Random Pet Challenge [v3.0]

[Sesamee]

Name: Sesamee
Level: 85
Exotics: yes
Restrictions: None
Pets already tested: green turtle, red dragonhawk, blue and red wasp

[TygerDarkstorm]

Ilanthe:
Brown Worm


Khi'jazi:
Blue Moth


Kebi(Keby):
Tan Spider


Sesamee:
Brown Rhino

[Kyria]

So! For my challenge I got assigned the light blue scarab beetle. My two options were the Turquoise Scarab in Uldum, or the Jeweled Scarab in Halls of Origination. I didn't want to slow up a group if I didn't have to, so Uldum it was! I hadn't done the quest line, but I remembered that if I just laid down a freezing trap in the right location, I'd pull my chosen beetle right out of phase, so I flew down, made sure I was in the right place for the color I was after, laid down a trap, and... it vanished! I'd frozen a beetle, sure enough, but it didn't appear in my phase, possibly due to freezing trap no longer putting you in combat. Sighing, I flew back out, continued the quest line until the beetles appeared, and chose a likely-looking one beneath the shelter of some rubble, running about with three baby beetle critters. I tried to get a shot of him and the critters together beforehand, but they all moved around so quickly that I gave up and just got to taming.



I knew to expect the beetle to be gigantic, but it somehow I still wasn't prepared. He went from being tiny and adorable to huge and awkward, and I have to admit that I wasn't a fan. I got a shot of him and a wild Turquoise Beetle together:



Pity he couldn't have stayed his original size. I liked the wild ones better. Still, he was at least pretty enough, so I toted him out to Zul'Drak, where I resumed my Gundrak Hatchling farm with my shiny new single-target tank-specced beetle trundling along beside me. Trundling, specifically. "Beetle trundles placidly around his mistress." I've never known a pet to spam an emote so often. I would have named him Trundle for that reason, but "Trundle trundles" didn't seem like the best idea I'd ever had, so he remained nameless. I had hoped that he would be a lucky charm, but a hundred more raptors and no dice, so I took a break on a ledge and took a good, close look at my chitinous pal.



His colors were admittedly very pleasant, his wing casings lovely and detailed. I appreciated the contrast between warm, buttery gold and sky blue, and the sea green accents made for a gorgeous happy medium between them. The tiny traces of purple in the blue, from my normal distance, weren't too visible but instead added a slight purple sheen, and when I noticed that, I liked him even better. From above and behind, he was quite nice to look at. Unfortunately...





The face, while... odd and a little creepy, didn't bother me so much. But what the HECK is going on underneath his plating, here? What are those disturbing lumps all over the place? Did he catch a disease? Can he spread it? Ew! Shuddering, I resolved to simply put it out of my mind and continued on with my day. After another few hundred raptors and no drop, I was getting pretty tired of the farm, so I decided I'd head out and solo Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle for the heck of it. As expected, he single-target tanked like a champ... but with all those adds, that was exactly what I didn't need. In fact, at my current gear level, a single-target tank isn't worth much at any time, considering I don't have the DPS to solo anything I'd actually need one for. He's tenacity with a worthless group skill, so I chose not to do a random dungeon with him, and I have no PVP gear, so no battleground, either. At this point, I already knew I was going to release him, so I didn't waste any time going through the last few motions. His idle was a half-turn back and forth and an antennae-wiggle, and, as I discovered when I dove into the nearest, least terrifying bit of water I could find, he had no swimming animation at all, and his clicky walking noises persisted beneath the water, which unfortunately seriously grated on my nerves. He had no personality to make up for his other failings. In the end, he had shiny good looks, and that was all. Still, it was a fun adventure! We said our goodbyes in the Dalaran sewer system, where he'll have all the beetly joys his little heart could hope for, and I flew off to... well, to make this report.

Another, if you would be so kind.

Name: Kyria
Level: 85
Exotics: Yep!
Restrictions: None.
Pets already tested: Light Blue Scarab Beetle.

[Sesamee]

My challenge pet this time was the Brown Rhino. I love Rhino's and this has been my favorite tame so far. I headed off to the Borean Tundra to pick out my new pet. You can choose between a rhino calf or matriarch for the brown skin. I chose the calf and just had to name it Baby. There's something so adorable about a big hulking baby....who kicks ass!


Once Baby was mine we went off to grind out the dailies. In combat he swings his head side to side like he's trying to knock the mob over. He does the same thing when he does his special ability, Horn Toss, where he'll hurl the mob into the air. Horn toss is fun and I use it on cd to keep myself entertained lol. Here's Baby in action:




Break time!!


