Hunter Survives It All

Aspect of the Hare had an amusing post yesterday, and something pretty similar happened to me as well. I was on Yazmin, and looking to run something, since I couldn't find jack on Tzia yesterday. So, I joined the LFG channel, with ZF as my dungeon of choice. Caught a message of "Tank and Healer looking for 3More", so I said I'd go, we apparently attracted a mage, and I suggested my guild leader while he was on his rogue. We ran it, almost wiped once, lost the mage, subbed in a warlock and just had fun.

While we still had the mage a 3 pull turned into a 6 pull due to a 3 mob pat landing on us. I know my comment to the group was quite simply, "Oh shit, 3 inc!" And it was.

The mage did a reactionary Frost Nova, for which I am still grateful for. That slowed everything down, and I sent my boar after the lizard that had been part of the three pull, and threw down a trap, which froze another, taking the 6 pull down to 4. We managed to kill one as the mage died, then we lost the healer as my trap broke and the lizard died.

We lost my guild leader in there somewhere as well, and it got to the point of the warrior cutting and running, to try and draw stuff off me and the healer... who had already died. We were down to three things, me focusing on one with the boar, the other two chasing the warrior. I think the warrior either A: made it out, or B: just got really lucky because the two things came back to me right as I was killing the third thing, avoiding flame totems and trying to deal with two things landing on me at the same time.

Most of the last two were a blur of flying fingers, button mashing, and re-directing my pet a few times. But, when it was all done, I was oom, the boar was gasping for breath and bleeding all over the place, but everything we'd pulled was dead.

I looked down at the chat log as I sat to drink and saw, "Heal Yaz first, then rez us." from the warrior. I chirped back that I was fine and everything was dead... that was a good feeling... hunter took on 6 and survived. :D

Memorable Tames - Lilith

We all have special pets, ones we want due to looks or for reasons of roleplay or what have you. I am going to share one of my more memorable pet tames, just due to distance, and at the time, uniqueness of coloration on the Horde Side of the faction line.

When I first rolled Tzia over on Deathwing, she got to level 10 and I ran her to Mulgore to get a wolf - at that time they had both bite and furious howl, so it was a great choice for a starter pet, and my husband thought so too at the time. I didn't keep the wolf very long though... he had a hell of a time keeping aggro - poor Vash, I didn't know about growl.

My husband, who had a level 25-ish tauren hunter at the time, also did not know about growl. He'd seen other hunters do amazing things with a pet... including having the pet run at the target and hold it there so the other hunter could actually shoot the thing to death! So we both had an idea that somehow pets could do more than what ours were.

I thought maybe I needed a better pet than what I had - more damage would help hold aggro (I'd heard the concept thanks to my husband's best friend and other friends talking about it - had little clue what it meant though)... so I opened a search engine, typed in WoW Hunter Pets and found my now favorite hunter pet site in the world - Petopia.

I stared at all the choices surrounding me - back in those days the opening page was all the pets... litterally every skin available greeted you on going to the site. I know Mania still has that page floating around somewhere... but that was my opening to Petopia - pet after pet after pet in every color of the rainbow.

As some already know, I'm a cat lover in real life. Even the big cats awe me, and one of my all time favorites is the cougar/mountain lion. In WoW, the skin is too dull to realistically mirror those big cats - the springpaws are a little closer but still... not quite there.

Because of my love for the larger felines, my eyes were drawn to the cats, I saw the tigers, went cool, but I'd seen enough people horde side with an orange tiger that I didn't want one. I then saw the black/white tigers and smiled. I'd not seen anyone with one of those horde side on my server. So, I clicked on the black and white kitty.

It took me to the base page that lists all cats that share that particular skin. I think I was 13 at the time I did that, and I saw that Moonstalkers were only a level away, so I dealt with and died through the level and thought the undead were very cruel, since I was questing over in those lands. On hitting 14, I went back to Petopia, to figure out how to get to the pet... I'd noticed the location name when staring at it, and I went back to the game. I turned to my husband and asked, "How do I get to Darkshore?"

