All posts by Pike

non-wow

The Cute and Cuddly Beasts Within

11 Comments

First of all, a shout-out to the authors of Troll on a Powerbook and One Among Many, for becoming the fourth and fifth people, respectively, to roll alts on my server to say hello. All of you guys flatter me, really, and I still sort of can’t understand it– I don’t find myself very interesting at all, and I’m even less interesting when I’m talking in real-time, because I can be pretty shy. But thank you anyway. I’m quite a lucky hunter. (I’m also getting to be quite the enchanted-out hunter, and thus quite the broke hunter… but that’s another story.)

In my recent “essay” on the Beast Mastery spec, Faradhim asked me if I have pets in real life. As a matter of fact… yes I do:


These are my guinea pigs Reno and Vincent. (First person to figure out where their names are from, and then deduce which is which because of it, gets a big ol’ cookie. Turns out I name my real-life pets the same way I name my pets in WoW… always a hidden meaning.)

Reno and Vincent have been living with me for the past couple of years. They are intelligent, mischievous, and also possibly the most spoiled guinea pigs on the planet. You see, I work at a pet store. (Yes, that’s right, the hunter works at a pet store!) Specifically, I work in the pet care/small animal department. This means that I not only spend most of my time working with and handling fish and small critters, but I also get to stock the shelves in my department with all the new goodies that come in. And the whole time I’m doing it I’m thinking “Oh my gosh, they would LOVE this new treat… oooh, and that one too…” and then I come home with a bunch of snacks for them and they don’t eat half of it.

At least they’ve gotten a little less picky lately.

They’ve caught onto my sleeping schedule and decided that maybe if they start making noise before my alarm goes off, they will get fed earlier. Cue lots of squeaking at 4:30am, every morning. Fortunately I am prepared, with earplugs! Bwahaha.

They have also decided that merely eating their food out of their bowl is not exciting enough, and it’s much more fun to eat food off of the floor of their cage. So they wedge their head under the bowl, and then when you least expect it… BAM. Bowl goes flying, food goes flying, and the guinea pigs are happy and Pike has to grab the vacuum again.

I can’t help but love them though. And I wouldn’t want to get on their bad side… I don’t know if I’d want to deal with the wrath of a Big Red Guinea Pig anytime soon.

instances, stories

Good Hunters go to Heaven, Except They Don't Die

15 Comments

So I had the rather, um, unique experience yesterday of surviving a wipe. Basically it goes like this:

We were in Black Morass, which none of us had ever done before. This is a very… unusual instance. It consists of you running around killing bosses and other non-boss big elites, while trying to prevent wave after wave of mob from getting to Medivh. Very intense.

Anyways, we were about halfway through and doing okay, for it being everyone’s first try. I was on add-duty, so while everybody else focused on the elites I got to run around with Track Dragonkin up, making sure nobody was trying to sneak past. Anyways to make a long story short, we were busy on one of the bosses and then it happened. Tank died. Warlock died. Rogue died. Healer died. …hunter and pet are running around attacking the growing number of adds. I was fully expecting to die any second, but… nope. You see, I hadn’t touched the boss at all because I’d been focusing on adds. So I had no threat when it came to him, so he wasn’t touching me.

Furthermore, the adds weren’t mobbing me because they were all focused on Medivh. I was able to run around and pick them off one at a time– or at least make a futile attempt to do so before Medivh’s shield fell.

Medivh’s shield was, in fact, falling faster and faster and suddenly I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be trying. Maybe I should die while his shield was still up… maybe then we wouldn’t have to start over?

I said in party chat: “Hey guys, I’m still alive”.

Party Chat: “…”

Me: “Am I supposed to die?”

Party: “Is Medivh’s shield falling?”

Me: “Yeah”

Party Chat: “Yeah… maybe dying would be a good idea…”

Okay, suicide. I can do that easily enough. I ran up to the boss they were fighting before and fired an arrow at him. Boss yells something out and charges at me and hits me for a lot of HP, but I was still hanging in there. I braced myself for the final blow…

And then he disappeared.

