exotic-pets
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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.
Patch 3.0.2 guide to Exotic Pets: Core hound
Core Hound:If casters are giving you trouble, then the core hound is the exotic pet for you. Their Lava Breath ability slows down the enemy's casting speed by 50% for 10 seconds. The cooldown is also ten seconds, so you don't even need the Longevity talent to keep this up all the time, which is especially nice for PvP also. Their Ferocity talents give them lots of extra damage and self-healing options as well. The core hound is the pet with the loudest footsteps in the game -- their feet pound the earth so hard it even makes everyone's screens shake if they happen to be nearby. So if you're the kind of hunter who likes to announce to the entire world, "Here I am! Look at me! Right here!" then this is the pet for you; but if you want to be sneaky and avoid attention, then you ought to look elsewhere.BRK loves core hounds lots. There are three types to choose from: red hot, green hot, and white wolf; found in Blackrock Mountain, Shadowmoon Valley, and Azuremyst Isle respectively.If you want a non-exotic alternative to core hounds, you could consider the serpents and their Poison Spit ability, which is almost just as good as the core hound ability, and ranged too! You won't deafen people and shake their screens with a serpent, but you'll do the trick just as well, more or less, especially if you have Longevity. Serpents are Cunning pets though, so you it also depends on which talents you prefer. NEXT: DEVILSAURS >>
Patch 3.0.2 guide to Exotic Pets: Chimaera
Chimaera: Pronounced "kai-meh-ra," this mythical mish-mash of different animals has a Froststorm Breath ability, which does a bit of damage slows down your enemy by 50% for 5 seconds. Normally the cooldown is 10 seconds, which in itself isn't that bad, but with the Beast Mastery talent Longevity, you can shorten this to 7 seconds. Combined with well timed Concussive Shots, you could keep an enemy slowed to 50% speed for 12 out of every 14 seconds. That makes this pet one of your best bets kiting, and excellent for PvP: if melee types like rogues and warriors keep slowing you down with their hamstrings and crippling poisons, this beast is your revenge. It won't free you if you're snared, but it will snare them and give you some hope of escape. It's a Cunning pet, so it's extra mobile, and it can also help you recharge your mana in a fix, but it may not have some of the extra damage capabilities or survivability of Ferocity and Tenacity pets.Check out BRK's video of a chimaera pet, have a look at Wowhead's chimaera gallery to see whether you prefer the Azerothian or Outland breeds, and then scan their list of tamable chimaeras to find the one nearest you, in many places, such as from Winterspring to Shadowmoon Valley.If you're wondering what sort of normal pets have similar functionality, the next closest pet to the chimaera is the hyena, with Tendon Rip, which lasts 1 second more than the chimaera's ability, but has a 10-second longer cooldown. NEXT: CORE HOUNDS >>
Patch 3.0.2 guide to Exotic Pets: Silithid
Silithid:The silithid is your choice if you want to keep an enemy stuck in place. It has a ranged Venom Web Spray ability which can do some damage and trap your enemy for 4 seconds every 40 seconds or so. Longevity helps with that, but to me at least it still doesn't seem as nice as the chimaera's Froststorm Breath. But it all depends on how you use it, I guess, as well as what other sorts of talents you choose for yourself. This is a Cunning pet, just the same as the chimaera. BRK had a look at this a while back, which showed off the pets abilities and looks. There are four different colors, and for the most part, they can be tamed in Tanaris, Un'Goro, and Silithus.The spider is your closest non-exotic alternative, with Webs that do the same thing as the Silithid but without the extra bit of damage. NEXT: WORMS >>
Patch 3.0.2 guide to Exotic Pets
If you're a hunter, you're probably pretty excited about the new talents we're getting in Patch 3.0.2, not the least of which is the new Beast Mastery talent, appropriately enough called Beast Mastery. It gives you 4 extra talent points, and enables you to tame "exotic" pets that would otherwise be beyond your reach. But which exotic pet is right for you? Where can they be tamed? Are they really better than the regular pets? There are seven exotic pets in all, but only five of them are available to us now: Chimaera Core Hound Devilsaur Silithid Worm The Rhino and the Spirit Beast will only be available in Northrend once the expansion actually arrives next month. For now, we have the selection of exotic beasts that would become available to a level 60 hunter upon first clicking that 51st talent point, and reaching the pinnacle of his or her mastery of beasts. These pets are not necessarily set in stone, of course, and they will change a bit over the next month or so, though how much is still anyone's guess.So what makes each of these pets special? Let's have a look. FIRST UP: CHIMAERAS >>
Patch 3.0.2 guide to Exotic Pets: Devilsaur
