Features I like(d)

I like some random, inane stuff.  Tiny cute things.  Anything green.  Completely extraneous Easter-egg stuff.  So over the course of WoW there's been a lot of random stuff I've like from each expansion, regardless of whether there were other things that drove me batty (like gated profession stuff and losing both ships on a 92% mission fail).

But this is about stuff I like, so here's some of them:

Fished up bosses.  The first of these (as far as I know) was Gahz'ranka in the original Zul'Gurub.  Unlike later fished up bosses, like the Lurker Below and the Pandaria fishing quest bosses, Gahz'ranka required a process to fish up.  This is also why I was a bit irritated about Nat Pagle forgetting who I was every expansion - he taught me 225-300 fishing skill.  But yeah, I liked that having done what a lot of people hadn't in Vanilla (maxing fishing) was useful for something besides obscure food.

Yes, I still have my Mudskunk Lures.

Long quest chains with both strong emotional payoff and decent equipment rewards.  The Major Windsor escort through Stormwind (and Bolvar's subsequent badassery).  The Cipher of Damnation (Burning Crusade edition).  Alas, Andorhal.  The Battle of Darrowshire.  Drakkuru.  Zul'Drak's troll gods quests.  Terokk's story in Spires of Arak.  When I specifically seek out these zones to quest through again, it means they're doing something right.

Zapthrottle.  So I'm still carrying around my mote extractor.  As an engineer, I loved suddenly having resources that only I could gather.  I may have occasionally frustrated people by being en route to some group thing and getting distracted chasing down balls of gas.  It was worse than ore tracking.

Floating islands in Nagrand.  They're so full of Easter eggs, and they were fun to go hang out on if you had to afk for a bit.

Water with currents.  After how many years of waterfalls and such, Pandaria finally gave us water that would pull us around!  I especially liked the currents off the southern coast of the Dread Wastes.

Phasing that lets us change zones over time.  One of the things I was a bit sad about until phasing went in was that, no matter what we did in WoW, nothing changed.  You go help someone out and as soon as you leave, it all resets.  But in Mount Hyjal, we helped beat back the Twilight's Hammer and start the healing of the fire-scorched areas.  In Pandaria, we contributed to the devastation of some of their pristine areas.  In Deepholm, we repair the World Pillar.  And Gilneas!  Oh, Gilneas.  One of the things that impressed me most in the Cataclysm beta, playing through Gilneas for the first time, was that the moment of the cataclysm itself - so bluntly shown in Kezan as Deathwing disrupts a sports game - you feel it when the devastation hits, and your village begins sinking into the ocean.  It was visceral and amazing.

So, uh, sorry, west coast of North America.  It's going to be devastating when you fall into the Pacific, but it's going to be amazing for your narrative.

Tol Barad.  I liked that some PVP opened up some basically PVE daily quests with mount and pet and gear awards for the related currency.  The zone was interestingly creepy, as well.  I suppose Winterspring was also in this vein, but Tol Barad felt more polished.

The Seahorse in Vashj'ir.  The only thing I didn't like about it was that you could only use it in Vashj'ir.  Going fast underwater was almost better than flying.  It didn't hurt that the place was gorgeous.

The turtle boats in Northrend.  It was slow, but it was a nice thematic touch for the Tuskarr, and when you forgot which zeppelin went where as frequently as I did, it made schlepping over to the other end of Northrend prior to having flying much easier.

Garrison followers.  I love my bird-buddy Ishaal, and a lot of the followers just make me more connected to Draenor in general.  I may hardly leave my garrison, but I do have cool people hanging out with me.  When I'm not making them do random menial tasks.

NPCs that use class-specific skills.  The last boss in Nagrand's Ring of Blood shaman-popping.  Yrel in that Talador cutscene.  Anytime I see NPCs we're interacting with behave the way I'd expect someone of that class to - it's just awesome.  (Seriously, I kinda teared up when Yrel popped wings in that video, because Yes! That is a paladin!)

Rexxar's rat innkeeper.  Because it's cute and adorable.

Pet biscuits.  Because rats bigger than gnomes are awesome.

6.x Raiding Pets

Here I am, swapping back and forth between Exotic Munitions and Focusing Shot depending how much I actually need to move during a fight, when I have the option to just not use a pet.  Depending where you look, either Focusing Shot or Lone Wolf is the way to go for Marksman, but I haven't even tried Lone Wolf yet.

Why not?  Two words:  battle rez.

That's right, I'm raiding with a Crane.  Some raids, we have no druids, no warlocks, and our only death knight is one of the tanks.  If that tank drops, it could easily mean a wipe, and no one likes repair bills.  (We're saving for a yak. Ahem.)  Gift of Chi-Ji gives me the option to bring up a raid member without having to switch to Beast Mastery to bring a Quilen.

Now, there are downsides to this.  I have occasionally worried some people as I wandered into the maze of the Twin Ogron's flames to find a dropped tank and pick them up.  The cast has a 40-yard range, but in practice this means you may have to send your crane to stand closer to the unfortunate's corpse in order to reach them.

Optimal DPS versus raid utility is a trade-off you make sometimes; nowadays, with pet DPS normalized regardless of what buff they're bringing, you can focus on bringing the best pet for the raid - if you need to bring one at all.  The buff redistribution that happened with the 6.0 patch means that no longer am I bringing a sporebat to every raid (regardless of how amusing Stampede was with one).  The nine standard buffs are almost always covered now, and on the occasion that we've been missing multistrike, one of the other hunters has been able to bring that.

One of the reasons I've opted to go with the crane is that I don't frequently die early in a fight, my DPS is usually just kind of average, and I'm good at watching what's going on.  (The third is likely feeding into the second.)  This means I'm generally still alive and not in immediate danger of dying if a tank drops, since it's been quite a while since I regularly rode just under the tanks for threat, and I notice when a tank or healer drops.  I also notice how much mana the other healers have if it's a healer, I've got a Weak Aura set up to monitor how many battle rezes we have available, and I not infrequently can easily pull up Recount to check either the healing or DPS meters without too much affecting my output or immediate safety.

