About the Author

Way back in 1997, a then 13-year-old girl stumbled onto the Internet. She called herself “Pikestaff” after a character she’d invented based on the “Redwall” series of books; a hare with a penchant for causing mayhem.

Over ten years later, Pike still lives…

“Pike” has been the longtime Internet moniker (heck, offline moniker too sometimes) of a twentysomething geekish girl who lives in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. (Specifically, she lives in the town where Vulcans and Humans will make First Contact, according to Star Trek lore.)

She’s been playing video games basically before she could talk, thanks to the cutting-edge Commodore 64 computer her family owned. A quick perusal of the “Favorite Games” section of her Baby Book would not reveal Pat-a-Cake or Peek-a-Boo, but rather Dig-Dug, Donkey Kong, and Pac-Man.

Then one year they got a Super Nintendo, and other than a very passionate love affair with Starcraft, she was exclusively a console gamer for many years. Until one day her boyfriend said “Hey I’m installing WoW, do you want to play too?” She thought hunters sounded fun, created her first WoW toon, and that’s when the madness began.

Today you can see Pike creating and playing hunter after hunter after hunter because it’s not just a class, it’s a lifestyle. And an obsession, admittedly.

Pike’s other big passion is the Linux operating system. She leveled her first character to 70 exclusively on Kubuntu Linux and the only reason she pops onto a lesser OS sometimes these days is for Ventrilo (by the way, she appreciates all the “Linux/Wine/Ventrilo” how-to links people send her, but trust her when she says she has tried everything and it’s a bug that’s out of her control at the moment).

You can find Pike online most places as “Pikestaff” and chances are if you see a “Pikestaff” on some internet site, it is her (DeviantArt is a notable exception– somebody else took her beloved internet name first and that is perhaps the big reason why she can’t bring herself to create a DeviantArt account).

Other than that, her Pikachu plushie collection, and the Periodic Table of the Elements she carries in her wallet, Pike is just your normal chick who holds a bachelor’s degree in filmmaking which she does not use and who currently works in the Pet Care Department of a popular pet store chain. That means she is a master cricket counter and fish catcher and is bitten by snakes on a regular basis. She can also warn you to never, ever touch a pooping hamster.

…no, seriously.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Can I link to you?
Yep! =D

Will you link to me? If you are an active commenter and your name links to your blog, chances are I will pick up on it at some point and add you to my blogroll. If I do not, feel free to send me an e-mail and if your site seems to have some decent content and is regularly updated, I will link to you.

Would you like to hook up for some advertising/moneymaking?
No thank you.

I saw a “Tawyn” on [insert non-Silver Hand server here], is that you? Nope. I tend to view my characters as all having distinct personalities and so as such I generally do not share character names across servers, though I have made exceptions. Tawyn is not one of those exceptions. (At one point, though, I did have a “Tawyne” on Dark Iron, but that character is now retired.)

How do you pronounce Tawyn
? Say the two words “Saw Win”. Now blend them together and replace the “S” in Saw with a “T”. And emphasize the first syllable. ^^

What is the cool add-on that makes you and your party’s name plates appear in 3-D? X-Perl Unit Frames.

“For the Horde” or “Glory to the Alliance”? Both! No really, I rather enjoy playing both factions. Alliance if pressed, though these days I am more prone to be found Horde-side due to circumstance.

PvE or PvP Server? RP and RP-PvP! =P

Is your guild on Silver Hand recruiting
? Entelechy is always accepting of new members of any class, level, and activity level (i.e. we won’t kick you even if you only log on twice a year). We are a fun group of people of varying backgrounds and ages (I’ll take a stab here and say our average member age is early-20s) who enjoy goofing off and hanging out in Ventrilo. You do not have to be a roleplayer but keep in mind that our guild’s roots lie in roleplaying so you should at least be respectful to those that participate in RP even if you do not yourself. If you are interested in raiding with us keep in mind that at this point we really only run Karazhan (we aim for once a week, though it doesn’t always happen) but many of our members raid higher-content with other guilds and you would be free to do so as well.

And if you want to get really nitpicky, we could use mages. Desperately. (And healers and tanks, but mostly mages.)

