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...