Tag Archives: Pets

So This Hunter Alt

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We’d been saving the name Fae since I transferred Fae the first off to Terenas, just incase I ever brought her back and I really love the name. Dan held on to the name for me because I didn’t have a space, but I did have a Rogue I wasn’t sure about. It’s quite nice having Fae the Hunter on Vashj again, even if it isn’t the real Fae. I decided to make her a red haired Blood Elf (who looks scarily like my Rogue, the one on Argent Dawn, in Hunter gear) instead of a Goblin, which was my original plan, purely because I knew I’d feel more comfortable with her. My Warrior and Shaman are both Goblins so no worries, eh?

The first thing I did was sort out her heirlooms. I had the sword and a dagger lying around, so she got those. They were enchanted with Crusader so I switched them both to +15 agi. I sent her the leather shoulders and chest to start with until I can get the mail stuff, which I figure is worth getting because I can then use it on my Shaman too. So far I’ve managed to get the chest but I still need about 2k points for the shoulders. I grabbed the helm and cloak from the guild vendor, and farmed a few points which got me the bow, which I can use on my Warrior afterwards, and chest so far. I threw on a few enchants (+15 agility on weapon, 8 agility and 8 dodge on cloak, +3stats on chest because I can’t do +4, +2 damage scope on bow) and got her a guild invite (we’re level 22). That’s a 45% experience increase, plus with the bow and all of the awesome stats, I’m basically one-shotting everything in my path. I have never levelled so fast.. I went from level 8 to level 18 in just a few hours. It’s nuts! So basically, my pet is there to look pretty and be awesome in instances. At the moment I’m mostly using a cat because the buff they do is nice.

I’d already known I wanted to get her the rare fox from Loch Modan, and Dan had mentioned the polar bear in Dun Morogh which we’d gone and got for Fae the first when she was a lowbie Hunter, and he offered to dragon me off to get it again. I checked Petopia for any other pets I might like and spotted an awesome rare cat from Darkshore, Shadowclaw, and asked if we could pop off to get that too. He threatened to drop me on a random mountain when I started RPing on his back (Fae the second really doesn’t like dragon turbulence), but you know, give a guy the evils and he wouldn’t dare. The polar bear is named Patrick after my beloved, giant cuddly polar bear that lives on the bed. The cat is named Shadow, just because it was originally called Shadowclaw so, why not. And the fox is called Sashi, as I realised I’m not using the name for a pet any more and it’s a lovely name.

So last night I decided to level a bit more, to catch up with Dan’s Goblin, and I got 21 to 27 (very close to 28) in a couple of hours. Started off by heading to Hillsbrad. There are some nice rewards there if you do a fair chunk of the zone, however, I also decided I might as well instance. The trouble with instancing is how much experience it gives, especially if you haven’t done the quests, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to skip past every questing zone I start. Each one is giving me one or two levels. I headed off anyway after getting my mining up to Tin level and some of it was nuts.

There was the SFK run that was just the last boss and we almost wiped on him but the dps was high enough, thing is, the Rogue (who at the beginning was spamming ‘go’ on every line while we waited for the Warrior to catch up) then started demanding a res… from a Warrior and a Hunter.

Next I got a Stockades. This one actually managed to confuse me a bit. The healer was called “Nksgfdhsfslksnksk” or something to that effect and was afk-ish. The Rogue felt the need to announce, “this is a random” okay, congratulations? I never did work out why they said that. The Mage started pulling and calling the afk, apparently gold farming, healer a fag. I made some comeback about him pulling without the tank, and he replied about the fag name Fae. Yeah, okay, I’m also a Blood Elf. At least I’m not called ‘Borntbwild’.. The Warrior whispered me telling me not to help him kill, he was trying to get him killed. It took us 5 minutes to get started and then the healer didn’t have water and went oom a lot, and I realised the Mage and Warrior were in the same guild. We’ll just brush that one under the carpet..

