WoW Profiles - Worba at 80

Spec: Beast Master
Profs: Skinning/leatherworking
Achievements: Headless Horseman Mount, Exalted with Cenarion Circle, Cenarion Expedition and Thunder Bluff, Brazier of Dancing Flames, Ice Mammoth mount, tamed Sapphire Hive Queen and Skoll.
Pets: Turtle ("Brick"), Wasp ("Kali"), Spirit Beast ("Fenris") and Devilsaur ("Diablo")
Themes: Red/orange/fiery, spiky/toothy
Comments:
Worba is the second character I ever rolled, way back in the misty pre-dawn era of WoW, and was capped at 60 well before BC came out. Most of that was spent solo'ing, and he has had a number of different pets at different times including Takk the Leaper (back when he had a faster run speed than other pets) and Spiteflayer (back when he had a faster attack speed than other pets)... but probably the part that stood out most most among that time was his guild membership.

I don't normally do PuGs let alone raids, as the only time I generally can expect to play without interruption is late at night - the "standard" raid start time of 6pm PST (9pm for me) means that even if everyone shows up on time and is ready to go immediately, you aren't going to be logging off until midnight (earliest), and often will be at it till 1am or 2am.

But back then I hadn't found this out yet, so I went along for a bunch of AQ raids, and with a good deal of solo grinding Cenarion Circle rep on the side, was eventually able to make exalted and score a set of epic hunter gear - I held onto the AQ set all the way into WotLK (and even then, it's worth noting that the +3% pet dmg set bonus is the one thing I've yet seen that can boost "vehicle" mounts in Northrend...).

Shortly thereafter, BC came out, the level cap went up to 70, everyone else in the guild outleveled me, and after a while of feeling lame for not keeping up, finally opted to leave The Wanderers - on good terms though, and I'd definitely recommend them to anyone looking for a solid Horde guild on Uther.

One thing notably absent from this toon is a backstory or pretty much any sort of RP material; I've always thought of Worba as the proto-typical orc, big, burly, rude, crude, etc - and of course most in his element when taming or directing big, nasty beasts.

His time in BC was pretty unexceptional; I replaced all of his former pets, slowly gathered the materials for a suit of epic dragonscale chainmail, and finally just before WotLK came out, managed to craft him a Khorium Destroyer on my protection warrior.

The turtle was the first pet I really took to - after trying many others, I found the shell shield, orc racial and general tenacity/beastmaster setup to be a "keeper"; there is really nothing else that tough, and it makes solo'ing heavy elites a pleasure. The name "Brick" seemed fitting.

The devilsaur came next; I chose a red model who I named "Diablo", after a character from the old "Primal Rage" game for the Playstation. Although devilsaurs had some initial problems with their post-tame walk animation, that was eventually fixed... and their growth from Monstrous Bite plus Bestial Wrath is something to see.

When WotLK opened up, Worba was the first of my toons to check it out; by then he was a little overdressed for solo'ing, and I plodded from lvl 70-72 trying and mostly failing to find something interesting to do... was just getting ready to put Worb back in hibernation when I read on Petopia of a certain unique level 78 wasp that was due to become untamable in a few weeks.

So I decided to pull out all the stops and try to make 78 beforehand - squeezing in as much WoW time as I could manage, staying up a couple hours later every night and otherwise fusing myself to the PC, I was able to just pull it off - as it happened I tamed the Hive Queen at about 1am, the morning of the patch that made her untamable! I named her "Kali", after the Indian death goddess - I wanted something epic, matriarchal and ideally which also said something about the big orange bug's 6 cleaver/stabber appendages, and this seemed to fit the bill nicely.

After that, finding myself now at lvl 78, I slowed down a bit and decided Worba would look good atop an Ice Mammoth, so (at a much more leisurely pace) I began doing dailies for the Sons of Hodir; this took me to 80, and also netted me a nice belt, and a lifetime supply of shoulder inscriptions...

Around that time, they came out with the Argent Tournament, and I headed over for some jousting; the epic rifle looked nice, and also it was an opportunity to improve some of his "old world" reps - back when Worba was doing all of his quests for Orgrimmar, Dark Spear etc, you got just 100 rep per quest, causing him to be way behind most of my other characters in reputation. To date Worb has made "champion" with all factions save the blood elves - he's also made exalted with TB, in order to get access to a kodo mount, although he quit riding it and the mammoth once the Halloween event opened - but I get ahead of myself...

Meanwhile patch 3.2 came out and kicked off a new tradition of releasing a new spirit beast with each patch - and Skoll the electrified wolf was added to the game. Having already tamed Loque and Gondria on other hunters I decided to go after Skoll with Worba. This was not something I decided lightly, as Uther is one of the oldest servers and so the competition was going to be fierce.

But I rolled up my sleeves and did what I always do when trying for the rare tames - patrol the spawn areas, log off, and try again later in between playing other toons - I make a point of not sitting around "camping" as it's incredibly boring, except when other players come along and try to harass you and start a "turf war", and then all sorts of magical stupidity ensues.

Sure enough, there were plenty of other hunters flying around or just squatting on the spawn points like deranged shotgun slingin' gold prospectors all giving eachother the stink eye...

After a few weeks of fruitless fly-bys, I took a break from the "Skoll Patrol", and just spent some time solo'ing Steamvaults with my trusty turtle, to bring my rep to exalted with Cenarion Expedition, and claim the Guardian of Cenarius achievement - a nice way of leveraging my old pre-TBC gains with Cenarion Circle into a nifty new title.

Right around that time they dropped the price of epic mounts by way of subjecting them to reputation discount, and I was just able to afford an armored wyvern, and all of its associated costs.

Outfitted with a much faster means of getting around, I returned to Storm Peaks and resumed my flyovers in search of the elusive Skoll - at 280% speed I could now check all of his spawn points without it seeming to take forever.

Finally in mid Sept, about a month and a half after 3.2 came out, I got lucky and spotted the crackling canine in Bor's Breath - would have mistaken him for a Stormcrest Eaglet on my beast tracking if my targeting macro hadn't dutifully chimed a warning (I don't use NPC_Scan or anything like it - although undeniably useful for this sort of thing, I feel it cheapens the game a bit too much for my taste). Landed, dismissed my placeholder Jormungar, dropped a freeze trap and tamed without any of the crazed panicking that characterized my last spirit beast tame, and Skoll was mine. Just like that.

