- Ground my way as quickly as I could to level 10. Had my first experience of running out of ammo just after agroing a spellcaster and had to run all the way to the nearest ammunition seller. It didn't seem that long since I had bought 400 bullets and all gone? It may be advisable to never leave town without full ammo bags. One of the hunter's bag slots is permanently reserved for ammo so they are comparatively short of inventory space, what with having to carry pet food as well. I will probably equip her with top-of-the-range 16 slot bags although all she loots is animal parts worth five copper. Is it worth paying 16g for bags to carry 0.0005g animal parts?
- Level 10 and pet training! There is a quest series for Hunters where you have to train a Large Crag Boar, a Snow Leapord and an Ice Claw Bear. Training is a matter of selecting the animal and right clicking on the training widget and waiting for 20 seconds. While you wait the animal tries to disembowel you and your armour is debuffed to zero so you have to make sure you are on full health when you start.
- Once the Crag Boar was trained I gave it a try out. Click on target animal, ctrl-1 to get boar to attack it. Boar hurtles off and engages beast. Start shooting at beast myself, beast is busy fighting with boar, after about three shots beast dies. Very quick, very efficient, very nice. I'm addicted.
- Trying the three different animals was interesting. The Snow Leopard was hardest to deal with because if I landed a powerful Arcane Shot I would draw agro from the beast and it would ignore the leopard and come running to attack me. When this happened I had to stop shooting so the pet could regain the beast's attention.
- If a beast attacked me directly, within melee range I could still target it with the pet (or let the pet automatically defend me), let them start fighting, walk back eight yards and start shooting. It is going to be a challenge to take the time to maintain my melee skill level.
- At the end of this I got the pet training abilities proper and had to choose a pet. I chose the Ice Claw Bear as when I was a paladin these seemed pretty tough and I want something with tanking ability, I'm happy to take care of the dps myself with a big gun. I decided to call the bear Colin.
- Questing went out the window, it was just a killing spree, we wiped out everything that got in our way. It's nice having a pet.
-
I wanted to take him to see the trolls so they could rub his tummy. We found a troll camp and I was unsure of our capabilities, what our limits were. I was lvl ten, he was eight and there were four trolls in the camp, all about level nine. I sent him in and he managed to agro three trolls and we got in a big fight. We took out a couple of trolls but we both died. I used the spirit healer and tried to summon Colin and was told he was dead. What? But I'd only had him a few minutes
- I had a 'revive pet' spell so I guessed I was supposed to find his corpse and resurrect him pally style so I went back to the troll camp. No body. Had the trolls eaten him? I decided to try the revive spell anyway and he just appeared next to me. I had to feed him to restore his health and make him happy. Then we polished off the remaining trolls. I can't really believe that I can just bring the pet back to life, give him a feed and we're rolling again. No debuff, just a bit of down time?
- If I learned anything from this it is that a bear in a camp is a bit of a loose cannon, once one enemy is dead it is likely to hurtle off and attack anything else that had attacked it and you don't have a lot of control over it. It's a very powerful weapon but the AI will take some getting used to.
- Morning and time for a short killing spree on the way to a quest turnin. During this time I dinged 11.
- We came across a 'named' level 10 wolf with two level 8 wolves either side roaming about. I was unsure whether we could handle it but I decided to try in order to get a feel for our limits (I'm already using 'our' instead of 'my'). Anyway I sent him in to attack the ten, the two 8's attacked him and I blasted away with the gun. From his health bar I could tell he was going to die and he did, leaving me with one wolf to finish off easily with melee. I revived the bear and fed him. I can't believe it was that easy, that there are no penalities associated with the pet dying, no ten minute debuff, just revive, feed, loot and carry on. I can't remember if a level 10 pally could have handled this but it wouldn't have been that easy. If my character dies I hate it as apart from defeat it's a corpse run or a spirit healer job. The pet dying seems to be the hunter equivalent of a pally having to bubble in terms of it being a hollow victory.
- Finished up by just killing things. It is very addictive because it is so easy. About three gunshots is all it takes. Colin dinged level 10: he has an experience bar just like me. Collected lots of boar and wolf meat, cooking skill is already 50 out of 75 and Colin likes the food, it makes him happy. Sometimes when we've killed something I wish I could pat him on the head.
- By a bizarre coincidence I had to go visit someone in Real Life yesterday. They had a dog and it inflamed my allergies so much that I wanted to claw my eyes out. I've been allergic to cats for years but now it's spread to dogs as well. But this doesn't matter, now I have a virtual pet and it can rip the virtual guts out of virtual trolls.
WoW Daily News Issue 87
Submitted by Peter on Fri May 04 2007 07:41
about 1 year ago
Peter Says:
Fri May 04 2007 11:03 about 1 year agoI'm really just starting with the hunter but fighting elites with the pally is about staying alive long enough to chip away with a puny axe/mace/sword.
With the hunter at least I won't have to worry about how to get my next heal in: one swig of a health pot and then just deciding when to run.
Peter
Vyaaren Says:
Fri May 04 2007 12:26 about 1 year agoI have a level 40 something hunter amongst my stables of alts....
It's been a while for me but have a play with the different beast control settings on his mini toolbar. From memory, there is aggresive, defense and passive. Passive is the best. Rather than running off attacking things at random the beast only attacks what you order it to.
There are times in soloing when defense stance has it's use.
Another point, I found that my beast would run out of 'power' using growl and bite, so when a problem I turned off bite so that it kept agro for longer. Leaving Fluffy to tank and me do the dps.
It was fun levelling with a friend.....
Vyaaren Says:
Fri May 04 2007 12:29 about 1 year ago...and another thing.
Target Colin and /pat will do the trick.