I remember him leaning against the doorjamb and just staring at me for a moment. He then said, "Darkshore? Let me look at the map." That, I might add is how I found out there was a map in game. >.<

He popped up the map, flipped continents on me, and pointed it out. He then told me I'd have to take the zep, run to cross-roads, and go through the entire barrens and through ashenvale. The entire mess, I know now, takes around 45 minutes to do. I looked at him, chirpped an okay, asked how to pop the map up again, then ran off to find the Zeplin Tower.

The Barrens killed me, Ashenvale really killed me, and right as I got into Darkshore, some stupid mounted -yes mounted- alliance popped off his mount and killed me. I was level 14 just had spent 45 minutes trying to avoid being killed by scary level hidden mobs, and a minimum 40+ player decides to kill me.

Needless to say, I was not a very happy troll hunter. But I sighed, grumbled about PvP servers, rezzed; and continued up the road, being very careful of the cats around me. When I saw a moonstalker, I waved goodbye to Vash, and started taming the kitty. It hurt, but when the cat glowed and shrank a bit, I knew it was mine, and I called her Lilith.

I did that entire run on my own - litterally without an escort, and have repeated it several times with various characters, even running a friend of mine into Darkshore, just to help him tame a ghost saber.

I had Lilith in the time before cross-realm battlegrounds, before TBC was even a whisper, before even Blood Elves were whispered as a playable class - so that cat was unique to the realm, and I would get whisper after whisper from people as to where I had gotten the cat. I always told them the answer... but I don't think many people went and got one. I was known to a number of people by the unique look of the cat. I was also called a night elf a time or two because the cat was most often seen as a NE pet.

Lilith was my first cat in WoW, and still a good memory. She was the cat that I figured out how and where to train growl on, and with a mix of Petopia and Good Intentions, I learned how to get pet skills.

When Tzia hit 70, I was tempted to name my Blackwind Sabercat Lilith, in memory of her - but Yikes became the cat's name.

Quote of the Day

"I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals." -Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)

This quote makes me smile. Not only have I heard it referenced on "Dirty Jobs" while flipping through the channels, but it makes me think of Truffles, Tzia's boar on Quel'dorei and Xavi, Yazmin's piggy over on Echo Isles. Both are great pets, and serve their purpose extremely well.

Why a Hunter

This post is in reference to the Aspect of the Hare post of today...

I know exactly how she feels. Without my pet, I'm partially freaking out, worrying I'm going to get squashed by something higher up, or just plain bigger than I am. Taming Humar was one of those... um... eek? moments. Tall Striders can look scary if you accidentally run into one without your pet next to you, and its the middle of the night and you are in foreign territory. Wing clip and raptor striking it to death is beside the point. Once I had Humar- now Japhrimel for Yazmin- I had her switch back to Xavi the boar and continued questing.

I grabbed Japh for Yaz because I have never before had the black male lion as a pet. It was an opertunistic grab, so I went for it, and I am very happy with my choice. Japhrimel comes from a book series I might have mentioned before by Lilith Saintcrow. Japh in the book is a demon with black silky hair and glowing reactive-green eyes. Sounds like my lion to me! I know that there will be TONS of Humar clones running around Shatt when I get to that point in the game - heck I see 1-4 every time I'm in Stormwind checking the AH, but I like the look of the cat; therefore I'm going to keep it!

Tzia has Ruka, a Frostsaber Pridewatcher out of Winterspring as her main pet. Ruka and BRK's Hobbes apparently look alike, and Ruka tells me she is honored to be from the same mold that Hobbes is in, and is trying to learn from the great cat's footprints. I picked up Ruka before I began reading BRK frequently. I was a MM hunter for leveling but loved the look of the Pridewatcher and had ear-marked the pet for Tzia when she was still just a level 10.

I love the looks of both of my cats. But then, I have two little furry friends in real life - Melody, the silver tabby; and Harmony, the black ball of fluff with yellow eyes. Pets are a large part of the hunter class, in real life? The pets are a big part of it. I love it when Harmony wants to chase toy mice up and down the hall, or when Melody walks over and flops down for a belly rub, or crawls up on my husband's moniter to regally stare down at us before dozing in the heat from the moniter.

Noteworthy vs Frequent Reads

Noteworthy are those blogs I think are pretty nice, but aren't a reading mainstay that I check through every morning, like Petoholics - thanks for the link hon, and BRK.

