It is a bit disheartening to know that out of a stable of hundreds of other pets, not having one particular pet that is fairly-readily-available (in this case, the Valk) on your team can result in so many close defeats, thus locking us into the choice. I myself often use a Fossilized Hatchling running with Bone Prison (another very neglected spell) in place of a Valk to counter the humanoid spam, but he is significantly inferior to the Valk in most respects and I bet my win ratio would increase quite a bit if I replaced him with an Unborn. I just fear (as you pointed out), that once I began using him I would pretty much never switch him out again if I wanted to avoid the frustration of continual "preventable" losses.

Another facet of this issue is the "counter" argument in that I get to feeling the need to have a hard-counter for all of the Valk teams out there actually locks me in as well. Unless I haven't seen a Valk team in a while, my most common teams always run with at least one (and sometimes two) Valk counters; normally and Emperor Crab with Shell Shield. I enjoy using this pet, but I don't really like the notion of having to use it continually in order to stand a chance.

[Maleric]

Another facet of this issue is the "counter" argument in that I get to feeling the need to have a hard-counter for all of the Valk teams out there actually locks me in as well. Unless I haven't seen a Valk team in a while, my most common teams always run with at least one (and sometimes two) Valk counters; normally and Emperor Crab with Shell Shield. I enjoy using this pet, but I don't really like the notion of having to use it continually in order to stand a chance.

And then, of course, there are all the people out there using anti-aquatic flier teams to counter the counter. If you want to have a high win percentage, not only do you need to be able to counter valk teams. You also need to be able to turn around and beat teams packed with moths and crows.

It feels like the proliferation of valk teams on the one side and flier teams on the other creates a really limited range of viable teams for people who want a shot at beating both.

[Voidsinger]

Even more fun is a Murk INTO a Valk. Combine both of your peeves into a 300 dmg dot!

Valk is just a great pet. CoD is actually good if you can combine with a swap pet like Fiendish or Crawling Claw. He either needs to switch back in (at a loss of a turn) or watch his pet slowly die in the backline. To everyone's point, Valk's haunt is also a solid switch in and of itself, oftimes wasting abilities like Geyser and other timed bombs.

To me, it's also very hard to compose a team and then not default back to Valk. I mean, unless there's a theme (conflagrate, bleed, etc.) there's just too much synergy on top of being a great pet (and undead too, free extra turn rocks) - hard to put on the bench.

[3wd]

Murk is very easy to be beaten nowadays.

Murk + bone raptor + aoe dog is a joke when you have a valk plus a robot that can lay mine.

I beat out that murk combo 10 out of 10 times just a few nights ago.

Also,

if you are still playing the valk base of the corpse eating strategy, you are also way behind the curve, that was an outdated team.

Valk + 325 Qiraji Guardling + 341 snake is the most powerful valk team currently and this setup can beat at least 85-90% of any other teams in this game now.

[Se5s]

i find myself stagnating in my choice of pets due to a lack of options. i came into pet battles early last year and didn't know about qiraji guardling. i have had ZERO luck with the death adder hatchling for the 341 breed. i hate gold farming and i don't have a guild that farms SoO so i can't get kovok or blackfuse. my only claim to anything is having all 4 celestial pets; which is a kick in the nuts that they aren't really that awesome as pvpers being extremely slow and predictable. i use them on teams anyway and would use them even if i had the good pets that i'm missing, like a magical crawdad cuz i can't get into fishing. i would prefer if all of the pets all have a chance to beat any other pet 1v1, and matching pet teams was based on what pets u adore or whatever, and the outcome of a match be entirely based on player skill instead of which tier pets you're using. but this is not how it is. and so i find myself stagnating in my choice of pets due to a lack of options.

