Random Pet Challenge [v3.0]

[TygerDarkstorm]

Usually model issues stick out to me once they're pointed out to me, and I can see how his back legs have a little bit of the demon dog syndrome to them, and his face unhinging in the yawn, and his derpy look in the water, but I don't see the rest. Also, you forgot to mention his totally epic roar when he goes into combat. That's probably my favorite thing about him; he lets you know that he's there, and that he's going to kick ass.

[Lupis]

Doh! I was going to mention that, and forgot! I'll edit that in, thanks for reminding me. I love that roar!

[Kormai]

I can definitely see all the flaws, but they don't bother me that much since I love his skin more than any other skin in the game. And his tail...his tail is just awesome (despite the random changes in length). And his roar...omg...LOVE his roar. *huggles Bunnykins and Corran* I loves them

As for his derp look while swimming...he may be a spirit kitty, but he is still a kitty. Poor thing.

[Litlemouse]

Hm, I can't seem to see them. Maybe I haven't studied him enough... or maybe you just have a very good eye, Lupis. Or maybe 'cause I don't wanna see them, like Tyger ^_^
Well I hope you have fun with him, he saved our dungeon group from wiping once by healing the tank in time. And in BGs people get confused when he heals. I love it! ^O^

EDIT: I forgot to tell you my game time ran out, so I can't tame my Green Core-hound until Monday, but on Monday I will definitely be doing that, just wanted 2 let you know :)

[Cialbi]

His attack animations are... broken. -.- They look pretty normal at first glance, a swipe with his left paw and a swipe with his right paw. Look closely at his tail, back legs and stomach, though, and you realize that he's broken. His stomach stretches oddly, which is only amplified by the strange stripes his stomach has. His tail changes lengths again. (...)

Well, in the top picture, the tip of the tail is being clipped by the wall behind the target dummy. So, no wonder the tail looks shorter!

[Lupis]

Oh, yeah, clipping doesn't help. xD But if you watch closely while he executes his animations you can watch his tail change lengths. It's hard to get a picture of, though.

[TygerDarkstorm]

All right, so Daliah had a report on .

Happily these guys frequent the banks of Duskwood and were very easy to find. I named him Schnaps which is the German version of Schnapps--I settled for that since both whiskey and schnapps are on the reserved list.

Looks:

As expected, Schanps looks lovely by Daliah's side with his shiny, snowy coat (top left). I've always liked the coyote model of wolf and this guy is no exception. His coat is a beautiful snowy white with silver and grey streaks over his back (top right). From the front the muzzle is very boxy and the teeth are 2-D looking; he also has a bit of a cheesy looking snarl (bottom left). From behind, you can see how terrible his fur looks sticking up (bottom right). This has just become a recent major issue, I believe, and tends to look pixellated.

Animations and Sounds:

Wolves make the usual snarling, snapping, and growling sounds when in combat. They have three idle animations; a howl (which is incredibly rare and accompanied by sound--top left), the sit and scratch (top middle), and they sniff the ground (top right). Their run is graceful and loping (bottom left) and their swim is a basic doggy paddle (bottom right).

Combat:

Wolves are great pets to have around for combat as they're ferocity and put out great damage. I only noticed a couple of attack animations for them. One is a lunge and bite with the left foot forward, and the other is a second lunge and bite with the right foot forward. Daliah's MM so I don't have to worry much about my pets holding aggro as Aimed Shot is usually enough to take care of most mobs.

Wolves' special ability is Furious Howl, which provides 5% increased crit. This is a very handy buff to have around if you don't need cover any of the other major buffs and don't have a fury warrior or feral druid around. This buff is more PvE oriented than PvP and I wouldn't recommend it for PvP unless you have CC covered.

And just as I thought, both of the wolves I have look good with Daliah. I plan on keeping them both in the stable until I absolutely need the room, but as of right now, I lean more toward Kamikaze.


More please.
Name: Venjin
Level: 82
Exotics: Yes
No monkeys, gorillas, or demon dogs please
Rares I Have: Loque, KK, Aotona

Name: Daliah
Level: 20 but feel free to roll up
Exotics: No
No monkeys, gorillas, or demon dogs please

[Chimaera]

Report on the Ghost Boar

I'd already had Steeltusk a few days before I got assigned him, actually. xD I had been going through the thing where you vote on the pet looks, and he came up and I'd never seen it before.

