Okay, Pike's Gonna Sit You Down

And tell you a little story to make a point.

With all my spec testing lately and my latest entry on how my "relationship" to my pet, playstyle-wise, varied according to spec, I fear I may have accidentally given off some false impressions. So, I'm gonna clarify.

There are hunters of all specs who love their pets.

There are also hunters of all specs who really don't care very much either way. This includes some BM hunters who are BM only for the numbers, for example.

The point that I was trying to make in my last post, is that I missed the feeling of splitting my damage with my pet. I missed knowing he was doing 35% of my DPS. It felt awkward knowing that the damage responsibility was basically squarely on my shoulders. It felt lonely to me.

When I say that, I am not at all trying to discredit the relationship you lovely MM and SV hunters have with your pets, or say that they aren't important.

Tawyn was my first ever character and she was Marksmanship until level 55-ish.

The reason is because I had no idea what I was doing or what a spec was. So I asked my friends what to do with these newfangled talent points. At this point I'd actually started putting points into BM already but two different people completely mocked the idea of me spec'ing BM and told me Marksman was the way to go, so I promptly changed course and followed their advice.


Up I went through that talent tree and my owl Tux was there the entire way. He was my feathery little pocket tank. He was my leveling buddy. He didn't dish out a lot of damage but he held aggro like a champ. I loved him dearly. I loved him just as much then, as a Marksman hunter, as I do now as a Beast Master hunter.

Really though, I was hungrily eyeing the Beast Mastery tree the entire time I was leveling. Heck, I went off and made Lunapike so I could have a BM hunter that my friends didn't have to know about. There is a reason why I gave her a red kitty pet, aside from the fact that I think they're cute. It was a conscious, symbolic choice because Lunapike was going to be my BM hunter.


That Little Red Kitty is level 70 now, by the way.

Anyways, back to Tawyn. I finally said "Ya know what, screw everybody else. I don't care if they're going to call me a noob now. I'm respec'ing." So I did, and I'd like to say that I didn't look back.

...except I did look back, once. Because it sort of scared me at first. Tux went from being my pocket tank to being this Big Red Owl of Doom. He was doing as much DPS as I was at the time, if not more. "I've created a monster!" I thought. I spent about a level as BM and then spec'd back to my Marksman safety zone. Tux went back to being my mild-mannered companion. All was well.

Then I started to miss the whole "fast and furious" playstyle of BM and the idea that Tux could be more than just my tanky friend. We could fight alongside each other, each doing equal damage. We could be unstoppable, together.

Together we went through the Dark Portal and stepped into Outlands and that is when I spec'd to Beast Mastery for good and since then I haven't looked back. I wouldn't have it any other way at this point. We fight together. He isn't just there to keep the mobs away from me. He is there to buff me with his Ferocious Inspiration so I can in turn buff him with Kill Commands and tons of Focus, and we both act as an elegant killing machine, as One.

I have a special relationship with my pets as a Beast Master hunter. But that doesn't mean I love them any more than I did when I was Marksman. That doesn't mean I don't value them any more than I did when I was Marksman (although in a gameplay sense, obviously you do have to value them somewhat more =P)

When I was experimenting with non-BM specs in Beta, I felt a certain detachment to my pets in terms of there not being nearly so much hunter/pet synthesis (one procs something for the other) and the reason I was forgetting Mend Pet is probably largely because I was busy trying to work out new rotations. Anyways, that is what I missed about being BM. I missed the hunter/pet synthesis. I didn't love the pets any less just because I shuffled talent points around. That would be silly.

So! That is your Pike-story for the day. Hunters everywhere love their pets, and that is the way it should be. Just wanted to clarify that. Thank you, as always, for your comments and support and I will see you all next time.

[WotLK Beta] Survival of the Fittest

So now all the BoP alchemy recipes start dropping for me. Now that I'm in Beta and can't keep them. /sob

Anyways!

Today I spec'd 0/9/52 -- Full Survival. Once again, I do not claim to be an expert on non-BM spec'ing, but it seemed like a decent set-up to me. Really the interesting thing that I noticed with Survival is that all the things I really liked about this spec also seemed to have an opposite and equal downside to them. So while the "wow" factor seemed to be there more than it was in Marksman, at the same time, the letdown factor was also here more than it was in Marksman.

Here, I'll show you...

Things I Liked:
Expose Weakness
So many crits!! <3
Hunting Party
Explosive Shot, because it's superfun
Knowing I have awesome traps

Things I Did Not Like:
Knowing Expose Weakness now only affects myself
So many crits... so much pulling aggro from my pet after a string of them.
Hunting Party is a nifty idea and not bad, but... really, it does so little, in the long run. I'm still a mana monster.
Explosive Shot is only superfun for so long, and when the novelty wears off it's not a particularly exciting 51-pointer in my humble opinion.
Awesome traps either are not implemented currently, or I'm going crazy

Really, the hardest part of both this and the Marksman tree, was getting used to the idea that my pet is no longer important, other than as a meatshield to keep the enemy at range. I feel like I'm doing all the damage, which feels "off" to me. I even surprised myself when, more than once, I forgot to use Mend Pet and my Tenacity-- tanking!-- pet wound up dying. You've got to understand, I never forget Mend Pet. My pet rarely dies unless Shade of Aran has a vendetta against him or something. And yet once I get into a mindset of a non-BM hunter, I... forget to use it. Because I get focused entirely on myself. And I don't like that. I miss being "us".