After a good deal of thought I finally decided to name him Fenris, after the "Doomsday Wolf" prophesied to kill Odin at Ragnarok (and also not incidentally the sire of the original Skoll in Nordic myth). Nowadays I focus mostly just on Brick, Kali and Fenris - I miss playing Diablo but find I have trouble keeping my interest when playing more than 2 pets of the same family (and that's pushing it).

More recently, I decided to do the Halloween Event with Worba. While I was only realistically hoping to get the DPS ring, the thought was in the back of my mind that of all my level 75-80 toons, Worba was the only one without a "special" flying mount (my night elves ride a Cenarion Griffin and a Netherdrake, my blood elf rides a Green Proto-Drake, and my dwarf rides a Turbocharged Gyrocopter), and so I figured if the Reins of the Headless Horseman were to drop (ha ha, as if), it would be Worba who I'd most want to be playing.

Last year and the year before I'd done the event many times on several different toons, but never once saw the reins drop, so this was really just a pipe dream...

Anyway, so Worb finds a group, and using his wasp Kali actually manages to do some good DPS, vying for top spot the whole way through and doing something like 2/3 more DPS than I ever managed vs target dummies (this actually put him a smidge higher than the best my (much better geared) MM hunter has ever managed (I'm still not clear on how that happened but am guessing it's probably a combination of trinket procs, crits and "reactionary moves"), and things are going along well - and the DPS ring drops. No one else wants it so I scoop it up and think "at least I'll have something to show for it now". Broom drops like 3 times but I lose the roll on all of them, and I shrug - this looks familiar...

Then a few kills later, the reins drop. Everyone rolls need except the warrior who already has them... dazed, I go ahead and select "need" as well, fully prepared to lose the roll as I pretty much always have in the past, when trying for anything I really really wanted... and lo and behold... I won! Two of the others offered to buy it from me, paying as much as 1500g, but I politely declined - I wouldn't have sold it for any amount. After all, aside from being one of the coolest (if not THE coolest) mount in the game so far, just about anything you could buy with cash would be eclipsed by starter greens as soon as the next expansion hit, whereas this mount not only flies but scales with your riding skill.

With the acquisition of this fiery green horse, and the electrified blue wolf, it seems Worba's beast taming skills have advanced to the point of affecting spirit entities with only the most tenuous connection to the animal world...

So feeling pretty lightheaded, I keep on mostly just because I owed it to the other group members to stay and help with the rest of their daily summons... a few more brooms drop but now I figure it would be churlish of me to even try for them, so I pass... well next thing I know, the Baleful Horseman's Blade drops, and you guessed it... I won that too. There was a shocked silence, and one of the other players quietly disconnected. I suppose I can't blame him.

Needless to say, that more than makes up for all of the missed rolls on past loot. I guess sometimes things just go your way... Continue reading

WoW Profiles - Bofors at 78

Spec: Survival / BM
Profs: Mining/Engineering
Achievements: Tamed The Beast from UBRS at 76, exalted with Stormwind, Ironforge, Exodar, Gnomeregan and Darnassus, Magical Crawdad.
Pets: Core Hound ("Magma"), Hyena (“Red”), crab (“Vise”) and spider (“Slag”)
Themes: Alan Quatermain, tinker, red/orange, fire
Comments:
Years ago, having recently finished playing a 1-70 marathon session with Velocity the night elf and looking to start a new hunter, I decided this time I'd try a dwarf – I was looking forward to playing a hunter who even the youngest/shortest pet would look “large” next to!

I drew a lot of inspiration from the character of Hemet Nesingwary – the idea of a larger than life Big Game Hunter of Legend seemed to have a lot of potential; something with a vague 19th/early 20th century feel. Along those lines I named him “Bofors”, which was the name of the Swedish manufacturer of the famous “Bofors Gun” back in the WWI-WWII period.

For professions, I went with mining/engineering; being mostly a solo player, I wanted access to superior (or at least decent) firearms that didn't require quests, dungeons, PVP etc. I figured the dwarf’s extensive experience with field stripping firearms plus a somewhat eccentric nature would have produced an inclination to explore the mechanical mysteries and create contraptions that would aid him “on the hunt” or provide amusement and “lift morale at camp”.

Further in keeping with his image as a jungle explorer, I decided he should ride an elephant rather than the standard dwarven ram – by now I’d become determined to get my characters cross faction mounts, a precious source of motivation during the otherwise very bleak and repetitive old world areas (back when Bofors was leveling, you still needed to make lvl 40 just to attain regular riding skill).

So this shaped his itinerary up through level 40; I methodically went around doing every Alliance faction quest I could find, and finally by I think level 37 had reached exalted with everyone except Gnomeregan – this had made for a spectacularly dull run since most of the time it meant he was doing gray quests... but having a purple elekk mount to ride at lvl 40 was a bright spot at the end of the tunnel, and made for a nice pick-me-up when I finally "arrived" at lvl 40...

Then patch 3.0 came out; all of a sudden hunters and their pets received a sweeping upgrade, and there were new specs and pets to try, so I planned out a major revamp for Bofors; previously he'd been an uninteresting mish-mash of MM and SV, so after some thought I decided on a full survival spec, and some pets that would (hopefully) help keep enemies at range while I pounded them with explosive shot, steady, auto and whatever else I could throw at them; this looked like a setup that would capitalize on a good chunk of the new 3.0 goodies.

First off I tamed a Scarlet Hound at the Scarlet Monastery, who I named “Red” – for Bofors I wanted pet names that were simple, preferably monosyllabic. This was a gruff outdoorsman after all and not someone who'd be seen running about with a cat named "Silvermyst"! I'd always thought the red hyenas were cool looking but not enough to justify the bother of taming something that was just a stripped down wolf - but with the addition of Tendon Rip that became another story.

A crab seemed the perfect choice for a tenacity pet, with its new Pin ability combined with the innate toughness that would hopefully see it through a few applications of Misdirection - and next to a dwarf, it would still look respectably large. I took a trip to the shores of Durotar and tamed a red crab, which I named “Vise” (it was nice for once to watch a new tame grow instead of shrink).

I now had myself a tenacity and ferocity pet, and did some leveling with them – the new arrangement seemed to work pretty well, and I found myself enjoying this character once more, and before long I was high enough level to tame the last pet on my wishlist; a lava spider from Searing Gorge.

Like the scarlet hyena, the lava spider was an interesting looking beast that I hadn't quite been able to justify taming on account of its lack of special ability, and like the hyena, this creature became a much more attractive choice in 3.0, now that it had Web to tie enemies up. “Slag” proved to be a nice addition and to complete the ruddy colored theme I sent Bofors to the new barbershop to become a redhead...