Getting him was relatively easy. Sadly I don't have screenshots of my tame, but it wasn't that exciting. Aggem Thorncurse I think his name was, he summons the boars during the fight. It's time based rather than damage based, so higher leveled hunters shouldn't worry about accidentally killing him before they can get a boar.


A nice purple placeholder, since I hate white space on these.
Anyway, even though Steeltusk is a transparent version of a normal model, I think he stands out in his own way. His fur is a nice golden brown that compliments my tauren's fur well, and has steel plates on his face, back, and legs with black markings on them.
I assume the markings are shamanistic, based on my understanding of Quillboar culture and the means in which he was summoned.

I think his face looks very old and wise, which I think is emphasized by his ghostly appearance. He looks like a devoted guardian, and his idle animations make him look like he has a curious, playful side as well. He carries himself proudly and always has a bit of a bounce in his movements, which I find gives boars a lot more personality than I noticed before taming one myself.
I found Steeltusk's idle animations look very cute. For the first he just looks around, and for the other he sniffs the ground, then crouches over, as if he's found something and wants you to follow him.

I did notice though, on the bottom right picture, his model stretches a bit while he's crouching down. His neck and face get a little longer, and his front legs get thicker.
His mane and the fur above his hooves also look a little pixely to me, but that's probably just how dated they are compared to newer models.


Boar walking and running animations are surprisingly smooth for an old world model. His back legs look a little odd to me in the top right picture though, I think they look a tad stiff, and on the two middle pictures I think his belly looks too thin for his chest, but this is coming from someone who doesn't really know the anatomy of wild board, so that could be normal. Other than that though, I think the animations look pretty realistic.


Although his swimming animations look smooth and realistic, it's pretty clear to me that Steeltusk isn't too happy about being made to swim around. He looks pretty awkward, like he's struggling to keep up with Okiwa.


I was a little disappointed by the attack animations, I only saw one, but I can't really think of what else a boar would to to attack. He lunges forward at the target and bashes them with his tusks and (steel-plated) head.

Overall a great pet in my opinion. I think this is one of the better vanilla models, and the armor plating only makes him look better. He doesn't hold aggro quite as well as my turtle, but he still makes a great tank who can hold his own and keep aggro well.
Though I don't find his ability particularly useful, at least not by myself.
Gore: Your boar gores the enemy, causing it to take 30% additional damage from bleed effects for 15 sec.
It's a good ability in itself, but as a BM hunter, it isn't very useful to me. He'd be great to use in a group with a feral druid, and I've also been playing with the idea of trying to spec him more dps-oriented and using a marks spec, since it has a bleed effect.

This was actually the most fun report I've done so far. =D Steeltusk probably would have ended up sitting in my stables otherwise, but this has given me a chance to bond with him a bit, even through the tauren and quillboar's hatred for each other and my own disdain for boars.

[TygerDarkstorm]

I loved your boar report. ^_^ Now I want to tame one of those guys. XD He looks great with your tauren as well.

[Cialbi]

Unfortunately, feral druids wouldn't really care whether or not your boar is using Gore; one of their hardest-hitting abilities, Mangle, will automatically maintain the 30% increased bleed damage debuff on their target anyways. They aren't the only ones, either. Hemorrhage, the specialization ability for subtlety rogues, is similar to Mangle. Blood Frenzy, a talent exclusive to arms warriors, will cause their bleeds to automatically apply this debuff, in addition to other benefits that make the talent a mandatory one for arms warriors. The only specs that actually make use of bleed damage but don't innately apply this debuff would be assassination & combat rogues, and marksmanship hunters.

[Aeliel]

Unfortunately, feral druids wouldn't really care whether or not your boar is using Gore; one of their hardest-hitting abilities, Mangle, will automatically maintain the 30% increased bleed damage debuff on their target anyways.

You'd think so, but if I have somebody else applying the bleed debuff it makes my life easier and my DPS go up (as long as it never drops off). It means I won't have to reapply Mangle every now and then. (Granted, it's gotten easier now that it's 1min in duration, but still.) Yeah, Mangle hits hard, but Shred on a properly debuffed target hits harder

[Chimaera]

Unfortunately, feral druids wouldn't really care whether or not your boar is using Gore; one of their hardest-hitting abilities, Mangle, will automatically maintain the 30% increased bleed damage debuff on their target anyways. They aren't the only ones, either. Hemorrhage, the specialization ability for subtlety rogues, is similar to Mangle. Blood Frenzy, a talent exclusive to arms warriors, will cause their bleeds to automatically apply this debuff, in addition to other benefits that make the talent a mandatory one for arms warriors. The only specs that actually make use of bleed damage but don't innately apply this debuff would be assassination & combat rogues, and marksmanship hunters.