I specificked (ok, I know that’s not really a word, but how the hell would you spell it?) an SFK to do my class quest and the instance quests, picked up the bracers from the [4th?] boss, oh and one of the cow Paladins was called Chezus. He totally got plus points. Hope he knows I was thinking of Glee’s ‘grilled cheesus’ when I complimented his name. After that I got a BFD in a random that had me flailing about because the tank wouldn’t stop pissing moving and I was trying to Steady Shot my focus back ._. However, we got the place done pretty swiftly and I did the first couple of quests in Northern Stranglethorn and then decided to give it a rest for the night. One of these days I’ll level her Engineering and give her more bank space, honest.

Perhaps she’ll get upto more interesting antics soon, who knows ;)

Cataclysm: Hunter Preview

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(See, I’m doing my bit to make this blog spoiler friendly!)

I’ll be honest, this preview has left me a little worried about the Hunter class. The change from mana to focus is going to cause the class to change a lot, and I’m currently trying out Rogue, the energy mechanic frustrates me somewhat. I’m a little bit scared that I’ll go into Cataclysm and find that I dislike the Hunter class, and what then? Would I just quit after seeing the new content, or reroll? Anyway, that’s me getting a little ahead of myself because this is, after all, just a preview and things are subject to change. Though from what we’ve seen already, Beast Mastery looks to be a strong contender for most interesting talent tree.

For starters: Cobra Shot: “A new shot that deals Nature damage instead of Physical damage. This ability will share a cooldown with Steady Shot. This will give hunters an alternative to Steady Shot on heavily-armored targets, and we will have talent incentives in the Beast Mastery tree to make this a signature shot.” This could either make or break Beast Mastery, giving them an entirely new shot to use instead of Steady Shot. My prediction is that it will hit like a train for a while, but I’m definitely interested in this one. One thing I wonder is how the nature damage aspect will work. Does this mean that Hunters will scale with spell power (or.. intellect I guess now) the same way that Unholy DKs don’t exactly suffer from it? What of hit and resistances?

Trap Launcher: “When used, the next trap can be shot to a location within 40 yards. This provides the current Freezing Arrow treatment to all traps and, as a result, we will be removing the current ability Freezing Arrow. 1-minute cooldown. No global cooldown.” Nice. Freezing Arrow has been a pretty useful tool, this means that we can plonk down an Explosive/Frost/Snake trap in a bundle of enemies in PvP without dragging ourselves into the thick of it at all.

Camouflage: “The hunter enters an obscured state that prevents him or her from taking ranged damage. The character would still be subject to melee or area-of-effect attacks, and dealing or taking damage will break the Camouflage effect. The hunter can move and set traps when under Camouflage, and will receive a damage bonus when attacking while under Camouflage (which will then break the effect).” At first glance, I thought, “what the hell?” and I looked again and I suppose this could be a nice tool for the start of a rotation, especially when used with the new BM talent, Careful Aim which “increases the damage of the next Steady Shot or Cobra Shot, but also increases the cast time of these abilities.” I can live with that, it’s a nice boost for BM.

The new focus mechanic worries me. I get frustrated at Rogue energy which regenerates at roughly 10per second. Focus will regenerate at around 6 per second. Eep. BM has always seemed to me to be the spec which focuses the most on Steady Shot. Steady Shot and Cobra Shot will be the focus regenning shot, thus I can see BM being much better for focus regen. Not to mention BM will receive mastery (which I still haven’t worked out /blush) talents for Haste, which will increase focus regeneration rates.

The pet changes could be just the thing I’ve been asking for! For starters, the mention of active and stabled pets, enabling us to keep pets that we may have certain attachments to but only carrying around the pets we plan to use, has been further confirmed. The amount of active pets allowed to us will probably be 3, though BM hunters may be getting 5 active slots. To switch a pet from passive to active and vice versa we will need to visit a Stable Master, which makes sense. The other pet changes I am particularly fond of? “Additionally, hunters will now start with a race-appropriate pet at level 1 and will be able to tame a different pet at level 10. We are also changing many pet family abilities to provide important buffs and debuffs. The intention is to allow the hunter to be able to swap pets and fill a position if a certain role is missing from the group. The goal is to have all pets provide a damage increase that is very similar and no greater than any other pet. Some examples of the changes we are making to the pet families are listed below:

