Monthly Archives: July 2008

rp, screenshots, stories

I wanna cast… Magic Missile

12 Comments

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

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

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

Or so I thought.

This is Althalor:

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

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

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

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

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

Today Althalor dinged 30.

…well dang.

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

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

So I said “Forget getting the mount at level 30. I’m not getting one until I’m exalted with TB.”

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

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

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

…that sounds viable.

So I went and got the chicken mount.

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

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

pvp, stories

Return of the Grumpy Care Bear

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I was on Lunapike, my level 63 Hordie Hunter, and I was camping out in the inn in Tarren Mill because I’d been helping a friend out. At the moment though, my services weren’t required, so I’d alt+tab’d out to do some stuff.

Suddenly I heard a bunch of commotion on my screen and pulled up the game just in time to see a big red cat clawing my face out. I could barely move before I was completely demolished.

Eh, it’s Tarren Mill, it’s to be expected. So I went back to the Inn and rez’d and then alt+tab’d again.

Same story about a minute later, big red cat destroys me.

So at that point I was getting annoyed but there really wasn’t a whole lot I could do, this being my highest leveled character on that server. I started to play a little game with the guy. I’d stand in my spot in the inn, I’d see “Noodle gains Bestial Wrath” and “Noodle gains Dash” in my combat log, Noodle the kitty would run into the inn… and I would log out. I can only imagine the confusion on poor hunter’s face when his big red kittycat came running back to him emptyhanded.

I did that a couple times and thought it was immensely hilarious until one of these times I logged in and the hunter himself was standing in my spot waiting for me, and I got demolished.

Okay, this was all getting super annoying, and at this point I was having to wait around in Ghost Form to rez because I’d died so many times in such a short period of time. So I figured I’d head out of there. Which was in and of itself a major pain, because even my Frostwolf Howler is apparently no match for Concussive Shot + Intimidation + Full S2 Hunter, and I died another two or three times on my way out.

Now it was around this point that I think the other people at Tarren Mill were getting annoyed too because they started disappearing and higher levels started showing up. Mr. AnnoyingHunterGuy left somewhere around this time, headed south, and we all made a group to go track him down.

We didn’t see him anywhere, though.

But whaddaya do when you’re in a group full of ticked off Hordies whose lowbie alts just got camped into oblivion?

You raid Southshore, that’s what.

We leveled the place. I mean, completely leveled. There were no NPCs left. There were no quest givers left. The poor level 30-ish Alliance that got caught in the crossfire? Rest in peace. They can thank AnnoyingHunterGuy and Noodles.

Now the respawn rate on the guards was super fast and we were just killing them over and over. So I was figuring the Alliance World Defense must have been exploding with “Southshore is under attack!” which is why I was expecting the Alliance Response Team to show up and put an end to our shenanigans. See, I say that as somebody with experience about the other side. I always have WorldDefense on, and if Tawyn sees “Southshore is under attack” more than a couple times and she isn’t in Outlands, she pulls out her PvP gear and hops on her gryphon– you’d better believe she does. Usually she shows up right around the same time as five or six other similarly-minded people and we successfully defend our town.

But you know what, on this server, it never happened. The Alliance Counterattack I was waiting for never came. Every so often a single level 70 would pop up and they would quickly get killed. That was about it. AnnoyingHunterGuy never even came back (although he did /yell something at us in the middle of it, so you know he was somewhere and knew what was going on– he just never came out to fight us.)

So after about twenty minutes of having Southshore firmly under Horde control we left not because the Alliance came to take care of us, but because we just got bored.

Victory for us!

So there you have it. Has Pike crossed over to the dark side? Gonna go around ganking and camping lowbies on a regular basis? Nah. I still like /hugs for the most part.

But revenge is sweet.

The best part of the entire night though?

Now I’ve had people make alts on servers specifically to say hello to me, but I can only think of a few cases where people who already live on that server recognize me. Makes me feel special. <3 And to Mr. Moonkin who asked me that, if you are reading, ’twas fun! =D

guides, hunter kindergarten, pets, screenshots, so you want to play a hunter

So You Want to Play a Hunter? Part 4

7 Comments

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

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

Talent Points:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pets:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When I first got there, the dinosaur I wanted to tame was level eleven, and I was level ten. And, as you may or may not know, you can only tame pets that are your level or lower. So I grinded myself up a level on the random critters running around Durotar, managed to tame a rare

Scorpion while I was at it and nab myself Claw 2, and finally abandoned him so I could tame my new dinosaur:

So cute!

