Random Pet Challenge [v3.0]

[Sesamee]

My challenge this time was a purple serpent. You can get this model by going to Wailing Caverns or there's an NPC named Venomtip in Scholazar Basin. I had previously tamed Venomtip on an impulse when I came across him doing dailies for the Oracles. I named him Volos after the Slavic serpentine god. Then I began to think Volos was more suited to the Violet serpent model so I switched them out. Almost immediately I regretted this and was going to go back for the purple one but then I needed room for King Krush so had to release Volos. It was a tough decision but now that I've gotten him back for this challenge, Volos is here to stay!! I'm going to have to figure out which pet to release though. And I may be starting to rethink my support for sticking to 25 stable slots...just sayin!

The tame was easy, no big deal!


Venomtip respawns fast. This is literally less than 2 minutes after the tame and he's already up again!


Stumbling across Volos in the wild really made me appreciate just how gorgeous the WoW serpents are. I love snakes in real life too but could never own one as I used to keep pet rats and to me that would be like feeding kittens or puppies to a pet :/ I just can't do it even though I know snakes have to eat too! Anyway! Volos is gorgeous with a purple scaly back and fins with pink highlights. I love how the light dances across his body. And his idle animations are so endearing. He sways side to side flicking the air with his tongue and makes the cutest faces when doing so!


Serpents are in the cunning tree and they have an armor reducing special ability. I decided to take him along on some bg's to see how he did. I had previously done dailies with him and he does just fine. I pvp as BM and most guides say a Ferocity pet is best but I'm only doing regular bg's for now so I can afford to play around with different pets a bit. I spec'd him for maximum dps and I have to say he was a tad squishy. Next time I'm going to give him more survival talents and see how much of a difference it makes. This is how he was talented:


Here we are taking time out of AV to pose against the pretty snowy background. He took on a very blueish hue here but he's really much more purply/pink looking.


Breaks over, time for action!! His combat animations are just bites and lunges pretty much. But it's really cool to see him get gigantic with Bestial Wrath! I sooo wish serpents had some sort of constricting ability where they'd wrap their bodies around their "prey" and squeeze the life out of them! God, can you imagine how cool that would be??


Here he looks very pink! This is right outside the MF portal in Hyjal. It's so cool to see him change colors in different settings


I loooove the way he swims. He stretches his entire body out and just makes an "s" through the water. It's so cool looking!!


Spirit Serpent!!


Here we are waiting for the boat with all our victims to dock! Muahahaha!


Overall, I'm so glad I got this pet as it put Volos back in my stable. He's here to stay this time. I love everything about him. He's gorgeous and I love having him by my side. He's not the greatest utility pet, there are probably others out there a bit better, but all in all he does a decent job and his cool factor more than makes up for it.


Thanks for checking out our story!

[Nubhorns]

I desperately need to get back into my hunter, so I figure I'll actually do one of these for once. :V

Name: Veeka
Level: 85
Exotics: Nope!
Restrictions: None at all. :)
Rares I Have: Skarr(unique), Snarler and the Sewer Beast(not unique, obviously).

[Sesamee]

Another please:

Name: Sesamee
Level: 85
Exotics: yes
Restrictions: none
Rares I have: Loque, Magria, Terrorpene, Olm the Wise, Arcturis, King Krush, Deth'tilac, Aotona, Nuramoc, Skarr

And for my baby hunter:

Name: Lyalla
Level: 23
Exotics: no
Restrictions: none
Rares I have: Shadowclaw

[Finduilas]

My pet challenge this time was the grey rhino.
This model can be found in the Borean Tundra, Sholazar Basin or the Storm Peaks.
I picked my new fellow from the Borean Tundra, right outside of the Horde Base there. He is named Brutus, a latin name that just jumped into my mind after I tamed him.


