Mania’s Arcania

Blizzard has made some important clarifications about the upcoming change to Growl that was mentioned in the 2.4.2 Test Realm Patch Notes: “The hunter pet ability Growl will no longer scale with pet Attack Power.”

The rest of this unfortunately-phrased patch note is apparently: “Growl will now scale with hunter Attack Power as was intended.”

Nethaera posted the following in a thread on the Test Realm forum:

Growl was scaling incorrectly before so it’s been changed to scale with the hunter’s AP starting at around 1200 AP. Other pet abilities such as bite, claw, etc will still scale with pet AP.

This raises a number of interesting questions (such as: “How much scaling? Wait — Bite and Claw scaled?!”). I’ll post more info as it becomes available, but for the moment I’m headed to the PTR to test this viscerally.

[edit] Nethaera posted this, not Hortus. Whoops! [/edit]

Fresh off the 2.4.2 Public Test Realms, here is more info on the new Dire Raven hunter pet.

The Dire Raven is a level 67-68 carrion bird that lives in Raven’s Wood in the northwest part of Blade’s Edge Mountains (up by Grishnath). Dire Ravens in the wild are non-aggressive and very easy to tame.

These beautiful birds have a completely unique appearance among pets that I believe is the same as the non-epic flight form for Alliance druids.

Once tamed, Dire Ravens knows the skills Dive Ranks 3 and Screech Rank 5. They have the normal carrion bird diet of meat and fish and can learn all the skills that carrion bids can learn, including Bite, Claw, Dive, Screech, Growl, Cower, and the passive skills.

I had a very unexpected e-mail just a few minutes ago: Patch 2.4.2 is apparently coming to a public test realm (PTR) near us — soon!

Although the PTR forum is still dead to the world and the Public Test Realms themselves are not accessible, you can right this instant this download the 2.4.2 client and even copy an existing character to the PTR. (And yes, character copies have been reset since the 2.4 PTR.) Even better, Blizzard has posted 2.4.2 Test Realm Patch Notes, which include some interesting items for hunters.

The hunter tidbits follow:

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Deathily of Stormrage sent me the following heartfelt plea. I hope we can help her!

I got a new pet the other day and I can’t seem to think of a good name for it. It’s one of the Netherstrom Lynxes in the domes. I’ve always had an eye for cats but when I saw this one I just had to have it. It was just perfect for what I was looking for to replace my Winterspring Tiger! Its eyes are really what got my attention — their green and yellow eyes are just beautiful.

I just want a name that seems to fit the animal and I just can’t seem to find the right one. But I don’t want one that’s too obvious. But as I play with my new pet the name just seems to get farther and farther away from me. I was wondering if you guys could help me out and get a good name for this beautiful new pet of mine?!

We’ll do our best!

So I spend most of the day on the phone with my bank trying to straighten out tangled mess of bank accounts and retirement accounts. I spend what’s left of the day on the phone with our health insurance company trying to get the application for our new policy to go through. I finish all that (or at least what can be done today) and the husband and I head out to grab dinner fixings at the grocery store before we settle in for an evening of games (EQII and WoW respectively).

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RFC stands for Request For Comments, and that’s exactly what this post is. I want to get your comments on which resistances are useful for pets, and when.

It used to be that I ignored resistances on my pets entirely. I trained Natural Armor all the way up, plus whatever ranks I could afford of Great Stamina, but I skipped all the resistances. There wasn’t a good reason; that was just how I did things.

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I did a bit of housekeeping around and about the blog this evening that I wanted to mention.

First off, I gave up on resurrecting my sexy form-based Contact page, but at least I fixed the broken link in the footer that pointed at it. The footer points at the About page now, which I spruced up in order to make my contact information more obvious. I also added a blurb about advertising (just in case any of the multi-million dollar companies reading this blog want to advertise here!) and a PayPal donation button. I won’t be asking for donations, but it’s there if you want it.

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Final Name: Valkyrie

Grimshott, a level 62 hunter who recently transferred to my old home of Cenarion Circle, wrote me a few days ago asking if we could help name his new boar. Unfortunately I’m still backlogged with Name That Pet requests so I told him he’d have to wait.

But as it happens Grimshott is a character of Fikkle, one of the writers on the blog For the Horde. So he posted about his boar on his site, and now I am pointing you over there in the hopes that you will visit and help him find a great name.

So what are you waiting for? Go suggest boar names!

And you thought I was crazy …

Final Name: Kuroshi

Kurasu, a hunter from Emerald Dream (EU), as written in looking for help finding the perfect name for his obsidian raptor.

Kurasu writes:

I don’t play on a roleplay server, but rather like you do, I have internalized character story and concept. Comes from a long life of playing tabletop RPGs, I guess. :)

Kurasu’s one of the sterotypical hunters. He hunts for the challenge and the skill of it. He is the sort who likes to be noticed, and so he has never really owned a pet that wouldn’t turn heads. At least, not for long.

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