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

As always… leave me your comments and questions!

screenshots

Guys…

8 Comments

Thanks.

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

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

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

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

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

Uncategorized

In Which Pike Deviates From Her Usual Positive Outlook…

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Okay guys, I know this is super out-of-character for me, but it’s gnawing at my mind and chewing a pit in my stomach and I’m hoping that by sharing it with you guys, maybe I’ll feel a little better.

My guild is dying. And I don’t know what to do.

Some of you may remember all the past victories of our guild, because I wrote about them so proudly. How we gained so many members, so fast. How we did so many heroics and eventually these turned into weekly Karazhan runs. We were progressing. We were dangit. We were many. We were legion.

Then the boyfriend got busy with life-stuff and gave the guild to me. And at that exact same time my job decided to schedule me mostly afternoons/evenings from here on out. And at that exact same time, a bunch of the guild regulars… the people who had been there forever… started to slowly drift away. They left for bigger guilds. Or they left to play alts on other servers. Or they simply went on WoW hiatus.

And here we are today; this once mighty guild is hemorrhaging members. Karazhan runs? Unheard of. That was something we used to do. These days we’re lucky if we can scrape together five or six people once a month or so to get in there with PuGs to fill us out, and we get stuck at Opera. Opera. This is not the I once knew. This is not the scrappy group of friends that fought our way tenaciously through Medivh’s tower, on our own, without the help of bigger guilds. This is not “THUNDERCATS HO” before Shade of Aran. This is not people affectionately calling me “Tawtaw” and cheeking with me, “I don’t care if it’s immune to traps, trap it anyway.” This is not “FIVE SECONDS TO EVOCATE!!”

Not anymore. What went wrong? I don’t know.

On the rare days that I can bring myself to log in to Silver Hand, I deal with more people who are leaving or contemplating leaving, because it is very clear that the guild is dying, or at least changing drastically. It hurts. I don’t blame them for leaving, not at all. But you think about how before you become GM, there would be 15 people all online, all doing stuff and chatting up a storm in Ventrilo, and now you’re GM and you’re lucky if there’s five people on… and nothing is going on, and the atmosphere is gloomy… and it makes you think. What am I doing wrong? Did I do anything wrong, or was it simply bad timing?

I’d give the guild away because I clearly do not have the time or energy to be GM, and maybe somebody else can salvage it… but there’s hardly anybody left to give the guild to.

/gdisband? I’ve thought about it. Yep, I’m confessing it: I’ve thought about it. Perhaps it is necessary, like putting down a dying creature. But I don’t know if I could ever bring myself to do that. Not this group of friends. Not this family. That was what we called ourselves, back in the day. We weren’t just a guild. We were family. Combine that with the vague hope in the back of my mind that maybe it’s just a rough patch we’re going through, maybe we’ll come back with a vengeance in Wrath of the Lich King… I don’t know if I could bring myself to type out the command.

But in the meantime I have to put up with a heavy heart everytime I log in and see more people leaving or confiding with me that they are thinking about leaving, and see more half-hearted Karazhan runs getting canceled for lack of interest. It’s painful, this hole in my heart is. And no Heavy Netherweave Bandage is gonna fix it anytime soon.

Though admittedly, writing it all down has made me feel better. The wounds are still there, yeah… but I don’t feel quite so alone.

(Note to any guildies/ex-guildies that may possibly be reading: I <3 you all and I am not in anyway upset with anybody, or laying the blame on anybody. Too much happened at the wrong time, I think. I hope. If it was somehow my fault… I apologize.)

stories, thoughts

Give a hunter a fish…

6 Comments

…and he can feed his cat once. Teach him to fish, and he can feed his cat for a lifetime!

…okay, so that’s not really how the saying goes, but I’m sure you’ve all heard it and know what it means.

I am here to talk about why I blog about hunters, and why I make “hunter kindergarten” posts, and things like that.