Medivh’s shield had fallen and so all the bad guys had disappeared.

Everyone had wiped and I’d ran up and shot an elite dragon boss in the face and yet my pet and I were still standing, battered, but alive.

Let me tell ya, I never thought I’d see the day where I could say that.

As for the instance, we tried a few more times unsuccessfully (the instance does in fact reset) and then decided we would call it a night and come back later when we needed the Kara key and when our tank was better geared. (Very good tank… needs better gear.)

I think it’s starting to turn into a joke among my guildies that I have this mysterious tendency to survive wipes. I am perfectly fine with that reputation.

Uncategorized

About the Author

2 Comments

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.

Uncategorized

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.

stories

Why I Play a BM Hunter

26 Comments

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.

gear, instances

Tawyn's a Happy Hunter

8 Comments

To start out with an update on my custom avatars; basically I’ve looked into it and I’ve run into some problems involving the legality of selling them because they’re renditions of Blizzard’s property. Yes, you could argue that I’m just a small little bug compared to their big corporation, but I dunno, I’ve been big Blizz fans since my StarCraft obsession phase almost ten years ago so I’d like to play it safe when it comes to my relationship with them. =P

I did get a lot of interest in my avatars though and I’m still sort of trying to come up with a way to offer them without making them entirely free, simply because while I’d love to give them away for free, the fact of the matter is that it takes a few hours to make each one and it’d be difficult to squeeze them into my time. One of my ideas is maybe setting up a little charitable drive, sort of like The Bronze Kettle did, only not on as big a scale. But I’ll keep brainstorming and keep you guys updated. If you were interested in an avatar I apologize for keeping you waiting on any final decisions.

Anyways, let’s discuss WoW.

Yesterday, I ran both Steamvaults and Shadow Labs.

Steamvaults dropped a very nice [Beast Lord Mantle] for me, which I promptly gem’d up and threw a Scryer inscription on.

Shadow Labs… well, I was praying to the hunter gods for Sonic Spear, especially because our motley crew had to endure several hours of pain in this particular instance (we went through three different tanks, one of which decided to leave the party without saying a word… and Grandmaster Vorpil… oh Grandmaster Vorpil… *shudders* … we wiped on this guy no less than five times)… so yeah, Sonic Spear would’ve been an awesome consolation prize but it appears that the hunter gods have more Shadow Labs runs for me in the future. I did, however, get the first fragment of the Kara key.

So! Not content with that outcome, I headed to the Auction House and bought myself both [Breastplate of Rapid Striking] and [Crystalforged War Axe]. Then I bought all the mats for Savagery and got the latter enchanted with that. My wallet is getting pretty thin and I’ve got some farming ahead of me but mmm. My un-buffed agility is now 434 and my crit is 18.85%. You should see me with Mark of the Wild and Blessing of Kings. Mmmmm. *eyes glaze over*

Ahem, sorry.

I think I’m doing okay for a pre-Kara hunter. I’m slowly replacing my greens with blues and getting enchants for them. Expensive? Yeah. Worth it when I open up my character sheet and see my stats? Oh yeah.

I’ve got more Steamvaults and Shadow Labs runs ahead of me, because I’d like the other piece of Beast Lord that you can get in SV (decreased trap cooldown… mmm hunter gear is yummy, no?), and because I’d still like Sonic Spear if I can nab it.

Oh, and /wave at Mirshalak and Pelides, both of whom have now made characters on Silver Hand to say hello! I owe you both a visit on your servers now. =P

Since I’m getting more visitors that way, I figured it’d be good to mention a few things. Firstly you are more than welcome to say hi to me and chat it up with me, so long as I’m not in battlegrounds or an instance. =D If I’m bored or not doing much I’ll even come find you “in person” and we can have a little visit.

