I’m assuming most of you who read this blog also read OutDPS, however, if you are one of the three or four people who doesn’t, I’m going to take a quick minute to bring a post there to your attention:

It appears that simply letting your pet auto-cast its attacks lags a bit and results in a DPS loss. You can find the details (and advice on how to fix it) right here.

Also note that this effects all pets, including warlock and mage ones.

Just a heads-up from your Friendly Neighborhood Pike!

- So between now and the last time I messed around with femaledwarf.com, something interesting has happened in regard to Beast Mastery and pets; namely, Devilsaurs appear to be beating wolves again. Only if you both have about a bajillion buffs though. (i.e., wolves are probably still superior in five- and ten- mans). Why this is different from how it was when I tested it multiple times a couple months ago, I dunno. Gear maybe? It may be worth a look, though, if you a Beast Master and are into that sort of thing!

- I did ToC25 on the weekend, like I always do if I happen to have the time slot off from work. Actually we did it twice. The first time we were going to have six hunters so I volunteered to go on my druid instead, and I healed the thing. Then I was feeling all good about how the next day I’d go and pretty much be the only hunter cause all the hunters had gone on the first day. But no, we still had like… four or five hunters in the group. The number of hunters that have joined the guild in the past month or so is through the roof. Maybe my guild is right, maybe hunters DO just follow me around, like I’m the Pied Piper or something.

ANYWAYS.

I got a whisper from one of the hunters, who was spec’d Beast Mastery at the time, if he should use his wolf, cat, or Spirit Beast. I told him that, numbers-wise, the wolf would perform the best of all three, but stressed that he should use the pet that he loved the most! So he ended up actually cycling through all three pets throughout the course of the run, giving each one a chance to do one or two bosses. Which I thought was neat.

The point is that I still support using the pet you love. That, to me, is one of the points of “Being a Hunter”. I mean, I can see not running with a tenacity- or cunning- pet, cause that makes sense, but I don’t like feeling pidgeonholed into one or maybe two pets of all the ferocity ones we can choose from.

I’ve been running as Marksmanship lately and recently discovered that, according to all the mathy stuff, I’d be doing 200 more DPS if I was using a wolf. My raptor, though, is not going anywhere, so the math can shove it. (Not saying wolves are bad though, I know a lot of people that really like them… but they are simply not my style. Well, except for the fiery Zul’Drak wolf, but Lunapike has that one already and I like when my hunters all have unique pets).

Granted, if Wind Serpents because a Ferocity pet, I wouldn’t raid with ANYTHING ELSE EVER, EVER AGAIN, but that is just a pipe dream. /dreams

- My “NaNoWriMo” book is going well, I’m at 13,500 words! I must say, the writing thing is fun. I’ve let the WoW and the blog fall a bit to the side while I work on this big book project but it’s suuuuper fun. Right now I’m just trying to dump words onto the page, but once I finish up, I plan on going back and doing a hardcore edit job. This is my profile-ma-jig by the way, and you should add me if you are doing it too. Not really for any reason, but just cause it’s fun.

…so that last one was totally not pet related. “Pet project”, maybe…? Hmm. /muses

I’m pretty sure we’re all clear on the fact that I enjoy rolling hunters. I can’t help it. It’s relaxing. It’s nostalgic.

Alongside this, it means I have tamed a lot of pets in my WoW career. The level 10 pet is very important to me, because I consider it to be the pet that particular hunter will have their entire life– oh sure, they’ll tame others, and may even use others in raids or PvP, but all of my hunters keep their first pet.

And one of my little quirks is that I enjoy taming the… more challinging to obtain pets.

I’ve ran level ten Hordies to Teldrassil. Twice. Once for the owl and once for a cat.

I’ve ran a low level Hordie to Azuremyst for the moth.

I’ve ran a level 10 Hordie to Dun Morogh for the snow leopard.

I’ve ran a level 10 Alliance character to Durotar for a raptor.

A good chunk of those were on PvP servers.

I’ve also done safer but still lengthy trips on other characters: dragging a Tauren to Eversong Woods or Trolls and Blood Elves to Mulgore. (It has occurred to me that an unusually high percentage of my lowbie hunters are Horde. Hmm.)