[Shikon01]

My first frustration was getting 3 pets to level 25 then picking my first few pets to level that I felt gave me a chance to win a few battles. Like you, I don't have much gold nor do a lot of farming, but enough to keep me going. I did darkmoon fair regularly on all my toons just to get the pets and let me tell you they will take you a long way and cost nothing but time. While you're there get a couple of crows and gulls if you can't afford a raven for a darkness team these birds know how to kick some butt. Like you I don't have a kovok or blackfuse so I worked on making an overall team that's consistent in winning battles 99% of the time. Yes, I made a couple of purchases after prices dropped,but its been the best investment making my enjoyment of pet battles more fun. My " go to team " is 1) Anibisath Idol ( Prophet ) Hits like hell has shield and some heal regeneration. 2) Fiendish Imp ( Tooby ) Excellent fire hits w/ ability to switch pets and 3) Lil Bling ( Bullion ) which is really cheap now if you don't want to wait for gift drop and you can get one on my server for 300g or less. Its a very under used mech pet w/ a self heal and can really take some damage as well as dish it out. I still haven't made it through the tamers in pandaland nor do I have all the so called powered pets but I take out the death adder as well as others w/ no problem. All 3 of these pets offer variety for a combination of pets battles you will face and offer quite abit to counter most battles you will face including the dreaded unborn valk. A major issue for a lot of new players was not having a toon high enough to capture some of the more desirable pets...its frustrating but again it can be worked around. Water pets also will drive most folks nuts so do try and get one a shore crab will drive most players insane..particularly those that use 3 crabs and rabbits and turles aint bad either. Vendor pets are also cheap and get the job done as well so grab those up for giving you some variety as well. I'm in one active guild but my main is in an inactive guild so don't let that slow you down hell, I have level the inactive guild by myself to level 7, but I don't let any of it define me or slow me down so hang in there it will get better

[Yamum]

This is a community problem and a game problem. I don't think it matters if the chicken came before the egg or not. Allow me to explain...

You play games to have fun. You have MORE fun if you win. The average WoW player wants to try his hand at pet battles - what does he do? He searches Google or some forum for "what are the most OP pets", or similar. First and foremost he wants to win. This is not restricted to pet battles, observe Trade Chat for some time and count the number of "what is the most OP class for dominating in PvP nowadays?" messages. So the aspiring pet battler finds a guide, probably the first search result, and follows it. Multiply this by thousands of players and the phenomenon is not that hard to understand. This also relates to an article I'm writing in my head entitled "how the internet ruined gaming".

And these people follow their guides to the letter! The amount of times I've seen a Kun-Lai Runt player try and use the 2-3-1 sequence vs a dodge pet...

I always laugh when I see someone running, say, a double Direhorn team with a Kun-Lai Runt. You know he's reading an out-of-date guide.

You can always spot these guys too. As soon the sequence is interrupted they invariably flee. Fiendish Imp vs Kun-Lai Runt (guide printed out and in hand). Round 1: Immolate vs Frost Shock. Round 2: NETHER GATE. Round 3: 10 second pause... OPPONENT FLEES! I guess the guide didn't prepare him for that one.

It is a game problem in that these extreme imbalances exist in the first place. Blizzard are obviously not allocating enough resources into pet battles. Currently, three pets define what happens in PvP pet battles (I loathe the term "meta-game"). They are: Anubisath Idol, Death Adder Hatchling, and our friend the Valk. 95% of all teams consist of either one or more of these three pets, or some direct counter to them. Thus there are roughly a dozen pets in total that are viable now. Blighthawks and Lil' Rags to counter the Idol, rabbits and crabs to counter the Valk, and to counter the Death Adder: crows and pets with "always hits" abilities (doesn't matter if you're blinded, y'see?).

It used to be that bad players used "cheese" pets and good players had balanced teams. Now, bad players use the top 3 and everyone else is forced to play around it.

Unskilled Valk players simply rely on casting Doom on round one, and Haunt on round two (even worse players simply use Haunt on the first turn), and behavior like this is easily juked.

Disagree. CoD is a waste of a move. If you have to do something other than Haunt then use Shadow Slash. Otherwise, get that Haunt ticking ASAP. Good Valk players rarely use CoD, if at all.

If Haunt ever received a CD (like it desperately needs), then players like this would have to abandon it in favor of something easier.

Well... duh? OP pets get nerfed, baddies move on to the next best option. That's why you don't see many Direhorns anymore. Or Giant Bone Spiders, etc, etc.

In conclusion, WoW players are not going to change, it's up to Blizzard to BALANCE THE DANG PETS.

[Poofah]

Mostly agree, just a couple nitpicks:

Now, bad players use the top 3 and everyone else is forced to play around it.

I think everyone uses these pets, not just bad players. Why wouldn't you?

Currently, three pets define what happens in PvP pet battles (I loathe the term "meta-game").

