WoW Pet Battle Team: Lil’ XT and Kirin Tor Familiar
March 26, 2013
It’s a new week following the review of our Double Damage pet battle team, and that means it’s time to kick off a new squad of killers!
My first real inspiration for a team when I started playing with pet battles was simple: I wanted to try all AoE damage. You know, fill a team with pets that deal damage to all 3 pets on the other team at the same time and try to kill ‘em all at once.
It didn’t work back then, but patch 5.2 brought a lot of subtle changes to AoE abilities that might just let the strategy pay off now. Let’s find out!
UPDATE: The verdict has been passed on this team after a month of leveling and PvP fighting! Read my full review here.
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Lil’ XTRole: Burst AoE DPS |
Kirin Tor FamiliarRole: Steady DPS |
Your Options for AoE (Area of Effect) Attacks in WoW Pet Battles
Your main, multi-pet options for AoE damage are:
- Arcane Explosion: the classic that hits the front pet for full damage and half to the back
- Thunderbolt: this spell was completely redesigned in patch 5.2 to be a long-cooldown AoE that hits all pets for the same damage, and is really really strong — it’s the hardest hitting AoE in the game, dealing over double a regular punch in damage
- Whirlwind: A humanoid attack where they spin and deal equal damage to the whole team
- Magma Wave: A spammable, low-damage Elemental AoE that removes objects on the board
- Cyclone: A long-duration AoE that has a chance to hit pets every turn
Those are all the general, shared AoE spells I can think of, but my favorite AoE spell is actually a unique abiliy for the Lil’ XT bots called Tympani Tantrum. It’s the third-hardest hitting AoE in the game (only Thunderbolt and Whirlwind deal more total damage), and unlike the other two, it goes for 3 rounds in a row, letting it dish it out without long cooldowns in between.
Why The Combo Works
My first pic for the AoE team was Lil’ XT for that awesome AoE burst damage–the only burst damage AoE has in the whole game. But he’s a Mechanical pet, and we all know how much of a liability Mechanical pets can be when the enemy team has Elemental pets.
So for my second pet, I decided to go with the Kirin Tor Familiar. I like that it has two magic-damage AoEs, a weather effect to override any problematic weather plays, and some decent single-target damage to force out elemental pets.
Laser beams: the goto move for any self-respecting magical pet.
How To Execute It
- 1. Turn one, play the pet that counters who I think they’ll start. Mechanical counters Beasts, but is weak to Elemental. Magic damage from Kirin Tor counters flying, but Elemental pet is weak to Aquatic.
- 2. If don’t have any counter pets, I start with XT and immediately activate Heartbroken
- 3. Next turn I take a big hit, but immediately start the Tympanic Tantrum AOE. With that buff, I should be dealing 130% punch damage to the front line pet every turn, and 75% punch damage to the backline every turn. That’s the equivalent of almost 3 punches every single turn. Not too shabby
- 4. Then I’ll punch with XT until he dies, which I’m guessing will only be one turn after he finishes his AOE, using the resurrect that Mechanical Pets to help him last
- 5. Then I’ll bring in Kirin Tor Familiar, or the third wheel if they counter the enemy pet and start spamming AOEs like a madman, using single-target DPS only if really necessary to deal with a problem.
- Realization: If my pet is slower than the enemy, I won’t actually reduce their DPS by killing one of their pets, unless one of their pets deals more damage than the others.
Concerns
I actually have quite a few concerns with this team. I’m not actually sure that AoE damage is going to be powerful enough to be viable, and I’m worried that even if it is, the strat allows the enemy team to keep all of their pets and chain their combos together uninterrupted. Frankly, I’m not sure it’s going to be a whole lot of fun if I never kill an enemy pet before losing. If they end with all their pets at 10% health, I’m going to feel terrible. Those little victories of killing a pet during the fight are nice moral boosters, even when you’re on a losing streak.