This was all in my mind yesterday when I did something crazy and made a character on one of my non-”Home Servers”. Thus it was that I made a female tauren hunter (yes I have a billion of those, shuddup, Azeroth needs more, dangit! /shifty eyes) on Wyrmrest Accord, so I could say hello to Faeldray and Tzia, two people who have been a part of the Aspect of the Hare commenting community for a very, very long time and who both have awesome blogs of their own.

We hung out for a while and did some really nifty RP (which I may talk about later, in its own post), but always in the back of my mind as I did the tauren starter quests for the umpteenth time was what pet I should get. It had to be special, something that I could tie in to my developing character story, and preferably something I hadn’t ever tamed before.

Then I had an idea.

Snoeken (Dutch for “Pike”, albeit the fish and not the weapon =P) went on a little adventure.

First, the ride from Thunder Bluff to Orgrimmar.

Taking the zeppelin to Undercity…

And getting on a different zeppelin and going to a very scary place for a level 10:

Howling Fjord.

Then came the ceremonial removing of all the clothes (except the shirt and pants– I’m a decent tauren!) and a deep breath…

And then the corpse hop began.

So, rez timer, we meet again.

The run to Utgarde Keep wasn’t that bad though, and I soon found myself where I needed to be…

Well well well, what’ve we got here?

Brand New Birdie:

The fishertauren and her sea hawk:

My new druid-birdie has a few bugs, it would appear. He flies extremely low to the ground (as opposed to, say, an owl, who flies much higher), and when he flies after you, he remains leaned back in his “hovering” position. The way a druid would look if it was just flying in place. I’ve actually had this happen to me in my druid flight form, if I time myself carefully and jump right when I enter flight form. But it seems to be a perpetual problem for the Daggercap Hawk, and it looks kind of silly. In addition, he doesn’t “highlight” when you click on him, the way other things do.

Regardless of these issues, he is a gorgeous pet– and certainly unique, as well!

Now we just have to cross our fingers and hope Blizzard eventually fixes these issues, rather than conveniently deciding that a level 10 hunter shouldn’t have a bird from Northrend =P

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend recently both in game and as anecdotes on other blogs: hunters that aren’t using their pets. At all. Like, they don’t even summon them.

Okay guys, here’s the deal. I know that 99.999% of you are Marskman or Survival right now, but even so, you can’t afford to not have your pet out.

“But Pike, his DPS sucks!”

I asked some people on Twitter how much DPS their pet contributes in a raid setting. Here were some of the responses I got:

TheAllianceGuy (Marksman): “Above 1000 at least”
T_Jazz (Marksman/Survival): “the hundreds”
tchann (Beast Master): “40+ percent of 5k dps”
shizukera (Beast Master): “I can’t give you a number, but it hurts like hell when my pet dies”
jayesh (MM/SV, depending on fight): “16-23 percent. varies from fight to fight”
ILikeBubbles (Beast Master): “I think mine is…800/900ish DPS?”
dhollinger (Survival): “Rough estimate? My ulduar geared SV hunter’s wolf does ~450-500 from what I remember”
shieldbreakr (Survival): “536dps in my raid last night in my 25man naxx pug. I did 4132dps, he did 536. I use cats”
Eidtalheg (Survival): “my average pet (wolf) dps is ~730.”

The awesometacular Anna of Too Many Annas sent me some raid info from Totally Raids, Inc, on Feathermoon. Here is what she sent me:

First 3/4 of Ulduar + VoA Clear
Surv Hunter Pet – Cat – 950 DPS, 3.3 mil damage
Surv Hunter Pet – Moth – 900 DPS, 3 mil damage
Surv Hunter Pet – Wolf – 920 DPS, 2.5 mil damage

Yogg, Ony, VoA, ToC Normal -
Surv Hunter Pet – Cat – 850 DPS, 2.2 mil damage
Surv Hunter Pet – Moth – 800 DPS, 1.9 mil damage
Surv Hunter Pet – Wolf – 650 DPS, 1.5 mil damage
Marks Hunter Pet – Cat – 750 DPS, 1.5 mil damage

It’s worth noting that the marks hunter, whose pet is at the bottom of the chart, had never seen Yogg-Saron before (he’s our “sometimes” hunter, and we’ve not been doing Yoggy a lot), so he’s got a bit of a gear disparity from the other three!

