Category Archives: screenshots

pets, screenshots, specs, stories

Okay, Pike's Gonna Sit You Down

11 Comments

And tell you a little story to make a point.

With all my spec testing lately and my latest entry on how my “relationship” to my pet, playstyle-wise, varied according to spec, I fear I may have accidentally given off some false impressions. So, I’m gonna clarify.

There are hunters of all specs who love their pets.

There are also hunters of all specs who really don’t care very much either way. This includes some BM hunters who are BM only for the numbers, for example.

The point that I was trying to make in my last post, is that I missed the feeling of splitting my damage with my pet. I missed knowing he was doing 35% of my DPS. It felt awkward knowing that the damage responsibility was basically squarely on my shoulders. It felt lonely to me.

When I say that, I am not at all trying to discredit the relationship you lovely MM and SV hunters have with your pets, or say that they aren’t important.

Tawyn was my first ever character and she was Marksmanship until level 55-ish.

The reason is because I had no idea what I was doing or what a spec was. So I asked my friends what to do with these newfangled talent points. At this point I’d actually started putting points into BM already but two different people completely mocked the idea of me spec’ing BM and told me Marksman was the way to go, so I promptly changed course and followed their advice.


Up I went through that talent tree and my owl Tux was there the entire way. He was my feathery little pocket tank. He was my leveling buddy. He didn’t dish out a lot of damage but he held aggro like a champ. I loved him dearly. I loved him just as much then, as a Marksman hunter, as I do now as a Beast Master hunter.

Really though, I was hungrily eyeing the Beast Mastery tree the entire time I was leveling. Heck, I went off and made Lunapike so I could have a BM hunter that my friends didn’t have to know about. There is a reason why I gave her a red kitty pet, aside from the fact that I think they’re cute. It was a conscious, symbolic choice because Lunapike was going to be my BM hunter.


That Little Red Kitty is level 70 now, by the way.

Anyways, back to Tawyn. I finally said “Ya know what, screw everybody else. I don’t care if they’re going to call me a noob now. I’m respec’ing.” So I did, and I’d like to say that I didn’t look back.

…except I did look back, once. Because it sort of scared me at first. Tux went from being my pocket tank to being this Big Red Owl of Doom. He was doing as much DPS as I was at the time, if not more. “I’ve created a monster!” I thought. I spent about a level as BM and then spec’d back to my Marksman safety zone. Tux went back to being my mild-mannered companion. All was well.

Then I started to miss the whole “fast and furious” playstyle of BM and the idea that Tux could be more than just my tanky friend. We could fight alongside each other, each doing equal damage. We could be unstoppable, together.

Together we went through the Dark Portal and stepped into Outlands and that is when I spec’d to Beast Mastery for good and since then I haven’t looked back. I wouldn’t have it any other way at this point. We fight together. He isn’t just there to keep the mobs away from me. He is there to buff me with his Ferocious Inspiration so I can in turn buff him with Kill Commands and tons of Focus, and we both act as an elegant killing machine, as One.

I have a special relationship with my pets as a Beast Master hunter. But that doesn’t mean I love them any more than I did when I was Marksman. That doesn’t mean I don’t value them any more than I did when I was Marksman (although in a gameplay sense, obviously you do have to value them somewhat more =P)

When I was experimenting with non-BM specs in Beta, I felt a certain detachment to my pets in terms of there not being nearly so much hunter/pet synthesis (one procs something for the other) and the reason I was forgetting Mend Pet is probably largely because I was busy trying to work out new rotations. Anyways, that is what I missed about being BM. I missed the hunter/pet synthesis. I didn’t love the pets any less just because I shuffled talent points around. That would be silly.

So! That is your Pike-story for the day. Hunters everywhere love their pets, and that is the way it should be. Just wanted to clarify that. Thank you, as always, for your comments and support and I will see you all next time.

screenshots, specs, wotlk beta

[WotLK Beta] Survival of the Fittest

12 Comments

So now all the BoP alchemy recipes start dropping for me. Now that I’m in Beta and can’t keep them. /sob

Anyways!

