The Gorilladin Club

So I've been playing Rai a lot over the past couple days, and I have really been enjoying him. It's been a long time, probably a year since I had played a hunter, but I've quickly gotten back in the swing of things. I think for the time being at least, Anguish is officially on the back burner, but I do plan to get back to him eventually, probably when I finish up Koji's quests and am only raiding on him. Besides, he does represent half of this blog's namesake.

Now it's pretty obvious that pets are a huge deal to hunters. No matter what the spec, they are a large part of a hunter's DPS and offers other utility such as tanking, buffs, or debuffs. I cringe whenever I'm grouped with a MM hunter who doesn't use a pet because they 'aren't a big part of their DPS', the huntard title is well deserved by many unfortunately, but those who play their class well prove that hunters can be extremely valuable.

But back to pets. I play BM, so pet choice is especially important to me. Unless you play purely for min/maxing, there is a lot more to one's pet than merely DPS or tanking ability. Aesthetics, personality, all those good things are part of your character's flavor and style, and to most hunters, that is important. Now I do my best to maximize my skill when playing; in most cases that's DPS, but these other traits are very important to me as well. If I wanted max DPS, I'd get a cat, scorpid (though they both are getting nerfed a bit), or devilsaur. I for one dislike all three. Scorpids are bleh. Devilsaurs are big and ugly, and kinda loud. Cats, yea they look pretty, all sleek and whatnot, but they are so blasted common. I'd say a good 4/5 hunters use cats as their DPS pet. I never once used a cat leveling two hunters to 70, and I don't plan to.

So comes the issues of choosing a pet. I had originally started with a ferocity pet. DPS all the way. The faster stuff dies, the faster I move on to more stuff dieing. However, even if these are pretty good DPS, I hit a snag. Agro is quite an issue for hunters. I first got a wasp from Zangarmarsh, they're beauts, and I hoped that Sting would be decent agro, and it would also raise my DPS. Unfortunately, being lvl 65, he couldn't hold agro for squat and DPS wasn't very good either. Yea I could have gone to Nagrand or something and leveled him, but I'm not a patient person. Besides, the Sholazar models are much cooler.

I next chose a carrion bird, hoping that Demoralizing Screech would be pretty good agro. The two new WotLK carrion bird models are cooler than older ones, but they're still condors and pretty ugly. I got the only pretty looking model, a Fjord Crow. I named him Twilight, isn't he cute?

Unfortunately, agro still wasn't that good. He held it better, but I had to use either Intimidation or Misdirect every fight. It's a mana drain and also slows down my killing, making it not all that efficient. Sorry Twilight, but you had to hit the stables. Maybe someday.

So Ferocity isn't working out too well. Luckily, there is a flavor of tanking pets, tenacity. Now comes another issue of who to choose. I already said no to scorpids. Turtles probably make the best tanks with shell shield, but they aren't my style, plus they have no DPS so agro could be an issue. Warp stalkers also probably make good tanks, with their avoidance from warp, but still, no DPS. Crabs. Uh, yea. Pin, no thanks.

Boars. Hmm. I had leveled with a boar on Rai up through 70. I had a cute little black one until about 30 when i got a nicer armored one. Back in the day, boars were king. Charge+growl=crazy agro. That changed though and then they also changed the entire pet mechanics. Today, I think boars are a decent prospect. Gore isn't too shabby DPS. Certainly a consideration.

Crocolisks. Bad attitude is interesting. If you have a lot of mobs it can probably do some pretty wicked DPS. But it's a long cooldown, and I simply hate crocolisks. I don't like their look and their breathing... ugh, I could never listen to that all day.

Rhinos. Very cool. When you think of a "tank", these fit the description. However, therein also lies an issue. They're huge. Stampede also isn't very good. sure it makes for some great videos (Thanks BRK) but practicality is pretty slim.

Worms. Not what I'd think of for a tank, but they can be promising. Acid spit is promising, decent damage and an armor debuff. However it's a ranged attack so they are currently suffering from the spit shuffle or whatever they call it on the forums. This is supposed to be fixed with 3.08. Maybe then.

Bears. They are another pet that actually looks like a tank. Swipe is pretty decent, allowing you to take on a few mobs without worry of agro. They're just so vanilla, though. I find no models at all interesting and I wouldn't really want one following me. If you could tame a War Bear or could still tame a Polar Bear Cub, that may be a different story.

Lastly we come to gorillas. They're tanks. They look pretty cool. Thunder Stomp is absolutely wicked. AoE. Good Damage. Heavy Agro. My only gripe is that pretty much every hunter has one. That's one of my big issues with cats. They only thing is there is really no competition. They tower above all other tenacity pets and no other tenacity pets really have any cool factor. If I am going to have the same tenacity pet as everyone else, I at least need some style. So I moseyed on down to Un'goro to take my chances at finding Uhk'loc, the only albino gorilla in the game (excepting Mokk the Savage who isn't tameable), likely modeled after Snowflake, the only Albino Gorilla who unfortunately died a few years back. He's a rare spawn gorilla that is up only once every 6 hours or so. When I got there, he wasn't up, I wasn't really expecting him to be. It was about 2 a.m. so had no intentions of camping him or anything so I just took my leave and logged off. Since I tend to have insomnia, I found myself awake at about 4:30 and decided to take a look. As luck would have it, there he is strutting through Fungal Rock. Lucky me.

Now a new issue: a name. Some people don't name their pets at all, that's a shame. It adds a little more flavor to your character and the game. A lot of people give their pets goofy names or "pet" kind of names, that certainly isn't for me. I take pride in my pets as noble and loyal comrades. They deserve a dignified name. This is
going to be a tough one.

Edit: I decided to name her Luna. The white fur makes me think of moonlight. I'm gonna go ahead and say that she's female. No I'm not going to go to Wetlands and check. I don't want to spend my time going there, and I especially don't want to spend my time going there to find out that it's really a male. You know it will happen if I do check. So I'm gonna just say it's female. So there.

I first named her Shiro, meaning white, but I thought that was pretty boring and also didn't sound that great. So I bought one of those nifty pet renamers and changed it to Luna. I had also considered Yuki/Yukino or Tsuki/Tsukino, meaning snow and moon, respectively, but I think that Luna is a very pretty name. If I change my mind, I can always cough up 8g more in a week for another certificate.