Random thought: Fog is awesome. Fog at night time is even better. Because at night time, if you are passing some trees which are obscuring the light from a streetlight, the resulting patterns of light and dark (interference patterns, lolziknoezmyfizzicks.)in the fog are pretty. Then again, I’m easily amused by shinies.

Not a lot in the way of WoW adventures this weekend, as I was busy yesterday, and Kazura doesn’t play on Sundays. Just a small post because, well, I’m bored. Winter sucks. I can’t wait till Universities go on their Christmas break soon, hopefully we’ll be able to actually get people together for a meal or something. But for now, I have nothing to do.

Anyway, I spent this morning finishing up my exploration of the “old world”, with just the Eastern Kingdoms to go, having finished Outlands and Kalimdor a while back, and listening to the latest Twisted Nether Blogcast, which helped the exploration go a bit faster.

Whilst leveling, you pretty much have the leisure of using whichever ranged weapon you want, which for me, is a bow. However, I’ve realised that when it comes to endgame (if I ever start raiding), I’m not really going to want to use a crap weapon if I don’t get a good bow drop, so I decided today to train Guns, and level that and Crossbow to the cap (or close.). I headed off to every Hunter’s best friend, Dr Boom, and by the time I’d used up all of my ammo, I was at 369/370 gun skill. Switching to crossbow, I got from about 100 to 367/370 before… Dr Boom died. Hehe. I actually killed him with about 60 ammo left. I noticed after I’d killed him there was a BE DK standing around – I have no idea how long they’d been waiting, but I’d been at Dr Boom for about half an hour. So I’m a bit worried I kept them from their quest for a while, but if they’d actually moved into my field of vision I’d have feigned death and let them do their quest. So not capped either of them, but I’m close enough that I should be able to catch up just fine if I get a nice gun or crossbow (thinking of getting the Alliance Vanguard Rep gun at 78.) All I need now is a decent ammo pouch, got a nice 18 slot, +15% quiver.

I’ve also decided Northrend is far too depressing, simply because of this quest:

Yeah… depressing much? Still, it certainly makes you want to go out there and carve up some Blue Dragons.

And finally, Blizzard REALLY need to be careful when it comes to where they place NPCs at Wyrmrest Temple. I was unable to find the Quartermaster the other night, despite having visited her before… Because her head was in an… uncomfortable position, shall we say.

Either that, or that guy has been eating Blood Elves whole, and is rather lax about his bodily functions.

Boring, non Nexus stuff out the way first:

Kalu’ak rep is just thrown at you. You want rep? Here, take 500! What? That’s not enough? Do a marginally tougher quest, here, have 700! What? You want even more? Take 1000!

I love it. Currently 1.5k from Revered, which is where I need to be, so that’s just three more dailys!

Wyrmrest and Kirin Tor rep are a good way through friendly now too, with Coldarra quests complete, and Dragonblight quests well underway. Now, the main course!

We ran the Nexus tonight. Like you didn’t guess from the title. After about an hour of trolling general chat from midnight on, we managed to get a Tank and DPS for the instance.

So in theory, we had 4 DPS and a Tank. Kazura, however, has been relegated to “healers are to hard to find, and Balance does just fine” status, and was acting as our healer. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my “omgabalancehealerisgonnagetuskilled” fears were completely unfounded, and she made an excellent job of it.

Getting to the first boss was a bit of a pain – he has those annoying little enemies on the way that respawn every 90 seconds. They have very little HP, but a small group rezzing can throw a battle against elite mobs into total chaos. They messed up my trapping! Ahh, trapping. I’d never really had a chance to trap properly til I did The Nexus, and I’ve decided that chain trapping is now one of my favourite things to do. It’s so satisfying. Pop a trap, pull the mob, freeze them, cackle, place another trap, freeze, cackle, ad infinatum. And, bonus, Yuanjia wasn’t breaking them all the time like he usually does (see, this is why I’ve never had a chance to chain trap before! /grin)

So, first boss. A big collossus type guy. He was a total cakewalk. All he really did were some annoying ice spikes that were easy to dodge. Free shard! … That is, if I remembered he had them, ahah.