Thunderbolts! WhoOoOoOooa
Suggested Third Wheels
Picking a third wheel is going to be tough, but for the best reason: there are a lot of good options to round out this team.
I know I want a pet that has either Thunderbolt or Whirlwind because those are the two hardest-hitting AoEs in the game, but I’m not sure what pets to bring with them.
I’m tempted by the Darkmoon Zeppelin, because has Thunderbolt, a big Elemental damage AOE, and it can lay down a decoy that blocks attacks. But the rest of its abilities are lackluster, and it wouldn’t even have a spammable attack—just 3 abilities with super long cooldowns. And it’s Mechanical, which leaves me even more open to a hard Elemental counter.
I like the Curious Wolvar Pup too. It’s got Whirlwind, a humanoid AoE attack, a self-buff to boost its damage, and a spammable punch in Beast or Humanoid flavors to help diversify.
And once again, my great seductress rears its tempting head: that sexy Tranquil Mechanical Yeti. It can summon Lightning Storm to boost all Mechanical damage by 25% and add damage to every hit—both of which are awesome for Lil XT’s AoE Mechanical attacks. I’m not sure that it’d be a good pet. I think it’d likely be another throwaway for a single-pet trade, and I’m not sure I need two of those on the team. Maybe I’ll try it just for old times’ sake.
Curious Wolvar Pup smash!
How To Get The Pets
Lil’ XT
Bad news! Lil’ XT is only available through the Blizzard Store, where you have to pay $10 to unlock him.
Good news! There’s another pet that’s an exact copy of him that’s not sold on the store!
Bad news! The clone pet is only got through loot cards from the TCG, meaning you have to pay for it too
Good news! The loot card is a little cheaper on eBay than buying Lil’ XT ($8 at the time of this post)
Bring: Real money and then choose who you want to pay it to.
Kirin Tor Familiar
This little guy is the symbol of many proud achievement hunters in Wrath of the Lich King. You earn it by completing the achievement Higher Learning, which grants you access to a secret room in Dalaran, which houses the vendor who sells the pet.
Just getting into the secret room is fun, and I’d highly recommend everyone pick up this achievement with some simple, casual spawn checks. It’s pretty simple: you need to read six rare-spawn books in Dalaran.
To do this with minimal effort, just park an alt inside Dalaran and log in there once a day or so to run around and check all six spawn points. This map will help you know the general area that the books spawn, but you’ll also want to view this video once so that you can see where it is within the rooms/architecture.
Bring: a level 70+ character and a little patience.
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Tags: pets, World of Warcraft
11 Comments
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© 2015 The Game Diplomat | Theme by Eleven Themes
There is a sort of alternative to the XT’s – the Personal World Destroyer (engineering crafted, bring a flawless mechanical stone if you want it in rare) can use supercharge (only one turn, but does NOT increase your damage taken) and then quake (which looks like it hits a bit less than your XT does, but on a shorter cooldown).
I think it’s hard not to go with Call Lightning with this strategy. You’re hitting three targets per turn every turn, that extra damage is too good to pass up. Why not go for a cloud serpent instead of the yeti so that you add an extra creature type (who even comes with Cyclone) to your roster?
As to your fear that your opponent will hit you with combo’s…. every turn they hand you while they swap out pets is a turn in which you’re damaging their entire team. That’s a plus for your group, not a minus. I think the bigger concern is that you are either going to have a flawless victory or a catastrophic defeat in every match, but at least it’s different?
Green Armadillo recently posted: Rise of Massively Multiplayer Online Gameplay Anthologies (MMOGA’s)?
As I’m sure you’ve already noticed, Kirin Tor Familiar is elemental, not magic. The looks are really quite decieving on that pet…
I decided to scroll through all the abilities to find what’s AoE. I think I caught them all:
Starfall
5 Round Cooldown
Deals 17 Dragonkin damage to all enemy pets, restores 17 health to all allies and turns the weather into Moonlight for 9 rounds.