I try my best to write readable and easily-understandable Hunter How-To Posts because I think that there is a very big category of hunters out there that fall between the category of “good hunter” and “huntard.” These are the people that are spec’d something cookie-cutter like 41/20/0, have gear that is at least mostly correct (no spell hit gems or shammy gear *shudder* … but maybe going too overboard with one stat or something), and yet do not know why they are doing these things.

I have been in heroics with hunters who show up with a solid spec and a solid set of gear and then they start tossing random Aimed Shots into their non-existent rotation and Serpent Sting stuff they should be trapping. I’ve seen hunters that use the Auto/Steady macro and have no idea WHY it does so much DPS, they just know that it DOES, so they spam it, maybe with a bow that is several speeds too slow.

Now do I have anything against these hunters? Of course not, I was there once too, and I’m sure I’m still there in some aspects. That is why I write what I write, and that is why I advocate hunters learning to weave their shots manually before switching to the macro (if they choose to do so)… because it’s all about the foundation.

I’ll never forget how surprised I was one day when this story happened: I popped into game and four of my guildies were in a Heroic. I asked who the fifth member was, and they said a PuG’d hunter. I asked how the hunter was doing (I tend to ask that… I’m curious), but instead of the typical answers, which are always either “He sucks” or more often “He’s okay, but…[something]”, they told me “She’s actually really good.”

I got into Ventrilo and popped into their channel just to listen in, and chat a little. I had just got my Choco-Bow and mentioned how fluid it made my shot rotations, and the PuG’d hunter said “Hey, what shot rotation do you use, if you don’t mind me asking?”

… /blinkblink

Another hunter was actually asking me about shot rotations. And we actually had an intelligent hunter conversation about them.

MADNESS, I tell you!

That’s never happened to me before outside of blogs. I’ve had a lot of people come up to me in game and ask me for shot rotation advice, which I have always very happily given those who ask… but actually having a little discussion about it was new.

Since then, that incident has stuck in my mind, and it reminds me about why I write. Because incidents like that should not be as rare as they are. I shouldn’t have to be surprised when my guildies say they PuG’d not just an okay hunter, but a very good one. I shouldn’t have to be taken aback when somebody wants to discuss shot rotations with me.

I’m part of the “WoW Noobs” community over at Livejournal, where I can give advice to newer players (Heck, if you look back far enough, you can find a level 20 me asking what the meeting stone outside Deadmines is for), and I’ve noticed that new players are attracted to the hunter class like a magnet. This means that we, as hunters, have a big responsibility. Learn why you are spec’d what you are spec’d. Why you’ve picked one talent over another. Learn why your shot rotation is your shot rotation. Then, pass it on.

“But Pike, if everyone is a good hunter, won’t that put you out of a job?” Maybe, but teaching-for-make-benefit-glorious-class-of-hunters is more important. Besides, I seem to have lucked out and I currently hold a monopoly on the hunter class in my guild. It’s true, almost all of the other 70 hunters in my guild either /gquit, permanently started playing non-hunter alts, or disappeared entirely. It’s really kind of odd and I’m not sure whether that’s says good or bad things about me, but… hey. >.>

talents, wrath of the lich king

The Future

6 Comments

Edit: Good news for my non-BM hunter friends, it appears WoWHead was wrong and it has now been fixed… all hunters can get the “final tier” talents now.

WoWHead has the WotLK pet talents up.

See all those lovely talents along the bottom there?

Can’t get ’em unless you’ve got 51 points in Beast Mastery.

I think spec’ing anything OTHER than BM in the expansion would drive my OCD-ness up the wall. “You mean I can’t get those bottom talents for Tux? *claws at desk*”

But on the other hand, I keep looking at the WotLK hunter talent tree and thinking about all the new hybrid possibilities now. I’m talkin’ about the potential to have Serpent’s Swiftness and the Super Trap talents from Survival. Or heck, Serpent’s Swiftness and Trueshot Aura in an unholy union. Or Expose Weakness, Trueshot Aura, Ranged Weapon Specialization, Improved Barrage, and some points in Master Marksman.

Of course, the big question is whether these potential hybrid builds will ever outclass the new talents. But I find it so very, very interesting to think about…

Anyways! I’m sure many of you are sick of hearing about WotLK, and I do find all the news kind of overwhelming myself. So! I will go back to concentrating on playing my current characters and writing about them (as best as I can anyway; I’ve been thinking about the ramifications of having a bunch of out-dated guides on my blog… the good news, though, is that there will always be new hunters who always need Hunter Kindergarten posts. At least, I hope so, between all the Death Knights.)

druid, movies

Foshizzywhatsy?