Second boss we did… was not fun. We didn’t really know what to do, so when the rifts spawned, we wiped, horribly. Second try… well, I’m not sure, about halfway through, I fell off the edge, and then everyone else died. So I don’t really know how it went for the last 20 seconds. Oops! Third time was the charm though, and we took him down with ease. Didn’t drop anything nice, though.

Telestra was not fun. I don’t think we had any idea she had Gravity Well, which was like some sort of crazy AoE turns you into a yo-yo effect, though I could still pelt her with Arcane and Aimed shots whilst she was using it. So that took us by surprise. Then, of course, she splits into three, and in the confusion Frost traps were broken, and we wiped. Not cool. The second time we managed to get our traps in order, and she went down like tonne of bricks.

And finally, we had Keristrasza, which is not, in my opinion, a Hunter friendly fight, and given me and another of the DPS were Hunters… the first try was ugly. Moving constantly to get rid of intense cold means it’s hard to fire off anything more than a couple of shots in succession. Also, pets tend to stay rather stationary in combat, so I found Erethia dropped quickly to the debuff. When we tried her again, I learned from the previous mistakes and was making greater use of my instant shots, and was constantly making Erethia follow then attack to keep her moving. In the end, we were all rewarded with an Achievement, and… well, see for yourself.

Faulsey wins the Nexus! Everyone else fails! I live! Ah ha ha. That made my night. Err, morning. It was around 3AM by this point.

Was good times, good times. Especially the last boss! Before we fought her, Kazura was /crying at her in the ice, as she loved Keristrasza, “she was so pretty.” Then she killed us all. “OMG, I’M GOING TO KILL THAT BITCH!” Rewards wise, Yuanjia is a far too lucky, and all four quests gave him upgrades. Kazura got one quest upgrade, but was blessed with two drops in the instance. And I got two from quests. Which replaced my welfare epics from the Scourge Invasion.

I’m also level 74 now, as I dinged during the Instance. I’m really liking Aspect of the Dragonhawk, for two reasons. First, and most obvious, it frees up a space on my action bars. Secondly, my dodge without it is 0.44%. Whut? I was sure Agility counted towards dodge… I…. what… Ok, yes, I have very little +Agility now compared to what I used to, as stuff is mostly pure AP or Crit, but… 0.44%? Whoa.

Not yet went to Dalaran, either by portal pre-74, or now that I’ve hit 74. I didn’t go before for the same reason I never went to Shat before I got to Outlands – it feels like cheating for me. I like seeing things at the “right” level, I feel more of a sense of achievement that way. Kazura, who DID go to Shat, feels the same way, so she hasn’t been either, so I’m now just waiting for her to get 74, so we can get there. I have just got 1k now, so I will be able to afford my cold weather flying in a few levels. Excitement!

The Fjord has been left behind, and we still have like… 45, if not more quests to do for the Achievement, but I was getting rather tired of the place. I like achievements and money though, so I will be coming back at 80 to finish things off. I think we’re sticking to the Dragonblight for now (At least until we run out of Wyrmrest Quests – Red Drake you will be mine!), and then not sure where. I’d like to see Grizzly Hills for sure, and Zul’Drak too (I want the Icier Barbed Spear. I’m currently Dual Wielding again. I dual wielded from 30-60ish, then got a Polearm, and I really love them now. So I miss having one around.)

Oh Blizzard, you do spoil us.

So much to see, so much to do, how will I have the time for it?

Ohwait, gap year! /evil grin

Note: Apologies for any grammatical errors and whatnot. It’s 5AM. I have got to stop posting at 5AM. I’ll fix them later. Maybe. If I remember. -stumbles into bed-

And should not be allowed on Kazura’s character.

First, he killed a baby mammoth, making Kaz very angry.

Then he called them Horses.

Then he dueled me.

In the middle of a huge group of Mammoths.

And popped Starfall.

He died (I won the duel XD).

I burst out laughing.

