Casual Huntering

Posts Tagged ‘Hunter Pets’

I’ve been meaning to write a post about some of the random keywords people have used to find my blog. Many of which aren’t addressed. So, I here I am addressing them.

“what level do you have to be to tame skoll”

Level 80

“any benefit to taming rare pets”

Yeah, they’re cool looking! What kind of hunter would have to ask this question anyways??

“at what age is it nerdy to play wow”

Depends on who you talk to, some would say it is always too nerdy to play WoW, but in my humble opinion you are never too old to be too nerdy. Oh wait, did that come out right? I actually think wow is a geeky thing, not a nerdy thing.

“can $30 internet handle world of warcraft”

When I started playing I was on a dial-up. So, it’s possible to play with slow internet, but you’re lag will be pretty bad. I don’t suggest it. Go buy yourself a WiFi card and play on your neighbor’s internet.

“can my kids use the same world of warcraft account as me?”

If you don’t ever want to play with your kid, yes. If you want to play alongside him, then no. Of course you’d then need another computer as well.

Mostly you’ll have to fight for game time, but you’re the parent, you can kick them off.

“can’t play wow at worl, how can i pas the restrictions”

Yes, Worl restrictions can be quite severe. You’ll have to jail break your worl in order to add a proxy WoW server in order to be able to bypass all of the restrictions.

“how many pets can a hunter have”

5

“how long will it take me to get to level 80 from level 40?”

However long you would like, that depends on how much you’d like to neglect real life, but its takes me way too long to do that kind of leveling.

“how to change your personal cultural bias”

Identify, examine, educate yourself, follow through. I don’t know if that really fits the scope of this blog.

“how to manage wow and real life”

Prioritize

“how to teach a child to play wow”

Throw them at a computer and let them have at it.

“i want to get my mom to play wow, what should she play as?”

A hunter

“i was in the snow for long time got fever”

Get out of the snow then.

“i wiped the raid hunter pet aggressive”

Take your pet off of aggressive /facepalm.

“ways death knights can make money”

The same way any other class makes money.

“what age kid plays mafia wars”

This depends if you are taking about the facebook app or real life mafia wars.

“what is rp & rl on twitter”

Well, for me rp=roleplay rl=real life, but I don’t know what other people are doing.

“where are the best place in nothend for hunters pets”

Well, I assume you meant northrend. And you’d be surprised to find animals to tame in every area. No really, it’s true. Depends on the pet you want.

“why teenagers shouldnt play wow”

Well, I don’t see why not, unless they are letting their play time destroy their grades. I say you should teach balance and moderation instead of complete abstinence. Now I’m referring to WoW and not other things teenagers do. Keep that in mind.

“why can’t i buy hourly game time in wow”

No, but sometimes I wish you could, cause it kills me that I pay the same amount for my 8 hours a week as my brother-in-law does for his 30+ hours. You can in Asia though.

“will expanded stables be released before cataclysm?”

I don’t think so.

So, there you have it, some of the random questions I’ve gotten in the last month. Of course since these were google searches, they probably just went to another website that did have the answers. But whatever.

Maybe if their lucky. I wasn’t sure if I would ever get one. But man, if you are hunting the spiritbeast, you should be prepared, at least somewhat prepared.

Could I have possibly do everything wrong? Just how many chances could one hunter get???

So, today I’m doing my dailies, and when I have to go get the snobolds in Stormpeaks. I’ve made a habit of going by Skoll’s spawn points, but I don’t expect anything. So, I’m not ready at all. But then my nifty little NPC scan dings with a nice little picture of the blue wolf in the middle of my screen.

Well, I guess I was at least in my BM spec, so that was good. But I totally already had a pet out. I dismiss my turtle. I get down and throw down a frost trap. YES, A FROST TRAP. Oh my gosh, hello?? What do I want to do slow him down? So, I start stumbling around for my tame beast spell. Oh course it isn’t out! Finally start taming him and I’m already half dead. /facepalm.