So if we've got two battle rezes up and three DPS down, I'll pull up Recount, see who was riding highest before their demise, and burn one of the rezes on a DPS, saving one in case we have a tank or healer drop.  Some fights you get to know you're more likely to lose one or the other - most of us only raid about six hours a week at the most, and then maybe LFR, so we expect folks to die sometimes.

As our raid pool slowly shrinks due to interest attrition, the people who need a battle rez aren't coming as often, and our raid group is getting to know each other better, so on non-progression fights, the tanks don't die as often.  I'm still not really inclined to go pet-less, though, since Focusing Shot helps make me stand still more (for the mastery buff), and Exotic Munitions means fire arrows that I've wanted since forever.

Dragon Soul meant raiding with Coby, my armor penetration ravager; Siege meant raiding with Clarence, the spell haste sporebat; so far raiding in Warlords means raiding with Lucius, the green crane with the Gift of Chi-Ji, who was originally acquired to be part of the Aesop's Fables stampede group.

Battle Pet Theme Teams

My initial pet battle team was formed a bit haphazardly; I had played around with it on the beta (for about three days exclusively), and from that I knew that mechanicals were strong against beasts, beasts against critters, and for most of my early fights, the third pet was going to suck if it was something else.  So my initial team looks like:

• Mr. Grubbs
• Mechanical Squirrel (Bolts)
• Rustberg Seagull (Sully)

There wasn't really any rhyme or reason other than that Mr. Grubbs is my favorite pet; Bolts seemed good as an engineer, and the random third pet is strong vs. aquatics, and I keep running into Toads.

Beta Team

But, as I've been assembling themed stables for Stampede (Aesop for Dusk, undead for my Forsaken, August Celestials when my Pandaren is higher level... and I'm not sure yet what for the other two), I've also been thinking about some themed secondary and tertiary pet battle teams, preferably ones that don't use two of the same pet.

I can't do all of these (I'm missing a handful), but I can do most:

Aesop again:

• Jade Crane Chick
• Fox Kit
• Gilnean Raven

Watership Down:

• Spirit of Summer (Frith)
• Rabbit (El-ahrairah or Thlayli)
• Sea Gull (Keehar)

Valley of the Four Winds:

• Black Lamb
• Chicken
• Feral Vermling

August Celestials:

• Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling
• Jade Crane Chick
• Winterspring Cub

Obscure Star Trek:

• Shimmershell Snail
• Bombay Cat
• Fishy

Jungle Book:

• Panther Cub (Bagheera)
• Dun Morogh Cub (Baloo)
• Emerald Boa (Kaa)

Rudolph/Island of Misfit Toys 1

• Winter Reindeer (Rudolph)
• Tranquil Mechanical Yeti (The Abominable Snowman)
• Father Winter's Helper (Hermey the Misfit Elf)

Rudolph/Island of Misfit Toys 2

• Pint-Sized Pink Pachyderm (Spotted Elephant)
• Guardian Cub (King Moonracer)
• Tiny Snowman (Sam the Snowman)

Offspec

I'm a marksman hunter, yeah?  I have been for what, 7.5 years now?

And since the 5.0 patch, I've been doing raids and dungeons as beast mastery.  *shudder*

The results were pretty marked: an 8-10k increase in DPS on Zon'ozz probably says a lot at just how bad I am at marksman sometimes, especially when I'm macroless as BM and have been running with a cast sequence macro on MM.

It also suggests that maybe it's time for me to try running without the macro as MM and see how that goes, as well.  I really like Aimed Shot and Chimera Shot, and I miss them - especially Chimera Shot - in the BM spec.  I could get a self-heal through talents, but it's not the same - it's really just one more thing to cram onto my bars somewhere.  Sure, there's a trap pull-out now, but that's not particularly handy for keybinds.

On the BM front, I've picked up one of the gorgeous green cranes (Lucius) and a black goat (Aurelius - there is a pun there, but it's not really explainable outside my marriage).  They're not exotic pets, but they're pets.  I have four exotics at the moment - Skoll, a devilsaur, a worm (named Larry, because he just seemed like a Larry), and the cat from Hyjal that I'm probably going to dump because I really don't care about it and it's taking up space.  I kinda just tamed it because it was there while I was getting tokens to try for a scorchling.  The devilsaur is pretty, but he may get axed, as well.

In other news:  I spent the first... day and a half? of Mists doing pet battles to get to 250 pets.  Then I finally went off to leveling.  I'm up to 88, and I've discovered that Stampede will just make extra copies of pets if your 5 active slots aren't full.  (Good to know if you want to keep an empty slot to tame something pretty.)

Professions have been much less painful to skill up, other than the Spirit of Harmony requirements for damn near everything I actually want to make.  The engineering pet takes two - two - when you can make the inscription pets for some paper and ink.  I've gotten inscription, engineering, and alchemy maxed, and enchanting and blacksmithing are close.  Jewelcrafting is also close and is currently restricted mostly by my lack of blue gems to bump it up the rest of the way.  I'm not appreciating the inability to mine for gems without a rare-spawn pickaxe.  Cooking is maxed!  Well, the Way of the Oven is maxed.  Working on the others.  Overall, the guild just needs fishing and archaeology to get its heirloom pants.  I've been working some on fishing - it's at ~555 - but got distracted by clearing out the map in Krasarang.  I've caught one rare fish so far, but I'm still a Stranger to Nat Pagle. :(

Despite having played in beta, I'm still impressed by the size of the map and the sheer quantity of stuff to do crammed into it in Mists - the minigames add interesting layers, and the farm makes me want to get all my toons into Valley of the Four Winds.  I need either scallions or leeks for my next recipe. >.<

Beta Mists, 6

Oh, look, a patch.  Download was surprisingly fast.

Hey, Hadrian is back to his normal size!  Unfortunately it doesn't look like this means the pet talents are in yet.

The slicky quest in the Jade Forest that wasn't letting me pick up the exploded slickies seems to work now.  There are spinning turtles here.