He then said the “whales have had their revenge.”

I started crying, I was laughing so hard.

Fair enough, it’s late, but that is a lot of fail in five minutes.

…

Ok, it’s a you had to be there moment!

-

Also… Level 73! Done all the quests I needed to open up all the Nexus quests (yay Instance Quest checklists over on Banana Shoulders), so yay, 73.

I…think I’m going to have to leave one of my pets behind. Which I really don’t want to do, firstly because I LIKE switching my pets about as I level, and secondly, cause I’ll just have to level them up from 75 when I hit 80 anyway. The problem is, I don’t know which one to leave for now. Erethia is, of course, out of the question. Aside from being my Ferocity, and thus, instance pet, I just love her far too much to not level her. So it falls between Ella and Akshiran. Now, Ella is already 72, whilst Akshiran is just off 71, so Ella would be easier to continue levelling. Plus, she’s gorgeous and I love her too. On the other hand, Akshiran is slightly more useful, particularly for doing group quests with Kazura. Guess what? I love Akshiran as well. I’m far too attatched to my pets… But really, either they all have to suffer EXP wise, or one of them goes.

Sigh, decisions, decisions.

Given Erethia is still 71, I might actually have to drop BOTH my other pets! We’ll see, we’ll see. I stupidly left myself in Shattrath earlier, so I logged back on four hours later to see like… 110k rested EXP bonus.

That’s just ridiculous.

Let me show you him!

Yes, after 6 days of grinding – I can has Netherwing Drake!

I ended up getting a boatload of eggs over the last 48 hours, so when the dailys reset, I only had to do the booterang, collect some extra ore, and hand in the crystals I already had. Then, it was turn in the four eggs I had and… BAM! Exalted! Cool scene, agonisingly long trip to Shattrath, more agonising over which colour to pick… I eventually picked Azure, which I’ve now decided looks a bit radioactive (though not quite as much as the Green one). Should have went with Onyx! I could just go buy an Onyx one too, but.. I have 600g to my name. I owe 500g to my alts (I like my characters to be self sufficient, but I just couldn’t wait, and had to send money from alts to fund my epic flying), and I still need to save up 1k for Cold Weather Flying.

I actually, in theory, took a LOT of screenshots (for myself, to be put in my ever more complex system of screenshot folders) – of me getting exalted, of the little cutscene, of me /thinking over which drake to get, but, for some reason, FRAPS has been playing up recently, and, guess what? None of those actually took. /angry. So, using built in screen capture now, which is slightly less convenient.

Minor annoyances aside… YAAAAAY DRAKE! I’ve wanted one of those since I was a little nublet, and when I first came to Outlands, every time someone flew by on a Nether Drake, I’d go green with envy, thinking “It’ll be me riding one of those awesome things, someday…” And someday is today!

Next on my rep hitlist are the Kalu’ak, who offer a nice level 76 Chest piece at Honoured, and a cool Polearm at Revered. There’s also the Penguin, at exalted, but he’s not a priority, though I will certainly get him. The idea of leaving a rep at Revered offends me! After that… Wyrmrest is looking tasty, if only for the Red Drake. And Kirin Tor – I’d like to cut a bit off the price of the Armoured Snowy Gryphon, which I.MUST.HAVE. and the Armoured Brown Bear. Of course, I’m also doing Skyguard dailys on the side, though only in Skettis. I now know what I’m doing to unlock the dailys in Blade’s Edge (Thanks, Zaea), but what I’m doing is… 5 man quests. So that can wait.

Some other minor notes:

Respecs all round!

Or near enough, anyway. On Faulsey, I did a minor rejig of my talents – dropping the 5th point I had in Frenzy, and one I had in Cobra Strikes, and placing them in Animal Handler. I now can’t max both Invigoration and Cobra Strikes though. I think they look like pretty good talents, and they are highly complementary… so not maxing one would kind of lessen the overall advantage, so I will probably just skip ‘em both. Thinking of putting the points that will leave into Focused Aim (depending on how my hit rating is looking at 80 – with Focused Aim and my Draenei Racial, I can get 4% of the 9% I need without any hit rating gear!), and the remaining point into Spirit Bond, or doing 2 into Focused and 2 in Bond. Bond is a talent I sniggered at pre 3.0.2 – seriously, 2 talent points to get 2% of your health every 10 seconds? Please. With the + healing though… could be handy.

