Random Pet Challenge [v3.0]

[Calmai]

One day, there was a Sin'dorei Farstrider. She had recently lost a wolf to battle and it had come back as a spectral wolf. That wolf was named Freki. Freki was a wonderful companion, but Cal'mai slowly grew lonely. She wanted a pet she could hug, and cuddle with on cold nights. So she decided; she would find Freki a brother.

So the Farstrider gathered together her gear and wore the green and browns of the forest, of camoflauge. She hitched a ride to Stranglethorn on the next Zeppelin leaving Tirisfal. She began the slow trek through the jungle to Duskwood, where she knew many packs of wolves would congregate. Near the Elwynn/Duskwood border...she found the perfect candidate.

His fur was the colour of snow, a pure, lovely white, and he had a fluffier coat than the other worgs. This would be her companion. This would be Geri.

She observed her target for many minutes before deducing a plan of action. She'd slowly approach the beautiful worg from behind and then corner him. She'd offer him food as consolation, and hope he'd agree to go with her.



Picture 1: Stalking the prey.
Picture 2. The tame!
Picture 3. Geri and Cal'mai, together side by side. They look great together!

After, she decided she'd head back to her home city of Silvermoon, where she headed out to one of her favorite spots in Eversong Woods, so she could more properly get a look at him in bright light. She chose to wear red within Quel'thalas, since she wouldn't get sporked for being a Blood Elf openly here.



He was a very large wolf with much muscle. Most of his mass was actually just fur. His face was a wonderful shape and seemed to have a lot of personality. His teeth were in dire need of a good brushing, though. His claws also needed an urgent clipping. He stood proud and tall, though, and next to her they looked very handsome! She made a mental note to herself to get him a collar befitting of such a creature.



He doggypaddles.

Being a Farstrider, Cal'mai knew that she had some duties to perform, and decided to inform Geri of them. She began her Scar patrols of the Ghostlands, and both were disgusted to see that Abominations were still patrolling the Scar! Unwilling to accept this unfortunate turn-around, they headed in!

It didn't take long to defeat him, and after a little while more, Cal'mai donned her forest green and brown leather and headed to Grizzly Hills for some casual hunting.



They made a great team! With Geri's natural hunting instinct and Cal'mai's dead-on lazar arrows, they were able to fell enough Elk to provide food for months, for all of her pets! Cal'mai saved the most succulent cuts for herself, though, since spirit beasts and Devilsaurs weren't exactly picky. She reminded herself to always reward Geri with a choice cut, however. She took note that Geri always fights with his jowls, snapping and biting at the enemy. He was very smart to go for the throat, though!

At the end of the day, she headed home to rest...and offered him a soft place at the foot of her bed!




...Please don't mind my goofy RP story. Everyone knows the PvE basics of wolves already, so I thought I'd take a different take!

Overall:

Looks: 7.5/10, could be better.
Personality: 8/10

He really fits with my character!


Another, please~!

Name: Calmai
Lvl: 85
Exotics: Yep!
Restrictions: I already have two wasps and two Devilsaurs, so I'd prefer something a little different but I'm not picky. The only thing I say no to is monkeys. They're so ugly and I can't stand them. D:
Rares I have: Karoma, Ghostcrawler, Grubthor, and for honorable mention Ayamiss

[Daranara]

Okee, may I have another? :3 ay I have another? The usual info applies, rare reviews are perfectly fine (with strikes being the ones I have already done):

Daranara
level 85
exotics okee!
no restrictions!
Rares I Have: Loque, Skoll, Arcturis, Gondria, Karoma, Ghostcrawler, Krush, Sambas, Jadefang,Madexx (black), Lord Kri (who I admit is not a -rare- per se, but he is kind of a pain to get to, so maybe it counts?

[TygerDarkstorm]

Just as a clarification, pets that can only be obtained through a raid are considered on the level with hard to get rares because not everyone has access to good friends/a guild to help them out.

And Calmai, your RP style reviews are more than fine.

Always Coca-Cola!

Calmai:
Brown Bat


Daranara:
Green Armored Chimaera


I'm also going to have my orc hunter make a report on Chromaggus.

[TygerDarkstorm]

Kk, Venjin's report on .

Venjin already had one of these beauties. The easiest way to get one of these guys is to go to EPL and go into combat with the Crypt Horrors and other Nerubians in the zone until they spawn one of these guys. They're also available in the Bastion of Twilight. Pic of them together is included with looks.

Looks:

The word Juju in Zandali means " a fetish, charm or amulet used by some tribes." It seemed suiting to a beetle--I tend to call him Jujube after the candy. >_>
Anyway, looks. I love the color of this guy; he didn't match Venjin as well when she had purple hair, but he's perfect now that her hair is green (top left). He's a lovely cherry red color with black mouth parts and chitin, and his silithid design is green.

I love Juju's face--he looks like an angry old man (top middle). I love the way his back pattern looks. The green is the exact same as Venjin's hair, and in the middle it almost looks black (top right).

There were a couple of weird things I noticed on the model. I'm not sure if his mandibles and the tips of his feet are really low res, or speckly, or both (bottom left). The other weird thing I noticed is that the tips of their leg...armor I guess...is a purple color (bottom middle).

Animations and Sounds:

Beetles have pretty basic animations. They bounce around when they idle and then they do the beetle wave (bottom right). When they run they skitter along by your side, it's pretty cute looking (top right). And...beetles don't have a proper swim animation--they just walk really fast in the water (top left).

