I am new to PvP pet battles but what the hell is this

So i am trying to do my achievements for PvP and every single opponent has anomalous - blightbreath. And that’s all they need to defeat me. It doesn’t matter what i do. Sometimes he even skips his turns, like he is afk. And he still beats my easily. Is there something i am missing here? What’s going on ?

Welcome to PvP :stuck_out_tongue:

That’s how it is. That’s what PvP is.

Today, it’s Anomalus. In previous times, it has been Graves, Bone Serpent, Teroclaw Hatchling, Wicked Soul, others.

Everybody doing PvP can always choose any comnination of pets. So naturally most people choose whatever is both most powerful and easy to use. At the moment, that’s Anomalus, plus probably another couple of AoE pets. This pattern, using the easy and powerful pets, is called “the meta”. Today, Anomalus AoE is “the meta”.

AoE always tops the ratings for “Easy to use”. You don’t have to think or calculate, or decide anything, really, to use AoE.

Blightbreath is maybe not the ideal pet to go along with Anomalus, though.

What is likely is that you are bumping into the same player again and again.

There are very few people who play PvP willingly. Most of the people you find are just feeling obliged to rack up some numbers for achievements. So, at any given moment, there’s a pretty good chance that there are fewer than 4 people in your pet battlegroup in Europe in the queue. Often there are only 2, and they get to face each other again and again and again.

The character you see facing you is not a representation of your opponent. To keep people anonymous, the game creates a representation of a random NPC to show you, so there is no way to track each other. So even if you match the same player multiple times, you will appear to see a different character each time.

You were the only two playing, you kept meeting the same guy, he was running Anomalus/Blightbreath, and you didn’t have a team that coud counter it.

Your choice in such a situation is either to leave the queue and come back another time, hoping someone else is coming in, or slot a team that will counter his.

There are some team types explained at https://wow-petguide.com/index.php?m=PvPIntro

To save you some time, I will tell you that the easiest counter to Anomalus AoE is Sandstorm. Sandstorm tamps down the amount of damage you take with every hit, and with AoE spreading its hits, it is very effective. If that Anomalus is using Toxic Fumes, you should aim to have your Sandstorm used immediately after he casts Toxic Fumes, overwriting the weather. If it’s a Void Nova Anomalus, use it ASAP.

S/S breed Qiraji Guardling is the easiest Sandstorm pet to use. Kick Anomalus to get an extra round at the start, then Crush to get in some damage. Then you’re ready to decide when to use Sandstorm, depending on the abilities of Anomalus.

There are other ways. You can take out Anomalus fast, before it does much damage, or you can force-swap it out and try to get some damage in while your opponent is regrouping. Both of these methods need more planning than Sandstorm, though. YouTuber Discodoggy has been dealing with the Anomalus meta lately, so you will get more ideas in his most recent videos. He explains some of the theory here:

http://pvppetbattles.com/multi-attack-probability-tree/

PvP does get A LOT easier in Pet Battle Week, when you will also find many regular players entering the queue. But when it’s over, you’re back to facing almost nobdy except The Damned, who are serving their eternal sentence of joylessly farming more wins.

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thanks for the reply - i will check out what you said, and yeah i am guessing Sandstorm is nice, but for the achievements, many pets don’t have that so i have to pray i don’t run into that guy which sucks.

Family achievements definitely get easier in Pet Week.

Having said that, you are not helpless outside Pet Week. I did all my Brawler battles outside Pet Week, deliberately, because it was too easy to be fun during the event.

Remember that in PvP, the average win rate is 50% by definition - actually a bit less because of draws. This tends to be very hard for people coming from PvE to accept, who are used to 100% win rate, and get all salty over at Xu-Fu’s when a rare crit combo happens (or they misread the instructions!) and they lose even one battle to a Family Familiar, knocking their win rate down to 99.6%. :stuck_out_tongue:

And you are facing even that 50% win rate average under a handicap because of Brawler.

My strongest and BEST recommendation to someone new trying Brawler is:

DO NOT
DO NOT
DO NOT play the same Family more than twice in a row.
JUST. DON’T.

The queue operates on the principle of countering whatever beats you. When you play Mechanical after Mechanical, whoever is in the queue will immediately switch in an Elemental as soon as you beat them.

And sometimes, you just won’t make progress with a given team.

I see you have already got Humanoid, Dragonkin, and Aquatic. Aquatic ain’t easy, so well done on that! But don’t keep hammering at Mechanical until you get your 10 - switch Families and keep the queue guessing!

Or wait for Pet Week. :stuck_out_tongue:

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The majority of the PVP community are waiting for Shadowlands because of Anomalus etc (I don’t see the meta improving at all in SL). The Devs are directly behind only having a handful of pets be viable at present. The options are play the meta counters or lose regardless of what you do.

I’d suggest running high hp pets where you don’t have sandstorm available and alternatively fast control pets that reduce the amount of attacks your opponent can actually land

Just stay away from it, all it with bring are waste of time. It’ll be a minority in wow and should always be. If you want something like that, go play pokemon.

I can’t even understand how it was put in wow, cause it ruined so much.

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It’s the pet meta. As soon as they add a new pet, it’ll be swapped out.
And rinse repeat.
It’s like anything with hard numbers, there will always be a most optimal build.

Pet battle weeks are the most fun, cos you get lots of different teams and you don’t know what you’re up against.

Taltros just hates fun.

Edit: I dunno if it’s still a problem since I don’t really do much pvp pets anymore, but if it’s a heavy focus on breath, just run a bunch of sandstorms.

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