A blog gets to the frequent reads catagory by being amusing, witty, and making me laugh at least once so hard that I end up sounding like a hyena crossed with a dying dragon - don't ask, no really, don't.

Pop ups and Spam-me-not

I found a pop window up sitting on my computer task bar this morning after I finished typing my quote of the day in. After having read several unfortunate instances of hacking, I am letting my virus scan completely run, and then piggybacking Ad-Aware - 107 days of old deffinintions? Oops! Correcting that right now - and Spybot S&D, which is also probably out of date! >.< Anyways, this leads me to my daily post...

I wonder how many people remember last year about this time in WoW. Tzia would have still been on another server- pvp at that, and I don't think Quel'dorei would have been up just yet. Either way, I remember the sheer volume of SPAM I kept getting from random level 1 characters whispering me about once every minute - if I was lucky it was once every two - just to see if I wanted to buy gold, and my mail box was full of the junk as well. Deathwing how I do not miss thee!

I remember dealing with it calmly for a day or two, simply because I knew I wasn't the only one, my husband was getting a ton of it, as was his best friend, who was running Scholo with his brother to farm for money for his epic flying mount - I think it was the epic flying mount.

Then I got lucky enough to get Tzia into an instance - I want to say ZF at the time... yeah, a year ago Tzia was barely in her late 40s... scary eh? But, I got her in, and was running along killing things quite happily - then I got hit with about 7 spam tells about WoW gold all at the same time, and missed a pretty important notation about not clicking Bly due to it. Needless to say I wiped the group... oops.

Luckily the group leader was pretty cool about it, and suggested I get a mod called spam-me-not. I said okay, jotted down the name of the mod for later review and we tried again, successfully killing Bly and crew and getting me a shiny blue ring.

Side note: I want that on Yaz!!

After the run disbanded I got off my computer, walked down the hall to the present day computer room, knocked, and stuck my head in, to talk to my husband's best friend and ask about the mod I had just heard about. Lucky for me, computer geek best friend to husband - GIDustin - had heard of the mod, and had tested it out. He backed up the suggestion on my getting it, confirmed I could find it at curse and that it was "safe" for me to download and install on my at-the-time shiny, new, pretty, pink computer! (What can I say, I'm a girl?)

Side note 2: I might also add, Dusty put together my computer, all I told him was, Pink. Can run WoW and Half-Life2. Okay? Good!

I went back to my room, downloaded and installed it. It worked like a dream. When I later transfered over to Quel'dorei it needed an update, because they were dealing with the same volume of spam that Deathwing had been, just minus th mailbox portion of it. I was blissfully silent after that Spam-me-not update, and even today, running through a town, I will sometimes see Spam-me-not chirp at me that a gold spammer has been blocked - a single line of text is better than a paragraph!

Quote of the Day

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde

I couldn't agree more. Nothing seems to flabbergast a Tauren Shaman or a Human Paladin more than being of the other side, having just died -- usually to them wacking at you quite happily, and you wait out the pvp timer (or are just on a pvp server, and then I pitty you - hated it there myself) and then walk up and hug said other faction member!

Quote of the Day

"Un'goro, daily adrenaline rush since 2004." - My husband, in response to me dying sooo many times on Yazmin.

Un'goro

Yick! That's my first comment on entering Un'goro. Yeah, its a pretty place, but all the oozes and tar beasts running around kinda ruin the scenery... if you know what I mean.

I pointed Yazmin towards Marshal's Refuge immediately, and picked up all the quests I could. Checked my ammo, food, water, and non-combat chicken then set off questing. One thing I'd forgotten though... this is Un'goro Crater. Giant Impact Term less MONSTERS roam the crater.

Yazmin got smushed no less than six times by three different Tyrant Devilsaur... fear for the loss! The first time I laughed it off, it was a wake-up call, I'd barely woken up when I started questing in real life, didn't even have coffee- so I was playing a bit bleary-eyed anyway.

By the third time I was running back to my corpse, I was wondering if I was just having a really, really bad time... I didn't remember dying this many times with Tzia or Dione. Then again, Di is a bit harder to eat - plate does that to teeth.

Anyways, I rezzed, and promptly got eaten by the third Devilsaur of the day. Didn't have time to rez the pet, drink, nada. It was rez and RAWR!!! Dead hunter. My guild leader was laughing his rear off... because usually Feign Death saves my butt, while his little rogue-self is usually squashed flat.

