And here are the last questions from our little Q&A Session:

15. “Hunter Debate?? I say you and me use our blogs to debate some hunter issues and designs!” says Nomakk. While it’s a fun thought, firstly I was never good at debates (can I use the term “carebear” here?), and secondly, I worry we may end up agreeing on most things anyway. But then again, I guess we could do playful pet vs. pet showdowns or something. Or some sort of hunter joke contest (“Two hunters walked into a bar. Druid’s got ’em LoS’d good.”) Guess we’ll have to see?

16. “How do you personally undergo character creation when you envision a new character on a roleplaying server? How have you roleplayed a hunter in the past? And what other ways can you envision roleplaying a hunter, especially when you take into account racial tendencies and perceptions?” There are two different ways I start a new character, either I have a sudden flash of inspiration about one that sends me rushing to the character creation screen, or I feel like creating a [race & class] so I go make one with the intent of finding a story as I go. That first one there is usually the one that yields the best results though. I tend to incorporate various aspects of the game into my roleplay, it is often said by people that they can’t get into RPing in WoW because of limited game mechanics, me, I find that to be an asset. A favorite technique of mine is to make my character somehow connected to a culture or homeplace that is not their own native one– that gives you all sorts of opportunities when it comes to getting to exalted, getting a faction mount, getting tabards, etc. It says a lot about a character when they come up to you riding a unique mount and/or sporting a unique tabard, especially when they “match”.

Hunters are an interesting class to roleplay because by definition they tend to not hang out with people so much as many other classes. Typically though, I can take one “aspect” of hunters and run with it. Tawyn in her current incarnation has roots of inspiration in Calamity Jane; a bold and fun-loving character who has an almost religious respect for her rifle and who isn’t afraid to live life to the fullest. Lunapike is more reserved (though no less intelligent), focusing more on the spiritual aspects of “The Great Hunt”. She enjoys learning about the many things the wilderness has to offer (hence her dual gathering profession of skinning/herbalism– she’s a researcher more than a creator). Althalor has a kindred-spirit respect of the creatures of the Barrens, lions in particular. So in a way, with each character, I am taking one aspect of hunters and making it their focus. It is difficult to make just one character the quintessential platonic hunter ideal; it has too rich of a history and is too deep.

Overall I try not to stray too far from a race’s lore-given qualities, but still bestow upon my characters a certain uniqueness. It is admittedly a difficult balance to strike sometimes, but it’s far from impossible. Different cultures do approach hunting in different ways, as do different individuals.

17. “Are you excited or dissapointed about the changes to owls (or, well, birds of prey) away from being a dps pet with aoe tanking abilities to a cunning pet with a disarm?”: In all honesty Tux was always my solo/PvP pet. While the changes mean he may no longer be as good of a solo pet as, say, a rhino, he’s still gonna be an epic PvP pet. So I’m pretty happy about things.

18. “Got an idea: a PVP guide for BM hunters. For duels and for arenas. 🙂 Tips & tricks of sorts.”: Well a loooong time ago I made a Battlegrounds Guide— I think it’s still fairly helpful even though it was written a.) before the AV change and b.) back when I was still kind of a wee hunterling. For duels, I once wrote a little hunter-on-hunter guide. Arenas are simply not my thing (though some of my buddies are trying to coax me into it again, so we will see). However, this does all still leave out hunter-vs.-[insert non-hunter class] here guides. So, thank you for the suggestion, I will look into that!

19. “I’d also like to know which pet in Wrath that you prefer. How will you you spending your first few days in Northrend? What color are your underpants?”: Which pet I will be using in Wrath, I am still unsure of. I imagine I will be switching between all my pets. Granted that may make it really, really hard to keep them up to an even level with me– so we’ll have to see. I am looking forward to Tawyn & Tux together again, although it’s hard to argue against the rhino.

My first few days in Northrend– also unsure. I imagine the starting areas up there will be super hectic a la Isle of Quel’danas. I’ve considered focusing on lowbies for the first week or so for the mayhem to die down, but I also think a lot of people will be planning on doing that so really, if you want to wait for the mayhem to die down, I think you’ll have to wait a while. Besides, I do look forward to all the shiny new Northrend stuff. So– we’ll see what happens.