  • Wind Serpents: Will provide a debuff that increases the amount of spell damage taken by an enemy (similar to a weaker version of the warlock ability Curse of Elements).
  • Ravagers: Will provide a debuff that will increase an enemy’s Physical damage vulnerability (similar to a weaker version of the warrior ability Rampage).
  • Hyenas: Will provide bleed damage (similar to a weaker version of the druid ability Mangle).“

Yes, yes, yes! This could be just the thing to bring back a bit of variety in pet choices, and enforcing Hunters as a ranged class as early as the 1-10 bracket. Good. Those of us who’ve played for a while can manage okay with kiting mostly, though some players struggle with it, and even more so for newer players who may get used to meleeing as normality. Not to mention this is exactly what Razorstorm commented about in my last post ranting about pet mechanics. Nice call :P

TL;DR Conclusion: I like a lot of these ideas. I think I’m drawn more towards Beast Mastery as my Cataclysm spec from the sounds of a lot of the changes (and I don’t tend to enjoy BM as much as MM or Surv as it stands now). The pet changes might well be just what the doctor ordered, and if these go through I’ll be happy with it. I’m terrified of where focus will lead the Hunter class, as I struggle with energy classes, I’m worried it might lead to me rerolling if I really don’t like it (probably Shadow Priest or Warlock if it came down to it), though of course I will give it a try because I will probably be completely wrong and it will make the Hunter class just a little bit cooler. Of course, if you want to read the full changes, MMO Champion has them up, this post is purely a recap.

You might notice I haven’t kept up on Cataclysm changes too much, but I’d like to have a rough idea on how to play my class when it does come around.

My Thoughts on Hunter Pets

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Pets are possibly one of the biggest selling points of the Hunter class to new players. When I first started playing WoW, I was told that Hunters were “kinda like Rogues but they use bows and have pets that you can tame.” My slightly girly, non gamer head went ‘oooh, pets’ and then chose Warlock because they were magic users.. but Hunter was my first alt! I just ended up deleting her because I wasn’t a fan of the female Orc model (this was pre-TBC, no Blood Elves, and I was Horde). Some people like pet classes because you get yourself a little companion that you can fight with, some because of the variety, and some just because they like cute animals.

Stable Slots

Whatever your reason for liking Hunters, you probably like to have several pets in your stable. First pets, flavour pets, useful pets.

My first pet was the polar bear from Dun Morogh when I was level 11. Dan ran me there from the Undercity on his Mage, and on my first attempt I died. I called it Gwynarth (white bear in Welsh, okay, Dan named it, I wanted to call it Pokey) and I loved it, levelled most of the way with it. My next pet was a white stripey cat from Winterspring called Sashi, who was my raiding pet at 70. When WotLK was released, I tamed a Rhino, first thing I did, I loved them to bits, and I called it Steve. Later on, I decided to tame Pitch in Scholazar Basin as my raiding pet, and called him ChairmanMeow. My point? I’ve had to delete every one of those pets to get others. I had to close my eyes when I found Skoll and the only pet left that I could release was Gwynarth, I still feel a little horrid for that! My stable currently has: Wolf, Turtle, Spirit Beast (Skoll), and a pink Dragonhawk. I’m running around with NomNom, the blue rare cat from Winterspring. I wouldn’t have had to if Hunters had more stable slots, which I think would improve the Hunter class without making them overpowered.

Dev Chat

So, the developer chat pops up on Twitter, I’m around so I asked “Are hunters likely to see more stable slots for their pets in the future? With the current variety of pets, the amount they have right now seems too small.” and I was answered!

“Arm-waving here, but a model I would love to see is dramatically expanded slots (so you can store all those Spirit Beasts) but have a smaller number of “active” pets, like 3. You could summon an active pet from anywhere in the world, when outside of combat. You would swap a pet from active to the stable at the Stable Masters.“

You know, I think I’d be okay with that if it happened. That would mean we could keep the sentimental pets, and just carry around the pets we’re most likely to use.