Combat:

Since beetles only have a couple of combat animations, I decided to show the start of the animation and its finish. Their first animation is what I like to call the body slam (top left and middle left). The beetle crumples itself up into a ball-like shape and appears to slam the target. Their other animation is the jump and bite (top middle and right). They're tenacity pets so their damage is okay, but not as good as a ferocity or cunning pet.

Beetles' special ability is Harden Carapace which reduces incoming damage by 50%. This makes them damn good tanks for soloing and taking on hard elites. They can also be used as back up tanks in a random in the case that your tank is having some serious troubles. I wouldn't recommend them for PvP as their are for more pets with the utility PvP generally requires.

Overally I really like Juju, especially now that he matches Venjin perfectly.

[Kormai]

Kormai
Madexx (red)

I'm so excited that I got Madexx. I really wasn't sure for the longest time if I would want him but omg...so very pretty! Since there are a few reviews on Madexx already I figured I'd just do a skin review for the red colour.


a) Frontal View: The front of her (I have decided it's female because it's red...I just keep refering to it as a her) is really beefy looking, which is good for a tank pet.
b) Facial Close-Up: Awwww isn't she cute, staring at me with her 6 eyes?
c) Lateral View: You can see the legs and how her tail is connected to her body.

Overall a very nice model. She is highlighted with a tiny amount of white on black tipped plates and pincers. The very tip of her mouth (a) and stinger (c) are a really pretty greenish-blue. Her overall colour ranges from a bright red streak down her back, to a darker red on most of her body, and the "water droplet" looking marks on her pincers and body are a really nice purple-red, which match her glowing purple eyes.

Now I just need to decide if I want green or blue for Kåri.

[TygerDarkstorm]

I love the red Madexx. Mine's a female too.

[Lupis]

Alright, my reports.

First, blue Madexx, a recent tame. See my last Madexx report for animations.



Top two: Taming/after taming. I tamed my Blue right before going to bed. Being in the evening, that's still my server's Rush Hour, so I was very surprised to see him up. I was even more surprised to see him in my favorite of the colors, as I highly expected him to be in black, green or brown. I just about had a heart attack when I saw that he was not only up, but he was blue, and he was alive. O.O

Blue Madexx has very pretty coloration, being mostly a nice, cold-colored (not green or red tinted) blue that fades to black and white. In most lighting, the stripe of lighter color on his shell turns yellow, which adds a warm touch.

His eyes are very bright aqua, matching his spots. I'm starting to think of the blue spots as bubbles, because they look a lot like bubbles to me. >.< They're also aqua, though not as bright as his eyes.

His highlights (claws and ridges) are black with white highlights.

I really like his mouth/venom color, which is a nice copper. Usually I don't like orange, but his coppery venom (and my dwarf's hair) looks nice. It matches my dwarf, actually.

Lastly, I really like how his aqua bubbles go all the way up his tail and even to his stinger.

Chimera Report

These Chimera are easy to find, being common mobs in Blade's Edge Mountains. I tamed one that was flying in quick circles.



(Sorry for the huge picture. >.<)

From bottom picture to top:

His wings are a mix of brownish skin, brown armor, and bright yellow skin. I was amazed by just how bright and pretty his wings are, they really glow.
His tail has armor as well, which I found kind of odd, but cute. Fairly well drawn, and a nice model. I really like the color of his armor, a sort of bronze-brown.
His face is a little disturbing, as I'm not quite sure where his eyes are... It's possible that he, in fact, has three eyes per head, all bright green. It's very odd. I also noticed that his horns are of different shapes, one being a stub, the other being a long, twisted spike. Oh, and he has chin spikes. They're actually very pretty, highlighted neon green at the end.
The last comment I have about this model is the spike ridge along his necks/back. It's awfully 2D, which is a shame - it's a lovely model and a gorgeous skin, so bright and shiny.

As for running/swimming/idle, he's... boring, honestly. He doesn't have an idles that I can see, and his flying animation is almost exactly the same as his idle 'flying still'. Swimming, he just flaps very quickly, a sped up walking animation. I'd love to see him land on his hind legs as an idle or something like that.

Now, attacks. His first special, Frost Breath, causes him to both breath lightning and ice. It's a slow, which I suppose I can see being useful for PvP. It's also very pretty, if flashy. His regular attacks are to swoop in for a bite and to duck down and try to gore the enemy with both chin spikes.
He also has the AoE Froststorm Breath, but it's not really that useful I find, as it stops the chimera from moving or using any other attacks. It is pretty, though I stupidly forgot to take a picture of it.

As for DPS/tanking, I've found that they're not really the best tanks unless specced specifically for it. They are cunning, so they could go both ways - DPS or Tank. I typically choose DPS as they don't have Thunderstomp even in Tank Cunning.

Overall, though this character didn't keep this pet, I immediately headed out on my other hunter (one with Nuramoc and lots of free stable space) and tamed one. I also nabbed The Razza and a green Outlands one to complete the Outlands Chimera set. They're extremely pretty, even if not the most useful of all pets.

Moar!
Rassaa (Rares Only, stable full)
Rares I Have: Madexx (Blue, Green, Black), Karoma, Terrorpene, Zaricotl, Spiteflayer, Ghostcrawler, King Krush, Sambas, Jadefang, Olm the Wise, Deathmaw
Honorable Mentions (Not rare, but somewhat hard to get/unusual): Chromaggus, Oil-covered Wolf

Vallrok (Any pet, including the rares I have, if you want)
Level 82, BM
Exotics? Sure
Restrictions? No monkeys, gorillas are okay.
Rares I Have: Pogeyan, Rak'shiri, King Krush, Loque'nahak, Gondria, Arcturis, Skoll, Aotona, Shadowclaw, Duskstalker
Honorable Mentions: Ghost Hydra

[TygerDarkstorm]

Yay Chromaggus report! ^_^

I don't have any taming shots of Chromaggus, but he's the second to last boss in BWL. Myself, my boyfriend, and our RL friend on his shaman went into BWL to go help me tame this guy as well as get some RP gear--BWL is easily duoed (not sure if it's soloable yet, the first boss is kind of a pain) if you have competent people.

