Posts with tag raptor

Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, we contribute to Azeroth's obesity epidemic by refusing to walk.

Mounts: They get your ass from point A to point B, and if you're lucky, they'll do it as stylishly as possible. They're the most immediately visible status symbol in WoW and often give you a one-glance note on the kind of player at whom you're looking. People astride Invincible can be counted upon to be hardcore raiders from the Wrath of the Lich King era, someone riding a Violet Proto-Drake is never new to the game, and players rocking a White Stallion are seriously old school.

Players who have been around for any length of time almost inevitably accrue a stable's worth of beasties to cart them around, but some folks go the extra mile for the Leading the Cavalry and Mountain o' Mounts achievements. In Cataclysm, these are a lot easier than they once were, although you should still be prepared to dump a ton of gold and time into them no matter what. Fortunately, the first part of the Mountain o' Mounts trek should also net you The Ambassador achievement and title.

Cryptozoic has just announced that War of the Elements, the first WoW TCG Worldbreaker expansion, will be released worldwide on April 26, 2011. The expansion is being released in four languages at the same time around the world, a first for the trading card game. War of the Elements also features loot cards, as usual, for WoW players to redeem cool pets, mounts, and other in-game items from WoW TCG cards. War of the Elements will include Landros' Lichling, Fool's Gold, and the Savage Raptor mount.

War of the Elements will also feature two new dragonflights: the bronze and blue flights, with respective leaders Nozdormu and Kalecgos. What is interesting is that the TCG has solidified Metzen's statement that Kalecgos would become the new leader of the Blue Dragonflight and plays up the importance of these two flights in the coming patches and content in Cataclysm.

Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply).

New patches always bring unique and often limited-time-only opportunities to cash in. To take advantage of them you have to be aware, come prepared, and be willing to invest in anything from materials to spending some quality time with the Auction House.

So what can you get out of patch 3.2? Scanning through the latest PTR notes, here are some potential gold-making highlights. Remember, results may vary:

Glyphs
Strangulate, a Death Knight ranged ability that silences, will soon also apply a 3 second Interrupt effect on non-player controlled targets (read: not for PvP). While a few other abilities are also getting this buff, you might note that there is actually a Glyph of Strangulate, which skims 20 seconds off its cooldown.

Considering how many fights depend on the tank and DPS to constantly be interrupting effects (General Vezax anyone?), this particular glyph might become more popular.

Frustrated Paladins everywhere probably have dropped Glyph of Exorcism from their PvP specs, but with 3.2 making it usable on players again, they may be wanting it back.

Glyph of Claw is being added to the game, and you can expect pretty much all ferals pre-level 50 (when they train Mangle) to pick it up. Although you won't be able to make this pre-patch, you could farm the materials.

For those of us who like to collect stuff in WoW, one of the cooler announcements for patch 3.2 was the inclusion of a whole new set of raptor hatchling pets, dropped around the world by rare and elite raptors. Of course, it was also an announcement of dread for serious collectors who can tell horror stories of killing thousands upon thousands of slimes and dragons for rare pets before. But will it be all as bad as that? WoW fansites have been on the case.

Mania, maven of Hunter pets, has also been looking into the drop rates and drop mobs, and has compiled a handy chart on her blog. Between Mania and the news on Warcraft Pets, it seems we can mostly confirm that the rare raptors (such as, for example, Takk the Leaper) will always drop their pets, while those that drop only off elites have a very rare drop rate more similar to the aforementioned slimes or dragons.

Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary.

We know you want a Spirit Beast movie. We're trying, stop yelling at us! /pout

In the meantime, we present some oldies but goodies: Crocolisk, Bat, and Raptor.

You are invited to download the YouTube version (70MB) of this movie here, and the full-sized version (103MB) here.

As always, a great big Thank You to the WoW Insider editors for allowing us to publish this movie both here and on our little blog at the same time!