If you would like to make a more dedicated alt on Silver Hand, to try out RPing or whatever, I should mention that while our guild Entelechy is usually open to anyone interested in having a good time with some fun (and just a bit weird) people, doing some instances, and casual roleplaying, our recruitment is sort of semi-closed at the moment due largely to rapid growth and wanting to concentrate on our current members, so I can’t guarantee you a spot in the guild if you’re interested in one. Besides, very, very few people in my guild know I have this blog anyway. Partially ’cause I’ve never really had a reason to bring it up, and partially because there are a lot of very good players in my guild, both hunters and non-hunters, and I wouldn’t want to steal anybody’s limelight by being “the one with the blog”. Heehee =P

Oh, and you are also more than welcome to try and catch me horde-side on The Venture Co. as well. My main character there is Lunapike, and I play her a few times a week, usually in the mornings. The Venture Co. seems to have more RP going on than Silver Hand (admittedly, Silver Hand isn’t exactly known as a mecca for RP), so you might want to try that out if you’re curious.

Today’s question that I pose to you: where do you do your farming? …and no, you don’t have to give away your super-secret location to me, if you don’t want to. =P

guides, pvp

Hunter vs. Hunter 101

6 Comments

Thanks for all the input on my last entry, regarding my custom avatars. I’ll think about it some more; I’m sort of short on time these days, but I’m also short on money… so yeah! I’ll be thinking about it. Thanks for all the feedback, I will definitely take all of your opinions and requests into consideration. I do want to stress that I’m not turning this blog into any sort of corporate showing-off-my-PayPal-button scheme. If I were to offer my avatars for sale it would probably be a limited-time-only thing. Because writing guides and telling stories is what I do best so that will always be the primary purpose of this site.

Anyways: Here is a story/guide combo (two for one!):

Earlier this morning I was in Stranglethorn Vale with my level 34 hordie. For those of you who are new or haven’t been following; I’ve got my 70 Alliance hunter on an RP-PvE server, and a 34 (well, now 35… but 34 this morning) Horde hunter on an RP-PvP server.

Because this character is on a PvP server I’ve been explicitly avoiding STV for the most part, but I do want to do the Nesingwary Expedition “Mastery” quests that culminate in good hunter stuff.

So there I was, level 34 and searching around for panthers, and I saw this level 38 Alliance hunter out of the corner of my eye. I figured I would ignore him, hoping he would leave me alone. But nope, a couple minutes later he springs on me and attacks me.

I beat him.

I threw on a bandage and ate some food, and then resumed questing. I’m too much of a carebear to do any corpse camping or /dancing or the like. Besides, it’s just not good form! Anyways, a couple minutes later, he comes back. He attacks me again, opening with Aimed Shot. Again, he lost.

…to make a long story short he attacked me no less than five times, and all five times he lost to me.

Now I won’t deny it: it felt really, really good to know that I had consistently outperformed a hunter who was four levels higher than me and whose pet was at least five levels higher than mine (my poor kitty got kind of behind because I was working on another pet for a while.) Especially because he was always the one initiating combat, he always got the first shot off, and more than once it was Aimed Shot.

But I’m not one to sit around and simply be proud of myself (although as I said, it felt durn good), so I’ve thought of some mistakes that I either know he made, or think he probably made, which prevented him from winning. And I’m posting them here because hopefully they will be of some help to a newer hunter! =D

For the record, I can’t find this guy’s spec because Armory has been weird all morning. Or I would do a spec/gear comparison. So this is all based on my observation and hunches:

For Starters:

Buffs: I had both Aspect of the Hawk up, as well as Mark of the Wild which a passing druid had given me not too long before all the combat happened. I don’t recall the other guy having Aspect of the Hawk up, though it’s possible I just wasn’t paying attention. Aspect of the Hawk will buff your ranged attack power. It’s good to have. Mark of the Wild is a fantastic buff. Druids who put it on me and especially on my pet, make me happy. (Thorns on the pet makes me happy too.)