After hunting around for names for this guy, I realized that he was a she and I stumbled on Maleficent and realized the name was perfect.

Looks:

Maleficent is a very stunning pet; she's a beautiful purple color with gold and grey armor, silver spikes, and a metallic green on her back (top middle). The scaling detail is very nicely done as well for such an old model. I think my favorite feature of her is her face (top right). The greens from her back blend nicely up toward her eyes, and her eyes are a gorgeous golden color--they almost look intelligent.

The bottom two photos show her from the front and back to get a better look at all her spikes and colors. Overall, I see no glaring flaws with the model--for a vanilla model, she's very well built.

Animations and Sounds:

Even if you don't play a hunter, you've probably been around a hunter who's tamed one and used it. Chromaggus is *loud.* My boyfriend and I did some testing with his roar in Orgrimmar. With me standing on the ledge right outside the PvP mount vendor, I could hear his Chromaggus killing critters over by the gate on the east side of the Valley of Strength. It's not a whole zone loud as I've seen claims making, further than that point I couldn't hear it, but that's still a pretty damned good distance for a combat noise, probably left over from Chromaggus being a boss. Along with a really loud, unique sounding roar, Chromaggus does not make the burning embers sound that the on fire core hounds make.

Maleficent only has one idle animation, and that's to rear back her two heads and perform the core hound howl/roar (left). Her run is pretty basic and lumbering, to be expected, really (top right). Sadly, she has no swim animation and instead walks really fast under the water (bottom right).

Combat:

I was very pleased to see that Maleficent attacks with each of her heads (made me happy because the hydras on WMV only attack with one head). She bites once with the right head (top middle) and once with the left head (top right); there's also a shot of Call of the Wild being activated placed in there for giggles, as well as one of her in Bestial Wrath (middle right, bottom left).

Core hounds get two special abilities, being exotic. The first is Lava Breath, which reduces a target's casting speed by 25%. This is handy for both PvE and PvP, and they can cast it from a 30 yd range, allowing you to lock on those casters fast. Their second ability is Ancient Hysteria, which is a renamed Bloodlust/Heroism (Increases melee, ranged, and spell casting speed by 30% for all party and raid members. Lasts 40 sec. Allies receiving this effect will become Sated and be unable to benefit from Bloodlust or Time Warp again for 10 min.). This makes a core hound a great pet to have around for both dungeons and even regular BGs (all Bloodlust like effects have been disabled for arenas and rated BGs). Plus they're ferocity which means they'll also be putting out a mean chunk of damage.

[Xella]

Basanti's first report! (I almost feel like I should write that in rainbow pastel Comic Sans; for the love of all that's good in the world, someone stop me!)


I flew out to Loch Modan last night before bed, intent on taming my two pets, and spent about an hour circling around Gosh-Haldir's spawn point without seeing her—completely forgetting that I already had one in my stables (and had mentioned such when I signed up! *facepalm*)! Nevertheless, she's quite large in the wild, and shrinks down considerably when tamed:

Partway through the tame, it occurred to me that this particular looker was already a part of my collection, and I cancelled the tame, in case anyone else wanted her for themselves later. A quick trip back to Thelsamar's stable master, and voila!


Meet Rojeras. He's named after a minor character in the book-on-tape I was listening to at the time, and the name (and character) have no particular connection to this particular croc. Upon further reflection, I think I rather like the name! Rojeras' model is the new Cataclysm crocolisk, and comes complete with the gorgeous textures and increased attention to detail that seems to be synonymous with the Shattering thus far.


Look at that smile! Look at that face! That's what a crocolisk should look like! His teeth and horns are all individually modeled, and while his webbing is 2D, I don't feel it really suffers for that. Unfortunately, he does have some problems—both his back-left and back-right legs (left) suffer from some model tearing, and his front-left leg (bottom-right) ends up looking exceptionally bloated from the combination of the model tearing and the overall shape of that leg.


Rojeras waddles along at both a walk and a run, but swimming is where he really shines—his idle swim animation bobs quite a bit (and his jaw opens quite wide), but when swimming proper, he surrenders his legs and propels himself with his tail alone. It's quite a sight!


(Sorry for the poor image quality on this one!)
There are only two attack animations for cata-crocs: a short thrusting bite, and a much larger, grandiose lunging bite. Both bites come from the same direction (right to front), which I found a little disappointing. Still, the two animations work well together, and end up fairly well randomized. When he attacks, he makes a sort of growling hiss along with the "snort" that demon dogs make. When not in combat, he's very quiet.


As a tenacity pet, Rojeras has access to Thunderstomp; when he casts it, his front two feet light up and the ground slams under him This doesn't avoid neutral mobs or mobs that aren't currently in combat, so I highly recommend turning it off if you're in an area with crowds of neutral mobs. His special ability, Ankle Crack, is a 50% snare lasting 6 seconds, with a 7 second cooldown. It is available to autocast, though I found that in the few instances I pulled aggro off him, Ankle Crack would almost invariably be nearing its duration, and the mob I'd be fighting would get a second to run at me at full speed before he could reapply it. I almost wish that he'd smart cast it so that only if the mob he was attacking wasn't going anywhere would he use it, but that's probably wishing for too much companion autonomy!