Ah, bummer. At least he still looks cool.

[Kormai]

YAY Kåri gets to raid again!

Tyger (Venjin)
Bronze Scorpion


Daliah
Brown Bat


Enjoy

[TygerDarkstorm]

Poor Daliah has to make another trip into Forsaken territory. XD

[Xella]

Meet Miles.


Miles is a Corpse Scarab, a special and unique breed of tameable black beetle first brought to the attention of the Petopia forums (or at least, my attention!) at the end of march by Spiritbinder (thread). He's summoned during the Anub'Rekhan encounter in both 10- and 25-player Naxxramas, from the corpse of either a player or one of the larger Crypt Guards summoned periodically throughout the fight. We took three hunters into 10-man Naxx (and later, my elemental shaman + my guild leader's alt hunter), and it was messy, but we survived and all got our beetles. A guildmate suggested we name them John, Paul, George, and Ringo, so we could have a full set of -hem- Beatles. Not being a fan of that musical style, I named my own Miles, after the vertically-challenged, handicapped protagonist of the majority of the science fiction novels written by Lois McMaster Bujold (and at the risk of waxing poetic long enough to derail my own train of thought, most of the books in this series are available as free HTML and/or eBook files, here, and I highly recommend them). In retrospect, "Mark" might have been more fitting (being equally short, but also having a strong association with both the colour black and [butter]bugs), but I don't like Mark as much


I'm not usually a huge fan of bugs—I'm quite phobic irl (some people on these forums have little bug things in their signatures that freaked me out quite heavily the first time I saw it, since it was the exact proper size for an ant crawling on my screen. I've since gotten over my first kneejerk reaction, thankfully ) and while the bugs in WoW aren't hyper-realistic and don't set off my squeamishness, they're still not really my first choice as a pet. Miles is different. Miles is tiny.


I mean, really tiny. Corpse Scarabs retain their size when tamed. For me, this is his primary charm—tiny little tenacity pet tanking big giant Ettin and Dragons and all those other fun things that tenacity pets can tank. Miles is about the size of the cockroaches of Twilight Highlands (and elsewhere; I don't think Azeroth's roaches change size much from locale to locale). Consequently, it's a bit tricky to get a good look at him, unless you zoom in really close. Fortunately for him, this means that any texture issues are quite hard to see, especially since they're not increased far beyond their original size-scope, as many other pets' textures are. Miles is sort of a grey-black with brown and a striking red design interspersed with black on the back of his carapace. His model is quite detailed, but on the larger areas (notably, the carapace itself), gets a little geometric. While this would be a major detriment on a larger bug, because Miles is so small, it's not something I notice in day-to-day play.


Both walking and running, Miles retains the black trail that summoned buggies from all sorts of Nerubians carry, and both the train (and his size) are retained despite deaths, stabling, dismissal, and the rest. His trail also continues in his "swim" animation, which is... not a swim animation at all; both he (and my Mini Diablo) have no swim animation and simply run and stand in the water. A major fault in a larger pet but again, his small stature works in his favour, since I have to be looking to notice. ("is he a spot, or is he a spec? When he's underwater does he get wet, or does the water get him instead? Nobody knows! Particle Man.") His normal idle animation is a bobbing motion with frantic movement of his antenna; every so often he'll look right, then left. When he looks left, there's a quiet "thump" as a dead body falling to the floor. You won't hear it if you've got music going but my guild leader picked up on it right away when he got his and I was like "wait, what?" lol


Miles has two attack animations. The lunge forward and the more dramatic "invisible stinger strike." The lunge is quite nondescript, but the stinger-strike has a myriad of issues—his carapace flattens up top, his back legs cut through the lower half, and besides... where's the stinger he's attacking with? Missing, that's what!