Last half of ToC plus 11 wipes on Heroic Northrend Beasts
Surv Hunter Pet – Cat – 950 DPS, 2 mil damage
Surv Hunter Pet – Wolf – 700 DPS, 1.3 mil damage
Surv Hunter Pet – Wolf – 1000 DPS, 1.1 mil damage

Extremely variable numbers as you can see, and I know this is dependent on things like gear, level of content, group makeup, etc. But look at even some of the low-end numbers from Twitter and tell me that’s not helpful. Would you say no to a free 400 DPS? And check out some of the stuff Anna is doing– those pets are doing twice that! If you’re min/maxing your gear and your spec, why would you say no to using a pet?

“But Pike, I can’t keep him alive, I’m not BM like you!”

There seems to be this weird misconception floating around the blogosphere and the WoWosphere in general that raid-spec’d BM pets are magically much easier to keep alive and/or are better tanks than non-BM pets. Here’s the deal, I could spec for pet survivability, but I don’t, because I spec for DPS. The only things my pet has that yours probably doesn’t, from a standpoint of pet survivability, is one extra point in Wild Hunt, one extra point in Bloodthirsty, and one point in Improved Mend Pet. Possibly one point in Endurance Training, if you are Survival and don’t have it. That’s it. (I don’t count Improved Revive Pet because that is assuming your pet is already dead, and we’re talking about keeping him alive.)

This means my pet has a little more stamina than yours, and a slightly greater chance to regenerate a minute amount of life in combat. Improved Mend Pet is extremely situational– it’s helpful on Heigan and that’s about it.

If I can keep my pet alive, you can too. It just involves some situational awareness and a Mend Pet keybind.

“But Pike, this is [Insert Some Ridiculously Pet-Unfriendly Boss Here]“

Now, believe me, I know that some fights are a royal pain in the butt in terms of pet survivability. I understand that not all fights are created equal.

So keep your pet by your side.

Most Marksmanship builds include 2/2 Focused Fire, which is free DPS just for having your pet there.

And on top of that, a good number of you are using a wolf right now. I don’t, myself, partially because I like other pets better, partially because my stable is full, and partially because I’m a stubborn idiot making a stand against what I see as an unfair pet status quo. But guys, the wolf is free DPS just from standing there because of Furious Howl.

“But Pike, he dies on Mimiron anyway, even if he’s standing by my side!”

Yeah, I know >.> We won’t talk about Mimiron. /cough

“But Pike, it’s just a couple hundred DPS.”

And yet that new piece of gear you are drooling over will get you what, like, 15 DPS?

And what about those 1% boss fight wipes? Betcha wish you’d had a couple hundred extra DPS there.

In Conclusion:

You have no reason to not have your pet at least out and summoned. It’s free DPS. And besides which, look at your favorite pet’s face. Go on, do it.

Who could say no to a face like that? >.>

Pet control is vital, in my opinion, to all hunter specs. It’s part of what makes you a hunter. It’s part of what makes our class difficult to play, regardless of what other classes may occasionally think or rib us about. Because when the raid leader says that “ranged has to do this and melee has to do that”, we have to listen to both those things because part of us– our pet– is in fact melee.

We are the ones who have to make sure our pet is not DPS’ing the same lasher as we are on Freya.

We are the ones who have to make sure our pet is DPSing the big add on Onyxia while we focus on whelps or Onyxia herself.

No other class has to worry about this kind of thing, except maybe demonology warlocks (and Unholy Death Knights..?). It’s a big responsibility.

And spec’ing MM or SV doesn’t automatically clear you from that pet responsibility. That arrived when you chose to roll a hunter. If you want to be the best hunter you can be, that includes your pet. You’re both in this together.

To mangle a quote by a toy cowboy, “Pets. If you don’t have one, get one!”

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, there was a necklace I wanted called Worgen Claw Necklace. It dropped off of Attumen, the first boss in Karazhan, and I wanted it because I was wearing one from Steamvaults or something.

Now I went to Karazhan a lot. Pretty much every week for several months. I loved that place, I never tired of it, not even long after I was Exalted with the Violet Eye. Still do love it, which I’m sure most of you know. But Worgen Claw Necklace never dropped. Not once.

Pretty soon, I didn’t need it anymore. I had a necklace from Heroic Slave Pens and eventually I had a badge necklace. (Never got the Shattered Sun necklace because I was Scryer and the Scryer version sucked.) Still, it became the principle of the thing. I saw Attumen drop everything else. I even saw the mount once. But never Worgen Claw Necklace.

