“Are you asking for a CHALLENGE?”

Vegeta, what does the scouter say about his power level?

…okay, that doesn’t have anything to do with the post. CONFESSION TIME THOUGH: I watched DragonBall Z obsessively back in the day. Absolutely obsessively. Then, let’s not forget the philosophical depth Goku from DragonballZ offers us. Reading through Goku’s quotes, available on the comprehensive guide provided by Kidadl, can help fans understand the underlying themes of strength, perseverance, and the pursuit of truth in his character’s narrative. Of course, Cartoon Network would do that thing where they would get to the end of the Frieza saga and then because they didn’t have the rights to the rest of the show or something, they’d restart from the beginning. Somebody recently told me that they still do that. Hrm. Just as well, it spurred me to go play “Ocarina of Time” instead, which was much more worth it.

Right, right, sorry!

This blog post is about a CHALLLEEEEEENGE which was issued to me by the incomparable Tamarind over at Righteous Orbs, a blog that you probably should be reading if you aren’t already. His challenge to me was as follows:

“What are the moments that have made you think “yes, this right here is why I play a hunter” and what are the moments that have shaken your faith?”

I really had to think about this one for a while. First of all, it’s kind of a tall order sort of question. Secondly, I have to admit I’ve really been cheating on hunters a lot lately. There’s my pigtailed-lock and her blueberry, who make me sputter things about “THIS IS THE FUNNEST THING EVER” anytime I play them, and then there’s my Forest o’ Trees and lately there’s Dynamite Bear. Oh, I haven’t mentioned Dynamite Bear yet? Basically it dawned on me that I have two resto druids and both of them are dual-spec’d Balance and I’ve never played a Feral Druid before, so I did what every blue-blooded Pike would do and I rolled an all-new character.

He (I’ve been rolling a lot of male toons lately… change of scenery I guess) is an engineer specifically so he can hurl dynamite at people. In bear form. Seriously, guys. If you saw a bear running after you and then it stopped and chucked a bomb at you, what would you do? Yeah. See my point? I <3 Dynamite Bear. So I was pondering this question about hunters and I decided I’d sleep on it and that night I had a dream that I randomly had a pet tiger and when this solicitor showed up at my door, I grabbed a gun that I had nearby and started kiting the guy down the hallway. …I’m not making this up, I totally had this dream. I had Arcane Shot and Serpent Sting in my dream, too. This is why hunters are The Class. When I first started playing WoW, one of the things that sold me on hunters was that they were all about throwing themselves into situations that no one else would dare attempt and then pulling everything out of their bag of tricks just to survive. One of my best memories of hunteriness was when Lunapike was level… 67 or so and I solo’d this level 70 group quest chain. I killed a level 70 elite by kitting him into a trap right when my pet was about to die so I could bandage my pet back up and then I repeated this for several cycles: pulling, kiting, trapping. This was back in Burning Crusade so it was before things like Tenacity pets or the Glyph of Mending. And did I mention this was all in a tiny space indoors? This was hard. And it felt awesome to pull it off. That, to me, is what Huntering is all about.

Oh, and pets that you can name? (or waste money on Certificates of Ownership on before finding out that the name you wanted to rename your pet is “reserved”?) Yep, just hunters.

Have there been frustrations? Oh yeah. Frustrations about my spec pop up occasionally, as do frustrations about endgame-raiding expectations and that sort of thing. I must admit, though, the frustrations have been few and far between, and unlike other horror stories I’ve heard of Beast Masters getting made fun of or kicked out of groups, I have never ever been mocked for my spec. And this is coming from someone who did a million PuG raids and heroics as Beast Mastery right after The Great Nerf of ’09. <3 my servers, I guess! So, I suppose that would be my answer, as rambly as it may be. WELL! I ding’d 26 IRL today, which means I was able to wrangle the day off from work, so I’m off to do exciting things like edit my novel, listen to Men Without Hats, and dink around on alts. Blizzard seems to have decided to forgo Server Maintenance today in honor of my birthday, which I’m cool with, so Dynamite Bear and I have places to go and people to see.