I managed to ooze my squashed self back, watch the Devilsaur pat away, then rez, pop up the pet, and run away!! In between the time of being smushed by ravenous Tyrant Devilsaur's, I managed to get a few quests done and then turned them all in. Yaz is almost to 51, the boar is 50, but I'm tired of being flattened for a while, so I'm going to go play Sims 2... once I have all the expansions re-installed.

More of Yazmin's adventures in Un'goro tomorrow!

Hunter, money, and some hunter blog

Well, Yazmin dinged 50! And I ran her off into Searing Gorge to pick up a chest piece, since I was still wearing something from the mid 30s and it was leather... eww. Mail, with agility, stamina, and intelect. Should last me for a bit of time, I hope. Only a few more levels to outlands.

I have also been back-reading several diffrent hunter related blogs. I ran into an old post off Bremm's Musings declaring that outlands should not be attempted before 60... just due to the fact that a person will have a harder time with it.

I find, from previous experience with my Troll hunter Tzia and her pet kitty, Ruka, that 58 was just fine. But then, I am also a bit picky when it comes to gear and was able to conserve gold and had enough on dinging 70 to buy my flyer... so money is not an issue for me, and that I remember was one of the major problems with this person's post.

I figure Yazmin will have an easier time in outlands than her horde predecessor. The reasons for that being:

1. She has a tanking pet, not a dps pet.
2. I already know what I will face, prior knowledge will keep her alive.
3. Fel Reavers have an impact term - hallelujah!
4. I will be grinding for money, not questing as much... want epic land mount asap.

Yazmin is 50, as I stated earlier... she is still in a few pieces of leather - Triprunner Dungurees, some agi/stam leather shoulders, and I think that's it now that the chest piece is out of the way... but her gear is holding up, as is Xavi the boar, who got his updates of bite, gore, and charge - still needs to hit 50 before I can give the lil armored piggy a better growl.

I'm still a bit upset with the AH. Echo Isles Alliance prices are insane in my oppinion, but I do remember the fact of supply and demand... there are tons of hunters out there and a very very tiny portion of gear that is good for hunters, therefore demand is high, supply sucks, so pricing is in the stupidly rediculous range.

It just means I will be hoping for good gear to drop over buying it, unless I can find really good items for cheap... and when I do, believe me, those pieces won't remain on the Auction block longer than it takes me to click 'buyout'!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! And many happy returns for everything you do this upcoming year.

Well, I just showed my husband how to use chopsticks, and we found out that chicken-flavored ramen with cashews is a very tasty combo... might have to do that next time I want a late night snack.

Just realized its 3 in the morning here, the 1st of January... and I go back to school in six days from this one. Ugh. But then again, maybe its a good thing to be headed back to school. I'll be able to break my WoW time up with studying History and Sociology - I hope.

Also, realized I need to refill my FSFA form for the up-coming school year! I think some of the deadlines are the day after Valentine's!

Spark - "Hunters and Tanks"

In a tank's pov of what hunters should do in groups blog post from Ironhelm of Can Tank, Will Travel I found myself nodding. I've stated the same things so many times its not funny, and I'm the hunter! I had to learn such things by trial and error, and my husband kindly and patiently telling me why something wasn't a good idea. Of course, some of the time, I did have the right idea... even if I did get killed 2-4 times before pulling the insane stunt off... My suggestion? Check out the post!

Oh, and I had no clue that this blog existed until I followed a link from Bremm's Musings. Might have to consider changing the blog name... I'll sleep on it. Time for me to be to bed!

About Sparks

Sparks are my little notations on things I've read from other blogs and the like, so if you see a Spark - "statement" posting, its from another blog that I found rather interesting enough to dash my own commentary off on. Expect to see quite a few of these from me!

Draenei Hunter 41- 49

41-49

Yazmin is 49 at the time of this post. I leveled her through a number of various places, mostly in Theramore, Feralas, and Tanaris; helped out Woven on his Rogue with a Stranglethorn matter... that was a fun experience.

