It glows green....
How many time have you looked at a piece of your armour or a weapon and wept for its crapness? How many times have you looked on the Auction House, only to see no items for your level to replace aforementioned horrible garment or whatever? How many times have you seen a grren/blue drop from a mob, only to discover its about as useful to you as a chocolate firegaurd? Too many times.
As you know, I’m mounted. :-) One day as I was getting off my whitestriped nightsabre, and my pet appeared loyally by my side it struck me. It would be possible to find a pet the same colour as my mount. Thus giving the impression (now, use your imagination here) that I wasn’t dismissing my pet but simply, er… mounting him. Riding him if you will. (damn the inuendo!)
I’ve so far been finding the lower 40’s pretty uninpiring. After the gallop (miander) to lvl 40 and a few cool skills and my first ever mount, it felt like my next big goals were lvl 50 (finish up my BM tree) and then lvl 60 (start getting invited in cool stuff, and hunting around for omgwtfawesome gear). But the areas I’m in (back in stinking STV) weren’t getting me excited about levelling. I needed a reason to make progress other than I thought I should be, and my next pet upgrade felt like a decent enough drive.
Rufus, my loveable STV tiger has been great. I’ve had him for about 10 levels, and he was the first pet that had dash, and the first pet I bothered to look into damage with. I.e, claw Vs Bite. Mobs have stuck to him like glue, and I can’t fault cats. They are just great. But he wasn’t the same colour as my mount, and I needed to make that happen because.. well, it has the potential to be awesome sauce.
So I hit petopia and looked for the skin I wanted. Low and behold King B sprung up, a lvl 43 elite. Puuurfect. I was level 41 but I wanted to make sure I knew where he was so that when it came time (lvl 43) to trap him I could hit the mark and get it done quick.
Levelling in STV is just torture now, but before I knew it I was 42 and half way to 43. I had a quest that involved Trolls (around lvl 37-39), and I decided I would just farm them until I levelled up. They were great fodder, taking them down normally in around 10 seconds. Easily doable 3 at a time, and on one occasion 6!
After not too long (a few sessions/nights considering I don’t play alot) I did the fateful ding and headed back to the stables to drop off Rufus. I would not abandon him. HELL NO! If the King B thing went bad, or any other completely unlikely random event I wanted to know that Rufus was waiting in a ready to kill position.
On my way to the King I tamed a Gorilla. Why not. He might come in useful to clear the way to the King. He was not. Not trained, not loyal, nothing stuck to him. However, he did enough to add some damage to the cause and soon enough I was one to one with B.
Trapping him was a cake ride. I dropped the icetrap, pullshot the King and immediately started taming. By the time he snared the trap he was almost half mine.. and he dinged into my possesion without even getting a hit in. Easy. I immediately screen shot him, then me on my mount, and gloated to my guild about my uberness in pet/mount fashion. I don’t think they respect it. I don’t care, it rocks and you know it!
So I’m now lvl 43 and going well. New pet to work with and train, which is always nice, and now I’m looking to see which area to hit next.
I’m coming for you level 44!!
That’s all for now. More coming to be added to the list I’m sure.
I’ve managed to get on Wow a couple of times this week, for short bursts. But not with my hunter.
Lofgrin is level 37, and the race to get a mount is still very much ON. I think I blew myself out a bit when I wanted to hit Scarlet Monastray to see what it was all about, and to get some XP so I’d be hitting the next zone with some fresh skills trained. However, because of the odd times I’ve been on I’ve not managed to make the massive hike to SM. I did try, got burnt out hitting the wrong places, and in the end I headed back to Arathi Basin for a quick blast of PVP. I didn’t fancy a grind to 38 at this point, so I decied to take a break from Lof and see about creating a new melee character.
I won’t wonder on this subject too much, as I intended this blog to be hunter related (experiences up to 60/70 and then techniques/advice) - so lets just say I created a Rouge and a Druid to play with. Both great fun.
But I think for now I’ll get back to achieving my goals with Lofgrin and his eager cat companion Rufus at hit 40 and buy my first ever mount!
Then perhaps I’ll spread my efforts a bit and see what other classes I get on with.
This is something I’d imagine everyone new to the class quickly comes to grips with, but suffers a few savage attacks in the trial and error stage. I remember the early days when I would try and tame an animal that was higher levels than I, and wondered why it kept failing and chewing me up.
Well, I’m all better now and I’ve got trapping licked. I reckon.
Its a simply strategy involving freezing trap. Simple find the desired beast, flip on aspect of the monkey (for when the beast eventually comes for you - your improved dodge rating will lower his effectiveness), lay a trap, and wait 30 seconds. This allows your trap cooldown to expire so if things go wrong you can immediately drop an emergency trap at your feet - remember traps last one minute when placed so you have time. Now pull the beast towards you, get some distance from the trap, and watch him get snarred. Then hammer Tame Beast. That’s 20 seconds of uniterupted taming, and only 10 seconds to survive a pounding when the beast is released. If you have gotten a decent distance away from the trap before the beast was frozen, by the time he gets to you he’ll only have the chance to throw a half arsed claw at you before he’s humping your leg and begging for food.