By the time I made 60, I’d raised my Gnomeregan rep to exalted as well, and decided that his epic mount would be the culmination of his years as an engineer – the venerable elekk was put out to pasture (savannah?) and replaced with a clockwork ostrich, aka mechanostrider. Back then, mechanostriders could only be ridden by gnomes and dwarves, so it seemed a nice fit and helped keep things interesting as I zoomed around Outlands on my new whirring, clanking mount.

While the quest rewards in Outlands were certainly very nice (getting Hemet's Elekk Gun at lvl 65 was cool but shortly to be replaced by a Northrend green), it was the new skill 301-375 engineering recipes that really stood out for me, and I made sure to take periodic detours from my questing to farm engineering mats and keep his skills up; having engineering had pretty much always ensured I had a rifle that was at least adequate, but now I was getting access to some really nice stuff – the adamantite shell machine for one gave me a way of producing ammo whose DPS was just shy of the sort not normally available until level 75, but which I could use from level 62 thanks to engineering.

In addition there were the teleportation trinkets which let me hop back and forth more or less freely between Old World and Outland along with the occasional amusing side effect… I also got the epic chainmail goggles which he still uses a dozen levels later, and last but not least a turbo-gyrocopter.

At level 68 I moved Bofors over to Northrend; as with Outland, nice quest rewards, awesome engineering recipes – flexweave underlay lets you avoid having to keep a parachute cloak in your bags, the hand mounted pyro rocket in addition to having a cool looking effect actually does a decent amount of DPS and CD is (just) short enough to make it a factor in regular combat… but the hands down coolest item (so far!) is the Mark S Boomstick, which I’ve been using from level 73 - engineer only, and slightly better than the rep reward firearms not available until lvl 78.

Long ago I’d gotten Bofors’ fishing skill up to 229 or so before giving up on it – back then a failed attempt simply resulted in the annoying “Your Fish Got Away” message… and no chance of skillup, e.g. you either stayed in the same low level fishing area from 1-375, or else you advanced as skill permitted, with frequent, wasted casts (i.e. a lot more time spent).

Recently however Blizzard had overhauled the fishing process to A) allow at least a minimal chance of success in any area even for skill 1 and B) failed casts now result in an 18 cp junk item – but remain eligible for skillup. So I decided to give this another try; I've wanted a Magical Crawdad for some time, and thinking one would look nice alongside Bofors’ red crab, I sent him back to Terrokar Forest to try his luck at the Highland Fishing Schools.

Having found a likely looking area, I settled in expecting a long wait for my number to come up; according to wowhead, you first had to get Mr. Pinchy, which was rare to begin with, but then once received you had to hope that one of his three wishes returned the vanity pet.

On the last cast of my first Highland school, the Mr Pinchy achievement suddenly flashed on my screen (!), and slightly dumbstruck I right clicked on the icon… to find a Magical Crawdad in my inventory (!!). Feeling a bit dizzy, I happily made my way back to Northrend… while I've certainly done plenty of long (sometimes fruitless) grinds, things like this definitely restore one's faith that the odds do tend to balance themselves out... sooner or later. Nice!

This now meant I had one very cool vanity pet to go with my crab, and a couple of comparatively boring ones to go with my hyena and spider. A trip to Blackrock Spire and a bit of puttering in the workshop fixed that - now I had a color changing worg pup to accompany Red, and a smoke belching robot to accent Slag's fiery nature (and his master's engineering skill); although I don't usually put this much work into getting vanity pets, I felt Bofors could use a little spicing up to offset his lack of flashy Northrend combat pets (and as with combat pets, vanity pets look bigger next to a dwarf as well - always a plus!).

But the most noteworthy outcome of Bofors' time in the Blackrock dungeons (if not his entire career...) was his new core hound, aka The Beast. Taming this creature was quite the adventure and which will be covered in a separate post, but suffice to say I couldn't be happier to have him - and it's always nice to have at least one "trophy pet" on your hunter! Continue reading

WoW Profiles - Khitsune at 76

Level: 76
Spec: (Spec 1) Marksman / (Spec 2) Beastmaster
Profs: Inscription/Herbalism
Achievements: Flame Keeper, Sea Turtle Mount, Exalted with Kalu'ak, Orgrimmar, Darkspear Trolls, Undercity, Silvermoon, and Thunderbluff, tamed Loque'nahak and Aotona.
Pets: Boar ("Tanuki"), spider ("Jorogumo"), wolf ("Kabuki"), spirit beast ("Raiju")
Theme: Shinto, trickster
Comments:
Khitsune has made the past 5 levels mostly in Howling Fjord and Grizzly Hills, those being zones I haven’t frequented as much previously – while I like Borean Tundra and Dragonblight, I have to say HF and GH seem to have a more uniform/distinctive feel to them, with all the focus on the native Vyrkul and related lore.

At level 74 she replaced her moth with a fiery Vargul Blighthound, named “Kabuki”, after the animal’s vague resemblance to the traditional costume worn in these performances; he is a trickster spirit who has befriended Khitsune and the others, finding them quite amusing. I’ve been planning on doing this ever since my moth’s “summoning animation” green glow was removed and leaving it a comparatively drab creature; going from a moth to a wolf actually isn’t a huge shift in tactics, since both are ferocity pets who use a combat buff; obviously the moth will be a bit more of a tank while the wolf is for DPS, but this is not a big deal given that I have a tenacity pet for the tough fights.

After that, the Midsummer Fire Festival got underway, and I decided to get Khit a Spirit of Summer to go with her new wolf… by the time I’d achieved that I’d gotten to thinking it might be nice to have the title, too… and so I went whole hog and did everything. Although I’ve dabbled in previous Midsummer events, this is the first time I “did it all”.

I made sure to keep up with the Midsummer dailies, finding that like riding a bicycle, torch juggling skills always come back…

The bonfires were time consuming but not difficult thanks to epic land mount + humanoid tracking + aspect of the beast + small amount of luck; I got the Outland bonfires out of the way first so as to avoid getting barnstormed by players on epic flyers, and then slowly worked my way through the Old World bonfires, stopping along the way to grab flames from the enemy capitals.

Darnassus and Stormwind went the smoothest with only one death each, while Exodar and Ironforge required a bit of “corpse hopping” to pull it off, due to their more difficult city layout/bonfire placement.

