An Ode to Pike's First Love

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Before WoW and before hunters...

...there was Starcraft.



Oh how I played this game way back in the day, not long after it first came out. Oh how I played it to death. I knew it like the back of my hand. Units? Memorized. Tech tree? Yup. Don't ask me to pick my favorite race, either. I love 'em all to pieces. I can extol the virtues of each one.

My playstyle really depended on my mood. Sometimes I would feel "hardcore" and I'd go sit and play Terran on The Lost Temple over and over, carefully trying to improve my micromanagement skills.

Then I'd say "screw it" and go start an eight-player Free for All on Big Game Hunters, make some 150 Hydralisks, and go on a rampage. First base down... second base down... third base down... hey I'm bored, let's make some Guardians. *evil laugh*

The units all said the best things, especially if you clicked on them multiple times. Oh the hero units would get all ticked at you, and Artanis would tell you vehemently that "This isn't Warcraft in Space!" and insist that "it's much more sophisticated!", but then there was the Battlecruiser who would say "I've reeeeally got to go... Number One"; the Science Vessel's "E=MC...d'oh let me get my notepad"; and the Corsair's "Zefram Cochrane, is that you?"

Perhaps the great thing about the game, aside from its sky-high replay value, was that each of the races was perfectly balanced. That's not hyperbole either. So each game was a surprise because each game could go any way.

Well, as was inevitable, the StarCraft obsession eventually faded away, until I just recently decided to pop in that ol' scratchy CD-ROM for the first time in a long time. Ahh the memories came flooding back and I was reminded just how great of a game it was. Truly one of the all-time greats and one of the few games that has ever gripped me the way it did. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time held me under its firm spell for a while, as did Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Halo, and some of the earlier Pokémon games. (Oh, and Banjo-Kazooie, please tell me some of you guys played that one.) I also made a valiant attempt to get into DotA but I was never very good at it (although I got to a point where I was decent enough with the Netherdrake) so that phase didn't last very long.

But Starcraft was somethin' else, and I'm sure there are at least a few of you out there who understand.

Good game, Blizz.

Good game.

I am alive!

I apologize for my lack of updates these past few days. I've been a bit busy and had some stuff going on. A couple days ago I went and had allergy testing done because I've been having some allergy issues and I figured it was about time I did something about it. The good news is-- the hunter is not allergic to animals! The hunter is, however, allergic to the wild outdoors, as apparently I am severely allergic to all grasses, weeds, and molds. I'm having further testing done to determine whether I'm allergic to anything else aside from the basics. Lemme tell you though, I'm actually finding myself wishing Aspect of the Wild could be used in real life. I could use some nature resistance against those level 72 elite bales of Timothy Hay that like to crit me when I'm feeding my guinea pigs.

I'm also a little behind in my blog-reading, so if I respond to one of your posts a few days late, well, that's just me tryin' to catch up!

Anyways, I have a few different post ideas planned for the near future and oh, I suppose I do have one little tiny thing of importance happening this Saturday, March 8.

I'll give ya a hint. It starts with a K.

/grin

The Cute and Cuddly Beasts Within

First of all, a shout-out to the authors of Troll on a Powerbook and One Among Many, for becoming the fourth and fifth people, respectively, to roll alts on my server to say hello. All of you guys flatter me, really, and I still sort of can't understand it-- I don't find myself very interesting at all, and I'm even less interesting when I'm talking in real-time, because I can be pretty shy. But thank you anyway. I'm quite a lucky hunter. (I'm also getting to be quite the enchanted-out hunter, and thus quite the broke hunter... but that's another story.)

In my recent "essay" on the Beast Mastery spec, Faradhim asked me if I have pets in real life. As a matter of fact... yes I do:


These are my guinea pigs Reno and Vincent. (First person to figure out where their names are from, and then deduce which is which because of it, gets a big ol' cookie. Turns out I name my real-life pets the same way I name my pets in WoW... always a hidden meaning.)