Variety (or Lack of)

Another thing I think Hunter pets could use is a little rehaul of their abilities perhaps. As it stands, there is a pretty large variety of tameable beasts, and a heck of a lot of those tend to go unused. I like the talents, Cunning/Ferocity/Tenacity, that gives a little choice depending on what you’re doing, but I’m not sure I’m a fan of each beast having a different ability when that leads to there being a clear choice for ‘best raid pet’, ‘best pvp pet’ and so on.

You join a raid or instance or even just wander around a city and any Hunter you see with their pet out will 9 times out of 10 be using the same boring Northrend wolf model, occasionally the demon style wolf from Zul’Drak, which originally was really cool, but these days it’s BLAND. When I raid, I try to min-max a bit, I try to do the best I can do. I like to compete with the other DPS and if I turned around and said “screw this, I’m using a moth tonight” I wouldn’t be able to compete. I would, but I wouldn’t be as successful at it as if I used the ‘best’ raiding pet. I use a wolf when I have to, but I don’t like it. I’d use a cat.

I really think it would be nice to have a little more variety. Yes, make the choice cosmetic, that’s what makes us different. Especially after the Trial patch.. who wouldn’t like that? There would still be some limitations in terms of the spec of your pet for the min-maxers, for example, a bear wouldn’t be a brilliant pve pet, but this would still give a lot more choice! That’s the only thing I can think of that could work, and I’d like it a little more, personally. Can you guys think of any other ideas to give Hunters more pet choice aside from ‘sod the math, use the cat’?

Different Kind of Pet

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Syrana has decided to join in the syphilis fun and share a few topics too, I personally find thinking of a topic to write about the biggest challenge in blogging, and as such I love the shared topic idea, and the spreading topics like syphilis idea is also one I can get behind ;)
So, Syrana asks:

“@Jaedia – If you could tame any animal (in game or IRL) what would it be, why, and what special ability would it have?”

Actually, I’ve mentioned this one on twitter before I think. If I could tame any pet ingame (that I currently can’t) it would have to be a giraffe. They’re so cool looking. I would include the Longneck Grazers in Scholazar Basin as being giraffes as well as the Barrens Giraffes. I think this really stems down to my vague boredom flying around Scholazar looking for Loque’nahak, trying to complete Frostbitten (which I still haven’t found, he remains the last rare I need to complete it) and possibly my prancing around the Barrens.

My inner voice just decided, “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could tame a giraffe?” This is the same inner voice that wants a Baby Yoggy vanity pet, and a badger mount. In fact, I think I made Dan ask a GM for a badger mount for me back in TBC, they came up with some elaborate plot to buy Tigul a poodle, let him get attached to it, and then kidnap it and hold it ransom until he designed a badger mount.

Its special ability would be to headbutt its opponents dealing X amount of damage, and knocking them down for 3 seconds. Also, it would have to have an idling animation. This would consist of a duck walking past and the giraffe pointing at it.

lookduck

And also a sleeping animation, purely because I just found an awesome picture of a sleeping giraffe.

sleepinggiraffe

Of Vanity Pets and Syphilis

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So I’ve been told the syphilis party is still ongoing and got me in on some of that action (I’m hoping this link works, for me it’s broken but I seem to be the only one). You know, after his blog deciding that it simply hated me and wouldn’t let me access it! So, we have:

“Okay … your topic … from your blog, it has to be: vanity pets. Truthfully, I’ve never quite ‘got’ them – what’s the appeal? If you could only keep three, which three would it be, and why? And, finally, which were the most exciting to acquire?”

The Appeal

I want to go off on a tangent and talk about my first vanity pets actually because I suppose this is where the appeal begins for me. When I first started playing I didn’t have a clue what they were or the point in them. I should think my first pet was Peanut on my warlock, the first week of Children’s Week in TBC. I loved that little elephant, it was ridiculously cute and I could have it by my side whenever because it didn’t affect dps or anything like that, it was purely cosmetic and I liked that.

The first pet I got on the character I first started collecting on would have probably been the Bombay Cat. I used to have a black cat in real life called Sooty which I loved to bits, so my boyfriend gave me a black cat ingame when he went on a cat sale spree on horde side, which I also called Sooty. Of course, I did farm a while for the Dark Whelpling, so I had one of those thinking it was just the cutest thing. I also had a Snarly, which I did Crocolisks in the City for months for. Originally, the crocs had a much lower drop rate in the fishing bags, so when I finally saw the little blue outlined bucket it was awesome.