Ella had a minor change as well – with Longevity, two points in Mobility was redundant – one would suffice to lower the cooldown below the duration. So I put the other point into Avoidance, and now that she is 72, she has Wolverine Bite! Woot.

And finally, Erethia. I have no idea what the hell I’d done with her talents. I had Lick Your Wounds, and with the way the rest of the talents were placed, as looking at level 76 before she got Rabid. Yeaahh… I respecced her to have Rabid, and at 72 she’ll pick Lick Your Wounds back up, so all is good.

Akshiran missed out on the respeccing love, cause I’m mostly happy with how he is at the moment. Though… Maybe I’ll dump Taunt in favour of Last Stand. Hmmm. Taunt has actually came in handy a few times, but on the other hand, 30% extra health for 20 seconds could save our bacon when doing Group quests without the recommended amount, especially when paired with Blood of the Rhino, and Mend Pet + Gift of the Naaru to bring him up to full health.

Speaking of pets, I’m already planning for my exotics. The Devilsaur will probably have an almost identical spec to Erethia, but the Rhino? I plan on using my Rhino for PvP. So I’m thinking of loading him up with all the Stamina and Armour talents, as well as Charge, Last Stand, Intervene and Roar of Sacrifice for active abilities, with the crit reduction talent to round it all out. Then, it’ll be time to set him loose in AV with Stampede. Hmm. I really want to try that out. Just the idea of the half the Horde Team being hurled into the air… Priceless.

Instancing:

Had a quasi-disastrous Utgarde Keep the other night – It was crazy. On DPS, there was Me, Kazura and Yuanjia, and we had a level 78 Bear tank and 70ish Priest. It should have been fine. We wiped on trash three times, after which the Priest and Bear disappeared. We managed to get a DK (73? I think?) and a different 70 Priest to replace them, and we had no further problems on trash, and the first boss dropped without any problems. Then we wiped three times on Skarvald and his friend. Err, huh? Took them down fourth try, and me and Kazura, I believe we were the only ones who had done the instance before, predicted some serious death on the last boss, who had been our only problem the first run. He went down in one try. Needless to say, a very confusing run.

We’re hopefully gonna run the Nexus at some point this week, too. I, personally, want to try out all the instances as I level up, so I don’t feel I’ve missed out on any of the fun!

Alt miscellania:

Dusted off the Druid, who is now at level 29, and should be 30 quite soon, though I’ll need to return some of the money I took from him to pay for his mount. Herbalism is still raking in a decent amount of cash, so I shouldn’t have too many problems paying to upgrade some of my seriously out dated gear. I went into BFD at about 27 and solo’d the first boss, who was incredibly gracious and dropped a (cloth) belt with +4 Intellect and Stamina and +8 Spellpower. Thank you kindly, Ghamoo-ra! With a quest reward ring that gave 7 Spellpower, and some Minor Wizard Oil (made by Ellaria, so at least some good has come of her dip into Enchanting.) on top of what I have already, I’m at 39 spellpower, which I feel isn’t too shabby for a lowbie Balance. Looking forward to next level for Insect Swarm, then it’s just ten levels till Boomkin!

Leveled my Survival Hunter to level 14, having fun shooting things from 41 yards away. Obviously, so far it’s not really any different to when my BM Hunter was 14, but I’m reliving my newbie days! Picked up Leatherworking, simply because I felt like it.

Work tomorrow, but after that, hopefully either Nexus or leveling time. I’m almost 80% into 72, so should get level 73 very soon. Pet situation still isn’t brilliant – Ella is 72, Erethia is 71, and Akshiran is halfway into 70. He MIGHT hit 71 before I get 73, but I’m not holding my breath. Used up all my rested EXP though, so I might start seeing an improvement now.