I got my tree druid to 70 and started doing Kara when I could. You may be thinking, “Ha! It probably dropped when you were on your druid!” But you would be wrong. My druid never saw it either. She’s half way through Revered. I have never seen this thing drop.

And so a dream began to formulate in my head. Several months and an expansion later, Kill Bill-like, I knew what I had to do.

I must solo Attumen.

I must get my necklace.

After several weeks of putting it off because I was attached to all my pets, I finally let my wolf go so I could obtain a tenacity pet. Because I was impatient, I got a worm, because there are some that are level 80 by default.

I got myself a pet-tanky spec, spec’d my pet a pet-tanky spec, and bought a shiny Glyph of Mending. Pretty soon my Mend Pet was healing for 2200 health a tick. Then I got into a raid group and headed off– just my worm and I– to Medivh’s tower.

The trash to Attumen is tricky. Pulls of two or three horses at a time, often with stable hands who heal and do fun things like that. So long as you know how to trap, pull and properly time your Feign Deaths, it’s not difficult, but it is time consuming and there were a couple of close calls.

Finally I was standing in front of Midnight. I braced myself and sent in my pet.

For about ten seconds, all was going well; Mend Pet was keeping Nachi the worm up. Then Attumen came out. Thunderstomp picked up aggro on him and I soon discovered that poor Nachi couldn’t dream of staving off both off with Mend Pet alone; Last Stand gave him a couple extra seconds but inevitably down he went.

I tried again and had a similar experience, and then trash began to respawn. See, let me tell you what the most frustrating thing about solo’ing Attumen is. It’s that it takes about twenty minutes to clear the trash, but thirty minutes to respawn. So you essentially have a ten minute window to make attempts on Attumen before they start respawning mid-boss-fight and coming to pwn you. Yeah, it sucks.

Anyways, feeling a bit miffed, I went and tried a few other solo’y things. I gave Onyxia a shot and managed to get her down to 40% three different times, but each time it wound up being not my pet who died, but me. Between whelps, random fireballs, and crap like that, and being limited to your one token potion, bandages, and Lifeblood, I couldn’t self-heal enough.

Then I went completely nuts and headed off to Molten Core. I quickly discovered that you can sneak past a good deal of the trash, and that which you can’t sneak past you can dispose of fairly easily. As such I made attempts on a few different bosses, and again, each time I was faced with the issue of the boss having some gimmick that would destroy me long before my pet was in any danger. (Why hello, Living Bomb, yes, I hate you too.)

Finally I went off to give Attumen one last shot, having tweaked my pet’s spec a little and having discovered some trick on YouTube where you could supposedly pull Midnight without pulling Attumen. Cleared the trash, made four unsuccessful attempts (maybe they hotfixed this?), and was more than willing to make more attempts but, you guessed it… trash respawns.

So I ended that little experiment and found myself wondering if it’s even possible for a hunter to solo Attumen without exploits or two pieces of T5.

Then I had another crazy thought. Turtles have a special move called Shell Shield. I found myself wondering if maybe, with a very well timed Shell Shield and Last Stand, and a “burn ‘em down quick so they merge” technique… it might be possible.

And so, after bidding farewell to my worm… this is my new turtle (or as my inner pet store geek insists on calling him, tortoise). His name is Bourne which is short for Bourne Again Shell because I am a nerd.

Now I’ve just got to begin the process of leveling him up to 80 from 75.

I’ll be back, Attumen… you can’t sit on that necklace forever!

There they were, high in the hills of Crystalsong Forest. Tawyn and Perezvon. They’d flown there atop the broad, red wings of Spirakistrasz, Perezvon the wolf enjoying the ride as he always did, ears flapping.

Tawyn had grown attached to him since nursing him back to health some time ago, but she had since discovered that they were not the best fit for each other. He was loyal, and he fought as hard as he could, and his howl was inspiring to her. But he lacked the pure unbridled storm that Wash seemed to possess, and the cunning of Eltanin and Tux, and the stealthy movements of Locke. Perezvon was a good friend, a companion– but Tawyn needed a fighter.

They stood there and Perezvon wagged his tail a bit, as if to ask what they were doing out here. That tail, Tawyn thought. She was convinced by now that he was only half-wolf, and half-domestic dog. She was also convinced that he’d had an owner at some point, before her, which is why he had warmed up to her so fast– and it was time to return him to his home.