Reno and Vincent have been living with me for the past couple of years. They are intelligent, mischievous, and also possibly the most spoiled guinea pigs on the planet. You see, I work at a pet store. (Yes, that's right, the hunter works at a pet store!) Specifically, I work in the pet care/small animal department. This means that I not only spend most of my time working with and handling fish and small critters, but I also get to stock the shelves in my department with all the new goodies that come in. And the whole time I'm doing it I'm thinking "Oh my gosh, they would LOVE this new treat... oooh, and that one too..." and then I come home with a bunch of snacks for them and they don't eat half of it.

At least they've gotten a little less picky lately.

They've caught onto my sleeping schedule and decided that maybe if they start making noise before my alarm goes off, they will get fed earlier. Cue lots of squeaking at 4:30am, every morning. Fortunately I am prepared, with earplugs! Bwahaha.

They have also decided that merely eating their food out of their bowl is not exciting enough, and it's much more fun to eat food off of the floor of their cage. So they wedge their head under the bowl, and then when you least expect it... BAM. Bowl goes flying, food goes flying, and the guinea pigs are happy and Pike has to grab the vacuum again.

I can't help but love them though. And I wouldn't want to get on their bad side... I don't know if I'd want to deal with the wrath of a Big Red Guinea Pig anytime soon.

On Training Low-Level Pets

So with the newest patch, raptors got the ability to learn dash. I do indeed have a raptor sitting in my stable. I got him in Wetlands at level 22 or so, leveled him to 36, and then realized that he was falling too far behind and I was having too tough of a time keeping two pets leveled with me. So sadly, poor Wash the raptor has found himself in the stable ever since.

But "raptors getting dash" inspired me to go out and pull him out of confinement and see if maybe, just maybe, I could start leveling him again.

Here's the catch: I'm a (currently) beast mastery spec'd hunter at level 53, and he's... level 36.

I knew it was going to be a challenge, but I was curious to see if I could do it, so I packed up and headed over to Blasted Lands where I would run into a bunch of mobs that were green to me-- hence they would still get us experience, while hopefully being not too difficult for me to handle now that I was, for all practical intents and purposes, pet-less.

My test run was, not surprisingly, very difficult. My pet rarely hit, and when he did he did very little damage. He couldn't hold aggro. My polearm skill wasn't particularly hot. But, after some trial and error, I managed to carve out a step-by-step strategy on how to do this:

Pike's Personal Strategy on How to Level a Pet That is 20 Levels Lower Than You:

1.) Get as far away from the mob as you can, and still be able to shoot it.

2.) Lay down an immolation trap.

3.) Send the pet in. Once the pet has the mob's attention, shoot at the mob with Scorpid Sting and Arcane Shot. At this point you've probably pulled aggro, so go ahead and shoot it as many times as you can before it gets to you.

4.) As soon as it runs over the immolation trap, feign death. The mob should jump back to the pet. This is when you get up and run far enough away to regain distance.

5.) At this point, the DoT laid by Serpent Sting is probably really close to running out. So fire off another Serpent Sting and Arcane Shot, and if all goes well the mob should be dead or close to it by the time it gets back to you, thanks to your sting/trap DoTs, and you should be able to finish it off pretty quickly. If something goes wrong or you need to buy some extra time, throw in some tricks like Wing Clip to get back to distance.

And that's what I've been doing. It seems to work pretty well for me. I actually got my dino to gain a level, but at that point I had to leave so I stabled him to continue progress another time.

I have to admit, running around with a low-level pet that can't hold aggro, and throwing down immolation traps of all things, has sort of made me feel like an uber-huntard-newbie. There were a couple of other hunters around while I was doing this, I can only hope they guessed at what I was trying to accomplish and didn't just think I had completely lost my mind. But if I can level my dear pink raptor up to level 70 I think it will all be worth it to have a unique pet-- it will be worth it to have a pet that can't be tamed "in the wild" past level 40. My current goal is for this to be the pet that I use in cases where, say, the group isn't fond of a big owl with flappy wings.

But yeah, I'm curious to know other methods regarding how hunters have trained up low level pets. Maybe I can find one that's a bit more effective than my current one.

In other, real-world news, I have a new job-- at a pet store. I find this delightfully ironic considering my class in WoW. *grin* ^_^