Out of all the screenshots I have ever taken in WoW, this has to be my favourite.

Boomkin; so called because of the explosive pelvic thrusts involved in their dances.

Not too much to report, really. At the moment, I am 17k Rep from my Nether Drake! Woo! Only a few more rounds of dailys to go.

Tried to tank Ramps on my DK… With Yuanjia and Kazura. Apart from dying about 5 times, I think I did ok. /grin. Got a nice neck upgrade from Omorr the Unscarred, and, fortunately, the Hellreaver didn’t drop from the last boss, or I think Yuanjia would have murdered me.

Picked up the Baby Blizzard Bear, which is pretty cute, and has joined Frosty as a pet to summon with Livestock.

Aaaaand finally, in the course of doing my Netherwing Dailys, I have dinged 72 (and am now about… 30% through it.), which would be awesome… if my pets were leveling well. Ella and Erethia are 71, and Akshiran is 70. I think the problem is rested EXP. As me and Kazura are only questing sporadically, if I log out in an inn or city, I’m getting a huge amount of rested EXP, loads more than I can use up in one nights questing. Add that onto the generally killing-light quests of Northrend, and my pets are getting very little EXP. So I’ve stopped logging out in cities, but with almost 1.6 million EXP total in this level, even logging out outside of cities gets me like 10k rested EXP. Hopefully, if I can use up all my current rested EXP (currently about… 230k bonus EXP stored up… woo.), the problem should be resolved.

Of course, they could just do away with pet leveling entirely, or let them get EXP the same way as players, that is, getting EXP towards 71, even when both Hunter and pet are 70. But yeah, like that’s gonna happen.

Really suck.

I don’t mind losing.

I do mind waiting 2 minutes every time I do lose for Mulverik to WALK ALONG THE BLOODY AIRSTRIP.

FFS.

Waiting as I post this.

Edit: BWAHAHAHA. Kiss my ass, Mulverick. Just Skyshatter left… shame that all this gets me is rep. Honestly, why did Blizz have to render riding crops useless after 70? I mean, what’s so wrong with giving normal players a 10% movement boost, since Paladins and Unholy Death Knights get nice mounted bonuses.

And it was completely worth it.

At least in a “Wheeeee! This is fuuuunnn!” sort of way.

I’m still not convinced it was worth it at this moment in time, given I can’t fly in Northrend.

But sod it, I have my epic gryphon, and he is AWESOME. I would love to have a Snowy Gryphon with armour, but alas, you only get a ride on one of them briefly in the Fjord.

I feel like a pauper now though. I now have 1% of the money I had before. That’s… that’s not cool.

Now time is KO time. I’m nearly Honored with Netherwing already – I actually bought my flying skill hours before my mount, and got the 160ish gold that I needed for my first mount from doing Netherwing quests, taking advantage of the free 280% speed Drake you use in the Quests, and flogging everything that dropped. Did all my neutral dailys once, and found loads of eggs. Then the dailys reset, so I did all the neutral again, except the poisoned meat one, and all my friendly ones. And found lots more eggs. I think I found at least 16 eggs, total, so I am now about 600 Rep from Honored… then it’s just 33k more rep from there till my very own drake!

-weakly- Woot!

I has the tireds. Bonne nuit! (I am so not gonna get much sleep… I can hear the wind howling over my music, which is as loud as 4:30 AM permits.)

Blazing through the lands across the snows,

Our pagan hearts and flesh built to endure the cold

Warrior Soul – to the death against all foes we fight,

We’re born under the Northern Lights

Warrior Soul (Kiuas – Spirit of Ukko)

Busy, busy, busy. Me and Kazura must have finished at least 30 quests last night. We did everything from slaughtering dragons, to flying dwarvern planes and shooting gargoyles, to cleansing our inner turmoil then floating gently down from a mountaintop. Ok, so maybe it’s not that many given how long we were on for, but we started out doing them very innefficiently; a quest at Westguard, another over at Valgarde, maybe one for the explorer’s league. After we’d been doing that for a while, we realised the best idea would be to pick one area, and, as far as possible, exhaust all the quests there. I think we’ve finished off Valgarde, unless some more quests open up from leveling or from links to other quests.