I have different colors of underwear thank you very much. Mostly white though. Yeah, I’m boring.

20. “R U A CLOTHIE!” YA I NEED MANAS AND I ROLL’D NEED THIS 1 TIEM ON ROBES OF ARUGAL LOLZ!

(No really, once I was grouped with a hunter who rolled need on it.)

21. (paraphrased) “Recommendations on just-turned-70 weapons and gear?” I cannot tell you enough how much I love and recommend this guide. I am going to mail Zeisha chocolate-chip cookies, I swear. To quote the last post in the thread so far which happens to have been written by some huntard chick named Tawyn, “I just got my second hunter to 70 and it’s just as much of a lifesaver the second time around as it was the first.” Seriously, bookmark and love that guide.

If you want a slightly more personal response: I went with the PvP crossbow on Tawyn and it’s not a bad choice, but in all honesty it’s a little slow for a BM weapon and the battlegrounds grind was looooong to the point of being painful (and you know me, I love battlegrounds, so that’s really saying a lot.) I know everybody and their dog has Valanos but it’s really not a bad bet, nor are some pretty good ones you can get out of five-mans that will last you until Karazhan.

As for other gear, get thee to Shadow Labs and run the place silly until Sonic Spear drops. The hunter gods like to use this one as a test of extreme faith and patience so be prepared to live here until you finally get it. It took Tawyn countless tries to get hers and Lunapike ran it twice in a row yesterday with no luck, but it is worth it. Until then, Crystalforged War Axe is usually pretty cheap on the AH, or you can do like I do and run around with Survivalist’s Pike enchanted with +35 agi. But then again, I’m kinda extreme and am willing to throw hundreds of gold into agility enchants at every chance I can.

and lastly…

22. “Yo Pike, I was wondering if you might be willing to address the issue of makeouts in your blog, and whether or not you would have them with me.” Ah yes, makeouts. Serious business indeed. The problem is that you, my friend, currently have a monopoly on Pike-makeouts as it is. Moderation in all things* eh?

…including moderation. /sexy Spock eye-brow quirk

OKAY, there ya go! Everything you ever wanted to know about Pike answered. Maybe. If you want to know more, you’ll have to wait for the next “Ask Pike” post. Scary proposition that there might be another, eh?

And now I will stop destroying you with walls of text that have scared countless readers off. G’night everyone!

*this phrase does not apply to rolling more hunters.

And the answers to the next seven questions!

8. “What pets will you have after 3.0, and what pets do you think will become the favorites?”: Currently Tawyn’s three pets are: Tux the Owl, Locke the Kitty, and Eltanin the Windserpent. When 3.0 hits, Tux and Eltanin will be Cunning pets and Locke will be a Ferocity pet, and I will have the two new slots left to play with.

In Beta, those two slots are already taken by Wash the Devilsaur (Exotic Ferocity pet) and Raskolnikov the Rhino (Exotic Tenacity pet), and I’m having a hard time replacing those two to test others, because I already heart them so much. So in that case, I will have all three types of pets covered.

There are still so many other pets I want out there, though, that it’s really hard to say. Tux is staying no matter what; Blizz could make owls the next sporebat and Tux would still be staying. Eltanin is staying because I love Windserpents and because I put a lot of work into getting him out of Zul’Gurub. Locke, oh Locke. The rare spawn kitty I had to tame at 4am. The pet I took into countless heroics and countless raids. The bumbling lil’ kitty that has become the brunt of a variety of inside jokes among my little WoW social circle…

…if it really comes down to it and cats really do get as nerfed as early reports say they are, and I really need another stable slot, we may have to part ways.

I don’t like to think about it though. And hopefully it won’t happen.

Of course, the good news is, with two 70 hunters (I love being able to say that), I really have ten stable slots, so… perhaps all is not lost! /dance! I’m not sure what’s in Lunapike’s pet future though. That does make it all the more fun, I think.