During Moonlight, all pets receive 25% additional healing and Magic abilities deal 10% additional damage.
Thunderbolt
4 Round Cooldown
Deals 47 Elemental damage to the enemy’s active pet and 47 Elemental damage to the enemy’s backline pets.
Sunlight
5 Round Cooldown
A Solar Beam strikes all enemies, dealing 34 Elemental damage and transforms the weather into a sunny day for 9 rounds.
During a sunny day, the maximum health of all pets is increased by 50%. and healing done is increased by 25%
Flux
3 Round Cooldown
Deals 40 Mechanical damage to the enemy’s active pet and 30 Mechanical damage to the enemy’s backline pets.
Unholy Ascension (kind of… Maybe)
Sacrifices your remaining life to haunt the enemy team, increasing all damage they take by 25% for 9 rounds.
The rest I found in
http://www.warcraftpets.com/abilities/filter/?filter=team_damage – which I found out while pasting abilities… It contained some I missed too.
Oh, good catch on the Elemental vs Magic on the Kirin Tor Familiar! I think I only half-processed that. I knew that it was countered by Aquatic Pets, but kind of forgot to take the Elemental passive into account. I’ll update the post to include that
Wow, I also didn’t realize you could filter abilities like that on warcraftpets. That’s SUPER useful.
Can we also take a moment to reflect on just how bad Bonestorm is? With 3 pets up, it’s the weakest AoE and it costs 10% of your health and has a 3 rd cooldown O_o
Thanks for the roundup of extra AoE abilities. Sunlight and Starfall make me a bit nervous on this team because none of the pets benefit from the healing perks, but the enemy team usually will.
Howling Blast and Dreadful Breath both looks interesting, but I’m not sure if they’ll be better than their alternatives. Should be a decent fill-in abilities for players with less pets to pick from though.
I like Unholy Ascension because it gives a pet that we don’t mind sacrificing if they have heavy burst, but the rest of the skull’s kit is kind of meh.
Thanks for the tips!
A funny insident I had with the Kirin Tor Familiar… I was dueling a friend of mine. Swapped in it to survive an Apocalypse… Only it didn’t, obvioously, since it was Elemental. It’s easy to forget that. For the record, magic pets with >40% health does survive apocalypse.
Back to the setup at hand. I agree about BONESTORM! though it is quite lovely, just the comedy of the name
Most of the abilities seem pretty lackluster. The most interesting ones seem to be Quake, Dreadful Breath and Howling Blast. The first two because of consistent damage, and the last for the higher efficiency. Sadly, Quake doesn’t have a great combo, like Tantrum does, so it doesn’t add as much to the team. Dreadful Breath is increased by 25% from rainy weather, so if you have that available, then it’s more efficient then quake. That said, I think that Howling Blast give most interesting options.
All of the pets have access to swap prevention. Then you could pick DnD/Siphon Life or Claw/Pounce with undead pets. The two elementals can choose to replace rooting with either Blizzard or Slippery Ice. Surge/Frost Shock might be useful, but they deal fairly low damage, as does Slippery ice. With your weather concerns, I’m personally a fan of Tiny Snowman. Magic Hats, Snowballs, Blizzards… What isn’t there to like? Besides, he looks awsome.
You can also simulate AoE by putting up dots and forcing pet-swaps with Death Grip. I’ve done it with the Giant Bone Spider, but I think the Crawling Claw would work well with it too. Creepy Crate doesn’t seem as suited.
As you can see on my armory, I’m mostly doing PvE battles though.
[…] The Game Diplomat Lil’ XT and Kirin Tor Familiar […]
I’ll be curious to hear the review show, but I’m wondering if using all three slots – or even two slots – for AOE specialists is overkill. I spent some time on a team with a Personal World Destroyer (did not own an XT, did own a Mechanical Battle Stone), the Kirin Tor Familiar and the Nexus Whelpling. My experience is that you want your first pet to unleash some AOE to soften up the enemy team, but once they’re done what you want is a pet with high sustained DPS to finish the half-dead pets off.