13 Comments

I have three things of interest to say in this post.

Firstly, this is my 200th blog post. I would wax nostalgic here and give a nice long speech about it, but I’m saving that for my one-year-blogoversary next month! Thank you, though, to all you crazy people that visit here every day.

Secondly, somebody got to my blog via the search term: “warcraft hunters why do you think you’re special?” Well, Googler, the long answer is here. The short answer is “Because we are. Durr.”

Thirdly, something is afoot among the druid community. I did my very best to defend my huntery honor in the Great Foshizzle Debate of 2008, and I maintain that Massive Quantities of Sustained Ranged Foshizzle is how it is best dished. But my level 40 druidling was very impressed by the unification of her fuzzy, feathery, and leafy comrades, so much so that she decided to show her own personal Foshizzleness against the baddest of the baddies: Edwin VanCleef himself. With only a level 11 priest (the alt of another druid, of course) by her side, Tamaryn ventured into that big scary boat and defended her honor.

Bear, Bell, Awlbiste, and all you other druid bloggers out there, this is for you… from the huntard with love.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmlM90fPezE&hl=en&fs=1]

(Disclaimer: if you didn’t understand the last paragraph, it’s okay. /pat)

guides, hunter kindergarten, movies, so you want to play a hunter, Uncategorized

So You Want to Play a Hunter? Part 3

11 Comments

So you’ve hit level 6 and you’ve got Arcane Shot. Great! This will make it easier for you to kill stuff before it gets to you. Now there seems to be some confusion, I think, involving when to use Arcane Shot. In all honesty, I don’t think there is a set “best rotation” for Arcane Shot in the low-levels. But the basics that you want to know is that you don’t want to use it too much, because it will eat up your mana and pull aggro away from your pet pretty easily. It does, however, round out most of the skills you will be using pre-level-62.

Hunter’s Mark is the other thing you learn at level 6. There is some debate over whether Hunter’s Mark is worth the mana. In my mind, it is: it provides a sizable DPS boost (particularly over time), and if you are spec’d for Improved Hunter’s Mark, it boosts your pet’s attack power by a significant amount, too. Think of it this way: if you are a Beast Master or Survival hunter, Improved Hunter’s Mark is basically like your own mini-Trueshot-Aura. And if you are Marksman, it’s more of the goodness! Rank 4 Hunter’s Mark is going to give you an extra 110 AP and the more you shoot it, the higher that bonus rises (for ranged only). Pike’s verdict: learn to use and love Hunter’s Mark.

Typical Lowbie Hunter Rotation:
-Hunter’s Mark
-Serpent Sting Opener
-Auto Shot until the mob is dead, throw in an Arcane Shot every so often to speed things up.

That’s really all there is to it. Before you have a pet, you are most advised to use your Arcane Shot whenever you can, though.

If you are looking into doing more PvP than PvE, Arcane Shot is going to become basically the cornerstone of your life and everything you hold dear, but us more-PvE types typically love our Steady Shot more.

And now you’ve hit level 8. And you’ve got Concussive Shot. Your mission, if you choose to accept it: put your kiting skills to the test and learn how to jump-shot-kite.

Jump Shot Kiting is accomplished by jumping, turning, shooting, and then turning back and landing, while moving. Sound complicated? It is, and it’s difficult at first, but if you practice a little, you will soon have the hang of it. It’s a little hard to describe through writing, so I’ve made a movie:

I don’t know if it is the clearest or most helpful movie, so let me know if you need clarification! Also, I have decided that Hellfire Peninsula is perhaps not the best place to hold many of these videos in the future, because over the overwhelming… red…ness… yeah. Note to self: Nagrand next time.

Well, congratulations, you have (hopefully) mastered the art of playing sans-pet. /diploma

And that’ll do it for this week’s installment of SYWtPaH. (pronounced Suit-paw…? Perhaps!) Be sure to join us next week when we go on a crazy pet-taming adventure!

pets, screenshots

Finally

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

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

I love pets.

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

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