“Perezvon,” she said, in a gentle voice that none but her pets ever heard, “It’s time for you to go.”

The wolf looked up at her and blinked once or twice. He of course could not understand Common, but Tawyn’s training as a Beast Master had given her enough of a bond with her pets that she was able to get the gist across with little more than the tone of her voice. She looked down at him. “You were hurt, and you needed someone to fix you up. I think you are going to be okay now.” She looked back up at the horizon. “And I don’t know where your home is. But I know you know how to get there.”

Silence. The wind blew a bit, rustling some nearby leaves.

And then he was on her, licking her face, and Tawyn sprouted a lopsided grin and cackled, “Git outta here, boy… go home.”

And he did, running through the snow.

The last thing Tawyn heard was a furious howl.

It’s Tuesday morning, the servers are down and some of you even have extended maintenance. Whether you’re at work or at home, there’s a good chance you’re bored. Never fear, Pike is here! To answer a few huntery questions I’ve been getting relatively frequently in comments/e-mails/Google searches/postcards. Except without the postcards. All I get in the mail are bills. /sob

But don’t take it from me. See for yourself what tragedy lies ahead when the paths of star-crossed lovers meet. And now: On with the show!

How much Attack Power does Agility give you as a hunter?: This is a flat 1:1 ratio. One Agility is one attack power. If you heard differently somewhere, you heard one of two things: either that Agility actually is worth more as Survival (which it is) so in a roundabout way, you do get more AP for it– or somebody who used to play a hunter a long time ago and then probably rerolled shaman/paladin in BC informed you that Agility gives you two attack power. Important: This stopped being the case with Burning Crusade. It’s 1 Agi = 1 AP now. A surprising number of people out there still aren’t aware of this. Don’t worry if you were led astray! Totally not your fault. *nods*

As a Beast Master hunter, should I be focusing on Agi gems or AP gems? Your “Stats for a Hunter” guide says Agi, is that still true?: That particular guide was written during the era of Burning Crusade and as such, while the basics of it are still correct, not all of it entirely is anymore. This is one of those points that has changed. At this time last year Agility was sort of the stat du jour for gems and enchants; AP and crit were still both very good, but “real hunters picked Agi”, so to speak.

These days, with your pet doing a bigger percentage of your damage (probably about 45-50% of your total DPS on a Patchwerk-style fight, as opposed to 30-35% of your total DPS in Burning Crusade) and Kill Command no longer having anything to do with your crits (and Cobra Strikes in general not proc’ing enough to justify stacking tons of crit), Attack Power is worth a lot more to you as a Beast Master than it was before, because it does, in fact, affect your pet’s Attack Power. Combine that with the fact that, for example, there have been no upgrades to Agility-based two-handed weapon enchants but some yummy AP ones, and you can see why AP is coming out the winner for Beast Masters these days.

Now remember, none of this means that agility or crit is bad. We still love them both. Just that AP gems are going to get you a bigger bang for your buck. Oh, and if you are dual-spec’d BM/Survival, I’ll say figure out which one you play more and gem for that. (Agi for Survival, and AP for BM).

So which pet really is the top DPS pet for Beast Masters?: There is some confusion here and I think it comes from the fact that there are some discrepancies on the list between “top DPS pets alone” or “top DPS pets when combined with the hunter”. Here’s the deal:

Devilsaurs are the current top DPS pet for Beast Master hunters.

Fortunately, for those of us who don’t like the large size/wonky hitbox/etc. of the devilsaur, we have some options.

Wolves do not do particularly high amounts of DPS alone, but in conjunction with Furious Howl applying to the hunter they are the second best DPS pet– yes, even for Beast Masters– last I checked the theorycrafting sites. Remember, combined with Longevity, that buff is gonna be up some 66% of the time for us. That’s pretty good.

However, they are only a smidge ahead of Raptors, the third best choice. Raptors on their own do rather more DPS than wolves do, but they lack the buff so the combined hunter-pet DPS theorycrafts out to be a little lower. They are still a top-notch pet especially for Beast Masters: Savage Rend crits a lot which self-buffs the Raptor and I have personally found it makes a big difference. I have both a wolf and a raptor at level 80 and I usually bring the raptor to raids. I find, in my situation, that I tend to perform slightly better with him (aside from the fact that I am more attached to him >.>). So remember, the theorycrafting numbers aren’t always everything, you have to see what works for you.