As a tenacity pet, the Corpse Scarab is an adequate multi-target tank (and by "adequate" I mean "mend pet won't pull aggro" lol) and an excellent single-target tank. His racial special, Harden Carapace, is identical to turtles' and reduces damage taken by 50% for 12s, with a minute CD. I love the way it looks, even moreso because it's "normal sized" on the tiny little buggy. One could argue that, because this is the most defensive ability available to tenacity pets, this makes beetles (and turtles) the "best" tanks of the bunch, though there's benefits to the other abilities (snare, interrupt, bleed damage, etc) and I'm sure somewhere on the internet, someone's actually worked out the math (old hunter guildmate Sthellesta, probably). Regardless of the ultimate endpoint, having a shield wall ability is exceptionally helpful against certain types of enemies, and the beetle will auto-cast it when its health drops below a certain threshold (50% I believe).


I've had Miles out by my side in Stormwind for the past few days since I got him, and only gotten one query (during the writing of this report, in fact!). Part of this might be because people don't realize he's my pet and think he's a non-com. Part of this might be because we (my guild, as a whole) hang out in Dwarven District, while most of the rest of the server including the, um, excessively-punctuated hang out in Trade still (also the gold beggars and spammers, so Dwarven keeps me away from the /say and /yell and /w of all those unsavouries!). I haven't seen anyone outside of DS with the pet either, for possibly the same reasons.


Overall, Miles was a godsend for me. I wanted a pet with a shield wall ability, but didn't really enjoy any of the available choices (Terrorpene and the Light Blue Scarab being the "best options" but neither was exceptionally appealing). Miles being big would be boring and his place in my stables is not a permanent fixture—if his size is ever changed, it's possible I might replace him with another. Visually, his biggest appeal is his size, not his model or skin. I can see several reasons that he could be changed in the future (including, alas, PvP—despite not having any specifically-useful PvP skills, his small size makes him especially difficult to target, if an opponent needed or wanted to do so for some reason). Speaking of which, I wonder what he'd look like under the Glyph of Lesser Proportion? There'd be something to see, wish I could actually copy my characters to the PTR to check! I really enjoy him, but I fully expect to not have him around for long... enjoy him while he lasts, but keep a few tissues around, just in case ;P


Name: Basanti
Level: 85
Exotics: Yes
Restrictions: None
Rares I Have: Skoll, Arcturis, King Krush, Sunblade Dragonhawk, Grimtotem Spirit Guide, Ghostcrawler, Corpse Scarab

[Cialbi]

Unfortunately, feral druids wouldn't really care whether or not your boar is using Gore; one of their hardest-hitting abilities, Mangle, will automatically maintain the 30% increased bleed damage debuff on their target anyways.

You'd think so, but if I have somebody else applying the bleed debuff it makes my life easier and my DPS go up (as long as it never drops off). It means I won't have to reapply Mangle every now and then. (Granted, it's gotten easier now that it's 1min in duration, but still.) Yeah, Mangle hits hard, but Shred on a properly debuffed target hits harder

Honestly, my feral druid is specced for tanking, and in that case I use Mangle every chance I get. So, I never fullly considered the situation for cats. Thanks for pointing that out.

[Chimaera]

Aaaaah, tiny pets. 8D Time to gather up my slaves guildies for a Naxx run. That's adorable.

Another for Okiwa, please.

Name: Okiwa
Level: 66 (almost 67, so feel free to pick a 67 pet)
Exotics: Soooooo close but still no
Restrictions: No mastiffs or diseased pets.

Rares I Have: A lot. *has no life* You can probably assume I have most of them, and I'm willing to do a report on most of them. Notable though, I have a Venomous Skitterer (red-purple scarab from HoO) that I can do a report on.

[Kormai]

Next cleaning mission: The Basement. WARNING: There will be spiders.

Basanti
Blue Spiked Raptor


Okiwa
Brown Bear

[Tydarus]

I want back in!
Tydarus, lvl 77
Exotics yes
No monkeys or crocolisks
Rares I have: Arcturis, Zaricotl (Mazzranache, Humar and Mahamba as well, but I guess they don't count)

Garwan, lvl 22
Exotics no
No monkeys or crocs

[Bastor]

Since currently I'm on a spree of testing new pets, I wouldn't mind a challenge.

Name: Kreuzner
Level: 85
Exotics: Yes
Would prefer a PvP oriented family skill, but will do anything else.
Pets I already have: Rhino, Silithid, Corehound, Spirit Beast, Spider, Spore Bat, Nether Ray, Bird of Prey, Hyena. Wouldn't mind writing a review about these, especially Rhinos.
Rares I have: Ghostcrawler, Gondria, Loque, Arcturis, Skoll, Chromaggus

No restrictions whatsoever.