Hunter’s Mark: I have a Hunter’s Mark/Pet Attack combo button. This means that my pet and I are never attacking something without Hunter’s Mark on it. The guy I was dueling never once put Hunter’s Mark on me. Hunter’s Mark is going to buff your ranged attack power and if you have Improved Hunter’s Mark it’s going to buff your pet’s attack power… and on this particular character, I’d thrown a point into IHM before starting down the Beast Mastery tree, so I had that going for me.

As a bonus… and actually maybe this is just me, but I’m going to say it anyway… I honestly find nothing scarier in battlegrounds than a Hunter’s Mark suddenly appearing above my head, followed by seeing a flash of a big red pet out of the corner of my eye. Because I know what’s coming. *shudders*

Rapid Fire: This is the biggie. Rapid Fire increases your firing speed by 40% for 15 seconds. I love using this against other hunters, because it seems to me that other hunters often forget to use it in a duel or in PvP. It has a pretty big cooldown (which can be decreased a little through a talent in the Marksman tree, Rapid Killing), so I was only able to use it… twice, I think, throughout the course of our five spars. But it makes a huge difference. Faster damage = good, in the case of fights like this.

Trapping: He could have trapped my pet, but he didn’t. To be fair, he did Feign Death each time to get out of it, but I quickly sic’d Alyosha right back on him. But remember that if you are facing a higher level hunter and the pet is big and red, well, there’s not a whole lot you can do CC wise to him.

Knowing When to Use Your Shots: He kept using Concussive Shot on me even though I obviously wasn’t going anywhere, and he wasn’t going anywhere, so it really didn’t make any difference if my movement speed was slowed. Now, maybe he had Improved Concussive Shot and he was hoping the stun would proc. Even so, I don’t think it’s worth it in a one on one duel of this nature. Also, using something like Aimed Shot or Steady Shot in the middle of your fight generally isn’t a good idea. It’s better to spam autos, Arcane, and Multi, and Serpent Sting really doesn’t hurt, especially if you’re a lower level and it’s really all you’ve got… Viper Sting is fun against casters, pallies, and yeah, other hunters. Especially if it’s in battlegrounds and so might be a longer fight than a one-on-one.

Have your Pet on the Other Hunter, Not on Their Pet: I see this a lot in duels actually. We sic our pets on each other. I feign death to get out of it. The other hunter’s pet is set to defensive so he starts attacking my pet. This means that his pet is not focused on me and it’s not really helping him out any. Be careful for this; in the heat of the battle (and the initial “surprise!” of me popping back to life… at least, I know it still always gives me a little jolt when another hunter does it), you might not notice that your pet is engaged on my pet and not on me. My own pet, personally, is almost always set on Passive. (Exceptions are when I am running lowbies through things… my strategy here is shoot everything once, and then have my pet wipe up the resulting mess… or when I’m grinding and I know it’s okay for my pet to jump from mob to mob if he has aggro on a lot of them.)

Other Stuff: If you have trinkets that buff your attack power, etc. then use them. If you have time before the fight starts to turn Growl off, do that; your pet won’t need it.

There were also other special circumstances that are somewhat less controllable that gave me an edge. For example, my character is a tauren. I have a passive racial increasing my health by 5%. I also have 5/5 Endurance Training on that character, that’s another 5% more health. Some of the better gear I’ve got on that character right now come from PvP rewards; more stamina. So I probably had a better chance than a lot of other people at my level just because of that.

And lastly, I can’t deny that I’ve already got a level 70 hunter that I PvP with on a regular basis, so there’s always the experience factor.

Anyways! In my experience, a lot of hunter vs. hunter fights turn into tests of gear, stamina, and, in the ca

se of higher-level BM hunters… whoever doesn’t have Beastial Wrath on cooldown. So you have to look elsewhere to get the edge. Remember your buffs, remember your trinkets, remember Rapid Fire… remember you have a few different ways to avoid the other hunter’s pet, and remember that they do, also… and with luck you’ll come out ahead! As a closing note, I’d like to stress that this is just a very basic guide. There are a lot of little rules and nuances when it comes to PvP, and to be honest my hunter-vs.-hunter strategy will change depending on their spec and my mood.