Overall, I found Rojeras to be an adequate tank, though a little on the squishy side (which will likely be rectified once he's not 3-4 levels lower than myself and the mobs I'm fighting!). He seemed to take more damage than my wolf, but less than my sporebat or dragonhawk, and an occassional Mend Pet was sufficient in keeping him alive against single or double level 83 mobs.

I really like Rojeras' model and skin, even with the leg issues he's got. Ankle Crack may well be one of the more useful abilities for a tanking pet to have when paired with a Survival/MM hunter (though I'm currently BM, and my pets hardly ever have aggro issues). He seems like a great soloing pet, and if you really like his skin best, he'd be great for "okay all other buffs are covered, personal preference engage!" time in dungeons and raids, but unfortunately, I just don't think he'll see that much screen time with 'Santi Stay frosty, little guy! *patpat*

[Xella]

I'll be honest: I've only seen one hunter on Bloodscalp with any sort of Worm pet out, ever. They don't seem to be an especially popular pet, and I can kind of see why. I hadn't decided on a look for my own stable, since none of them really appealed to me on first glance, so this was my first experience with a worm of any description. I was also kind of shocked that Oozeworm (the Dustwallow version of this critter) was in my cache when I went to go add him to NPCscan, though I suppose I'm not looking at my screen all the time I'm wallowing around Stormwind!

Once my cache was cleared, finding the worm in question proved to be much quicker than I'd anticipated—I'd heard stories of painful spawn timers, and was fully expecting to have to fly out to Silithus, and maybe back to Dustwallow and then Silithus several times. Since I haven't purchased 280%+ riding on my hunter yet, this was not something I was looking forward to in the least :P So hooray for luck!

After flailing around for a little, trying to decide on a name, I went with one of the characters from a now-abandoned webcomic that was last updated in 2004 (and who never ended up showing up in the little bit of the comic I did end up drawing ^^;):


Jareth (the worm, not the mercenary or the goblin king!) is a bright Macaroni-and-Cheese yellow-orange with deeper orange shading, a granite-grey underbelly and bright lime green eyes. He didn't seem to grow or shrink at all, going from a level 38 rare to a level 80 hunter pet, which I thought was pretty interesting.


As one would expect from a footless, wingless pet, Jareth slithers around on the ground when both walking and running; it's the same animation for both, but it works at both speeds. When idle, he'll occasionally look around and taste the air with his mouth a bit.


When moving in the water, Jareth elongates and slides through the water like an eel—I quite like that animation. However, when he's swimming idly, he retains a very similar pose to his land-idle animation (though his "butt" wiggles, presumably to keep him afloat, tho it'd more likely move him forward slowly :P), and I can't help but feel that this pose is the wrong one for the action. Maybe if it weren't such a sharp angle between the upper and lower halves of his body, it'd feel better?


Worms appear to only have one attack animation, which is a lunge forward to nom-nom-nom their opponent's head. During combat, they make what I can only describe as "rain stick with goo" noises. They're not very loud and are unlikely to drive you crazy, at least!


As a tenacity pet, Jareth has access to Thunderstomp, which lets me feel more comfortable casting Mend Pet on him when he needs it if he's got more than one mob on him. Unfortunately, it'll also hit extra mobs nearby that I wasn't necessarily planning on fighting, like all those beetles that show up everywhere in Uldum! His species special ability is Acid Spit, which causes its target to take 4% additional physical damage, which is great for him, pretty good for me, and awesome for Physical DPS in a dungeon/raid, if you don't have a combat rogue, arms warrior, or frost DK. it has a 10s CD and a 25s duration, which means he can keep it up full-time on two targets (and seems to do so on his own, if there are two targets in combat with him), and in theory he could also keep it on a third with a slight uptime loss, though I never saw him do so. Both Thunderstomp and Acid Spit originate from his mandibles; Acid Spit's graphic is, well, a wad of green spit :x


Physically, Jareth is a lot more attractive than I originally thought. I quite like his head, and overall his model isn't too bad (especially considering that it's six or seven years old). His texture could use some tightening, and I'm not entirely thrilled with the random single piece of armor plating on his neck, but the only major model flaw I saw was about 2/3 down the length of his body, his back suddenly goes concave on either side of his spine. If you cut him in half at that point, the cross-section would look like a pop-up book left open on the table! Quite strange.


Oh, there's another big flaw. And I mean, big. As an exotic, Jareth also gets a second special ability, in this case a channeled PBAoE called "Burrow Attack." With all the AoEing that we were told we wouldn't be doing in Cataclysm but seem to be doing anyway, this sounds like a godsend, but there's three big problems with it: first, you can't control your pet while it's channeling, which means that if the mobs you're AoEing moved or what have you, you have to wait 'til the channel finishes (and you can't kill command or any of that during the channel, either). Second, and more to the point for my itty bitty non-raiding hunter, regardless of how much threat your pet has, as soon as it starts to channel Burrow Attack, it is temporarily lowered on the aggro table (I assume much like a priest's fade, as the threat seemed to come back after it was done) which means that all the mobs are gonna head straight for you. Your worm, meanwhile, stays right where it was, its channeled AoE now not hitting ANYTHING (unless you move into melee range of said worm). Third, and least important of the three, there is no animation for Burrow Attack, Jareth just stands there.


