Finally.

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In completely unexpected news, Blizzard broke the internet today with the news that the wonderful Vulpera race is coming with patch 8.3.

The foxes revitalised my interest in BfA when I first encountered them, and while were an obvious choice for the next Allied race, it seemed like if it did happen it would be with the new expansion. Happily not!

I’ve never liked Goblins (too mercenary, and environmental criminals), and Gnomes too seem pretty wanton about destroying any land they settle on (see: Mechagon). Thinking back, the Vulpera also seemed pretty interested in treasure (why is it that Blizzard’s diminutive races all being greed-motivated?), but at least they were living in harmony with their homeland.

It will be fun to be playing a gigantic Tauren one moment, and a tiny Fox the next.

The other obvious conclusion with 8.3 being announced today (and the final boss revealed) is that Blizzcon will definitely be the announcement for the next expansion - they’ve cleared the BfA decks now. So that’s exciting too - if the rumoured PVE Overwatch 2 is also revealed (and Diablo IV?) it will be a great year to be attending. Almost enough to drag people away from Classic?

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So far I’ve dithered about on Classic by creating far too many characters and not really committing to any. Doing a quick tally, on three servers (two PVP, one PVE) I have Hunters at 12/11/10/7, Warriors at 12/10/5, and a Rogue at 6. Plus bank alts on each. So theoretically I would have an (impossible) level 73 character if I had stuck to one. Obviously that’s not true given the slow down in levelling, but none-the-less I am well behind the curve as a result.

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As usual it’s probably because the first levels are the most fun, with quick progress, rewards, and levelling routes burned into subconscious effectiveness. But now I’m trying to knuckle down and just play a single Hunter and Warrior, and actually move beyond the starter zones.

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On the Hunters I was finding that even once they got their pets, mobs would still come at me rather than the pet. I put this down to Classic being different, until finally realising recently that I had neglected to train Growl on any of them. I happened to notice text something like ‘You have learned a new skill: Growl’ when I handed in a Hunter class quest, and as soon as I trained it on my Wolf the Hunting game became a lot easier.

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Something else that made things easier was tracking down the rare wolf Ghost Howl in Mulgore. I searched around Thunder Bluff for an hour or more until finally finding him amongst the Windfury Harpies west of TB, and it was quick work with my tamed Prairie Wolf Alpha (I’d seen him earlier at level 7 but was no match for him then). Killing him led to a quest which rewarded an amazing gun upgrade.

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I love finding Rares in Warcraft, particularly when you find them just by noticing something different in the scene in front of you. It’s not only that they look slightly different - maybe bigger, maybe an odd colour - they also move differently to the normal creatures. It’s almost like they have a swagger about them - slight slower, nonchalant, and much less predictable.

Next up is to venture into the Barrens, where I hope to eventually find and tame Humar the Pridelord with his unique black coat. A friend once camped out his spawn point for days during Burning Crusade - might be a nice tribute to do the same. Petopia has a nice unique looks gallery for those wanting to track down a standout companion.

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Hunter tools

For reference, this is how I’m running my Hunter at level 10. I’ve developed a default key mapping with some macros behind each button to make the Hunter attack sequence easier and more effective:

• F1: Apply Hunter’s Mark and send the pet in to attack
• F2: Start Autoattack and Fire off a Serpent Sting
• 1: Arcane Shot: standard mana burner
• 2: Raptor Strike: for emergency melee use only

So the opening sequence is to press F1 to send in my pet, wait briefly for it to engage, F2 to start firing, then 1 to weave an Arcane Shot in between Autos. If there is more than one mob (please, no!), then F1 again will redirect the pet to the next tabbed target. I can refresh Serpent Sting with F2 (rarely required as regular mobs die before the 15 sec. debuff drops off). F3 is reserved for Concussive Shot to slow down runners (and pets I might want to tame).

For F1, I use the following macro:

#showtooltip Hunter's Mark

/cast Hunter's Mark

/petattack

And for F2:

#showtooltip Serpent Sting

/cast !Auto Shot

/cast Serpent Sting

(The ! before Auto Shot ensures that spamming F2 won’t turn it on and off accidentally.)

I borrowed these from Icy-Vein’s Hunter macro guide. Their pet guide was also very useful for jogging my memory on pet feeding, classes, training, etc. And to complete the trifecta, their excellent Beast Master levelling guide includes a very handy level slider that shows you the recommended build and rotation at each level.

Playing around with your own style rather than going by the book is definitely recommended, especially when levelling, but it’s good to have some kind of starting point reference.