Devilsaur:This big red dino is a great Ferocity pet with a specialty in sustainable damage over time. Its Monstrous Bite builds up over a period of 30 seconds to an additional 9% damage on all the devilsaur's attacks. If your battle is going to last 30 seconds or less, though, you're not going to get the full benefit of that, especially if, as in PvP, there may be breaks of a few seconds in which the Monstrous Bite buff is not being reapplied, then your devilsaur will have to start over again. This makes me think that the best utility for a devilsaur is in instances, particularly on long boss fights where it can just wail on a target from start to finish. Just be sure that your tank doesn't mind the footsteps -- they're not as loud as the core hound, and they don't shake your friends' screens, but they could definitely get annoying sooner rather than later.This was the first exotic pet that BRK caught on film, and it comes in shades of red, white and black. You'll find them all in Un'Goro Crater, except for one more in the northernmost Netherstorm biodome as well.The closest non-exotic pet is the raptor, with a Savage Rend ability that does some bleed damage and boosts attack power if it critically hits. It has a nasty 1 minute cooldown though, which really limits its usefulness. NEXT: SILITHIDS >>
Patch 3.0.2 guide to Exotic Pets: Worm
Worm:The worm is your exotic Tenacity option if you need a really hard-core single-target tanking pet. It doesn't have the gorilladin's ability to tank multiple targets at the same time, but you can't do much better than Acid Spit for single target debuffing over time. The more physical damage-dealers you have attacking that target over the longest period of time possible, the more you'll see its effect stack up. It looks to me like the best boss-tanking pet you can find in a party made up of mostly physical damage-dealers rather than magical, if you can get your friends to let it tank the boss, of course. In PvP, the effect doesn't wear off as fast as the devilsaur's ability, so you might find it somewhat useful there as well, if you need a pet with more survivability.BRK showed us worm a while back, and of course Wowhead can show you all its 6 colors (as well as the upcoming Northrend version). In Azeroth, the most likely place to find these is in Silithus, or if you're in the Horde, you can just hop down to Ragefire Chasm and tame one there.If you need a non-exotic pet with armor reduction, you can try out the wasp and its Sting, though that's a Ferocity pet for damage more than tanking. If you want a good Tenacity pet for PvP before Northrend, then the crab and its Pin ability might be what you're looking for. In Northrend, however, you're going to want a Rhino for all your PvP Tenacity needs, without a doubt. RETURN TO EXOTIC PETS GUIDE FRONT PAGE >> Patch 3.0.2 "Echoes of Doom" has landed and WoW Insider has you covered. From patch notes to talent guides for every class to fixing your addons to 5 easy achievements you can snag right now. Make sure to check out the latest news.
AotV, Exotics to be changed
Aspect of the Viper is an ability that the developers have been toying with like an indecisive puppy for months now. It's been scrapped and re-written a few times, and I can barely even remember all the iterations it's gone through. Many hunters aren't happy with the current version for PvP. Fortunately for them, neither is Blizzard, so it's getting changed again. In the new version, half of AotV's regen will work passively - whether you're hitting the opponent or not, you'll get 4% of your max mana every 3 seconds. The other half will remain active, but will work on melee hits as well. This way you'll be regenerating mana whether your target is in melee or at range, and getting at least some mana even if the target is out of LoS. They're also doing some retuning of exotic pets' specials. The target is for an exotic pet to do 10% more DPS than normal pets. GC says the goal with that is to make exotics seem like a good use of a talent point (along with the 4 bonus pet talent points) without feeling like you have to choice an exotic if you're a BM hunter. I question that a little bit. Let's say a BM hunter gets between 25 and 40% of his DPS from his pet. A 10% boost on that translates to a 2.5 to 4% boost in overall DPS. What hunter is going to skip that just for pet aesthetics? Well, probably the kind that doesn't read articles with numbers in them, I guess. Still, in my book, a damage increase like that is not to be passed up without a good reason.
BigRedKitty: Hunter-pets in 3.0.2
Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary. From: The Big Bossman at WoW Insider To: The WoW Insider peons Subject: Get to work! Write a post on each of your class's trees, or you're fired. Fired with extreme prejudice! Love, Dan O., aka The Punisher ... /gulp Holy crap, we're in trouble now. Why? Because not only do we have to write about Beast Mastery, Marksmanship, and Survival, but we've now we've got pet talent trees too: Tenacity, Cunning, and Ferocity! Six talent trees, are you kidding us? This is going to take a while. And we should probably start from the beginning.
Ask a Beta Tester: It's all about the money
We have a lot of profession questions today, but also a few about Achievements, the Beast Mastery 51-point talent, and what happens when you push Death Knights off a cliff:Riley asks...How is the Shaman Hex ability working? Does the target still have control of movement and does the PvP trinket work against it?Hex is a the crowd-control spell for Shamans referenced by the devs at the class panel here, and it's been tinkered with a lot since we first heard about it. It was originally meant to be more of an emergency-only, short-duration CC. In its present form, Hex's duration has been increased to 30 seconds and it doesn't necessarily break on damage. However, in PvP the target can control where they go, the PvP trinket does work (you can also shapeshift out of it as a Druid), and it's considered a curse and can be dispelled by Mages, Druids, and restoration Shamans (who will have the ability do dispel curses with a 31-point talent Cleanse Spirit). Think of it as a somewhat odd combination of Counterspell, Fear, and Polymorph.