Appearance:

I love rhinos. Their wooly fur makes them so cuddly and Brutus is no exception to this. I love his always a bit grumpy expression and his size. I have a rhino with my Tauren and he's one of her favorite pets. I already had the grey rhino with Morga, but let go of him again, because I think they didn't match and now, after the pet challenge I finally know why. It's the eyes. They are red and have no pupils. The other rhino's eyes are brown or green, but the red really bothers me. I don't mind the lacking pupils, this just looks a little bit odd, compared to other's pets well designed eyes.
I personally think it's sad that they shrink so much after taming (same thing with Devilsaurs for me) but he still looks big next to Morga. And he looks really funny next to Morga in his Brunnhildar disguise for the daily quest although a bit grumpy (well like always) because he's not the biggest one around.

Sounds and animations:

The rhino's sounds are very nice. He makes some "huff and grump" sounds when you send him into battle and while fighting more grumping sounds. I think they fit his facial expression perfectly. Brutus is no loud pet and I like him this way.
I think there was a time back in Wrath that when you tamed a rhino it kept it's ground shaking stomping, so when you ran you always had the ground shaking. I can be mistaken, if so, please tell me. Now he just stomps at Morga's side without shaking the ground.
Brutus' idle animation is to shake the head from one side to the other and making a "humph" sound. Nothing spectacular, but kind of cute. For me he always looks like a child complaining to his mother "why don't we do something funny?".
His swimming animations... I don't think he likes the water. While swimming he looks like a big floofy rock floating in the water and while diving verey uncomfortable while paddling like a overgrown dog. But I understand, I don't want this mass of hair to dry again in the freezing cold of Northrend.


Fighting:

I specced Brutus towards a tank and went very well with it. My brother currently quests in Northrend, so I helped him out a lot with group quests in Dragonblight and quests in the dungeons, so didn't have to wait for a group. I always had Brutus out with me and he made a great job. He didn't lose much health, only once when I had him pull three groups in An'kahet. He held aggro very well, Thunderstomp helping a lot.
One thing I can't understand is his special ability "Stampede" that causes his enemies to take additional bleeding damage. Brutus is an exotic pet. As such I have to be Beastmaster to use him. As a Beastmaster I don't do bleeding damage. If I wanted to help out my group in a dungeon or raid by increasing bleeding damage, I would not take a rhino, but a hyena, which is ferocity, provides more damage and is not in every one's line of sight all the time. So in fact his ability NEVER helps me in my skill tree as Beastmaster. It's useless. I switch it off on my rhinos, so they can use the cooldown on their other abilities.

Conclusion:

Brutus is a very nice pet. I adore rhinos despite their completely useless ability (at least useless for me). They are floofy goofballs and I like having them around. I won't keep Brutus with Morga, because my rhino-love goes out to Larkania's rhino. Rhinos are really good tanks and I would love to have one as my tanking partner when I'm in Marksman, because then I would make use of his ability.


Next roll please:

Name: Morga (Orc)
Level: 85
Exotics: yes, Bm is his main
Restrictions: no diseased pets please

edit: Pets I already did a review on: but I'll do a review on one of these pets again, if you want me to, if you should roll on one of them.
with my Tauren Larkania: Dark Grey Gorilla, Red Nether Ray, Armored brown ghost boar, brown rhino, blue warpstalker, tan wolf, Aotona, black fox
with Nerdanel (Belf): green raptor, purple demon dog, purple parrot, blue raptor, blue vulture
Finduilas: yellow beetle, white chimera
Morga: armored black boar, grey rhino
with several others: brown scorpid, grey moth, diseased dark brown bear

just noticed: I did a lot of tenacity reviews The system loves tenacity pets, admit it!

[starkittens]

Here we are waiting for the boat with all our victims to dock! Muahahaha!

it looks like he's spitting that white thing that's flying (just past you, around middle of the destroyer)

[Melentari]

My 'Aka and I decided to head out from Menethil on this adventure, to go find the Hyena I was assigned. We were sitting there a while before the boat arrived and we headed to Theramore. From there it was a short flight north to the Northern Barrens, where the Hecklefang Hyenas live. On the way, I made a special side trip and look who happened to be up!

I didn't tame him, though, as I have cats I love and I didn't see a reason to steal him from someone who might really appreciate him. I would've tried to rehome him, but I was the only Ally in the zone and it was about six AM - nobody was around. So Humar got to lord over his pride in peace.

