Category Archives: i love hunters

alts, fun, i love hunters, screenshots

Rumors of My Rerolling Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

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So I have a paladin who I’ve been spending a little time on each day, and I have a resto druid who randomly wound up with her very first old-school Badge of Justice the other day (Yes, it is apparently quite possible for a level 65 tree to heal a level 80 tankadin through level 70 heroics), but you gotta understand something. Namely, you can take the girl outta the hunter but you can’t take the hunter outta the girl. Or something along those lines.

Heck, scratch the girl part, you can be a hot blood elf guy too:

wow_althalorlevel40portrait

Althalor is now level 40. For the uninitiated, that means I now have a level 80 hunter, a level 70 hunter, and a level 40 hunter. And once you toss all my dozens of sub-20 hunters into the mix, I’ve clocked well over 200 collective levels in this class. Probably closer to 250.

Yes, yes, I know. But hey, I can’t help myself. Once you go pewpew, you can’t go… uh… I’ll get back to you on that one.

So yes, I am here to ease the panic that sometimes occurs on blogs, comments, e-mails, and the WoW Twitterati (term coined by one Matticus) when I briefly dip into a non-hunter interlude. Be not afraid– Pike is a hunter, and this is a hunter blog. One lil’ treedrood and one lil’ baby protadin are no match for the Hunter Mafia. I mean, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the leveling of two little alts doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy World of Warcraft.

Eh? Ehhh? See what I did there?

/cough

Okay, I’ll stop now. >.>

(P.S. Okay, so maybe not that many people are panicking. But I can pretend, at least, to make it more dramatic.)

fun, i love hunters

Boom De Yadda

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Ahem.

“It never gets old, does it?”
“Nope.”
“Kinda makes you want to…”
“Roll another hunter?”
“…well, that’s not where I was going, but…”

I love each of my pets
And I love Steady Shot
I love The Beast Within
I love more stable slots
I love my hunters
I think I’m quite obsessed
Boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda

I love to Feign Death
And Aspect of the Hawk
I love to bother rogues
I love when Frenzy procs
I love my hunters
And all their epicness
Boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda

I love my Choco-Bow
I love my Agi ‘chants
I love crit rating
And non-revealing pants
I love my hunters
I play them all day long
Boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda

I love to chain trap
And I love kiting things
I love the jump-shot
I even love my stings
I love my hunters
And all they stuff they do
Boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda

I love to Misdirect
And I love Kill Command
I love to Aimed Shot priests
And weave my shots by hand
I love my hunters
I really, really do
Boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda
Boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda…

(Inspired by this, this, and finally this.)

i love hunters, screenshots

A Tale of Two Trolls

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Tauren and Trolls are, without question, my favorite two races in the game. Anything that would come in third (probably gnomes; gosh I wish they could be hunters) are a very, very distant third. It is perhaps ironic that overall I still prefer the Alliance lore and aesthetics over the Horde lore and aesthetics, and I’ll always be a Stormwind Girl at heart, but when it comes to races, there is no contest; Horde win.

My love for Tauren (especially female Tauren! <3) has been manifested in my adoption of Thunder Bluff as my Hordeside home, making my blood elf character an adopted Tauren, and of course, making about a zillion Tauren characters such as Lunapike who is my Hordeside Main (and honestly, probably my New Main these days).

And my love for Trolls, well… wait a minute, I’ve failed to ever get a Troll character past level 17 or so.

I know, it’s horrible. My Troll characters, as much as I adore them, have all met bad ends for one reason or another.

One of the first characters I made was a Troll Hunter on Silver Hand. I named her Shantizar. I ran her to Dun Morogh when she was level ten so she could tame a Snow Leopard. I have a screenshot of her /flirting with my boyfriend’s main, who was like… level 30 at the time. That’s how long ago this was.

Unfortunately my initial impressions of Silver Hand Horde failed to catch my eye and that character sort of fell by the wayside. When I next gave Horde a shot, it was an all new server– The Venture Co.– and the server immediately gave me a “this is home” feel, the same one I get on Silver Hand Alliance. So basically all my hordies since then have been on VeCo.

Anyways, flash forward several months. I wanted to give the Survival tree a shot but I couldn’t bring myself to respec one of my current hunters away from my beloved Beast Mastery and on top of that, I think one of the best ways to really get a feel for a talent spec is to level through it. I considered resurrecting Shantizar of Silver Hand but she was broke and I wanted to give a boar a shot, so… I rerolled entirely. Shantizar the Second was born on a completely different server, she tamed an aggro-monster of a boar who she named Niels, and she got to about level 17 as Survival.