We died what... six times trying to do a quest involving a witch doctor - I think? Three adds + Witchdoctor + a patrol = one very frazzled hunter and an appoligetic rogue. I had fun with it though. It was testing my reflexes and response more than a Kara run will, because all I had was myself, the rogue, and the pet. I would have refused the 5g he tossed at me for the trouble, but he was persistant.

At 46 I started pulling out Humar, whom I named Japhrimel - after a character from the Dante Valentine Series by Lilith Saintcrow - working on leveling him up. I'll only be doing this when I am out of rested xp and the boar is caught up to me in level.

At 47 I managed to level Japh from 27 - 36 before I hit 48 and put him back in the stable to bring out Xavi again and continue questing.

At 49 I have run ZF once, have the mallet thanks to a very awesome hunter from Phoenix Wrath (thank you a ton!). The ZF run was a partial nightmare for me. I was coping very well with things going wrong... I am willing to PUG - hence the name of the blog - but this guy was irking me.

Had another hunter in the group. He claimed to have a high level warrior, so he and I got to sending whispers back and forth. He also had a boar. The boar was on defensive (which I can overlook ... if you are awesome), had growl on, and charge. I think my trap broke about 4 times just due to that stupid boar having charge active. Its a known hunter issue. Said hunter also claimed that growl cannot pull aggro off a tank... umm what are you smoking and can I please have some?

I can pull aggro with growl off a high level tank, so I was pretty adamant about the fact that it can be done, and growl should not be on in a group unless the tank royally sucks and you have to pet tank it... The tank for that run was pretty good, even if she was being power word: sheilded by the priest every time. She maintained aggro almost flawlessly. We wiped only once, and that was due to Gaz'rilla being in a bad spot due to bad clearing. Ah well, we got our carrots.

At 49 my current plans for Yazmin are:

• Do the Felwood Timbermaw quests.
• Keep leveling Japhrimel.
• Ungoro next for questing.
• Get better gear!

Draenei Hunter 21 - 40

21-30
Around my late teens, early 20s there was some friction with myself and other members of Phoenix Wrath that caused me to split from the guild and look for another one.

I switched over to my cousin's guild, Blood Pack. The guild was okay, but still not what I was looking for exactly, so after a few days ther, I left and went hunting again for a place for my character to call home. I'm pretty picky about this because with my horde hunter, I run a guild, so what I think a guild should be is defined.

I stumbled onto a little guild called Order of the Temple. It was just forming, and in some ways still is. Wovencroft is the Guild Leader, and so far I think he and I are getting along all right. The people are friendly, the atmosphere is good, I think Yaz might stay here for quite some time...

At 30 I decided I wanted a boar. The last boar available until 48 is a level 26, from Razorfen Kraul. Before I went to the Barrens, I ran into Redridge and tamed Bellygrub - a level 24 boar that knows charge 3 and Gore 4. Learned those skills and then switched back to my lion.

RFK is not something that should be done without a group, but I went in on my own - I had Feign Death, I could easily run far enough past the stuff at the entrance and FD out of issues... then pop up, lay my trap and tame my piggy friend... right? Wrong.

I died 5 times trying to get a boar... mostly due to the stuff at the very start and to the left of the entrance... would either resist or I'd fall too far and well... it wasn't pretty.

When I finally did get clear of the mess of mobs at the start of the instance? I grabbed a level 25 Raging Agam'ar, but decided I didn't like the look of the lighter colored boar. I was going to tame the level 26 Rotting Agam'ar, but couldn't get to it due to a patrolling ooze. I settled for a level 25 Agam'ar, which I named Xavi and hearthed out.

31-40
I spent 30-32 leveling Xavi up to my level in Ashenvale, doing quests and killing random mobs as it suited me. At 30 I was finishing up many of the Night Elf Rep quests. At 34 I was exaulted with Teldrasil. I then turned my attention to raising enough money by 40 to have my skills and my mount training.

I ran SM Cathedral once with Yazmin, it was a run-through with a 60 warrior leading the group. I only screwed up once... forgot that there was a mob to the left of a door way, stepped through and got killed pretty quickly. Not too fun for me, the healer rezzed and the group moved on. I didn't get anything but xp out of that run... it was worth it though... reminded me what grouping can be like with inexperienced players, and why I had enjoyed SM so much on Tzia.