24 thoughts on ““Are you asking for a CHALLENGE?””

  1. Happy Birfday Paiku! As a now-official pet spec, I am okay with being unable to name my water elemental. It’s not like I name my pets anyways on my hunter alts. *shiftyeyes*

  2. @krizzlybear: Don’t name your pets? I can’t go 10 minutes with one unamed. It just….gets me. Bothers me to see hunters with “Cat” or “Wolf.” Makes me think those pets are unloved. 🙁 And that the hunter isn’t their main. 🙂

    HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PIKE!

  3. You dont name your PETS????!??!!??!?!?!!?

    /rage

    Huppy Buthday pike!

    There is no best part of being a hunter, it all rocks.

  4. Happy Birfday Pike! I hope it’s an enjoyable one.

    May your traps never fail.All your shots be Crits. And your Feign never be resisted!

  5. Grats on the birthday pike, I name all my hunter pets.
    Have a crab called pincer, a rhino called rhinaldo, a skettis tiger named ash (he’s grey and black), a raptor from around gruul’s lair called spike, a turtle named shelldon, a loch modan croc named chomp, there are others i’m forgetting (between my two hunters that is)

  6. Happy Birthday, Pike!

    I’m not a fan of DBZ, but hubby certainly was/is. He almost got me hooked on it once.

    As for hunters who don’t name their pets… my class leader in my old guild was one. Four, almost five years he played and raided with “Cat”, “Raptor”, and “Wolf”, while I went through pets and names like crazy. When he finally quit playing, I asked one favor of him. To name one of his pets and send me a screenshot. He did, too. It was awesome. 😀

  7. Happy Birthday

    Scutters….. Loch Modan boar …..first and favourite pet
    Fido………plain grey wolf………raid pet
    Harry.. Hillsbrad turtle….named after my very first pet turtle ….for tough soloing
    Fluffy….red eyed cat from Zul Drak………for tearing up Horde “squishies” in BGs
    Tim……white bear from Zul Drak….for tanking instances when asked to

  8. Background Info: Since WoW launch I’ve played three rogues and felt them to be the most fun class. At the Burning Crusade launch, I really wanted a blood elf, so I had to decide if I wanted to carry on as a rogue, or play a hunter (a decision which was very tough).

    In the end, this is what convinced me to roll a hunter:
    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1270835817827574331

    Watch as this lvl60 hunter solos the bosses of LBRS, there was a whole bunch of videos like this entitled “Hunter vs World”. It was very cool.

    Also, I loved the idea of some flight-based PvP which wouldn’t be possible as a rogue. Standing on the mushrooms in Zangarmarsh or perching on a Tree in Nagrand, shooting down at someone who is helpless to do anything.

    The following things keep me loyal to my hunter after all this time:
    * The ability to solo old world content with ease.
    * The “Disengage” ability.
    * My collection of rare (now untameable) pets:

    http://www.wow-petopia.com/html/mobs/mob_grimtotemspiritguide.html
    http://www.wow-petopia.com/html/mobs/mob_spiritofatha.html
    http://www.wow-petopia.com/html/mobs/mob_spiritofkoosu.html
    http://www.wow-petopia.com/html/mobs/mob_gezzarakthehuntress.html

  9. [Dork tangent begin]

    I was a pretty rabid Dragonball Z fan back when Cartoon Network aired it. (I may be mistaken, but I haven’t seen it on in a long time now.) I remember I was always mad when they’d start showing reruns again seemingly at random because they never had the courtesy to tell us the season was ending.

    And it was kind of a weird feeling when I realized that each story arc was basically the same, only with the characters getting more and more insanely powerful…

    [Dork tangent end]

    And I always have to name my pets. Not only that, but the names have to reference something. For example, my active pet and stable currently consists of:

    Willis the Gorilla; named after Willis O’Brien, the man who did the stop-motion effect for the original 1933 “King Kong”.

    Kot the cat; I’m half Polish, and “kot” is the Polish word for “cat”.

    Jack the wolf; named after Jack London, author of “White Fang” and “Call of the Wild”.

