hunter-pets
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Scattered Shots: Let's just pretend Scatter Shot is still a thing
Every Thursday 11 months, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. This week, your host Adam Koebel, aka Bendak will be leaving you with one final column dedicated to the best class in WoW. The beloved ability that this column was once named after, Scatter Shot, has been lost to time. It didn't feel right to change things up at this point. Scattered Shots will always be Scattered Shots. Besides, I wouldn't want to risk upsetting Grandpappy Frostheim. I hear he has a contingent of level 1 dwarven hunters who follow him around and do whatever he commands. Hogger didn't survive, and neither would I. Quite a bit has happened for hunters since I was last able to write this column 11 months ago. The Warlords beta and first few weeks of release was somewhat of a roller coaster, but things are settling down. Outside of high-end raiding progression, all 3 hunter specs are competitive with each other. Our major talents are getting buffed and re-balanced in the upcoming patch 6.1. Overall, I think hunters are in a pretty good place.
WoW Archivist: 3.0.8, the "disaster" patch
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? Any game that survives for 10 years and counting will have its growing pains. There will be moments when the urge to deliver the best possible content gets the better of the developers, when they reach too far but only figure that out after it's too late. Wrath of the Lich King was so ambitious in scope, as originally conceived, that Blizzard simply couldn't deliver what they announced. Blizzard cut major features before the expansion even went into beta testing. Wrath's systems went live with patch 3.0.2 in October 2008, and the expansion hit live realms two months later. As with most expansions, there were early problems. In patch 3.0.8, Blizzard tried to fix those problems. Instead, they made them worse. Far worse. WoW Insider called the patch a "disaster." Read on to find out why! Wintercrash Rebalancing the popular Wintergrasp outdoor battle was one of the patch's biggest features. Blizzard buffed vehicles and turrets to make them less fragile. The keep walls also became sturdier, while the final door received a nerf. Other adjustments and fixes went into effect. So did a bug so catastrophic that players couldn't believe it ever found its way to a live realm.
Guide to hunter pets in Warlords of Draenor
Warlords of Draenor is introducing five new hunter pet families -- hydras, riverbeasts, stags, clefthooves (exotic), and rylaks (exotic). That brings the grand total to 48 pet families. Many pet abilities have also been changed to fit the buff and debuff changes in Warlords. Exotic pets are more differentiated from standard pets in that they all have a total of three special abilities or buffs instead of just one or two. You'll be able to start taming pets from the new families with patch 6.0.2 (except for riverbeasts and rylaks which only exist in Draenor). Perhaps the most exciting hunter pet addition is the new spirit beast, Gara (pictured above). In order to tame Gara, hunters must embark on an epic quest that takes them all over Draenor to reunite Gara with her former master and ultimately save her from the Void. I've written a detailed guide on how to do it, but you'll want to avoid that post if you want to figure it out for yourself. Let's begin with a breakdown of the new families.
Did you miss in Pandaria?: Lost treasure of Old Man Thistle
As we reach the end of the Mists era, it's a great time to finish up some of the achievements and questlines we may have missed. Like the Pinch King, this questline is hidden. No marker indicates it. But you are given clues. Once Fish Fellreed gets to know you better, she will tell you the story of Old Man Thistle, a farmer who found a secret cave full of treasure. It collapsed behind him after his mushan Bobo smashed through a wall, but he drew a map to its location. Unfortunately, the location of the map, like the cave, has been forgotten. In order to start the questline, you need to be exalted with the Tillers faction and Best Friends with all of the Halfhill Market characters. You'll know you're done when the Friends on the Farm achievement pops up. There's no quest for this, but you should head to Cattail Lake and hunt the Enormous Cattail Grouper. Be careful, though -- he's big enough to swallow you whole. (These groupers are also the target of the Gift for Haohan daily.) If you meet the requirements, the grouper will drop an Old Map and launch you on a brief but lucrative adventure.
Warlords of Draenor Beta: New hunter pets
Bendak over at Eyes of the Beast has been doing excellent work over the course of the beta, and one of the things he's discovered is a big expansion to an existing pet family and the creation of an entirely new family - the rhino family has been renamed the clefthooves family (you can see Bendak above with one he tamed) and it now includes all the Outland and Draenor clefthooves in addition to rhinos from Azeroth, and there's a new family called the Stag family, which includes all Azerothian stags and the Talbuks from Outland and Draenor. The Draenor talbuks aren't currently tameable, but they're slated to be. I know quite a few hunters who've wanted stags for quite some time. This should make them very happy, and I've always thought it was weird we could tame rhinos but not clefthooves.