I promise, this isn't supposed to be some sort of "BM Power" rant or anything. Survival was a fun tree to explore, it had a lot of perks, and I wouldn't mind exploring it further. I would also like to give the Marksman tree another (deeper) look, and also test all the specs on the training dummies. Because all my testing thus far has just been running around the world pewpew'ing mobs. I like to test in a sort of "open field" environment because that is where I will be spending a lot of my time when leveling.

But really, I can't envision myself spec'ing away permanently. My tests have confirmed that, I think. Before, I was sort of wavering. Because some of the stuff in the other trees was finally starting to look really appealing to me. And they still do. But I can't do it, I've gotta fight with my pet. It's like, you know that Digimon Tamers episode where Takato was like "I really really want to fight together with Guilmon!" and then they bio-merged into that super awesome mecha thing?

...

...okay, never mind >.>

[WotLK Beta] To Thine Own Self Be Trueshot

Got my quest from the nice Tuskarr guy, leaped down into the area behind him to start my quest, and:


Note: The person in General Chat who says he is a "big game hunter" clearly has his words confused with "a normal person who lives where Pike does and has to deal with the local wildlife."

Gaahh! Dazed and confused and blind. A relog didn't solve the problem so I wound up having to hearth. I'm worried that this might be an OpenGL problem (us Linux folks run the game with OpenGL instead of Direct3D), since I had a similar one with one of the Death Knight starter quests and that's what it turned out to be. But hopefully it's a bug that will be fixed. Hopefully. I reported it to Blizz, anyhow.

However, the point of this post is not silly Beta bugs, rather, it is hunter talent specs. Those of you who looked closely at the screenshot may have noticed something rather decisively un-Pike-like.

Yeah, see the Trueshot Aura?

Today I spec'd 3/51/7. Then went out and shot stuff. (Note: This probably isn't the best level 70 Marksman build. I don't know very much about the Marksman tree. I just sort of winged it =P)

Now, I regret to inform you that I do not have fancy DPS charts or anything to share with you, largely because the way I have always gauged my DPS has been through the use of a group of addons. SWStats + SCT Damage, to be precise. SCT Damage is basically like the game's built-in Scrolling Combat Text except it looks much nicer, in my opinion, and much more importantly it tells you what shot you did next to the floating damage number, or what move your pet used, and in short I find it to be very valuable for getting a good "feel" for my own personal DPS. Sadly, I don't have it in Beta, and without it, it's much harder for me to get a feel for DPS than I thought it would be.

So, I now present to you Pike's Thoughts on the Marksmanship Tree Based on Pure Intuition Which May or May Not Have Merit:

Things I Liked:
- Opening up my character panel and seeing a "zohmygawsh-huge" AP and crit number.
- Trueshot Aura
- Being able to do more than just spam Steady Shot. I said it way back in my spec-testing days of level 50, and I'll say it again: Marksman is the "cool calculating blue" to Beast Mastery's "frantically red hot". You shoot nice and slow as a Marksman hunter, and you can focus on weaving in other shots, and it's pretty neat.

Things I Did Not Like:
-Lack of Bestial Wrath
-Lack of Intimidation
-The fact that I really, really wanted to use Readiness with Bestial Wrath and Intimidation, and only with Bestial Wrath and Intimidation, and, um... that would kind of defeat the purpose of Marksmanship and be overly ironic.
-Lack of the four extra talent points for my pet (I honestly missed these more than I initially thought I would.)
-Shooting felt too slow. =[ Serpent's Swiftness is a drug; so sue me. Or arrest me.

I whispered BRK and told him that I was testing Marksman. He said, "Wow, you must be even more sick than you said you were." It was of course in jest, but really, he had a point. I can see the appeal and I'm really happy that my Marksman friends got so much love this time around, but it's just not Pike. It's not me.

Armed with new resolve I gallantly leaped off Scryer's Tier, died (I forgot my horse cannot fly), rez'd, and ran to Stormwind and respec'd to Big-Red-Om-nom-nom-chew-your-face-off-goodness.

Of course, that's not gonna stop me from continuing to test out specs, and try them more thoroughly! Next stop: Survival. Though I am sort of expecting that my "Things I didn't like" list will look frightfully similar to the Marksman list. I'm kind of spoiled I think.

In closing, I now have a Gorilla named Günther. I <3 him dearly. So many pets, so little stable space. FIVE SLOTS IS NOT ENOUGH. Also THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS. Er, EXTRA PET TALENT POINTS. Or something. /cough

And Then There Were Two

Hey.

Hey guys.

Post Your Bank

I don't care if it's a mess. I don't care if it's embarrassing. Post it anyway.

Let's see what we got in the old closet here...



Whoo, talk about a mess. And I haven't even opened all the other bags and the two overflowing herb bags. But because I'm sure you don't wanna see all the random crap I've accumulated, we'll just look through the main portion here...

Row 1:

Plain Letter: This is a letter the boyfriend sent me after level 4 Tawyn ran around Teldrassil in a desperate attempt to get to this "Stormwind place". He apparently made a desperate attempt himself to get to "Night Elf place" and wound up somewhere in Arathi Highlands. The letter details his attempt and his resolve to try again later.

You'd better believe I still have this letter.

Chicken Egg: My first mini-pet. Somebody showed me how to get it and helped me set up a /chicken macro. I never bothered to get rid of that macro... it's still there in my macro menu.