Today I spec’d 0/9/52 — Full Survival. Once again, I do not claim to be an expert on non-BM spec’ing, but it seemed like a decent set-up to me. Really the interesting thing that I noticed with Survival is that all the things I really liked about this spec also seemed to have an opposite and equal downside to them. So while the “wow” factor seemed to be there more than it was in Marksman, at the same time, the letdown factor was also here more than it was in Marksman.

Here, I’ll show you…

Things I Liked:
Expose Weakness
So many crits!! <3
Hunting Party
Explosive Shot, because it’s superfun
Knowing I have awesome traps

Things I Did Not Like:
Knowing Expose Weakness now only affects myself
So many crits… so much pulling aggro from my pet after a string of them.
Hunting Party is a nifty idea and not bad, but… really, it does so little, in the long run. I’m still a mana monster.
Explosive Shot is only superfun for so long, and when the novelty wears off it’s not a particularly exciting 51-pointer in my humble opinion.
Awesome traps either are not implemented currently, or I’m going crazy

Really, the hardest part of both this and the Marksman tree, was getting used to the idea that my pet is no longer important, other than as a meatshield to keep the enemy at range. I feel like I’m doing all the damage, which feels “off” to me. I even surprised myself when, more than once, I forgot to use Mend Pet and my Tenacity– tanking!— pet wound up dying. You’ve got to understand, I never forget Mend Pet. My pet rarely dies unless Shade of Aran has a vendetta against him or something. And yet once I get into a mindset of a non-BM hunter, I… forget to use it. Because I get focused entirely on myself. And I don’t like that. I miss being “us”.

I promise, this isn’t supposed to be some sort of “BM Power” rant or anything. Survival was a fun tree to explore, it had a lot of perks, and I wouldn’t mind exploring it further. I would also like to give the Marksman tree another (deeper) look, and also test all the specs on the training dummies. Because all my testing thus far has just been running around the world pewpew’ing mobs. I like to test in a sort of “open field” environment because that is where I will be spending a lot of my time when leveling.

But really, I can’t envision myself spec’ing away permanently. My tests have confirmed that, I think. Before, I was sort of wavering. Because some of the stuff in the other trees was finally starting to look really appealing to me. And they still do. But I can’t do it, I’ve gotta fight with my pet. It’s like, you know that Digimon Tamers episode where Takato was like “I really really want to fight together with Guilmon!” and then they bio-merged into that super awesome mecha thing?

…

…okay, never mind >.>

screenshots, specs, wotlk beta

[WotLK Beta] To Thine Own Self Be Trueshot

14 Comments

Got my quest from the nice Tuskarr guy, leaped down into the area behind him to start my quest, and:


Note: The person in General Chat who says he is a “big game hunter” clearly has his words confused with “a normal person who lives where Pike does and has to deal with the local wildlife.”

Gaahh! Dazed and confused and blind. A relog didn’t solve the problem so I wound up having to hearth. I’m worried that this might be an OpenGL problem (us Linux folks run the game with OpenGL instead of Direct3D), since I had a similar one with one of the Death Knight starter quests and that’s what it turned out to be. But hopefully it’s a bug that will be fixed. Hopefully. I reported it to Blizz, anyhow.

However, the point of this post is not silly Beta bugs, rather, it is hunter talent specs. Those of you who looked closely at the screenshot may have noticed something rather decisively un-Pike-like.

Yeah, see the Trueshot Aura?

Today I spec’d 3/51/7. Then went out and shot stuff. (Note: This probably isn’t the best level 70 Marksman build. I don’t know very much about the Marksman tree. I just sort of winged it =P)

Now, I regret to inform you that I do not have fancy DPS charts or anything to share with you, largely because the way I have always gauged my DPS has been through the use of a group of addons. SWStats + SCT Damage, to be precise. SCT Damage is basically like the game’s built-in Scrolling Combat Text except it looks much nicer, in my opinion, and much more importantly it tells you what shot you did next to the floating damage number, or what move your pet used, and in short I find it to be very valuable for getting a good “feel” for my own personal DPS. Sadly, I don’t have it in Beta, and without it, it’s much harder for me to get a feel for DPS than I thought it would be.