Whoops, phasing error.  Maybe I have to complete some more quests to make my turn-in person show up.  But now!  Going in search of pets!

Aw, you can't actually collect battle pets yet.  Sorry, Mr. Mouse!

So far, browsing through, a few pets have abilities in.  The Albino Snake, Jubling, Hawk Owl, Nuts, Armadillo Pup, Baby Blizzard Bear, Core Hound Pup, Crimson Whelpling, Mechanical Squirrel, Onyxian Whelpling, Peddlefeet, Strand Crawler, Tranquil Mechanical Yeti, Willy, Bananas, Gurky, Lil' K.T., Mini Tyrael, Pandaren Monk, Phoenix Hatchling, Spectral Tiger Cub, Stone Armadillo, and Zergling all have abilities, although some of them are obviously test abilities.

Jacob the Test Seagull, with his test abilities

Crimson Whelping - pet abilities

I don't know where Bubbles is acquired, but dude.  Also, the Dimetradon Hatchling appears to have some camera distance issues.  And, dude, the Fetish Shaman?  The otter pup is absolutely adorable.

Bubbles

Fetish shaman

Otter pup

Whoops, flew around, and Hadrian shrunk again.

Checked in at the mining trainer; I really hope Trillium's materials get nerfed down to one of each ore.

First new metal - Ghost Iron

Second new metal - Trillium

Hm, the specialization panes have had their information reduced to just the main spells.  I liked knowing what the specialization spells/abilities were and when you get them.  I also don't know what my mastery ability is - and I have no way of telling what the other specs mastery is without actually respec'ing.  (Feedback submitted on the forum, woo.)

The current incarnation of the specialization pane.

I seem to still have the Master Marksman ability (Steady Shots are still stacking it and proc'ing Fire!), but I can't find anything in my spellbook that tells me I have it.  Oh, wait, there is is!  So I'm still supposed to have it. :)

I went to check my priest's talents, and it's consistently giving me a fatal error.

Logged on the Tauren monk to check what the trainer was like, and, well:

I foresee a lot of new monks falling off the bridge.

Okay, so I went to look at the warlock again, and they've fixed destro's mana regen spell (Chaotic Energy, which is passive), and the new play style is hella fun.  Burning Embers can be used to empower a Soul Fire nuke or to heal - which is helpful, since carrying Burning Embers damages you.  So far I've gotten an 83k Soul Fire, and I don't even know how that compares to live.

Chaotic Energy - Destruction's mana regeneration

Also, there's Fire and Brimstone.  It uses a Burning Ember to splash around Immolate, Incinerate, Conflagrate, or a Curse - so if you're going to need to AOE, save up an Ember for Fire & Brimstone, and then pop your dot/debuff/nuke of choice on the group and then, if needed, you can follow up with Shadowfury or Rain of Fire.  So you could AOE up Curse of Elements or Immolate, both of which will buff your Rain of Fire, or Conflagrate if you just want to daze them, or Incinerate if that's all it will take to kill or mostly kill them.

Fire & Brimstone, sort of like Soulburn just for Destro

Huh, nice little warlock bug.  Shoot keeps trying to turn on, all by itself, even with no wand equipped.  And keeping me from casting Rain of Fire without manually canceling it.  (Added to the bug thread for it.)

Of names

I play Marksman hunters.  I have three at 85, and my poor Night Elf sitting at 81 waiting for me to get around to leveling her.  (Damn you, beta!)  Being a Marksman hunter, I don't collect Spirit Beasts, and I've mostly just collected some pet looks I like, outside the half-dozen pets I rotate around in my active slots for their buffs.

My very first hunter pet was named, well, "Kitty."  I can be slow about deciding on names sometimes, and in retrospect, it was pretty apt: I tend to refer to a lot of my pets by what they are, rather than their name.  My wolves are invariably "Puppy," all the cats get referred to as "Kitty," and so forth.  That said, I do have some naming conventions, with a few random puns.  Except for Viatrix's, all of my hunters' pets are male.  Some of Viatrix's are.

So, my pets.  (If you can't picture any of the looks, check Petopia.)

Duskhawk (Pets)