9. (paraphrased) “Ever try a melee hunter or plan on trying one?”: No, because I love the ranged aspect of the class too much. Lemme tell you though: Funniest way ever to beat other hunters in PvP is to melee them to death. No, really, it’s a laugh riot. Jump on ’em, Wing Clip ’em, Snake Trap ’em, and let your pet eat their face off while they stumble around absolutely baffled at what is going on. I think they’re too stunned to properly get away from me, because the worst that’s ever happened to me is that I’ve been Scattershotted once or twice. Super easy kill otherwise.

…am I evil yet?

In all honesty, I respect my fellow hunters and try to fight them honorably. But sometimes they’re just being annoying, or you’re desperate, and that’s when you never know what kinds of crazy things you’ll resort to.

Mostly in Warsong Gulch.

I Raptor Strike’d a flag carrier to death once. Don’t tell anyone.

10. “Why haven’t you leveled Lunapike to 70 yet?”: Well, since this question has since become a moot point, I’ll change it to say “why did it take so long?” History lesson first. Lunapike was born on the Wildhammer (PvP) server a long time ago– before this blog was a even a glimmer in my brain. Heck, Tawyn was still level 30-something. Lunapike hit level 28 or so before I transferred her to The Venture Co. (RP-PvP) because not being in an RP environment was soul-crushingly depressing to me. Okay, maybe not quite that depressing, but it was still pretty sad. Anyways, that was right about the exact time as the leveling speed change, and slowly but surely Lunapike spent the next year getting to 70.

I have three reasons on why it took her so long. 1.) I am a notoriously slow leveler. I take my time to look at the scenery and I have the memory of a goldfish so while boyfriend-with-the-crazy-memory can memorize the best routes to do all the quests in every zone, I can’t. =P 2.) I had a 70 who I was doing all sorts of fun stuff with, and I sacrificed a lot of alt time for that, and 3.) 40 hours a week at this silly thing called “work” really cuts into your WoW-time.

11. “Since you love to RP and seem to have background stories for all of your hunters, how will that change/evolve when wrath hits?”: My characters are sort of like a Wiki site, they are editable when I get inspiration. Sometimes they go through major overhauls, other times just tweaks. In the past couple of months I have actually changed Tawyn’s character alignment from neutral good to chaotic good, which I find much more fun to roleplay, and those personality changes have enabled me to put more depth into her backstory.

There is a good possibility that WotLK will contain some faction or town that I will fall in love with (similar to how I fell in love with the Mag’har to the point that I’ve changed Lunapike’s story so that she has moved in with them in Garadar– I’m working on getting her exalted with them at the moment), and that may change things up a bit, but that’s okay. The Warcraft timeline is marching on, afterall, so there may very well be things like that in my characters’ future.

I am currently undecided on whether or not a certain important person from Tawyn’s past should, “lore”-wise, be located in Northrend or not, which would forewarn an eventual meeting. Decisions, decisions.

12. “What are your plans for wotlk in terms of characters and specs?”: Well, the nice thing about having two 70s of the same class is that you can mess around with different specs without having to respec too much. I can tell you right now, you’re going to be hard-pressed to tear me away from my beloved Beast Mastery tree. So at least one of my characters is gonna be toting around exotic pets. Now the other specs are looking pretty yummy too, and in all honesty some hybrid builds are also not looking too shabby, so it wouldn’t surprise me if I played around with some of those.

But really, I don’t know for sure yet. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

In terms of characters, Tawyn and Lunapike are getting to 80 and then I’ll work on my druid. Then probably on another hunter. =P

13. “What KIND of unladen swallow?”. Well, either African or European, that’s for sure.

14. “What should I do with my badges? I have enough to get the Scaled Drakeskin Chestguard. Should I or just use my badges for gems and sell it for gold?”. Hmm. This is actually kind of a toughie. I will begin by saying two things: firstly, I myself own the Scaled Drakeskin Chestguard on Tawyn and I love it dearly, dearly so. It’s basically one of the best hunter chestpieces in the game, period. The second thing is: had you asked me this question earlier in the year I would have told you hands down to get it.

But WotLK is a couple months away. This makes things a little tougher.