So, I now present to you Pike’s Thoughts on the Marksmanship Tree Based on Pure Intuition Which May or May Not Have Merit:

Things I Liked:
– Opening up my character panel and seeing a “zohmygawsh-huge” AP and crit number.
– Trueshot Aura
– Being able to do more than just spam Steady Shot. I said it way back in my spec-testing days of level 50, and I’ll say it again: Marksman is the “cool calculating blue” to Beast Mastery’s “frantically red hot”. You shoot nice and slow as a Marksman hunter, and you can focus on weaving in other shots, and it’s pretty neat.

Things I Did Not Like:
-Lack of Bestial Wrath
-Lack of Intimidation
-The fact that I really, really wanted to use Readiness with Bestial Wrath and Intimidation, and only with Bestial Wrath and Intimidation, and, um… that would kind of defeat the purpose of Marksmanship and be overly ironic.
-Lack of the four extra talent points for my pet (I honestly missed these more than I initially thought I would.)
-Shooting felt too slow. =[ Serpent’s Swiftness is a drug; so sue me. Or arrest me.

I whispered BRK and told him that I was testing Marksman. He said, “Wow, you must be even more sick than you said you were.” It was of course in jest, but really, he had a point. I can see the appeal and I’m really happy that my Marksman friends got so much love this time around, but it’s just not Pike. It’s not me.

Armed with new resolve I gallantly leaped off Scryer’s Tier, died (I forgot my horse cannot fly), rez’d, and ran to Stormwind and respec’d to Big-Red-Om-nom-nom-chew-your-face-off-goodness.

Of course, that’s not gonna stop me from continuing to test out specs, and try them more thoroughly! Next stop: Survival. Though I am sort of expecting that my “Things I didn’t like” list will look frightfully similar to the Marksman list. I’m kind of spoiled I think.

In closing, I now have a Gorilla named Günther. I <3 him dearly. So many pets, so little stable space. FIVE SLOTS IS NOT ENOUGH. Also THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS. Er, EXTRA PET TALENT POINTS. Or something. /cough

screenshots

Post Your Bank

27 Comments

I don’t care if it’s a mess. I don’t care if it’s embarrassing. Post it anyway.

Let’s see what we got in the old closet here…

Whoo, talk about a mess. And I haven’t even opened all the other bags and the two overflowing herb bags. But because I’m sure you don’t wanna see all the random crap I’ve accumulated, we’ll just look through the main portion here…

Row 1:

Plain Letter: This is a letter the boyfriend sent me after level 4 Tawyn ran around Teldrassil in a desperate attempt to get to this “Stormwind place”. He apparently made a desperate attempt himself to get to “Night Elf place” and wound up somewhere in Arathi Highlands. The letter details his attempt and his resolve to try again later.

You’d better believe I still have this letter.

Chicken Egg: My first mini-pet. Somebody showed me how to get it and helped me set up a /chicken macro. I never bothered to get rid of that macro… it’s still there in my macro menu.

Wood Frog Box,
Parrot Cage (Senegal),
Jingling Bell,
and Clockwork Rocket Bot: Minipets that did not wind up in my bags with the other 12 or 13 odd minipets that I usually carry around. Hmm, so that‘s why I never have bagspace.

Chestnut Mare Bridle: Ahh, Tawyn’s first mount. Her name was Buckles. Yes, I name my mounts. So sue me.

Row 2:

Warsong Gulch Mark of Honor,
Arathi Basin Mark of Honor,
Alterac Valley Mark of Honor,
and Eye of the Storm Mark of Honor… ye olde PvP badges. 99 WSG, yipe. I must be a masochist of some sort.