Since I’ve had freezing trap I have never struggled to trap a pet, and have in all cases avoided getting a right kicking.
I’m sure you could work on this further, say, drop a frost trap (slows target), wait 30 seconds, pull the beast, get some distance, drop a freezing trap, get some distace, start Taming Beast. With some strategic trap placing he’d have to made it through the slowing frost, then get frozen for 20 seonds. I’m sure you’d be able to tame without him even getting close. Hmm, might try that out.
So I’ve reached level 30. My highest levelled character, and its been a great journey. It has rarely felt like a slog, and although the “send pet - cast hunters mark - autoshot - arcane shot - repeat” can wear thin, I’m always keep on my toes by unwanted adds, grabbing the aggro from Jeff, or doing something silly (and usually for speed purposes). All these factors force my to learn how to evade such incidents, and a hunter is very capable of controlling these situations. So much so that I often find myself sending Jeff against the most horrible of odds, just to see if I can overcome them. 9 times out of 10 is a success. A trap here, a concussive shot there, an aspect of the cheeter everywhere, and a few wing clips and rapid shots thrown in for good measure.
I was looking forward to level 30 for a couple of reason. Firstly it meant I had found a class I enjoyed playing and learning, and secondly I had been eye’ing up the skills available to me at that level at the hunter trainer for some time. I have to say, I was a little dissapointed. A few improved Ranks and Feign Death. Having said that, I was looking forward to trying Feign Death to see how useful it was. I obviously couldn’t wait for an instance (as I rarely participate in them), so I got myself in trouble, grabbed aggro and popped FD to see what would happen.
What happened in this particular case was a resist from the mob in question, and my fetal positioned fake corpse being pushed along the ground by an angry axe weilding orc. I picked myself up, dusted off the side of my face, dropped a frost trap, and ran like buggery.
Still, I take great pride in my lastest ding. And reflect on my progression since I picked up the hunter class. I must admit, I can barely remember the lower levels and certainly nothing before having a pet! But the most satisfying aspect is that I want to progress this character. I don’t feel bored by his repitoir, I don’t resent my pet reliance, and I certainly do look forward to more skills - more gear - and more experience.
Lookout level 40 and my first mount. I’m coming for ya!
Quick update on pets. I did take the time to catch the ghost sabre at the ruins in darkshore. A laborious tasks of finding cat figrurines and opening them (boring) and I did it without a pet (stupid), but once it appeared…. joy.
He was a lot lower level than I, and at the time I wanted to progress and hit 30 and not go through the process of training my pet to hold aggro and get some xp under its belt. I stabled him and got Jeff killing for me again, but should I find things slow in the future, or I fancy a low level grind for some materials or something, I’ll be sure to drag out Smokey the Ghost Sabre because he looks damn cool…
I was looking through Big Red Kitty and took a look at the addon section of his blog. I hadn’t really tampered with addons much, I did install a boat load from a PCGamer DVD one-time - but all versions had subsequently become obselete.
There were a few on his list that intriuged me, so I found some lastest versions and added a few.
Firstly I threw on zHunter - a mod that gives you the ability to hover over a beast and see what skills are available to you should you attempt to tame it. Very useful, and it helps you cherry pick the ones you want instead of trying them all. Of course, at lvl 20 you gain an ability “Beast Lore” to do the same thing… but hey, this way I just hover. Works for me.
I also installed Atlas - this gives you dungeon plans basically, and you can see where bosses are, where certain key NPC’s are, and reveals the outline of the whole dungeon. Very useful when instancing and for finding where the quest item you are after drops.
Now the two that I no longer wish to play without:
I also bumped up my resolution (why did I have it on 1024 x 800?), but just bumping it up a notch means I have more real estate for buttons on my screen and a very nice increase in picture quality. Pleased.
I think that covers most of what got me killed! I got many green (and blue) items from the run, realised a few things about my pet and my coolness under pressure (what pressure, I was running with a 60!), and got the quest done. Interesting experiece (read: embarrassing).
The next run was much better. Stockades. This time I was running with another RL mate, Elendiil - Night Elf Druid, and a hunter guildie around the same level as me - Niyla. Straight off I knew this was going to be a great experience, as Niyla and myself got talking outside the instance about the in’s and out’s of the class. He was MM spec, I was BM. I was confident he knew what he was talking about (not his only character btw), and as we entered it was obvious he knew how to conduct himself from range. From watching and learning, and taking into account the DM run earlier, I managed to:
Satisfaction! No-one died (not even me), loot was grabbed in a logical way (not half way through combat), my pet was useful and not a liability, and I did my job - laid down ranged fire and mitigated mob control. Marvelous!
