Aspect of the Shadow

So, several months ago, before I was shipped out to Iraq, I posted that I had successfully tamed a Spirit Wolf and that I would post the details soon.  Well, now in March of 2008, “soon” has finally come, lol.  However, I will not go into meticulous detail about it because it seems as if the Spirit Guide Wolf is no long tameable.

From a Hunter’s website I found the following letter that discussed Blizzard’s previous viewpoint on the taming of this exotic ‘undead’ wolf:

Hi Fierce,

While this feature of the Grimtotem Spirit Guide wasn?t exactly intended, it was agreed by the development team that this is a fun use of in-game mechanics, and we therefore have no plans to address this issue - it will still be possible in future for everyone who wishes to tame this NPC to do so. 

I hope this alleviates your concerns!

Issuntril

This was followed by (apparently while I was in Iraq) the following notice on the forums:

Drysc:
Through a hotfix we?ve recently removed the ability to tame a Grimtotem Spirit Guide. Players who have already gone through the trouble of taming the creature will be able to keep them unchanged. This hotfix only removes the possibility to tame this creature from here on.

The removal of the spirit guide has been debated within design discussions for a while now as to what impact the pet and its precedent has on the game.
The unintended nature of the taming, the undead status of the guide, appearance of the wolf in relation to the feel of the hunter class, and the complex processes of taming were all issues touched upon and discussed.

Ultimately the discussions brought us to the conclusion that this should not be a permanent addition to the pet selection available to hunters; however, those that have already tamed them should be allowed to keep them due to their efforts in obtaining one.

I am extremely displeased that not every Hunter will be able to obtain such a beautiful and unique pet if they had wanted one, though I can’t say that I am not relieved I was able to tame one before the hammer fell.

Just in case the Spirit Guide becomes available again soon, or at the very least just for historical sake, here is the process that was involved in obtaining the ghostly wolf:

1) Obviously, you must be a Hunter, but not so obviously you MUST be a level 65+ Hunter in order to tame the level 30 Grimtotem Spirit Guide wolf.  This is because the only way to even hope of taming one is to have a meta gem named “Mystical Skyfire Gem” in a headslot item, and the first one available to Hunters is at level 65.  You may obtain this helm by accomplishing a quest that invovles two instances in the Coilfang Reserve.  Another easy way to get a helm with a meta gem slot is by collecting Spirit Shards (how appropriate!) from the Terrokkar Forest instances when your faction has control of the PvP objective, and turning them in to purchase a level 66 helm.

2) Now you much actually get somebody to craft (or buy from AH) a Mystical Skyfire Gem to place into the helm.  The reason this is needed is because this meta gem has a 15% chance of allowing your next spell cast (of which your Tame Beast ability qualifies for) to have it’s casting time reduced by 50% … bringing the cast time from 20 seconds to 10 seconds!  Why do you need this, you ask?  Because the Grimtotem Spirit Guide is actually summoned by a spell from a mob, and the spell only lasts for 8 seconds … at exactly 8 seconds, the Spirit Guide wolf dissappears!  Thus, you must be able to tame it in LESS than 8 seconds.  Obviously, we will need additional help to take our new 10-second Tame Beast to NASCAR levels.

3) There are a few things you will need, and possibly not all of them:  You will need a Shaman to cast Battle Lust to increase your spell-casting time AND a Leatherworker to use Drums of Battle for the same.  Fortunately, since Shamans wear leather until level 40 and Leatherworkers can actually make Mail that Shamans also wear after level 40, you can often find one person that is both a Shaman AND a leatherworker!  Yay for us!  But, if you just happen to be a Troll hunter, you can use your racial ability to cut some time off the Tame spell as well, so a leatherworker wouldn’t be needed.  However, if I were Troll hunter (which I was not), I’d still want to find both of the above to give me the absolute lowest cast time I could possibly get, because of the finite time line and perfection that is needed to pull this thing off.

4) Finally, before we can even think about realistically taming our phantasmic wolf, we will need a Priest.  The Priest will be used to Mind Control a mob and use the MC’s “pet” bar (much like our Hunter pet bar) to summon the Spirit Wolf at the exact time we need it.  Without a priest, we have to pray for extreme luck in having to engage the mob and getting the meta gem to proc and everybody use their abilities at the exact moment before the mob summons the wolf on it’s own.  This is too much to hope for, and while it can theoretically be done (and some Hunters have claimed to have done so), it would take hours and hours to accomplish.  Your friends would probably not like you for this, and thus we will be using a Priest.  =)

5) Alright, now that we have all the ingredients to have a Tame Beast cast time of about 7 seconds or so, we are prepared to make the journey to Dustwallow Marsh near The Barrens.  In DWM, we will travel north to the Grimtotem Village where there are lots of hostile NPC taurens, including our target: the Grimtotem Spirit-Shifter.  Clear an area by the edge of the mountains have everybody gather around you.