Stormwind was the only city where I encountered any real resistance from enemy players, and even there I was able to grab the flame before they and the guards took me out – after that, I returned to find 2-3 players camping my corpse, but I managed to “outfox” them by simply resurrecting at the bottom of the canal behind them, and used my turtle mount and Kalu’ak fishing pole to submarine my way out to the docks - a quick hop overland past a few guards and then from there along the coast to Westfall safely underwater once more – while I haven’t had many opportunities to use my turtle and fishing pole since I got them back at lvl 71, they came in very handy here.

Total gear repair bill from city deaths: a few silver, as I was wearing lvl 10 vendor chainmail…

The Dalaran juggling achievement was do-able with 15 torches and a hotkey, although it took a couple tries and left me feeling like a human jackhammer.

The hardest part of the Ahune event was simply finding a group; the actual fight proved to be a total breeze thanks to the level 80s (and I’m glad I did it this year because Blizzard has announced plans to bump Ahune up to 80 for next Summer), netting me an achievement, a Tabard of Summer Flames, and a bunch of burning blossoms.

And finally after three days’ work, I had my title! (I must say I think the fire theme and Midsummer outfit ties in pretty well with Khit’s supernatural/fey/fox nature but maybe that’s just me)

The event had netted me perhaps 300-400 gold and about a level of exp; after some more time in Grizzly Hills I made level 76 and started thinking about getting some new pets.

First off I traveled to the Argent Vanguard at Icecrown, and replaced my red spider with a Carrion Fleshstripper; this spider model is extremely cool looking and not commonly seen (can’t recall ever seeing another player with one in fact), so it was a sweet upgrade – gave it the same name of “Jorogumo” and it was ready to go; I figured this would represent “Jo Jo” maturing into a more demonic spider form…

Next up I decided to go after Loque’nahak; of all my hunters in the end game, Khit seemed like the best fit for this particular pet, and so I went about getting her dual spec and setting up a BM51 offspec – this kind of wreaked havoc on my macros and took some major getting used to, but after a little while I’d adjusted everything to work and was ready to head over to Scholazar Basin.

The thing I found about dual spec with BM51, is that you have to swap pets at a stablemaster immediately after switching specs – and reserving each pet for use with just one spec. Otherwise, your pet’s talents keep getting reset every time you switch specs, which gets old real fast.

Over in Scholazar, it took me some two days or so of herb gathering before I finally located the elusive prowler, during which time I kept a placeholder rhino pet and got Khit’s inscription raised by some 30-40 points or so (that place has a ton of resources); I’d also stumbled across Aotona and parked her in my stables – she should work well as a dedicated cunning pet for BM spec.

When I found Loque, I had to move pretty quick as I was being trailed by a swarm of angry giant wasps, and ended up wasting my freeze trap on one before I FD’ed… but happily after that the tame went pretty smoothly and I had my very own Ghostsaber 2.0 (he did take off a chunk of my HP, but fortunately his DPS seemed to taper off once I was down to 30-40%); while I subsequently tamed Gondria on my BM nelf hunter, I have to say that I think Loque looks cooler – among other things Loque has an (almost) unique look reserved just for himself and a cat goddess… whilst Gondria actually uses a “standard” cat model + ghost overlay effect (check out the undead gryphon riders in SE dragonblight and you’ll see what I mean).

After some research I named him “Raiju”, which is the name of the pet/sidekick belonging to the Shinto thunder god Raiden; the classic description of this creature fits spirit beasts to a “T” (“Its body is composed of either lightning or fire and may be in the shape of a cat, tanuki, monkey, or weasel”), and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was in fact part of the inspiration for spirit beasts. I decided that Raiju would have been sent as a reward for the “Faithful pursuit of good deeds beyond the terms of the heavenly sentence” and a general mark of favor from his master Raiden, who perhaps also felt his pet was spending too much time sleeping and needed some exercise. Continue reading

WoW Profiles - Dougal at 77

Level: 77
Spec: Beastmaster (“Shooty”)
Profs: Mining/Herbalism
Achievements: Exalted with Kurenai and Cenarion Expedition, Cenarion War Hippogryph, tamed Nuramoc and Gondria
Pets: Chimaera (“Nightmare”), silithid (“Lurk”), hyena (“Frenzy”), spirit beast ("Aurora")
Theme: Purple, creepy
Comments:
As planned, Dougal leveled from 74-77 mostly in Zul'Drak and so now he's about 1/3 of the way through honored with Argent Crusade, and on track for getting a Zombie Sweeper Shotgun by 80; in the meantime he has the K3 Pachyderm Prevention Device from Storm Peaks, which is just way-cool looking in addition to having respectable DPS (even if it looks a bit like a super soaker...).

To help with the firepower, at 77 Dougal finished off 3/3 Improved Arcane Shot, which works well with Ferocious Inspiration (combined total of +24% dmg with arcane shot) and helps to achieve my overall goal of making him more of a "shooty" BM spec; although I wanted to take it earlier, things like Careful Aim and Mortal Shots seemed to provide a more reliable DPS boost, so it had to be pushed back until now.

More notably though as of level 77 he gets access to Cold Weather Flying, and so finally he can ride that pretty Cenarion War Hippogryph I’d worked so hard on acquiring back in his early Northrend career. This makes him only my second character able to fly in Northrend, and the first to do so with an epic mount - after all this time immersed in WotLK lvl 68-76, I'd almost forgotten what it was like to jet around at top speed, bypassing pesky ground mobs and otherwise feeling like Snoopy on his flying doghouse... although sk 225 flying mounts will soon enjoy a very nice boost with upcoming patch 3.2 (60% to 150%), there's still no substitute for the 280% full monty (not counting the achievement or PVP mounts, anyway).

Then last but certainly not least there is Gondria...

I have to say, when the spirit beasts first came out I wasn't too crazy about taming them; I thought they were just a little "too hip" and anyways, I figured, once you're a 51 pt BM spec, doesn't every pet become a "super pet",for the most part? But over time I got to thinking "what if I ran across Loque or Gondria and actually had the opportunity to tame it - would I still feel so blase about it, and if not, would I be willing to dismiss my current pet… or what if I just ran into it on a non-hunter (d’oh)?" While the majority of my high level toons are still in the 67-75 bracket, sooner or later I knew I'd be spending more time in Zul'Drak and Scholazar, and it would be just my luck to skip those tames only to run into Loque on my warrior or something.

