August 14th, 2012 by Steve Perry
After we took a look at the upcoming Pet Battle system in the first post and the different classes of pets and their abilities, I figured now was a good time to take a closer look at building your team and what kind of decisions you should make. As I said in Part 1, there are several directions you can take as a Pet Battler. The first, and the one that everyone will need to take at one point or another, is the PVE route. This consists of leveling, farming for rare pets, doing dailies, etc.
PVE PET BATTLING:
So, the thing to be aware of when farming rare pets or leveling are the types of pets you’ll encounter regularly. For the first 10 levels or so, you’ll mostly deal with three types of pets: Critters, Beasts and Flying. Sure, you’ll run across an Aquatic or Dragonkin pet here and there, but those are few and far between.
With that in mind, you want to have at least 3 pets you can level together which will provide you with good utility against those pet types. There are a few rules you should keep in mind when building your core team:
- Avoid all of one type. By going all-Beast or all-Mechanical, for example, you limit yourself as to what you’re able to do in different situations.
- Don’t necessarily go all-different either. Variety is good, but take advantage of the strengths of your situation. Considering the three main pet types you’ll encounter while leveling, it doesn’t hurt to have two pets in your party that may take advantage of that.
- Avoid “cool factor”. I know there are a few pets out there that are a bit more badass than others, at least in terms of appearance. But if their abilities prove to be a hindrance to your team, then you’re gimping yourself and slowing down your progress.
Above all else, your goals are to engage and end battles as quickly as possible to avoid damage you take. The less damage you take, the longer you can fight and the less you have to use healing abilities and items for your pets.
So, with all this in mind, we can probably rule out Undead, Aquatic, and Critter pets for efficiency. Those three pet types will take extra damage vs. the pet types we’ll deal with normally. A few really good options are Flying pets, whose overall ability/damage spells are not much of a factor but are extremely useful for certain abilities and resistances; Mechanical pets, due to their strength vs. Beasts, non-factor damage balance, and their strong Passive; Beasts, who can destroy Critters pretty swiftly and are only a problem against the rare Mechanical pet, not to mention their handy Passive; and Dragonkin, who will be resistant to a lot of Flying attacks and also have a nice “finishing” Passive.
For example purposes, my party on the beta consists of the Personal World Destroyer, Lil’ Smoky and the Mini Blizzard Bear. I also have a Polly which is my Flying pet of choice to rotate in when needed. This lineup I use is strong in Beast-heavy areas, which is usually the 2nd or 3rd zone after the starter area. My Mechanical pets are great against Beasts, the PWD has a self-healing spell, and the Blizzard Bear is useful for the occasional Critter pet to put it in its place. This 4-pet team gives me a lot of versatility and efficiency when leveling, but the real decision is up to you.
PVP PET BATTLING:
PVP Pet Battles are a whole different ball-game, because you really never know what you’re gonna deal with. In my experience with other players, they tend to use – at least at first – whatever pets they like most. No real research or planning put into it, so that makes choosing a roster a lot harder. Unlike PVE Pet Battles, there really isn’t much you can safely just “rule out”. Players will randomly level whatever they want, so the best thing you can do is try to have pets with strong PVP presence and not worry too much about the balance factors.
In this case, the pet classes we can probably avoid would be Magic, which have a paltry Passive ability and are too weak against Dragonkin and Mechanical pets which you may see more often than not and Aquatic pets, which aren’t going to give you much benefit and are weak vs. Flying pets, not to mention a Passive that isn’t that effective. Beyond that, however, the choice is yours.
Since the majority of pets in the game are Beasts and Critters, you can probably plan for that a little bit, but I wouldn’t put any more than one pet type in your PVP team, and I’d also be sure to have some good options to switch to. PVP Pet Battling is really a matter of being aware of what you’re up against and making sure you don’t have a weak pet out.
With that in mind, a good place to start (at least in terms of type) would have to be Beast, Mechanical, Flying, Undead and Humanoid. I highly recommend Mechanical pets, simply due to their Second Wind passive and the self-heal that some of them possess. Also, Undead pets have a similar Passive to give them one more round to finish the job. Humanoids with a self-heal passive are strong in that regard, and Beasts are just great damage dealers against Critters.
I can’t really recommend individual pets, considering the diversity of what you’re up against, but research the pets you have and check their abilities. The biggest factor to keep in mind is that just because a pet may be Mechanical or Humanoid or Flying, their abilities may still fall under a different class, so make sure you get a good balance out of whichever pet you choose.
Next time, we’ll take a look at individual battle strategy and how you can smartly and efficiently approach each battle depending on what you’re trying to do.
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