Next on PvPing With Pike: Etiquette, taboos, and silly things that probably only Pike does! Stay tuned.

Uncategorized

Wow. Part 2.

13 Comments

So this morning I woke up, feeling horribly sick with (yet another) flu-type-thing, and stumbled over to my computer and hit the “Next” button on my Firefox toolbar, which brings me to my unread blog entries.

BRK pops up with some of my pictures on it.

Now you’ve gotta understand, it was about 5 AM and I was sick and it took a while for me to register what I was seeing. “Oh look, BRK… oh look my pics… yawn… snore… WAITAMINUTE.”

So aside from the fact that BRK is like the WoW version of Slashdot and caused a mass flood of newcomers to my humble abode, he requested some of my UberCute WoW Character Portraits (TM).

Telling BRK that you’re not going to make him some pictures is like telling Linus Torvalds that you aren’t going to build him a Linux distribution. Not to mention, I’ve been itching to draw the BRK duo for a while. So of course I accepted the challenge:

Big Red Kitty: Bringing You Massive Quantities of Sustained Ranged Pewpew Since 2006

Turned out pretty good I think. Entirely mouse-drawn in the GIMP because I currently don’t have a working scanner or one of those fancy-tablet things, so it all had to be done by mouse.

Anyways, BRK suggested to me that some other people might be interested in having their WoW characters UberCute-ified as well, and that I could possibly take commissions on them… afterall, as much as I would love to do these for free, the fact of the matter is that each one takes a good few hours to do. (BRK’s admittedly took a bit longer because I made a few different versions.)

So what I’m asking here is… if I were to charge something small like $5 or $10 to make you an UberCute version of your favorite WoW toon, would you be interested? If I get enough interest, I’ll definitely set up a PayPal button or something, and we can get the proverbial ball rolling! (And if I only get a few takers, we’ll figure something out too!)

And of course, all opinions on whether this would be a good or bad idea are welcome too.

goals, lists

Wow.

11 Comments

Somebody made a character on Silver Hand to say hi to me (and give roleplaying a shot)! I’m quite honored. I’ve gotta thank you all again for your comments and support. It never ceases to amaze me that I’ve got an actual readership, especially because I started this blog mostly to have a place to ramble to myself and provide occasional advice to newbies.

Speaking of which, I’m going to try and provide more guides and “newbie advice”. I’ll definitely keep posting stories and anecdotes though, since a lot of people seem to enjoy them. But I’ll try to sprinkle some guides in here and there too.

Anyways! Level 70. I have to admit, the first few days I actually seemed to come down with an odd case of a Post-70-Funk; that is to say, this whole time I’ve been looking forward to 70 and I had all this stuff I wanted to do at 70, and then I got there and after the initial excitement wore out, I thought about the stuff I’d wanted to do and none of it sounded appealing anymore. However, I think it might have just been some exhaustion over the whole thing; because now after some rest I’m quite happy about being 70 again and I’ve made some goals to work on:

– Grinding marks/honor in PvP: For the Gladiator’s Pursuit set. Yes, it’s just the infamous “welfare epics”, but they are definitely not a bad start to a good set of PvP gear. I’ve already snagged myself Gladiator’s Chain Helm and I’m working to complete the set and get them all gem’d and enchanted up.

– Karazhan Key Quest Line: I’ve started this one already, got some instances ahead of me though.

