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Hey, A New Post!

July 25, 2009 By Garwulf 5 Comments

Sorry it’s been nearly seven days since I’d last posted. I’ve had a busy week to say the least. Whenever I did have a little free time I chose to do some playing instead. I thought about discussing this and that, but blogging is hard work. So, without further ado…

First off and most importantly… 😉 Worgens were officially removed from our stables last Tuesday. I discovered this just after maintenance when I pulled Hank out of the kennel to abandon him. I was like, “what’s this nappy ass grey wolf doing here..?!” Then I realized after a second… ah it’s Garwal. I wasn’t phased by it because like I said, I was planning to abandon him to go on a taming mission anyway.

After sending Garwal back to Howling Fjord I headed over to Thousand Needles to tame me a Silithid. Not just any Silithid, but Silithid Ravager. I’d been entertaining the idea of trying out a Silithid for arena, so of course I had to go out and find one of the more unique ones in the game.

Silithid Ravager spawns in and around the dig site in the southern part of Thousand Needles, just a short ride from Gadgetzan. When I first got there I saw no sign of him anywhere. A few hours later I logged back on and patrolled the area again, but still no luck. I brought up WoWHead to verify the spawn locations, and also noted a comment about him lurking around a teal colored rock. As soon as I brought up the game screen again I saw the teal rock in the distance along with this crazily hyper insect bouncing around beside it. I hovered my mouse over it and ding..! RareFinder sounded its little alarm and told me that was the bug I was looking for.

To make a long story short, not long after taming him I decided to abandon him and go after a worm once again. Here’s why…

Silithids are annoying as hell. I’m not sure if they all do this, but Silithid Ravager retains his restless behavior even after taming. I dunno… some players may like the animation, but it made me crazy after awhile.

Secondly, even though I hadn’t leveled him to 80, I just couldn’t see the Silithid beating out the Chimera for a starting job in the arena. While Venom Web Spray is a very nice situational skill for PvP, I think Froststorm Breath wins out. I had mistakenly thought that Venom Web Spray had a 30 yard range, the same as Froststorm Breath, but it is in fact only 20 yards. That was the thing that immediately turned me off about the Silithid, apart from the crazy dancing animation.

I’m sure there are some BM Hunters who swear by using a Silithid in arena, but I’m going to stick with my Chimera. A 50% slow for 5 seconds on a 7 second cooldown that is not dispellable is just too good. Combine that with 2K nature damage crits as well as a 30 yard range, and you have yourself a PvP monster. In my opinion, keeping an opponent slowed for 70% of the match is better than a 4 second root on a 28 second cooldown. Not to mention that Venom Web Spray can be dispelled where as Froststorm Breath cannot.

I still think Silithids could be a very viable pet in arena, but I would highly recommend taking Venom Web Spray off of autocast. The root could probably make or break a game, so it definitely needs to be used wisely. The 28 second cooldown is too long to be wasted. If you were able to get someone to blow their trinket on Intimidation, then immediately follow with the Silithid’s root, then you might be able to sway a match pretty quickly. I also suppose Silithids would be decent pets for dueling if that’s your thing.

Any Silithid lovers out there..? What’s been your experience with them?

So anyway, that was my brief experience with Silithids. Although he didn’t really get a fair shake, I just couldn’t see myself spending the time leveling him to 80 to properly test him. If we ever get more stable slots I may revisit the Silithid, but for now I’m sticking with my Chimera as top choice for a BM Cunning pet.

Of course, after I abandoned the Silithid I had to fill that vacant slot with something, so it was back to Silithus to try and find Grubthor again. I made the tough decision to abandon my worm so I could join in on the Worgen fun a few weeks back. I had a feeling that the thrill of being a Worgen owner was going to be short lived novelty, but it was worth it.

