Have Bow- Blog Title Revisited

When I started Have Bow, I thought it was a catchy little statement that fit the fact I was huntering quite well. Then I posted about the fact I'd run into a Can Tank, Will Travel blog. I questioned at that time changing the blog title, but never got around to it. The name Have Bow, Will Travel serves this blog well, and is much more appropriate now than it even was then!

At that time I had (QD)Tzia and Yazmin over on Echo Isles. I now have the Way Too Many Hunters list, which I might add is actually lacking a few, since I consider them Alt-alts. Yes, there is Main, Alt, then Alt-alt in my Hierarchy of Characters.

The total list of hunters is up to 8. Yes, eight different hunters on five different realms. Deathwing hosts two, Echo Isles hosts one, Quel'dorei has one, Bal'gun has one, Elune has one (on The Guy's Account from way back when), and Moon Guard has two.

Never thought I'd be spread out over so many realms! But then, the reasons for being on so many are very easy to explain.

Deathwing : The Origin Server.
I rolled the original Tzia on this realm under the name Venari. She started with a bow, an axe, and a nasty temper. The temper has smoothed out... especially after the name shift, no more being called VD... (I blame The Guy's friends for that one... particularly certain rogue). I learned certain fundamental aspects of WoW Hunter on this realm. And this is where my Horde Hunter calls home.

1. Always check your back... never know what's sneaking up on you.

2. Lay a freezing trap behind you... most people are stupid and won't check before walking into it.

3. Your pet is your life-line in hairy situations. Always keep major skills up to date.

4. Feed a pet one piece of food at a time. Shoving down its throat does nothing for happy pet.

5. Turn growl OFF in groups unless pet is off tanking. Makes for a happy tank.

Quel'dorei: Intro to PvE Servers
I originally rolled a hunter named Ranii (now deleted) on this realm to check it out. I found a nice enough guild to start off with, and then The Guy and I ended up forming our own.

We got a crash course in running a guild, luckily my guy found a few good guides, so we knew what to expect, and we knew the kind of guild we wanted going into things; we wanted what we weren't finding - informative, helpful, and a place to retreat from the rampant immaturity that was out there.

The guild was sorely lacking on healers, so I shelved Ranii and rolled a BE paladin named Dione. I ran Dione to about 62, and then the realm opened up for realm to realm transfers (yes, I'd gotten in on the ground floor of a realm starting) so I brought Venari/Tzia over as a 60 and shelved Dione. I leveled Tzia to 70 on here, had a great time with most of the people I grouped with, had a few horrible runs of various instances, and learned everything I could as a hunter with those people. Most of them earned my respect, a few lost it, but I can look back at QD with mostly good memories.

QD taught me:
1. How to deal with a guild, manage one, and deal with anything that was thrown my way.

2. How to deal with other people, even when you have lost all respect for them, and to let go of good friends to make their own mistakes, but always leave the door unlocked if they want to come back.

3. No matter what happens, you know you've done your best, and when its time to move on, you do so without a backward glance.

Echo Isles: Welcome to the Alliance
I rolled a Draenei Hunter named Yazmin here because my cousin on my Dad's side of the family had an alliance paladin, and I figured I can burn a hunter to 70 far faster than he can a paladin. Sad thought is? We never got to play together. I ran into a few guilds that were great, a few that were terrible, and sorely missed the Concentrate and Contain method of the Horde with the Barrens. Every Alliance I've played since then has made me grateful for the Barrens. I also didn't feel like I could ask a question while playing alliance, even though I'd never played the side before, but I was lucky in the fact I was playing my favorite, addictive class so I wasn't a complete and total newbie out in the world.

1. Alliance needs a Barrens Chat... somewhere specific, not in five zones across the world.

2. I love the Barrens, one chat, easy to turn off while flying over!

3. I am Horde, through and through. For the Horde!

Moon Guard: RP and what I do for Friends
Here is where my other Tzia resides, as a Draenei hunter with a as of yet un-named black wolf. I'm in a guild with a good friend of mine from back in the day of playing an on line horse simulation. She also has a hunter, her daughter has a horde hunter, and now a 65 something priesty. That priest is scary good. Ree is the kind of friend I love playing with, I can giggle when she does something goofy, confide in her when I'm feeling down, and help her destroy mobs when she needs just a little bit more help doing something on her druid. And I get to RP a bit now and then, whenever I feel like it!

