My challenge this time was for Morga, my Orc. He has always tamed whatever creatures he liked and he came across and already tried out a dog in form of a mastiff (and this didn't end well for both of them...). So at first I was a bit sad when I got assigned this guy:
The white ghost demon dog. This creature can only be found in the depths of Karazhan. I NEVER had even seen Karazahn before and had to look up where it was. I was already playing wow during BC, but I never entered any of those raids. So when my fiance got back from work and I had him in Skype, I burst out my request to take me there. Luckily for me, he knows most of the old raids and even knew where we had to go to find this dog. So we fly over to this tower in the eastern kingdoms, open a raid group, turn right after coming into the raid and enter the dusty, cobweb filled cellar. After a room full of spiders *eeew* my fiance seems very pleased with himself and shows me a couple of dogs walking around. I spot one ghostly white on - and almost disconnect. Screen goes to a stop and I don't see anything but Morga's big back anymore. My fiance tells me "oh the dogs hit you now,... they still hit you" - funny, thanks. My laptop finally decides to be good again and I find Morga being chewed on by two of the patrolling dogs, both white. I think I have one of them in target, hit tame and the next group comes stomping towards me. Surrounded by about 6 dogs trying to eat my face the tame finishes and I even have tamed the right dog. We finish of the other ones and I can finally take a screenshot.
I named my new fellow Poof, because I tamed him after a heavy fight with a friend of mine and all I could think of was this stupid thing: "Hey want to see a magic trick?" "yeah" "Poof, you're single"
Stupid me, but this time my "friend" went way to far for me to just ignore her silly and insulting behavior and I kind of broke up my friendship with her. So I now have a Poof...
Appearance:
Poof is small. We all know, the demon dogs don't really grow after taming and stay at some mini-pet size. I took out my minipet olifant to show there is nearly no difference between these two - one being hunter pet, the other one companion.
Poof is one of the ghostly pets in game, and I like them. I tamed most of them at some point in the lifes of my several hunters and the only ones missing were the ghostly dogs. At first I was really disappointed by him. He looked quite grey in Karazhan and so small. He didn't grow after taming, I even think that he shrank, compared to the other dogs in the room. Next to my bulky Orc he really looks tiny but I wanted to give him a chance to proof himself.
At first I flew over to Hyjal to do my dailies with him and take some screenshots. I like how his color changed from a muddy grey to a creamy white in the daylight. I absolutely love his poofy (heehee) mane and his furry legs. He always seems to grin, that makes him look quite happy. In my last report (about the grey rhino) I complained about the red eyes. Poof also has red eyes, but they fit him, his ghostly appearance only gets better with red eyes. In some angles he doesn't look ghostly at all, at others he seems almost transparent. I like how he changes depending on the light.
Animations and sounds:
Poof has one of the cutest idle animations for hunter's pets. He does the happy puppy leap (top row, pic in the middle). He jumps in the air with his front paws like a puppy wanting a treat. I only caught him during the landing, but you can still see his happy face in it.
Sadly this does not make up for his lack of swimming animation. Seriously Blizz, you still have not been able to give pets a swimming animations that lack them? He is a dog, he should do a cute dog-paddle, but instead he just walks in the water, but at some abnormal speed without gaining much ground next to my swimming orc. This is just ridiculous. I'm glad Poof is so transparent in the water, that he is almost invisible so I won't have to look at him walking the water.
His sounds are ok. Lots of growling and yelping, but I think they fit him. He's such a tiny dog and I know tiny dogs want to make up their size with lots of growling and "grown-up-dog-behavior", Poof is no exception.
His running is nice. He makes himself quite flat, while stretching out his legs as wide as possible and galopping at Morga's side.
Fighting:
First I took Poof to my dailies with me. I usually do my dailies with one of my tanking pets or a spirit beast, so Poof was a new experience for me. His ability "Lock jaw" pins the target in one place (like the pin of a crab), that's not bad at first thought, but he has to channel it. So while Poof channels his ability I get aggro and if the mob is not dead by the time it comes out I have it chewing on my face. Then I noticed that Lock Jaw breaks, if you by accident click on Kill Command. As a Beasmaster KillCommand is in my normal use of rotation quite on top so I hit KillCommand usually the second when Poof started channelling. This helped him gain aggro, but the CD was lost... So I turned his ability off for the rest of the dailies. None of the rares were up so we were finished quite quickly (usually I try to rehome every rare I find). Poof did make nice damage, as he is ferocity, and once I had turned off his ability he even held aggro quite well. But I think I had to use a lot more "mend pet" on him than on my spirit beasts, although I specced him the same as them.
I totally forgot to take screenshots of him during fighint, but I think they wouldn't have come out great, because he usually seemed to disappear into the mob
So here are some pics I took in Orgrimmar fighting a dummy.
First pic shows his ability's animation. Looks like a warrior had just stomped on you, so same thing. His attacking ist the normal "lunge and bite" along with hitting with his right paw.
Then I decided to switch to my MM-skill for a battleground. I usually pvp as BM, but I didn't want to try out my dog and then switch to my spirit beast in the middle of the Bg because I like it better. So Bg as MM was actually quite fun. I only took a pic of Poof and Morga defending the tower, because during fights I totally forgot about screenshots, but well... I think Poof really did a great job. He annoyed one of the Nelf rogues to death I think, because she always died through my hands while Poof held her locked in place (thanks Poof). I only died twice and finished second (after a rogue) and Horde won with ease. After this Bg I really came to like Poof, because I had finally found a thing he really was useful for.
Conclusion:
I like Poof, despite my first impression he has grown on me. I think I'll keep him around a while and probably do some pvp in MM with him. Because of his small size he didn't get hit very often, I think my enemies mostly didn't even see him coming until it was too late. He is a cute little goofball and I love his happy puppy behavior.
Next roll please: again for Morga, I finally like playing him again with the pet challenge
Name: Morga
Level: 85
Exotics: yes!
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, ghostly white demon dog
with several others: brown scorpid, grey moth, diseased dark brown bear