Wood Frog Box,
Parrot Cage (Senegal),
Jingling Bell,
and Clockwork Rocket Bot: Minipets that did not wind up in my bags with the other 12 or 13 odd minipets that I usually carry around. Hmm, so that's why I never have bagspace.

Chestnut Mare Bridle: Ahh, Tawyn's first mount. Her name was Buckles. Yes, I name my mounts. So sue me.

Row 2:

Warsong Gulch Mark of Honor,
Arathi Basin Mark of Honor,
Alterac Valley Mark of Honor,
and Eye of the Storm Mark of Honor... ye olde PvP badges. 99 WSG, yipe. I must be a masochist of some sort.

Obsidian Warbeads,
Oshu'gun Crystal Powder Sample,
and Apexis Shard... collectables!

Row 3:

Minion's Scourgestone (oldschool?)
Spirit Shard
Zaxxis Insignia
Halaa Battle Token
Halaa Research Token
Arcane Rune
Badge of Justice... more collectables!

Row 4:

Gladiator's Chain Helm,
Merciless Gladiator's Chain Gauntlets,
and Merciless Gladiator's Chain Spaulders... the PvP gear that I pull out when I want to add more o' them PvP tokens to my collection, or when no one responds to my "BORED HUNTER WILL DO ANYTHING I HAVE TRAPS AND COOKIES AND HUGS" pleas in LFG. ...which is actually quite frequently. /sob

Cat Carrier (White Kitten): was given to me as a present for answering a quiz question in guild chat. I still remember the question. "What anime includes the name of a WoW profession in the title?" Yeah, easy question, I was the first to answer so I got a kitty in the mail. What a deal!

The Gunblade: This is never leaving my possession. I will never forget the story behind this. I was level 65ish and a guildie who'd I'd been instancing with for a while took me all the way out to Blasted Lands, telling me he had a surprise for me. He handed me a package with the Gunblade in it, as well as an ammo pouch and bullets, and then he /saluted me and informed me that it was my present for being a good hunter. The gun served me well until 70, and yeah... it's stayin'.

/sniffs
/stoically stops thinking of old guild

Sonic Spear: Such good memories of when this dropped. I can't bear to get rid of it.
Guild Tabard: Tawyn will always and forever wear the Private's Tabard, because it fits her character and looks nice, but ya never know when you'll need a guild tabard... at least for a screenshot or two.

And yeah, see all those other bags? Those are stuffed full of various holiday items, nostalgic gear, nostalgic quest rewards, and the mandatory RP gear (I actually have never been one for "RP outfits", figuring my characters' RP outfits are their gear... but you never know!)

It appears that Tawyn, just like her human player counterpart, cannot bear to throw anything away. Adding new stuff to the bank is always an agonizing thing. And so many times I've staunchly said "Today is the day I organize my bank!", marched up to the banker, and... found that I couldn't bear to toss anything. Hi, my name is Pike, and I have a problem.

Please tell me I'm not the only one! /whimper

[WotLK Beta] The Man, The Myth, The Legend

So I decided to do something completely crazy in Beta and see if I could tame one o' them core hounds. From Molten Core. Solo. Hey, I'm a hunter, I can do that, right?

Got about halfway through Blackrock Mountain when I remembered I needed to be in a raid group to even get in the door.

Oh hey, some nice dwarf and his bear are gonna party with me! They even flew all the way over to help me out!



We had about a dozen different plans and they all failed to go through, thanks to evade glitches, threat glitches, and a variety of stuff refusing to work right. We were so close a couple of times that it was just frustrating. Lemme tell ya though, the bear is a beast. Never seen a hunter pet tank not just one, but two Molten Giants for so long. I am so gonna get one if I can tear myself away from my Rhino who I just solo'd most of Slave Pens with.

Anyways! The moral of the story is: If you are a Beta blogger you had better be on the lookout because I do periodic /whos and you might be the next person who gets roped into one of my crazy schemes, fo'shizzle.

[WotLK Beta] He's back.

Conversation From a Few Months Ago...

Me: "So guess what, I heard that in Wrath of the Lich King, I'll be able to tame those big dinosaurs from Un'Goro."
Boyfriend: "Really?"
Me: "Yep!"
Boyfriend: "...can you do me a favor?"
Me: "What?"
Boyfriend: "Tame one of those... and name it Wash."

[WotLK Beta] Tawyn & Tux's Excellent Adventure

So it took some sleuthing, geekery and hackery, but the WotLK beta runs as smooth as butter under Linux with Wine.

Took me a good five or ten minutes to figure out how to use mounts.

Took me another five or ten minutes to distribute talent points (55 points in Beast Mastery is okay, right?)

Ten minutes of running around Shatt trying stuff out and using The Beast Within (Sade, was that you in front of Aldor bank? ;o I wasn't sure so I was kind of afraid to ask. I'm shy like that.)

Ten minutes of setting up my hotkeys again, training Tux, and pewpewing a couple things in Terokkar. Steady Shot feels... off. I'm sure I will adapt to it with more time.

Then I went to Stormwind, found the harbor, stood on a boat with a group of people, all of us asking "is this the boat to Northrend?"... realized the boat wasn't going anywhere and hopped on another boat...



It's huge you guys. I'm so excited. Too bad I have to go to work now >.>

Oh, what are some addons that work in Beta? Somebody in trade mentioned that X-Perl did so I will be looking into that. I hadn't realized until now how much I rely on stuff like Scrolling Combat Text and RatingsBuster.