“But Pike, I love my Spirit Beast/Cat/etc.”! Good! Please keep using the pet you love. Cats and Spirit Beasts are still quite viable, they just aren’t in the current “top three” on paper. But “on paper” is just that, on paper, and in my humble opinion it’s not as important as raiding with a pet you have had since level 10, or took forever to find, or just love dearly.

Well, hopefully all of that cleared up some confusion. As always, this site would not be complete without the comments, so feel free to leave ‘em!

Pet specs have been shaken up a bit with the advent of 3.1, so let’s talk about how you will ideally spec your three types of pets. First up, pet specs for us Beast Masters (I’ll cover you non-extra-talent-points folks in a later post!)

Ferocity:

You will probably want your Ferocity pet’s talent tree to look like this. This scoops up everything you need to ensure your pet is the instrument of your vengeance in your average raid or heroic. Of course, there are adjustments you can make if you are solo’ing or leveling and would rather pick up, say, the stamina or healy-type talents. But honestly, Heart of the Phoenix never once worked for me anyway, so I didn’t really have a problem with ditching it… >.>

Cunning:

Your cunning pet is a very versatile creature who can be used in a variety of situations, and as such I consider his talent tree to be the most flexible in terms of talents that you do/don’t want to take. I have found that this works very well from a solo’ing or questing standpoint. I know Cunning pets are often overlooked these days but honestly, equipped with things like Owl’s Focus, Feeding Frenzy, Wolverine Bite and Roar of Recovery (now with a shorter cooldown), they are not to be underestimated. Try one out and see what you think.

Tenacity:

With Thunderstomp no longer Gorilla-exclusive and some great new tanky-talents, the Tenacity changes were really great. I have found this to be a very good pet-tanking build. You purposefully bypass some of the typical “DPS” talents in favor of making your pet able to take it, if not dish it out. There is some flexibility here if you’re not a big fan of Last Stand and would rather put the Avoidance+Last Stand points somewhere else, although I’ve found it to be quite a lifesaver in multiple tricky situations, myself… I wouldn’t go without it.

Welp, there ya have it. Toss me your questions and comments, and the “non-Beast Master edition” is coming up soon!

Blood.

It mingled with the dirt and the hair and the rough prints left in the crunchy dry snow, and Tawyn crouched over them, bits of leftover slush clinging stubbornly to her fingers as she ran them softly over the ridges made by this… creature.

For that’s what it was, something in the canine family probably, judging by the prints and the smell and the texture of the fur.

The night elf closed her eyes and breathed in the scent one more time before flicking her fingers behind her; one sharp motion that simultaneously shook some of the snow off and also beckoned a brilliantly hued magenta raptor to pad silently up behind her, his glittering eyes scanning the area and his breath coming in puffs in the crisp northern air. Tawyn never lifted her gaze from the tracks and finally she arose and slowly walked along them, followed closely by her raptor, Wash.

A faint rustle of leaves. She paused; the quarry was near. The blood pooled a bit at the base of a nearby bush, and a smell was on the wind– it was still alive. Tawyn bristled and instinctively reached for her rifle, and was comforted by its familiar touch, as behind her Wash stared unblinkingly at the bush, awaiting one command…

…that came in the form of his master loosening ever so slightly and breathing “easy,” the word itself a mere whisper, but enough for the raptor to relax his stance– just a touch– and return to his previous behavior of scanning the surroundings. The thing in the bush was no longer a threat.

Tawyn crouched down next to the bush; The Thing was cornered now and began making nervous growling and spitting noises– it was still willing to put up a fight, wounded as it was. The hunter peered in and saw a wolf of some sort staring back at her: bruised, beaten, bleeding. Its eyes flashing with anger and pain. Tawyn stared back, and the staring contest went on for quite some time before the wolf buckled, shutting its eyes and letting out a quiet whine of anguish. This was followed by a low and near imperceptible rumble. The wolf’s stomach was growling.

With movements that were slow and precise, as not to startle the creature in the bush, Tawyn pulled her backpack from off her shoulders, reached inside, and pulled out a piece of dried venison. She pushed it under the bush, a few feet from the wolf’s nose, and set it there. The wolf recoiled at first in fear, snarling, but Tawyn pulled her hand back quickly and simply waited.