• KitTabik - Mulgore Prarie Wolf.  Dusk's first pet.  Way back when, wolves had a bonus to armor that actually made them okay tanking pets, before the implementation of pet talents.  He's named after an obscure wolf companion in one of my bad high school-era stories.
• Olin - Dun Morogh Snow Leopard.  I picked up Olin during the Karazhan days, when cats were the top DPS pets for hunters.  I leveled him from level 8 in Terokkar forest on basilisks.  I named him after, ahem, the daemon the Golden Compass daemon quiz thing gave me.
• Violet - Purple Tallstrider.  During Burning Crusade, they added in the druid flight quests, and at some point the purple tallstriders appeared on an island south of Auchindoun.  One of the guys in my guild whispered me asking if I'd seen them yet, and I immediately had to go tame one.  This was my first, "Where did you get that?!" pet.  I named him Violet because of the color.
• Hadrian - Black Dun Morogh Bear.  When they added pet talents and the additional pet slots, I picked me up a bear to tank.  I've always preferred the black bears, so I went back to Dun Morogh (where I got Olin) to pick up Hadrian.  I named him after the emperor the wall is named after.  Hadrian is the pet I generally have out while soloing.
• Coby - Orange & Black Ravager.  During a lot of Wrath of the Lich King, I raided with my wolf for the attack power bonus.  During Cataclysm, with the change in pet buffs, the one our raid leader was asking for most often was 4% increased physical damage taken - which is a ravager or a worm.  Since I don't raid as beast mastery, I eventually went out and picked up a ravager from Hellfire Peninsula.  (My transmog set for Dusk unintentionally matches him.)  He's named after my real-life place of work, because I don't like ravagers, and taming one was "work."
• Octavian - Winna's Kitten, all growed up.  I LOVE GREEN.  Ahem.  When I found out Winna's Kitten was tamable in Cataclysm, I had to tame him.  I named him after another Roman emperor, despite not being a tank pet.
• Phil - Green Wind Serpent.  I picked up Phil at some point for the spell power buff.  Apparently one of our guildies is actually named Phil, so when the raid leader asked about a spell power buff pet, and I said, "Sure, let me get Phil out of the stable," there was some confusion. >.>  One of the random male names I picked.
• Hawkins - Black Fox.  Hawkins was the first fox I tamed on Dusk.  His name is entirely a pun.
• Asher - Ashtail (Grey Fox).  I was wandering around Loch Modan for archaeology a couple months ago, and Ashtail popped up on my NPC Scan.  Since there wasn't anyone around, I was like, what the hell, why not? and tamed him.  The name is just a play on his given one.
• Pickles - Cheetah.  "Pickles was a bad cat."  The Firecat was one of my favorite books when I was little, and given 25 stable slots, I picked up a cheetah-skinned cat just to give him this name.
• (Unnamed Spider) - I've had a couple of random spiders over the course of Cataclysm for PVP purposes; I don't think I've actually named any of them.  This one is a red lava spider from the Molten Front.
• Chad - Grey Hyena.  I picked up Chad back during Wrath of the Lich King when hyenas had hamstring for PVP.  I used him mostly during the PVP fight in Trial of the Champion.  He's named after my cat that died last year.  (Since, you know, hyenas are more closely related to cats than to dogs...)
• Clever - Red Raptor.  One of the "omg 25 stable slots" acquisitions, named for - well, it's a raptor.  Do I really have to spell it out?
• Peredur - Black Boar.  I grew up on a hog farm, and I've always loved Durotar's black boars.  When I rolled a Draenei hunter on another server when my main server was down, she went on a pilgrimage at level 13 to get one.  He's named after Percival, which ties in to the same bad high school-era story KitTabik is from.
• Zuul - Green Demon Dog.  I love the look of the demon dogs, even though I don't play with him at all.  There is no Dana, only...
• Harold - Green Turtle.  I picked up Harold as a soloing tank pet for the spell shield.  I don't use him much.  Random male name.
• Turquoise - Blue Tallstrider.  Once the 25 stable slots went in, I went and picked up the clutch mother.  Named for the color again.
• Magenta - Pink Tallstrider.  I really don't like pink, but like so many other hunters, once I had the Lovebird and the Mulgore Hatchling, I had to finish the set.  Again, named for the color.
• Kurtka - Yellow Wasp.  I picked up the wasp for the armor debuff in case we needed it for raiding (we never have).  The name is another pun.  Kurtka is Russian for jacket.
• Justin - Green Nether Ray.  I mostly ride a green nether ray for my flying pet; I picked up one for a matching set thing.  Random male name.
• Clarence - Brown Sporebat.  The sporebat was a "just because" taming thing.  Named after the angel in It's a Wonderful Life.
• (Unnamed Skoll).  I picked up Skoll while looking for the Time-Lost Protodrake.  I haven't decided on a name.
• Larry - Green Worm.  I picked up the worm even though I don't play beast mastery because of its AOE, just in case I ever needed it.  (Then they buffed Multishot.)  He just seemed like a Larry...
• Lawrence - Black Devilsaur.  I love the sapphire-blue eyes the black devilsaurs have.  Named after Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.

Mabs (Pets)

• Kitty - Nightsaber (acquired as a level 6 cat).  This is Mabs's original pet.
• Sobek - Green Crocolisk.  I picked up a crocolisk for Mabs's tanking pet, since I wanted to use different tanks on all my hunters.  Sobek is a crocodile-headed ancient Egyptian god.
• Max - Old Cliffjumper (Grey Worg).  I like rare skins, and Old Cliffjumper is probably my favorite worg skin.  Max was one of my dogs as a kid, and I name all my dog pets in non-WoW games Max.
• (Unnamed White Lion).  I picked up Sian-Rotam before the quest was changed, but never named him.

Duskmoon (Pets)

• Darius - Blue Crab.  Named in the same vein as Hadrian, after ancient-era king, this time Persian rather than Roman.
• Joshua - Black Wolf.  I like the wolves around the Altar of Zul in the Hinterlands.  Random male name.
• Thirteen - Red Lynx.  Duskmoon's first pet.  Named after my favorite FF7 character.
• Patrick - Blue Tallstrider.  The first time I tamed the Clutchmother was on Duskmoon.  Random male name.
• Philip - Black Crow.  I liked the crows in Howling Fjord; the name was picked randomly.

Viatrix (Pets)

• Laurel - Black Boar.  I thought I would try something different with my pets on Viatrix and make them female.  Thus her boar is named Laurel.
• Phoebe - Undead Starting Spider.  I hate spiders.  Hate, hate, hate.  Running across one in the house leaves my skin crawling for hours, even if they never actually touched me.  So when I started my undead hunter and was given a spider pet to deal with, her name ended up a play on "phobia."
• Molly - Brown Tallstrider.  I figured I'd pick up a tallstrider for her at some point.  Named after one of my brother's cats.
• (Unnamed Brown Fox).  I got a fox while I was in the Western Plaguelands and never got around to naming it.
• Llinos - Green Ravager.  Okay, so at level 43 I decided I needed to go pick up a ravager for Viatrix.  I had been running dungeons on her, and... well, yeah.  There's only one place to get ravagers prior to Hellfire Peninsula:  Draenei-land.  Draenei-land, in Cataclysm, is accessible for Horde only from the boats at Rut'theran Village at the foot of Teldrassil.  To get there, without flight paths or a fast flying mount?  You have to go through Stormwind's docks.  At level 43.  I died at least five times before managing to get on the boat (after taking the zeppelin to Grom'gol and running up through Westfall and along the edge of the water up to Stormwind Harbor).  The name is Welsh for greenfinch.  (So... named after the color.)
• Shelly - Green Demon Dog.  I picked up a demon dog in the Eastern Plaguelands.  Random female name.
• Eleanor - Green Turtle.  I thought I would try using a turtle tank on Viatrix, but she ended up in the stable.  Random female name.
• Mara - Black Bear.  I tried a bear on her, too.  Decided to stick with the boar.  Random female name.
• Daniel - Red Worg.  So once I got up to higher levels, I decided to pick up a wolf for the 5% crit for dungeons.  I'd always liked the red worgs in the Burning Steppes, so I got one.  I forgot I was doing female names on Viatrix, and he ended up with a random male name.
• Jack - Snow Leopard.  At some point I realized that Viatrix had no cat, and for some groups I preferred to have the Agi/Str buff if it wasn't present.  I realized at 85 I hadn't named him, and in a brief panic, he was named after my new cat.  Then, when swapping out to my wolf, I realized the unintentional correlation. >.<

In three colors!