So, I feign death and start over. This time with the right trap. Everything is going fine and dandy, tame pet spell almost over. It ends with a “you have full pets” or some junk. Ha! I didn’t even have a pet slot available!!! I quickly do a call pet spell, and hit some button, I don’t know which. My mind was completely blank as to how to get rid of an unwanted pet. Then I remembered that you have to abandon it. Seeing how I messed around with the call pet spell, I was stuck with whatever pet I had for the next 5 minutes. It was my turtle, sad I know. I love my turtle! But he’s a whole hell of a lot easier to find than the spirit beast. So, I said goodbye to the turtle (well I didn’t really, I’ll go find him again once I get a chance).

Attempt 3 went smoothly, I was able to tame skoll. Yay!! My goodness how many attempts could I have had, thank heavens nobody else was round about! I honestly didn’t think I’d ever get a spirit beast.

The funny thing was I kind of had a weird feeling about flying around Stormpeaks, like I would actually find either Skoll or the Timelost proto drake. Strange. I knew where two of skoll’s spawn points were. I was debating about pulling them up before I even came out here.

Well, I’m feeling all sorts of jittery now. I’ve always heard the stories of those who have found spiritbeasts, how you get the shakes, I didn’t know how true it really was.

Okay, now I’m going to get back to my dailies. Happy Huntering!

Okay, I recently posted about how you can use addons such as NPCscan or Silverdragon to help you find rare mounts, such as one of the 3 spirit beasts running around Northrend. Someone brought up the fact that hunting spiritbeasts is a waste of time. If you are a BM then your dps is already limited and that the devilsaur will put out better dps anyway (of course if you bring this pet into a raid you might get kicked out, its butt is just too big). So, time would be better spent raiding and improving your gear. And I have to agree, if getting the best dps is the most important part of the game for you, then truly hunting for a spiritbeast would be a waste of time. Granted, the entire game is a waste of time anyway, so why bother?

Because it’s the spiritbeast!!! That’s why!! Have your read some of the stories on BRK of people taming the elusive spiritbeast? There is a certain joy that comes in the hunt itself, stalking your pray, waiting for hours in the shadows, etc. The constant disappointment, the patience, the let down… Then for some of you guys out there (not myself), there is the excitement, the adrenaline rush, that mad dash to throw down that frost trap, get rid of your trash pet, and tame the darn beast. Then the thrill of naming it, pulling it out at parties, using the addon Petemote to have him /pee on your guildmates or flirt with the kitty druids.

Why do we bother hunting the spiritbeast? Because it’s what us hunters do. Its an emotional roller coaster, so hang on for the ride.

This just came out on the blue posts regarding BM hunter changes for patch 3.2.2

* The Beast Within now lasts 10 sec (Down from 18 sec) but now also increases all damage you deal by 10% at all time.
* Bestial Wrath now lasts 10 sec. (Down from 18 sec)

So, now the damage is dealt all of the time, and then actually using the Beast Within doesn’t do so much damage, except break crowd control and help out with mana. This isn’t going to be a very happy thing among BM hunter PvPers. It was always fun to watch that poor warlock try to fear me and my pet right before getting hit with an intimidation. Ha! Look at me talk, more often than not I get owned by warlocks. I’m not much of a PvPer; however, I do love a good battle ground.

So, when are BM hunters going to be thrown some real love? I would like my primary spec to be a viable spec again, not just my solo spec.

So, I’ve began the hunt for Loque’nahak recently. I know I’m slow on the hunt and everybody and their dog already has him for a pet, but I’m usually behind the times on these things. That’s just part of the package when you are a casual gamer. You have to accept the fact that you’ll not be ahead of the crowd, but rather a little behind. I’ve come to grips with this and I’m fine with it.

Anyway, I’ve been using the nifty little mod called NPCscan to try to find Loque’nahak. This is a great tool, but you need to know a few things about it before you get started.

NPC scan will scan the surrounding area and when a rare mob comes within targeting distance it will alert you. It will alert you in with lots of sounds, flashing lights, and a pop up. There is no way you could miss it, in fact it usually scares the crap out of me when it pops up.