Overall, I'm not entirely sold on Jareth. If I could take his head and transplant it onto something cuter, I'd totally go for that, but I'm not sure that he's the one for me. Worms come with good buffing capabilities for raids, they have an AoE (assuming it's even worth using), and as tenacity they're great for soloing, but as an exotic, he takes up a stable slot that I can only really use in one of three possible specs, his raid buff can be supplied by a non-exotic that I can use in all three specs, and he's not made of sunshine and flowers and puppy hugs :( I'll hang onto him for now, but chances are he'll be one of the first to get the boot if I run out of space!


Please sir, may I have another! :3
Name: Basanti
Level: 83
Exotics: Yes
Restrictions: None
Rares I Have: Skoll, Arcturis, King Krush, Sunblade Dragonhawk

[TygerDarkstorm]

Wow, I wasn't actually expecting you to pick up both pets. But both reports are lovely. And just in case a wild Kormai appears, I'm going to throw out my roll requests before I toss out any new ones.

Name: Venjin
Level: 81
Exotics: Yes
No monkeys or gorillas please
Rares I Have: Aotona, Loque, King Krush, and, not sure if we're counting it, the ghostly carrion bird with mist effects

Name: Ruffley
Level: 32
Exotics: Not Yet
No monkeys or gorillas please

And a rares only report for my orc:
Name: Vitani
Level: 85
Rares I Have: Karoma, Sambas, Chromaggus, King Mosh, Azzere (not sure if he counts), Lord Kri, Red Madexx, Terrorpene, and Skoll

[TygerDarkstorm]

Xella(Basanti):
Purple Shale Spider


Tyger(Venjin):
Blue Sporebat


Tyger(Ruffley):
Bronze Crab


Tyger(Vitani):
Red Wind Serpent

[Daranara]

Daranara, here!

My target this time was:



The green outland Chimera!

I'll admit this is going to be a short post, and pretty much entirely about his looks. If you want my thoughts about how chimeras are in combat, you can read about it in my post here.

So! Green outland chimeras live in only one place: Shadowmoon Valley in Outland. So I headed out there to find one!

Now, I've never bothered with them much, so I don't know if they've always done this, but I had a hard time finding them because they don't flutter around at ground level. Instead, they actually fly above your head!



This can make them a bit tricky to tame, because you have to take the height off the ground into your "is this too far?" taming. But spatial relations, I can figure them, and we were in business.

Meet BeepBoop.



Now, for those of you who have read my last entry about chimeras, you may remember how I warmed up and grew to love my old-world style chimera. For the Outland-style chimeras, however, they seem to have stripped away most of what I liked about him. Gone is the thick mane, the beards, and the fierce faces. Gone are the tattered wings and tufted tails. In its place is smooth textures, webbing, and knife-chins. The Outland chimeras remind me more of sleek cyborg-beasts, or robot chimeras, rather than something living. BeepBoop is so named because of this.

But let's get to it, shall we? I do like the colors on this chimera! The green and brown combo reminds me of a kiwi. His eyes are a bright blue, which is pretty enough on it's own, and a nice offset to the main coloring. The heads on this chimera are very streamlined, reminding me of a robot's head. On either side of their jaws, they have a spike for poking or whatever. Their jaws are the stuff of nightmares, with the overslung lower jaw and the too-many teeth, not to mention the knife-chin.

Instead of a mane, there is a fin running back along their necks. Likewise, rather than the torn and tattered wings of their Azerothian cousins, the wings of this chimera are pristine. The tail splits as usual, but the effect is more of a scorpion's stinger than a lion's tail.

The overall impression of this chimera is of a sleek-if-brightly-colored killing machine. The overall look and feel fit in well with the Burning Crusade's space rainbow aesthetic, so I can't fault it for that. It is, however, not for me. Maybe it's for you!

That said, may I have another?

Daranara
level 85
exotics okee!
no restrictions!
Rares I Have: Loque, Skoll, Arcturis, Gondria, Karoma, Ghostcrawler, Krush, Sambas, Jadefang, Madexx (black), Lord Kri, sunblade dragonhawk

[TygerDarkstorm]

Vitani's report on Azzere is up first: .

Azzere the Skyblade is a level 30 rare spawn in the Southern Barrens and can be found South of Taurajo.

Looks:

This guy is a very pretty color--a very beautiful deep red with a cream colored underbelly. His wings are a nice mix of red and green, and his stripes are sort of a pale, pea soup green with black under-highlights. Like many of the other wind serpents, he has really nice scaling detail and his face is very intelligent looking. There's only two major flaws I noticed with the model, the first and most noticeable being the 2-D crest on top of his head, and if you look closely when he's idling, as his wings go back, his back almost looks as if it's breaking.

I combined combat with animations and sounds because it's hard to get a picture of wind serpents idling.

Their run makes me think of being caught in a wind tunnel, but I've grown used to it and like it (top left). Their swim is very pleasant to watch (top middle, right). When idling in the water, they use their wings to paddle and keep themselves afloat, and when they swim they pull their wings into their sides and wriggle through the water.

In combat, this guy looks mean and makes hissing sounds to go with it. While performing their attacks these guys will unleash a wicked looking set of fangs, much like real snakes do (second from top left). Now, I formally thought that wind serpents only had 2 attack animations, but after watching Azzere at the dummy, I learned he actually has 3 attack animations. The first, and most common animation is does is the bite and wing slap (bottom left), the second and other more common one is the tail whip (middle), and the third, more rare one is the exagerrated rear and bite (second from bottom left).