Obsidian Warbeads,
Oshu’gun Crystal Powder Sample,
and Apexis Shard… collectables!

Row 3:

Minion’s Scourgestone (oldschool?)
Spirit Shard
Zaxxis Insignia
Halaa Battle Token
Halaa Research Token
Arcane Rune
Badge of Justice… more collectables!

Row 4:

Gladiator’s Chain Helm,
Merciless Gladiator’s Chain Gauntlets,
and Merciless Gladiator’s Chain Spaulders… the PvP gear that I pull out when I want to add more o’ them PvP tokens to my collection, or when no one responds to my “BORED HUNTER WILL DO ANYTHING I HAVE TRAPS AND COOKIES AND HUGS” pleas in LFG. …which is actually quite frequently. /sob

Cat Carrier (White Kitten): was given to me as a present for answering a quiz question in guild chat. I still remember the question. “What anime includes the name of a WoW profession in the title?” Yeah, easy question, I was the first to answer so I got a kitty in the mail. What a deal!

The Gunblade: This is never leaving my possession. I will never forget the story behind this. I was level 65ish and a guildie who’d I’d been instancing with for a while took me all the way out to Blasted Lands, telling me he had a surprise for me. He handed me a package with the Gunblade in it, as well as an ammo pouch and bullets, and then he /saluted me and informed me that it was my present for being a good hunter. The gun served me well until 70, and yeah… it’s stayin’.

/sniffs
/stoically stops thinking of old guild

Sonic Spear: Such good memories of when this dropped. I can’t bear to get rid of it.
Guild Tabard: Tawyn will always and forever wear the Private’s Tabard, because it fits her character and looks nice, but ya never know when you’ll need a guild tabard… at least for a screenshot or two.

And yeah, see all those other bags? Those are stuffed full of various holiday items, nostalgic gear, nostalgic quest rewards, and the mandatory RP gear (I actually have never been one for “RP outfits”, figuring my characters’ RP outfits are their gear… but you never know!)

It appears that Tawyn, just like her human player counterpart, cannot bear to throw anything away. Adding new stuff to the bank is always an agonizing thing. And so many times I’ve staunchly said “Today is the day I organize my bank!”, marched up to the banker, and… found that I couldn’t bear to toss anything. Hi, my name is Pike, and I have a problem.

Please tell me I’m not the only one! /whimper

screenshots, wotlk beta, wrath of the lich king

[WotLK Beta] The Man, The Myth, The Legend

11 Comments

So I decided to do something completely crazy in Beta and see if I could tame one o’ them core hounds. From Molten Core. Solo. Hey, I’m a hunter, I can do that, right?

Got about halfway through Blackrock Mountain when I remembered I needed to be in a raid group to even get in the door.

Oh hey, some nice dwarf and his bear are gonna party with me! They even flew all the way over to help me out!

We had about a dozen different plans and they all failed to go through, thanks to evade glitches, threat glitches, and a variety of stuff refusing to work right. We were so close a couple of times that it was just frustrating. Lemme tell ya though, the bear is a beast. Never seen a hunter pet tank not just one, but two Molten Giants for so long. I am so gonna get one if I can tear myself away from my Rhino who I just solo’d most of Slave Pens with.

Anyways! The moral of the story is: If you are a Beta blogger you had better be on the lookout because I do periodic /whos and you might be the next person who gets roped into one of my crazy schemes, fo’shizzle.

screenshots, wotlk beta, wrath of the lich king

[WotLK Beta] Tawyn & Tux's Excellent Adventure

7 Comments

So it took some sleuthing, geekery and hackery, but the WotLK beta runs as smooth as butter under Linux with Wine.

Took me a good five or ten minutes to figure out how to use mounts.

Took me another five or ten minutes to distribute talent points (55 points in Beast Mastery is okay, right?)

Ten minutes of running around Shatt trying stuff out and using The Beast Within (Sade, was that you in front of Aldor bank? ;o I wasn’t sure so I was kind of afraid to ask. I’m shy like that.)

