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Taming The Beast

September 25, 2010 By Garwulf 66 Comments

Taming The Beast from Upper Blackrock Spire is one of those huntery-type of achievements I’d been meaning to check off the list over the past few months. Last night I finally decided to tackle it.

Truth be told, it was really quite easy. Perhaps I was exceptionally lucky, but here’s how I did it…

First off, I grabbed any and all of my haste gear out of the bank, along with some Potions of Speed. Same as with attempting a King Krush solo-tame, you need to reduce the channeling time of Tame Beast to be as hasty as possible. The shorter the taming time, the greater the chance for success.

If you’re not level 80, then the haste becomes even more important, as the damage he deals will be more of an issue for undergeared players.

I basically equipped all PvP gear for the added stamina, apart from any PvE pieces that had haste on them. At the time of taming, I was at about 29K health.

My next move was to create a fancy macro to help me with the taming process…

You need to have a throw-away pet with you when you begin the taming. In order to pull off a successful tame, you need to be under the effects of The Beast Within so as to avoid The Beast’s interrupts.

/cast Bestial Wrath
/script PetAbandon()
/use 13
/use Potion of Speed
/cast Tame Beast

The macro is pretty important, as it maximizes your taming time while under the effects of The Beast Within. With one button press this macro will:

Cast Bestial Wrath – putting you under the effects of The Beast Within
Pop a Potion of Speed
Activate an on-use trinket (in my case, the Thorny Rose Brooch)
Abandon your pet

Tame Beast Will not begin simultaneously, as it takes the game a split-second to realize your pet is gone. One quick second tap will get it going, however.

I didn’t put it in there, but adding Deterrence is a good idea too, especially if your hit points are a bit low (~20K or less).

Now it was off to Blackrock Spire…

Skip this section if you know where to find The Beast

I wasn’t much of a dungeoner prior to TBC, so this instance was still pretty unfamiliar to me. I’d ventured in there maybe all of three times back in vanilla; only one of those times being the UBRS portion.

So… for the other noobs out there like me who need a little guidance…

To get into UBRS, you enter Blackrock Spire (via running up the chain opposite the direction of Blackrock Depths), then head up the stairs and to the left. You’ll enter a large hall lined with small side chambers – each one possessing a glowing rune on the floor. In order to gain access to UBRS, you need to fully clear the mobs surrounding these runes. Once you do, the door opposite the entrance will open.

Back in the day, Seal of Ascension was needed to unlock the upper portion of Blackrock Spire, but not no mo’. Now you can just slaughter your way in.

Once you get in there, you’ve got to blast your way through a few bosses in order to gain access to the Furnace, which is where The Beast is lurking. The upper portion of the instance is pretty small, so you can get to him pretty quickly. At level 80, none of the mobs present much of a challenge, so reaching The Beast is pretty smooth sailing.

If you still need your Leroy Jenkins achievement, this is a good time to knock that one out. The Rookery is just outside the chamber where the first boss is located (Pyroguard Emberseer).

Once you get past the Pyroguard, the Warchief & Gyth; it’s onto The Beast.

Tame The Beast in the corner, behind the hay

The only positioning strategy involved with taming this guy is to skooch yourself into the far corner on the left, just behind the pile of hay. Taming him from this location prevents his knockbacks, and apparently is also supposed to help against his fear. Regardless, it’s recommended, so that’s what I did.

A lot of players suggest pulling him with Scorpid Sting, so as to reduce his hit chance. I didn’t bother with this, but used my pet to pull him instead. I targeted him, positioned myself behind the hay, then sent my pet in. Once he was within range, I hit my macro and began the tame.

My first attempt failed about 3/4 of the way through.

Some suggest having a few throw-away pets at your disposal, to allow for some failed attempts. Otherwise, you have to run back outside and tame another one real quick, which is just what I did. I had cleared most of the mobs on the way in, so I just booked out into the LBRS portion and tamed one of the Scarshield Worgs.

For my second attempt I let my pet beat on him for several seconds, allowing me to get a feel for when he’d cast his interrupts. Anyway, what ended up working for me is starting the tame immediately following one of his Fireball casts.

The second attempt was textbook.

During the taming, he took me down to about 50% health (starting at 29K) during a 14.5 second hasted cast time on Tame Beast.

Well, what’s so cool about The Beast..?

Well, for starters, Core Hounds are among the top Beast Mastery PvP pets, especially for arena. In Cataclysm, Core Hounds will also be an optimal pet for PvE, due to their new Ancient Hysteria buff (i.e., Heroism/Bloodlust).