Metagame is a silly term to throw around with pet battles, because there's not enough data out there about what team beats what (and even if we had enough data, I frankly doubt that there's enough of a critical mass of players to discover all the truly 'best' teams). Maybe that's why you don't like the term? It wasn't clear.

It's easier to single out overpowered individual pets, certainly. But even then, this is subjective: somebody might put Murkalot in your list in place of Anubisath; or Fossilized Hatchling, or etc etc. Maybe some reclusive genius has won 1000 out of 1000 games with 3xPierre! We don't have access to win/loss records and there's no significantly-attended tournaments, so everything is anecdotal.

In conclusion, WoW players are not going to change, it's up to Blizzard to BALANCE THE DANG PETS.

This part 100% agree.

This also relates to an article I'm writing in my head entitled "how the internet ruined gaming".

And this part 100% disagree. As with any game, people discover the optimal strategies over time. Access to information only serves to accelerate that process. If people rely on bad or outdated information, that's on them. If the internet leads people to flock to a single overpowered pet/team, that's a flaw in the pet battle system: it's not the internet's fault, the internet has only revealed a pre-existing problem. And in that case, it's on Blizzard to adjust the system (as in your previous point).

[Yamum]

I think everyone uses these pets, not just bad players. Why wouldn't you?

That's what I meant - everyone either uses these pets or some counter to them.

Maybe that's why you don't like the term? It wasn't clear.

I just think it's a stupid term with no meaning. I've never heard a sportscaster talking about the soccer meta-game. I've never heard a politician talk about the meta-economy. I've never had anyone face-to-face use the prefix "meta".

It's easier to single out overpowered individual pets, certainly. But even then, this is subjective: somebody might put Murkalot in your list in place of Anubisath; or Fossilized Hatchling, or etc etc. Maybe some reclusive genius has won 1000 out of 1000 games with 3xPierre! We don't have access to win/loss records and there's no significantly-attended tournaments, so everything is anecdotal.

Not at all, you can test this out empirically for yourself. You don't need access to everyone's battle results to come to a reasonable conclusion. Also, if someone had won 1000 games with triple Pierre then he would have 1000 victims, people would be talking about this team and copies would start to appear.

And this part 100% disagree. As with any game, people discover the optimal strategies over time. Access to information only serves to accelerate that process. If people rely on bad or outdated information, that's on them. If the internet leads people to flock to a single overpowered pet/team, that's a flaw in the pet battle system: it's not the internet's fault, the internet has only revealed a pre-existing problem. And in that case, it's on Blizzard to adjust the system (as in your previous point).

I don't agree here. The condition may already exist but it's the internet that enables it. A bit like how someone may have a predisposition to alcoholism, it's only once they access the alcohol that it becomes a problem. Agree to disagree.

[Poofah]

I've never heard a sportscaster talking about the soccer meta-game.

I submit that you have, they just didn't use that term. For example, 4-4-2 vs 4-1-3-1 vs 3-5-2; or 'hold a high line/pressure on the ball' vs '9 behind the ball/look to counter'. Teams tend to play in a certain way even though the rules don't force them to do so -- any strategy like that could be called a metagame. They probably just don't want to sound like nerds. Whereas I am more than happy to.

You don't need access to everyone's battle results to come to a reasonable conclusion. Also, if someone had won 1000 games with triple Pierre then he would have 1000 victims, people would be talking about this team and copies would start to appear.

That's the crux of the issue. You don't need *every* battle result to form a good idea of what's out there, but you do need a representative sample. You're assuming that *if* one player were dominating with Pierre, then we'd have heard about it. I'm not so sure: I think random outliers like that could slip through the cracks. And I don't actually know who's correct.

I picked on Pierre because it's an extreme case. But what about harder questions like:

What's the best third pet for Blighthawk/Jademist Dancer/X?
What's the best third pet for Murkalot/Fossilized Hatchling/X?
What's the best third pet for Valk/Death Adder Hatchling/X?

Somebody out there has probably 'solved' these problems. But if they have, either they haven't reported it, or people aren't willing to believe them. We don't have data to really answer these questions, all we can do is argue about it (which isn't very useful). This is unlike games with significant participation (M:tG, chess, etc.), where each possible matchup has been played out many many times, and the data are public domain.