In the blink of an eye

You ever have one of those moments where you hesitated a drop, only to look back and wonder what the hell happened?

My postings and chronicles of my WoW experience sorta went through that this weekend. The short story is, lots of stuff happened. I didn't write an entry about it on monday. Lots more stuff happened. Now the stuff from the weekend seems an afterthought and silly.

Here's the slightly longer version, but still pretty short. What happened to Amava over the weekend....
1) Lots of guild drama and officer chat and he-said-she-said stuff.
2) Ding 56
3) /gquit. The discussions in step 1 above revealed to me that the leader guy and I share different visions of how a guild can be fun, so I decide to part ways.
4) Ding 57
5) Tamed a new pet. Poor Teddy, the bear I got when I was a wee lass at lvl 10 and has been my exclusive pet ever since, has been retired to the stables.

So that's the slightly longer version. Of course the full version would include all the gory details of how people's RL drama will influence guild drama, and just how painful the 4-hour in-game chat was that I've neatly condensed into the one line item in #1 above. Also all the fun questing I did to level up those two steps. The only one that's probably worthy of some additional detail is step 5, especially since this is a drop of a hunter's blog.

Teddy. My bear who I got at lvl 10, and who has travelled with me tanking all sorts of mobs and only asking for the occasional mend pet, and some mystery meat from time to time. Poor fella, he's been put to pasture. I've known for a while that bears are not the optimal pet. I picked him originally because of the cinematic trailer to WoW. You know the one...it opens up with a Dwarf hunter and his bear trudging through the snowy hills of Dun Morogh overlooking IF. To rewind a few months, when I first installed WoW, it was on a brand spankin' new computer, and I had just hooked up the sweet sweet new monitor and surround sound system. Cranking the subwoofer, I fire up WoW for the first time ever and the cinematic trailer starts rolling. You see that dwarf's huge nostrils, and then the bear's snow-encrusted fur blowing in the wind. It blew me away. I wanted a bear.

When I hit lvl 10, I wanted that bear. I got my bear. And he's been by my side ever since. He's been with me through my first foray into Marksmanship spec, and my bewilderment over why people say a hunter's pet is so awesome. He couldnt hold aggro worth a damn (at the time, I thought it was his fault. i have since learned the error of my ways). He was with me through my first respec into Beast Mastry spec, and some changes to how I open fire. Holy S. Teddy can hold aggro now. He went into all sorts of instances and BG's with me. And his only complaint is to make a little yellow frowning icon to let me know he's hungry. What a trooper.

Farewell, Teddy! I hope the stable is nice, and they keep your straw bed fresh.

Because mama's got a new friend.

Over the past several weeks, I've started reading a bunch of blogs, some of which are dedicated to hunter topics. You know the one, and the other one. They all hype up boars as good levelling pets. Ok, let me try that out. What's all this hub-bub about "charge"? Head over to petopia to read up on them. Hmm, seems that Grunter is a cool boar around my lvl. Ok, that sounds good, I'll have that. Fly over to IF and put Teddy in the stable, then head to Blasted Lands where Grunter likes to hang out. I have never tamed a pet since Teddy, so I barely remember how. But I know that I'm running sans pet and feel pretty naked, so let me tame whatever beast I run into first, just so I have a bodyguard, and I'll throw that one away when Grunter shows up.

So I run around the area. No Grunter. No Grunter. Run some more. No Grunter. Petopia says he's "rare" but I don't know what that means. Run some more. No Grunter. Let me check thotbot. Oh, "rare" means he only spawns every 32-48 hours. Gotcha. So I guess I wont have me some Grunter. For now ;-)

But I did keep my Ashmane Boar, who is pretty cool, coming with charge level 5 right out of the box. I was lvl 55 or 56 at the time, and she was 49, so she misses alot against the mobs at my level. She's levelled up a bunch, so its getting better, but since Teddy was always at my level or just 1 level below, its a bit strange experience. There was also something weird going on where Growl wasn't firing, so between the high miss rate, and the Growl not firing (even if I turned off automatic mode and did it manually, and yes, I did have enough focus), threat generation was low as can be.

The Growl situation was really bugging me, so I logged off and logged back in. Growl now worked as expected, with automatic mode firing as often as focus would allow. Strange, but ok, don't look back.

Charge rules. Ruby hits a mob with her rank 5 charge and instantly generates about 2.5k threat. I can open fire immediately and pretty much never pull aggro. Very nice as a companion for levelling.