The Big Dog Cometh

I had heard that Wolves were largely considered the "best" non-elite pet for Hunters. Their howl buffed the Hunter, while they did plenty of damage on their own. Being that kind of schmuck who has to see things for himself, Ruk dismissed his 79 cat and tamed himself an 80 Wolf. Back to Silvermoon City, and back to the Heroic Training Dummy. Ten minutes later, the numbers came in.



Wait, what?





Not only does the Wolf beat the Spirit Beast's numbers, it comes in just barely behind the Devilsaur.

Let that be a lesson to us all - Corehounds might be large, but the Wolf is the real Big Dog.

Don't mess with the Big Dog.

Elite Fight Club

Rukgut now has two elite Ferocity pets. That's not necessarily a problem, but should Ruk decide to get his group on, or maybe step up to raids and such, he's gotta bring the pain. Pain, in this case, via a pet. Beast Mastery 4 Lyfe, bitches!

To determine the pecking order, Ruk put his two prized scrappers - T-Rex and Spirit Beast - to the test. In this case, test being the Heroic Testing Dummy in Silvermoon City. Nobody goes to Silvermoon City.

Both rounds of testing would be the same. Both sets of pets would run with everything they'd be running with out in the World (maybe not in a group setting, so Growl stayed on for both... okay, I forgot to turn it off. Bite me.) Ruk would lead with a Hunter's Mark, Serpent Sting, and then simply auto fire. Ten minute rounds for each.

Nord, the T-Rex of Pain, stepped up first. Ten minutes later, he had his numbers.







Next, Spirit Beast who happens to also be named Rukgut. Fun fact, you can name your pets after yourself. Who knew? WTB Pet name change! Ten minutes later...







A clear-cut winner. Will that matter? Hard to say. Some folks don't like the Devilsaur in a group because he tends to eat up alot of real estate. Time will tell the tale on this one, but I've got a hunch both of these wicked beasts will see plenty of action.

Interesting Spawns

The Rokk grouped up with some guildies and took the hurt to Drak'Tharon Keep. It was our first instance, first real guild grouping, and it was great experience. Of course, The Lich King showed up at the end of our run and talked a whole lot of trash. Regardless, the run went so well we took a spin through Gundrak for dessert!

In other (Hunter) news...



Skoll. Mine.

We just happened to be flying by one of the spawn points and decided to manually click the rare mob macro I'd set up. Suddenly popped up. Frantically I tried to find him on the map, since there were plenty of yellow neutral dots on Rukgut's map.

I quickly set down and instantly noticed a drake mount was nearby. A quick icon sweep over it revealed it to be an 80 Dranei paladin. I was worried. Why was he just sitting there? Oh crap, he wants to kill it for the Achievement!
(Turns out Skoll wasn't part of the achievement, but I didn't know that at the time.)

Where the Hell was my Frost Trap? C'mon c'mon, dismiss the old wolf pet! Tame, frozen... Skoll is going to be mine!

It was right about then, while I watched the seconds tick down, that I saw movement to my left. Two Alliance Hunters stood there and watched. Were they there the whole time? Or did they just show up? Didn't know, but once the taming was over one of them came up and pet my new pet. Got a cheer after that, but of course I had no idea what they were really saying -



There was no gloating on our part. We simply took our new pet out for a walk, while I stood up from behind my keyboard and rode out the adrenaline dump from taming a rare pet that I'd spent months looking for (Spirit Beast, not necessarily this one.)

When Wishes Come True

I'm not sure how it happened, but Rokk somehow almost made it to 76 in one day. Granted, that wasn't fully devoted to leveling at the time. There was plenty of RL stuff involved - family time ( + rep there), gym time (cause not all gamers are fatties, fatty), and chores (those gutters won't clean themselves). Then there was some auction house goodness (damn you Epic Flying) on top of it. Yet somehow, Rokk stands a few bubbles away from 76.

That wasn't easy. Once midnight rolled around, I was just throwing myself at quests to finish them. Didn't read them, didn't care. Just grind, quest, finish, rinse, repeat. I did consider taking my mind off things with some fishing, and ended up landing Mr. Pinchy on my third cast. With a Fishing skill around 240, that was crazy luck.

Naturally that luck didn't hold out when I made my first wish.