So I decided to make spirit beasts the new priority - after managing to get Loque for Khitsune, I now had to get Dougal up to 77 and then see if I could track down the other “glowie kitteh”...I thought Gondria would work pretty well on Dougal - being a BM spec he wouldn't need to worry about fancy dual spec arrangements like Khit did, and a spirit beast ought to fit in reasonably well with his travelling menagerie of purplish nightmare beasts, so off I went on my new epic flyer to see if I could pull it off...

Got her on my first run.

I complain about my luck sometimes but things like this remind me that I really have no right to - having just got done taming a "placeholder pet" and setting up a "Gondria macro", I was flying around at mach 1, enjoying my new epic mount and thinking "well, I'll probably get to know this area pretty well by the time I see that cat", and all of a sudden up comes the raid warning and my adrenaline pegs the gauges.

Now, while I think I did a not-terrible job of taming Loque (got him on first try, no deaths or retries), it was another story with Gondria - instead of say, using my placeholder bear to clear the nearby mobs, I hurriedly abandoned him and proceeded to try taming Gondria right on the spot, tunnel vision raging... well, as it happened the nearby mobs displayed truly amazing timing, appearing from nowhere to trip my freeze trap a millisecond or so before Gondria got around to putting her dainty paws on it (spirit beasts hit hard, fyi), and then breaking out to pop me below zero HP when my tame bar was down to 0.001% or 0.002%. If there had been another hunter there, the only thing preventing him from swiping the tame would be if he was laughing too hard to work his keyboard.

Finally on like my 3rd or so corpse run I cooled off enough to form a semi-coherent strategy, and this time dragged her over to a quiet corner where I was able to complete the tame with Gondria frozen and sans interruptions...

Moral of story: if you're trying to tame a rare, do yourself the favor of taking the extra 10-20 seconds to scope out the local situation and make a plan, rather than allowing panic to set the agenda ("oh noes the competition must be RIGHT. ON. MY. HEELS"), because honestly you are going to be wasting much more time on corpse runs if you don't - this much I know.

Still - got her. After some research I decided to name her “Aurora”; since I’d been unable to come up with a decent name that fit with the theme of his other pets, and this seemed appropriate for a glowing spirit creature from an arctic land.

So, yay - now I can get back to playing all my toons with no worries of spirit beasts and bad timing... at least until they add the electrified wolf in 3.2... Continue reading

Mend Pet SPCA Charity Drive

I sometimes get so caught up in the phenomenon of World of Warcraft that I miss the things that actually... matter.

I'm referring to the place called "Real Life", whose troubles seem so far away when we're off slaying gnolls, doing dailies and otherwise running about with our virtual beast companions (well if you're a hunter fan like myself anyway - it's one of the 3 most popular classes in the game, about even with paladins and behind death knights).

But what makes hunters so popular? For some it's the mechanics of the class; which shots are best for what situation and in what order... but for myself and I suspect plenty others, it's the animals - virtual, yes, and rather too big, spikey and all around deadly to want to encounter IRL under any circumstances... but even as virtual animals, hunter pets do resonate somewhat with a love for animals in the world at large.

It doesn't matter if you're on an RP server or not; personally my interest in roleplaying extends no farther than dreaming up a character background (which never gets shared except here!) - I play PVE servers all the way, and while I try not to sound unintelligent I am guilty of occasionally using things like "lol j/k :)" etc, sorry to say. Nonetheless, I still feel attached to my hunter pets on some level.

And that's because I love animals IRL - my personal weapon of choice is the cat, but pretty much anything that A) won't eat me and B) can show happiness and affection is cool in my book. Always have, always will - and that's why it burns me up when I hear about animal abuse or neglect.

So, when I found out about Brajana's Mend Pet SPCA Charity Drive, I decided I had to get off my tail and help out somehow. Having recently already committed to $18/mo over at www.aspca.org, I didn't have the means to make a financial contribution so I decided to do the next best thing and try to help get the word out. Took me a couple weeks to get around to doing this (sorry!), but there's still a week or so before 7/31 to head over to Mend Pet; please check out Brajana's charity drive and help in any way you can.

Also a big thank you to Mania at Petopia for making us aware of this - and sorry it took me so long to get on the ball. ;) Continue reading

WoW Profiles - Velocity at 75

Level: 75
Spec: SV/MM Hybrid
Profs: Mining/Skinning
Achievements: Exalted with Netherwing, Sha'tari Skyguard, Ogri'la, Darnassus and Ironforge, tamed Garwal and Aotona.
Pets: Cat ("Boo"), gorilla ("Wendigo"), bird of prey ("Voodoo")
Theme: Ghostly, cold, pale
Comments:
Originally hailing from the Nordrassil server and named Nightbreeze, I rolled Velocity back in the early days of the BC expansion when I'd just discovered the ghost saber and really really wanted a hunter that would "look good" with a ghostly cat - for those who joined the game more recently, back in those days something like a transparent snow leopard was a big deal, and was the first time I had a pet that felt "special".

When I created Velocity, I decided this character would actually be "part ghost", with ragged white hair and far away demeanor being partly connected to the ethereal realms; how she came to be this way is unknown as her earlier memories are obscured by amnesia - all she knows is that she was awoken in a graveyard by the murmurs of the dead below, and that ever since she has had a connection to the other side. It was for this reason ghostly creatures relate to her more strongly and thus she was able to befriend a ghost saber who I named "Boo".

I pretty much played her exclusively from lvl 1-70, psyched to have such a "cool" pet. Her spec wasn't very good - for the sake of trying something different I set her up with a "kiting spec", which is to say a muddle of talents from all 3 trees, basically whatever seemed like it would help a hunter to kite effectively (Improved Concussive Shot, Improved Aspect of Cheetah, Trap Mastery etc); that was way back when I was first learning about kiting and thought it actually merited a whole spec (hint: it doesn't). But, having a neat looking pet and a way of taking down super-tough mobs was all the excitement I needed at the time.

Back then, the Ahn-Qiraj event timer had been accidentally reset by the launch of the Burning Crusade release; this meant you could do the repeatable Ahn-Qiraj War Effort quests, which was a nice focus for a new hunter and also a good way of getting rep for a riding ram; by that time I had gotten tired of default racial mounts and was looking for something a little more individualized. By doing my leather, ore and cooking turn-ins exclusively at Ironforge, and doing as many Ironforge quests as possible, I had the rep for a riding ram well before level 40... my RP backdrop was that the dwarves accorded her a great respect for being part ghost, being a culture practicing ancestor worship.

