Exalted Overlord Pets

 

In 2015, I spent a lot of time stalking exalted overlords for their pets. For this projects, Iwatched PvP matches of exalted wizards (lvl 100) with a rank of 1300 or higher. This was back when 100 was max level. I took pictures of all their Mega pets and am presenting the results in this article. Draw your own conclusions!

What kinds of pets do
high level & high rank PvP’ers use?

Which talents are the most popular
among the cream of the crop?

 

 

 

Some points have to be made:

• Balance wizards were by far the easiest to find. At Exalted higher ranks, Balance rules the Arena. I don’t think this comes as a surprise to anyone. This means, however, that I’ve had trouble finding enough wizards of the other schools to compare effectively.
• Not all wizards were necessarily using their prefered PvP pet. For example, Cody FireBreath used an Epic pet instead of his Mega Fire Beetle for most of the matches I watched. He was just ranking up and down to get tickets, so he didn’t feel like he needed his Mega pet. There may be other reasons as well: maybe they had just trained a new pet to Mega, maybe they have several PvP pets, maybe they were just trying out a new one. I didn’t talk to every PvPer, so we will never know.
• Not all overlords were necessarily active in PvP anymore. I also took pictures of the pets of Exalted overlords who were just watching PvP. It might be that they’ve retired from PvP and just used a random pet. It might also be that they got their rank at a much lower level and only leveled up afterwards.
• Even overlords end up with pet “fails”. Maybe these PvP’ers were trying for a different kind of pet, but ended up with certain talents that were less than perfect. They might just be using a less than perfect pet because they are still working on the pet of their dreams.

 

Now let’s look at those delicious pets!

 

BALANCE

 

For Balance, there are two types of pets I ran into repeatedly: the Flamingo Tocador and the Forlorn Sabertooth. Both pets give cards that can be very useful in PvP. The Flamingo is absolutely the most popular. It gives three Availing Hands, which means the Balance wizard won’t have to carry as many heals in their main deck. The Sabertooth gives a Hex trap, a Doom and Gloom bubble and a Sabertooth attack. I assume the Doom and Gloom is the most useful of those three cards.

When it comes to talents, Balance wizards like the following types of talents the most:

1. Damage: 15/15 pets had at least one damage talent, with tripple damage being common
2. Universal resist: 12/15 pets had at least proof, many had double resist.
3. One heal: 8/15 pets had one heal, be it pixie, fairy or unicorn. However, nobody had multiple heals!
4. Auras: 6/15 pets had the Infallible aura, which is especially useful for aggressive builds
5. Critical: 4/15 pets had at least 1 critical talent.
6. Wards: 1/15 pets had Balance-Ward. Ward pets are clearly not very popular for Balance PvP, just like it isn’t for the other more aggressive schools (Fire and Storm).

Overall, most Balance wizards seem to be focused on being able to deal a lot of damage. I’m unsure how much variation there is between different Balance wizards’ PvP style. One thing is clear in any case: there is surprisingly little variation between their pets.

 

ICE

 

Ice seems to have two strategies (Jade and damage), so two different types of pets.

Jade Ice pets have resist and heals, with 2/4 of the Jade pets being a variation on the double resist, tripple heal theme. Favored talents were:

1. Universal resist: 4/4 Jade pets had double resist.
2. Heals: 2/4 pets had tripple heals, 1/4 just Fairy and 1/4 no heals at all.
3. Wards: 2/4 Jade pets had the talent Balance-Ward, with one of the two also having Storm-Ward
4. Auras: No auras! Fortify did not appear in any of these pets, while it’s pretty popular among Death Jades.

For damage Ice pets, the Snow Beast is popular due to its Ice Blade card.

1. Damage: 2/5 tripple damage, 2/5 double damage, 1/5 single damage
2. Universal resist: 4/5 pets had double resist, 1/5 only Spell-Proof
3. Heals: 3/5 of the damage pets had no heals at all!
4. Critical: this isn’t that important for Ice, as only one pet had a critical talent
5. Auras: only 1 pet had an aura: may cast Infallible

Interesting to me was especially the complete lack of heals on some Ice damage pets. Fire and Balance seem more conservative in this regard, as their pets do often have at least Fairy. Maybe Ice has enough of a health buffer for it not to matter if their pet doesn’t occasionally heal? In any case, pet heals aren’t something you can depend on.

The other interesting thing was the lack of Fortify in Ice Jade pets. This may cast aura is popular on Death Jade pets, but not on Ice or Life Jade pets.

 

FIRE

 

For Fire, pets that give a Fire Blade card (such as the Crimsonzilla and the Blaze Beast) are the most popular. Fire has what we might start calling traditional damage pets. All pets had at least one resist talent, but the other talents are centered around either damage or critical. Anything to give Fire From Above a little extra power!