– Getting Enchants and Stuff: The ever-so-illustrious BRK posted a list of good post-70 pre-Kara gear and enchants. Now I’m probably not going to follow this list 100% to the book but it’s definitely going to be my guide for the time being– and yes I want to work to get the enchants even on my fresh-out-of-Outlands-greens, because I want to be prepared to do my best if asked. First on my list is Glyph of Ferocity, which requires Revered with Cenarion Expedition. I lucked out here in that a.) I loved Zangarmarsh and spent huge amounts of time here; b.) I ran Underbog more than any other Outlands instance; and c.) I still have a lot of Cenarion Expedition quests to do in Blade’s Edge and elsewhere. And I’m already halfway through Honored. So hopefully this one won’t take too long.

– Work on getting Sonic Spear: My Survivalist’s Pike with +25 agi has served me long and well but it’s about time for an upgrade.

– Last but not least, Leveling the Pets: Tux is level 66 and Locke is level 68. I’m rather proud of my ability to at least keep them decently close in level with me in the final stretch, though obviously I’d like to get them both to 70. I figure I can do a lot of pet leveling while working on some of my other goals, such as the rep grinding/quests.

I’ve probably got some other stuff to do, but this is the list for the time being! Posted here so I can keep track of them… =P

Do any of you have any other advice for a newly-minted level 70 hunter? Or a newly-minted level 70 in general?

ding, screenshots, stories

Storytime

19 Comments

Gather round, and I will tell you all a story… (I apologize for the length!)

Way back in May, when I was finishing up university, my boyfriend installed WoW.

…now there was absolutely no way I was going to let him do this without me, so the next day I installed it too.

A few hours later, there I was, looking at the character creation screen…

Me: “Ooooh, Tauren are so cute!! I must make one!!”

The Boyfriend: “Erm, I’m playing Alliance, so you’ll have to also if you want to play with me.”

Me: “Oh. Darn. Well let’s see here. Oooh, Night Elves. They had a pretty cool backstory in Warcraft III. Look, I can even make one with teal hair. My favorite color! *squee* Now for class. Hmm. Oooh, hunter. That sounds sorta like my favorite D&D class, ranger.”

*click*

And thus Tawyn was born.

I spawned as a little level one Night Elf Hunter in Teldrassil and I had no idea what was going on. I clicked on all the little tutorials that popped up, reading them carefully and trying not to forget what they said. “The little gold chalice button is the Quest Log.” “People with a big yellow exclamation point above their head have stuff for you to do.” “Right click to attack.” It was all very confusing. I couldn’t keep a lot of the aspects of this strange new game straight. I found a cute little bunny hopping around and I wanted to select it… so I right-clicked. It died. I felt horrible. The camera angle kept doing strange things, and I had no idea how to change it.

But oh, look, a guy with a big yellow exclamation point above his head! That means he has stuff for me to do, right? He’s telling me to go kill boars. Whee, I’ll go shoot them!

So I did. But then they ran towards me and I couldn’t shoot them anymore. So I whacked away furiously with my dagger, spamming the attack button because I thought that was how you did it. Then I went back triumphantly to get my very first quest reward. I chose some mail gear because it had the most armor so it was obviously the best one. Then I spent about ten minutes trying to figure out why I couldn’t equip it.

Those first few quests weren’t so bad, even though I was still clueless about the game. But around level 4 or so, I found a cave full of spiders and that was a terrible, terrible place. Those spiders killed me more times than I can count. There was another place called “Starbreeze Village” which was filled with cute teddy bears! They killed me too. Hmm.

So by level 6 I was getting pretty discouraged and I was wondering how the heck I was supposed to get to wherever my boyfriend the human warlock was because it didn’t seem to be anywhere in the vicinity. Plus, I’d found a Peacebloom which I wanted to give to him as a present because it was really pretty. So one of my sisters decided to make a level 1 character on my server and show me the way!

Off we went. We rode gryphons and boats and died at the hands of crocodiles and ogres. My sister kept stopping and telling me to talk to strange NPCs with green exclamation marks above their heads. I had no idea why I was doing this, but I did anyway.

Eventually we got to Ironforge and rode a curious little subway thing to Stormwind. I was completely lost but I followed my sister around because she seemed to know what she was doing. I eventually found my boyfriend and opened trade with him to give him my present. But…

Trial accounts cannot trade.