Hey, you're not a cute pet! Why are you not a cute pet?! Why are you attacking me, stupid combat non-pet!?

After running headfirst into the game for seven hours straight, I felt like I should write something despite having what feels like some degree of brain damage. Yet here I am, blogging with the words and pictures - screenshots no less! That's dedication, kids. In fact, I was so impressed with this post that I sent a copy to my good friend Lindsay Lohan. I bet she was thrilled to read it!

It's Been One Week Since You Looked At Me...

Unacceptable. However, in my defense I've been RL busy.

That part aside, let's discuss the gains that have been made in the past week.

- Epic Flying & Epic Mount. Through dailies and selling everything I could get my hands on, the Ruk now has the 5k flying. Went to Shadowmoon Valley in Outlands and shelled out another 200 gold for a 280% speed mount. Handy.

- Albino Devilsaur. Regardless of the other pets, it looks like Devilsaur is still topping the DPS charts. But since everyone and their gnome has the dark one, the Ruk went out to Un'Goro Crater and tamed Nord, the albino. He currently sits at 76, almost 77. We've been using him to grind the basin.

- Leatherworking. Currently sitting at 434. I'll be damned if I'm going to spend 25 gold on 5 Heavy Borean Leather in the AH. Might as well grind it on the damn, dirty apes in the Basin. At least that way, Nord's getting xp. Plus the gorillas are the spawn points for...

- Spirit Beast. Nothing yet. I have to get this thing out of my head. It looks cool, and the spirit strike is an impressive visual. But numbers have it down on the charts. We must be more zen and less superficial.

- Wolf. Since not much else has been upgraded, I decided that it'd be good to have an 80 pet in case Ruk was invited to a group. We went out to Storm Peaks and tamed an 80 wolf, Deathnote, and slapped it in the stable. He'll sit there until we get a group, or until Nord hits 80. Or until the future Spirit Beast hits 80. *twitch twitch*

Plan: Grind mats in the Basin, leveling up Nord and Leatherworking at the same time while continuing on the Oracle dailies. The next goal is to have Leatherworking at the point where we can make some purples. Wowhead says that level is 440. Six skill points. That's 60 Heavy Borean Leather, give or take. That's 360 Gorilla Kills.

A Slow Grind

- Not much happened this past week, to be honest. Ruk kept looking for the Spirit Beast, made himself gear - Eaglebane Bracers and Swiftarrow Shoulderguards, and farmed mats.

- Halfway out of 78, and the pets are coming along. The Devilsaur is now being levelled for DPS, until I can get the Spirit Beast. Taming a wasp from Sholazar Basin is fine, but targeting can become an issue. I can't imagine any group being thrilled with having to navigate around a giant flying bug. Maybe grinding up one of the wasps from Zangramash might be a better way to go. We'll just put that on the list of things to do at 80.

- Questing is still a little frustrating. Ruk is working through the questlines, and they all seem to end at one elite boss. They're not listed as group encounters, but still... what a pain.

Pet Power

After cleaning up my talent points and getting them sorted away, I decided to take my available pets out for a bit of a tussle versus the training dummies.

The pets are:
Marv (76 Gorilla)
Estelle (75 Cat)
Devilsaur (71 Devilsaur)
Dakota (74 Wolf)

The results?







True, different levels between pets. But the disparity between them is an interesting indicator as far as "potential damage" goes.

BM and Survival Spec

Late last night I tried the difference between BM and SV specs. I tried it at the training dummy in Orgrimmar, using a Wasp. Simply changed from a 51 point BM to a 51 point SV. All I did was shot rotations, and SV came out ahead. Will I change specs? SV damage is bursty due to crits, and I doubt any pet could hold threat over that spiked damage, so I'll keep levelling with BM for now.



Ding 72! Ditched the wasp (again) and levelled up the pets to 71.

One Left Behind

Level 70 was actually pretty good to me. It let me get all my pets caught up to me, as well as getting my cooking to a point where I have to get recipes from higher level zones.

Correction on one point - my Devilsaur remains at 65. Why? Because now that we've hit 71, there's a Devilsaur in Netherealm that is 71 that we can tame. I suspect that I should keep an eye on that one, because once patch 3.0.8 rolls through it might be my best dps pet until the (fingers crossed and prayers said) spirit beast.