Further north, I found my quarry: a hyena in some mixed company.

I landed, looked around, and I had to admit - the little short tails on these guys were pretty charming, and watching him walk around was fun, but I had a job to do so I set about taming.

He was so low level that this time, I didn't bother trapping. I don't think he got much damage in - after all, there were seventy levels between us. In the end, though, I had myself a Hyena at my side.

Now for the nitty-gritty. His size didn't change much at all. Standing there beside the wild hyenas, I could barely tell a difference. For idle animations, he did the same as most wolves - stand and sway, scratch, and sniff to each side. I will say that his spotty hide was actually pretty nice, but there were some places I just didn't like.

I don't know if they intended him to look diseased or just scruffy, but it was edging a little too close to the diseased for my comfort. There are the usual 2D complaints - his mane is very rough and his claws are really ridiculous, but those Mickey Mouse ears are actually cute. But after speccing him, I realised what his name just HAD to be, given the company I found him in.

If I PvP'd, I can only imagine how much havoc that name would wreak. *ahem*

From there, I took him somewhere that was both strangely different and stunningly like the Barrens. Outland.

I'm pretty sure he'd never seen anything like the Fel Reaver, but I'll forever consider myself as having a score to settle with that thing after the crap I went through to get my dungeon key back in the day, so the two of us got together and killed him - and we killed him so fast that I barely had any time to get any screenshots at all. And that was a trend that continued as I went through my usual daily adventures.

Kodo didn't bring me any spectacular luck and, honestly, I had to tune out all the little hyena attack noises. Things did die very quickly with him around. In fact, on that Kael kill, we killed him so fast that I ended up being bugged floating in the air for a while. I could appreciate his DPS, but the bleed damage buff wasn't really useful. I quest as BM and dungeon as Surv, so the only way I'd keep him around is if I had my pocket druid with me - and he usually brings his own bleed damage buff.

His animations were actually rather boring. I've seen the same thing on a thousand wolves, and they didn't look mangy while they did it. He had one attack, and here it is:

The classic lunge-and-bite.

One thing I did learn with Kodo around is that I really suck at taking screencaps of pets in combat. I get too focused on doing the dungeon to think about screencapping doing the dungeon, and I end up with a few "posed" screenshots instead - and this after having Kodo around for two days and running the dungeons twice. I've really got to work on that.

Overall, while I did like the spotty hide and short little tail, that was about all I liked about him. I was amused by my own naming job, and for a while I considered keeping him just for that, but the fact that I have an assortment of Ferocity pets, most of whom are more useful to my specific situation, made him a little superfluous. I let him go while I was repairing my gear in Ironforge, figuring that he'd make one of the Dwarves a good pet. I'll give him points for having some charming aspects, but he just wasn't so useful. So I'm sorry, Kodo, but if I ever do find a reason for a bleed debuff, I'll keep you on my short list of things to go tame.

I'm up for another!

Name: Melentari
Level: 85
Exotics: Yep, I have a BM offspec.
Restrictions: None that I need a group to get to on-level. I just don't have the resources. Lowbie dungeons are fine.
Rares: Gondria, Olm the Wise, Magria, Ban'thalos, Terrorpene, Ankha
Honourable Mentions: Ghost Sabre, Alystros the Verdant Keeper (yes, there's an owl with his skin, but taming him was an adventure)

Edited for word usage. I said "charming" a lot.

[Sesamee]

Mel, if you raid with your hunter you'll want to have a hyena in your stables permanently. My hunter is an alt so I do 10m alt runs and I use him a lot in raids. And if you raid as MM it's no question that you should have one with you. I agree though, they're kind of rough looking and could use an update. But my poor ol' Sancho sees more end game content than some of my more favored pets!

[Melentari]

Mel, if you raid with your hunter you'll want to have a hyena in your stables permanently. My hunter is an alt so I do 10m alt runs and I use him a lot in raids. And if you raid as MM it's no question that you should have one with you. I agree though, they're kind of rough looking and could use an update. But my poor ol' Sancho sees more end game content than some of my more favored pets!