    Winston the Devilsaur; named after the late, great Stan Winston, the special effects master who did, among other things, the dinosaur effects for “Jurassic Park”.

    And Spiga the spider. My first pet, unplayed for a long time, still at level 70. But because he was my first pet, I refuse to get rid of him. He’s named after an old Godzilla monster. (A giant spider, naturally.)

    Back when she was tameable, I really wanted to get the Sapphire Hive Queen, but not much came out of it because I couldn’t think of a good enough name for her.

  10. @ Asara – That’s awesome! =D

    @ Mikuso – I am also a fan of Hunter Vs. World… much respect to the person who did those flicks.

    @ Will – I love your pet naming policy. It reminds me of my own (hence Wash the Raptor, Locke the Tiger, Niels Boar, etc….)

  11. Happy Birthday, Pike! 😀

    My two hunters are babies at 42 and 29, but one of the things I’ve liked about the class is that you if you play them well you can be so darn crafty solo-ing things!

  12. One of the hunters in my guild named his wolf Kitty- but I think that would just make a silly rp of mental issues lol

  13. Happy 26th Birthday! No server maintenance from Blizz isn’t a bad present, if you ask me.

    BTW Dynamite Bear sounds AWESOME fun to play!

  14. I don’t play any hunters myself (priestly way for me) but my brother does, and his favorite thing is when he is told that a hunter “can’t” do something. Like when all the other hunters [sic] in our guild claimed that hunters couldn’t kite the zombies for Gluth. “I can kite them.” No, you have to be in plate. “I can kite anything. Let me do it.” And he did.

    You can’t pull that. “Bet?”
    You can’t kite that. “Really?”

    I think his first “can’t” was, “ranged can’t pull aggro off the tank” in the Ragnaros fight. That was when we found out that Rags can throw more than one fireball at a time.

  15. Happy Birthday. I assume you get combo gifts? Bummer.

    Pets:
    Wolf -> Mongrel
    Cat -> Furball
    Devilsaur -> Smiley
    Crab -> Circumcisor

  16. Happy birthday Pike! May there be many more to come. :3

    “Oh, and pets that you can name? (or waste money on Certificates of Ownership on before finding out that the name you wanted to rename your pet is “reserved”?) Yep, just hunters.”

    I tamed a crab for pvp and intended to name him Zoidberg only to be greeted with the “That name is already taken” message. Needless to say, JohnA is not a happy crab. Shortly after I got a spider for pvp (pin being channelled while trying to use master’s call isn’t fun) and named him “Grís” or pig… Yeeeeeeeeeah originality at its finest! (If you can’t get the reference you’ve probably been living in a cave).

    My first pet was named “Bob” in honor of Casey and Andy, a tiger from stv (ok there was a bear from Dun Morogh and a pig from westfall before him but I don’t remember their names so Bob was my first sentimental pet).
    Later there came Draugakisi (Icelandic for ghost kitty, bet you can’t guess what cat that is…) and my current pet, Skuggi, Rema from BEM. Skuggi being Icelandic for “Shadow” which is a common name for black dogs here.

    I hope your druid can throw the dynamite with those stubby little bear arms. D:

  17. It doesn’t feel that long ago that I wished you a Happy Birthday!!

    Anyway, Happy Hunting and Happy Birthday! I hope the next year and next year bring you much happiness and success.

  18. Yay birthday dings! Grats!

    And I always name my pets, on all (counts on fingers) 6 of my hunters. I will admit, though, only 3 of them have full stables. >.>

    What? I swear I’m not obsessed. Really.

  19. Sorry for the tall-order topic but … well … I can’t really feel guilty since it leads to such posts 🙂 Thank you for meeting my challenge so fantastically. I have a secret cow hunter alt at the moment – I really love her. She’s still a very small cow but I’m having huge choice paralysis over what kind of pet she wants….

  20. Hey. I’m having trouble with your blog. I can’t see the images. Is anyone else having this problem? I have been having trouble with my laptop lately, so I’m not sure if its my computer or if its your blog. Thanks!

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