Scattered Shots: Pet talent trees in the Wrath Beta
Welcome to another edition of Scattered Shots, the other WoW Insider weekly Hunter column. Daniel Whitcomb is your guest host again this week. So, we theorized about talented pets a bit quite a few installments of Scattered Shots ago, but now we have the actual trees live and testable on the Wrath Beta, and they seem to be firming up nicely. There's a few promised changes yet to come, such as the removal or lowering of focus costs on many major abilities and talents, and it's still very possible that Blizzard may make changes here and there before live, but I think they're solid enough at this point that we can look at each tree and make some solid predictions about how people will use them and how various talent builds might look.
Hunter Pet News: New exotic pet families added, Kill Command changed
The latest Beta Build has hit the test servers, and there's a lot to report for Hunters. In particular, many of the announced changes we discussed in the last Scattered Shots went through. Aspect of the Beast now grants a melee AP buff, and Mongoose Bite is unlinked from dodge. Tranquilizing Shot now dispels magic effects, and Arcane Shot does not. Most of the big notable changes however, center around pets, and specifically Beast Mastery. The 51 point talent is now implemented, and 5 extra talent points work. Chimeras and Devilsaurs are now exotic only. In addition, two new exotic pet families have been found: Worms and Silithids. %Gallery-28679% You can tame both the Dredge Striker and Dredge Crusher type worms in Silithus and the Jormungar worms in Northrend. For Silithids, only one "warrior" skin seems tamable, while the worker, wasp, and heavy tank type silithids are not tamable. The worms are Tenacity pets who feed on bread, cheese, and fungus and have a family skill called Acid Spit that does nature damage and reduces, while the silithid is a Cunning pet who feeds on meat and fungus and have an ability called Venom Web Spray that roots the target for 4 seconds and does nature damage. I've added some screenshots of the new pets and their abilities to the gallery above. Also, if you're not impressed with any of the new exotic pet families so far, take heart. We've been told they're still working on the pets themselves. Unfortunately, the rest of the pet-related news is less than amazing.
More stable slots now available on Wrath Beta
You may recall a few days back that we told you about new stable slots coming with Wrath of the Lich King. It looks like Blizzard wasn't just whistling dixie, because they're in. When I was switching from my level 65 devilsaur to my beefier level 70 dire raven for a Nexus run over on the Beta server, I noticed that the stable boy was offering me two more stable slots! The stables slots costs 50 gold for the third one, and 150 gold for the fourth one, giving you a total of 4 slots. This means you have room for one pet from each talent tree, plus a spot for a specialized pet (such as a scorpid for PvP) or an exotic pet (and yes, devilsaurs will be exotic only) or two. Combine this with the abolishing of the need to tame pets simply to learn skills and auto leveling, and it continues to look like pet management should be easier, funner, and more efficient in Wrath.
WoW Insider Show later today at 3:30pm Eastern
Our podcast is back this afternoon, and it's going to be a doozy. We'll share with you some of the best entries in last week's beta key contest, and we'll do what we always do: talk about the biggest stories in the past week of Warcraft. I can tell you right now: this week's show is going to be almost all about the Wrath beta, because there's no bigger story than that. All of those amazing Green quest rewards will probably get a mention, as will what we've seen of Inscription and all the other new stuff so far.And since BigRedKitty will be making his triumphant return to the podcast (and I'll be on with him for the first time since I've started leveling my Alliance Hunter), we'll talk Hunter stuff as well -- I definitely want to hear what he has to say about all these exotic pets we're seeing. And while I can't guarantee it, there's a rumor that none other than Matthew Rossi will be stopping by -- I hear he's excited about something called Titan's Grip?Should be, as always, a terrific show. Tune in to WoW Radio at 3:30pm EST, join everybody in the IRC channel at irc.mmoirc.com in the #wowradio channel, and as always, if you have questions or concerns for us to answer (or just want to tell BRK how awesome he is), drop us an email at theshow@wow.com. See you this afternoon!
Barrens Chat: Fuzzy Wuzzy was
Welcome back for another Barrens Chat comic. I would up front like to say that I am very excited about exotic pets. So excited, I had to poke fun at fellow blogger Daniel Howell for his post last week on the topic of exotic pets. Although I think I might have been a little misleading when I first ran the idea of what I wanted to do past him.Either way, I'm still playing with a few drawing and coloring changes here and there. I didn't darken the outlines this time around, but I think it makes it a bit harder to see in places.Thank you, Daniel, for pointing me towards your banner for a reference, even if I didn't specify what it was I was referencing exactly.See you next week! %Gallery-22361% Barrens Chat is a weekly comic installment created on caffeine and pixy sticks. Although we've yet again decided to abuse Hunters in any way we can find, sometimes we go after the tankier players, too. Stop by every week to see a new comic, and hope that the sugar stash has run out by then.