If you are also in Beta and wish to say hello, you can find me on the Northrend realm, both Alliance and Horde; Tawyn on the former and Lunapike on the latter. ^_^

Congratulations...

Wrath of the Lich King™ Beta Test

You have been selected to participate in the beta test of World of Warcraft®: Wrath of the Lich King™. Welcome!

In the beta test you’ll get an opportunity to test the first zones of the new Northrend continent, and the new levels above 70. We look forward to your feedback on the overall experience, including quests, monsters, zones, aesthetics, and more. We would also appreciate reports on any bugs you may encounter. These can be logged using the /bug command explained below.

I am off to work now, which is actually fine because the downloader tells me there are at least six hours remaining. I come to you all with a question, though. I know many of you frequent my site in part because I am one of the hunter blogs out there that is still dealing primarily with the non-WotLK content. I sort of don't want to change that. Plus, so many other bloggers out there are already covering the Beta.

But is there anything in particular that you would like me to cover or not cover, aside from "How well this all runs in Linux with Wine" which is probably the first thing I will be reporting?

And which is "so far so good" by the way:



I honestly mostly just want to mess around and get some ideas of new huntering for myself I think-- if current content is what you all want, then that is what you will get, because I still love the current stuff. And I don't want to spoil WotLK too much for myself!

The Fable of the Gnome Rogue

The Tauren Hunter was merrily bounding into the Silverwing base in Warsong Gulch; she had been enjoying these player-verses-player excursions lately and was rather fond of her 25,000 honor that she had stockpiled for when she would hit 70 in a couple more levels and would need a nice set of war gear to go with her set of standard adventuring gear. She made it to the roof of the enemy building when suddenly she was jumped upon! By a very persistent gnome rogue.

Now, the tauren knew that many of her fellow hunters dislike the rogue because they are very good at taking away that which hunters prize most: space. However, she has an odd knack for managing to catch rogues before they catch her, and even when they do catch her first she has a knack for wriggling her way out of their grasp, so at first she wasn't afraid. She directed her trusty red lynx to Intimidate the rogue, during which time she laid down an Immolation Trap and got a little bit of range and then hit him with a Serpent Sting.

He was soon on top of her again though, and sadly his first initial strikes had taken a critical toll so she was down on her luck right from the start. Still, they tussled for a bit, before the hunter's health ran low and she collapsed to the ground.

She did not release her spirit though, for the rogue was himself weak, and he was still burning from the Immolation Trap and still feeling the ache of the Serpent Sting...

He saw her watching him, so he targeted her and /laughed.

Then, smugly, he started to bandage himself.

Serpent Sting removed the bandage effect.

The gnome's eyes widened. They say in this world of pixels and polygons, facial expressions cannot change. I swear to the Earthmother, though, that his eyes widened as he came to a sudden realization.

The last tick of the Serpent Sting went off and he fell to the floor.

They lay there for a few seconds, simply targeting each other. Then, when the tauren hunter was sure her message had clearly been sent across, she calmly released to the graveyard.

The moral of the story, oh best beloved...

...is do not /laugh at a hunter, for they have a disturbing tendency to have the last /laugh. Or the last /giggle, anyways.

I Can Dream

(P.S. Yes Bear, I'm working on that gear guide for you.)

A Tale of Two Trolls

Tauren and Trolls are, without question, my favorite two races in the game. Anything that would come in third (probably gnomes; gosh I wish they could be hunters) are a very, very distant third. It is perhaps ironic that overall I still prefer the Alliance lore and aesthetics over the Horde lore and aesthetics, and I'll always be a Stormwind Girl at heart, but when it comes to races, there is no contest; Horde win.

My love for Tauren (especially female Tauren! <3) has been manifested in my adoption of Thunder Bluff as my Hordeside home, making my blood elf character an adopted Tauren, and of course, making about a zillion Tauren characters such as Lunapike who is my Hordeside Main (and honestly, probably my New Main these days).

And my love for Trolls, well... wait a minute, I've failed to ever get a Troll character past level 17 or so.

I know, it's horrible. My Troll characters, as much as I adore them, have all met bad ends for one reason or another.

One of the first characters I made was a Troll Hunter on Silver Hand. I named her Shantizar. I ran her to Dun Morogh when she was level ten so she could tame a Snow Leopard. I have a screenshot of her /flirting with my boyfriend's main, who was like... level 30 at the time. That's how long ago this was.

Unfortunately my initial impressions of Silver Hand Horde failed to catch my eye and that character sort of fell by the wayside. When I next gave Horde a shot, it was an all new server-- The Venture Co.-- and the server immediately gave me a "this is home" feel, the same one I get on Silver Hand Alliance. So basically all my hordies since then have been on VeCo.

Anyways, flash forward several months. I wanted to give the Survival tree a shot but I couldn't bring myself to respec one of my current hunters away from my beloved Beast Mastery and on top of that, I think one of the best ways to really get a feel for a talent spec is to level through it. I considered resurrecting Shantizar of Silver Hand but she was broke and I wanted to give a boar a shot, so... I rerolled entirely. Shantizar the Second was born on a completely different server, she tamed an aggro-monster of a boar who she named Niels, and she got to about level 17 as Survival.

Then... things happened. Boars got nerfed (so sad, I loved Niels "Boar" /sniff), the server never really gave me the "home" feel that I look for in a new server, and I decided that as much fun as exploring a new talent tree was, spec'ing something other than BM is just hard for me to do. I can't help it; I'm a pet fiend.