You (probably) won't see it anywhere else, so here's my tallstrider family:

The mount is from the Darkmoon Faire, the hunter pet is the Clutchmother, and the pet-pet is the Mulgore Hatchling.  I've gotten as many questions about where to get the mount as I got when I first tamed the identical strider back during the Burning Crusade.  I named mine Violet way before the Faire did, though:

Tracking and aspects on the toolbars, Mongoose Bite, Viper Sting, Scorpid Sting, mana potions, quiver...  Yeah, that was Burning Crusade.  Also, I appear to be on fire in that particular screenshot.  Ahem.  I don't even remember the name of the DPS addon I'm using there.  Something pre-Recount.

Unexpected delights

Hm... I was especially emo yesterday, no? Today, something more positively reflective!

With the change to focus, et al, that hunters underwent, quite a few changes didn't become apparent until I'd started playing a while with them. Many of these were awesome.

You can Multi-Shot while moving! For the longest time, Multi-Shot had a built in cast time of .5 seconds, which meant you had to stand still for it. Now you can spam the button as long as you have focus while desperately backing up and hoping that the pet-targeted Misdirect you just cast will eventually stick one or more of the bazillion mobs you're trying to get at range with back on your bear/crab/etc. Multi-Shot is one of my long-time favorite skills, and I was including it in my regular rotation in Burning Crusade before an Arcane Shot/Multi-Shot/Steady Shot rotation was de rigueur. There is nothing quite so satisfying as being the unorthodox player whose methods suddenly become, for your spec, the orthodoxy. True, enchanting my 2-handed weapons for Int, or getting +mana librams on my T1 (more mana = less feigning to drink mid-boss), never caught on, but leveling in "of the Falcon" (agility/intellect) gear was more appreciated once the Int -> Attack Power talent went in. Of course, those days are gone.

That green and orange cat in Felwood is tameable! No, seriously! I've named him Octavian, and he's currently my DPS pet in 5-man's just because the color scheme is so hilarious. I need to team him up with a troll feral druid for something...

Glyph of Misdirect is amazing. I mentioned this in my macro post a couple weeks ago - if you're soloing without Glyph of Misdirect, you're missing out on the awesomeness of sending your pet into a pack of a gazillion mobs, dropping Mend Pet on it, and alternately spamming Misdirect and Multi-Shot. If you are like me, you will forget the first two Misdirects and end up in the scenario described under the Multi-Shot entry above.

Trap Launcher is surprisingly fun, if still clunky to use. I have not yet developed good macros for making Trap Launcher more stream-lined, but being able to toss an Explosive Trap on a tank for non-elite adds, or to throw my Snake Trap over at an add on a healer to hopefully pull the aggro off onto the snakes, is really handy. I wish Trap Launcher + Freezing Trap were more useful for something besides crowd-controlled pulling, but it seems like every loose add I want to trap is bleeding or poisoned or burning or in the throes of agony from a curse. Hence the substitution of snakes for adds on the healers.

Camouflage is quite fun, although I've yet to use it for its supposed strength, PVP. Mostly I pop it on in 5-man's as we're moving towards or around groups to avoid my huge cow ass pulling something. (I had problems with that in Nexus for a long time. >.>) The additional bonus of cloaking my pet is great if I don't have the cat out.

The fox pet dances! I got a Black Fox a couple weeks ago (from Redridge) and named him Hawkins. If you don't get that joke, I am disappointed in your movie tastes. "Play" + "Move To" was highlighted by someone else, but for especial hilarity, go to Thunder Bluff and dance your fox back and forth across the pond. I was giggling way too much.

Scatter Shot is a baseline skill! This wasn't a surprise, but despite having it sitting there on my bars, I had mostly forgotten about it until I went to Tol Barad the other day (successful defense, woo!) and oh, God, Silencing is still on cooldown there it was! It was a favored shot while leveling, and having it around again is great. Hawkeye, the other talent Survival stole from Marksman years ago, also sort of went baseline - most of the damaging hunter shots have longer range, although Multi-Shot, Silencing Shot, and Tranquilizing Shot still seem to have the old base range, which means on fights you're going to need them, you have to make sure to move up enough for them. Basically, the two formerly Markman talents that made me put points in Survival in Burning Crusade and Wrath are now mine for free.

Hey, I can get Improved Mend Pet! I don't know if I'll keep it when I put together a raiding spec (and my devilsaur and worm are doomed to a life in the stables), but it's been coveted for a good four years, so it's definitely staying in my soloing spec.

A non-huntery unexpected delight were the quests in Uldum. I love Vashj'ir - it's gorgeous, and the ecological details were greatly appreciated. The ultra-violet canyon is beautiful, and for some reason the secluded emptiness of the Abandoned Reef makes it one of my favorite places. (It is also where Ghostcrawler roams - beware the Nerfbat.) But Uldum - it took a little bit to get into, but as soon as I ran into Harrison Jones, the quest chain just skyrocketed in its level of awesomeness. The end of the chain (spoiler) was unexpected but had me laughing. The reworked Silverpine and Hillsbrad are also amazing for their quests - Siliverpine for the drama, Hillsbrad for the comedy.

There are always disappointments with changes (Aimed Shot's more or less neutering is one of them - if it's going to be only for opening or a proc, at least make it hit hard enough for it to be special - it's our friggin' specialization skill), but I am enjoying most of the changes.