The Nexus Whelpling was a good fit for this, as he can come in after the mech dies, hit one more AOE with the Arcane Storm, and then unleash Mana Surge for a high damage three-turn channel that potentially kills both your opponent’s first pet AND their second. Another combo to consider for your number two slot is something with devour, in the hopes that you can come in and feast on your opponent’s half-dead pets to heal yourself.
Green Armadillo recently posted: Re-Capping Pandaria
I did a livestream of the team “review” last weekend if you want to see some of my thoughts ahead of time. I’m hoping to record the review episode tonight and get it up this weekend.
http://www.twitch.tv/watchjosh
I really like having AoE on at least two pets, because it gives me options when dealing with Elemental pets, where it’s plain suicide to put XT out first (he can get killed without a single AoE hit done against the likes of Lil Ragnaros). Kirin Tor Familiar still feels like a great combo because it has decent single-target DPS with Gravity on top of its spammable AoE.
I think you’re right about the third slot though, a high single-target burst would be stronger.
If they trigger Heartbroken, Lil’ XT’s Tantrum is absolutely devastating. He is very much the glass cannon though, as most teams have either an elemental or some burst pet to kill him pretty quickly. He will do what he is there to do though, bring them all down. Kirin Tor Familiar is just a nice slow AoE burn for their whole team too. Really make them scared after the havoc of Lil’ XT. The Arcane Storm is also nice to counter things like Daylight or Sandstorm, both of which are very problematic, especially Sandstorm.
For the third wheel, I tried out a few different choices. Like Green Armadilo says, the Call Lightning seems to be a great choice, but I really had a hard time with it. It not only forced me to put another pet out first, and give up a free hit on Lil” XT when I swapped him in, but just let them kill him before the full Tantrum would go off this way. Wanted it to work but just didn’t have good luck with it.
What did work, and very well, was pairing these two AoE beasts with a nice single target burst, with small passive heals, and some small amount of speed. I got all this in the Harbinger of Flame. XT brings their whole team down to half and is killed (for the second time). the Familiar goes in and brings them all down some more, some times killing the front pet, or any back row beasts. Then Harbinger of Flame goes in, usually going first, and nukes down the little remaining health with a hit or 2, passively healing every turn.
This team is either extremely effective or you get demolished. Very rarely is it a matter of one hit, one miss, or who has the last hit like with some other comps. While it was not the most fun to level, it is pretty fun to play at cap, and seams to win more than it looses at cap too. Looking forward to hearing what you think Josh.
Yeah, I’ve found very similar results with XT. Without an Elemental enemy and with Heartbroken, it’s insanely fun. But if either of those problems crop up, it’s pretty lackluster. Sandstorm was a big problem for me as well, and I think that solidified my opinion that Kirin Tor is definitely necessary for this team.
Call Lightning was pretty disappointing for me too–it works on paper, but in practice it’s just not worth it. You’re already putting so many eggs in the “lots of small hits” basket that Lightning Storm seems too risky. Also, I’m not sure if they nerfed the damage on it, but it feels weaker now.
I love the idea of adding Harbinger of Flame onto the team in the third slot. The Wolvar Pup was pretty lackluser, and I ended up using him for single-target most of the time anyways. I’ve been playing it a lot this week, and will add my thoughts of it into the review episode, which I’m recording tomorrow!
Thanks for taking the time to send in this feedback. I absolutely LOVE reading your thoughts on these teams. I hope you continue to do more in the future!
[…] Lil’ XT: I tried LiL’ XT for only two matches. Like his buddy the Clockwork Gnome, he has so much potential to be amazing if half the pets on PvP teams weren’t Elemental. His combo takes awhile to set up, and if the enemy can overwrite the weather effect, or is smart enough to not proc the Heartbroken damage buff, he gets stomped without much challenge. […]