Random Pet Challenge [v3.0]

[TygerDarkstorm]

Eclipse:
Black Wind Serpent

[Litlemouse]

Sorry they're huge... I don't know how to fix that

Here I am taming my Green-Core Hound, he's very easy to find, right off the path entrance to the Dark Portal in Blasted Lands.


His NPC name, then his new name. Hehehe, I know it's weird, but seriously I couldn't think of anything else atm.


Yeah, um, he's definitely not a rare XD


Took him for a swim off the coast. He does a sort of doggie-paddle.


Sometimes he lifts his head heads and howls when idle.


His normal attack is a lunge with one head and a foot back.


His special attack is Lava Breath, which reduces the target's casting speed by 25% for 10 sec. Normally he doesn't float though, whoops


An overview of him. He is actually pretty with the glowing green strike, although I wouldn't want to smell his breath XD Sometimes firey "drool" drips out of one of his mouths, and there is a slight fire on his trail oftentimes.


Me and Gnomegas, together. Whew, I'm done!
That was fun...

Darn, forgot to take a pic of Ancient Hysteria. Oh well :/ looks cool anyway

[TygerDarkstorm]

You got it.

[Litlemouse]

Thx for the help Tyger ^_^
I'll do another! Now I know how to post, I'll be able to do it much sooner. Whoops
Just incase you don't want to find my post all the way back there, here it is again:
Name: Litlemouse
Level: 83
Exotics: Yes
Already have: Loque, Krush, Core-hound (haha), nightsaber/moonstalker, aand... oh yeah 1 of the new spiky Cata crabs.

[TygerDarkstorm]

You're welcome. ^_^

[Kormai]

Litlemouse
Pink Shale Spider


The flight is booked...I leave for Alberta on May 5th at 9 pm :O!

[Cialbi]

That'll be one momentous day! Good for you, Kormai.
_

Thanks for the tip, Ashley. I sent out an updated version of the spreadsheet, but forgot to mention this in the email: I've taken the liberty to add the Corpse Scarab as its own separate model (I sure hope they don't change it!), and made the hyperlink point to the specific NPC on Wowhead. I imagined that the Corpse Scarab would only be included in rolls if one were to specify it under the 'Rares I Have' category.
_

Brown rhino? Hmm, I've been quite indecisive as to what rhino skin I want, so this is quite fortuitous actually.
I won't be able to so much as log in tonight, but tomorrow promises to be a free evening for me.
_

Litlemouse, you did a good job. Keep it up!

[Ikotar]

I thought I'd post now, since I'm not sure if I'll have time to take and edit screenshots in the next while, so here is my report before I forget.

Ikotar
Blue Sporebat


And extra credit: What is the best hunter pet?

So I was assigned the sporebat.

I headed out to Zangermarsh, and found Nerf bobbing by one of the large mushrooms out there. Fortunately I happened to have some bread in my bags when I tamed him, so I could cheer him up. Once he was happy enough, we headed off to see what sort of team we'd make.

We headed out to Tol Barad to try some dailies. Now I haven't been out here yet, due to the fact that I've been obsessively camping Loque out in Sholazar since I hit 85 . I spec'd Nerf for tanking, since I figured my BM spec would help with the DPS side of things. We headed into the town there and proceeded to pick a fight. Nerf did so-so with the chain adds due to a high respawn rate, but I found that I had to heal him a lot more than I'm used to. I'm not sure if this is the fact that he was only level 82, or the fact he's a cunning pet. It was probably the lack of raid buffs, so we'll have to see if I can test that.

The sporebat model is nice, with a pretty blue colour and the glowy bits. The model is quite alien, and not really something I can relate to due to not seeing many similar things in either real life, or movies/games/etc.

At this point, I'll keep Nerf, since I still have space in my stables, and see if I want to keep him or release him back into the wilds.

I'll take another when you have a chance. Here are my stats again:

Name: Ikotar
Level: 85
Exotics: Yes
Restrictions: No sporebats

Thanks,
Ikotar

[Miraga]

Alrighty! I had the green/pink ravager!

I love ravagers. They just have so much personality and they always make me smile so I was really happy to get one as my random pet.