He was very graceful in the water:


We decided to take a run on the beach while I showed Baby around Durotar:


Rhino's are very large pets, one of the largest out there, I believe. Perfect for Taurens or Blood Elf chicks who like a big hunk of meat ! He's bigger than my toon mounted even:


I love his chocolaty brown color and think I'm going to keep Baby for a while. I had to let my big black Rhino, Crash, out to pasture but I know he'll be waiting for me when it's Baby's turn for a break


Thanks for checking out our adventure!!

[Sarantha]

Green corehound. I wasn't too enthused about this tame, since I dislike corehounds in general, excepting Chromaggus whom I already have and is my only corehound. I went out to Shadowmoon Valley to tame one for my challenge, looking for Uvuros or Spawn of Uvuros. I found Uvuros first and tamed him. He was HUGE pre-tame:





After tame. He was a little annoying to tame for a low level mob. He feared me several times, but I got him eventually. I never even thought to lay a trap or anything:



Uvuros back/side shot. He's still rather huge after the tame. He is also doing his idle animation in this picture, which is just roaring occasionally. And no, he did not eat that little bear cub near his feet:



I took him to Hyjal for some fighting and swimming. He just does a little doggy paddle and doesn't have very interesting combat animations. The only thing I like about corehounds is Ancient Hysteria, a hunter's bloodlust:





Sara and Berkley:



All in all, I will not be keeping Berkley. I just didn't click with him and I dislike corehounds. I keep Chromaggus only because I need a pet with Ancient Hysteria and he is the best looking corehound out there. Berkley has some nice animations and some nice combat sound effects, but I just can't get past his appearance. He just...ugh. I don't like corehounds. His coloration, neon green, was pretty awesome looking, but I really hate two-headed dogs. I feel a little bad for him and will try using him a bit in the next few days or until I get my next challenge tame just to see if we click anymore, but I don't think it will happen. Sorry, Berkley, you just aren't my cup of tea.

Name: Sarantha
Level: 85
Exotics: Yes
Restrictions: No monkeys/gorillas. Would like to add dogs and Shale/lava spiders to restrictions. Just do not like dogs/shale spiders and lava spiders I just see too much of. Wolves are perfectly fine, as are normal spiders, just no dogs or shale/lava spiders.

[fleetwreck]

I hope it's okay to join this even though I'm completely new to the forums. I've been a huge fan of petopia for years, and the hunter has always been one of my favorite classes. This seems like a lot of fun!

Name: Znee
Level: 60
Exotics: not yet.
Restrictions: I already have a few saber cats, and my main pet is a ravager, so I'd like to try something besides those for a newer experience.

[TygerDarkstorm]

I keep forgetting to mention this, but welcome to all newcomers to the Pet Challenge, and welcome back to those revisiting us.

Caelan(Kyria):
Seagull

(Not going to lie, this roll put a huge smile on my face as I've never seen a report on one and I have yet to tame one for myself on any of my hunters.)

Sesamee, I'm not sure if you wanted another roll or not so I'm going to go ahead and roll for you anyway; if you don't wish to participate with it, that's fine.
Sesamee:
Brown Sporebat


Sarantha:
Red and Green Ravager


::OR::

Blue and Yellow Moth


Fleetwreck(Znee):
Blue Nether Ray

[Sesamee]

I did thanks and was just about to post for a roll again

[Sarantha]

I have two free stable slots. I could do the moth AND the ravager. The moth looks more interesting and I've had moth pets before, but I've never used a ravager and it might give me a new experience to try one out.

[TygerDarkstorm]

It's up to you. Since the ravager is only available in an Alliance zone and your hunter is a Horde character, it's my obligation as the roller to offer you a second option. Just a part of the way we run the system. If you want to tame both, be my guest, I leave it up to you.

[Sarantha]

I'm not on a pvp server, so all I have to do is get to the draenei place, then wait for my flag to drop. Not too hard. Haha.

[Vasken]

Haven't done this for a few months... Why not!

Name: Avanji.
Level: 49.
Exotics: Nope!
Restrictions: Preferably no gorillas/monkeys/foxes, if possible!

[Finduilas]

So here is my report on this nice guy
The black armored boar I tamed with my Orc.

The black armored boar can only be found in a dungeon: Razorfen Kraul. As a level 85 I had no problems goin in there solo, if you are lower level (like 40something) you might want to ask someone to help you. If you come from the northern Barrens flying south it's the dungeon to your right (I always get confused which dungeon is which). The tame itself was easy peasy, I camouflaged my way through the dungeon until I came to a bridge. Under the bridge I saw my new fellow patrolling, jumped down and tamed. Right there:

I named my piggy Melisande, wanting a female companion for my Orc.