The wind serpent combat special is Lightning Breath (bottom middle) which increases all magic damage to the target by 8%. This makes the wind serpent a great PvE pet to have around for caster heavy groups. They're also the second best pet for SV hunters to use after cats (for min/maxers). They're cunning pets so they also put out great damage. I wouldn't recommend these guys for PvP unless your teammates have agreed to supply the CC.

[Calmai]

Cal'mai ventured to Undercity to pick up a package for her rogue friend. Heading back home, she was stopped by the bat trainer!

"Excuse me," he said. "Would you be willing to go out and capture me a new bat? One of mine have died and if the Dark Lady finds out about another one, she will lynch me!"



Cal'mai, utterly compassionate, agreed. She headed up to Tirisfal and located a worthy-looking candidate, who easily decided to go with her. After inspecting him...



...She realised bats were very strangly bred and that she didn't really like the way it looks.

The bat did have some redeeming quality. A really, REALLY cool skill. She thinks it was called Sonic Screech.



Since she was told to pick a name, she did so before bringing him back. She named him Breeze, since he blew a lot of wind from his wings.

At least the bat handler seemed to like him.



With that, she headed home, feeling mildly accomplished.



Another, please~!

Name: Calmai
Lvl: 85
Exotics: Yep!
Restrictions: I already have two wasps and two Devilsaurs, so I'd prefer something a little different but I'm not picky. The only thing I say no to is monkeys.
Rares I have: Karoma, Ghostcrawler, Grubthor, and for honorable mention Ayamiss

[Kalhoun]

Alrighty then. I was assigned the Bronze Crab this time around.


I've been wanting to try out a crab for a while now, since I think the Old World model is just adorable, but never really got around to it. I did tame one just to have something funny beside me while I did archaeology a little while ago, but didn't keep it.

So I was like, "Oh, I know where there's tons of those models. Westfall, right?" Yeah.... I didn't look at Petopia. I'm not even sure if there were bronze crabs in Westfall pre-Shattering. I just was going on a hunch.

Well, the only bronze crab in Westfall is untamable, as it's already a mob's pet. Shows what I know.



A visit to Petopia later, and I was back on track, heading to Swamp of Sorrows to tame a Monstrous Crawler.



The Old World crabs have a sort of worried expression, with their down turned mouths and their idle animation of peering around (they turn and look to the left and the right). They just look to me as if they're always asking, "WHY YOU DO THIS?" Their mouths also do this jabbering, "meemeemeemeep" motion. Unfortunately, the individual points on their mouth are not cut out (I think they used to be at one point). Crabs are also HUGE. Kalhoun could use this guy as a work bench. In fact, I almost named him after a piece of furniture, because of his huge... flatness. Endtable could have worked, or maybe even Footrest. But instead, I named him Lucky - after an RP conversation Kalhoun had, in which I don't even remember what the details were... just that Kalhoun was talking about having a crab boil. Lucky is fortunate to be a pet and not dinner. Lucky also fits Kalhoun's color scheme - he tends to click with natural-colored browns, tans and greens.



Lucky's shell is very glossy and shiny, and I like the green/blue accents. He has two different sized claws, much like a fiddler crab. When he walks he makes a faint clicking sound, and his fighting noises are a very unobtrusive hissing sort of thing. He's a pretty quiet guy.

His Claw ability, when used, looks like the typical claw effect - red slashes. His fighting animation is pretty simple, but I find it cute; alternating between his left and right pinchers to attack, his eye stalks swaying as he fights. His Thunderstomp ability looks like every other Tenacity pet's Thunderstomp, but seems to crackle around his pinchers. And his special ability, Pin (a cast root), has a purple effect.



Being Tenacity, his damage isn't remarkable, since he's a tanky sort of pet. I specced him more on the damage side of Tenacity, and prepared to go try him out on some mobs.

Kalhoun: Ready to go do some daily quests?
Lucky: *Worried expression*



Kalhoun is Beast Mastery specced, and so Lucky had absolutely no trouble keeping aggro or doing his job. He tanked multiple things at a time with little effort, even at lvl 82.



The thing I have heard about Pin, being a casted root, is that the crab will start casting it and lose aggro since it's not casting anything else (it's also canceled by Kill Command). Try as I might, I tried to get this to happen, but I never gained aggro off of Lucky. It may be because I am BM spec, or it may be because my gear really is not very impressive. Either way, Pin still seemed like an ineffective skill - the mobs never needed to be rooted anyways. Perhaps if I were SV or MM, Pin could be useful in PVP? Not sure.

I like to have a range of different pets in my stable, switching them out daily for variety, and so Lucky will be staying with Kalhoun. He'll be sure to come with on my Tol Barad dailies (I often use Tenacity pets for those, since the fast respawn rates on the mobs there have gotten me swamped several times), and maybe he'll even help me fish and do archaeology. He doesn't feel like a "real" tank to me, not like beetles or turtles, but he's definitely good enough for questing and running around... and setting drinks on.

****************************************************************

Go ahead and roll me another.

Name: Kalhoun
Lvl: 85
Exotics: Yes
Restrictions: Nope
Rares: King Krush, Skoll, Loque'nahak, Karoma, Sambas, Harakiss the Infestor

[TygerDarkstorm]

I find that as a BM hunter, it takes a lot for me to lose aggro to any of my pets, including ferocity and cunning ones on Vitani. The reason we report that Pin would cause the crab to lose aggro is because your crab won't produce extra aggro while channeling it--which can be seen in the combat log. It shouldn't really be an issue with BM, especially coupled with a MD.