I mentioned the Leading the Cavalry achievement earlier, the achievement that requires 75 mounts to... well, achieve. The big question is, is that actually possible? Let's find out!

Let's use a Forsaken for our example, since they have no factors working against them like racial boundries on mounts. Keep in mind that some races will have a harder time, like Tauren can't use two of the five Horde mounts, and Gnomes don't allow anybody but Gnomes and Dwarves to use mechachickens.

The Horde has Peacocks, Raptors, Wolves, Skeletal Horses, and Kodo. From a glance at Wowhead, there seems to be...

Welcome to another edition of Scattered Shots, the other WoW Insider weekly Hunter column. Daniel Whitcomb is your guest host again this week.

So, we theorized about talented pets a bit quite a few installments of Scattered Shots ago, but now we have the actual trees live and testable on the Wrath Beta, and they seem to be firming up nicely. There's a few promised changes yet to come, such as the removal or lowering of focus costs on many major abilities and talents, and it's still very possible that Blizzard may make changes here and there before live, but I think they're solid enough at this point that we can look at each tree and make some solid predictions about how people will use them and how various talent builds might look.

Scattered Shots is for Hunters. David Bowers is caught in a Freezing Trap this week, so Daniel Whitcomb -- who did not set the trap, he swears to the Light -- is substituting for him.

You hear it pretty much all the time if you've ever slightly dipped into the world of Hunters. If you want to play in the big leagues, conventional wisdom says you're pretty much stuck with a select handful of pet types (also known as pet families): Ravagers, Cats, and Raptors for PvE, Scorpids for PvP.

But do you know why those pet families are so desired? What it really comes down to is Hunter roles and abilities.

While looking over the new "fake" pet skills page at Petopia earlier today, one of the biggest things that struck me is that the whole Thorns skill that the temporary Crab pets get for the lowbie Hunter taming quests would be a great thing for normal Crab pets to get. Right now, They're stuck learning nothing but Claw, placing them right near the bottom of the pet pantheon - very close to Sporebats, who can't learn any special abilities at all.

My two high level Hunters tamed a Carrion Bird and a Boar, respectively, so I'm lucky enough to have a good selection of skills to use, but I think there should be more options for people who love their offbeat pets like Sporebats or Hyenas or Crocs. They can even use some of the old rumored alpha skills for pets that popped up around the time of Burning Crusade's alpha. I'm hoping that Blizzard shows more types of Hunter pets some love in WoTLK with a wide selection of new skills, be it thorny shells for Crabs, a Cannibalism-type skills for Raptors, or anything else that lets us see Hunters fighting alongside fewer Cats and Ravagers (or in the case of arenas, Scorpids).

What do you think? Should Blizzard focus a bit more on a wider variety of options for Hunter pets? Or should Hunters just take what they can get and be grateful for it? If the former, what types of new pet skills would you like to see?

The always interesting Mania's Arcania has more great news for Hunters from the PTR blog. Apparently in 2.2 (and right now on the PTR), Raptor family pets will be able to learn the Dash ability. Previously, I believe, Dash was primarily available from the cats in STV (Bhag'thera, the elite panther down there, gave Dash rank 2). But now Raptors are getting in on the speedy fun, too.

Now, Raptors can already learn to both Bite and Claw (they can Growl and Cower, too, but those are the standard pet abilities that every pet has), so you might think a third ability would make them a little OP. But it turns out Raptors have been getting the short end of the stick for a while-- Cats can do all those things and Prowl, and Boars even get an extra Charge ability. Heck, even Tallstriders can Dash, so a Raptor doing it is no problem.

Bears, it seems, are stuck with the short of the stick, as they only have the Bite and Claw. But Bears get extra HP and Armor, plus a lumbering bear isn't exactly sprightly, so Bear-owning Hunters don't have much to complain about. If you're a Raptor kind of Hunter, make sure to stop by the pet trainer after 2.2, because your pet, clever girl, has picked up a new skill.