1. RP not that scary.

2. Playing with RL friends makes it so much better.

3. B is one of the best tanks I have ever seen... even if I can give him grief about dying in Stockades at level 70. :p

Summary
I know I'm addicted to hunter. I try and play other classes and miss the pets, or I miss the damage, or I miss the armor. But most of all I miss the satisfaction of knowing I just killed something with my pet and it didn't even touch me. My pets are my companions, my friends, my anchor. As Cait, over at One Among Many said a long time ago, "A hunter's pet is a part of the Hunter's heart. A warlock's pet is a page in their grimoire..." Its true. Every hunter I have had has had special pets, with a personality all their own. And the best thing? Each and every one uses or has used a bow.

The name and sentiment with which I originally decided the name remains: Have Bow, Will Travel!

A Thank You

This post is a thank you to those that post every day, and actually give me a reason to crawl out of bed five minutes early, brew a pot of coffee in the morning and read my Frequent Reads.

Thank you Pike, for my daily dose of humor. Thank you BRK for keeping me grounded in hunters and up to date on major hunter in sights as well as the occasional daniel mode out-take. Thanks to Hunter's Mark for even more hunter info and beta info! Thanks to Mania and Petoholics for keeping me in the fuzzy lil critters that are our greatest friends in game. And last, but by no mean least, thank you One Among Many, for reminding me how kick-ass Boom Chickens are, and how cute!

And those are just some of the reasons why these guys are my favorite reads.

Blog Azeroth

Well, running around reading other people's blogs while you are trying to find a decent Prot Tank Paladin blog can sometimes lead you to stumble onto some pretty amazing sites!

I honestly cannot remember now how I landed on The Empty Quiver, but Caleria led me to an interesting forum for WoW Bloggers. So, I joined, and found that One Among Many and Pike are already listed on the Forum. Considering I read these two every day before school while sipping at my morning coffee, its a nice place to find. And, I think I might have found my Paladin Tank blog via Blog Azeroth.

Blog Azeroth is a forum for all those that blog about the game World of Warcraft, and our experiences in it. So, go ahead, follow this link over to the forums, if you wish!

Why Do YOU Blog?

I figure this is a question that I personally should answer, and would encourage anyone that reads this to do as well. And its an easy-to-post if you are stumped for something!

I blog most of the time so that somebody will be able to have something to read as they are getting ready for school / work / a zombie killing spree. I actually have two or three articles written in longhand on paper with a pen (ooh, scary hun?) that just haven't quite yet made it through the keyboard and onto the screen. The reason those articles are even on paper is I have an hour on Monday, Wednesday, and a half hour coming up on Thursday to write while my husband is in class. When I get home? Nintey percent of the time? I just want to log in and play, I don't want to blog immediately, unless I've been chewing on something while in class.

Blogging also gives me an outlet when things go really, really wrong in an instance, as a place to try and analyse why things went so horribly wrong, and how possibly somebody else can prevent making the mistake I did. Or, to share a funny incident or a really, really lucky break. My blog is a place to vent, cheer, or just generally be confused, without feeling stupid about it.

As I've said to my husband a few billion times, I had to learn a lot to get where I am now as a hunter. When I first rolled one? I had no clue how to send my pet to attack, didn't know that spiders kinda sucked as pets, or how cool boars eventually would be. If I can pass on even a tiny bit of what not to do to a new hunter, then at least the other hunter won't screw up the way I did so many times!

Note: Most times if you get more than 3 things on you as a new level 10+ hunter with a pet? You are sooo dead. Hunter multi-tasking is done with a growl, a freezing trap, and either a scattershot or an intimidate. Even I don't always survive a three pull if things go bad and the wrong thing traps. So, never feel bad for dying, just be embarrassed if your pet has just come from a battleground and you wipe the group because s/he is on aggresive - been there, done that, never do it again!