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…