After that run, I went over to Ratchet and popped up near Humar's tree, just to see if the black cat was home... he was! So I dashed back to Ratchet, dropped Xavi off in the stable and tamed myself a pretty black male lion.

At 40 I had enough money 104g to be exact to buy my mount, which cost 80g and get all my level 40 training too! I was happy with myself! I'd hit a major milestone - Yazmin to 40. Next goal is 50.

Draenei Hunter 1 - 20

Yazmin. 49. Likes bows, arrows, and killing stuff. Has a pet boar, formerly from RFK. She is a goat-girl as well...

No, its not a profile, or the starting sentences to a new story I'm writing. Its my alliance hunter over on Echo Isles. I decided to start and level a hunter because I have a cousin that is playing on that particular server, and on the other side of the faction line. I figured I might as well play with somebody I know, so about two weeks ago, I rolled a female Draenei hunter and called it Yazmin.

1-10
Started her through the Draenei starting area, got her to 10 - only dying twice in the entire proccess of getting to 1o (go me :p)! I got her little butt on a boat as soon as I had the pet training quest complete, and headed to Auberdine.

Grabbed a black and white tiger, and ran her down the road, dodging through monsterous bears and stags and icky murlocs. Died to a walking mass of vegitation, and almost blundered into some very scary looking Tauren at a pointy gate. That was just the first brush with Ashenvale she would encounter, since I wanted a specific first pet for her... I wanted the Rake.

Dodged around the tauren, going through a break in the fence. And then died to a freaking Tallstrider! Lucky for me, I knew exactly where I was and where I was going too, so I took the rez sick hit, and ran her towards Camp T, some how managing to avoid aggroing most of the mobs along the way...

Got around Camp T no problem, and ran her into Mulgore. I knew where the Rake spawned from previous trips to Mulgore helping out guildies on my "horde" server, dropped the black and white tiger -which had just been a distractor pet- and grabbed a Prairie Wolf Alpha to teach Yaz bite. Then I settled in to wait for the male lion to spawn.

While waiting, I ran into Ghost Howl, killed him, and equipped the cloak - it was better than what Yaz was wearing at the time. Glancing around again, I spotted the Rake, and dropped the wolf.

The tame was a snap. I had a very grouchy male lion on my hands once it was all said and done, but I fed him, got him happy, and then started killing things in Mulgore. On a PvE realm I felt comfortable killing things as long as I stayed away from Thunder Bluff.

Killed Mazzranache, and got a decent chest piece. The Rake repopped, and I killed him, getting an even better chest piece, which Yaz equipped. Then I hearthed out and continued questing with my cat... which I cannot remember what I named... odd really...

During this time I was with a guild called Phoenix Wrath - great people, chat regularly with one of their hunters still - and was lucky enough for the guild leader, Zuko, to run me through a few diffrent instances for gear.

11-20
Zuko ran me through Dead Mines once and through SFK as well, which helped me with gear to level (I cannot say thank you enough). During that time, I had the lion, which was really only a few days - I was jumping through the levels so quickly.

At about 19 I picked up mining, dropping the leatherworking I'd picked up - but keeping the skinning. I'd decided that Yaz would be nothing but a money making character and I'd buy what I needed off the AH.

While deciding on my professions, I had decided that Yazmin, even though a Draenei, would be riding a Night Elf Cat come 40. I already had a good chunk of rep earned from doing all the starting Draenei quests. So, I went back and did all the Auberdine quests and any over in Teldrasil that I might have missed.

Have Bow, Will Travel

Welcome to the first post of Have Bow. This will be a WoW-related hunter-specific (I hope) rambling spot for me. I've played hunter for a little over two years and recently rolled a new hunter on a new server, and on the other side of the faction line.

You will most likely hear about some of the blunders I've made as Tzia, my horde 70 hunter on Quel'dorei; and of some of the ones I make as Yazmin, my alliance hunter on Echo Isles. Yes, I have two hunters, each one on diffrent sides of the faction line, great people on both sides, and both servers!

I'm having a blast leveling with Yazmin. I'm also having fun with Tzia, who is my 70 raiding hunter, even though I'm taking a break from raiding at this time. Miss my raid buds, but they need to get some other people into raiding, so I'll sit out for a few more weeks.

And if I royally screw up with either hunter? I'll post about it, just so anyone reading can get a laugh. ^_^