Lord of Verminion - An Awful Frustrating Experience

[Myon88]

You were on the right track with the wind-up succubi, but what would really have served you well would have been fenrir pups as mentioned. They're basically the monster type clone of the wolf pup - they cost the same, have the same stats, the same limit break (that buffs monsters instead of critters) - if there was a literal counter to wolf pups it would be these. They have exactly the same stats, so the only way they would lose is if your opponent played better somehow (positioning, etc). Even if you can't micro and just want to spam something, you can still win someone else doing the same by picking the right counter minion.

If you're willing to put in a bit of effort at micromanagement, baby bats are the better and universal counter to any strategy that relies on massing up a big group of single minions. Their LB is a DoT that deals 200 damage over 20 seconds (comparable to the coeurl kittens who deal 230 damage instantly), but what makes it different is its extremely wide range making it easy to aim and tag a large number of targets with it. 1 potency = 1 hp, and wolf pups have 385 hp, so it does not matter how many wolf pups your opponent has in their deathball, if you hit them with the baby bat LB twice, they will all be dead. 8 bats (or even 4 bats who come back to LB a second time) can kill 240 points/16 wolf pups if used well.

Re: bombs, yeah don't use the cherry bombs as they're slow and no one competent will get hit by them. Use Robonyan (cheap and 3 speed) or gilgamesh (expensive but 4 speed) if you really want to pull off a bomb play. You shouldn't have to though, as bombs are last resort strategies and if you play well (see above), your opponent will be the one scrambling for a solution instead.

the advantage of having a single 30 cost vs three 10 costs is rather non-existent. Sure, your 30 cost can probably smack those three minions down on its own, BUT, not only do the 10 costs only need one more minion to activate their ability (which would most likely turn the tide of that skirmish completely), the advantage they gain in terms of map presence is far greater (you can send three 10's in three different directions, you can only send one 30 to one spot).

This is true and one of the advantages that cheap swarms have over smaller groups of strong units. Something to note however is that minion resummoning time does not scale up as fast as minion costs do - that is to say a 30 cost minion doesn't take 3x longer to summon than a 10 cost minion, it's more like.. 40% longer or something. What this means is that if you focus on pumping out strong units you can max out to your 240 point cap much faster than someone spamming cheap units. This gives you a momentary advantage where, for example, a minute into the match you might have 8 hildibrands (240 points) and they only have 15 coeurl kittens (150 points). How you make use of this advantage I'll leave you to think about.

You are also correct in that speed is the most important stat by far, to the point where minions that don't have 4 speed almost might as well not exist at all. That said, I don't think it's a bad thing for only a few minions to be 'in the meta'. There are hundreds of minions in the game so it's literally impossible for all of them to be relevant, the knowledge to choose the correct ones is part of player skill as well. If you're overwhelmed by the number of minions to choose from, I recommend http://ffxiverminion.com/minions which lets you easily browse all of them. You might be surprised to find that some of the most common pets in the game are also the strongest in the metagame.