And so The Survival Project was put on hold and yet another of my poor Trolls never saw level 20.

But something interesting happened the other day. I logged onto Shantizar the First, with Scraps the Snow Leopard by her side-- this character hadn't been touched in months-- and I got that feeling. The "home" feeling. The one that hadn't been there when I'd originally made her so long ago.

So... I've started playing her again. Just a little, on the side. No rush, no pressure.

And I think I'm gonna respec her to Survival. And I think I'm gonna level her in the Ghostlands, a zone which I have never been able to get into before.


It's about time I had me some jungle lovin', right?

P.S. Someday I swear I am going to make a hunter named Schrödinger and tame the Ghost Cat.

No Introduction Needed

...and before you ask, no, the Ancient Petrified Leaf did not drop, and Eltanin the Windserpent can tank Ragnaros for nine seconds.

Old School

So while I've definitely been enjoying my alts (mostly of the hunter variety), I have also found myself logging into Tawyn a lot more often again, lately.

Why? Is it perhaps the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion that has me all excited? Is it getting into the current raids of Burning Crusade?

Nope.



It's cause Blackrock Mountain is basically the most epic thing Blizzard has ever done. True story.

I went to Molten Core the other week with a bunch of people. Unfortunately it was sort of a hastily put together group, people started leaving more and more as we went on, and we had to call it quits after wiping on... the fourth or fifth boss? Can't remember.

But it was a really neat experience and inspired me to start looking seriously into old-world content. I am a "Burning Crusade Baby" as they say, who waltzed into Outlands at level 58, effectively skipping most of the old Level 60 stuff.

But doing LBRS the other day to get the UBRS key, and aaaaalll the billions of quests involved for that; and now currently doing the quests and the BRD runs for the Onyxia Key... this is when Epic was Epic and when adventuring meant going into a burning lair of fire of brimstone.

Oh, and guess who plays at 8:00pm in BRD?



Sheer coincidence that we happened to be in this room at 7:57pm. It was great.

The interesting thing about these old-world quests, to me anyway, is how memorable they are. So far I have had to take control of a dragon in order to blow fire on a quest object, take secret notes all over Eastern Kingdoms, and rescue a guy from prison and escort him out of BRD while he deadpans lines about his flying fists of fury (and runs into every mob he can without giving you a chance to drink >.>). I think my favorite, though, was when I was sent to a guy in Lakeshire, the same guy who gave me a bunch of quests when I was, oh, level 16 or 17 maybe. "Do I know you? You look familiar," he said.

Hehe.

I can't tell you how far this little old-world excursion is going to take me. In theory, I'd like to hit up all the old raids, in reality, I don't know if that can happen. But the point is, Bear was right. There is a ton of content out there and I dunno about you guys, but I don't raid for the loot. Loot's a fun bonus, but it's not why I still adore Karazhan and try to run it every chance I get even though Be Imba tells me I should be in SSC, and it's not why I want to do the old school raids. It's cause there's adventuring and exploring out there that I haven't done yet.

Oh, and Hunter Tier 3 looks awesome and I must have it.

So You Want to Play a Hunter? Part 6

Levels 12-20:

So we talked about Hunter 101 last time, right? Alright. Now from here until level 20, you are mostly going to be learning a lot of "filler abilities", in my mind-- stuff that can be useful but which for the most part is not going to be "ZOMG-SUPER-EPIC-HUNTER-STUFF". For that reason, the majority of my hunters (did I mention I've rolled like 17 of them?) get stuck in the levels between 12-20. Once I get past 20 and Aspect of the Cheetah I'm usually on a roll and get more excited about things again.

But I'm ahead of myself. You still learn some stuff in these levels. Let's take a look at them:

Eagle Eye is a move that you learn at level 14. This will zoom up on your vision for quite a distance. Useful for certain quests where you perhaps need to "find the item"; this way you can find out where it is. Similarly handy if you know where you have to go, but want to scope out the dangers beforehand. Also useful in Arathi Basin when you're at Lumber Mill and want to see how many people are guarding Blacksmith.

Eyes of the Beast you also learn at level 14. It lets you temporarily take "control" of your pet and move him around, druid-style. Now, I am going to come right out and say it, and feel free to rebuke me in the comments if I'm missing something epic and obvious: Eyes of the Beast is a party trick. You use it when you're bored and waiting for people to show up at the summoning stone, or when you're on the Deeprun Tram/Arathi Basin before it starts and you want to see how far your pet can run by himself before time runs out.

I'm not going to say it's completely devoid of uses; I can imagine it would be a handy scouting trick if you have a cat with Prowl. And I have actually sacrificed my pet a few times with various Eyes of the Beast strategies that are invariably my partymates' ideas (use him to activate all the bombs in Blood Furnace (that's the one with the bombs right?); use him to pull stuff in Heroic Mech while the rest of us stand at the elevator) but that's about it. If you guys have discovered something super useful with this move, please tell me.


Sorry about all the times I sacrificed you, Locke. =(

Anyways, the other one you learn at 14 is Scare Beast. Scare Beast can be handy for these scary pre-Freezing-Trap days as really your only form of Crowd Control (other than Wing Clip/Concussive Shot), and I often find myself using it frequently in the early levels. Oh, and use it on bear/cat druids in PvP. Much laughter will ensue.