For several long minutes, the wolf feigned disinterest in the meat and didn’t move. His eyes gave himself away, however, and then his nose, and finally he inched forward and chomped the meat down eagerly before returning to his original position. Tawyn pushed another strip of meat into the same place. The wolf only waited about half as long before eating, now, and the hunter noticed that his tail made a few weak thumps against the snowy earth– this was interesting in and of itself, as normal wolves did not wag their tails past their youth. A hybrid animal, perhaps? Or a young wolf? It was hard to say; the creature was slightly smaller than the average wolf but this could have spoken for either theory. Regardless, it was heartening to see the animal improving, if only a little.

One more strip of meat. This time, though, Tawyn held it out with her fingers, not letting go of it.

The wolf didn’t move, but he eyed the meat and Tawyn could tell from his eyes that he was considering it. The elf remained perfectly still, arm outstretched. Finally the wolf tenderly plucked the meat from her hand with his teeth and pulled back again to eat it.

Tawyn smiled thinly. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless, and a step in the right direction.

She next reached into her pack in pursuit of frostweave, and hissed a sharp Darnassian curse under her breath upon finding out she didn’t have any. She would have to go into town…

…she glanced back under the bush at the wolf. He was looking at her with a somewhat expectant expression now.

“I’ll be back,” said Tawyn softly. She stood up and motioned something to Wash, and he picked up on her cue and remained standing guard as she disappeared into the wood.

***

“Whadaya need today, Tawyn?” the pixielike gnome winked. “Here, sit down, let’s chat.” She seated herself by the fireplace and gestured for the night elf to follow.

“Frostweave,” Tawyn replied tersely, and if it was almost anyone else she would have refused to sit, but Trixy had rather grown on her so she pulled up a chair and sat down.

“Frostweave, hmmmm,” replied the gnome as she rummaged through a large sack. “I don’t know, I mean, I’ve got threads, dyes, and ooooh what’s this?” she pulled out some sort of shiny contraption.

“Trixy, I don’t mean to rush you, but we’ve… ah… I’ve got a bit of an emergency situation. D’ya know anyone who would have any, if you don’t?”

The gnome’s eyes glittered as she inspected the shiny thing, but she set it aside and stuck her tongue out in concentration and plunged her arm back into the bag and finally pulled out… some frostweave. “There ya go!”

Tawyn snatched it from her, ripped it in two, and began to nimbly shape the them into bandages. The gnome watched intently. After a minute or two she asked gingerly, “What are they for?”

Before Tawyn could reply, she heard a familiar noise from outside, mingled with the calls of the soldiers of the 7th Legion. She leapt to her feet, dashed to the door of the inn, and pushed it open– to see the wolf limping painfully but determinedly into town, followed by an exasperated Wash who looked like he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to handle this. Some of the soldiers nearby were gaping and pointing their guns at the spectacle, although most of them looked like they weren’t about to waste any bullets on this, what with a greater threat outside the walls of Wintergarde. Besides which, Wash was a familiar sight to most of them by now.

Tawyn stood in the doorway, wondering at the unusualness of it all. Again, she was struck by that brief zap in her mind that there was something distinctly un-wolflike about the creature’s behavior…

The wolf buckled and Tawyn was out in a flash; bandaging his wounds with the Frostweave bandages she had just crafted and quickly mixing up some sort of salve with the myriad flasks and herbs she carried around in her pack and massaging the creature’s legs with it. The wolf stood steadfastly through it all, although it was clear that he was still in pain.

Tawyn heard someone approach from behind them– Zybarus, the stable master. “Zybarus thinks he likes you,” he said in his curious manner of speech, a slightly squeaky voice that for whatever odd reason spoke in nothing but the third person.

Tawyn shrugged and continued working. “People do strange things when they’re in pain. Animals do too.” Of course, she wasn’t telling the whole story. She didn’t tell the part about how she thought there was something unusual about this wolf. How he seemed to be acting like this wasn’t the first time he had extended trust to a person. She didn’t talk about his uncharacteristic tail wag.