Grubthor wasn’t up, so I just headed over to Storm Peaks and tamed a Snowdrift Jormungar who was already 80. I’ll probably still go after Grubthor at some point since I’m weird like that, but at least now I’m able to PvP with my worm right away. My 2v2 partner and I had an absolutely dreadful run in arena yesterday, so I’m thinking of switching things up a bit and rolling with the worm tonight. Sometimes Acid Spit, Charge, and having a pet that can take a little more of a beating is what’s needed. It’s possible I may have had a little too much of my “Game Fuel” last night, but we were getting some crazy counter combos left and right.

Lots more to talk about, including the Hunter Q&A, so stay tuned for more…

Don’t Get Too Attached

July 7, 2009 By Garwulf 10 Comments

The writing is on the wall I’m afraid, but it was a fun few days. I think the removal of pet talents, the pet character pane and the inability to feed them are all signs that Blizz is intending on removing the Worgen.

I can still pull him in and out of the stable, dismiss and re-summon, and even use Eyes of the Beast, but not much else I’m afraid. If you switch between dual specs it seems to bring back the character pane at least, but not the talents. It’s uncertain whether they plan to leave them this way hoping that Hunters will ultimately abandon their useless pets, or if they’re still working towards an ultimate solution. I guess it’s time to lock them in the stable and hope for the best.

As you can see by my screenshot which I took moments after logging in, the novelty has worn off. Garwal is probably the most common Hunter pet in the game now. The hotfix thread in the WoW Hunter forums is growing at an exponential rate. I’d expect a blue post there sometime within the next few hours.

I’m not really surprised at any of this though. I never honestly thought they’d let us keep them and I knew that it would only be a matter of time before every Hunter had one, considering how easy they are to tame. What is somewhat surprising is just how many Hunters still had the Alpha Worg quest chain available to them.

On a side note… in the miniscule off chance that Blizz lets us keep these, this may be a good opportunity to tell the desperate and gullible Hunters that entering arena now “fixes it”. They’d be a lot less common… 😈

Update: Ummm… Yea! I’ll take this as a compromise! If Blizz wants to swap out Hank for a giant Worg, I’m cool with that! He’d look pretty intimidating when under Bestial Wrath. 😉

Seems as if this Worgen hotfix is a work in progress. I wonder what other oddities await us.

It’s Taken Azeroth By Storm

July 7, 2009 By Garwulf 11 Comments

Worgen Mania!

WORGENMANIA!

Within hours of the news being leaked on the internet, hundreds and even thousands of Hunters across Azeroth were scrambling to tame the new hottest thing… a Worgen..?!

By now this latest craze has become quite the rage, as now literally dozens upon dozens of them are popping up on servers everywhere. It’s caught the attention of the Blizzard developers who are now trying to determine how best to approach this situation. The Worgen was of course never intended to be tamed, but as with some of the other glorious flukes of the past, an incredibly clever or flat out lucky Hunter was able to discover a means of obtaining a Worgen as a pet.

Blizzard has made an official statement concerning the “Fate of the Worgen”:

As you put it Zennie, we are currently discussing this issue.

It is not intended that Garwal can be tamed while in worgen form and will be addressed via a hotfix in the near future. When we have determined how to handle situations where hunters have already tamed Garwal we will let you know.

I suspect that a fix will be implemented as early as today once the realms go live. The big question is… will they allow the Hunters who’ve already tamed this incredibly cool looking pet to keep it as is, or will they revert it to a wolf model? That’s the question of the hour.

There’s no doubt that Blizzard intends to fix it so that Garwal can’t be tamed in Worgen form any loger. After all, Hunters were never supposed to be able to keep an intelligent humanoid creature as a pet. That would basically make it a slave! Some Hunters pose the gorilla argument, but a Worgen and a gorilla are vastly different. As far as I know, gorillas in-game don’t speak or wear armor.

The question on everyone’s mind, especially for the fortunate Hunters who were able to tame him, is… are they going to allow the already tamed version of Garwal to remain as a Worgen? There are many good arguments for and against it.