Appearance:

Melisande is basically a normal black boar with silverish armor and some nice turquoise spots. Her armor gives her a really battle-ready look and I personally think she looks great.

When I took the top shot of her, I noticed she and Morga had the same hairstyle

I always thought piggies need to be somewhat bulkier or bigger, but she looks really sporty and sleek. I wanted to feed her something to grow, but well, it doesn't work out as we all know from the northrend worgs.

Sounds and animations:

Melisande's sounds really prevented me from bonding too tight with her. She's constantly squeeking and grunting, even when returning from battle, she runs next to you "squeeeek". I normally love pets that talk to me, but it was just too much with her.
She has several idling animations. One is to sniff the ground and look from side to side.



The sniffing is often followed by the most cutest pet animation, the piggy-butt-wiggle.

This wiggle totally makes up for everything else. I love it. It gives her so much cute personality.
I took Melisande to do the Tol Barad dailies with Morga and went swimming with her. She does a dog-like paddle under water, but always seems to want to reach the surface. I don't think she is too fond of swimming.


Fighting:

Boars are tenacity pets and as such I specced Melisande towards lots of health and avoiding critical hits. So pretty much my personal tank.
Sadly I have to say she didn't do such a good job as I would have expected. We had to kill these ghosts on the part of Tol Barad you only get acces to, when your faction owns it. When she had more than two of those ghosts against her, her health began to drop quickly. I had to use mend pet on her regularely during the dailies, something I never noticed for my bear (he needs a mend pet once in a while, but not so often) and they are specced identically. Melisande did an excellent job against single targets like this one:

In this pic you can also see how big she gets under bestial wrath - quite a difference.
Then I decided to get to Problim (not sure if this is his name in English) solo.

Problim is the 85 Elite mob you have to kill and I have to admit, that Melisande lost less health while fighting him than while fighting three normal mobs. She stomped him right into the ground.
A word about her special ability:
The ability of boars is to increase the bleeding damage taken by the target to 30%. It is quite a nice number, BUT only if you play MM. I think it was the MM specc that makes one of your shots leave a bleeding damage on the target. So her ability is pretty useless for a BM or SV hunter playing mostly solo. And if you want to take a pet to a dungeon that increases bleeding damage, take a hyena - same ability but ferocity talent tree = more dps. So for me the boars ability was something like "nice to have, but useless".

Conclusion:

Melisande is a pretty pet, but I didn't click with her. Her appearance really fits my green Orc, she is pretty. But for Morga playing mostly Bm, her ability is useless for him and his bear makes a better solo-tank. I will release her back into the wild, perhaps in the Barrens, she apperently liked taking the screenshots there or in Durotar where she can start a family with the normal black boars.

Next roll please:

Name: Larkania (Tauren)
Level: 85
Exotics: yes
Restrictions: no diseased pets please
Rares she has: Shadowclaw, Gondria, Arcturis, Ankha, Ban'thalos, Magria, Solix, Deht'tilac, Blue Madexx and Karkin (and quite a lot non-rare pets )

I think I should make a list on what I already did a report on...

edit1: to put in Larkania's rares
eidt2: Pets I already did a review on:
with my Tauren Larkania: Dark Grey Gorilla, Red Nether Ray, Armored brown ghost boar, brown rhino, blue warpstalker, tan wolf, Aotona
with Nerdanel (Belf): green raptor, purple demon dog, purple parrot, blue raptor, blue vulture
Finduilas: yellow beetle, white chimera
with several others: brown scoprid, grey moth, diseased dark brown bear, armored black boar

[Sesamee]

My challenge this time was the Brown Sporebat. There's only one mob with this skin and its named Sporewing. He's in Zangarmarsh. He's not rare and has a fast respawn time. He was kind of hard to spot but I made a target macro for him and then found him without a problem. I'm not really into the sporebats and this challenge didn't change my mind. I gave him his old name back since he's the only one of his kind and I knew I'd most likely be releasing him back to Zangarmarsh.

I took Sporewing along with me while mining in Uldum to see if he grew on me...nope! He looked very out of place in the sands of Uldum. There's something about sporebats that annoy me. They dont really look real. I think the artists could have done a better job. I can barely make out their faces and they just look "alien" to me. I adore ravagers so its not the creepy fantasy type look, its just something about the sporebats in particular I dont like. Its like they're not well defined or something. Here's Sporewing looking very out of place at the entrance to Uldum:


While mining a hyena, the same skin as my Sancho Panza, attacked us and Sporewing dealt wtih him competently. But I felt bad that a pet I didnt even like killed one I do, or at least the same skin as one that I do lol.