I don't raid at all, and honestly, I hate Marks and have ever since I started playing back in BC. For Surv, I prefer using my Dragonhawk (who recently got upgraded to one of the Bloodfalcons from Botanica) for the magic damage buff, and in BM, I use... well, whatever's shiniest at the moment, since BM is my questing spec and nothing really matters when you're questing as long as it works. I did a few raids back in Wrath and BC, but since then, raiding just hasn't been my priority. Thank you for the advice, though, and if I do start raiding, I'll keep it in mind.

[TygerDarkstorm]

Kalhoun:
King Krush


Talody(Jandos):
Green Crocolisk


Talody(Lael):
Black Fox


::OR::

Grey Boar


Sarantha:
Red Devilsaur


Nubhorns(Veeka):
Green and Red Scarab Beetle


Sesamee:
Gomegaz


Sesamee(Lyalla):
White Wolf


Finduilas(Morga):
Ghostly White Demon Dog


Melentari:
Red and Black Felboar

[Huntmyth]

My challenge this time was the Green Chimaera. I thaught awesome my favorite color is green and the pet looked cool so this should be good. Than i found out that its actually a rare named The Evalrcharr that is suspected to have up to like a 48 hour respawn lol. I sat around camping him for a while and checking on and off between doing other things when my girlfriend who was on a different server at the time decides to check and what do you know Hes up and she tames for the hell of it.


I was getting tired of just flying around but decided to do 1 more fly by and bam he was there on my server! I thaught this tame was really cool because of his name "The Evalcharr" I read that he used to have a different skin but with cata it was changed to his current form and his level was also changed to match the zone.

The tame went off without any problems since he was a low level but i was so happy he was finally there!


I decided to name him Maionios which is short for Drakon Maionios which was a huge dragon that ravaged the land of Lydia in greek mythology. I found it to be funny since my girlfriends name is Lydia so we had a few laughs there.

After jumping around town for awhile i noticed some specific things about Maionios' facial features. Since the Chimaeras have two heads they differ from each head. One has hair on his chin, one Horn on his head and the ears point up. While the other head has no chin hair two horns and the ears point down. Im not sure if this is like it on all the Chimaeras but i thaught it was cool.


I also noticed that the tails are different which really braught the whole 2 headed 1 body theme together. One tail is like a lions tail while the other is just a simple dragon tail.


His combat animations are simple swooshes and bites while he kinda flys back and forth. His main skill is Frost breath which starts out more as a lighting strike than a breath.


The coolest thing about Maionios is deffinatly his Froststorm Breath that can be used at anytime for just 20 focus so ive been having fun jumping around and spamming it lol its one of the best looking things ive seen from a pet and wish they used it for an actually spell effect!


Maionios' swim animation is the same as his flying but slowed down because of the drag from being in the water.


As i was taking pictures im talking to my gf in vent and she went afk so i decided to get a drink and some food at the time when i got back of course i forgot to swim to the surface and came back to me and my new friend to be dead..... =[

I got laughed at pretty hard for that one.

I decided to fly over Hyjal to see what we could kill and landed near some fire elementals and figured what better way to kill it with my new fire fighter Maionios!


Hope you enjoyed our story as much as i did i actually really like this pet and will be keeping him around!

[Huntmyth]

Another please!

Name: Huntmyth
Level: 85
Exotics & Rares: Sure
Rares I Have : The Evalcharr.

[Kalhoun]

I was assigned King Krush this time! King Krush is one of my favorite babies, and I love him to pieces. This guy was just waiting for me to take him home when I decided to go tame him, but he is probably one of the hardest rares to track down - I was extremely lucky with him. I did try to find him again just for this challenge, because I thought it would be neat to show his untamed size (he's huge), but I didn't have any luck.

King Krush is the only devilsaur of this color, and being a devilsaur he is a BM only tame - an exotic.

My Krush is named Sharptooth, after the t-rex from the movie "Land Before Time." That movie is probably to blame for my life-long dinosaur obsession (I begged my mom to take me to see it when it first came out in theatres), and I will still pull it out to watch now and then as an adult (it's one of those "so cute it hurts" sort of things). That dinosaur obsession has landed me a job in paleo illustration, so I have fond feelings for that movie.