Level 16! Mongoose Bite is a melee attack that you can only use if you successfully dodge an attack. This means that something has to be in melee and hitting you for you to be able to use it. Now I didn't have Mongoose Bite on my action bar for the longest time because I thought it was kind of silly, but then I got an addon which tells me when I can do stuff (such as Kill Command and Mongoose Bite) so I went and found it and put it in some random spot on one of my action bars.

I'm going to say something here that may scare you guys, so feel free to go hide or get a straightjacket or something: I actually kinda like Mongoose Bite. It's highly situational, but I think it is moderately useful. This is when I use it: if a mob is on top of me, strikes at me, and I dodge, and then after that my pet picks up aggro... that's when I use it. I Mongoose Bite while in the process of gaining range (I usually just run straight through the mob; Mongoose Bite on the way). It does a little extra damage and honestly, extra damage can always help.

I do not use it if my pet doesn't have solid aggro on the mob; that's when I use Wing Clip/Feign Death/etc. depending on the situation. And I most certainly do not go melee a mob for the purpose of trying to get a Mongoose Bite in. Bad bad bad.

But if you happen to be in range of the mob and you happen to get a Mongoose Bite in queue, you'd might as well use it.

Immolation Trap is the other thing you learn at this level; ahhh, your first trap. This trap isn't a CC trap but it does do a lot of damage over time. I tend not to use it in PvE because it will generate a lot of threat which I would rather have on my pet. But it is useful if you are pure-solo and sans-pet for some reason, and I've found it useful sometimes in one-on-one PvP.

At level 18 you learn two things, Track Undead and Multishot. Track Undead is, of course, added to your stable of tracking skills and does exactly what it says it does (Undead players, though, count as Humanoid). Multishot is interesting, let's talk about it a little. If you are a Survival or Marksman hunter, then you may end up using this in your endgame shot rotation. So you may want to take the time to sort of play around with it and get a feel for its odd hidden cast time. For the most part though, I do not use this shot in leveling PvE: you've got plenty of DPS output with Serpent Sting and Arcane Shot alone.

Remember: Multishot will break CC so be especially careful when using this in an instance or similarly delicate situation.

I'ma tell you where Multishot is king though: Epic army on army showdowns in AV. Especially when it crits. Om nom nom.

And ding level 20, congrats! You will learn Aspect of the Cheetah, Disengage, and Freezing Trap.

Aspect of the Cheetah will help you get around faster until you get your mount: remember though that it will cause you to be dazed on hit, so be careful when you use it: it's more of a "travel from place to place" move as opposed to an "escape" move.

Disengage is handy pre-Feign Death for dropping threat; it's kind of a mana hog and requires you to be in melee range, but before level 30 it's basically the best you've got.

Freezing Trap deserves an entry all to itself and will get one in the next installment of SYWtPaH! /bow

In other news, Tawyn is 85 rep points away from being exalted with Stormpike:


The sad thing is, it took her 9376 honor kills to get there. (By contrast, Lunapike has about 3500 honor kills and is halfway through Revered with Frostwolf.) Ohh, Bloodlust Alliance. You are so silly. It's okay though, because the Spirit of Competition Minipet looks AWESOME with my Windserpents:

This is Silver Hand

One of my earliest roleplaying memories from way back when I first started playing WoW and wound up on a little server called Silver Hand, was a paladin named Sorox. He was a heavy roleplayer and a nice guy who developed an intense, strictly in-character rivalry with one of my fellow guildies and officers. That really stuck to me at the time. I was a new player and a new roleplayer, and here was this crazy rivalry that continued to manifest itself through the months. That, I thought, was pretty awesome, and certainly inspired me to start tentatively roleplaying myself. He had other characters, too, and while I never knew him as well as many others, to say that I knew of him and respected him as a fellow roleplayer and a good person would be an understatement.

Today, I heard some horrible news. By way of a fluke accident, he had wound up in the hospital, in a coma. The entire server had him in their collective thoughts and prayers... but it was not to be, and he passed away.

So when I learned of a memorial walk to be held in his honor, I went.

We all did.

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
across Northrend's bright and shining snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
on Westfall's fields of golden grain.
I am in the morning hush,
of Stranglethorn's jungle, green and lush.
I am in the drums loud and grand,
the thunderous hooves across Nagrand.
I am the stars warmly gleaming,
over Darnassus softly dreaming.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I do not die.
-Alicia's Poem

My fellow Silver Handers who I have linked this to, I did not know Ryan as well as I would have liked. But the seeing the community get together like this was simply amazing. And for that, I thank you.

This is Silver Hand, and this is WoW.

-Tawyn < Entelechy >

I wanna cast... Magic Missile

You know, quite some time ago I had a dream that Tawyn had the chance to get the most rare and most awesome flying mount ever. She could get an owl mount, one that looked just like Tux.

And in the dream, I turned it down. My reasoning? It wouldn't be in character.

I woke up and thought "Dream-Pike you dorkchop! Giving up a super awesome mount like that in the name of roleplaying! You don't even roleplay all that often! Real-Pike is much more sensible than that."

Or so I thought.

This is Althalor:



When he was a wee young lad, he and his high elven merchant parents were traveling down Southern Gold Road in the Barrens when they were attacked by some particularly nasty beasts. They fought gamely but they were tired and weary and couldn't much fight back. With their dying breaths they managed to conjure up a spell that made it so the creatures did not see, hear, or smell little Althalor who was hiding in the caravan.