Tameable hydras for hunters officially on the way?
Hunters may remember with some sadness the brief moment in time back in 2011 when hydra pets were datamined from the patch 4.1 PTR. Unfortunately, the pet never made it to live servers, leaving those with hopes of taming a three-headed beastie for their very own to wait until a later time. Apparently, that time is coming soon. Game Designer Jeremy Feasel tweeted the tantalizing image shown above yesterday, along with the following tweet. Wish they'd stop biting each other and help me kill this thing! #Hunters #StopHittingYourself #3HeadsAreBetter pic.twitter.com/yfh0Lhsabh- Jeremy Feasel (@Muffinus) March 28, 2014
How to play a boosted level 90 hunter
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. This week, your host Adam Koebel, aka Bendak will be discussing how to get started with the hunter class. Do you still need convincing on why you should boost a hunter to 90? Go check out my 10 reasons why from last week. So you've got a fresh level 90 hunter in front of you -- what now? What are all these abilities? How do pets work? We've got answers for all that. Without the benefit of having abilities and mechanics slowly introduced while leveling, you might be a little confused when you first log in. Don't fret, you'll be turning monsters into pin cushions and taming an army of pets in no time. You can check out my previous getting started with hunters article for help in choosing a race and specialization for your hunter. Once you're past that step, we can dive into the meaty bits. We'll start with the absolute basics. What to do the moment you log in with a fresh 90 hunter. First, I want you to take a peek in your spellbook. Don't panic, we'll sort out what's important here.
Scattered Shots: 10 reasons to use your level 90 boost on a hunter
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. This week, your host Adam Koebel, aka Bendak will be discussing the reasons why you should be playing a hunter. As you may have heard, Warlords of Draenor will be available for pre-order soon, and with each purchase comes one free level 90 boost. Still wondering which class you should use your boost on? I'm here to make your decision a whole lot easier. Here are 10 reasons why you should use your level 90 boost on a hunter. 1. Feign death Hunters only die if we choose to die. Feign Death makes a hunter's repair bill is a mere fraction of what it would normally be. It's not just about repair bills though, it's about being able to avoid fighting things you don't want to fight. It's about avoiding corpse runs. And you would be surprised how often it fools people in PvP. Other classes are jealous of Feign Death, but they put up with it because we can mass resurrect to save them a corpse run. I put this at number one because it is, without a doubt, my favorite hunter ability. On second thought, it's probably tied with number three on the list. It's really hard to choose.
Scattered Shots: Hunter etiquette
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. This week, your host Adam Koebel, aka Bendak will be discussing what it means to be a good hunter. The level 90 boosts are coming Soon™ and I am sure there are some of you interested in picking the hunter as your first boosted character. You can check out my article on getting started with the hunter class from two weeks ago for a brief introduction to the class and picking a race. Once you are level 90 and want to start doing group activities, there are some things you should know about being a hunter. The last thing you want to do is contribute to that awful "huntard" stereotype. We're going to start off with a little pet etiquette. First and foremost, turn off Growl autocast when you are in any kind of instance with a tank. Even veteran hunters make this mistake from time to time. You're out killing things on the Timeless Isle, and all of the sudden your queue pops and you forget to turn Growl off once you get inside. If you find that you are forgetful when it comes to this, you may want to look into getting the BadPet addon or something similar.
Scattered Shots: Hunter pets we'd like to see in our stables
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. This week, your host Adam Koebel, aka Bendak will be discussing potential new hunter pets in Warlords of Draenor. Blizzard seems to have really enjoyed teasing hunters this expansion with the Dire Beast spell. Dire Beast is a talent which summons a random beast to fight for you for 15 seconds. Each zone in Pandaria has three different beasts it chooses from, and there are several instances where it will summon a beast which you're currently unable to tame. The most notable examples being the pterrorwings on Isle of Thunder and the gulp frogs on Timeless Isle. There's also several beast families which have been in the game for a long time but remain untamable. Occasionally, these are added in a new expansion, such as the basilik and water strider in Mists of Pandaria. As a pet collector, I have high hopes that we'll see both old and new pet families added in Warlords of Draenor to fill our stables. Let's start with a family of beast so obvious that they already have a unique spell attributed to them in the game.