Last night was also our first instance! Woo! We did Utgarde Keep, which was a blast. The first boss was fairly easy, we all got encased in ice a little bit, but no one took any serious damage from it, and I got to actually use Volley properly, to knock out the adds that spawned. Second boss we had a minor mishap, and someone killed the caster boss whilst Skarvald was still at about… 60% health, but he only came back as a ghost, and Skarvald dropped within a few seconds anyway.

We wiped on the final boss, though. We easily beat him the first time, and after he was brought back by the crazy Valkyrie, we got him down to 10k health, before a combination of AOE and Kazura dying horribly to his axe obliterated us. The second attempt was more successful, and though the tank still died, Kazura brought him back with Rebirth.

I was quite amused to see the text on his head, which you have to loot for one of the quests (and me, being an idiot, forgot to loot it, and jumped down the shortcut, so had to use Aspect of the Cheetah to rush back up to the top), which questions the etiquette of holding a disbodied head. So it’s only now my character begins to question decapitating dead people, I’ve only been doing it for about 70 levels.

Overall, for my first Northrend instance, it was a lot of fun, though I was disappointed that I didn’t get any upgrades from the instance itself; got a nice ring from one of the quests though. Kazura was a bit luckier, and got a nice set of leg armour from the last boss. We might be running the instance again with Yuanjia – who went off and did questing on his own at one point, then complained me and Kazura were questing without him! – who hasn’t done it yet.

Speaking of upgrades though, since I was mostly in Outland greens when I arrived, stuff is getting replaced… but it’s kind of annoying me. Firstly, Agility is rare. Ok, yes, stuff is coming with oodles of crit rating and attack power, so I’m coming out on top, but my Agility is dropping, dropping, dropping, which is somewhat depressing to look at. Also, Intellect is non existant on any of the non-caster mail in Northrend, which is kind of irritating… the only classes that will use mail with Attack Power and Crit Rating on it would be Hunters and Enhancement Shammys, both of whom could really do with a bit of extra Int. It’s not so much of an issue, since I have Aspect of the Viper, but more mana means I can go for longer without having to activate it.

All this questing also meant that, finally, I dinged level 71, and Kazura followed suit a few hours later. Level 71 means I get Kill Shot, which looks really good… for instances and PvP. With a BM Hunter and a Boomkin, enemies hit 20% health very quickly, and they don’t tend to hang around there, so it won’t be seeing much use in questing.

Now, just because Northrend has opened up doesn’t mean that we’ve stopped going to Outlands. Oh no. A couple nights ago, Kazura needed to let off some steam… And what better way to do so than do some world PvP in Hellfire? It was so much fun. We ended up killing an epic geared Warlock about 3 times before an epic druid made an appearance, and they killed us. A short while later, a big group of lowbie DKs were trying to capture Broken Hill, and were being wailed on by those two hordies, plus a Boomkin. In what stands as our finest moment outside of BGs, me and Kazura joined this mini brawl down below, helped to kill all the hordies, and save some baby DKs. It was hilarious.

Another thing we’ve done a couple times in Hellfire now is go through Hellfire Ramparts, for Yuanjia’s DK. He really wants the polearm that drops from the Dragon boss. So far, he’s done it four times. First, with me and kazura on our DKs and Wraigth. Second time was the time we had my Warp Stalker tanking, a third time he did it in an all DK party, and last night we had Ramsus, a Ret Paladin from the guild, and one of his Prot Paladin buddies along for the ride, and we absolutely destroyed the place. Alas, Yuanjia has still not got his polearm.