Once a particular mob has been found by NPC scan it will not be able to find that mob again until you clear your cache. This is easily done. Go to your world of warcraft folder usually under program files (if you are using a PC, if you are using a Mac then you’ll do something else, of which I have no clue, good luck). When you find the folder c:/programfiles/worldofwarcraft/cache delete the entire folder (just the cache folder). Don’t worry, it won’t mess up the game and it will be recreated next time you log into the game. Again delete the /cache folder, not the /worldofwarcraft folder, that would bring you much grief. Of course, if you aren’t worried about finding that particular mob again then don’t worry about it.

Here’s the tricky thing about this mod, it can’t tell the difference between the rare mobs running about the world and pets that were tamed and are now tagging along with some random hunter. There is an option where you can make it not look for tamable rare mobs. You go to options and click on the addon tab. You’ll be able to see the NPCscan options from there.  Click on the plus sign to pull up the secondary options. Here you’ll see a box that you can check or uncheck to track tamable mobs. If you aren’t concerned with tracking down rare tamable mobs then uncheck this. If you are hunting rare pets then check this only when you are hunting. Go uncheck it when you are done, or you’ll freak out like I did. If you’re going to be around someone who has one of these rare pets then you can always add their ID to the mob so it’ll start ignoring them. Look up the beast that you don’t want NPCscan to look for anymore on WoWhead.com. The last number in the url is the id number that you’ll need.

For example: “http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=32500″

I had forgotten that I had left this on when I was doing Sons of Hodir dailies. Suddenly Gondria pops up and I freak out. My heart leaped in my throat. I tried to target it, I stopped doing whatever I was doing. I looked around thinking I was going to be able to tame it. Then my brain caught back up to me. Gondria is not in Storm Peaks, but rather Zul’Drak. There was just a hunter passing by who already had the spiritbeast tamed. I calmed myself down and promptly turned off the option to track tamable pets.

Now, I have not yet found any spiritbeasts with this, but I was able to take down some rare mobs because of it. Even if you aren’t a hunter, NPCscan can help you work on achievements to take down certain rare mobs. If you are a hunter looking for rare pets then this is a must. It has the same distance as the target macro and it WILL get your attention when it finds something. Believe me. I’m always startled whenever this goes off.

The other Addon I’m using to help me find the spiritbeast is Routes, with this I was able to set up a route in Sholazar Basin where I could optimize mining while hitting all of the known spawn points. Now I just need to get on there and hunt more often.

For many of you this is old news, but not to you new up and coming hunters or you slow but steady casual gamers. I hope this helps.

Okay, here is the run down of my current pets and why the heck I have them.

This is my cat, I don’t have a name for her, mostly just because I’m lazy. This pet really isn’t very hard to get, but its off the beaten path.

She is currently my primary raiding pet, I finally got off my lazy butt and leveled her to 80 just recently. I love cats, so I’m going back to my roots.

This is Mungula, my gorilla. I know the day of the gorilla is over, but I haven’t been able to part with the beautiful butt scratching creature. We’ve been through so much together. But alas, I don’t know how much longer I’ll be using him. I still pull him out when I need a tenacity pet, but I have since tamed a new tenacity pet.

Here is my one and only cunning pet, named Twitch. He can’t stop moving, gets a little unnerving, but I like him. He is an exotic pet so only when I’m BM mode can I pull him out (which is all the time right now because I haven’t yet bothered with buying duel spec). Right now he’s level 77. I’m trying to level him for PvP. He has a really neat rooting ability that nets a mob into place for like 3 seconds. Useful when you are trying to get away from a melee class.

Once WotLK came out and did what ever other hunter around did, I tamed myself a Devilsaur. I named this guy Kauhn. He’s big mean, and super freakin huge with bestial wrath! I haven’t focused on him for a raiding pet because I assumed my guild would give me the boot. /kick. Cause he’ll cover up everything!!! But I’ve been told that if you are BM that he’s technically better dps than my cat. Just don’t know where to house the big lug. My wife won’t him stay inside, and when we have him sleep in the back yard neighborhood cats and dogs tend to come up missing. I’m just at my wits end with this big guy.