…there was only one thing to do. I bought the game. And gave him the Peacebloom.

So there I was, level 6 and in Stormwind. And– oooh, look that guy’s weapon is all fiery! Mental note to get that someday, whatever it is– I began questing in Goldshire. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience. Murlocs killed me mercilessly and despite the fact that I thought I was pretty handy with my dagger, spamming that attack button and all, I didn’t seem to be doing very well. I rolled my very first alt, a tauren (they’re cute darnit!) druid, and it was a lot more fun. You mean I can cast spells at people and heal? So much cooler than that silly hunter I’d made, pffft. But I kept playing my hunter because I wanted to play with the boyfriend.

Level 10 rolled around and I got this mysterious quest to go back to my hometown and get a pet. I about had a heart attack when I found out I had to go back to Teldrassil, as visions of those evil crocodiles and ogres flashed in my memory. I procrastinated on that quest for a while, because of that. But, eventually, I used my hearthstone (which I had never got around to changing yet) and went back there.

The quest involved me taming a spider, a cat, and an owl. The spider I still had a grudge against from that cave. The cat was cute but I saw cats all over Stormwind (all the hunters wanted them, for some strange reason), and I wanted to be unique. The owl made cute flappy-wing noises. I liked him.

After the quest I was informed that I could go tame a pet of my choosing to keep for as long as I wanted. I freaked out because I instinctively knew that this was a big decision and I didn’t want to screw it up. Frantically I went to my sisters for help, and they directed me to a website called Petopia. I spent about an hour there, cycling through all the pet choices, hardly understanding anything about “DPS” or “skills”. I was going purely on looks, how hard they would be to get (I wanted a raptor but they were in the Barrens, which I assumed was full of Hordies who wanted to kill me, so that was a no-go), and whether the site said they were “offensive”, “defensive”, or “well-rounded.”

I seriously considered a wolf but in the end I went with the owl. There was something endearing about having an owl flapping next to you. I went and tamed a Strigid Hunter and named him Tux.

Back to Stormwind I went, feeling a rush of relief when I managed to get back to Elwynn. I hadn’t liked it at first but it had really grown on me. Now I just had to adjust to life with a pet. I wasn’t exactly sure how it was supposed to work. Was I supposed to put him on aggressive and have him kill things for me? Hmm, nope, he died. OH MY GOSH IS HE GONE FOREVER?? *hyperventilates* Oh wait no, there’s a spell called Revive Pet. *deep breaths*

I know, I’ll shoot stuff and make it come to me and my pet and I can fight it together!

That’s what I did for a while.

…yes. I know.

I moved from Elywnn into Westfall and began questing there. At some point during this period I realized I could teach my owl “Growl”, and I also sort of gained an inkling of the idea of having him tank while I shot stuff. I could now use something called “Talent points”. I asked a couple people (non-hunters) what I should do with them and I was told to put them into the Marksmanship tree, so I did. Improved Concussive Shot, obviously, because a chance at stunning someone sounded about ten times more exciting than increased crit. I thought I was a pretty darn good hunter, despite the fact
that, ya know, I was dying all the time. Boldly I ventured into Deadmines with my pet on aggressive. This was a dungeon afterall. More damage was good, right? Having my pet on aggressive killing stuff was good, right?

The people at my party started yelling at me and telling me to control my pet. I didn’t get it. How was I supposed to control my pet? What did they mean?

At some point they told me trap a mob. I laid down an Immolation Trap and smugly pulled the mob in. I had an ice trap too but I didn’t like it. It didn’t do any damage. Pfft. What kinda lame trap is that, not doing any damage?

We killed VanCleef somehow. The people in my party weren’t very happy because apparently someone had ninja’d a lot of the loot throughout the dungeon. I got angry too. Darn those ninjas! Good thing I somehow got a lot of great stuff though. My bags were full of them. Silly people should know to click Need if they want stuff.