Then… things happened. Boars got nerfed (so sad, I loved Niels “Boar” /sniff), the server never really gave me the “home” feel that I look for in a new server, and I decided that as much fun as exploring a new talent tree was, spec’ing something other than BM is just hard for me to do. I can’t help it; I’m a pet fiend.

And so The Survival Project was put on hold and yet another of my poor Trolls never saw level 20.

But something interesting happened the other day. I logged onto Shantizar the First, with Scraps the Snow Leopard by her side– this character hadn’t been touched in months– and I got that feeling. The “home” feeling. The one that hadn’t been there when I’d originally made her so long ago.

So… I’ve started playing her again. Just a little, on the side. No rush, no pressure.

And I think I’m gonna respec her to Survival. And I think I’m gonna level her in the Ghostlands, a zone which I have never been able to get into before.


It’s about time I had me some jungle lovin’, right?

P.S. Someday I swear I am going to make a hunter named Schrödinger and tame the Ghost Cat.

i love hunters

Hello, I'm Pike, and I Like Hunters

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This post is dedicated to all of you newer people who are stumbling upon me by way of BigRedKitty or various other links out there. Here’s a little introduction about who I am and why I write what I write…

Hi, I’m Pike, and I like hunters. Lemme tell you why.

I like hunters because hunter crowd control is hard and because to watch someone who can succesfully pull it off is to watch a symphony in action.

I like hunters because the hunter is two fold: hunter and pet. When one is strengthed, the other is. They draw power from each other. They help each other. They are each other. I play a Beast Mastery hunter because it makes that relationship even more literal.

I like hunters because no other class gets to carefully plan which companion they want with them, go into the heart of danger and come up with cunning plans or wait for hours and hours to get that companion, and then carefully raise and train that companion up to their level.

I like hunters because we do have that companion to get attached to; the one we’re willing to forego rested experience for in favor of keeping multiple pets evenly leveled. The one we spend hours searching for the perfect name for. The one we’ll shed a few tears over when it’s time to release it.

I like hunters because I like shot rotations. My love for shot rotations is not because they allow you to achieve maximum DPS, although that is a nice bonus. I love shot rotations because I like weaving them myself. I like the rhythm. I like the timing. I like the feeling that you have to be holding it all in your brain, suspended there, as you coordinate your shots and abilities into one graceful melody. I like shot rotations because they’re cathartic.

I like hunters cause they can play dead. Great party trick.

I like hunters because skilled ones can kite almost anything indefinitely.

I like hunters because they are masters of space and time; able to choose exactly when and where to fight with the clever use of misdirection, pets, and traps.

I like hunters because they’re the underdogs, the ones with the bad name, the ones everyone laughs at and calls “easy-mode”, and I love that because of that I can go into a random heroic with people and watch their reaction when they realize that hey… this hunter can trap. I like how at the beginning of the instance my trap is the first crowd-controlled thing the tank lunges for to pick up, and by the end of the instance it’s the last.

I like hunters because I like the little green symbol and WHOOSH noise when Improved Aspect of the Hawk procs.

I like hunters cause I like my screen filling up with crits.

I like hunters cause they look so awesome standing there at a distance, cool, calm, and collected, pointing their deadly gun or bow at the enemy with a big dangerous axe or polearm strapped to their back as if to say “Just you try and get close to me.”

I like hunters cause I dig a heroine in mail.

I like hunters because while enraged, they do not feel pity or remorse or fear and they cannot be stopped unless killed.

I like hunters, and I like writing about them.

I hope you like reading about them.

(And for those of you who want to know about the non-WoW-ish stuff for some reason… here’s the About the Author page.)

i love hunters, screenshots

Hunter The Thirteenth

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So after waxing poetic about all my hunters in my previous post, what did I do? I went and made another one, obviously.

Althalor the Level 7 Blood Elf Hunter.

Male Blood Elf Hunter.

Now some 95% of my characters are female, because I am female too, and I feel most comfortable “getting into” my characters when we are the same gender. After a while I started branching out and playing male gnomes, and now I’ve got me a male belf.

And I am enjoying playing him faaaaaaar more than I thought I would, especially since I’ve never been a huge blood elf fan.