6) Most everybody will need to make some macros and keybind them to something easy to make this tame as quick as possible.  The Shaman and Leathworker will need to make macros for their abilities/items so that at a press of a button the group will get he spell-casting speed buffs, and if you have one person that is both a Shaman and Leatherworker have them macro both the ability AND the item into ONE macro that they just have to spam the macro as fast as they can at the exact moment.  You, as the Hunter, will need to make a macro that includes “/target Grimtotem Spirit Guide” AND “/cast Tame Beast” … and if you’re a Troll, you will need to have a macro keybinded for using your racial talent “Berserk.”  Once this is all done and you tell everybody exactly how this is going to work (by reading below ahead of time), you will all be ready for your first attempt of likely several attempts before everything falls perfectly in place.  Expect to be there for 1-2 hours just in case, and tell your party this so that they understand this is not exactly easy.  You may get it on the first try, but most likely not.

7) With everything in place, it is now up to the Priest to go Mind Control a nearby Grimtotem Spirit-Shifter and bring it to about 20 yards of your party.  You will be facing the Grimtotem.

As soon as the Priest’s MC is in position, begin dancing aspects between Hawk and Monkey.  These abilities are counted as spells and the goal is to activate the proc of the Mystical Skyfire Gem.  The instant your Gem procs, and your friends will need to be watching you on their screen to see spell graphics ignite around you, the Shaman and the Leatherworker (or one and the same if you’re lucky) will spam the Bloodlust and Drum macro(s).  If you are a Troll, you will activate your Berserk at this same instant. 

9) The moment you have all the time-reducing effects in place the Priest needs to click the Summon Spirit Guide ability on their MC pet bar and you need to spam your /target and /tame macro.  This will bring forth the ghost wolves (there will actually be two of them summoned) and have you taming them instantly.  Both the wolves will begin attacking the Priest directly from  initial agro, however your Tame Beast spell will pull the agro of which becomes targetted through your macro and it will come to you.  You’re a high enough level to not have to worry about a scorpid sting, aspect of the monkey, or an ice trap for a successful tame, and it takes to much time to do those things so just forget about it.

10) Nobody in your party should do ANYTHING … any sort of spell or ability cast while you are taming may turn your wolve’s agro towards them and the tame will be interrupted automatically.  This also means that the above directions have to be followed exactly, meaning that Shaman and Leatherworker’s abilities have to be activated BEFORE the Priest summons the wolves.  If the Priest summons the wolves and split-second before either one of those abilities is activated, then the wolves will agro the Shaman or Leatherworker and the hate from your own Tame Beast spell will NOT be enough to pull it off of them and your tame will FAIL.  This is why all of this takes practice in order to perfect, and even once your perfect the timing of everything, the window is so small for the taming process that it may take a few extra tries for the Tame Beast spell to fully complete prior to the Spirit Guide wolves despawning.

11) After you have successfully tamed one of these extremely rare wolves, it will die.  No kidding, it will drop dead at your feet and you may even wonder if you actually tamed it or not.  Have no fear, because if you saw the blue taming graphic flash around the wolf at the last second or even heard the sound effects, you are now good to go.  All that is needed is for you to cast Raise Pet and you will be the new owner of a literally bright and shiny, undead, phantasmal, ghostly Spirit Guide wolf!  Now feed it, profess your love and undying thanks to your friends, and hearth back to Shattrah to show this puppy off!  (you only have, I think, 15 minutes of it being ‘unhappy’ before the wolf leaves you if you do not feed it in that time).

Okay, so maybe I did go into a lot detail in this, but I couldn’t help myself!

Again, I hope they bring this pet back so that if you did not get the chance to tame it you might have the pleasure of having such a fantastic looking companion.

Let us pray!

So, last night after running Ramparts with my 62 Warrior and Aesynn’s 60 Warrior, along with Star’s 70 Priest, Shaede’s 70 Lock, and Thistle”fur” the 70 Druid, we headed out to Thrallmar to turn in quests.  While there, I pulled out my Rocket Chicken for some fresh air.  It didn’t take long for questions to come up about where Rocket came from and what he did, and after I explained that we had to watch him for awhile to see him explode … well, we did just that.

 The problem was that he hadn’t exploded after about 45 minuts, and I was repeatedly accused of either being high, playing a joke to see how long I could get people to stare at a chicken in a video game that did nothing … or both!  I swear, it explodes!