Shortly afterward she tamed Uhk'loc in Ungoro crater - again back in those days a white furred/blue skinned gorilla was almost unheard of, and I would get a lot of questions about him. I named him "Wendigo", for the northern beast spirit; I decided he would actually have come from the icy steeps of Dun Morogh, responding to her ghostly nature and establishing himself as her protector.

From there it was a fairly uneventful trek to lvl 70, at which point I settled in to work on the Skyguard and Ogri'la dailies; after a bunch of that plus the cap level gold reward from finishing pretty much every non-instance quest in Outland, I had enough for an epic flying mount and added Netherwing dailies to my schedule... finally after maybe 2-3 weeks all told I had my epic crossbow, epic trinket, and netherwing drake mount.

After that, she went on hiatus until WotLK came out, at which time I dusted her off and did the Argent Crusade events until she had a full set of epic chainmail, Argent War Horn, tabard, and a haunted memento, leaving her in pretty good shape to start questing in Northrend - the memento was an especially nice fit with Velocity's ghostly RP background.

It was also around that time that I decided to move her from Nordrassil to the new Latin server Quel'Thalas, as part of a merge with my Alliance toons from the overcrowded Uther server; during the server transfer I was forced to change her name as Nightbreeze was already taken on the new location, so after a very long and frustrating process of trial and error I finally went with "Velocity"; about the only cool sounding hunter name I could find that wasn't already taken - apparently either the new Hispanic players were very creative or else a lot of other people'd had the same idea as me about jumping on the free transfer. Still, not such a bad deal - I find I like the new name just as much if not more, and anyway after the transfer I was able to roll a nelf druid back on Nordrassil named Nightbreeze, which made for some amusing conversations with my friends there... I actually do intend to go back and level that toon someday, if I can find the time.

The new quests in Northrend proved to be pretty cool, although sadly the epic Crystalline Crossbow I'd worked so hard to obtain back in Outland was replaced almost immediately by a Northrend green quest item; DPS and armor points receiving the traditional "new expansion" boost that we saw with the BC expansion...

I've also changed her talent spec a number of times; since I already have "purist" hunters devoted primarily to each of the different talent trees, I knew I wanted some kind of hybrid, but it seemed nothing was working very well for her... finally I found something that seemed promising - 0/25/41 with Concussive Barrage 2/2 (I try to time Multi-shot to go off right around when my pet is about to lose aggro, for the auto-daze effect), Black Arrow and as much +dmg% talents as I could fit. Still making last minute tweaks but so far, so good.

Next thing to do was try and find a third pet; Velocity had "just" two pets, and I try to have at least 3 on all hunters, preferably 1 from each family; for Velocity it's been tough finding pets that fit her theme - and so I had to spend some time window shopping at Petopia before I finally decided on Aotona; here was a cunning family pet, of a species I hadn't tamed before (bird of prey), with both unique looks and sounds... and his coloration was at least kinda sorta compatible with a white haired night elf, so I spent a long time gathering ore in Scholazar Basin - but after a week or so of fruitless effort I gave up...

But then I was lucky enough to catch wind of the Garwal tame bug over at Petopia's; Mania has the full scoop if you haven't heard of it already, but basically there is a wolf boss at the end of a Howling Fjord quest chain who morphs into a werewolf once you get him down to 50% hp, and it just so happens that if you are taming him, and your tame completes right at the exact instant he makes that change, then instead of a tamed wolf - you have a tamed worgen. The trick was to get him down to like 55% or so HP, hit him with Wyvern Sting and time your tame so that he wakes up and starts taking DoT damage as the tame is finishing.

Having focused on Borean Tundra with Velocity, the Garwal quest chain happily remained available to her, and having 41 pts in SV she had wyvern sting, so I headed over to try my hand at this very tricky tame; although it took me some 30-40 tries I finally managed to nail the tame-timer just right, and voila I had myself a tamed worgen - how cool is that?? Of course, seeing this as a "bit too much of a good thing", Blizzard nerfed it the next day - no more taming Garwal, and existing tames lost their pet spells and talents and otherwise became somewhat buggy, so I opted to leave mine in the stable as a collector's item - recently however Blizzard replaced tamed worgen with the generic lvl 68 Northrend wolf and so I finally released Maul back to the wild.

While I was initially kind of mad about Blizzard's decision along with many, many others, this was largely down to the way they held off making any comments or updates until the player community had been begging all day for a blue post, at which time some rather flimsy justifications were tepidly offered up (among other things they never adequately explained why tamed spirit guides were allowed to be kept or how a worgen was any less appropriate for a hunter pet than the slime-a-dile aka "Spirit of Koosu" - I especially liked the one about how they set its pet family to null because they "didn't think a werewolf belonged to any pet family - nope, just can't find a plausible fit"); but that aside I recognized in the end it's their decision to make and did my best to let it go and move on; I was still glad to have been able to participate in the "event", and I'm certainly not going to harbor any bad feelings toward players who tamed ghost wolves, slimes, hydras etc.

Feeling sort of "blah" and trying to get back into the mood, I decided to head back to Scholazar Basin and give Aotona one more try... and lo and behold, there he was! The tame went quite smoothly; apparently he has a fear ability but luckily he wasted that on my placeholder croc pet before I abandoned it and got my freeze trap off - getting feared across the Wild Growth Mangal would not have been fun... and getting him at 75 was nice, as he'll be an active part of my quests and grinds for that many more levels than if I'd waited to do this as a bored level 80...

I named the huge, colorful bird "Voodoo", to at least give it a modicum of tie-in with the other pets - this, I decided, was the familiar and soul vessel of the scheming pirate captain "Fast Jack” - a man of minor magical skill but of great cunning and ambition, who tricked the dark god Davey Jones into granting him much greater magical ability in exchange for his soul... which was already safely stashed away in another body. Said creditor sent his be-tentacled agents after the doublecrossing captain, but Jack managed to stay one step ahead... for a while. When Davey's "boys" caught up, his body was taken down to the dark place beneath the waves... but his parrot got away and while Davey knows Jack’s soul remains up there, somewhere... he's still not quite sure where exactly.

Velocity was able to suss out Voodoo's true nature with her ghostly affinities, and as a condition of her silence, the giant magical parrot has agreed to accompany her on her adventures... and has come to appreciate the "safety in numbers" of being with her - or perhaps he just thinks Velocity could make a handy soul vessel someday… Continue reading

WoW Profiles - Khitsune at 71

Level: 71
Spec: Marksman
Profs: Inscription/Herbalism
Achievements: Sea Turtle Mount, Exalted with Kalu’ak, Orgrimmar, Darkspear Trolls, Undercity, Silvermoon, and Thunderbluff.
Pets: Boar (“Tanuki”), spider (“Jorogumo”), moth (“Konpaku”)
Theme: Shinto, trickster
Comments:
Not having played a blood elf before, I decided to roll a hunter with an anime theme – originally this toon was named Kyuketsuki, which meant “vampire” in Japanese, and I’d planned on setting her up with a bat (Ressan), a spider (Zarakh), a zombie bear and a wolf mount… and I’d went with tailoring/enchanting.