I didn’t start collecting however until pets became learnable, attached to your character. This was where the appeal really started because I didn’t have to worry about bag/bank space. That and the 50 pets achievement. There’s something oddly comforting about having a small vanity pet following you around, and some of them are so awesome looking, with interesting animations such as Lil KT, which kills critters. I have been known to sit there and watch their animations when I’ve been particularly bored.

I have 3 characters with collections, my main, Fae, having 95 pets. This I guess is purely from rerolling a lot, as both hunters and my priest have been considered my main in Wrath. In fact, my paladin has 15 purely by accident, pets which have dropped, like Mojo, the account-wide pets like the Monk, or even random pets like the Spirit of Competition, which I wish I had on my hunter instead but she won’t have been max level when these were being given out.

Just Three

The Baby Polar Bear and the Turkey are 2 pets I’ve wanted since I saw their respective models in Dragonblight and Howling Fjord. The Polar Bear itself is so cute I think I would have whined at Blizzard until we got one! I did miss that one when I played on Terenas quite a bit, in fact Zal bought me a Dun Morogh Cub because I wouldn’t stop complaining about my lack of a bear, ha. I still use that when I log into my draenei, I just love bears, ingame and also in real life.

The Turkey, I’m not actually sure where my strange attachment for this pet came from. Everytime I take an alt to Howling Fjord, I have a tendency to find the group of turkeys and kill every single one of them for the achievement. If anything you’d think I’d be happy with their suicidal tendencies, instead you’ll find me threatening to kill whoever put a basic campfire next to my turkey!

The Core Hound Pup is a much much more recent addition, but it has already made itself up to being my favourite vanity pet. To start with, it’s a corehound, it’s going to have an awesome model. It’s cute, and the animations just add to this. I love how it rolls around and jumps about, it’s one of those I can sit there and watch when I’m bored, maybe even a little therapeutic when I’m in a terrible mood.

Exciting..?

I don’t want to admit to being geeky enough to be excited by vanity pets but, being a lover of cute fluffy things I have been known to squeal on occasion when acquiring a particularly cute or interesting pet. The first rare pet I got my hands on was… I think the Dark Whelpling. Do you remember the Whelpling Orbs you could get in Blade’s Edge? There was a quest to disguise yourself as a cultist and they had a vendor, which sold a quest item and these orbs. An old guildy was sat in Shattrath as a whelpling and I exploded. When Dan tried to quiet me by telling me there was a pet version I ran off to farm it. I think after a few nights of several hours of farming, one finally dropped and I loved it to bits. These days I think I prefer the Blue Whelpling though.

Next I’d have to say the Hyacinth Macaw, purely because I died inside trying to farm this one. You know the level 40ish pirates just outside of Booty Bay? On the boats and along the beach? Yeah, they have a 1/5000 chance to drop it. I farmed these several hours a day for about 2 months, sometimes with help, and often with comments of, “Still farming that bird?” And yes I gave up, I lost all hope. I kept checking the auction houses though, on the off chance an alt found it and thought it might be worth 50g, and one day I found it for 3000g on the neutral auction house! That made my day, really did.

vanitypets

As usual, I’ve rambled on for long enough. I have 2 more topics to write up and some link love on Sunday, before we go away for the week, 21st-28th. If it snows too hard (which I bloody hope not..) or I can ninja some internet access I might pop on and write a little or at least say hello to twitter, though that’s unlikely I think and I plan to take a few books.

Casual Play

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I made a decision that if I end up playing WoW, it will be as a casual, no more proper guild raiding for me. If this happens I’ll end up achievement farming and I really am tempted to go for ‘The Insane’ … I don’t know why but I really want to do it. My priest farmed pirates outside of Booty Bay so much that she was revered with every Goblin faction… which put me off going for Bloodsail Buccaneer rep. However, Fae has only touched the Goblin stuff that she used to level with sooo.. if I’m feeling really crazy I might just do it.