Anyways, if you see me on as Tawyn or Tamaryn send me a poke and I’ll toss you an invite. You can also randomly whisper someone in the guild if I am not on to see who has invite rights, usually at least one person who can invite is online.

Is your guild on The Venture Co. recruiting? No, because that guild is a small personal guild for me, my alts, and my friends and family. That may change in the future, but for the time being, no, Lunapike’s guild is not recruiting, and no, I’m not interested in leaving my mini-guild for a bigger one.

Pike's Blogroll

Hunter-Related Blogs:

Other Classes/Multi-Class/General WoW/Gaming:

If you do not see your blog here and know that you have been here in the past, it means one of two things: either your blog has moved/disappeared and I don’t know where your new one (if you have a new one) is, or you haven’t updated in a couple months. I still keep tabs on you inactive guys (<3 you all!) and if you start regularly updating again, I will re-add you to the blogroll as soon as I can! Similarly, if you have simply moved your blog, pop me off an e-mail and I will get right to it.

Questions or comments? Got a new blog you think I’d like to know about? Feel free to drop me a line: pikestaff21 [at] gmail [dot] com. I can’t guarantee that I will link to everything you suggest but I will consider each link I am sent.

When it comes to the categories, please note that if you talk about hunters but you also talk about a lot of other stuff you will be added to the “General” blogroll. If you think you have a hunter slant and I haven’t noticed or something (or vise versa), please let me know and I’ll be happy to move you to the appropriate blogroll.

Why I Play a BM Hunter

Have you ever gone somewhere without your pet? Maybe you had to go tame a new pet for skills, or maybe you were doing a quest where you took control of something else so your pet couldn’t be there (that quest chain in Blade’s Edge Mountains comes to mind)…

If you’re anything like me, going somewhere without your pet is not a pleasant experience. You feel vulnerable; incomplete, crippled even. You skitter nervously past mobs, like a mouse running through a field with hawks overhead. You are weak.

And then you see him (or her): the pet you want you want to tame. Maybe he has just the right skills you need to learn, or maybe he is just the right color and the right style. Maybe you’ve carefully done your research to decide exactly which pet you wanted to tame, or maybe this one just pops out at you and feels right.

He, like you, is vulnerable right now. His life consists of walking around in zigzags and circles and occasionally pouncing on a hapless critter. Oh he could put up a decent fight against a passing adventurer, but it would probably all be for naught– he exists so that someone can kill him and loot him for vendor trash or some random green.

You are both vulnerable. But together…

Your eyes meet and he runs at you. You’re prepared with a trap, but eventually he breaks free and bashes on you. You try to hold out just a bit longer…

And then it happens.

A flash of light and he is standing by your side. In that instant everything has changed. In that instant, neither of you are weak anymore.

There is a beautiful synergy between hunter and pet that I have been unable to find in any other class so far. Granted, I’ve never gotten another class past level 19, so perhaps I’m biased. But the fact remains that, for the time being, I’ve yet to find that synergy elsewhere in the game.

In my last post I was geeking out a little bit about crit. You know why I like crit? It’s not just so I can top the DPS meters. Oh don’t get me wrong, I love being at or near the top of the meters at the end of the instance. It means I’m doing my job and doing it well.

But this is what happens when my pet crits:
Ferocious Inspiration procs, giving a buff to everyone in my party, including myself.

And this is what happens when I crit:
My pet gets to use Kill Command
My pet gets a bunch of focus through the Go for the Throat talent.

You see that? We’re helping each other. We make each other stronger. Everytime that big blue number pops up on the screen (thanks Scrolling Combat Text) and the little alert comes up, it means I not only get to jam my Kill Command hotkey, but a bunch of pet crits are probably coming up too. Those, in turn, further strengthen me through Ferocious Inspiration. It’s a beautiful dance and it thrills me each and every time it happens.

That’s why I play hunters. That’s why, specifically, I finally settled on the Beast Mastery spec. Sure it was Uncle BRK who put the idea into my head in the first place, but it was I who had to try it out and I who had to decide if I liked it or not. It’s about more than a DPS increase. It’s about the aesthetics. It’s about the thrill of the hunt. It’s about that companionship.

Because alone, you are weak.

But together, you become stronger than either of you could have ever imagined.