Getting the rep for the wolf mount required doing a ton of Horde quests including many that were gray, and necessitated raising all of the horde factions since a good chunk of the rep needed to make exalted with any of them comes from the “spillover” rep you get for doing quests for the others, so by the time she reached level 40, she had made exalted with Org, and was already there with UC and well into revered with the others.

However by then I had realized that I just wasn’t that enthused about her pets or for that matter her theme; I’m not a roleplayer but I still like to have a nice, coherent mini-theme somewhere in the back of my head when playing a character – and this character just hadn’t gelled for me. So I decided she needed an overhaul; I knew I still wanted something anime-ish for her, so I went with a Shinto theme this time – instead of a vampire, she would be the closest thing the Japanese had to an elf; a fox spirit. Called Kitsune (“kits-NEH”), these beings were foxes that could assume other shapes, including a humanoid appearance, which they invariably would use for the purpose of playing tricks on humans… one paid name change and haircut later and she had her new identity – now to find some new pets to go with it.

I tried to think of a tenacity pet that would work well with a marksman build while also having some potential for a Shinto background, and the armored blue agamar from RFK seemed to fit the bill, so I tamed one of those. None of my hunters had a boar, and the initial aggro burst seemed to work well with an MM spec (a crab would’ve been even better but I already had one on my dwarf); I named him “Tanuki”, which is the Japanese word for a badger spirit. Also known for being shape changing tricksters as well as gluttons, I thought this would be a pretty good fit for the boar with his playful hops and wiggles.

Next I decided on a spider – in my experience their web is second to none for keeping a mob tied up while you unload burst dps, so I picked up the red spindly rare from Duskwood and named her “Jorogumo” (“Jo Jo” for short) – this was the word for (wait for it!) a spider spirit. In addition to being shape changers they tended to be evil and so while they too enjoyed playing tricks on people, their tricks tended to be more harmful if not fatal.

My last choice was a moth – from my research I’d learned the Japanese along with many other cultures considered moths and butterflies symbols of reincarnation and in particular to be the forms that restless spirits sometimes took when visiting the world of the living. I tamed a Vicious Teromoth from Terrokar Forest, which at the time still kept its summoning animation (it made a “splat!” sound whenever you called it, and had a creepy green glow), and called it “Konpaku”, which basically meant “soul” in Japanese; now I had a pet from each family, complete with RP backdrop.

To tie it all together I decided that Jorogumo had pushed Khitsune and Tanuki into playing a trick on a crazy old Shinto monk who thought he was on a quest to right 1000 wrongs… normally Khit and Tanuki would not have dared pester a holy man, but they did not want to be seen to back down from a challenge and so they went along with it – unfortunately the prank went wrong and resulted in the old monk’s death, and so the three were rounded up by angels and brought to trial before the goddess Amaterasu Omikami, who decided to send the monk back to complete his quest as a giant moth, and sentenced Khit, Jo Jo and Tanuki to accompany and aid him in this pursuit as his faithful servants – or face expulsion to hell. Furthermore she took away their powers of shape changing and thereby locking them into the forms they’d held during their last, ill-fated prank.

The tricksters chose the option that avoided eternal torment and did their best to serve their sentence. Omikami put Khit in charge, she being smarter than Tanuki and if not good, then at least not evil like Jo Jo.

Eventually the sentence was served out, and Konpaku returned to heaven (not incidentally this was right about the time when Blizzard removed pets’ summoning animation, including Konpaku’s cool greenish glow…); however over the course of their sometimes humorous journeys aiding the Don Quixote-like Konpaku, a curious thing had happened to the three spirits – they had each developed a conscience, and doing good deeds now seemed the natural thing, try as they might to return to their old ways (a particularly sad realization for Jo Jo), so they just continued on with helping those in need and doing the things adventurers do.

With a little more work I was able to get her to exalted with the rest of the Horde factions, bought an epic skeletal warhorse, kodo and raptor, and went about setting up a macro to /castrandom a colorful mount whenever she needed to travel – I decided these creatures would either be mythical Shinto fauna (kodo), things she had a spiritual commonality with (warhorse) or simply just something that looked cool and let her ride it on account of her smelling more like an animal than a humanoid (raptor).

In addition to the new pets and mounts, I decided to get new professions as she couldn’t use 90% of the stuff she made with tailoring and enchanting was taking forever to go up (in addition to not seeming very useful to a mid-lvl hunter); both skills have worked out well for me on various other chars, but they just didn’t seem a good fit for this one, so I dropped them and went with herbalism/inscription.

Perhaps even more than providing raw mats for inscription, herbalism proved a boon in that it gave Khit Lifeblood, which was great for helping her to survive while channeling a point blank volley from the middle of a crowd of angry mobs; otherwise I can’t say the new profs have been terribly exciting – inscription costs a fortune in vellum, way more than just plunking down the occasional 5-10 gold for a new glyph (I’ve somewhat offset her costs with sale of practice glyphs but only partially, as glyphs appear to be a buyer’s market on her server)… it’s too bad they don’t have a selection of “BoP” glyphs that only inscriptionists can use – something like that would certainly make the profession a more attractive choice…

And last but not least I went with a new spec as well – previously she had used a nondescript BM spec, and despite a lot of misgivings about holding agro, decided to switch to the marksman tree – however with some careful planning and macro setup the new spec proved quite effective; I spent the rest of the time up to 68 in Nagrand looking for tough bosses to fight (she was able to solo the Windroc Matriarch, Cho’war the Pillager, Gurok the Usurper, the Master Planner, Banthar, Bach’lor and Tusker at level 66-67). Her dps is really head and shoulders over most of my other hunters, all else being equal, and while she inevitably will pull agro off her pet, they normally are able to keep the target tied up long enough for Khit to burn it down before it gets to her.

