62 and Much Pet Ado

BRK » 19 January 2007 » In Pets, PvE »

Ding, 62. WooT. Hunters FTW. That’s outta my system, let’s talk pets.

BRK performed brilliantly in Hellfire Peninsula. I kept him in the same configuration as I had him for PvP, and he tanked and held aggro with aplomb.

However, he did take a lot more damage than I wanted him too. With the mob respawn rates at their current levels - they’ve gone Plaid - Hobbes and I have been caught fighting mob after mob after mob with no down-time. That quest from the Longbeard Dwarves to get the feathers? Those NPCs that raise the d@mn birds are practically rezing before they die, the birds do some serious dps, and those casters spit out nasty nature damage. A couple of times I was unable to extricate Hobbes from a small village of rezzing mobs and he tasted Hellfire Peninsula dust. A situation I do not want to allow to continue, I’m sure you can imagine.

I’ve been monitoring BRK’s damage in Scrolling Combat Text and watching just what is going on with his attacks. His Bite 8 costs twenty-five training points and it just doesn’t seem to proc enough to justify using it in PvE. With Hobbes dinging 61 yesterday, and thus a total of 305 training points available, plus the fact that a complete pet-training point respec only costs 10 silver, I thought it was time to tweak BRK’s setup. Off to Ironforge and the pet trainer, shell out 10 silver, and get all his training points reset. Let’s build a kitty for Outland, shall we?

Growl 7 is zero points. If I have to explain, go roll a Shamen.

Dash 3 is twenty-five points and if you don’t have it, for what purpose do you even have a cat?

Claw 8 is twenty-five points and my favorite attack because it has only a 1.5 second cooldown and only uses 25 focus. Bite 8, on the other hand, has a 10 second cooldown. Bye-bye Bite.

Those are our basic skills, we’ve spent 50 talent points, and we have 255 remaining.

Great Stamina 10 is 185 points and increases BRK’s stamina by 40. Like the Bee Gee’s said, it’s all about Stayin Alive.

70 training points remaining.

Natural Armor 5 is 25 training points and increases BRK’s armor by 330. In PvP, I don’t get Natural Armor because BRK’s main purpose is to destroy casters and cloth wearers. But in Hellfire Peninsula, where tanking melee mobs is a standard occupational role for hunter pets, this seems like a good choice.

45 training points remaining.

Arcane Resist 2and Nature Resist 2 are 15 training points each and increase BRK’s resistances to those magic classes by 60 each. If I were building Hobbes to go into Molten Core, I’d max Fire Resist and ignore the others. In Outland, I’m seeing a lot of Nature attacks. Why Arcane Resist 2? Because I haven’t run across Fire, Cold, or Shadow in sufficient quantities to warrant “resisting” them more.

15 training points remaining.

Fire, Cold, and Shadow Resist 1 are 5 training points each and increase BRK’s resistances to those magic classes by 30 each. Nothing spectacular, but enough to mitigate a little of the damage from each class.

And that uses all the of the available training points. Let’s see what BRK looks like now:

Not bad, I’m especially pleased with the 7100+ unbuffed armor, BRK’s white damage was unaffected by my elimination of Bite, and his resistances are now better than zero, (60 Arcane, 36 Fire, 60 Nature, 34 Frost, 30 Shadow). Tonight we’ll see how much better he fares in the swamps of Zangarmarsh.

But why did I use a pic of a Warp Stalker for this post? Because I’m working very hard to get over the fact that I don’t have one in my stables yet. If I keep looking at it, maybe I can convince myself not to get one tonight. Warp sounds so cool…

Pets, PvE | January 19, 2007

Comments

One Response to “62 and Much Pet Ado”

Keystone on January 19th, 2007 7:08 pm

You hunters sure do level fast!

I have decided against AoE grinding like I would normally do on my mage, because this time I want to check out all the qeust.

I can’t wait for level 62 thou, we get Molten Armor, which increases crit chance by 3%