Hard Work - Spark

This is a Spark off of BRK's post today over at BigRedKitty.net. It makes me think of having left Tzia behind on Deathwing while I was leveling Blood Elf Ranii, on Quel'dorei. I ran into a hunter and priest combo trying to kill things in Hillsbrad.

The three of us teamed up to take on a guy in the mines. I was watching the hunter, Dutchess, kill things as I was taking them down from range with the pig I had next to me at the time. The hunter was running up and bashing them over the head with her nice shiny +STR axe. I cringed, we had to wait for the guy to respawn because a group of paladins had blitzed ahead, mass pulled and downed everything.

While we were waiting I looked over her gear and at her kitty. I complimented her on the cat, it was a black/white tiger from Darkshore. She fed it a piece of meat then crammed three more down its throat. I realized then she had no clue what she was doing with a hunter, so I asked if I could give her some advice.

I started out with how to feed a pet, one piece, let it finish, then give it another... saved on food bill that way. Then I moved on to working from range and how to send in a pet. Then I went on to show her why certain gear was better than what she had on, largely str and spir gear.

After I had outlined everything, I was told she'd asked somebody else in Org one day and the guy had told her everything completely jack @ss backwards. I sighed, shook my head, and the guy repopped, so I let her start off by sending in the pet, letting kitty get some aggro (thank god she'd figured out growl on her own) then sent in the pig and fired along next to her. We dropped the guy, only our pets took a beating, and she was thrilled.

I invited her and her priesty husband into my guild. She was with us for a long time then moved on to find a raiding guild. But, we kept in touch sending whispers back and forth... she even mailed me a few pieces of gear when I transferred Tzia over, which really helped me get Tzia moving. Then some friends and I were trying to gear for Kara and there were only two of us on, we found a group of people that were willing to run Black Morass, which neither of us had done before.

We join the group and I suddenly see in party chat... "OMG! TZIA!!! HI!!" I looked over at the name and realized it was Dutchess!

I hadn't physically seen her in a while, she had Lucifur, a Rak'shiri and I had my Ruka, the Frost Saber Pridewatcher. She was using her pet to pull in ways I hadn't even thought of yet. It was awe inspiring to watch her work. She was also kicking my butt on the meters.

We crawled into Vent and Dutchess and I are talking back and forth at each other, working in almost sync while the poor mage that had tagged along with me is standing there dumbfounded at how well we work together. We get through the instance I get a nice piece of leveling gear out of the entire mess, and we clear Morass.

Then, over vent one of the other members from her party, compliments me on how well I did - for being under-geared. Dutchess laughs and said "She's good, she taught me everything I know."

That in itself still makes me smile. After that run, I asked her how she did certain things in there, and she turned around and showed me how she was pulling five things with a cat, running it back to the warrior- it worked. (She'd had the cat on Stay next to the warrior, would send it at a target, the stealthed stuff would swipe at it, she'd re-call the cat, it would return to its Stay spot and a Thunder Clap would swing all the mobs to the tank.) I learned something from her, and when it came time to actually raid... I asked Dutchess for gearing advice.

She's now one of the better hunters on the server, and I smile at the small part I played in it. All I did was steer her in the right direction on how to use a pet and gear. The rest? She figured out on her own. If that's not hard work? I don't know what is.