The way I see it, assuming you are a “casual raider” like myself (i.e., you raid sometimes but Illidan and friends aren’t in the cards)… you have two options here, depending on your own thoughts on how badly you need gold, how much min/maxing you are willing to do gearwise, etc. Option one would be to go all out and get the Scaled Drakeskin Chestguard cause it’s just that epic. Option two would be to get the gems and sell them for gold, and farm Heroic Magister’s Terrace for Tunic of the Ranger Lord instead. That Heroic-MrT chestpiece is not a bad replacement– the Scaled Drakeskin Chestguard is still a good head and shoulders above it overall, but if you’re okay with having a “very good” chestpiece as opposed to an “excellent” chestpiece, then it’s definitely a viable option.

Which should you go with? Only you can answer that question, because you know where your priorities lie. Tell you a little secret though; if I was making the choice I’d go with the Scaled Drakeskin =P

To Be Continued…

Okay guys, here’s the deal. My “Ask Pike” post got a lot of really great questions! So as not to crit you with a wall of text, I’m going to post the answers in chunks. Here are the first seven. (Yes, seven. It’s a good number. Do not dispute this fact.)

1. (paraphrased) “What is your opinion on the new Aspect of the Viper and the new Survival 41-point talent (Trap Mastery)”: I haven’t been messing around in Beta as much as other people; there is still a lot for me to do in the Live game so I’ve been playing Live. I did some quests with the new AotV and I also did some solo instances to test my rhino with the new AotV and for the most part I like it. I think a passive regen component would be nice for between pulls (and Blizz has said that is coming), but PvE-wise I like it. It adds some new depth to the hunter class and I always welcome that. You have to plan for when you know you have a big fight coming ahead, and adjust your Viper usage accordingly.

Now moving on to PvP, I can understand your concerns. I do not do Arena, but in its current implementation, Viper is my aspect of choice in certain battlegrounds (I’m lookin’ at you AV). And even then I occasionally have to sit and drink. The big question, in my mind, comes down to “is the shooting-based regen from the new AotV going to work in a battlegrounds-PvP situation”, and that I cannot tell you without actually going and trying it.

And all THAT said, I know they have changed it lately and I haven’t exactly been in Beta lately, so, if I have said anything misleading or outdated, I do apologize!

As for your Trap Mastery comment: I haven’t paid much attention to the changes to the Survival Tree other than I find them to be interesting (not really in a negative or positive sense, just a “…huh!” sense.) Like I said, I have spent too much time playing Live lately. =P

2. “How excited are you about Naxx on a scale of 1-10?”: New Naxx is gonna be pretty awesome. Bringing back Cryptstalker Armor is gonna be pretty awesome (am I the only person in the world who liked how that set looked?). My biggest regret is that I never got to do Naxx in its current implementation. So I’m givin’ it a final score of 9.

3. (paraphrased) “More Alamo-styled posts?”: Possibly! But no guarantees. In all honesty I was not expecting it to be that popular so it was going to be a one-time thing. However because people seemed to like it so much, I am game for a possible sequel sometime.

4. “What kind of gaming did you do, and characters did you enjoy, before WoW that you think led up to you playing five million hunters at once?”: My game-playing has always been rather all over the place, genre-wise. I devoured games of all types on the Commodore 64, Atari, and Colecovision, and then I devoured games of all types on the Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64. (My Playstation I acquired for the sole purpose of playing Final Fantasy. I was a major Nintendo fangirl, okay? =P)

At around that time my game playing sort of started to plateau into a comfortable existence of playing Starcraft 12 hours a day* and playing various games on my Game Boy/Game Boy Advance the rest of the time. I later got a PlayStation 2 and a GameCube but I actually didn’t do a lot of gaming on them other than cavorting around Super Smash Bros. Melee and various Metal Gear Solid games. And I did play a lot of Halo for somebody who never had an XBox (my parents did, and when I could tear my mom away from Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, I was all over that. Sniper rifles were lame by the way. Come out with the pistol and fight me like a man!)

Then World of Warcraft showed up and the rest is history.

It’s hard for me to pick a favorite genre or style of game though I’d say Real-Time Strategy if pressed. I also have a major soft-spot for Final Fantasy Tactics-style games but they don’t seem to come around very often. Really though, I have fallen madly in love with RPGs, First-Person Shooters (Goldeneye 007 anyone?), action-platformers, and everything in between.