And finally, me and Kaz are now Neutral with Netherwing. I’d already done as far up as the 5-man quest, so I helped Kaz do all the pre-reqs for that. We then had Wraigth, who had respecced to Boomkin, much to my confusion, and Zyroos, one of Kaz’s classmates at College, who was already a level 77 Hunter, with one of those oh-so-cool new wolves, help us to fight the boss for the final part of the quest. As you can see, I sort of panicked the whole time, going spamming steady shot, thinking we’re gonna die, we’re gonna die, but it all turned out fine in the end, of course. 77 Hunter is teh hax!

All that remains to be done now, at least for me, Kaz has a significant amount more to go, is to get 578g, buy my Epic Flying Skill/Gryphon… and grind my way through the Netherwing Dailys. /sigh. 578g really isn’t much, but it just feels like it’s going to take forever to get it. Then, of course, I need 1k between whenever I get epic and 77 to be able to fly in Northrend.

The Cobalt Nether Drake will be mine someday – Mine! Muwahahaha!

Edit: First time in EVER I have forgotten to title a blog. See what lack of sleep does to you?

Of all the Ranger-type classes I have played in various games, the Hunter class in WoW has to be my favourite. Alone, a Hunter is equipped with a wealth of fun and useful abilties – traps, debilitating shots, and an Aspect for every situation. However, the most important tool in a Hunter’s arsenal is their pet. Without a pet, Hunter DPS takes a significant hit, and our “easy mode” soloing becomes hard mode.

Unlike Warlocks, who are in a similar position, Hunters are able to tame and name a huge selection of beasts. Choosing the right pet is something we put a great deal of thought into. What makes the “right” pet is something completely different for every individual Hunter. For some, a pet which performs well in a Raid situation is their most important consideration. For others, they want something that will inconvenience other players in PvP. Others still want a pet that they feel looks good. The latter point, I feel, is something that applies to all pets, regardless of what the main reason for taming said pet is.

Personally, I fall into the “aesthetics” category. I tame pets that I think look good. Given the viability of every pet family for solo grinding, I prefer to quest with something nice besides me, instead of something I hate, but tamed anyway, because they had teh awesum skilz. That’s what I enjoy about Hunter (particularly post 3.0.2) – we can tame whatever we want, and solo with ease. Thus, I tame what I like the look of. That’s just me, though. For some, the way they enjoy the game is to have what they feel is the absolute best pet, performance wise, so that soloing or raiding is even easier – and that’s fine!

Now, of course, what people find aesthetically pleasing is unique to that person. One Hunter’s ugly Core Hound is anothers fierce and intimidating companion. A Hunter may tame a pet because they think it is “gorgoeus”, or “fierce”, or “cool”, or any number of other adjectives. Me? I tame “beautiful” pets. At least, for the most part. My choice of pets will show that that is not a rule I stick to, and also show how a wide range of pets can appeal to me.

A little idiosyncrasy of mine is that my pets must be white (leave your hilarious “omgthatsracistlololol” jokes at the door, thank you.) I didn’t actually realise this until after I’d tamed my second pet, and noticed all my mounts were white, too. So that’s something that contributes to how appealing I’d find a certain pet – does it have a white skin?

Merely having a white skin does not automatically make a pet appeal to me, though. Take, for example, the incredibly rare White Gorilla skin. I don’t like it. Why? I don’t like the Gorilla family as a whole. Gorilla’s are excellent AOE tanks – so good they have been nicknamed the “Gorilladin”. I know that taming one would make soloing go that little bit smoother. Does that mean I should have to tame one as my tenacity pet? Nope. Aside from finding Gorillas generally ugly, the idea of taming something so close to a human is something I find slightly disturbing. Out of all the pets we can tame, the Gorilla is probably the most intelligent. That kind of unnerves me. But I digress.

Likewise, the lack of a white skin does not automatically mean a pet won’t appeal to me. For example, I have actually tamed Blacksting, the unique black and red Wasp. Unfortunately, I’ll be letting Luminara go when I get my exotic pet talent, as she (yes, taming can induce sex changes.) was an impulse tame, cause I really liked that particular wasp skin. And while a lot of people might find wasps ugly, I think they are quite cool. I certainly wouldn’t describe wasps as “beautiful”, though I like them none the less.