Another thing about being a casual I remembered is not having any use for min maxing anymore! Woohoo. First thing I did was head to the North of Winterspring, and there was my little rare kitty wandering around. He became an ice cube, and can now be seen following me around going by the name of ‘NomNom’. Yay. Never really liked wolves. Suppose I’ll get Shifter out if I ever get into a 10 man or something for the extra DPS but otherwise he’ll be gathering dust…

You know my stable is so full I couldn’t tame another pet. Got my turtle for soloing, sporebat for PvP, bear for the sentimental value (first pet, effort, blabla), wolf and now cat.

More interesting Cataclysm updates

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  • The Cataclysm will be released after Icecrown Citadel, not only with the date but also lore-wise.
  • The dances we were told were coming with Wrath are still being worked on…
  • Once faction changes have been sorted, they are planning on implementing race changes, which would mean a Blood Elf Paladin could switch to a Tauren, for example.
  • They may be adding the ability to reorder the characters on the character sheet, thank God I’ve wanted this one for a while xD
  • The guild levelling system being discussed will enable you to create guild heirlooms. You’ll be able to buy profession plans with this and anyone in your guild can wear the item, and it scales with level.
  • In order to ensure enhancement shamans and hunters are able to share the same gear, Blizzard will try to give enhancements similar talents to those given to rets in order for them to use the same gear.
  • In 3.3 they’re talking about pets scaling from all hunter stats and also allowing buffs from raid encounters to affect them (uh oh I smell nerfs inc already…)
  • Also in 3.3, they’re planning to make it so that pets can’t be hit by boss AoEs but others (i.e. PvP) can affect them.

Source: World of Raids.

Cunning and more Onyxia

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Yesterday, I started thinking about cunning pets, because of course I use Tenacity and Ferocity pets quite regularly for PvE, dailies, levelling, soloing, but never Cunning pets. So I looked into it and they’re pretty good for PvP. Now, I don’t PvP much at all, when I do it’s for a tabard or a mount usually, so I thought I’d find one that’s already fairly close to 80. During my search I found that the Dragonhawk trash before Alar in Tempest Keep is now tameable and though that’s pretty difficult, I can’t help but want one! I also checked the different Wind Serpent skins and decided I preferred the red one, during my usual ZG soloing I grabbed myself a Son of Hakkar.

There has also been some of the Onyxia loot released already from the PTR, though, badly modelled, as we already knew I suppose, we have a gun which I might be drooling over just a little, the Snub-Nose Blastershot Launcher. The Onyxia mount has been released though I really hope this isn’t the final model, as Dan pointed out, it looks like the mount is a dragon in drag :P As well as the usual Sack of Gems, and 22 slot bag. Looking to be a decent little raid instance.

Dustwallow Marsh was merely a setback..

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No, but really, an updated Onyxia for a 5th Anniversary of.. World of Warcraft. :) So, in the next patch, 3.2.2, we will see Onyxia the Broodmother updated and tuned for level 80 players, replacing the level 60 instance.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Onyxia

http://www.wowwiki.com/Onyxia

It will include the old item models with stats relevant to the new content, including Tier 2 helms. So, hunters, prepare to look like fish again! It will be a permanent change with 10 and 25 players modes included.

There will be a 310% speed mount named the Brood of Onyxia, a normal sized drake modeled after Onyxia. I for one am quite excited about this though unsure whether it’s a guaranteed drop or just a chance to drop, like the blue drakes from Malygos. Either way, in my opinion, an awesome addition.

In November, for a certain amount of time, similar to the Baby Blizzard Bear giveaway last year, there will be an Onyxia Brood Whelpling pet given to people who log in during a particular time period.

The only bad news I can think of is that this will replace the level 60 instance permanently, which will in turn mean no more Onyxia soloing, so if you haven’t done this yet, better get on with it ;)

All in all, a nice 5th Anniversary treat from Blizzard :) Maybe it’s time to dust off the old ‘More Dots’ T-shirt..

Blizzard will be opening up the level 80 version of Onyxia on Test Realms soon, along with other new content. There will be more news on this in hopefully the near future.