The following conversation ensued:

Needless to say, 15 seconds after Star and Aes logged off, the Rocket Chicken exploded.  I still don’t think they believe me.

/cry

 PS:  I never noticed this, but the other day I was going through some old screen shots and one of them shows a toon in a battleground from another realm with the guild tag of <ORZ>.

Look at that, I’m so famous, guilds are now named after me!

Well, after a little bit a research, the crafting of items, the spending of gold, and hiring on some good friends, I went out and did it!  I tamed the Spirit Wolf and have a new best friend!

A huge … HUGE … thank you goes out to the two people I’ve known the longest in this game, and other games before it, Dynamite and Harleybar!  I <3 you both.

Details on how the tame was achieved will soon follow, but right now I just wanna go level the crap out of him.  That new Pet Leveling patch will help a lot, I’m sure, as it’s not going to be too fun.

Over the last month there has been some fun things to do in Shattrah, besides dancing on mailboxes making rude (and nude) gestures to gnomes.

 First off, the Darkmoon Faire Cannon event was entertaining (at least for 30 minutes).  Run up the ladder and insert yourself into the ‘human-’launching cannon was a blast.  I thought it was a great touch to add wings to your character and make a game out of dropping them at just the right moment to safely (or not so safely most of the time) into a small pond with a target in it.  Although I didn’t notice anything special occur during the times I hit the target dead on, but it did occupy my time as I waited for a party to form up.

Shortly after patch 2.3 came out, along with Zul’Aman, came the Mojo invasion.  At first you think it’s just an ordinary, albeit blue, frog loyally following around it’s master.  Oh, no, Mojo is so much more.  Give him a /kiss and he’ll not only send you a kinky tell full of inuendo, he’ll also transform you into a frog as well!  This works when you’re mounted, too.  Check it out below.  Needless to say, I want a Mojo of my very own … badly.

Yesterday I saw my first Phoenix mount in Shat, and it was gorgeous.  Unfortunately it was slightly ruined by being occupied by a Night Elf, but it was still a sight to see.

And last but not least, my Warrior “Orz” found a new companion the other day.  GO-GO ROCKET CHICKEN!!  Rocket Chicken is easily, in my humblest of opinions, the coolest cirtter pet in the game.  A mechanical chicken with two enourmous rockets strapped to his back, ‘RC’ will sometimes hover a foot off the ground for a moment or two to show off his flight powers and best Steve Austin jet pack impression.  However, once in a while, he kind of looses control and blasts off into the sky, only to explode with a shower of feathers.  See the action below …

On Sunday night my guild, Equilibrium, ventured into Gruul’s Lair, and after several pulls we finally downed High King Maulgar.  It was only our second time bringing him down and it felt good since it was the first time I had been in there with Shadowmourne.  My hunter was usually the Misdirector for the High King himself onto the guild’s Main Tank, followed by falling back in order to range-tank the Shaman with another Hunter.  Being on Fel Puppy duty was different and at times a challange, but nothing mind-boggling once I got it down.

For that battle, my Warlock partner, Fomalhaut (who is an excellent Lock and has gear that makes me cry), came in first on the damage meters and I came in at 3rd.  It was a fun and triumphant kill and was very happy to be a part of it.  However, Gruul lay just around the corner, and the next few hours were spent in the next room over.

Gruul the Dragonkiller is a rather fun battle, and there is quite an element of luck to the fight, as well as plenty of strategy.  He is definitely in line with Onyxia and Prince Malchezaar in the luck factor.

Our first try at him got us to about 65%, which was a tiny bit better than the guild’s first try at him two weeks prior to Sunday.  The second go at him brought him downt o 50-something percent, followed by 36%, 33%, 15%, 9% … and then, we had a break through.  At 5% we had him completely under controll and all was well, then our Priests hit rock-bottom on mana and Gruul got in some lucky hits followed by the AOE silence and our Main Tank soon found himself wondering if the dirt had more blood on it in here or in the High King’s room.  The Off Tank picked Gruul up, but not before our Rogue bit the dust as well from a rather harsh hit to the tune of 22,000+ damage.  Chaos ensued and one by one our melee forces perished in a blaze of almost-glory.

(yes, that’s me dead in front)

At the end, we had taken Gruul down to a mere 33,000 hit points, which represents .1% of his health (he starts at nearly 3.5 million hp), but victory was not meant to be and we fell short.  Our next two attempts got him down to around 10% each time but it was not the night that we would conquer Gruul’s Lair.

But, as the saying goes, we live to fight another day, and we’ll most certainly be back to finish the job!