At first I saw the pet and immediately didn't like the coloring. Nothing seemed to match! I went to get one anyway because I wanted to give the little guy a chance.



An easy tame, even at my lower level.



When you get a good look at him, maybe you can see how I thought he didn't match. The green pink and purple don't seem to go well together do they?



And he didn't go too well with my hunter either!



I then took a look at his environment and realized he matches it PERFECTLY! He's the same color as all the vegitation and he just FITS that area, you know? It's hard to see this pet as matching, going well with something, etc for me because I couldn't see where he came from. Then when I looked around, I knew he belonged there.





I love his fighting animations! He leans in and goes "NOM!" and bites what he's fighting! As other people have pointed out, he does a flip but it was really hard for me to get a picture of it.



I just like this pic because the ravager on the right is like "HEY. Stoppit!"

Overall I love ravagers and this model has grown on me. Unfortunately, I already have the death ravager for this hunter and love little Yahto to bits. I really think more people need to give this model a try. I think he would go rather well with a goblin for some reason. His debuff is particularly helpful for me in 5 mans if I get a group with all other buffs covered. Heck, I even love it because it sorta buffs him even when it's just me and Yahto. Ravagers need more love, imo. They look like little aliens but they have all this love to give!

I'd love to go again!!

Eluriel
Level 20
No exotics and no birds or spiders please. I just can't seem to like them... at all, lol.

[Cialbi]

Rhinos. Gah. Talk about a challenge!

Screenshots of the model? Check
Screenshots of basic animations? Check
Screenshots of combat? . . .

Horn Toss is proving to be one of the more infuriating pet special abilities. I see how far it can toss an enemy on relatively flat ground. Not bad. Know what would be awesome - a cliffside! ...wait, what? Why are they flying shorter distances now?
Add on top of that the difficulty in setup (I wound up just MD'ing a melee attack on some Borean Tundra mob, FD'ing, and keeping pet on passive while the poor thing gets poked and prodded incessantly until I'm ready for a Horn Toss), and you have a very frustrating assignment.

Anyways, I'm hoping to get shots of gnome punting and goblin punting (maybe the latter will explode on impact?), trying to toss big things off of even bigger dropoffs, comparing Horn Toss and Disengage, and changing my druid's offspec to moonkin so that I cna see what a real knockback is supposed to look like.

There's something missing from this watered down version of Rhino Bowling - it's just not fun.

[Xella]

This skin is my absolute favourite dragonhawk skin. When TBC first came out, I made a pilgrimage out to Stormspire in Netherstorm (on foot at level 60) to purchase a couple of the non-combat variety for my various alts. When the Mountain 'o Mounts achievement came out, I was super-excited because Alliance got the best dragonhawk skin in the game (and the Horde just got the boring ol' orange one). The non-combat version is one of the few vendor pets that are on my random minipet macro. And yet I just realized I never bought one for my hunter. Oooooops.

Unfortunately, when TBC came out, the skin wasn't tameable anywhere. Hell, it wasn't even used on any actual dragonhawks! That changed when Sunwell came out in patch 2.4, sort of—the skin was now used, but it wasn't tameable, even if you had a raid capable of taking on the trash... but that changed again in 4.0.3a, and it's now tameable! It's still only in Sunwell, and will require a little bit of trickery (or brute force). Here's how I did it, and some notes in case you want one of your own (of course you do, see above re: best skin ever!)


There are three packs that I've seen with the dragonhawk (there might be more but they never spawned in the random resets I did of the instance today). They're right near the entrance—a patting robot is the first pull, the next two pulls contain dragonhawks, and there's another pack in the back of the room behind them with the third. I went to go tame my dragonhawk at about level 73-74, and had a frost DK friend accompany me. The problem I was running into in my tame was that his diseases would a) break my trap (if I even managed to land it; the dragonhawk does a lot of pacing and getting in range to launch also aggroed the pack) and b) piss the dragonhawk off mid-tame. He'd also die a lot because these mobs still hurt. Wowhead comments say they soloed it at 70 but I dunno, I never had much luck. I ultimately managed to get it away from the pack and get it trapped while the DK (and the resto druid I conned into it after a couple failed attempts) killed the rest of the pack and ran out of the instance to drop aggro. Hiding behind a wall was pretty important since I had nothing for health at the time, and three(?) of the five add types apply dots. I suspect it'd be a lot easier now that I'm 85, but I didn't want to wait anymore!


