My main is now level 76. I attribute most of that level to a couple of things: firstly, the fact that thanks to my job, I am perpetually rested (at this point I sincerely doubt that I will ever be un-rested for the rest of this little leveling journey), and secondly, a certain super long and super awesome questline in Dragonblight that I will not speak of in too much depth because spoilers abound. Suffice to say it was basically one of the coolest things I’ve done in this game, period. Though I do have a minor gripe with it in the form of my constantly-dying pet. Seriously, if you’re gonna throw enemies at me that hit for thousands because you’ve buffed me with ridiculous HP and health regen– at least give my pet the stamina buff too. I would’ve been happy with giving him just that, the stamina buff, and not the damage one, really. He was even dying when he was on passive and not doing anything, because they were tossing AoE around or something. I gave up on rezzing him after the sixth or seventh try and just resorted to volley spam, which wasn’t as fun, but eh.

Really though that’s just a minor gripe, it was a really neat and fun thing and my major regret was that I was disconnected and kicked from the game right at the end so I didn’t get to see the finale to the event. But yeah, awesome. So impressed with this expansion so far.

I was hoping to be able to have some stuff to write about Master’s Call but I really don’t. Really all I can sort of ascertain thus far is that it is probably best paired with a Cunning pet because if both of you are CC’d, the Cunning Pet is much more likely to be able to break out faster than another kind. Still, as many of the commenters have pointed out, its use in PvE seems to be quite limited. I could see it as being sort of a mini-trinket in PvP– “mini” because it is much more situational than the standard PvP trinket– but the only PvP I have done lately has been on my 70, Lunapike, (since it occurred to me that she is basically coincidentally “twinked” for the 61-70 AV bracket and I wanted to have some fun with that) and she doesn’t have it yet, so I haven’t been able to really test it. I will write a post on it though! …someday!

Overall I am really excited about the state of hunters in general, and especially my beloved BM hunter. It feels like we have more to keep track of than ever before, between a Bestial Wrath that is talented and glyphed down to a cooldown of almost one minute, the new cooldown-ified Kill Command, old standbys like trinkets and Rapid Fire, and Serpent Sting which I am sort of viewing as our own personal version of Faerie Fire, something that we want to constantly keep up because thanks to a certain glyph, it’s such a damage buff for us. We have a lot of things to keep track of and when you toss pet buffs like Call of the Wild and Roar of Recovery into the mix, it seems like there is always something going on improving our damage or something that we can do to improve our damage. It’s really exciting and I can see a lot of stuff to write about in the future.

Tawyn dinged 75 last night. I actually am about 25% through that level already, in no small part because I tagged along with Mr. Pike who has this knack for being able to glance at his quest log and instantly know where to go and what to do and in what order (don’t deny it, hon). So I was able to finish several quests in the space of about an hour that it would have taken me all day to do otherwise.

Have I mentioned lately that I stink at leveling? I have? Ah, never mind then. The ironic thing is that it’s probably my favorite part of the game, really.

Speaking of Mr. Pike, he’s trying to level his enchanting, so this means I get to be the lucky test subject on all his free or near-free enchants. Super Stats on chest? Yes please. +16 agi on cloak? Yes please. +38 AP to bracers? Mmm, right here baby. Icewalker on my shiny new blue boots, because their lack of hit rating makes baby Thrall cry so I need a hit enchant to appease him? Yes, very yes.

Toss my druid into the mix and it gets even better; Tamaryn is now toting around +50 Spell Power on her Hellfire Ramparts staff and +23 Spell Power on her Green-Bracers-of-the-Owl, all at the tender level of 61. I gotta say, leveling my druid is jawdroppingly easy; every few days I will hop over to her and announce “Resto druid LFG Ramps/BF/Slave Pens/Underbog”. I get a group invite within about ten seconds, and presto, 40 minutes later I’ve gotten about half a level and, satisfied, I can head back over to work on Tawyn. I’m pretty sure I’ve done a total of three actual quests since hitting level 58, the rest has all been pure instancing. It’s nice and easy and I like it. I even have people complimenting me on my healing, though we all know that’s just part of a hidden agenda to get less hunters and more healers in the LFG channel. =P

Coming up soon: a post on Master’s Call once I’ve had more time to play around with it. Hope you all have a nice weekend!

So in my last post I made a gigantically huge and horrific typo and got Longevity and Invigoration confused. Thanks Kantaro for pointing this out.

Just to be clear:

Longevity is the godly talent that I think every BM hunter should have.

Invigoration and Cobra Strikes are iffy to me at this point, and I don’t have either included in my talent build. This may change, but for now… they are not worth it.

That is all. Hopefully nobody thinks I have absolutely lost it for waxing philosophical on the virtues of a talent that I don’t even take. >.> Carry on!