I don’t talk a lot about personal stuff on the blog. It’s usually all pet battles all the time over here. But guys. I hate spiders.
No, you guys. like. I HATE spiders. HATE. haaaate.
When I did Maexxna as a healer in Vanilla, I turned my character to the wall so I didn’t have to see her. When I did her in Wrath as a hunter, luckily the rotation had grown so easy I could spam my steady shot macro and close my eyes for most of the fight. I am not even kidding, either about how much I hate spiders or how easy hunters were.
I honestly don’t even know why. I’m cool with bugs and caterpillars. Snakes and lizards, sure. Even scorpions are fine. I’ve always had some kind of garden as far back as I can remember, because my parents were hippies and liked growing their own food, so I know spiders are good for nature and all that jazz. Something about that extra set of legs maybe? The way they move? The webs? I don’t know and I’d prefer not to think it over too hard just now thankyouverymuch.
But there are a couple of reasons for me to explore their creepy little leggy crawly beady eyed oh god this sentence has to be over now. First of all, many of these guys are low-texture, and you know how that tickles my fancy. They were one of the first to be made over, into both a spindly-legged model and a fuzzier tarantula model, and now there are even more varied models to choose from. The low-texture version is also reused for Pandaria with the bizarrely pink Amethyst Spiderling and thus have spanned across expansion packs, so they kinda fill that same role as the frog.
They’re also a fairly decent pet battler across the level gamut, which tends to be rare. They get the Leech Life ability at level 5 to heal themselves, and as a result they’re a hardy choice for grinding. Unlike the Frogs, spiders can have varied movesets. For example, the crystal spider has a stun instead of the DoT poison ability.
My interest in spiders was piqued when I was dueling with Elepheagle one day. He completely wrecked my Black Claw DoT team with his spider. Rather than demand the answer, “WHYYYY” on my knees from an unanswering sky, I asked wowhead instead.
Brittle Webbing typically inhabits the same slot as the regular old web, only gives quite a bit of reflexive damage on each attack. The damage can be countered by Sandstorm (WHAT CAN’T BE COUNTERED BY SANDSTORM argh) or the Shell Shield-type abilities. I haven’t quite fought enough to recommend it whole hog, but I’m trying out a new team, pairing the spider with a pet with Wild Magic and a third, heavy-hitting tank pet (but not a direhorn… the nerf for 5.4 is pretty bad). If you find yourself coming up against DoT teams I definitely recommend trying out a spider.
…you know, as much as I *could* recommend trying out a spider. blerg.
BattlePetRoundup.com 
I use a P/P spider fairly often. I love brittle webbing!
Some of the colours are nice for spiders though!
I’m um, learning to love it. lol. colors schmolors, those things are creepy.
*laughing*
You know who REALLY REALLY hates spiders?
My Clockwork Gnome. :(
They’re really good to level with – most of them have a strong DoT, Brittle, and Leech – very durable. It’s been a long time since I’ve actually seen one in PvP though.
Aside: Not on Twitter, but I’d like to see the Celestial Tourney stuff. Though, if you’re doing all of that, order doesn’t matter so much I guess. :)
I’ve found that if I can find something that isn’t showing up a ton in PVP but is still somewhat viable, I can win fairly frequently because it throws people off, and they make silly mistakes. I’ve gotten a few spidery wins and if they were more popular I’m not sure it would work as well.
I’m planning on doing a long post workup on the Tourney over the weekend, but I figure I can bang out a Kovok (eg) video pretty quickly and move on to the battles. They are seriously, seriously freaking difficult, in part because you have certain pets you usually use as your counters and once they fight against one opponent you pretty much can’t use them again, because of the no heals parameter. It takes a lot of pre-planning (and a lot of heal counters, good lord) to start downing celestials. As it is, it sounds like a huge artificial hurdle to have 30+ 25s, but even after I have my optimal strategy I think that may not even be enough. We’ll see!
Unfortunately, “somewhat viable” just doesn’t cut it against the dumb gimmick crap I’m seeing lately.
(My “favorite” that I hit quite a bit last couple days: Triple Direhorn. They literally didn’t even hit any key not named “Charge”. Seriously. *sigh* I hope the nerf is as bad as you’re suggesting – it really doesn’t look like much on paper…)
30+ 25s really shouldn’t be a big deal. I have 45-ish 25s marked as “favorites”, and probably 10-15 more that aren’t marked (stuff that I leveled and then decided they really weren’t “all that” after all). On the other hand, I hit up Aki/Moruk/Nishi at minimum every single day to level something. *shrug*
Looking forward to the tournament for sure!
It makes it so Direhorns are still fairly valid, but aren’t the OP powerhouse they are now (and they’re why almost every team I use has a mech, for now).
The baseline 15 25s (they halved it last PTR build… lol) isn’t going to be the issue… there are 3 sets of 2 pets you fight, and then you go up against the 4 aspects, and you can’t heal or revive any pets during the process. So, unless you get super lucky or have a mega, mega tight strat you’re looking at a minimum of 21 lvl 25s. The dicey bit comes when you see that 2 of the 4 Celestials are beasts… Mechs are really good and all, but there aren’t a whole lot of them and I don’t keep a ton of duplicate pets in my stable (UNTIL NOOOOW). I know I have more than 75 25s, but a bunch of those are kinda useless (eg, the h/b rabbit I leveled to do the rabbits video).
I have a sort-of summary overview kind of post on it coming tomorrow (toddler permitting) and after reset I’ll start formulating my walkthrough posts.