New Familiar Friends

If you're not familiar with the Plaguelands, this is probably spoilery. Beware.

Tuesday night I headed into the Eastern Plaguelands because I had a headache and didn't want to run any more PUGs for Goblin reputation. I figured I would get my Mr. Grubbs, and it would be relatively mindless during the officer meeting. While I was there, I ended up getting one of the gorgeous new plaguehound dogs (green), and named him (her?) Zuul. (There is no Dana...) I'll probably finish off the zone this weekend.

Getting Mr. Grubbs requires starting Fiona's caravan quests. The caravan is a fantastic device for plot movement for the zone, both because it physically moves you from tower to tower around the zone, and because the interplay between the two paladins riding with the caravan gets you invested in the zone.

I had Loremaster for the "old world" finished before Wrath launched (~2400 quests complete when 3.0 went in), but quests have all changed, and existing story lines which I had completed popped up again. This was awesome, because the Plaguelands have always had my favorite quest chain - the Battle of Darrowshire. (My favorite zone overall is Duskwood, because Stitches is awesome, but the Plaguelands, Eastern and Western, are a close second.)

With the changes in Anderhol, Chromie is now found at one of the Argent Crusade's towers, and the quest line has been shrunk down a little - no more chasing down Joseph Redpath's wedding band or venturing into the Anderhol town hall for the Annals of Darrowshire. It's about the right size for the 40-somethings who will be inhabiting the Plaguelands as they level. You're still getting the lore, gathering relics of the heroes and villains, and later in the zone, still freeing the souls of the Darrowshire residents from their ghoulish forms. Pamela still makes you tea.

Joseph still comes home to Pamela, and it still makes me cry.

There's an added bonus to doing the chain if you're doing Fiona's caravan quests, as well. Recruiting people into her caravan allows you to carry a buff zone-wide, and if you fill the caravan, you have eight buff options. Fiona's lucky charm lets you find Mr. Grubbs, but once you're done with that, fighting the Battle for Darrowshire means Pamela Redpath can be your constant companion throughout the zone. (A little creepy when you go to fight Baroness Anastari and she's just standing there, watching... But overall pretty awesome.)

One notable absence in the zone is Nathanos Blightcaller - because he's now a hunter trainer in the Undercity. I miss him in the Plaguelands, but having an undead hunter, that's so awesome. She can be trained by the Forsaken hunter! I was also encouraged by the presence of Argent Apothecary Judkins, because the whole New Plague thing Sylvanas has going just creeps me out. The idea that you can play a Forsaken (or rather, former Forsaken, now independent undead allied with the forces of Light) not bent on killing off the entire rest of the world and that it's basically canon that Forsaken like that exist is comforting for me.

Biggest downside of the zone? Those towers blind me every time I go up to the top to get whatever quest is up one.

Hunter F.A.Q.

So a couple days ago my brother texts me about hunters and Armor Penetration. I'm not a theory crafter - I really haven't got the time what with everything else I do - but I do tend to remember what I read. As such, I'm going to compile the questions I get asked a lot. I'll link back to sources when I can find them.


Q: What's your rotation?
A: After Hunter's Mark, Serpent Sting, and Rapid Fire, Chimera, Aimed, Steady x4. Readiness when Rapid Fire falls off, Rapid Fire again, and resume Chimera, Aimed, Steady x4. Kill Shot as soon as it's available. When moving I may throw in Arcane.

Keeping in mind that I use a /castsequence macro with Kill Command and Silencing also tied to it, if I move, it tends to get lost in the Steadies. So if I have to move, I hit the rotation manually to resynchronize it with the macro.

Q: Does the shot rotation macro work?
A: If you're as bad at doing the rotation manually as I am, yes.

Q: What should I gem?
A: As Beast Mastery, either Attack Power (AP) or Armor Penetration (ArP), depending on your base ArP. As Survival, Agility (Agi). As Marksman, Agi or ArP depending on your base ArP.

The level of ArP at which you switch gemming to ArP is about 400 for BM, and about 800 for MM.

If you want to match socket bonuses, for blue sockets you'll want purple gems with Stamina for BM or Surv, and mp5 for MM. Yes, mp5. Stamina does nothing for a MM hunter's DPS. For yellow sockets you'll want orange gems with either hit or crit rating, depending if you need the hit rating.

Q: Do I really want to drop Arcane Shot as MM at some point?
A: Probably, yes, after you have about 450 base ArP. Drop the talents, drop it out of your stationary rotation, and pick up Improved Steady Shot if you don't already have it.

I don't know if it's worth dropping from BM's rotation at any point, since you probably don't have the points to improve it anyway.

Q: Is it worth hitting Steady Shot over Auto Shot?
A: Steady doesn't clip Auto anymore, so yes, spam it. Your talents and its scaling make it more valuable. If you're not casting something, you're losing DPS. Push a button, dammit.

Q: Haste - should I gem it?
A: No. Just, no.

Q: Where'd you get your wolf?
A: Mulgore. He didn't bark when I tamed him (March 2006).



That's all I've got for the moment - I'll add more as they crop up.

#93

I think he looks rather sassy at that angle, don't you?

Yes, he's 310%, and I owe my guildies lots of props for the help over the past year - especially with Halloween and Brewfest; I can't remember at the moment whether the others required groups.

I also picked up the pink baby elekk this morning (#92 for small pets).

And, ahem, I was made guild master last night. Our GM of almost five years is crazy busy with school, and won't be able to play for much of the next... 6 months? year? Sad to see him go, even temporarily. We gave him a send-off in Booty Bay with Pirate Day going.

Second time I've inherited an online group - I got made leader of my clan on the MUD I used to play on after the previous leader quit playing. Hopefully I don't screw this up.

Marksman 1-80: Level 10

I suppose you're all well past level 9 now. >.> Here's level 10!

Level 10

Level 10 changes the flavor of hunter-hood: Your hunter quests at level 10 will net you a pet.