(this slide and description is super messy/rambly but you know what, who cares!)

Meet Tivaari. Tivaari is named after one of the secondary characters in an old (mostly abandoned) project of mine, Shadows (the comic itself borders on nsfw; sketchtastic nudity). Basanti herself is named after the main character, so this is one of the pets that feel especially close to my hunter. Basanti herself is human nowadays, but she used to be a female Night Elf, which both suited the name better and was a closer visual match (she was also my very first character back when live hit, a warrior on Proudmoore, and even further back on Test 7 in the original beta. Yeeeaaaa test 7! /brofist). Tivaari has occasionally made an appearance as a low-level warrior on various servers, including Bloodscalp, but as far as I know none of them have survived my "gdi 50 characters on the account need more alts" purges. Though I didn't realize it 'til I started thinking about 'Vari in the pet-challenge sense, I suspect my backbrain of cementing this dragonhawk as being properly named in my mind—in the story, both Basanti and Tivaari are Flamedancers, a sort of cross between fire breathers, bellydancers, and sorcerers/mystics, who use swords to conjure fire in their ritualized dances. Tivaari's hair is sort of a weird purple-and-blue pastel mullet/dreadlock/something combination, which also mirrors in-game 'Vari's colours—though thankfully, the dragonhawk's colours are much more vivid, else I suspect I wouldn't like the skin quite so much!


Tivaari is a striking purple, with blue and sea-green accents on the wings and tailfeathers, and a light sky blue/cyan patterning on beak and head... feathers? tendrils? Her eyes are sea-green orbs the colour of her feather accents, and the overall face is very striking. There are a few issues with the model and skin—the inside of the mouth is a flat dark blue (you don't see it very often unless you're looking), some of the shapes implied by the wing's silhouette are a little bit odd. Most of the wings are paper-thin with texturing to make them look slightly thicker, but overall this impression fails. The wing textures themselves are very fuzzy, as is the texturing on the tail, and the edges of the 2D sections of wing and tail are ragged and pixellated (though the wings never stop moving so again, you have to be looking specifically for it).


No matter what she's doing, Tivaari is flapping her wings. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower, but always flappity flap flap. This usually drives me crazy for flying pets (hence my undying love for sporebats, I wonder?), but there is no sound file associated with Tivaari's idle animation, meaning that if I tab out I'm not hearing flapflapflapflapflapflapflap. She's generally pretty quiet—her Fire Breath has a roaring fire noise, and her attacks make a... chittering mumble, I suppose would best describe it. When idle, she flaps quietly by my side, occasionally looking from side to side. She has a walking and running animation at various angles of forward lean, and she seems to hit her idle animation for a brief stop between walking and running (this might just be because I can no longer control her directly so she's just catching up to me with the AI. WTB EotB back! T_T).


As with many (most?) flying creatures, Tivaari's swim-forward animation is simply a slowed-down version of her run. I thought at first that the swim idle was also the same, but upon looking closer, the tail hangs more limply in the water, which I find quite charming. When swimming at the water's surface, the swim-fly ends up looking a bit odd—too slow to be flying, too out-of-the-water to be swimming.


Dragonhawks have two attack animations—a tail smack, and a brief lunge forward. These randomize pretty well, though under enough haste effects it looks like Vari's having a seizure. Being a Cunning pet, Vari is supposedly good for both PvE and PvP, though as with all cunning pets, I find her a little bit squishy and end up using mend pet on her more often than on ferocity or tenacity pets. Oh, and she has this annoying habit of taking 20 seconds or so to get her full health after being summoned, so she got two-shot by pretty much everything in Tol Barad, and I ultimately ended up finishing my dailies by putting on Cheetah and running around, because I'm impatient (figure that one out!)