Scattered Shots: Why every hunter needs a tallstrider pet
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. This week, your host Adam Koebel, aka Bendak will be discussing how awesome tallstriders are, along with some other interesting hunter pets. I still deeply regret abandoning my hydra pet back in Wrath of the Lich King. A bug in one of the daily quests in Sholazar Basin allowed hunters to tame a ghostly hydra, oozeling, or crocodile. Blizzard fixed the bug, but allowed everyone to keep their pets. In my defense, we were only allowed to have four pets in our stable at the time, and there was spirit beasts to be had. Do you know how heavily camped Loque'nahak was back then? You think cross-realm zones are bad? Before Wrath added a couple of extra stable slots (which cost gold, by the way), hunters only had two stable slots throughout vanilla and BC in addition to our active pet. Then Cataclysm came along and let us tame a whopping 25 pets. I'm pretty sure the server hosting the Petopia forums spontaneously exploded in the back of a room somewhere, ruining some poor IT guy's day. It felt like it could never get any better for a pet collector. Then patch 5.3 came along and Blizzard said: "You guys want, like, 30 more pet slots? Sure, here you go." The new slots were welcome, but just how does one tame 55 unique pets?. Once you've tamed every rare and hunted down every spirit beast, what else is there? The tallstrider, of course. Get one in every color and have your own fleet of tallstriders. Tallstriders are awesome! Maybe even more awesome than sporebats.
Scattered Shots: Hunter wish list for 6.0
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. This week, your host Adam Koebel, aka Bendak will be discussing the future of the hunter class. In little more than a week, we'll know what we have to look forward to in the next expansion at BlizzCon. Whether or not we hear something about hunters specifically remains to be seen. There's no class panel scheduled and class questions won't be allowed during the Q&A panel. We have had some hints from the developers here and there, but ultimately our future is a mystery and may remain so until we see the first beta patch notes. Arth over at the Warcraft Hunters Union has been compiling a community-generated list of hunter ideas and suggestions intended for the developers known as The Hunter Project. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the hunter class as it stands, but there are some areas where I think some changes are needed. We'll take a look at some of the suggestions put forth in The Hunter Project and I'll add my own input to the mix.
Hunters get more pet slots: running out of things to complain about
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim or ask him on Google+. In the very early incarnation of the patch 5.3 PTR, hunter stables have been expanded to accomodate up to 50 hunter pets. This awesome feature was discovered by a score of hunters almost as soon as the PTR was available, though I believe Kalliope reported on it first. With this change hunters will now be able to collect up to 55 different pets, with 50 in the stable and 5 in the active pet slots. In the comments to this news at the WHU, Arth made an apt observation: Min. range is gone, our specs are fairly well-tuned and are all viable, we aren't terrible in PvP, and now this. What the hell are we supposed to complain about? What indeed, hunters? Let's take a moment to look at why hunters need so ridiculously many stable slots, and why we got them.
Patch 5.1 introduces a bounty of new hunter pets
Pet-obsessed hunters are in for a real treat in patch 5.1. The Petopia forums have discovered over 100 new named beasts on the patch 5.1 PTR that have been added to the various Azerothian continents. Outland has yet to receive any new beast love. Most of these new beasts share skins and models with other previously available pets, but among them are a few new (or previously unavailable) skins. Perhaps most exciting is the addition of a few arcane wyrms to the hunter pet lineup, a pet type hunters have been completely unable to tame previously due to their status as dragonkin, but are now beasts that fall under the Serpent designation. Having what amounts to a minigame exclusive to your class is a rather nice perk of being a hunter. Would it even be possible to implement similar for other classes? What could you give a warrior to do that is unique to their class? Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Mists of Pandaria Hunter Pet Guide
Anne posted yesterday about the new hunter pet challenges, including exciting information on how hunters can track down their target tames using tracks on the ground that are visible only to hunters. The hunter then casts down a flare at the end of the line of tracks to hopefully reveal the rare pet. This is a really cool-sounding new feature that should hopefully also dramatically reduce the number of hunter tames lost to other marauding players. So why are we telling you about it again? Well, Kalliope over at Petopia has done a truly fantastic forum post that serves as a guide to hunting down these beasts of mystery. Kalliope has done a pet-by-pet guide showing you what tracks you're looking for, where the tames are likely to be roaming in Pandaria, and the family and names for each tame. Not only that, but Kalliope has a host of great tips for would-be owners of these beasts. The full tip list, after the jump.