Skills, Level 10

• 10: Aspect of the Hawk (Rank 1), Serpent Sting (Rank 2), Track Humanoids, Tame Beast, Call Pet, Dismiss Pet, Feed Pet, Revive Pet

When you talk to your trainer for your skills at level 10, you'll get Aspect of the Hawk, a new rank of Serpent Sting, and Track Humanoids. You'll be using Aspect of the Hawk a lot. You'll also get your first talent point - start with Lethal Shots in Marksman so you can get to Aimed Shot by level 20.

Your trainer will also give you quests for taming pets. If for some reason you've left your native newbie zone, the local hunter trainer may not have the quest for you. Taurens need to go to Bloodhoof Village, Night Elves to Dolanaar, etc. Your trainer will give you three successive quests to tame some kind of local fauna, and then you'll get the skills to tame your own pet. Make sure you talk to both the hunter trainer and the pet trainer so that you pick up the full gamut of skills - Tame Beast, Call Pet, Dismiss Pet, Feed Pet, and Revive Pet. A lot of hunters wander around confused about the feeding process initially; it's usually because they missed the quest for the skill.

A couple pet-related macros:

#showtooltip
/cast Feed Pet
/use 3 1

This will cast Feed Pet and select whatever food is in the specified bag slot. The location format is . Bags, from left to right, are numbered 4, 3, 2, 1, and 0 for the backpack. The slots inside the bag are labeled from the upper left-most to the bottom right-most; in a bag whose slots aren't divisible by 4 (say, a 10-slot bag), the left slot in the top row of two is slot 1. Just keep whatever food your pet likes in that slot, and when you click the button, you'll be feeding that food. If you prefer, instead of using a bag slot, you can use the name of a food, but if you have a pet like a boar or bear that eats anything and are just using randomly dropped food, the bag slot macro will be less of a hastle.

#showtooltip
/cast [button:1] Mend Pet; [button:2] Revive Pet

This is a left-click, right click macro. I use a lot of these. This one casts Mend Pet (which you haven't learned yet) when you left click and Revive Pet (which you do have) when you right click. Even if you don't have one skill or the other, you can still use it for the other skill with the appropriate button.

Your pet is going to come with Growl, Cower, and some family-specific abilities. Petopia is an awesome source for browsing pets. Regardless of what you pick, you'll want to open your Spellbook, go to your pet's spell page, and drag Growl, Cower, and maybe some of his other abilities down onto your pet's action bar. Right clicking on an ability will toggle autocast; if there's a moving gold border around the spell, it's on autocast. You want autocast ON for Growl and OFF for Cower. (Note that in groups with a tank, the opposite is true.) Also keep your pet's basic special attack (Claw, Bite, etc.) on autocast. You can always left-click an ability to cast it, as well. Note that pet spells tend to be buggy and turn themselves back on to autocast if you don't leave them on the toolbar. This is why it's important to keep skills you don't want to use on the toolbar.

Marksman 1-80 (Part 7: Pets)

Ok, back to the guide! This time...

Pets

Being a Marksman hunter, your pet isn't going to be as tough or do as much damage as a Beast Master's pet. Although a pet with the Tenacity tree may make leveling easier, it's not hard-and-fast required. (I've been using a tallstrider with my current baby hunter because it's a pretty blue.)

Your best source for pet information is Petopia. Between the skill information and the gallery, you can pick a pet that will fit your preferred playstyle and your taste. There are 11 cunning pet families, 11 ferocity, and 10 tenacity.

I haven't leveled with a broad variety of pets - I used a cat 1-70 on my night elf, a wolf 1-70 and a bear 70-80 on my tauren, and my blood elf has used a cat, crab, and tallstrider at varying points. I've played at some point with a cat, wolf, bear, tallstrider, crab, and hyena (and dabbled at one point with a boar and a spore bat), but other than taming most things once or twice for skill ranks (way, way back), I haven't done much with the rest.

At the upper end, for raiding, you'll want a wolf. Their AP buff now stacks with other AP buffs (Might, Battle Shout), but is hunter/pet only. That's okay - it's enough to give them a competitive edge over a cat. Cats are still solid DPS, and the difference in output between a cat and a wolf isn't huge. Noticeable, but not enough that you're likely to catch flak for it.

For soloing, the bear's swipe, combined with Thunderstomp at higher levels, makes group pulls easier. (Note that the bear will indiscriminately break your traps if you let him Swipe at will, though.) The crab's Pin and the hyena's Tendon Rip both help keep things at range longer. (The crab is sturdier, though.) The tanking pets are good for quite a lot of group quests if you have a healer with you - the bear tanked the Headless Horseman multiple times at 67 or 68.

If you're a Night Elf, Shadowmeld + Prowl (cat) never really gets old in PVP. It's not as sweet as when Aimed Shot was a 3 second cast and didn't break your stealth till it went off, but it's still nice. Tenacity pets, though, do generally fare better in PVP, just from their survivability. Cunning pets aren't bad (I hear the spider's Web is nice), but are a bit squishier.

Pet talents start at 20; there are several good combinations, but these are the ones I tend to use:

• Tenacity Talents
• Ferocity Talents

Note that I don't put points into the pet happiness talents in ferocity; I do in tenacity because it's an extra threat talent. I have the Mend Pet glyph (happiness from healing), and I always have food on me, so I figure it's a waste of points that could go to a better DPS boost. If pet happiness drops to yellow in combat, I just toss up a Mend Pet. I don't have talents for a cunning pet up because I don't have any, but you can easily gear them towards damage (Wolverine Bite, Feeding Frenzy, etc.) or utility (Roar of Recovery, etc.).

Regarding food, bears eat everything - you can toss them whatever random food you find while questing, and it's all good. Crabs are a bit pickier, but they'll do fish, so if you're fishing, you should be all set. Most pets eat meat, and if they don't eat meat, they probably don't eat fish (crabs and turtles are the exception) and will eat everything else (bread, cheese, fruit, fungus). There are some oddballs out there, but Petopia's got a good table if food type is important to your pet choosing process.

