Transmog Outfits: Riftstalker + Black Ice

"Fun" features such as transmogrifying can be quite time consuming and can keep a player "in" the game by not even have to "play" the game. I found that this was certainly true with player housing in LOTRO. One could obtain different wallpapers and furnishings from the various different housing vendors in the various different racial housing zones. They also did a great job of integrating PVE into player housing where most dungeons would drop a token in which you can barter or exchange for a cool rare statue for your home.

"Fun" stuff is fairly new to WoW. Other than the holiday events and some quests which involve references to OTHER "fun" games such as Katamari or Plants vs Zombies, there isn't much else for us to "do" other than grind rep or farm pets in terms of "fun"ness.

Transmogging will be a fresh feature that will help keep us "immersed" in the game. As we all know the dailies don't do a thing to help that cause, if anything it pushes us away. Though as of now I am not sure what focus or direction the game is taking right now. The promises of introducing content faster and faster hints that we're all just content hungry, and this makes sense. I get a feeling most of us just love to thrive off of what we don't have versus appreciating what we DO have. Or maybe everything is just SO good that if *only* what we were missing had been implemented......or maybe not.

Let's talk current content. T12. Firelands has been made "easier" now, which doesn't change the very very mechanic driven nature of the bosses, but healers will like having less to do. But this is just raiding. Some people don't like to raid. What do they do? Grind dungeons for VP. That is oh so interesting right? I think the Looking-For-Raid is a very very nice addition, in that it plays upon tiered instances. Like I said again, just copy LOTRO. Have ALL instances be scaleable to any level at any difficulty and have the different levels of dungeons drop different tiers of emblems in which you can turn in for gear. For example if you scaled Ragefire Chasm anywhere from 15-84 you'd get a Mark of Pride, which can be turned in for level 15 gear. Only if you choose to scale it to heroic, will it drop an extra Mark of Valor, which would be equivalent to our current valor points. We can even go further to scale it to be 346, 359, or even 378 and 391 friendly and so on and so forth.

Woooow did I go off on a tangent or what? All I wanted to do was show you guys one of my new outfits!

It's our Hunter T5, the Riftstalker set coupled with Black Ice from Malygos! I know it's not a very creative put-together hipster set, but it's the complete set and I've always liked the devious/lightning pauldrony look. A great pet to go with this outfit is: Skoll!


I've come to appreciate my Albino Drake a lot nowadays...hmm...

Turby the Riftstalker

Spirit Sabres United

After many arduous years apart, Gondria, Magria, and Ankha are reunited..ready to fight the forces of evil!

(How do you like my noob Paint skills?)

On Pet Talent Trees

Cunning, ferocity, and tenacity. I believe these are all subjective terms, and I have to say, I am an RP-Raider. Why can't we be both? How we tend to view RP'ers is that they are dressed up in their froofy costumes, hanging out around towns and bars doing their roleplaying goodness. It's totally harmless and fun. Then we view "raiders" as totally serious and removed, if they had any roleplaying interests it is all stripped off in favour of killing big bad meanies.

Both aspects show an enjoyment of the game, be it the "soft" factors such as costumes and self created backstories, to the "hard" tactile raid "content". I like to be both! Firelands on its own is meaningless if my character doesn't care to defeat Ragnaros, and it's even less meaningless if I go out and tame a pet just for a specific buff to benefit the party. Technically speaking this is optimal, but for a battle as epic as the Firelord, I would like my long term/close companions such as Puppy (seen above) to accompany me.

Now what was I saying? Oh yes, pet talents. Why do the beasts of Azeroth come locked in certain traits? What makes a Dragonhawk more "cunning" than a Hyena? What makes a Tallstrider more "ferocious" than a Scorpion? Why can't a giant Devilsaur take the beats as well as a squishy worm?

As masters of all things beastly, you would think that us hunters are able to "train" our pets to whatever style we would like. Perhaps one of my Devilsaurs is more devious than the other and loves to devour members of the opposite faction hence he can be specced PVP cunning, while the other is prone to ferocious outbursts and remains Ferocity?

It's a very simple mechanic to adjust, we have our pet skins and the individual talent trees to apply to them. In terms of beast family abilities such as Burrow Attack, Lightning Breath, or Shell Shield, what if depending on which talent tree we choose for our pets, they get to choose between 3 different talent tree specific family abilities. Kind of like our "signature" abilities when we choose which talent tree to specialize in.

Some examples could include:

Turtles:
Tenacity: Shell Shield
Cunning: Head-Butt (Stun/Interrupt)
Ferocity: Great Bite (Reduce movement speed)

Scorpion
Tenacity: Clamp (Or whatever it is now)
Cunning: Poison Jab (Reduces Healing)
Ferocity: Tail Jab (Nature Damage Debuff)

Since we see a lot of shared-then-renamed abilities, this is totally feasible...right?

By doing this, for the FIRST TIME EVER I even minded PVP implications, where my recommended changes are feasible for PVP. Perhaps there are PVP hunters who really want to use a certain pet but they just had really bad abilities. I wouldn't even mind if certain pets had sub-optimal abilities for Ferocity PVE, but as long as they can access the DPS boosting talents in the Ferocity tree I shall be satiated.

(Or just reinstate Eyes of the Beast so I can run around as all the pretty pets and I'll stop complaining forevers ;D )

Turby the Hunter

So Many Spiders!

Spiders in PVE. They still do 2.4K when specced for damage in Marksman. Why not? Yeah yeah I said "why the hell would I want so many spiders" months ago and of COURSE, that means that I would end up taming THREE............ Kirix: A green radioactive looking spider, aptly named Radio. I've been meaning to release Radio back into the wild but everytime I release him from the stables his stunning green-ness just.....gaah! Solix: Tamed on a whim of trying out his challenge. Frost, jump shot concussions, and tame when appropriate. At first I thought if I wanted any of the spiders it would be Solix, the Orange one. But everytime I see Solix his coloration reminds me of how annoying Molten Core and Molten Front colors are, black and orange. But I can't bring myself to release Solix either. Grrr. Deth'tilac: I saw Deth all alone in his corner one day and decided to give him a shot. The most purpley-bad-ass looking spider with an interesting tame mechanic. I died horribly the first time, as I forgot to keep attacking him to keep him slowed and got cornered when I couldn't resurrect my trash-taming spider in time. The next time I was doing very well, he was down to 50% and the pally with me was helping me attack/sacrifice and an Alliance druid showed up and helped me perma-root Deth. I named my new Spider Howie, a variant on this friendly druid's name Howee. Thanks again, Howie has been through many a glorious deaths already D: Skitterflame and Anthriss: Really, these two share the same model as the "regular" spiders you see around, the yellow color is perhaps too ingrained in me as being "Kill 8", and I actually do like the red coloration, even moreso than the orange spider, but...I have no room! So the question is, should I release Solix, and perhaps even Kirix? Or should I put them up for "adoption", have my friend "hold on" to them for a while (this means they have to go out and tame 'em?) Pictures tonight! (Or never...)

Magria: A New Companion



So much blue!

Despite adamantly stating that I would not tame any of the new Firelands "challenge" tames, out of spite towards myself I have ..uhh inadvertantly tamed 8/10! Magria being one of the first ones, I've just been lazy to upload pictures. I like Magria, unlike Gondria, this kitty is bright and clear and makes it easier to manage where my pet is in hectic-ish fights.

Now that two of the Spirit Sabres are safe in my stables in Dalaran, they have been urging me to find their last missing sibling (as far as we know) Ankha for a family reunion. They also hinted towards merging towards becoming a super sabre cat...!