Well, my very first Arena team ever, Shadow Play, that I had written about last week came to a close two days ago.  I had logged on the very next day to find that my partner had invited somebody else into the team, which is perfectly fine with me, and had played 70 games in less than 24 hours (which is not fine with me).  Out of those 70 games the only lost about 10, which is pretty good, and I wish them the best of luck … however, I cannot even come close to trying to keep up with that level of Arena participation since I need to have participated in 30% of the team’s total battles and that’s just too much for me on a daily basis.

However, on a brighter note, the other night I saw a 70 Rogue looking for a 2 versus 2 Arena team.  I contacted the Rogue and asked if he was looking for something casual just to rack up some points or really wanted to go heavy into Arena.  He responded that he wanted something on the casual side of PvP and that his gear wasn’t all that great.  Perfect!

Within a half hour, since I was in an Alterac Battle at the time (I’m saving up some BG points to buy the [54879en] since it’s actually quite incredible for a PvE Raider doing Karazhan and Gruul’s Lair), my new Rogue friend, “Dehisce,” had started up the Charter for our Arena team and we were on our way.

Our team name is “Unpossible” and I very much like it.  I had seen a guild name like that in an AV BG a week before and thought it funny and clever, and it was my suggestion for the name when the Rogue had asked and he liked it too.  So there it is … Unpossible!

And let me tell you, winning thus far is nearly Unpossible for us.  Though we’ve only played 3 games, I can see a flaw in our team design.  While he is stealthed up at the start of the battle I am the only team member that is visible, which means I’m target Numbero Uno.  I have been crowd controlled by anything and everything, pummeled to death, stun-locked and bounced by fears left and right, and hard to really help out at all when it’s 2 on one while Dehisce tries to get into position.  We will have to continue to experiment and I still have yet to find the right pet to use.  It’s between the Succubus and the Fel Puppy at the moment, but I’m leaning towards the Succy.

In the meantime, however, I think the next time we play I’ll jump on Aspect the Hunter and get him invited to the team.  I think a Rogue/Hunter combo will be much effective as I have more defenses and can battle multiple Gladiators at a time more efficiently and deal out some burst damage as well as have Freezing Trap and Beastial Wrath.  If I can get Shadowmourne the required 3-5 battles for approximately 10 total team battles, both Aspect and Shadow will get Arena points each week.

I figure that I can start out by running partially into the Arena with Aspect and lay a trap and stand on it while the Rogue stays nearby in stealth.  If I’m up against a Rogue, most likely he will come to me and disable my trap and stun me, at which time my own Rogue will come up behind him and stun him in turn.  Using the PvP Trinket I can break out of Stun and lay another trap, that way if my Rogue opponent does the same he’ll instantly by trapped again with no way out and that would leave us with two against one for the other guy.  It’s a decent starting strategy but we’ll see if it works or not.  For going up against non-Rogue teams, I’m more than confident in my Hunter’s ability to do some damage and controll the flow of the battle with my pet and various traps.

Wish me luck!

Let’s see if this will work:

 [Evoker's Helmet of Second Sight]
 [Netherweave Belt]
 [Frozen Shadoweave Robe]

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Last night, after having just finished up doing my two Skettis Daily quests, I grabbed the Daily Battleground quest which happened to be Alterac Valley.  Now, back in the day on my Hunter, I remember making the run to Exaulted Reputation at level 60.  Sometimes it was fun, sometimes it was a headache.  AV these days is much better, I must say.  Not only did the changes to AV (making it so you do not neccessarily have to kill the opposing faction’s General in order to win, and thus also not allowing the opposing faction to “turtle” themselves in a defense stance to drag on the AV for upwards of 6 hours or more, you can win by depleting their reinforcements - killing the other players as well as captains and capturing towers) allow for shorter battlegrounds and more eveness for both sides, but playing AV with my Warlock is just plain funs!

Whenever the Alliance would group up and try and stop the Horde from taking the next graveyard (we were destroying everything in our path), Shadowmourne would cast Seed of Corruption left and right and his kills and damage went through the roof.  let me tell you, there is nothing like having 1,500 real-time DPS in a large Battleground, especially when you are receiving heals and shields and the Alliance cannot kill you.  I was practically a god in that battle (only a tiny bit of exageration).  Major funs!

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Ugh, this is looking ugly.  It appears that I will have to dig deeper into the code to change every little color adjustment and then start adding in the custom images for menu bars, and of course the header itself needs a sweet graphic as well.

 I will prevail!

Edit:  Well, here’s my header image.  Not my best work, but it’ll all come back to me. ^^

Image Test! Clicky the photo for enlargement!