Current stables:

• Duskhawk: wolf, bear, cat, hyena, tallstrider (wolf for raiding, bear for soloing)
• Duskmoon: wolf, cat, crab, tallstrider (crab for soloing, wolf for instances)
• Mabs: cat (she's only ever used the cat)

Next up, a brief analysis of hunter races, and then, the real fun: levels 1-9.

Post-3.1 Spec

Ok, I haven't dual-spec'd Dusk yet. I did the priest and the warrior, but I have less than 4k gold left, and for some reason that makes me uncomfortable. And being dual-MM spec'd - not just that, dual PVE MM spec'd - well, ok, I already know I'm crazy.

So, my general spec hasn't changed too much - I bumped a couple points around to pick up Piercing Shots, and so I'm now 7/53/11. Major glyphs - Hawk, Serpent Sting, Trueshot Aura. Minor glyphs - Mend Pet, Revive Pet, Feign Death.

The second spec will be more optimized for raiding - so, cutting out things like Scatter Shot, and actually analyzing my haste rating and seeing just how many points I actually need in Improved Aspect of the Hawk... and then shoving all the extra points into things like Marked for Death (once I find out if it works with other hunters' marks) or Ranged Weapon Specialization (a talent I used to have, before they added so much fun stuff in 3.0).

I didn't actually test this spec much of at all. No, I logged out Monday night parked in Feralas, in order to begin farming Sprite Darters as soon as the server went up. Which I did, sometime around 8:45ish EST. I was all alone there until about 9:50, when another Tauren hunter showed up. The egg dropped for him after about five minutes. >.< Mine dropped at 10:00 on the dot, which was coincidentally the time I had decided I was going to stop a half hour before, so that I could go do the cooking and fishing dailies and buy the three new Horde faction mounts.

Small pets: 73; Mounts: 77.

Tonight: Gnomeregan! (For Lil' Smokey.) And then, assuming I'm not invited for Ulduar (I don't anticipate being asked to come), I'll start on the Emerald Whelpling.

Squee!

12 hours, 1 Firefly. I started farming for it on Saturday or so; it dropped around 9:00 p.m. on Thursday.

Pet count: 72.

(Mount count: 73.)

Woo! AOE bear!

Thunderstomp: Coming to a bear/boar/crab/croc/rhino/scorpid/turtle/warp stalker/worm near you! (And the gorilla still can has too.)

I have stubbornly held on to Hadrian, my bear, as my tenacity pet. Combined with the remote stable spell, I'm probably going to switch back to the bear for solo play once this goes in.

The idea of pet talents and individual pet family skills was, if I recall correctly, that more than just three pet families would get used. The gorilla becoming Gorilladin sucked a lot of people in, with their superb AOE farming ability.

There will soon be most awesome irony when I go farming for Chilled Meat in Sholazar. /cackle

Yeah, totally not a MM thing, other than that no pet holds aggro for me right now (outside groups, as weird as that is - Hadrian tanked Headless Horseman with just Misdirects and his taunt), and this might actually change that. MM farming may stop being a combination of kiting and standing there taking hits with the un-interruptable Volley.

Even Marksman hunters have pets!

I started playing a hunter initially because I like combat at range, but I'm not that big on spell casters. Still, I'm fairly loyal to my pets, and on Bronzebeard, I'm currently running with the following:

Duskhawk has:

• KitTabik (70) - a prairie wolf from Mulgore. First pet. I ran with "puppy" almost exclusively for a good year and a half, since the howl buff was okay and raiding in MC mostly meant standing there, pet at side, and spamming. He was never terrible for DPS. I occasionally tamed other things, such as the Clutch Mother or the rare black boar in the Blasted Lands, but I never really played with anything but puppy. Until...
• Violet (70) - a (now former) guildie discovered the purple tallstriders in Terokkar shortly after they went in, which coincided roughly with when he got his flying mount and took a world tour. I immediately flew down and got one after he whispered me, and for quite a while I was getting whispers asking where Violet was from. I raided Karazhan with him for a long time, until I wanted to push my DPS up a bit (and was getting tired of buying bird food, when I was drowning in cooking/fishing daily foods), and then came...
• Olin (70) - a snow leopard from Dun Morogh. He was level 8 when I got him; leveling him to 60 after the first pet XP change went pretty fast and made me 800g (thanks, Terokkar basilisks!). 60-70 took longer, but Olin was my regular raiding pet once he hit 70. He wasn't the first snow leopard I tried to tame; a level 6 gnome rogue killed that one. >.<

Then I got two more stable slots on Dusk, and the patch meant that all my pets I had before were now Ferocity pets. I decided I wanted a Tenacity and Cunning pet as well. The acquistions were...

• Hadrian (70) - a Dun Morogh black bear. I like the Dun Morogh bestiary, apparently, as they have wolves similar to mine, as well. Of all the Tenacity pets, the bear was the option that interested me most. Hadrian has tanked the Headless Horseman, and when he was still level 65, we went into Zul'Gurub alone (with my husband who was doing battlegrounds making it a raid group) and killed off a couple croc packs so I could fish up Gahz'ranka for the achievement. (We, um, didn't survive post-fishing.)
• Chad (70) - a spore bat from Zangarmarsh. He's one of the ones with the orange belly, and basically matches the Sporeggar pet. I'm not sure what I think of him yet for mechanics, but he's kind of pretty, and I wanted the armor debuff with the change to boss armor.

Mabs is an entirely different story for pets. Mabs only has Kitty, now 70, the basic nightsaber from Tel'drassil. I tamed him when he was level 5 or 6 and kept him forever. I bought her other stable slots so she could train pet skills, but other than once briefly having Humar, the pride lord, in the stable, they've been empty.

Duskmoon has the bright red cat from Eversong woods, one of the Springpaw Lynxes or some such. He's about at level with her, and is named Thirteen. Bright red cat... named Thirteen. Yes, it's a FF7 reference. Red XIII is my favorite character from that one. :P