:)
Peter Says:
Fri May 04 2007 12:39 about 1 year agoPart of the fun is learning to play a new class and the pet seems to double the depth. I noticed the bear had a brownish bar under his health bar but no clues so far as to what it is a measure of. I assumed it was like warrior rage but since I've never played a warrior I don't know how to work it.
So it's power?
Maybe I should read the manual.
Peter
Galoheart Says:
Fri May 04 2007 12:51 about 1 year agoGlad to hear your having fun with your Hunter and your cool pet. Wonder why pally's cant have a holy spirit minion or someting or a avenging spirit. Oh Well. Your having fun at least.
On the pally side, just think how much all that rest bonus is gona build up while your off been killer Hunter.
Nibuca Says:
Fri May 04 2007 19:10 about 1 year agoWhen you get to higher levels, taming a pet becomes marginally easier. You set an ice trap, catch the beast, then start taming the beast. That way the un-tamed beast only beats on you for a little while before he's tamed.
Helpful macro: (I think it's this one.. I'm at work and the macro's at home.. I'll check it tonight. This one should work.).
/cast Hunter's Mark /petattack target=pettarget,noexists /petfollow target=pettarget,exists
Target a mob, click macro once, puts Hunter's Mark on the mob (improved ranged attacks) and sends your pet to attack the mob. Click the macro again and it calls your pet back to your side.
So when "Colin" runs off to get mob #2 you can call him back to you.
This can be very useful when mob #2 is close to mobs 3-7 and you don't want Colin to accidentally aggro other mobs.
Hit macro to mark/petattack mob#1. Colin runs off. Mob #2 sees Colin and runs over to help mob#1 beat on him. Mob#1 dies. Colin turns to kill Mob #2 but you feel he's too close to mobs 3-7. Target mob#2. Hit macro to call Colin back to your side. Colin turns and starts to run to you, Mob #2 chases Colin. Hit macro again to mark mob#2 and sent Colin to kill mob #2.
You should end up with Colin killing mob #2 closer to you.
Also a very nice macro if you send Colin against a mob and then realize (before he's aggro'd the mob) that you actually didn't want to do that.
Pets don't like to jump down on long jumps. If you jump sometimes he won't follow. Instead he'll take the long way down. Normally this isn't a problem.. but if he runs into aggressive mobs he could drag them all back to you. This is the main complaint I hear about hunters/pets in instances.
My fiancee plays a hunter. He describes his melee weapon as "back candy" It's there to look pretty and to have good stats on it.. but it should never actually be used. A hunter with high melee weapon skills is (in BRK's and my opinion) a gimped hunter. The only time you should be in melee is when things have gone horribly irretrievably wrong.
Ogga Says:
Sat May 05 2007 06:11 about 1 year agoActually the bar under the pet health is "focus". Each of his attacks use varying amounts of focus.
I always recommend the Boar to new hunters because of the "charge" skill. Similar to warrior intercept where it stuns and gains large aggro on the mob. You can get a lvl 25-28 armor plated boar in RFK with a little group assistance or a high level friend.
Good luck with your new hunter. Kinda funny on a side note, I just started a paladin, looking at learning to Prot grind at lvl 35.(lvl 29 now)
Dean Not Verified Says:
Sat May 05 2007 19:02 about 1 year agoI remember a comment about hunters and them just letting their animals do the fighting...
Peter Says:
Sun May 06 2007 05:09 about 1 year agoDepends what you are fighting but it's quicker to shoot as well (and more fun).
Peter
Peter Says:
Sun May 06 2007 05:12 about 1 year ago
This sounds useful. I like the bear's 'claw' I think it is, where I press a button and the bear remotely claws the foe and draws spurts of blood. I'm not sure of the utility but I enjoy doing it 
I've seen mention of something costing so much 'focus', now it makes sense.
Prot grinding is fun. The enemies get tougher in outlands and do more DoT's so it isn't as easy. Enjoy it while you can.
Peter
Peter Says:
Sun May 06 2007 05:22 about 1 year agoThanks for this, I've been wondering how to stop him attacking and going berzerk in camps.
A guildie described a hunter letting his pet agro elites outside uldaman but taking the long route. It's something I will try to bear in mind.
I hope it's possible for a hunter to avoid melee because that's what I'm doing. If I wanted to melee I'd stick with the paladin. I've already found that if colin and I are both taking agro, it's quicker for me to kill colins enemy and let him help me than to try killing mine with melee first.
Maybe this is the great thing about Hunter shooting, it's an uninterruptable cast.
Peter
Dargno Says:
Wed Jun 20 2007 17:51 about 1 year agoKeep in mind at lvl 10 you get 'talent points' to make you and/or your pet slightly better. If you like your pet a lot i'd suggest you go for the beastmaster tree. If you press 'n' you can see the available skills.
Furthermore if you learn 'growl' to your pet and rightclick the button it will become much harder to let let the enemy come to you. And dont forget you soon will get a skill called 'mend pet' which will heal your pet over time. Your pet itself can learn skills too, you might want to learn some and give your pet some more life or armor or resistances against poison or fire or any other magic.
And dont forget to learn your pet to claw or bite so it does even more damage. Focus is the mana bar of your pet, needed for skills like growl, claw and bite. More info on pets can be found on http :// petopia.brashendeavors.net/
Comments are Closed
Peter's Moblog
I feel for you on the cat and dog allergies! Same position here as well. I have just started a Troll hunter (Malrok - EU Quel'Thalas) and am really enjoying it and coincidentally, my first character is a Dwarf Paladin (Krommer - EU Quel'Thalas) at lvl 60. Am loving the sheer power of the hunter class and pet (BM specced atm) for taking out mobs of a much higher lvl than us. I used to try and solo elites with the pally and found it hard but not on the hunter. Still trying figure out what type of gear / stats to go for though :(
Great blog keep it up.