Sixteen Rarest Hunter Pets

Armory Data Mining has some fun info on hunter pets. Now some hunters are all into having what everyone else doesn’t have– you know, so when Cataclysm comes out and everyone is running around taming everything, you can say you tamed a pet when it was still underground– so I figured I’d go through, figure out which pets per family had been tamed by less than 1% of hunters with that type of pet, and list them here. There are really some underused jewels here. So without further ado:

Bird of Prey:
Dark Brown Owl/Brown Crow: 0.8%
Red Owl: 0.3% (Why?? This thing is awesome. And can’t you solo Sethekk now?)

Cat:
Orange Leopard (aka Travel Form): 0.7%
Lioness: 0.1%

Crocolisk:
Ghost Crocolisk (No longer tamable): 0.4%

Ravager:
Red & Purple Ravager: 0.2% (Another awesome color combo)

Scorpid:
Red Scorpid: 0.6%

Spider:
Green Spider: 0.8%
Tan Spider: 0.4%
Olive Spider: 0.4%
Jungle Spider: 0.3%

Wolf:
Dark Gray Worg: 0.7%
Ghost Wolf (No longer tamable): 0.6%

Worm:
Brown Worm: 0.9%
Green Worm: 0.3% (Best worm skin by far, you all are nuts! *nod*)
White Worm: 0.3%

Hit the link for the complete lowdown, as well as a list of pets with unique properties as opposed to unique skins. But now you at least have a start if you want something new and different.

The Black Arrow How-To

I had a request for this, so although I feel a bit silly writing this up mere weeks before everything changes, I am here to deliver!

I’ve been playing around a lot with Survival lately, and having a lot of fun. Black Arrow is tied to Lock and Load so you quickly learn not to “waste” Black Arrows. I don’t really have any hard and fast rules for this, other than what’s common sense:

  • Don’t use Black Arrow when the mob is about to die.
  • Don’t use Black Arrow if you are or are going to be in Viper.
  • Don’t use Black Arrow on mobs that are non-elite and/or going to die in a few seconds.

and etc.

Don’t feel too bad if you screw up– it has a fairly short cooldown so “wasting” a Black Arrow ultimately isn’t something to beat yourself up over; it’s just something to watch. (Lock and Load itself does have its own 22 second internal cooldown, which still isn’t that bad.)

Lock and Load will also proc from trapping things. You don’t get a chance to do this much in PvE at current but you’ll soon figure out moments and take them to your advantage (Hint: the ghouls during the last boss fight in ToC).

And that is Black Arrow.

As for me, I’m still plinking around with Netherwing Dailies. It’s going much faster than I was expecting. Guys: I’m not doing all of the dailies, I’m not going overboard with eggs, and I’ve skipped a few days because I’ve been busy or whatnot, and I’ve already hit Revered in two weeks. Easy-squeezy.

…did I just say Easy-Squeezy? You have permission to facepalm.

I Believe You Have My Internet Dragon

Hey guys remember the Netherwing questline and how it was super hardcore back in the day to have one of those netherdrakes?

…so yeah, I never did it. I dunno, just wasn’t my style. I know it was the hip thing to do back in Burning Crusade, but I just never got around to it.

So anyway, the other week I randomly decided, you know what, let’s do that Netherwing quest chain. I mean, at the end you get what I like to call an aetherdragon mount. (Fact: Attaching the word “aether” to any other word as a prefix instantly makes said word several more levels of awesome than it already is.)

Furthermore, I’ve decided to do it on my Hordie rather than on my main. I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe it’s because I hate myself, because it’s on a PvP server and all. Or maybe it’s because I already like my mounts on Tawyn. Who knows. Sometimes I just get the urge to do things on a different character. My Hordie is, after all, also the only one of my toons with the talbuk mounts and the Diplomat title, and I have no intention of ever repeating either of those feats on my main (partially because I think it’s out of character and partially because the grinds suck).

Anyways, I’m at the point now where I’m logging on, doing a few quick Netherwing dailies while in queue for a random, doing the random, and then calling it good for the day. I’m taking it nice and easy and I’m not spending hours hunting around for eggs or anything, so this will probably take a while. Honestly, if I have the drake by the time Cataclysm comes out, I will be utterly shocked.

Oh well! I’m in no rush.

In related news, doing the Netherwing dailies gives you a spiffy male Fel Orc costume, even if you are a female, and I have discovered that using the Darkspear Pride item here will turn you into a male troll. I love crazy gender-bending tricks like that.

Speaking of Cataclysm, I’m rather apathetic about it. Not in a emo/ragequit/etc. way, but more in a “Well Cataclysm probably isn’t gonna affect my silly Netherwing grind or my newfound addiction to battlegrounds as a gnome rogue, so I’ll take it or leave it” way. That’s not to say I won’t go nuts rolling ten thousand goblins when the game comes out, but you know.

Though now that I mention it, reserving a copy would probably be a smart idea…

(Edit: Just occurred to me: flying around Orgrimmar on a netherdrake is gonna be boss)

Survival?

Hi dead blog! *pokes with stick*

I figured I should write something. So here I am. Hooray! And as a bit of a double bonus, I figured I’d return to my roots and actually write something huntery. Double Hooray! So intense!

So, here’s the deal. As of now, I sort of consider myself to be a… triple-spec’d hunter. As we probably all know by now, I have two level 80 hunters. Well, Tawyn‘s been rocking her Beast Mastery main spec and her Marskmanship Fun spec. And for a while, poor neglected Lunapike was rocking the Beast Mastery spec as well. But of course, right?

Well, recently I blew the dust off of the latter and decided to start playing her again. At that point, I hadn’t seriously played her in months, so she was decked out in a bunch of super-old-school stuff like dungeon blues, heroic purples, and Nesingwary. Spec’d Beast Mastery she was getting maybe 3k in heroics, which is like… half of what Tawyn does on a lazy day. Beast Mastery is a fickle, gear-dependent creature.

Anyways I sort of missed big numbers and I was feeling ambitious and I knew I didn’t have the gear for Marksmanship so I went Survival. Yup. Now for those of you just tuning in, my grumblings about Survival are pretty well-known. I’ve ranted about it many-a-time in this blog: how much I dislike the rotation and basically find it un-fun in every way. It’s why Tawyn’s dual spec is Marskmanship.

…so I’m not sure what I was smoking when I decided to go Survival, but go Survival I did, and you know what? This time around I really enjoy it. I’m not even sure why. I think it finally “clicked”. I mean, in essence it’s a very similar rotation to Beast Mastery, except that stuff is on lower cooldowns, so you have to be a bit quicker on your feet… and you get Lock and Load. By the way, Lock and Load is super fun. It’s tied to Black Arrow, so once you figure out how best to use that one, you’re good to go.

I can also see why SV is the recommended “Freshly Minted 80 Hunter” spec. Upon spec’ing it and heading into dungeons, it was basically like… Go Directly to 50% more DPS, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. It was very plug-and-play.

Anyways, I have also rediscovered my love of level 80 PvP. I love pre-50 BGs to death, but the endgame stuff with all the resilience and everything was never really my bag. But I did so many BGs on Lunapike this last weekend, and had a blast. It feels like I have a ton of toys to play with as Survival.

But yeah. Sorry for the massive TLDR. I’d break this up with pictures but WoW is down and I’m too lazy to go hunting through my screenshot folder.

If you want me to write about something in specific, lemme know, because I’m having a terrible time coming up with stuff to put in this blog lately. Just keep in mind that I’m still pretty much retired-from-raiding so super intense strategy guides are probably out, but most everything else is open game.