I know I’ve often waxed lyrical on my love affair with my crab Ishmael, but I may be cheating on him just a little with my Scourged Whelpling, Radley. Come on, who wouldn’t want to rub up on this?
Couldn’t you just kiss that little toothy, rotting, plague-infested… um, forget I asked.
Right now, the Scourged Whelpling might be my very favorite pet of all pets. The only thing he kinda stinks at is taming… he has mostly damage over time abilities, and his single nukes all hit really hard, so he’s reserved for straightup killing, and whoa boy does he deliver. He’s been one of my favorites for PVE stuff for a while. Radley has been featured in my Aki strat and my Burning Pandaren Spirit Tamer strat already. He’s so hardy he can decimate any wild pet he runs across, even the critters he’s vulnerable to.
PVP is where he is suddenly scintillating for me. Mostly because, yanno, I only just started to PVP. He’s key in nearly any damage over time team. He was featured in the clockwork gnome/wild golden hatchling synergy combo I started PVPing with (discussed briefly in my post about the clockwork gnome). My current team, making heavy use of Black Claw (which I’ll be discussing in a future post, really soon!) also uses the Whelpling.
Really, nearly any team which is heavy on the DoTs will benefit greatly from using him, because of his high health, undead type (which helps to beat up those damnable Kun-Lai Runts) but mostly because of his Plagued Blood ability. This ability has no cooldown and debuffs the current pet. It heals you each time you strike the pet with the debuff, for roughly 50. This means that each time a DoT ticks or turret fires or death & decay ticks, you get a heal.
This can end up being tricky to manage, since all they have to do is swap out and you have to reapply the Plagued Blood for the new pet. With a heavy swap team, or going against a force swap team, this can be a huge pain. It can also be problematic with the turret, because unlike something like a Shrine Fly‘s DoTs directly on the opponent pet, when your opponent swaps, you lose that healing until you re-apply Plagued Blood.
So, how do you find one of these elusive little guys? Honestly, this is a really tough tame, even now. Your best bet is to just park an alt the area in Icecrown where they spawn, and check every so often, especially just after a cross-realm server restart. This is one of the pets I see people saying they created a DK on one of the rp-pvp servers for less competition, too.
I know I’m kind of a jerk for spotlighting such a difficult tame, and it probably reads more like ‘haha look what I got suckaaaa.’ A Restless Shadeling is an alright substitute in some DoT teams, but is kind of a pain to tame too. Luckily, you only have to do it once, and this guy will be yours for long walks on the beach, or glamour shots in the sun.
Just dreamy.
BattlePetRoundup.com 
The heal from Plagued Blood should be 59 per hit on average for a H/H breed. It’s Power*0.2 + 4, and scales with the Scourged Whelpling’s Power, not that of the attacking pet.
I have one but never used him… perhaps I should *ponders*
oh wow, I love this little guy and use him against Aki everyday but do you know I have never used the Plagued Blood abilty, I thought it meant while it did damage it would heal the other pet everytime it attacked you, sort of how scorched ground hurts both pets etc. Wow I can’t wait to try out that ability tonight.
I was lucky enough to snag one, just a common though. Still waiting for an undead stone from my pet battle bags. Used your strat to cascade – now working on leveling the right ones. Thanks again for sharing these tidbits. I’m still holding out from starting PVP battles, but you tempt me with your posts.
Heh, I just got one of these! Did the cheapo “DK on a RP-PvP server” bit, took about 40 minutes. They were all over the place in Icecrown – my level 1 troll hunter took a look around and found a rare to tame (about the 4th one that I looked at)!
yay, congrats! Mine is probably my most used pet right now. :)
Yeah, I can see why, the thing is awesome.
Plagued Blood is pretty ridiculous with Turret. I’ve not been terribly happy with the Kneebiter in the third slot for that team – it’s too easy to avoid Black Claw and the stampede just doesn’t make up for how fragile it is. Been experimenting with an Ooze there and it’s going well so far. It’s pretty hopeless against Shields and Lil Rag, but I may have to just accept it with that team. *shrug*
Fun team I went against yesterday: mushroom-based Nether Faerie Dragon/Sporeling Sprout/Infected Squirrel.
yeah, I’ve been experimenting with Mushrooms & Moonlight, because it’s a really underused synergy. It seems really fun, though.
For a DoT team I did enjoy a Thunderstorm slot, but it was countered really easily by shields (and honestly, with the extra animation, matches were taking FOREVER, so I had to find an alternative). Anything with DoTs works well in combo with Plagued Blood. I tried a Shrine Fly for a while, but man, talk about glass cannons. Fel Flame is a decent pick too. Or you might want to *ahem* fight fire with *snerk* FIRE ahahaha and go with a miniRags of your own.
Keep at it, and report back!
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