In the past, Blizzard usually dealt with these types of things by allowing the ones that slipped through to remain. However, this situation is highly controversial due to the fact that Garwal is a humanoid, along with strong speculation that Worgen may be added as a playable race in a future expansion.

If I were to guess, I’d say that one day we’re going to log in and find a wolf where a Worgen used to be. I may be wrong on that, but one thing’s for sure… if that does happen, the Hunter community will be up in arms about it.

Only time will tell.

How I Met Hank

July 4, 2009 By Garwulf 42 Comments

Some of you may have heard about the Worgen pet that is rumored to be tamable by Hunters. Well, the rumors are true.

Garwulf Taming the Worgen, Garwal

I had looked into this last night and decided I was going to go for it. After all, this sort of stuff is what I relish most about the game. I love these Huntery type feats of strength.

There is a Worg in the Howling Fjord named Garwal, who is the eventual target of a quest chain. Garwal shifts into a Worgen as he gets lower on health. If the tame successfully completes at the exact moment in which he shapeshifts, Hunters can have themselves a pet Worgen.

Garwal has all of the same abilities as a wolf, and from what I can tell doesn’t seem to have any bugginess about him. I haven’t played around with him too much, but from what I saw, he dashes, casts Furious Howl and rips faces off just like a regular wolf. It’s quite a sight.

So, on to the taming adventure…

When I arrived at the Fjord to initiate the quest I was suddenly disappointed when I saw that the quest giver was Horde. I mistakenly made a post indicating that it was only available to Horde characters.

Fortunately for me, within minutes of publishing the post I watched a quick video of a Hunter running around with him. The Hunter was a Draenei… wtf..?! I jumped on WoWHead and did a little more research. The quests which allow you access to this Worg are available to both factions, but differ a little bit. I quickly unpublished my post and set out to find this guy.

Now I don’t know how long Blizz will allow them to stay in this state, but it’s definitely a fun novelty in the meantime. I had players following me around and sending me tells right away. It was pretty comical.

Let me tell you… this is one awesome looking pet. Here’s what you gotta do if you want one.

You need to have not completed the quest chain Alpha Worg. For Alliance, the NPC who initiates the quest is Watcher Moonleaf. For Horde, it’s Greatmother Ankha. You need to have a buff from this quest chain in order for him to appear.
Garwal is level 71, so you need to be at least that level of course.
The best way to accomplish the tame is with a Survival spec. Wyvern Sting seems to be the ticket here. I’m sure it’s possible to try it other ways, but I’m proof that this works.
You need to attack Garwal until his health is somewhere around 60%. This is not an exact science folks, so you’ll need to experiment for a bit.
At this point you need to put him to sleep with Wyvern Sting.
Somewhere just past the halfway mark of the Wyvern Sting effect you need to begin your Tame Beast.
Tame Beast needs to finish at precisely the moment that he shapeshifts into Worgen form.

It’s pretty tricky, but with a little practice it’s not too difficult. I got him on my 10th try. If you fail to tame him in Worgen form, just abandon and repeat. He respawns pretty quickly (about 2mins.), so you can get quite a few attempts in without having to wait too long.

I attacked him unarmed so that I’d have more control over the damage. Last thing you want is a huge melee crit with your epic 2H to ruin the whole thing. At 7800 health I hit him with Wyvern Sting. With 13 seconds left on the effect I began the tame. These figures may or may not work for you. Finding the sweet spot depends upon how low on health you get him before the taming, and how high your Wyvern ticks for. Just give it a few tries and make mental notes of where you were at in the taming process.

I recorded the taming process, but unknowingly had my UI turned off. I apologize for that because I was hoping to show you how low his health was when I hit him with Wyvern. I’m certainly not going to try this again! 😉

I’ve heard of Hunters spending hours at this, so either I’m just really good at Huntering or I got really lucky. I think it’s the latter.

Oh, almost forgot… Word has it that entering an arena will reset this pet back to Worg form, so NO ARENA FOR YOU! Well, at least for your Worgen buddy.