And so I continued my questing, fancying myself as a nice little hunter who’d had some bad luck. I still wasn’t a big fan of the class and I was rolling non-hunter alts all the time, but Tawyn was the highest level so she was the most interesting, so she got the most playtime.

One day I was attacking something and somehow aggro’d something else as well. It ran towards me, with Tux still busy on the first mob. Now I don’t know how or why this idea popped into my head, because it had never ever occurred to me before… but for some reason I hit my never-used Freezing Trap button.

Pop!

I had one mob trapped and out of my way while I took care of the other one. Then I went back and finished the trapped mob.

Afterwards, I blinked. Whoa.

…what a neat trick I’d just discovered! I tried it again. It worked, again. Wow! How fun!

I wondered if hunters had any other little tricks like that.

After I logged off WoW I hit up WoW Wiki and Google, searching for information and help on the hunter class. The first two sites I stumbled across were called The Hunter’s Mark and Big Red Kitty. The Hunter’s Mark had a bunch of stuff on trapping which I read voraciously. Big Red Kitty was filled with math and numbers and strange new phrases I had never heard of before, like “Steady Shot” and “Kill Command”. But it all seemed very important so I bookmarked it.

I hit my 30s and began questing in Desolace. I haven’t forgotten this: me, my boyfriend, and the guy who’d introduced us to WoW playing on an alt, all of us questing in Desolace. At some point we pulled a lot more mobs than we wanted to. And I, ever in love with my little trick, trapped a mob while we took out the others.

The friend said in party chat, “Great use of your traps Tawyn… you’ll make a great hunter.”

Wait… I would?

But everybody was always yelling at me! I was always dying! And yet… I really had the potential to be a good hunter? Great, even?

And that settled it.

I went back to BRK and read the entire thing. Everything. First I read the posts he had linked on his sidebar. Then I went back to his very first post and read the whole blog “cover-to-cover”. I read all the comments. Took a few days. I tried to internalize as much as I could. I didn’t understand a lot of it but I read it anyway. I went to The Hunter’s Mark, too, and read as much of it as I could and watched the movies that had been posted. Then I started clicking on links and on the names of the commenters. More blogs to read! I never said anything, I just lurked and read.

Somehow, between all that reading and learning and the playing and practicing, something clicked.

Suddenly I couldn’t play my non-hunter alts anymore. They were awkward. They didn’t have that special, unique quality that my hunter did. They weren’t me. I remember I rolled a troll warrior on some friends’ server with the express purpose of making her my “main alt.” I got to level 7 or 8 or so and had to stop, I just wasn’t having fun or enjoying myself at all. The next day I went back to that server and rolled a hunter. Today she’s my second-highest level character.

More leveling, more questing. More… erm… very interesting adventures as you can see from the above screenshot. And slowly I incorporated what I had been learning from various blogs into my gameplay. I was using my traps. I was teaching my pet the right skills. I had my pet under control. I was no longer a hindrance in groups, but a help. I stayed Marksman until level 50 because I was comfortable with it; but here is where the Grand Respec Phase came and I messed around with specs for a while before settling on, whaddaya know, 41/20/0. I hit 58 and Outlands. Things kept improving for me. I began topping charts in battlegrounds. I began topping charts in instances. People began specifically asking me to instance with them– apparently I’ve improved a little since Deadmines.

Most importantly, I discovered something that I could practice and take pride in. It might sound a little silly to a lot of people if I were to compare playing my class in World of Warcraft, to honing one’s skills in a sport or art form. But that’s sort of what it became to me. And it taught me that no matter how horrible you are at something– a little coaching and a little practice can work wonders.

And now…?

I am a hunter.

And as of today, I am level 70.

Thanks, WoW bloggers. I couldn’t have done it without you guys. (Well, I could have, but… it wouldn’t have been a pretty sight. /twitch) I can only hope that my own little site will be as helpful to some other inquisitive newbie someday.