Dragonhawks' racial ability is Fire Breath, an 8% increased magic damage debuff placed on one target for 45 seconds, with a 30 second cooldown (21 seconds with Longevity). This ability is shared with Wind Serpents, who are also a cunning pet, so it's pure personal preference as to whether you prefer a more scaly or a more feathery flappy thing in your face (did I mention how big these pets feel? They're shorter than a devilsaur but not by much, and almost twice as wide as a corehound if you go from wingtip to wingtip). Assassination rogues, warlocks, unholy death knights, and balance druids can (and usually do) provide the buff as well. Neither you nor your pet will gain any direct benefit from it, making it a purely dungeon/raid/"prettyspec" pet (unless Serpent Sting and Arcane Shot are still affected by spell power like they have been in the past. God, remember the 2pc t5 + as much +sp gear as you could get days of hunter soloing? Makes me smile/cry). This Fire Breath actually looks like a fire breath (probably because it used to BE a fire breath, lol), and while your target is affected by the debuff, it'll be tinted slightly orange-red, and be afflicted with the traditional "AAGH I'M ON FIRE" effect.


Overall, my biggest issue with using Tivaari as my go-to "prettyspec" pet is simply how big she is. In overall bulk she's much slimmer than most pets, but her wingspan is so large and she's moving so often that she'll often get in your way while you're trying to click on things like corpses or frightened squirrels (to be fair that quest blows even if you don't have a pet getting in your way). Well, and because Sporey > * but that's not her fault. While I don't see her looking that great next to... well, most male characters, plus a lot of the females, that's mainly a problem with the character models and races in question, not the dragonhawk Still, I think she'd look pretty good next to a troll or one of the bluer-hued orcs or goblins, and you never know if you'll like her until you try!

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

(next one might take a little bit longer because I really need to crack down on my commissions and start practicing drawing moosen, but that's okay! And who knows, pet challenges are good for procrastinating!)

[Cialbi]

As it turns out, the Fire Breath debuff has nothing to do with spell power. It increases all magical damage taken by the target by 8%. Increased magic damage is completely different from increased spell power, just as increased physical damage is completely different from increased attack power. Mastery rating for SV hunters will even increase all magic damage dealt by the hunter, since most of their damage is magic damage. So, the every single hunter attack that doesn't deal Physical damage will hit harder if the Fire Breath debuff is on the target. For MM, this just means Serpent Sting and Arcane Shot (plus fire traps, if you even bother using them); for BM, you can add Cobra Shot to that, but are also relying more heavily on pet damage for your overall DPS. Yet, for SV, this debuff will affect almost all damage they deal, with only auto shots and pet damage being unaffected.

Thus, dragonhawks and wind serpents are probably the second best option for SV hunters if the Roar of Courage buff is already covered.

[TygerDarkstorm]

Aw, I'm sorry you didn't like that ravager Miraga. I have one on my undead hunter and I love him. XD

Ikotar:
Blue and White Felboar


Miraga(Eluriel):
Blue Moth


Xella(Basanti):
Grimtotem Spirit Guide

It rolled you Karoma, but since I figured you had the Grimtotem wolf listed, that would be a good option, just make sure to mention it's not tamable anymore.

And also, I'm opting to do three projects, one for each pet rolled because my worgen hunter has the black cat already.

[Xella]

[Important CoE information that's already been mentioned so I am cutting for space here!]

Thus, dragonhawks and wind serpents are probably the second best option for SV hunters if the Roar of Courage buff is already covered.

That... is very good to know! I wasn't sure if SS/AS/whatever else (immo/explosive trap I suppose?) had some weird "this is not strictly physical damage but gets affected by +physical and not +magical" thing—hunters and shaman were caught up in that weird "physical classes preferring spell power" thing that seemed to happen every major content patch in TBC and I gave up trying to get my head around it all, haha

[Cialbi]