It was the Tauren of Camp Taurajo who found him and took him in. He was raised in Mulgore as an adopted Tauren, as a hunter, because of his uncanny skill with a rifle and his odd rapport with the lions of the Barrens. Today he fights for the Horde, passing himself off as a Blood Elf, although deep inside he feels that he really is a a Tauren in spirit.

So clearly he needs to ride a Kodo. This was the plan from day one. And for that, (unless you want the war mount)... you need to be exalted with Thunder Bluff.

At the tender level of two I ran him all the way from Sunstrider Isle to Mulgore. He cleared the place of quests and this led him to Crossroads, Camp Taurajo, and eventually Freewind Post in Thousand Needles. Considering the fact that I began with a distinct disadvantage (blood elves begin the game as Neutral with Thunder Bluff, not Friendly... and on top of that, a rather long questline in Mulgore is apparently Tauren-exclusive), I didn't think I was doing too badly. Tawyn was exalted with Stormwind at level 37, why couldn't Althalor be exalted with Thunder Bluff at level 40? Easy, I figured.

Then came the change to the mount level. I worried about my rep grind but hoped for the best; turning in as much cloth as I could at my low level and scouring WoWHead for quests I hadn't finished yet.

Today Althalor dinged 30.



...well dang.

Now don't get me wrong. I like the chicken mount. I like it a lot. I was so excited when the Warstrider was announced and then so crestfallen when I found out my taurengirl Lunapike couldn't get it. (She has some MgT farming in her future I think.)

But Althalor, I thought, no, he can't ride one. It would be obscene. In his story he hasn't been to the Eastern Kingdoms since he was a baby. Him on a hawkstrider? It would be So. Out. Of. Character.

So I said "Forget getting the mount at level 30. I'm not getting one until I'm exalted with TB."

I went to work today and realized I'd turned into Crazy-RP-Mount-Dream-Pike.

And I thought about it and I thought about it and I thought about it and I thought about Aspect-of-the-Cheetah-ing all over Desolace and it was this horrible dilemma, you have no idea.

Then I had an epiphany. He's trying to pass himself off as a Blood Elf right? So maybe his Tauren friends decided to help him out by obtaining a Hawkstrider mount for him... and he rode it around for a while because he was very grateful for the thought but it just made him so uncomfortable that he got a Kodo later?

...that sounds viable.

So I went and got the chicken mount.

It still feels awkward but at least my OOCometer isn't buzzing off the hook and blinking red anymore.

There are two morals of this story. One is I think Blizzard has really succeeded if they managed to create a world so immersive that at least some of its players are willing to do crazy things like forego mounts in the name of their fictional character's backstory. Two is that Pike is completely insane. But you all knew that I'm sure.

So You Want to Play a Hunter? Part 4

Thanks for the comments on my last video. There were some concerns that the technique used in the video was hard to understand, which I was afraid of, but I went ahead and tried it anyway. I also had some concerns that the movie did not go "in-depth" enough with techniques for kiting, but in all honesty, the movie was supposed to be intended for a new hunter who isn't level ten yet (or who has never kited before) so hopefully it was okay for me to have skipped some of the more "advanced" tactics.

So you've hit level ten. Yay! Two different important things can happen now: you can use your talent points, and you can tame your pet.

Talent Points:

Before you, you see three possible talent trees to put your points in. I'ma summarize them really quickly: Beast Mastery focuses on making your pet stronger (and eventually making you shoot much faster), Marksmanship focuses on increasing your own Ranged Attack Power, and Survival focuses on critting a lot and using various tricks to survive or help out your party. You could say that Beast Mastery shoots faster but for less per hit, Marksmanship shoots slower but for more per hit, and Survival is slower and does less per hit, but crits all the time. Pick your playstyle!

If you are just starting a hunter and want to get it to endgame, then you should be aware of the fact that the Marksman tree is currently considered to be a rather weak tree compared to the other two; although hopefully this will be remedied (or at least improved a little) in WotLK. It's not such a big deal for leveling though.

In all honesty I do not see there as being a "one true spec" for leveling. They are all going to be reasonably effective. Beast Mastery is often seen as "the leveling" spec because it makes your pet more of a tank and thus you have little downtime, but Tawyn actually leveled Marksmanship until level 55 or so, and had absolutely no problems (though that was before the Growl-changes, so it may be different now). I regret to say I haven't leveled a Survival Hunter past level 17 because I've been so busy with other goals I want to accomplish, but I imagine that leveling Survival, while maybe not as fast as BM or Marks, is still going to be handy because you will rarely die. That is just my conjuncture, however!

A while back Znodis did a lot of testing and found that an interesting BM/MM hybrid (enough MM for Trueshot, then everything else in BM) was actually probably the best spec in terms of grinding and pet threat generation, but it might have changed since then with the growl changes. Regardless, his thoughts are worth a look if you are okay with crazy hybrid specs.

In all honesty I think you should level up in the talent tree that you find most interesting.

If you do want my advice, I am going to say Beast Mastery, and I am going to say spec something like this. Yes, it's a different talent spec than the "leveling spec" I posted a few months back. But I sort of waver on my own personal opinions of a leveling spec, so I change it up a lot. Anyways, the one I posted is basic cookie-cutter 41/20/0 but with some twists that hone it more for leveling and soloing: namely, you swap out Improved Aspect of the Hawk and Improved Revived Pet for Endurance Training and Thick Hide, which are considerably more useful for leveling. I am still thinking about the possibility of Catlike Reflexes instead of Ferocious Inspiration-- I know it sounds like blasphemy, but for leveling it's not a bad choice at all and I wouldn't knock you for it (so long as you respec later if you are going to be instancing/raiding).