Apart from The Beast, the only other Core Hounds that share his awesome red model are the ones found in Molten Core. What makes The Beast so special though, is that he still retains his ?? Boss status once tamed.

The Beast is a perfect compliment to the Core Hound Pup… or is it the other way around..? Either way, they look really cool together. 😉

Solo-taming The Beast is a fun challenge, especially for hunters who are not yet level 80. If you’re looking for something fun to try, or have a hankerin’ for pets that are a bit more unusual and unique (just as I do…), then why not go out and try to tame The Beast…

More good karma

June 10, 2010 By Garwulf 14 Comments

You may remember some months back I posted about helping a guildie obtain Loque’nahak for their hunter alt. What took me umpteen hours to accomplish, I helped them do in about 15 minutes.

This very same hunter had also been talking about wanting to tame Skoll for the past couple of months.

Anyway… one evening after our raid was done, I flew into the Storm Peaks to collect my sack of snowballs from the big blue chick in Brunnhildar. Being the pet obsessed hunter that I am, I can’t help but travel past Skoll’s spawn points anytime I’m in the Storm Peaks. I’m not even looking to tame him, it’s just that seeing a Spirit Beast out in the wild excites me. Yeah, I’m kinda weird… I know.

Well, as fate would have it, just as I’m passing over the frozen lake towards the Snowdrift Plains… who do I see… Bam!

This guy… [Read more…]

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.

I Acquired Crabs in Desolace

April 30, 2009 By Garwulf 13 Comments

When I made the switch to Survival, I needed a new pet, so it was off to Desolace.

Why Desolace, you ask? Well, that’s because I needed a crab.

Now I bet you’re wondering why I didn’t just grab some random crab off the coast of Northrend and save myself the trouble of traveling all the way to this god forsaken land. The answer is simple.

No pet is worth taming if I don’t have to work to get it. I’m a freak when it comes to pets. If they don’t have a silver dragon around their portrait, then I don’t want ’em. The only excpetion to the rule here would be my ghost wolf, but that’s the only exception.

Some of you may not know this, and more of you may not give a damn, but the only rare crab in the game happens to inhabit the waters off the coast of Desolace. His name is Crusty, and he’s a little red bottom-dweller.

I’d actually tamed him prior to WotLK, but I ended up letting him go due to the fact that I wanted to experiment with, and tame other pets. Well, since I decided to give Survival a whirl for arena, I decided to re-enlist Crusty for his services.

Finding him this time didn’t prove to be very difficult. Although I didn’t locate him during my first sweep of the area, I did manage to target him within moments of logging in the next day.

Catching Rare Crabs Made Easy

Download and install NPCScan
Enter in the name and NPC ID of the crab you want to catch. In my case, this was the Crusty variety.
Swill down an Elixir of Water Walking
Turn on Aspect of the Cheetah
Do laps up and down the waters off the coast of Desolace in Jesus mode.

Eventually NPCScan will go BWWWAAAAWWWMMMM! Along with displaying a little 3D portrait of the little crustacean.

For more info about NPCScan and how to use it, check out this post.

Prior to going after Crusty, my stable contained three exotic pets and two non-exotics. Of my non-exotics, only one of them, the gorilla, was really considered a PvP pet. Pummel is great for interrupting casters, but I prefer the Crab’s 4 second lockdown that affects all classes.

So, of all my pets which is the one that you think I abandoned?

Was it King Krush?

Might it have been Loque’nahak..?

Could it have been Nuramoc?

Was it my wolf..? Hell No!! You think I’m crazy..?! 😉

Or… was it my ape?

Stay tuned for the answer…

Gather ‘Round Children

February 10, 2009 By Garwulf 48 Comments

Check out this post to see the King Krush solo-taming video.

…did I ever tell ya ’bout the time I tamed that great big massively monstrous Devilsaur in Sholazar Basin, known as “King Krush“. Oooohs and Aaaahs ensue…

King Krush

For those of you unaware, King Krush is a rare exotic pet in Sholazar basin, only tameable by Hunters with the 51 point Beast Mastery talent, and is probably the biggest taming challenge in the entire game. He’s only level 75, but he hits like a wrecking ball and casts a 5 second fear that interrupts taming. Solo-taming him requires a little extra effort.

Alrighty… here’s the story on how I successfully solo tamed this beastie. I know I’m probably not the first guy to have pulled this off, but I have yet to see a comprehensive and detailed guide on how to do it. So here ya go.
[Read more…]