Well, all hunter shots are calculated based off of attack power and/or ranged weapon damage; not spell power. So, that's where attack power comes into play. But, whether or not a hunter shot is physical damage, magical damage of some sort, or bleed damage does factor in, just at a different point than attack power and ranged weapon damage. All physical damage, be it a warrior's Execute or a mage poking something with a stick, will be mitigated by armor, and buffed by physical damage bonuses. Similarly, all spell damage will be mitigated by spell resistances, and buffed by spell damage bonuses; same applies for the individual schools of spell damage. For that matter, all bleed damage will be buffed by bleed damage bonuses.
What's more, the bonuses will be the exact same all around; if there's a 4% increased physical damage taken debuff on the target, then a mage poking the target with a stick will be dealing 4% more damage, and a warrior using pretty much any attack on that same target except Rend (which deals bleed damage) will also be dealing 4% more damage. While that is of little use to a mage since they aren't very good at poking things to death with a stick, consider that the same applies to spell damage. With your dragonhawk's debuff on a target, then a mage's Fireball will be dealing 8% more damage, your Cobra Shot will be dealing 8% more damage, a rogue's poisons will be dealing 8% more damage, a DK's dieases will be dealing 8% more damage... hopefully you get the idea by now.

[Kormai]

Cialbi, I always wondered if the turtle in your avatar (now in your sig) was face up in the barrel or face down...for some reason I would have found it cuter if it was his/her tail sticking up. :/

[TygerDarkstorm]

So...I've been out of town for a couple of days, and before that I've been being pretty lazy about getting these done, but eventually I'll get them posted.

[Cialbi]

Cialbi, I always wondered if the turtle in your avatar (now in your sig) was face up in the barrel or face down...for some reason I would have found it cuter if it was his/her tail sticking up. :/

Well, I didn't set that screenshot up; I was getting my Handful of Candy from the Light's Hope Chapel innkeeper, and she just walked right on top of the bobbing apple bucket, and her rump fell in.
_

On-topic: It didn't occur to me earlier that my WoW time is limited for now, and will run out sometime Friday. So, I don't know how many more screenshots I'll get of my current pet challenge.

Too much stress mounting right now... *heavy sigh*

[TygerDarkstorm]

Sadly, apparently all of my slides for Venjin's mastiff have been sitting completed. -_-

So Venjin had
I apparently have a thing for naming members of the dog family George (first Daliah's demon dog and now this mastiff).

Looks:

I know a lot of people aren't very fond of mastiffs, but I find that once they start getting closer to their full size, they're not that bad. Really the worst thing about mastiffs is their overall low texturing, which is most notable across their face and jowls (bottom left). One odd thing I also noticed is the way their back legs are positioned when standing idle (top middle); it's like they're too close together or something. This color's not as red as I would have hoped either, most of the time it looks like the brown mastiff which is disappointing.

Sounds and Animations:

Mastiffs make a pretty standard bark and growl like noise, and they also squeal when hit--ironically, they're the same noises the worgen make. Their run is kind of odd, sort of bumbly and gangly at the same time (top left). Their swim is a basic doggy paddle but the way their joints are positioned or something makes it seem weird (top right). They only have one idle animation, which is to shake their head and send those jowls flapping (which I'm kind of impressed Blizzard let them flop around instead of gluing them to the skull) (bottom left).

Combat:

Mastiffs, sadly, only have one attack animation--swing their head to bite (second from bottom). They're decent fighters, being ferocity pets, and will put out good damage.

Their special ability is Lock Jaw, which snares (immobilizes? roots?) their target (second from top). Unfortunately, while your dog channels this ability, they do absolutely nothing but stand there and therefore generate no threat if you're out soloing. These pets are okay pets for SV and MM hunters whose signature abilities can probably kill off the mob before the snare wears off, but this special is terrible for BM hunters. BM relies heavily on KC, which immediately disrupts any ability being channeled requiring this ability to be micro managed. Overall, I would consider these guys more PvP oriented than PvE just because since they're ferocity pets, they're pretty squishy if you're using them to solo. If you really want this ability for soloing, I recommend a crab.

George won't be staying with Venjin as I think the mastiff look fits certain races better than others.

[Miraga]

@Tyger: That's pretty much how I feel about mastiffs also. Honestly, I can only ever see them with humans. I guess I'm stuck in the mindset that it's a dog so it belongs with people. Even on human hunters, though, I can't keep one. I mean, they ARE cute... I just don't think I could handle all that drool! Hopefully I can get that moth today! Damn you, school!