Mists of Pandaria and Me
I've been trying to come to grips with this expansion, and there are a few things that have been bugging me about it.
Farming. Sure, it's easy to pick on Blizzard for introducing players to Farmville, but it's only with Patch 5.2 that I've really had any use for it. I am exalted with the Tillers (but not with each member of said faction), which means that I've been farming my hunter-butt off, but I really don't like the fact that it's a major part of leveling cooking. I think Blizzard is overplaying the importance of cooking, much like they underplayed it in previous expansions. And let's be honest: if it weren't for the cooking holiday Pilgrim's Bounty, most of us would only know how to make Spice Bread. I'm not sure what the right balance is, but I know that I'm not thrilled with farming/cooking as it stands now.
Factions. Okay, I don't hate the factions introduced in this expansion. I don't even hate that I have to grind rep with them. What I don't like is that I was nearly Valor capped before I had enough reputation with any given faction before I could upgrade my gear. I don't miss having to do the same random dungeons until my eyes bleed, but can't there be some Valor gear that doesn't require me to be enslaved to a faction?
Alts. I hate alts? No, I love my alts. I miss playing my alts. Why do I miss them? Because they weren't all raid geared like Gariath was at the onset of the expansion, and when I ventured into Pandaria with them, they got their asses kicked. To be fair, I haven't taken any of them out to level since then (I even leveled a Monk to 85, but that's another post for another day), I will say that having account bound rep bonuses for the factions that I have gotten to exalted with will take some of the pain out of leveling my alts. Oh, and while I complained about about farming, the one good thing was farming enchanting mats for my Paladin, so he's maxed his enchanting, all while sitting parked in Stormwind.
I'm sure there are other things that I can praise and damn, but I have crops to go harvest to I can upgrade my bow… to a gun. Ugh...
Taming of a Rare Spawn...
Yesterday, I took Gariath out to do his Firelands daily quests. I was flying into Hyjal, when my _NPCScan add-on alerted me to Blazewing's presence in the zone. I followed it around, trying to figure out what I should have known; that it can't be tamed. After making that mistake with Madexx, I no longer take chances. So, I targeted, landed, and took it (him? her?) down. It drops a nice pair of leather druid healer pants. I don't often get lucky with the rares, and I'll admit, it feels like cheating a bit to have the add-on, but obviously, but it didn't stop me.
After doing that, I went and did the "Vigilence on Wings" (Joust) daily, and was rewarded for my efforts with a nice achievement. If you get this achievement, you can stop having reward remorse for not picking the "other" mini-jouster; it's the reward for doing this daily ten times. (I'll have to do it nine times for Fidelma, so she can get the other pet, too.)
After this, I go to pick up the Firelands dailys. I collect the quests, and something in the air caught my attention; it was a the Spirit Owl, Ban'thalos. I'm normally specc'ed Survival, but I have a Beast Master secondary spec, which comes in handy, because the Spirit Beasts can only be tamed by Beast Master specc'ed hunters; it's probably to make up for their slightly lower DPS than Survival and Marksman top dog DPS specs.
So, now the fun begins. Why do I say that, you ask? Well, if you read the comments about how to tame this bird on the comments tab of the link above, you'll see that there are all kinds of shenanigans recommended to tame her. Since I'm not an engineer, nor am I potion enabled (just a boring Leatherworker), and my computers graphics are good, but not "…land on the highest part of the tallest tree" good, I had to come up with a different strategy. Which I did.
This was the text exchange I had with her. I should translate "eib" to being Eibhilan, her hunter alt. The levitation ideas were that she could use levitation on Gariath, or I could grab my Priest, and do the same thing for Tidnab.
After this exchange, Fi called me, and we talked out a strategy while she logged in. The reason that I thought I needed levitation is that the bird flies out of the range of the hunter taming spell (which has a 30-yard range).
After I read the suggestions on WoWHead to her, she proposed a strategy of her own; she would attack it, pulling it down to the ground, so that I could tame it. After a couple of spectacularly bad failures (which I should have recorded and put on YouTube, but I digress), which included another hunter trying to kill it (SHAME!), we got our positioning right for her to tag it, and bring it right to me on the ground.
It's a good thing Fi was in Holy Spec. It was a bad thing that she was in Holy Spec. I say this because she was able to keep herself alive while bringing Ban'thalos to me. The trick about this tactic is that in order for a hunter to tame the mob, the attacker must die, so that the hunter can cast the spell uninterrupted. Fi, being the healing champ that she is, kept trying to keep herself alive! I can't be mad at her because it took four casts for me to realize why I couldn't tame her. When she asked me why I wasn't taming it, I told her "it's because you haven't died. You need to die!" (Not exactly something you want to say often to your main healer… just sayin'.)
Fi cooperated, and died, and I was able to tame Ban'thalos. A million thank-you's later, I realized I needed to name her. Fi, suggested "MiniFi", which I seriously considered. But, I have this tradition, starting with Seaver, my first long-term keeper pet, to name them after baseball players. But for the life of me, I can't think of a player who I could associate with an owl. So, I decided to go to what I normally consider the easy way out, and name it for what it is.
So, here's Gariath with Banthalos (can't use punctuation in pet names; a double-standard, in my opinion).
Diary of a Huntard
If you've been here in the past, you'll see that this site has changed yet again. With the death of iWeb, I've had to changed editing software, and it's just easier to wipe everything out and start from scratch.