He moves through the air very aerodynamically. Despite my overall dislike for him I have to say his movements through the air are cool:


He moved the same way while swimming but seemed to want to float to the top. Apparantly he doesnt belong in Uldum or the water?


His combat movements in water are a lot different he didn't seem to move, just hovered over the croc and did whatever it is that he does:


On land though his combat moves were to be expected. He ungulates between straightened out and making a sideways "U" with his body towards the mob:


Since he's a cunning pet I took him along on a bg. We got Eye of the Storm, one of my favorites, so I was excited initially and thought this would be a bright spot in an adventure that was about as exciting as Sporewing's drab brown color. Wrong! We got our butts handed to us thanks to idiots who don't know how to defend the bases so we called it a day and left the bg early. A 15 minute debuff was a small price to pay to escape that frustrating mess.


Honestly, I found him pretty useless compared to a lot of the other choices for bg pets. His special ability, Spore Cloud, increases enemy casting time but its easy to see and thus easy to walk out of. I thought maybe once they got the debuff it would last the full 10 seconds but I tested it on several mobs and it disappeared when they moved out of the spore cloud. For one target its not that bad because its on a low cd but still, it seems an easy move to evade. Here you can see the spore cloud that the smart casters and healers either didn't walk into or walked out of:


Sporewing has definitely been released back to Zangarmarsh where he belongs. Nothing about him clicked with me at all. Peace out, Sporewing!


Another please!
Name: Sesamee
Level:85
Exotics: yes
Restrictions: nope

[Sarantha]

Will do Ravager in another post and when I get time to traverse to the draenei lands to get him. The moth was easy to get, and is in fact very pretty. I went to Terrokar Forest and tamed a Royal Teromoth. There are other versions with the same color, but this one was just the first one that popped into my head and I went for it. I named her Kiyomi, meaning "pure beauty" in japanese:







Took Kiyomi swimming and she did a little fighting with low level mobs. Her Serenity Dust is pretty neat:





Kiyomi and Sara:



I think Kiyomi is a very beautiful pet. I've never liked moths much before, but Kiyomi and I really clicked after I tamed her. I think she will stick around for awhile. Her animations are so graceful and elegant and she really is a beauty, which is what her name means. Serenity Dust, her special ability, is very useful against caster mobs, but it is pretty much useless on the whole against any other type of mob. The thing that makes her special is her shockingly good dps for such an elegant looking pet. I figured she would be in the cunning category instead of Ferocity, since she looks anything but ferocious! I'll post my thing for another roll, even though I do fully intend to do the Ravager tomorrow, since I'm off work and can manage to waste the time running to the alliance lands.

Name: Sarantha
Level: 85
Exotics: Yes
Restrictions: No monkeys/gorillas. Would like to add dogs and Shale/lava spiders to restrictions. Just do not like dogs/shale spiders and lava spiders I just see too much of. Wolves are perfectly fine, as are normal spiders, just no dogs or shale/lava spiders.

[TygerDarkstorm]

Vasken(Avanji):
Green Raptor


Finduilas(Larkania):
Black Fox


Sesamee:
Red Core Hound


::OR::

Yellow Silithid

(You do not have to do both rolls, I'm just giving you a second option in case you don't want to try and obtain a red core hound since they require a bit of effort to get.)

Saratha:(Going ahead and pre-rolling yours for when you finish the ravagers. )
White Warp Stalker

[Sesamee]

I'll do the Red Corehound no problem. I want the mail head off Rag for a transmog set anyway

[TygerDarkstorm]

Ah cool; works out nicely then. ^_^

[Aryenna]

I'd like to give this a go, if I may!

Name: Aryenna
Level: 85
Exotics: Sure!
Restrictions: None

[Talaridan]

Report for: Blue Moth

Screenshots/Idles:




Swimming:


Combat:




Overall: This moth really is a rather lovely pet. Elegant, delicate-looking, and graceful, but I just didn't really click with her at all. She didn't really seem to ever get much personality to me, even though aesthetically, I liked the model. Good DPS and she had some interesting little chitters and sounds. However, I just didn’t really care for her at all. I can’t exactly put my finger on why. Maybe it’s just this particular character, but I really didn’t care for the moth and released her within an hour or so of taming. I found the constant wing-sounds and the dust a bit annoying, and since I felt no fondness, I didn’t really see a reason to keep her for too long.


Name: Khi'jazi
Level: 85
Exotics: Yes! Beast Master is my main spec!
Restrictions: None
Pets already tested: Violet Dragonhawk, Red & Blue Boss Wasp, Yellow Hyena, Blue Moth