Most recently, I went out and caught myself a turtle. You have to grab them by the tell and be quick or they might snap off one of your fingers. Why a turtle? Well, I was looking for a tenacity pet to replace my gorilla. I want a tenacity pet for a couple of reasons. One, its fun to pull 20 mobs when farming, lotsa fun! And I would like to have a good tanking pet on call when the need arises. The turtle has the shell shield ability that is great for keeping them alive longer. I dream someday of MTing or OTing something with my turtle. But now tanks are a dime a dozen and nobody in my guild takes me serious. /sigh. (oh and I haven’t named him yet, any good ideas?)

What pets do you have (assuming you are a hunter of course)?

Okay, so I got my new header and it totally doesn’t work with all of this red, but I’m not going to get rid of it until I can change the header or fix the background. I’m just happy to finally have a header for my blog. Thanks to Nassira for editing the image and putting it together for me. And thanks Nance for helping me put that on the blog.

On to another topic. I’ve realized that one reason WoW is so addictive is the fact that there is always something to work on. Whether is be an alt to level, gear to be ninja-ed (well, Hm earned), mounts to be found, achievements to be… achieved, etc. etc. There is always more to do, especially if you are a part-timer.

Right now I have several projects in the works.

• leveling my cat (currently level 79)
• Argent Crusade Dailies (So far I’m a champion of Iron Forge and the gnomes (can’t spell their city and I’m too lazy to look it up).
• Making a motorcycle (only about 9,000 gold to go /sigh)
• getting geared for raiding (which isn’t going wonderfully)
• Searching and working towards other mounts (yes this is one of my obsessions)

In this game you don’t ever win. Not really. There is always more to do. Whenever you beat a boss there are like 3 more, whenever you get an achievement there are like 10 more to do, etc etc. My cousin Applebiscuit (no that’s not his rl name) thought at first that when you hit max level that big words would come up on your screen “The End”, so he leveled slowly because he didn’t want the game to finish. Little did he know that the game only begins at the max level. There is always more to do.

Oh on a completely different topic, my pet is nearing level 80 and needs a name. I got this cat from a statue on the north end of Dark Shore, it took awhile, but not many people have this cat I like him a lot. What do y’all think I should name him??

Isn’t he pretty, he is all camoflaged in the snow (and no, he isn’t stealthed right now, he’s a ghost cat!)

Wow, is there some crazy stuff coming out of the PTR. Some crazy crazy hunter pet stuff. As always, keep in mind that this is always subject to change at any given moment. If you don’t like something that you hear then don’t hold your breath, it will probably change in a day or two.

Okay so this came out on MMO Champion and I quote:

Thuderstomp (Gorilla) has been removed as a pet skill and replaced by Pummel – Pummel the target, interrupting spellcasting and preventing any spell in that school from being cast for 4 sec. (20 Focus, 5 yd range, Instant, 10 sec cooldown)

Thunderstomp is now a pet talent available to any Tenacity pet. Now your bears, crocs or ESPECIALLY CRABS can join in the AE tanking fun.

Savage Rend (Raptor) now temporarily boost the raptor’s damage by 10% for 30 seconds.

Furious Howl(Wolf) now only affects the wolf and its master, duration increased from 10 to 20 seconds.

Wow, so all tenacity pets can have Thunderstomp! This is absolutely huge! (sad for the once popular tanking gorillas out there). But think of the possibilities….

crocadine, bearadine, wormadine, and my favorite (a said by stopableforce) bacondine. Oh, and all the other tenacity pets there too. Now you can actually have a viable tenacity pet that isn’t a gorilla. I’ll still hold on to Mungula for awhile, he’s so cute and cuddle, but he does smell a little bad sometimes.

Just read an interview with Ghostcrawler where he tells us all about duel specing (Talent Spec Q&A). Interesting stuff.

This is what GC had to say about hunters in regards to duel-specing:

Nethaera: What about hunters? Often their pet talents are set up to match the talents of the hunter. Will they be able to switch their pet specs as well?
Ghostcrawler: We will wipe the pet talents. However we are going to remove the respec cost for pet talents so that players won’t feel like they need to jump through an additional hoop to respec their pet. In addition, we are going to provide hunters a new core ability to let them remotely access their stable on a long cooldown. This way if their exotic pet heads off to the stable, they will be able to get a different pet. We hope to be able to discuss this new spell in more detail when we get a little further along.