But. I love his animations. I love his voice. I love the way he looks in the [Festive Teal Pant Suit]. And I absolutely adore the way his ears go all boingy-boingy when he runs. Actually I have a confession to make here. Not too long ago it occurred to me that I seem to have some sort of long ear fetish. Growing up (and still today) I have always been drawn to animals with long ears– rabbits, bilbies, and of course hares, my “mascot” animal. I grew up watching Star Trek and I loved Spock and the Vulcans. I collect Pikachu toys. In D&D I usually wanted to play elves or half-elves and now that I look back on it I think that it’s not because they’re graceful and athletic and all that– but because they had those freakish ears. My main character in WoW is Tawyn, a Night Elf, and I am so jealous of her ears. I wish I had long ears like that. It would be so awesome. I want to be her for Halloween just so I have an excuse to put on some fake elf ears.

/cough

So yeah, sorry about that tangent. Now that I’ve scared away half of my readership I’ll continue where I left off:

Above all though, I love my new character’s personality and backstory. You will notice from the picture that he is in Mulgore. He has a very good reason for that. I cannot wait to develop this further.

I love inventing new characters. I think it might be my favorite part of the game.

…but then again, these days anytime I make a blog post, I say something like “[Some completely random aspect of WoW] is my favorite part of the game!” So maybe I should make a song:

Running heroics and downing the last boss
Roleplaying and using up all my toon slots
Big Steady Shot crits and winning AV
These are a few of my favorite things

When the raid wipes
When my traps break
When I’m feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don’t feeeeel so bad!

The downside to having so many character ideas, of course, is that I give myself far too many characters to play, so many of them wind up getting neglected, even if I didn’t intend them to at all. I almost need to make some sort of playing schedule for myself. Hmm, that’s not a bad plan, really…

In closing, I leave you all with my new favorite YouTube movie. No, it most certainly did not put tears in my eyes. /scoffs at the notion

…

/sniff

i love hunters

My hunters. Let me show you them.

10 Comments


So it’s no secret that I love hunters.

But… just how much do I love those hunters?

Hmm. Let’s take a peeksie at my toons. I count a grand total of 28 characters, across 12 servers. Now let’s meet my hunters. In no particular order…

Tawyn
Level 70 Night Elf Hunter
Server: Silver Hand (RP)
Pets: Tux the Owl, Locke the Cat
Notes: Ah Tawyn. She was my first character and as such she will always be my favorite. Not much to say about her simply because this blog focuses far more on her adventures than anyone else’s… so you can go read up on her anytime!
Current Status: Main

Shantizar the First
Level 12 Troll Hunter
Server: Silver Hand (RP)
Pets: Scraps the Cat (this is a personal in-joke. “Scraps the Cat” is the name of a cartoon character I invented some 14 years ago.)
Notes: I wanted to play Horde. I wanted to make a hunter. I love trolls. Shantizar was born.
Current Status: On hold until I have more time

Katlaina
Level 16 Dwarf Hunter
Server: Silver Hand (RP)
Pets: Clifford the (soon to be) Big Red Dog
Notes: I wanted to make a dwarf hunter and I wanted a wolf named Clifford. I also wanted a character on the same server as my main that I could play if I… didn’t feel like dealing with my main. This character is super fun and is not played enough.
Current Status: Casual alt

Torysa
Level 9 Orc Hunter
Server: Dark Iron (PvP)
Pets: None yet
Notes: My brother and a bunch of my friends all play Horde on Dark Iron. Pretty much as soon as I got the game, they ambushed me and got me to make a character there. I made a Blood Elf Paladin who I got to level 16 before giving up. I didn’t play on that server for a while but eventually they once again convinced me to try playing there again. I figured I would have the best shot at not giving up if I rolled a hunter, so… I did.
Current Status: Retired until further notice

Tawyne
Level 14 Tauren Hunter
Server: Dark Iron (PvP)
Pets: Charisma the Cat
Notes: See above but I decided I liked taurens more than orcs because I’m silly like that. Also I thought that putting an “e” at the end of my main’s name would inspire me to keep playing the character. Turns out I simply have a hard time playing on non-RP servers. Hey, you can’t say I didn’t try, at least!
Current Status: Retired until further notice