So here is my Toothy. I love his colors. For an older model, he still is quite a handsome fellow - I think the devilsaurs have aged well. Though he does shrink down a massive amount once tamed, he's still pretty big beside a human.







Just look at that smile!



Devilsaurs roar now and then when they're idle, and it does have a "RAAAR" sound effect.



Toothy, like all devilsaurs, has a special ability called "Terrifying Roar" that increases your critical strike chance. To see just how well this effects my damage, I decided to take him to one of my Stonecore solo runs. The mobs before the first boss must be burned down quickly - the pack right before Millhouse are even tied to him, so if you aggro them, you aggro the boss and his pack of mobs as well. What I do is burn down each mob before the boss has a chance to get me, dismiss pet and feign. Typically I use my spiritbeast for this job, but Toothy's increased crit could very well help even more.

Toothy also has a special ability called "Monstrous Bite" that decreases healing to an enemy mob. But none of the mobs in Stonecore heal, so I didn't get to test that.

Devilsaurs attack with bites, head butts and stomps. The stomping made more sense when they were gigantic in the wild - at their tamed size they look like they're just stomping on the mob's feet.





I was nervous about not having the healing from my spiritbeast, but it turns out I didn't really need it anyways. Toothy burned down mobs fast enough that I typically took a manageable amount of damage, or even none at all. When it came time to burn Millhouse down to 50% so he would run and summon the gyreworm boss, my pet had more health left than my spiritbeast typically did - the crits might have made it go faster, and thus he took less damage. I was even able to dismiss him before feigning (usually on that pull I sacrifice my pet). The only downside to using Toothy was applying Mend Pet, and that certainly was not a big deal.

Here we are running. Devilsaurs run in a sort of "chasing something tasty" sort of way - head down, mouth open.



Stealthosaurus.



Toothy yelled at Slabhide for me before I dismissed him for my turtle (Slabhide clearly was not impressed). Toothy's threats didn't make the mount drop, but I appreciate him sticking up for me.



And one of my favorite things about devilsaurs is how they swim. I literally LOLed when I first saw it - it's just so ridiculous. Their little gimpy arms quickly paddle while their legs do this long, slow kicking. It's so absurd but so adorable.



Anyways, devilsaurs are awesome, and King Krush is by far my favorite out of all of them. And what's not to love about having a pet dinosaur?

[Teigan]

I would like some random pets! The more random the better For Teigan (85, BM), Dayva (85, BM) and Tanzi (83, non-BM)

[Kalhoun]

I would like another roll, please!

Name: Kalhoun
Level: 85
Exotics: Yeppers
Restrictions: None
Rares I Have: Sambas, Loque'nahak, King Krush, Ankha, Magria, Karoma, Terrorpene, Jadefang, Red, Blue and Green Madexx

[Nubhorns]

My pet was the Green and Red Scarab Beetle! There are two mobs with this skin, but I went with the easier one: the Emerald Scarab, a level 83 mob in the Obelisk of the Stars, Uldum.


Here. Ish.

The Obelisk of the Stars is home to three other colors of scarabs, all of which phase out if you complete the associated quests - i.e. part of the main Uldum questline. Whoops! They can easily be brought out of hiding with a snake + freezing trap combo, however!




Boring tame.

This guy is named Beetls! I asked Ryan "what should I name my beetls" by mistake and...well, yeah.



"name him beetls" - Ryan

His model looks really nice in the wild, but it looks a little stretched out and not as nice when he 'grows up'. There's also a dangly bit that I guess counts as a 'tail', really, but it looks like it's part of his carapace so it wigs me out when it wobbles during his idle animation. :1 His colors are really pleasing to the eye, even though they don't match my gear - a nice yellowy green, with a darker forest green, gold(really more of a dusty tan) and red accents.

He does a funny little idle where he looks back and forth and sort of rears up on his legs - it's really strange looking, and I completely failed to get a picture of it.