Mists of Pandaria Beta: Hunters get new challenges for rare pets
Hey hunters, sick of players killing beasts you've spent hours trying to track down? Syiler has dug up some new news for hunters on the Mists of Pandaria beta, in the form of new hunter pets with a unique twist. Hunters were given a series of unique taming challenges in the Firelands patch, with several unique hunter pets that required specific tasks in order to tame them correctly. For hunters, it was an incredibly entertaining new challenge to add these pets to their stable. In Mists of Pandaria, it looks like challenge tames are making a return -- with a little twist. These beasts are not out in the open for all to see; instead, they are hidden away. Hunters will have to track the beasts via sets of mysterious tracks found on the ground, rather than the usual tracking methods. These tracks are apparently only viewable by hunters; other classes can not see them. If you follow the tracks to their natural end, you'll see absolutely nothing at all. But if you cast a flare, you'll find a rare pet of your dreams just waiting for you to tame it. This is not only a fun mechanic, but it also prevents random players from wandering around indiscriminately killing the rare pets that hunters crave. And the creatures themselves seem to be elites, which discourages other players from intervening on a hunter's tame as well. Players killing rare spawn spirit beasts and other creatures has been a source of irritation for many a hunter over the years. Perhaps this solution will keep the creatures in the hands of those who can use them for more than padding their pocketbook. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Breakfast Topic: The game's most famous rare
I was taking my main through the new set of Northern Barrens quests recently when I found myself running across rare spawn mobs a lot. This in itself isn't all that surprising; you'll run across rare spawns pretty commonly whenever zones aren't occupied by eager levelers. I saw Elder Mystic Razorsnout, Swiftmane, and for the first time ever, Humar the Pridelord. Humar is well known as a popular hunter pet, and until Wrath, he was the only black lion in the game. And that got me to thinking: What is the game's most famous rare spawn? If I had to settle on one, my vote would be the Time-Lost Proto Drake, which has driven legions of players to the nuthouse in an endless struggle to find it, let alone kill it. Close behind would probably be Loque'nahak, another famous hunter pet. Curiously, it feels like most of the game's really well-known rare mobs are actually fairly recent additions to the game, although people who played during classic WoW might disagree.
Mists of Pandaria Beta: New hunter pets
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.or ask him on Google+. If there's one thing that defines the hunter class, it's our smoldering good looks. But just behind the irresistable allure of our sculpted flesh, the defining aspect of the hunter class is our pets. There is nothing hunters love more than our pets, and the most common questions hunters ask about Mists of Pandaria are about our pets. What will the new pets be? What are their special abilities? Will we get more stable slots (because the extra 20 we got last expansion are already full)? And of course, what about spirit beasts? Happily, we're far enough into the beta process that we can begin answering some of the questions about new hunter pets. Join me after the cut for the rundown of the new tameable pet types now available and what their new abilities are.
Scattered Shots: Hunter pet plan in Mists of Pandaria
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the hunter podcast uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim.or ask him on Google+. Thus far in the Mists of Pandaria beta, we've seen and heard tons of sweet news about the hunter class, but we've had very little news about the second most important class in the game: hunter pets. Historically, development around new and awesome hunter pets stuff tends to happen later in the beta process, but Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has made an appearance on the forums to let us know what the plan is with our beloved companions. As he suggested at BlizzCon, we will be able to take any hunter pet we want and choose whether to make it ferocity, cunning, or tenacity. So you can have DPS turtles and tanking kitties. But in addition to confirmation of this awesome news is a plan that many hunters are far less thrilled about: no more pet talents at all. Here's what Ghostcrawler had to say about pet talents going the way of the manhood of the elven races.
The Queue: Come to me, Pandaria
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. The beta does not currently allow questing on Pandaria, and it is driving me batty. It's so close! Let me quest, dang it! bethontheharbor asked: So has anyone bothered to get shots of the Theramore area, or is it blocked off. I haven't seen anything from that town posted anywhere.