1. Universal resist: 8/8 Fire pets had resist, 50% of which had only Spell-Proof
2. Damage: 7/8 pets had damage talents, 3/8 had tripple damage, 2/8 double damage
3. Critical: 5/8 pets had critical talents, with 1/8 tripple critical
4. Heals: 2/8 pets had Fairy, no other healing may casts
5. Auras: 2/8 pets had may cast Infallible

 

STORM

 

Storm overlords are rare, unfortunately. It’s hard to draw any conclusions based on 4 pets. Here’s what these 4 pets reveal about Storm PvP pets:

1. Damage: 4/4 Storm pets had at least one damage talent, and 1/4 was a tripple damage, double critical pet
2. Critical: 2/4 pets had at least one critical talent
3. Universal resist: 2/4 pets had double resist, 2/4 had no resist at all
4. Heals: 1/4 pets had Fairy, 1/4 had Unicorn
5. Aura: none of these 4 had a may cast aura

 

 

LIFE

 

Life is going strong in Exalted PvP, woot! I’ve found fairly many overlord Life wizards. Life seems to have two strategies, so two different types of pets. I ran into 3 Life Jade pets and 8 Life damage pets.

I didn’t find enough Jades to really draw conclusions about Life Jade pets. However, the presence of Storm-Ward was interesting to notice. These are the talents these three pets favored:

1. Universal resist: 3/3 pets had both Spell-Proof and Spell-Defy
2. Healing: 3/3 pets had may cast healing: 1/3 had only Fairy, 2/3 had two healing talents.
3. Wards: 2/3 pets had Storm-Ward
4. Auras: 1/3 pets had the Conviction aura.

For a Life damage pet, the Forest Beast is the most popular due to its Life Blade card. These are the talents most popular among Life damage pets:

1. Damage: 4/8 pets had double damage and 4/8 had tripple damage.
2. Universal resist: 5/8 had double resist, 2/8 only Spell-Proof and 1/8 no resist at all.
3. Healing: Surprisingly, 4/8 damage pets had NO may cast healing talents. 3/8 pets had Fairy and 1 had Sprite.
4. Critical: 3/8 pets had one critical talent, with one of those also having a critical block talent.
5. Auras: None of these pets had a may cast aura.

As you can see from the above, Life damage pets are quite traditional damage pets, focusing on damage or critical with some resist. The lack of healing talents on these pets was interesting. I suppose their owners felt they can take care of their own healing!

 

 

 

DEATH

 

Death seems to have two strategies (Jade and damage), so two different types of pets. The Jade Deaths focus on resist pets, with strategies and gear meant to outlast the opponent. These are the Deaths that like to use Bad Juju. The talents Jade Deaths like the most are:

1. Universal resist: 5/6 of the non-damage pets had double resist, 1/6 had just Spell-Proof.
2. One heal: 5/6 pets had Fairy, 2/6 had Unicorn.
3. Wards: 3/6 pets had Balance-Ward.
4. Fortify aura: 5/6 of the non-damage pets had may cast Fortify aura.
   
5. Enfeeble: The presence of Enfeeble on 4/6 pets was interesting!

There are also some aggressive Deaths around, though they seem to be more rare than Jade Deaths. These are the talents these Death pets had:

1. Tripple damage: 2/3 pets had tripple damage, 1/3 had double damage.
2. Resist: 2/3 had Spell-Proof, 1/3 had double resist.
3. One heal: Fairy on 3/3 pets!

 

MYTH

 

It’s been said before and it will be said again: Myth is not very common nowadays in the Exalted arena. I managed to catch 4 specimens of the Myth variety, which is not enough to make big conclusions. Two of the Myth pets I found on overlord Exalted wizards were Jade-ish pets, and two were more on the offensive side. Since there are so few, here’s a summary of these 4 pets:

1. Universal resist: 4/4 pets had double resist.
2. Heals: 2/4 pets had Fairy, with the non-damage pet also having Unicorn.
3. Damage: 1/4 had double damage, 1/4 Myth-giver
4. Auras: one of the more offensive pets had may cast Infallible, while one of the more defensive pets had may cast Conviction.
5. Wards: 1/4 pets was a ward pet with double resist, Death-Ward, Ice-Ward and Storm-Ward.

It’s hard to say anything more based on 4 pets.

 

 

Some final thoughts

It’s nice to see how pets have grown to be a specific part of one’s strategy. The traditional (boring) SPUDF (Sprite-Proof-Unicorn-Defy-Fairy) pets you used to see on every single wizard have lost their glory. People have explored other possibilities and are using pets and talents that really fit their strategy.

The Beast pets are very popular! The Forest Beast for Life, Blaze Beast for Fire, Snow Beast for Ice and Shadow Beast for Death can be seen everywhere. They give a very useful Blade card. The Enchanted Armament is another popular choice, because it gives three Sharpened Blades. Balance wizards are somewhat exceptional in this regard, as they mainly stick to their Flamenco with its 3 Availing Hands. I’m sure that, if there would be a pet that gives 3 Satyrs, many people would go for that one. The Flamenco fullfills that role for Balance wizards and those with a Balance mastery amulet.

The presence of may cast auras was a surprise for me. I had assumed that — with Balance’s popularity and their Supernova spell — people would try to avoid pets with auras, as it’s a low pip way to do a lot of damage.  I ran into 2 may cast Convictions, 4 Fortifies and 6 Infallibles. I guess 12 auras in 60 pets isn’t that much, but I expected it to be less!

 

Did any of the above surprise you?
Did you learn anything new?
Which pet would you like to hatch with?

 

As always, let us know in the comments!

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