Beetles make excellent tanking pets, supposedly - this wouldn't be a surprise, as they're part of the tenacity family and share the same talent as turtles: a 50% damage reduction shield. Beetls and I decided to go bully Myzerian.


Haha, you fell.

I've killed this guy before, but I used my boar as a fresh 85 in questing/dungeon blues. It was horrible and I died several times. Beetls made this laughably easy - the only issue I had was keeping myself healed when I stood in fire for screenshots. He held aggro very well for being specced like a blind monkey(I just threw talents wherever, mostly into damage reduction/threat stuff) with me in a mediocre BM spec and dpsing very little.



Beetls doesn't look too spectacular in combat, just lunges and a weird little carapace-thrusty type thing. He looked quite impressive furiously mauling Myzerian's feet, though.


Admittedly this looks really badass.



The fight took a while - beetles are not the best dps pets, and the fact that I was in photographer mode didn't exactly help. We whittled him down, though, and I remembered to activate his talent before the fight was over:

Harden Carapace is basically the same as Shell Shield or whatever it is that turtles have, kind of an emergency shield wall.


It has the bonus of looking totally bitchin'.

Once Myzerian fell, we looted our hard-earned Shimmering Claw and some gold - and took a picture while I prepared to say goodbye.



As adorable and handy as Beetls proved to be, I already have a tanking pet - my dear black bear Stella. As I do most of my playing in MM spec, I rarely have need for a 'proper' tank pet like a turtle - things just die too fast to ever really need the shield. If I ever need a tanky pet though, I know where Beetls hides.



I'd like another, please. :>

Name: Veeka
Level: 85
Exotics: I respecced back to BM/MM, so yes!
Restrictions: None!
Rares I Have: Skoll

[TygerDarkstorm]

I would like some random pets! The more random the better For Teigan (85, BM), Dayva (85, BM) and Tanzi (83, non-BM)

I'm more than happy to roll pets for you providing you request them in the proper format.

[Teigan]

I would like some random pets! The more random the better For Teigan (85, BM), Dayva (85, BM) and Tanzi (83, non-BM)

I'm more than happy to roll pets for you providing you request them in the proper format.

Er, yeah

Name: Teigan
Level: 85
Exotics: yes
Restrictions: none

Name: Dayva
Level: 85
Exotics: yes
Restrictions: none

Name: Tanzi
Level: 83
Exotics: no
Restrictions: no exotics

[TygerDarkstorm]

Thank ya Teigs. I'll get some rolls out after I go take a shower.

[Sarantha]

Pet challenge. Red devilsaur. I call them orange because they look...orange, rather than red, but either way. I tamed King Mosh awhile back and named him Lucius. I was using him as a replacement for Krush, since Krush hadn't spawned for me at that point, but I've since tamed Krush and I couldn't abandon Lucius! Here are some pics of him:



Lucius roaring and hunching down a bit:



With dinos, its a bit hard to get a full face shot, but I tried:



Lucius swimming. He swims really funny. He paddles his tiny little hands faster than his big legs, apparently thinking that will keep him up better:



Lucius and Sara in our favorite zone, Hyjal. No mini fire elementals were eaten during this challenge:



Lucius is a really awesome pet. I just love devilsaurs. I've since completed his "family" by taming all 3 of the other devilsaur colors. His animations are great, and so is his general appearance. You don't see many people using orange devilsaurs, despite the fact that they are not rares. While idle, he will occasionally make a roaring sound, so if you don't like pets that make sounds while idle, devilsaurs are not for you. I abandoned some other pets I loved to complete Lucius's family, so you can tell how much I fell in love with devilsaurs after playing with Lucius for awhile!

Name: Sarantha
Level: 85
Exotics: Yes
Restrictions: Can only do white devilsaur, green devilsaur, and yellow worm right now.

[TygerDarkstorm]

Huntmyth:
Black Deep Sea Crab


Kalhoun:
Green and Purple Ravager


Nubhorns(Veeka):
Black Raptor


Teigan:
Orange Raptor


Teigan(Dayva):
Green Serpent


Teigan(Tanzi):
Olive Spider