But my three favorite games, will, I think, always be Super Mario RPG, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and Starcraft.

As to how that all possibly correlates with my hunter obsession, I can’t tell ya. I guess I was pretty good at that “shooting the targets from horseback” minigame in Ocarina of Time though. I think the closest I have come to pre-WoW hunterness is the ranger character I played in D&D who I really liked, and in all honesty, that influenced my class decision in WoW more than anything else (with the possible exception of a friend who told me they were “easy to solo with” and I figured I would be solo’ing a lot.)

Really, the more I think about it, the more I think a lot of my “hunterness” has its roots in real life. I was an unusual kid when I was younger. I eschewed normal friends in favor of a trusty stuffed animal sidekick; people confused me anyway, animals were my passion. During recess I’d leave the playground and run into this big group of trees, a mini-forest of sorts, that we called, well… “The Trees”. The Trees were offlimits but I went there sometimes anyway, because it was a million times better of a playground than the jungle gym was. I got in trouble once. I didn’t deny what I’d done; I rather defiantly told the teacher that yes, I was playing in The Trees, thank you very much.

Feeling disconnected from humanity like that, finding yourself instead in nature– this is the type of thing that society beats out of you as you grow up, and then you find it again years later in a video game, of all things.

Possible?

I dunno.

Just some food for thought.

5. “How about your thoughts on the Auction House and the economy of the servers you play on and what could happen with LK after it’s release?”: Hmm, kind of a toughie. Though I use Auctioneer, I don’t really “play the auction house” very much and the only prices I’m familiar with tend to be the prices of herbs because I’m a herbalism junkie. The prices in WoW already fluctuate a lot anyway, based on time of day, etc., to the point that a lot of times I can overprice something and it will still usually be sold by the end of the 48-hour period. I predict that the current primals and motes are gonna lose their value as they are replaced with… whatever the new primals and motes are. Things like that.

6. “We know that you are completely sick with obsession over the huntar class, as am I. But what other char class is your second passion, what do you play when you are unhuntarded?”: Healing is a guilty pleasure of mine. Its feel and the timing involved is basically the exact opposite of huntering and in that way, I find it very interesting. Druid is my highest-level non-hunter class– I’ve got one at level 48– and I’ve also got a second druid who is level 20. I fully intend on getting the first druid to endgame at some point, with the goal of healing.

Interestingly enough, I cannot get into druid DPS. Not a fan of Feral (though Bear tanking looks like something I might try). Currently spec’d Boomkin and it’s moderately fun, but it’s… definitely lacking something. The majority of my leveling thus far was actually spec’d Resto because healing was the only aspect of the class that I could really get into.

It is slow going as far as leveling my druid goes but I really do enjoy healing.

I have also lately been finding myself enjoying mages. I tried the mage class once upon a time and eventually decided I wasn’t a fan– it was too much “root and nuke” which I think is sort of what turns me off to boomkin, too. But I’m c

urrently leveling a new mage with my boyfriend and it’s a lot more fun this time around, to the point that I actually wouldn’t mind seeing endgame with her, either. If that is the case, that will be the first time I have liked doing DPS that is not hunter DPS. We’ll have to see! =P

Other classes do not seem to do it for me. But, I’ll never say never.

7. “Why are you already taken??!?”: Because four years ago I joined an online Zelda fan community and hit it off pretty well with some crazy guy with a million posts.

Yes, we met online.

/dorkgrin

Next post: Next seven questions! (I believe I had 21 total, so this “sevens” thing should work out pretty well.)

* Anybody who has ever played Starcraft needs to go watch this, now. I dare you not to giggle. Especially at the last 15 seconds.

I’ve been hit with a wonky case of writer’s block (blogger’s block?) lately. So I come to you to say… ask me something! Hunter question? Ask it. Personal question? Ask it (well, so long as it’s not too personal…). Questions regarding my thoughts or opinions on WotLK, RP, non-WoW games, or the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow? Ask them too! Just leave a comment and I will make a follow up post in a couple days responding to them all.

/wonders what sorts of Pandora’s Box she has potentially opened here, before hitting the “Publish Post” button.