The "blue" outland raptor (I'd call it purple personally, but I suppose it does have blue on it) is only found static in one location, which—surprisingly enough—is not actually in Outland. instead, it's the raptor mount of some of the undead trolls out in Zul'Drak. Petopia reports that this used to be a colour-changer, and that the rider will continue to respawn until the raptor is dismissed. Either they've fixed that bug or I managed to avoid it by taming the raptor right out from under said rider, then killing the rider afterwards.
This raptor—as with many pets for the challenge—sat around being stared at for a few days, unnamed. Desperate to get this report done, I
asked some guildmates for help, and ultimately settled on "Effluvium:"
Effluvium: a slight or invisible exhalation or vapor, especially one that is disagreeable or noxious. Sounds like I don't like my raptor, doesn't it? It's not that bad, honest!
At first I thought Effluvium was simply the most drastic display of the shadowing issues that sometimes plague the character select screen, but upon closer inspection, I think he's a little bit confused as to what colour he's supposed to be these days—he used to be a black-blue/purple colour changer, and in-game he's the static blue/purple... but on the character select screen, he's black! He's static here too, if you're wondering... black on the char select, blue/purple in-game.
Outland raptors have one idle animation, a walk, a run, a swim idle, and a swim movement animation. If you've seen the raptor/raven lord mounts, you've likely seen at least the land versions. The swim has quite a bit of a bob, and the raptor's powerful legs do most of the propelling.
Raptors are a ferocity pet, which makes them great dps and good at holding aggro on a single target, but absolutely awful at holding multiple mobs unless specifically told to attack the additions. Their racial special, Tear Armor, is a 4% armor reduction debuff that stacks up to 3 times (for 12% total) on a 6 second cooldown (4.2s with 3/3 Longevity), and which lasts for 30s. In theory, a raptor could keep up the debuff on multiple mobs, but I was unable to verify if it would do so on its own on the dungeon runs Effluvium was brought along to. Druids (Faerie Fire) and Warriors (Sunder Armor) are the most common supplier of this debuff, and Rogues (Expose Armor) can also apply it, though only protection warriors apply it as part of their usual rotation, so many DPS warriors will often ask you to use a raptor or serpent so they can spend their rage and GCDs on other things, upping their personal DPS. Whether you want to do so is entirely up to you, of course. Visually, they have two attack animations, a lunge and a jump.
Effie is a striking purple, with a very bold blue underbelly. Notably, on his thighs and upper-arms, there's a nice iridescent scaling effect (lower-left). Unfortunately, the nice texturework does not continue throughout the entire body, and this shows up most notably on the helm and 3D spikes. His teeth are the same colour as the rest of his head, which—while consistent with the spike colouring—feels a bit weird. He has 2D spikes on his tail, hind legs, and a stripe of "finning" (totally not the right word D:) going down the underside of his neck which look fine except for the edges, which are pixellated and make me sad-in-pants! His shoulder joints twist in a strange way while he idles, which I only noticed because of the colour transition there—it might not be as apparent on differently-coloured raptors.
Overall, Effluvium provides a good debuff for soloing (though it hardly ever got to a full 3 stacks during solo play), can provide a great debuff for physical DPS in dungeons and raids, and is overall a very nice looking pet. I'm not sure if he's for me for the "permanent files," but I haven't found a better sunder-buddy, so he'll hang around for now!
Name: Basanti
Level: 85
Exotics: Yes
Restrictions: None
Rares I Have: Skoll, Arcturis, King Krush, Sunblade Dragonhawk, Grimtotem Spirit Guide, Ghostcrawler,
Corpse Scarab
I've taken a small break from these because I keep forgetting about them and taking forever to actually do my reports even though I have all the screenshots done. >_>
I'm not really doing any "Oh this model part looks this way, but its not looking right this way" or anything. Tried to do my best though!