Ten minutes of setting up my hotkeys again, training Tux, and pewpewing a couple things in Terokkar. Steady Shot feels… off. I’m sure I will adapt to it with more time.

Then I went to Stormwind, found the harbor, stood on a boat with a group of people, all of us asking “is this the boat to Northrend?”… realized the boat wasn’t going anywhere and hopped on another boat…

It’s huge you guys. I’m so excited. Too bad I have to go to work now >.>

Oh, what are some addons that work in Beta? Somebody in trade mentioned that X-Perl did so I will be looking into that. I hadn’t realized until now how much I rely on stuff like Scrolling Combat Text and RatingsBuster.

If you are also in Beta and wish to say hello, you can find me on the Northrend realm, both Alliance and Horde; Tawyn on the former and Lunapike on the latter. ^_^

screenshots, wrath of the lich king

Congratulations…

7 Comments

Wrath of the Lich King™ Beta Test

You have been selected to participate in the beta test of World of Warcraft®: Wrath of the Lich King™. Welcome!

In the beta test you’ll get an opportunity to test the first zones of the new Northrend continent, and the new levels above 70. We look forward to your feedback on the overall experience, including quests, monsters, zones, aesthetics, and more. We would also appreciate reports on any bugs you may encounter. These can be logged using the /bug command explained below.

I am off to work now, which is actually fine because the downloader tells me there are at least six hours remaining. I come to you all with a question, though. I know many of you frequent my site in part because I am one of the hunter blogs out there that is still dealing primarily with the non-WotLK content. I sort of don’t want to change that. Plus, so many other bloggers out there are already covering the Beta.

But is there anything in particular that you would like me to cover or not cover, aside from “How well this all runs in Linux with Wine” which is probably the first thing I will be reporting?

And which is “so far so good” by the way:

I honestly mostly just want to mess around and get some ideas of new huntering for myself I think– if current content is what you all want, then that is what you will get, because I still love the current stuff. And I don’t want to spoil WotLK too much for myself!

pvp, screenshots, stories

The Fable of the Gnome Rogue

16 Comments

The Tauren Hunter was merrily bounding into the Silverwing base in Warsong Gulch; she had been enjoying these player-verses-player excursions lately and was rather fond of her 25,000 honor that she had stockpiled for when she would hit 70 in a couple more levels and would need a nice set of war gear to go with her set of standard adventuring gear. She made it to the roof of the enemy building when suddenly she was jumped upon! By a very persistent gnome rogue.

Now, the tauren knew that many of her fellow hunters dislike the rogue because they are very good at taking away that which hunters prize most: space. However, she has an odd knack for managing to catch rogues before they catch her, and even when they do catch her first she has a knack for wriggling her way out of their grasp, so at first she wasn’t afraid. She directed her trusty red lynx to Intimidate the rogue, during which time she laid down an Immolation Trap and got a little bit of range and then hit him with a Serpent Sting.

He was soon on top of her again though, and sadly his first initial strikes had taken a critical toll so she was down on her luck right from the start. Still, they tussled for a bit, before the hunter’s health ran low and she collapsed to the ground.

She did not release her spirit though, for the rogue was himself weak, and he was still burning from the Immolation Trap and still feeling the ache of the Serpent Sting…

He saw her watching him, so he targeted her and /laughed.

Then, smugly, he started to bandage himself.

Serpent Sting removed the bandage effect.

The gnome’s eyes widened. They say in this world of pixels and polygons, facial expressions cannot change. I swear to the Earthmother, though, that his eyes widened as he came to a sudden realization.

The last tick of the Serpent Sting went off and he fell to the floor.

They lay there for a few seconds, simply targeting each other. Then, when the tauren hunter was sure her message had clearly been sent across, she calmly released to the graveyard.

The moral of the story, oh best beloved…

…is do not /laugh at a hunter, for they have a disturbing tendency to have the last /laugh. Or the last /giggle, anyways.