Dandyne
Level 13 Tauren Hunter
Server: Moon Guard (RP)
Pets: Unnamed Owl
Notes: This character actually started out on Silver Hand and then all my character slots on Silver Hand filled up and I wanted to make a new character there… so I transferred this hunter to Moon Guard because I heard the RP there is awesome and I wanted to check it out. (Yes, I paid $25 to transfer a level 13 character. Don’t laugh. I get attached, okay? >.>) I actually have hardly played this character since the transfer but I really want to at some point.
Current Status: On hold until I have more time

Kairyn
Level 2 Dwarf Hunter
Server: Drenden (PvE)
Pets: None Yet
Notes: The mandatory female dwarf hunter that I made to say hi to BRK. But then I chickened out and decided he probably didn’t want to be bothered so I failed to ever even whisper him. I simply stalk his blog now. /cough
Current Status: Retired until further notice

Lumendrys
Level 2 Blood Elf Hunter
Server: Drenden (PvE)
Pets: None Yet
Notes: So after chickening out, I figured so long as I was on the server I’d might as well make a new type of hunter that I’d never tried before. So I made a female blood elf hunter. I quit at level 2 for the most shallow reason in history. Ready for it? … the bow-firing animation drove me insane. I don’t know why. I can’t even remember what it looked like. All I remember is that I hated it. I am horrible, no? Anyways, I’m sort of feeling the urge to try making a male blood elf hunter next time. Because the guy blood elves are… kinda cute. (Pike, did you just pull the female version of “I play a girl night elf so I can look at a cute butt?” … yes. Yes I did. I am not afraid to admit it. =D)
Current Status: Retired until further notice

Lunapike
Level 47 Tauren Hunter
Server: The Venture Co. (RP-PvP)
Pets: Alyosha the Cat, Ivan the Windserpent, Dmitri the (insert current experimental pet here)
Notes: This character started out on Wildhammer, a PvP server where some of my friends and their awesome guild were. I got up to level 27 or 28 or so but as much as I was enjoying the Horde side of the storyline, I simply was not enjoying not being on an RP server. So the character was shelved for a little bit. Eventually the guild sort of imploded and most of its members went their separate ways and I took the opportunity to transfer to an RP-PvP server and I haven’t looked back. I love playing this character and she will be my second level 70.
Current Status: Horde Main/Main Alt

Pikewind
Level 4 Tauren Hunter
Server: Anvilmar (PvE)
Pets: None Yet
Notes: This character was made specifically to partake in a certain project brainstormed up by Ess. A bunch of us bloggers get together to hang out and level together. Unfortunately I am really really slacking here but… I’ll try to log on more!
Current Status: Heir to the throne of “I need to play this character more”

Shantizar the Second
Level 14 Troll Hunter
Server: Shadow Council (RP)
Pets: Niels (the) Boar
Notes: This is my Survival hunter. I’d like to think she’s the character I focus on most after Tawyn and Lunapike but really only time will tell because I just started her.
Current Status: Full-fledged Alt

Celaniya
Level 6 Draenei Hunter
Server: Maelstrom (RP-PvP)
Pets: None yet
Notes: This character was made for two reasons: firstly, I wanted to have at least one hunter of every race and I didn’t have a draenei yet, and secondly, now that I’ve played Horde on an RP-PvP server I decided it was time to give my birth faction (hehe) a shot on an RP-PvP server. Actually she had been hanging out at level 4 until very very recently, when I resurrected her because I know how to kite and jumpshot now (THANK YOU BRK!!! EVERYBODY GO WATCH HIS MOVIES GOGOGO) so pre-pet hunters are now surprisingly superfun.
Current Status: Unknown; hoping to develop her into a Casual Alt

Statistics:
12 of my 28 toons are hunters.
That means approximately 42.8% of characters that I make are hunters.
If you added up the levels of all my hunters and made them one entity, you would get one big level 209 hunter.
The average level of my hunters is: 17
The average level of my non-hunters is: 8

My five highest leveled characters are:
Tawyn (Level 70 hunter)
Lunapike (Level 47 hunter)
Ralaenia (Level 21 mage)
Katlaina (Level 16 hunter)/Aellindria (Level 16 paladin) (tied)

Paladin and mage are the only two non-hunter classes I have ever gotten to level 11 or higher.

…so, what do you guys think? Am I a little crazy? Obsessed? Not obsessed enough? …I like that last option.

Why don’t you come back in a few months and we’ll see how many more hunters I’ve created/leveled.