Keeping track of my pet happiness was also difficult for some reason - maybe some add-on was hiding the status. I got around that by installing TitanPanel and this Pet Happiness broker. Now I can easily see when my pet needs feeding, and TP itself is useful in other ways (like making it obvious when I’m low on ammo).

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Having polished off all the Vanilla dungeons (I want to say Classic but that now means something entirely different), our motley Alliance crew ventured into the first Outland instance, Hellfire Ramparts.

I was super pleased to see our Hunter had already managed to piece together a classic Outland outfit, with some truly ridiculous ‘pants’, clashing gloves, topped off by a fantastically wrong helmet. His gormless face was icing on the cake.

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I have strong memories of this dungeon being somewhat difficult, especially the tricky early trash pulls which can easily go horribly wrong, and the final boss, the netherdrake Nazan. Those memories were confirmed when I looked up the Ramps blog entry from our old guild, Midnight’s Children - it sounds like a nightmare, even bringing a rare rallying cry from our Guild Leader:

Midnight Children do not believe in rank or status. As such their guild leader has never issued an order. But I do now. This Dragon must die. All the forces of this Mighty Guild will be bent to this end. No sacrifice is too much, no labour too strenuous. One Horde. One Guild. One Victory.

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So it was with some trepidation that we entered, especially as we were reduced to four players. How could we get through this alive, let alone short handed? Incredibly easily, as it turned out.

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Blizzard either nerfed the living daylights out of Ramps at some point, or else our years of playing meant that it was a walk in the park. Somehow I suspect the former. We had no trouble with any trash or bosses, with Nazan falling with barely a whimper. He also dropped a super nice looking weapon called Hellreaver for our DK.

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Our biggest challenge ended up being trying to tame one of the excellent Shattered Hand Warhounds for our Hunter. We accidentally killed just about every single one via my Consecration Aura, our Death Knight’s Death and Decay, an accidental auto attack, etc., before our veteran Priest designed a strategy that allowed our Hunter to pull a solo wolf while we distracted its companions.

It was silly but also great fun, a reminder of how the best gaming moments tend to be unscripted and spontaneous.

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Last night our Alliance guild finished off the final Dungeon in the original ‘Vanilla’ (aka Classic!) set, Lower Blackrock Spire, a dungeon crawl par excellence.

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When I used to tank pug, I was always glad when LBRS popped - though often I had to queue for it specifically as once you hit 58 the game decides it’s BC dungeons or bust. It’s a far more linear run than Blackrock Depths which makes it much easier with a PUG, but more importantly it’s full of interesting bosses, bonus quests, pet drops, and stunning multi-level design that absolutely nails the underground fortress feel.

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Much like BRD, there are many spots in the dungeon where you can see where you will be going later, or where you’ve been previously, and plenty of tricks for backtracking and short-cutting if you want to. The bonus boss Urok Doomhowl is a great example, requiring you to have looted the head of a prior boss but also to have collected an unmarked pike to stick that head on. The designers obviously realised people might miss the pike, and cleverly allow you to jump down to a lower level path that leads you directly back to the pile of pikes… followed by a long jog back to your party. At least one way was fast!

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LBRS is basically a dark Horde stronghold, which makes it strange to run as actual Horde, even if the minions and bosses are Horde traitors. Killing Orcs and Trolls doesn’t sit quite right. On the other hand, doing it as Alliance feels exactly right.

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One thing that became a problem late in this sequence of runs was Blizzard’s 8.2 change to group XP, where having a level-locked person in the group meant no-one earned XP for the events during the Dungeon nor the quest hand-ins at the end. Apparently the change was made to foil people charging for level 110-120 boosting, but surely Blizzard could have made that only apply to the high level boosting.

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Several of our members were using each run to level up, which worked perfectly with keeping pace on the dungeon level requirements, and that stopped abruptly with the policy change. We did work out you could disband the group, wait for a 5 minute cooldown, and hand in the quests for full credit, but that is a pretty dull thing to have to do and doesn’t help with the missing XP from all the dungeon mob and boss killing. It’s a pretty punishing change for groups like us who are working systematically through content.

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The level nerf didn’t spoil our fun however. We finished the journey that started way back in Deadmines over a year ago, and earned our Classic Dungeonmaster achievement.

The Blackrock dungeon duo are a fabulous end to an epic 60 levels of dungeoneering - our newest player commenting on how he was exhausted but exhilarated by the end of LBRS, with the achievement being all the sweeter for the tribulations Blackrock Mountain had put us through.

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Now it’s time to unlock XP again and venture into the wilds of Outland and the many good Dungeons - and colourful outfits - to be found there.

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