I also had been working on her fishing skill – previously I hadn’t been able to muster the patience to get this past 300 or so on any of my characters, but with a recent patch they replaced the “Your fish got away” message with a successful cast that returned a 6 cp junk item; now every cast counts as a potential skill up in any area, so no more “doing time” in Org, TB or SW trying to raise fishing skill enough to qualify for the areas you’d prefer to be casting in, and so by the time I made 68 and went to Northrend, she had 350 fishing and it made sense to work on Kalu’ak rep.

After a few quick upgrades, I spent the next few levels doing Kalu’ak dailies until finally Khit had attained exalted, and started using the epic +30 skill fishing pole; once that was done I settled in for a long grind fishing Northrend pools, and after 30 skillups or so was lucky enough to fish a sea turtle mount from one of the pools in Dragonblight, thus enabling her (with the Mastercraft Kalu’ak Fishing Pole equipped) to zip around at +60% speed underwater with unlimited water breathing – and thanks to the accessibility of the Kalu’ak dailies, Khit can use this from level 71-80 instead of just sitting on her turtle’s back like a fixture outside the AH (as tends to happen with people who wait till 80 to go after it) – nice!

Being exalted with the Kalu’ak also got her some other benefits – right off she picked up the vanity pet Pengu, who looks cool and fits right in with her Shinto-y entourage, and once she makes it up to the lvl 76-78 area she’ll have access to some nice blue chainmail and weapons.

At 74 I plan to fill Konpaku’s spot with a Vargul Blighthound named “Kabuki”, which will give me back a ferocity pet – it was kind of disappointing when Blizzard took away her moth’s glow effect but I’ll be just as happy with her new fiery wolf spirit, and then at 76 I’m hoping to replace Jo Jo’s red model with a bonespider from IceCrown; same name just a different look. After that I’m thinking about maybe picking up dual spec and spending time in Scholazar basin, where I might try to tame Loque (since none of my other hunters have him and he would seem a good fit for her spiritual/ghostly theme) and perhaps a white gorilla (who look somewhat like the white monkeys indigenous to the mountains of Japan, and which would give her another spell interrupt). Continue reading

WoW Profiles - Dougal at 74

Level: 74
Spec: Beastmaster (“Shooty”)
Profs: Mining/Herbalism
Achievements: Exalted with Kurenai and Cenarion Expedition, tamed Nuramoc
Pets: Chimaera (“Nightmare”), silithid (“Lurk”), hyena (“Frenzy”)
Theme: Purple, creepy
Comments:
For most of his career, Dougal was the hunter I played when I was either tired of playing all of my other hunters or when I wanted to try out some new idea re: places to level, or some new spec or pet or other idea I got from browsing Petopia… prior to WotLK I’d gone with a spec that I call the windserpent build, e.g. (lots of +crit) + (gftt) + (efficient pet focus dump), but it hadn’t worked out as well as I’d hoped; despite frequent lightning breaths his flying serpent just couldn’t seem to hold aggro long enough to let me enjoy all of the flashy proc icons lighting up my screen.

Then along came patch 3.0 which changed my pet’s lightning breath from a very-efficient focus dump, to a bite with special effects, and I finally had to send it back to the wild and go back to the drawing board… I’d had some good results from my other survival hunter re: using what I call “slowing pets”, and didn’t currently have anyone using a chimaera or silithid, so I decided to see what I could do with the beastmaster tree – and doing as much as I could to keep the emphasis on shooting over tanking.

First off I figured if I was going to pick up a chimaera that I might as well have a go at taming the coolest model out there – Nuramoc, of course. After some research and a lot of ore gathering in Netherstorm with my other night elf hunter (who had an epic flying mount, happily), I was able to track down the elusive flying purple chitinous two headed gribbly – hooray! It also likely helped that most of the other hunters had either tamed this beast by now or were too busy checking out Northrend to care…

Now that Nuramoc was a definite, purple would be the new unifying color for this hunter, and so I went ahead and tamed a purple hyena and a red/purple silithid, and completed the theme with a trip to the barbershop – Dougal’s race proving to be a nice bonus here as night elves are the only hunter race able to get purple hair!

Next thing to do was concoct some sort of RP mini-story for Dougal and his new pets. At one time it seems Dougal collected some debts for a merchant on the Goblin Market, who sold creatures he had extracted from people’s dreams and nightmares via magical dream catcher, and by way of reward for his efforts Dougal was allowed to choose three creatures from the merchant’s cages, which he of course tamed and took adventuring.

So now what to do? Since my new pets were a combined 11 levels behind me, it made sense to focus on kills over quests – unfortunately most of the rep grinds in Northrend entail doing daily quests and dungeons – you don’t have nearly the range of options for kill rep that you did back in the Old World or Outlands, especially in the lower levels… however, I did notice that the Cenarion Expedition had made a reappearance in Borean Tundra, and even had an old style kill rep repeatable with a buff, so I decided that faction would be his new goal.

The first step was to do the last few unfinished Cenarion Expedition quest chains back in Outlands, and then I got going with their quests in Borean Tundra – by the time those were done I had just managed to break revered and could now use Warden’s Arrows, which had 5 more dps than the standard ammo available from Northrend vendors, as well as a nifty arcanum for his helm; then it was time to settle in for the long trip to exalted.

After a few weeks of harvesting “Hemingwary Lackey Ears”, I finally got there – by now I was lvl 74 and my pets were caught up to me. I then drained my savings on that server to get Dougal epic riding skill and a coveted Cenarion War Hippogryph; he wouldn’t be able to use it in Northrend for another 3 levels of course, but in the meantime he can harvest ore and herbs in style back in Outland…

The new spec has been working out well – although sinking 51 pts into BM inevitably forces you to pass up a lot of the more shooty talents in the other trees, there are still a few handy bits to be had such as serpent’s swiftness (+20% increased rate of fire), improved aspect of the hawk (for another +21% increased rate of fire with glyph, that is proc-based), aspect mastery (+ap), and some dmg bonuses (+9% with arcane shot and another +5% overall dmg bonus thanks to focused fire and ferocious inspiration), and you can get very good value for spending the remaining points on the early MM talents – I’ve found with this spec that instead of holding back on my DPS to allow the pet to retain aggro, it works much better to actively try to grab aggro away from it – hard to do with a BM pet (another plus of the BM tree), but worthwhile as my pets’ slowing spells give me the time to burn the mob down before it reaches me and in turn saving me from having to spend the extra mana on heals.

Going forward I’m thinking of moving Dougal to Zul’Drak and focusing on Argent Crusade rep, since he is now the minimum level for that area, and they appear to have the best (?) ranged rep reward weapon (and if I’m very luck and persistent I might even run across Gondria…). Continue reading