No, she didn’t talk about how there was something unusual about this creature that she was determined to pin down. And perhaps it would explain the cause of his injuries as well– Tawyn leaned back and looked at him. A young and strikingly handsome creature possibly just hours before, he was now a wretched sight of blood and scabs and missing patches of fur. It would heal up eventually, but there would be scars, and he would never quite look the same. But his eyes were bright and Tawyn found that she thought the creature was, in his own broken way, still strikingly handsome.

“Your pet now?” Zybarus asked.

“No,” said Tawyn bluntly. Zybarus and Tawyn had a sort of odd love-hate relationship, one that the latter tended to form with others of similarly strong personalities, and this is what caused the stable master to grin and goad her on with “Ohh? But you’ve got a name picked out, dontcha? Zybarus thinks you do!”

Tawyn shot him a brief glower and then busied herself with adjusting the wolf’s new bandages. Finally, she muttered one word under her breath: “Perezvon.”

Well, I went over the stories of Tawyn’s pets, so let’s go over the pets of my first alt hunter… Lunapike:

Alyosha has a bit of a story behind him: once upon a time Tawyn was Marksman-spec’d, because she was new to the game and that’s what everyone told her to do. Pike secretly really wanted to be Beast Mastery, but she was sort of afraid to completely respec and try, at first. So she went and rolled her second hunter, Lunapike, to be a Beast Master. And at level ten she ran Lunapike to the blood elf starting zone and tamed a Little Red Kitty. It was a symbolic choice.

I absolutely adore the red lynx skin and I’m quite attached to Alyosha, who is named after one of the three brothers in The Brothers Karamazov. From a roleplaying standpoint he also has strong ties to Lunapike through their respective backstories– I was actually writing a story about this but never finished. I’ll have to do that sometime >.>

Although Lunapike is not currently max-level anymore, Alyosha is sort of the de-facto instancing pet, although he now alternates with a certain bug who we shall touch on later…

Ivan is the second in my trio of Brothers Karamazov names. I tamed him in Thousand Needles, one of my favorite zones. Oh, and when I summon him, he bamfs in with a poof and a cloud of smoke. No, really. Once I found this out, I had to tame him, so I did. Oh, he’s actually a “she” according to lore, but meh. People turn their Loque’nahaks into girls all the time, so I turned my Arikara into a boy >.> I have this weird thing where all my pets are of the male persuasion for some reason. No idea why.

Now that he is a cunning pet more than a DPS pet, he spends a lot of time in the stable until I pull him out for PvP. Sad, but true.

Dmitri rounds out the Brothers Karamazov. Remember how I said I always wanted to make Tux a rainbow owl but could never bring myself to actually do it? Dmitri is the compromise. He’s not Tux, but he is the rainbow owl. Unfortunately I fear he will fall into the same quandary as Ivan, sitting around without a niche, but we’ll see. It is a PvP server, after all. And owls really are a very good choice for a battlegrounds pet I think– what with Snatch and having those big wings that get in peoples’ faces.

He is a beautiful pet and I bring him out to play during quests sometimes. Roar of Recovery is great for solo stuff.

I fell in love with Serenity almost immediately– this is probably another one of my overall favorite pet “looks” in the game. Now Rilgon likes to point out that everybody names their wasp Serenity, and that’s probably true, but ya know what, I don’t care. And I’ve actually yet to see another Serenity in-game myself, although I know most of the blog comments I get when I talk about him are “Great name, I’m gonna use it myself!” …not on my servers yet, it would appear!

Have I mentioned I love how this pet looks? I love how this pet looks. Lunapike gets all the awesome pets, it seems.

Coulton is the newest member of Lunapike’s pet family. Now originally, I didn’t want to get a gorilla. I was never really a gorilla fan, mostly because they are so large– and I prefer my pets small and unassuming. Able to rip your face off, yes, but also small and unassuming. Gorillas were big and they encouraged AoE spam which I in my stubbornness am not a big fan of. I like to shoot my targets one by one thank-ya-very-much.

But then when I was busy working on grinding Timbermaw rep for my Diplomat title I realized it might actually come in handy. So off I went to Feralas to tame myself a gorilla. I was right– it worked beautifully. And by the time I got my title and then after that when Thunderstomp became a family-wide ability, I was too attached to the big guy to swap him out. So, that’s the story on him: he’s the token tenacity pet and he’s probably here to stay.

The name? Take a guess…

Alright. I have more, really, but I dunno, it would be crazy to keep going…

…right? /cough