Sounds like you are going to have to respec your pet every time, but for free. Pain in the butt to have to do that constantly, but more flexibility. I would have liked to see a way that you could save at least 2 different specs for your pets where all you have to do is hit a button to switch.

As for this new ability to remotely get your pets from the stables? That is awesome, no longer will Locks be able to tease me with their summon demon spell. Too bad it has a long cool down time. It would be nice to be able to pull out the Gorilla when ever you happened to need an off tank in an instance. I don’t know how many times this would have been useful in the past.

One other thing:

Nethaera: Will players be confined to only setting up two specs?
Ghostcrawler: We will be launching the feature with just two specs, but depending on how we feel it works out, we might consider additional specs in the future.

More than 2 specs in the future??? Are you serious? Part of me thinks that would be cool, but then another part of me thinks it sucks. Why, because we’re losing our individuality of we can every spec we ever dreamed of. Even with that said, I’m excited to have 2 specs. That way I can stay a BM hunter and do some trap dancing to boot! So, I may be losing my uniqueness, but I’ll fun in the process.

Okay Dave, now that you’ve chosen a pet of sorts (remember you can have up to 5 now), its time to learn how to use him (or her – if your pet is a girl).

With the new expansion several things have changed. All pets now have a growl (which they could have before unless you were being really silly and didn’t train it). All pets have a fear, they all have a focus dump (what else would you do with all of that focus coming out your ears), and last but certainly not least, they have their nifty talent based on their pet family.

You’ll also get several pet abilities when use up your pets talents in his (or her) given pet tree. Your tenacity pets will have lots of cool stuff that will help them hold aggro better, like taunt. They also have some intervening abilities that can save your tank, or a clothie’s butt if needs be. Ferocity pets have some neat things that will help them stay alive longer, like Lick Your Wounds, and a spell that will Rez them with full health (Heart of the Phoenix) which currently seems to be bugged.

Speaking of bugs, sometimes your pet will automatically turn on the abilities. You know when their spell glows, that means its suppose to go off whenever the cool down is up and your pet has enough focus. Well, some abilities were not meant to go together. For example: the pet’s fear spell was not meant to be put up the same time as growl. You have an ability that increases your pet’s aggro and one that decreases your pet’s aggro. What generally happens is that the mob gets so confused as to weather or not he wants to attack your pet that he gets extra angry and he takes it out on you. If you have this problem generally you be thinking your pet is stupid and can’t seem to hold the aggro to save your life. Your pet is not stupid, he just doesn’t know what to do, he needs you to tell him.

Some people have set up macros to turn off the pet’s fear ability, but I find if I just drag the pet spell down to the his ability bar that I can keep an eye on it and make sure that its off when I want it to be off, and on when I want it to be on.

Basic rule of thumb, if you are soloing and you want your pet to take the beating, then turn your pet’s fear off, leave your growl on. If you are in an instance/raid, do the opposite. I know most people are thinking, duh. Well, I’m trying to state the obvious… just in case.

Now when do you want to use use passive/defensive/aggressive. Well, when you are in an instance you will almost always want your pet on passive. You get yourself into all sorts of trouble with your pet on defensive and especially on aggressive. If your goal is to wipe your instance/raid then by all means put your pet on aggressive. You’re pet will get all excited an pull every mob in a two mile radius. When you realize your mishap your pet will come running all excited lolling his/her tongue all over the place (with about 20 mobs following). If you have your pet on defensive anything that attacks you with range will get your pets attention, usually also a bad idea. Best to be on passive for those situations. Now when I’m leveling I like to keep my pet on defensive so I don’t have to tell him everything to do. And my pet reacts quicker than I do. Now there are only a few times that I would actually put my pet on aggressive. The best is if you are fighting rogues. Your pet can find rogues quicker than you can and he can help you sniff them out. Sometimes I leave them on aggressive if I want to clean out an area in a low zone while I’m farming. Oh, and also when I’m mad and want to cause a wipe for my raid (okay, I’ve never actually done that, but if I were mad I know how I could get everybody killed quickly, then you just feign death – this doesn’t win friends or influence people, but if you are pissed at a pug it might be entertaining).

Well, that’s all for now. Let me know if I missed anything.