If you are still unsure of what you want to do with your talent points and want some time to think about it, but also want to start putting your points somewhere, I'm gonna tell you to put five points in Lethal Shots in Marksmanship and then come back at level 15 (you'll hopefully have decided by then). Heck, all my hunters level Beast Mastery and almost without fail I put the five points in Lethal Shots first. But that's maybe cause I'm a crit fiend.

Anyways, I don't want to go massively in-depth on the subject of leveling talent points, but I might do that in a later post if enough people are interested or think it's a good idea.

Pets:

Pets! Yay! My favorite part of playing a hunter!

First of all, be aware of the fact that you will have to do your pet quest in your race's homelands; at the first major town you encounter after you leave the level 1-5 starting zone. So yes, that means that if you pulled a Tawyn and ran your Night Elf to Elwynn Forest at level six, you will have to go aaaaall the way back to Teldrassil.

The pet quest itself is pretty simple and involves you going and "taming" a few different test pets that the quest giver will tell you to tame. You will do this for three different pets until you are given the skill to tame pets permanently. Then you are sent to your home city (Ironforge, Thunder Bluff, etc. depending on your race) to pick up a couple extra (and necessary! Do not skip this step) skills and then you will be good to go!

"Pike, what pet do I pick?" Well back in the day, boars were seen as the supreme leveling pet and for good reason: their threat generation was massive. But the Boar-Shaped Piñata since been whacked into oblivion with the Nerf Stick so there is really no ultimate-leveling pet anymore. You may opt to go with something that has high armor, such as a bear-- keep in mind that bears cannot use Dash, though.

But see, my thoughts on pets has always been that you don't choose the pet, the pet chooses you.

Pike would tell her young Padawan to study Petopia closely, browse the available pets that are level ten or lower, and pick the one that jumps out to them. There are no restrictions, although remember that only some pets will be able to learn Dash/Dive at higher levels (which makes leveling quicker), and some pets are considered to be better for endgame (windserpents, ravagers, cats, and raptors fall into this category), but if you like a non-standard pet, then go for it.

What's that you say? You found a pet you like but it's on the other end of the world? ...what are you waiting for? You're a hunter! Go get it!

And I would walk five hundred miles
And I would walk five hundred more
Just to be the man who walked a thousand miles
To fall down at your door...



That's my level eleven dwarf hunter. In Durotar. Getting there was an adventure, it involved running through Duskwood (and dying a million times) and I would have died a million times in Stranglethorn Vale, too, but lemme tell you, having a level 70 priest put a bubble on you and then tell you "Run!" and follow you all the way through the zone makes things a LOT easier.

When I first got there, the dinosaur I wanted to tame was level eleven, and I was level ten. And, as you may or may not know, you can only tame pets that are your level or lower. So I grinded myself up a level on the random critters running around Durotar, managed to tame a rare Scorpion while I was at it and nab myself Claw 2, and finally abandoned him so I could tame my new dinosaur:



So cute!

Well, I'd like to go in more detail on pets and how your huntering strategy has changed now that you have a pet, but this blog post is already obscenely long, so we'll discuss that later. In the meantime, the afore mentioned Petopia is an amazing resource to peruse if you have pet-related questions.

As always... leave me your comments and questions!

Guys...

Thanks.

Last night, I was kind of a mess-- it was midnight, a million thoughts were going through my head, I'd just logged off in frustration, and I had to let those feelings loose somehow. So I wrote 'em all down in Blogger. It was super cathartic. I'd be lying if I said I didn't shed some tears in the process. Before I hit the "Publish Post" button, I glanced at what I'd written and thought "Man... I should maybe just delete this all... nobody wants to hear my QQing." But I was hoping maybe I'd get some advice, so I published the post and then went straight to bed.

I woke up after a bit of a fitful sleep and went over to my computer and I had dozens of comments expressing support and help. People telling me they'd been through it before themselves, who were offering their own advice and experience. Ratshag even IM'd me to make sure I was okay. I also had some responses to a (rather embarrassingly) panicked post I made over on my guild forums, from guildies reassuring me that it wasn't my fault.

Are things magically fixed now? Well no, but I feel more calm and confident about it now. Whatever happens, will happen, and it will be okay. The point is, your collective concern helped more than I can express... so, thank you.

ANYWAYS, I don't want to dwell too long on mushy stuff like that. Aspect of the Hare will return to our regularly scheduled hunter programming on Monday (or maybe even Sunday if I'm feeling inspired.) You wants hunters, we gots hunters. And you wants the prettiest screenshot I've ever taken...



I was gonna say "You've got three guesses" but it's super easy, so you've only got one guess. =P

Finally

No really, I was literally having dreams about taming this guy, I was camping for him so much.



Althalor has The Rake, he has Humar, what's next? Sian-Rotam, of course. I'd love to go for the much lower-level Echeyakee but keeping three pets leveled up with me is simply not gonna happen... two is hard enough as it is, and typically requires forgetting about rested XP for the duration of my hunter career. I... am just that devoted.

I love pets.

I have been watching the new WotLK stuff popping up on Mania's Arcania with a lot of interest. It looks like I'm going to have two "cunning" pets (Tux and Eltanin) and one "ferocity" pet (Locke). Of course, that fails to account for Exotic Pets which are still a mystery.

Stable slots... it's all I'm asking for. C'mon Blizz! /beg /cry