[Xella]

For whatever reason, even though I have no intention of raiding (or possibly even dungeoning) on my hunter when she hits 85, I feel it's vitally important that I get all the pets to cover any missing raid buffs. It's quite likely a relic from when I powerleveled her to 60 because our hunters were too incompetent to handle tranq rotations on Ebonroc and Chromaggus and the like back when we were learning BWL, but in any case, a Shale Spider was definitely on my list of Things To Do. But which colour to choose?


Well, that answers that question! It's hard to go for anything but the purple anyway, purple being my favourite colour (followed closely by teal, which isn't an option for the little Shale Spiders!) Finding the appropriate colour once in his natural habitat proved a little tricky, but eventually I prevailed!

(I dunno about you, but the size of my frost trap on that bitty little elemental-beastie made me giggle. It's so big, and he's so small! Whoops, sorry, she in this case!)


Meet Darémyth [dah'r-ey-myth]. Usually I avoid special characters like the plague, especially for player-characters, but as nobody is likely to need to whisper my pet, going with the proper spelling of the word seems appropriate here. Darémyth is a (fictional) term for a type of self-sacrificing relationship, where one person's happiness is enhanced or dependant on the happiness of another. As a tenacity pet, and since I've always liked the way the word sounds in my head, it felt appropriate here (much more appropriate than poor Jareth!). Also according to Google, Daremyth without the accent was a character in Heroes 3, which is probably where I internalized the word/name from in the first place!


Darémyth walks with opposite legs in tandem, with each pair of legs on each side meeting closely before parting again. The run is a sped up version of this, and so there's no awkward change from walk to run animation like you see on wolves or cats sometimes while you (or they) are lagging. Her face glows a pretty purple and while its brightest point isn't connected to any of the crystals, I don't really mind that so much. Standing idle, she shifts her weight pretty frequently, and will also look side-to-side (quite a bit more than I'd like, but I guess she's just super-inquisitive!)


The swimming idle animation for Shale Spiders is quite cute, with the occasional leg dipping much lower than the remainder of the body. The moving swim is kind of awkward static but looks pretty nifty in motion; her legs all bunch up and then the back legs strike out, in a sort of breaststroke.


As a tenacity pet, Darémyth has access to Thunderstomp, whose animation (like the frost trap) seems to be much larger than fits her. Her species special, Web Wrap, is a 3s stun on a 31.5s CD (with Longevity) and uses the traditional Web Wrap animation seen in places like ICC or Azjol-Nerub. It looks great on appropriately-sized humanoids, but a little awkward on other beasts or things with a different shape. It's a magic debuff, shares diminshing returns with Intimidation, and on several occasions, a web wrapped mob would continue casting Shockwave or Twilight Bolt or whatever it was they were casting before getting wrapped, which makes me a bit leery of its actual classification as a stun.


Overall, the Shale Spider model is quite nice. The textures on several parts of the body—the larger portions of the legs and the mandibles in particular—seem a little bit fuzzy, but unless you're sticking your nose up their, um, probiscus... you're not likely to notice on a regular basis. I saw no major animation flaws, the model doesn't drift significantly when going through its animations (though there is a little bit), and is generally put together quite well. My biggest gripe with her is her summoning icon:

That's a real spider, not a shale spider! Shale Spiders, I am convinced, are named spiders because they fill a similar ecological niche in Deepholm that "proper" spiders do in the rest of Azeroth, and because they bear a vague physical resemblance to both spiders and shale (or are, potentially, actually made of shale considering the rest of Deepholm). I suspect that I'm not the only arachnophobe that has no issues whatever with shale spiders, except by name association. Luckily, this is a quite easy thing to fix in the overall scheme of "pets with issues," and is so minor that I suspect Mage Armor will get three or four more icon updates before Shale Spiders get a proper icon


Being an exotic, only a Beast Mastery hunter can befriend a Shale Spider. Their secondary exotic ability, Embrace of the Shale Spider, increases Str, Agi, Sta, and Int by 5% and increases magic resistances (an amount based on your pet's level). Druids and Paladins can both provide this ability (via Mark of the Wild and Blessing of Kings, respectively), though deciding whether to use a Shale Spider for Embrace vs. having your paladin use Kings also requires a secondary consideration of whether Blessing of Might's components are covered elsewhere in your raid. Shale Spiders are the only hunter pet that can provide the 5% primary stat increase.

Darémyth made a great tank, her web wrap was a little bit awkward but the 5% agi from Kings/Embrace increased the rate at which we both could kill things (and how many milliseconds it took all the PvP horde guilds on Bloodscalp to kill us both), making her my current tenacity pet of choice. I might putz around with trying a red one later, and it'll be difficult to decide which pet gets taken off my active list to keep her ready-to-hand, since I'm still keeping slot 5 empty for impulsive tames and I haven't got a tenacity pet to flat-out replace on that list... but that's a dilemma for later!

Name: Basanti
Level: 84
Exotics: Yes
Restrictions: None
Rares I Have: Skoll, Arcturis, King Krush, Sunblade Dragonhawk, Grimtotem Spirit Guide

[TygerDarkstorm]

Kk, Venjin's report on .

I think this is my second or third time making a report on one of these guys, and at least the second time for this color. Something unusual happened this time around though. Normally I can't keep sporebats because of their...dangly bits. I blame being half asleep ever since I've come home from work for making me view Squish differently. He developed a personality as I set up the screenshots in Photoshop and now I feel bad for abandoning the poor guy--I'm going to re-pick him up later after I've gone to sleep. Anywho, this guys is found around the middle of Zangarmarsh.