As far as my main pets go, I have two pets that I would describe as “beautiful” would be my Snow Leopard, Erethia, and my Winterspring Owl, Ella. Ella, in particular is undeniably gorgeous. I said aestheticsare a very personal thing, but I challenge anyone to honestly tell me that the pure white Winterspring owls are not beautiful.

My final pet, the Warp Stalker, Akshiran, isn’t exactly the prettiest creature ever. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about the white Warp Stalker that I just really like. I had my heart set on taming one of them ever since I was a little nublet. They just look awesome.

Unfortunately, it seems that exotic pets don’t have much in the way of nice skins to choose from. I only really like The Kurken and Loque’nahak. While I’d like to tame the Kurken, I’ve decided that the best option would be a Devilsaur. While I do like to choose my pets based solely on aesthetics, I’m realistic enough to accept that if I ever get into the endgame, and I have the exotic pet talent… I’ll be using an exotic pet, and I feel that the constant DPS boost of the Devilsaur’s special ability beats the 50% cast time reduction on a Core Hound. And taming Loque’nahak… well, that’s out of the question. Unless, of course, I had my Devilsaur with me, and I stumbled across him… then the Devilsaur would be dropped like a hot rock.

The other exotic pet I shall be taming is the Rhino. As with the Ferocity exotics, they don’t really appeal to me, aesthetically, but this is the one case where I think I’d have more fun with the ugly pet – I can’t wait to get up to all sots of crazy shenanigans with Stampede!

But there are so many more pets I want! I imagine many other Hunters feel the same, we need more stables slots. Ok, sure, five pets is plenty, you can fill almost any niche you want with the choice of five pets. But we need more! I want to keep my wasp! I want one of those awesome new wolves! I would really love one of the snowy white eagles – ok, yes, he would be identical to Ella, but they are sexy. Siiigh… So many amazing pets, so little space.

So there you have it – an incredibly long winded justification for my choice of pets. I thought it might be interesting to put into words the mental process I go through when choosing pets. Wonder what other Hunters would find aesthetically appealing in a pet?

Now, go petition Blizzard for more stable slots!

Hunters everywhere will thank you!

Had a busy night in WoW last night (Oy, early morning posts. See the bad, bad habits gap years get you into?), so expect a big post tomorrow. Err, later today. By three o clock. Before work.

Why hello tharr!

Welcome to the new blog.

“What do you mean ‘There’s an octopus on my face’?” as a blog name was beginning to irritate me, and I’d been on Blogger for two and a half years. So, on a whim, I jumped to WordPress. Ok, there isn’t a great deal of difference between free blog hosts, but, it WAS a whim. They are whimsical! I don’t need to explain myself. In fact, I could just say “A potato visited me in my dreams, he had a great bushy moustache, and he told me, ‘Move to WordPress, or bad things will happen!’”, and you’d not be able to do anything about it!

First, and most importantly, the name has changed. I picked Master’s Call for a few reasons. Firstly, it’s a Beast Mastery skill, so, it fits my character. Second, it’s not been used yet. And thirdly, I think it sounds cool.

Secondly, in addition to the main chronicles of my Azerothian adventures, the mood may occasionally strike for me to post a little “essay”, as it were. I have an old post floating around detailing why I choose my pets, and I’m going to give that a big overhaul. Why? Because I can. The potato told me to!

If you are reading this, the blog is currently “under construction.” Really, all I’ve left to do is get some shots from WoW to use in my header (currently down for wednesday maintainence), and fill in my blogroll, so it’s basically complete. However, now time is bed time, so such changes will come in the morning.

Edit: Simple and unexciting header up, that is at least better than whatever the heck I had before. I’m not particularly arty… My highest grade when I did art years ago was for essays! XD

Blogroll filled with the WoW Blogs that I’ve been reading so far. Not a great deal of them, and mostly Huntery stuff, with bias towards other classes I play, but hey!

Aaaand coming up shortly (Read: a while away) will be a random post about hunter pets. Oooh, exciting? I think not! /grin