New stable slots in Wrath? Updated
One of the biggest challenges that hunters face is the issue of only having three available stable slots. With all of the diverse pet choices, and Fluffy the pink Barrens raptor hogging all that space, most hunters would agree that another stable slot or seven would be handy. In fact, with all of the upcoming tameable Wrath pets, not to mention exotics, the stable situation is looking pretty painful. In a recent forum thread, Ghostcrawler hints that Wrath might bring additional slots, going against what Blizzard has said in the past. As a response to posters asking for an expanded stable, the CM responds with "okay." I can't express how excited I am about the possibility of one or more stable slots. Could this tie into the Achievement system? Will I be allowed to collect and house pets? Will we see a special "exotic" slot or slots? What do you think?Update: Ghostcrawler has confirmed that we will indeed be getting two new stable slots. In fact, Ghost points out that further testing may lead to the stables being integrated into the UI the way non-combat pets and mounts will be. In other words, summoning all pets would become spells, allowing the hunter to call whichever pet he or she wishes, without visiting a stable.
Devilsaurs tamable on Wrath servers, Chimeras may be next
As of the latest build, Beast Mastery, the 51 point Hunter talent in the tree of the same name that lets you tame "exotic" pets, remains unimplemented. However, it looks a sneak preview of the talent may have snuck into the patch all the same: Devilsaurs are now tamable! The devilsaurs do shrink quite a bit, but are huge all the same -- I'd estimate the one I tamed was at least three times as tall as my dwarven hunter after taming. They also make a satisfying stomping sound as they run around behind you. They use the Ferocity talent tree (minus Charge for some reason), and eat meat. They come with all the basic pet skills, use Bite for their focus dump, and have an extra family skill called Monstrous Bite. Monstrous Bite looks slightly unfinished, as there's only one rank, and it only hits for 4-6 damage. It's not completely bad though: It also has a buff on hit that increases the Devilsaur's damage done by 5% and stacks 3 times (It should be noted that Monstrous Bite's tooltip currently claims it boosts AP instead). In addition, the buff makes the devilsaur larger. %Gallery-28679% It should be noted too that Wowhead now lists chimeras as a pet category, complete with a family ability called Froststorm Breath. However, I could not personally tame the chimeras in Winterspring or Azshara. [Thanks for the tip, Homelessbird!]
Scattered Shots: Beastmastery in Wrath of the Lich King
Scattered Shots is for Hunters. Your host this week will be Daniel Whitcomb, who will continue his foray into the wide world of Wrath of the Lich King talents. Beastmastery has pretty much dominated the world of Hunters in Burning Crusade, with Serpent's Swiftness alone nearly singlehandedly allowing for the most efficient damaging shot rotations possible -- With a little bit of wrangling between haste and ranged weapon speed, of course. While the changes to Auto Shot clipping in Wrath will likely make shot rotations as we know them a thing of the past, Beastmastery is still looking to be a very viable tree in Wrath of the Lich King, thanks to some clever synergies and some amazing pet buffs.
BigRedKitty: "Exotic" declassified
Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary. Once upon a time, there was a comedian who did a bit about Troy Aikman. Mr. Aikman is a famous, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback who was forced to retire due to receiving multiple concussions over his career. The joke went like this: "Troy, you've been a Super Bowl MVP and are one of the greatest quarterbacks of the 20th century. How do you feel having to retire after receiving your 10th concussion, and how has that incredible series of blows affected your brain?" "Ummmm... I like... pudding!" How is this pertinent to WotLK and hunters? Well, the new 51st talent point in the beta of the Beastmaster tree is named Beast Mastery. As written, it's kind of obscure, a little open-ended, and the programmers don't seem to have a clue what it could really mean: "We're still working on implementing this particular talent. The talent will allow you to train a different "class" of pets which we're calling "exotic" right now. Only hunters with this talent will be able to train those pets. They won't necessarily be "stronger" (though will all have unique abilities that you can only get from exotic pets), the extra power you should get from the talent will be from the additional pet skill points (pet talent points). "Devilsaur anyone?" So when pressed for an answer on the WotLK beta forums for what "exotic" entails, the blue-poster basically said, "Pudding!" But did you ever have a doubt that BigRedKitty wouldn't know what "exotic" is? We sure hope not! We're totally on the case, ready to spill the beans on "exotic" pets, and announce what you 51/15/5 Beastmaster hunters can expect to find come expansion-time. Devilsaur, indeed.