Looks:

Surprisingly, Squish's blue works really well with Venjin, especially since his green under-lighting matches her hair (top left). Squish is a very pretty (don't tell him I called him pretty, he wouldn't like it) shade of blue that has some aqua tints to it (top middle), with glowing orange eyes, orange, pink and green belly, and brightly glowing pink dangly bits.

The underside of the all mighty Squish makes me think of the stomach of a starfish for some reason and I sat and wondered a bit tonight if that's how he eats (top right). Or maybe the tiredness and trying to watch "Eat Pray Love" is making me go delusional. Either way, the belly is very glowy and exudes? drops? produces? little spore dust of the pink and green variety.

Viewing a sporebat from the backside is where those of us with dirty minds get the "cannot unsee" factor; and I'll leave it at that (bottom left). If you don't see naughty things there, then more power to you. It's easily been one of the single most reasons I can't ever keep a sporebat because I'm a weirdo and get distracted by it and just sort of stare at it as it waves and jiggles around. >_<

Moving on! I included a close up of Squish's face just to show how alien these guys look (bottom middle). I'd say it's safe to assume that those glowy orange things are their eyes...and well, Squish's eyes are sort of mesmerizing. *Is consumed by Squish's mind control powers*

Animations and Sounds:

I have a tendency to watch movies or TV shows in the background so I didn't catch what noises Squish made in combat (don't hurt me all mighty Squish!). So anyway, I discovered that Squish does have a sort of idle animation, he squishes that body of his up, kind of like he's trying to take a poop (top left). Squish has the same animation for both swimming and running/flying; he squishes along beside you kind of like a big hovercraft or UFO or something (top right, bottom left). While in the water, I noticed him do something when I surfaced, he would sort of half-jump out of the water next to me as if he didn't want to be in there or something (second from bottom left).

Combat:

Sporebats are pretty amusing to watch in combat. They're cunning pets so they do great damage. Squish has two combat animations, a tail slap which is his regular animation (bottom left), and a much more rare (and very fast) spin attack (bottom right).

The sporebat special is Spore Cloud, which spreads a cloud of spores that slow the casting speed of all enemies within 6 yards by 30%. My biggest complaint about this ability is that it gets placed on the ground around the sporebat, which means the debuff will be lost if you tank needs to reposition the group/mob, or your PvP target runs out of it (which any smart PvPer should), you lose the benefit of this debuff. Being an AoE on the ground also means that if critters, neutral mobs, or anything you weren't planning on being in combat with, walks into this ability, you've got a whole new can of worms to mess with. If you don't mind any of these faults on the ability, it is a 5% greater casting speed reduction than the core hounds' Lava Breath.

I apologize if any of this came out bad, I'm falling asleep at the keyboard. I think the word 'squish' is in there at least a dozen times. >_<

Also Xella, the purple shale spider is one of my favorites--I have one on my orc and love her to pieces after thinking I was going to go after Jadefang. XD

[TygerDarkstorm]

And now for Ruffley's bronze crab report.

I went to Azuremyst Isle to nab one of these little guys. Petopia has these listed in Westfall, but as Kalhoun reported, those are pets of the murlocs and therefore not tamable.

Looks:

After getting this guy on Yzma, I'm really surprised with how well he looks with Ruffley (top left). This model of crab is a light golden-tan with strange green highlighting (top right). For me, it would be a very pretty color if it weren't for the icky green color that I feel dominates him. The green is striped on his shell, wraps all around his legs, and is very apparent on the tips of his pinchers.

One kind of neat thing with the old world crabs is how shiny their white undershell is (bottom left). The shininess even extends over his legs. The overall texture mapping for these guys feels very low res and pixellated, but is most noticeable in the eye stalks and mandible (bottom right).

Animations and Sounds:

To be honest, I did all the screens for Crusty last night as I was half asleep and I don't remember what his little combat noises sounded like, which was probably helped by having a movie playing in the background. I think it's safe to say he makes quiet little crabby noises.

Crusty has one idle animation that he does fairly frequently (making it hard to take standing still pics) and that's to look left (top right) and then look right (top left). His run is a cute little scuttle across the ground (bottom left), and when he swims, he uses those big pinchers like oars while kicking his legs backwards (bottom right).

Combat:

Crusty is a tenacity pet so his specialty is going to be in tanking mobs and doing okay damage. He has two combat animations, a right hook (top right) and a left hook (bottom left). Since his Pin ability wouldn't land on the dummy, I decided to see if it works on critters, as you can see, it does (bottom middle and right).

The crab special ability is Pin, a channeled root/snare. This can come in handy for SV/MM hunters as it will hold the target in place while you blast a full round into them--they'll likely be dead before Pin is done, however, if they're not, you've also probably just earned aggro for yourself and Pin has a lengthy cooldown. For BM hunters, this ability is largely useless unless you micro-manage it between Kill Commands, otherwise KC will interrupt your crab's channel. As another added note, most BM pets should never lose aggro (even without MD) to their master making Pin situational, and mostly PvP oriented, at best.

I'm still up in the air about keeping Crusty. I've been playing Ruff as BM and I've found I'm really not fond of dogs'/crabs' special and the green on this model just irks me. I have a feeling he'll be making a trip out to the beach even though crabs are kind of cute.

More please.
Name: Venjin
Level: 81
Exotics: Yes
No monkeys or gorillas please
Rares I have: Loque, KK, and Aotona

Name: Ruffley
Level: 32
Exotics: Not Yet
No monkeys or gorillas please