• Thunderstomp (Gorilla) has been removed as a pet skill and replaced by Pummel - Pummel the target, interrupting spellcasting and preventing any spell in that school from being cast for 4 sec. (20 Focus, 5 yd range, Instant, 10 sec cooldown)
• Thunderstomp is now a pet talent available to any Tenacity pet. Now your bears, crocs or ESPECIALLY CRABS can join in the AE tanking fun.

So, now that all tenacity pets will be able to get Thunderstomp (which, if my sources are correct, will replace Intervene as a talent unfortunately), what pet is the best tank to use? The way I’m looking at it we have 3 candidates.

Gorilla: The new ability that gorillas get, a 4 second school specific silence is awesome. The cooldown however is not set yet. The 10 second cooldown is just a placeholder from Thunderstomp. Being able to silence mobs is very nice for a tank. However, most bosses are immune to such tactics, so the question is, will Pummel be worth it to bring this pet along for?

Crocolisk: The croc will be the obvious AoE-threat holder. Run in, stomp, snapback. If you thought the gorilla was good at AoE aggro, the croc will be awesome. This might even be one of the best aggroholders for single target due to the snap back ability.

Turtle: The turtle will most likely be the best main tanking pet as I see it. Shell shield will make this pet last a lot longer than any other pet. However, it will not excel in AoE nor single target threat like the Crocolisk, and depending on the cooldown of Pummel, it may not be as effective towards casters as the Gorilla.

I know one thing for sure though, Gannjala, my turtle, will not be left at 77 for much longer.

“Be Mine! on the PTR (Source)

To clarify… Be Mine was not removed from the meta; it’s still there. However, the achievement has been changed to require any six of the eight possible candies. As such, the effort involved is still present, but it’s no longer quite so reliant on pure luck.”

Oh-My-God! Yes! Yes! Friggin’ Yes! My 7/8 candies will grant me my achievement!

Roar of Sacrifice can be used on the hunter only.

Wow, I really didn’t see that one coming. That was the main reason the guild thought a BM tank spec might be a good idea. That is basically the same thing as saying Tenacity pets should be used for PvP.

Still no new words on the new tier of the Pet Talent tree. I sure hope they make up for that one.

Even before achievements were introduced in the game I was all about doing things just to say I had done it. But I never was much of a farmer or grinder. And sometimes it really shows. With the amount of time I played my character one would figure I should have a lot more rep with different factions.

With the recent reputation change, perhaps it’s time to revisit those folks down in that tunnel. Or why not do a couple of strat runs just for the rep it gives nowadays. It really shouldn’t be too hard to get exalted with a lot of those old factions now that I can pretty much AoE everything down in one pull. <3 Umtokk and T5.

In the quest department I’m just 76 quests short of being Loremaster Nordhbane. I’m really glad they introduced that low level quest tracker or it would have been hell trying to find them all. And apart from some Frenzyheart/Oracle dailies, I’m quite done with quests. Not counting having to get 1000 daily quests completed. Yeah, that’s gonna take a while.

It really bothers me that I didn’t get the Love Fool title. I’m one of those guys that spent the entire weekend, every waken hour to get the last piece of candy. Even got up in the middle of the night just to get that one more chance of getting yet another bag that would probably just fail to drop the last piece for me. I spent a lot more energy on that than most that got the title. To put it in code: RNG x RNG == LUCK != ACHIEVEMENT.

It’s not about the mount for me, I didn’t get the Brew of the Month out of dumb laziness anyhow. It’s all about having done everything in my power and I still fell short. Apart from Brew of the Month I’ve done everything when it comes to world events. Even long before midsummer has started I’m only lacking 2 out of 12 achievements for that one. I became Nordhbane the Elder the first day of Lunar Festival (had to revisit all elders in the old world even though I had done them all the first year it was  up). So, not being a Love Fool feel really bad.

When it comes to Professions I just need to stock up on some bandages, catch a rare fish/rat, and get my thumb out of my arse and get the cooking fixed. It’s just a matter of a bit more time to get enough tokens for recipes.

The PvP achievements I’m gonna save to last. I’m not sure how I’m gonna get some of them done. The arena achievements are just not my cup of tea. I only get frustrated playing arenas. Bloody healers being able to out heal full nuke when I’m standing still and not getting interupted, and when I’m wearing very good PvE gear. I don’t understand that if I can’t kill a healer with optimal dps, how the F can I kill one when I have to run around chasing him around every single little LOS-box and pillar that Blizzard wants to throw in my face?

So, I’m wondering, how are your achievements going?

Inspired by Eresin, I figured that posting my /Played time might be a good way to introduce myself.

/played

I’m not, what you would say, a noob at playing my hunter. In fact, I have 2 more hunters at lvl 70, one on another server where I played horde for a while, and another on my current server. Different class and severly undergeared. Nordhbane however is my main, and have always been my main right from the first time I started WoW up.

I do suck at arenas, but I randomly play it with a hunter friend of mine just for fun. But at least I do ok in BGs and World PvP. Or did pre-WotLK. I haven’t bothered playing much at lvl 80.

I have “always” been BM, apart from 2 raids as Surv in SWP (strongly disliked it) and 1 week as MM (hated it) in vanilla trying to do the hunter demon quest. I had a bad few weeks of lag at the time, so I couldn’t kite the winterspring boss, so I gave it up.

I never understood all the drama queens about BM sucking in raids in vanilla just because they couldn’t keep their pets alive… There wasn’t a fight up to AQ40 that I didn’t manage to make my pet survive, including Vael in BWL, even though that required a group set up with an AoE healing priest.

Even before TBC I fell in love with doing things the unnatural way. For example, tanking Azuregos. In TBC I made a lot of hunter-only runs to The Shadow Labs for example. I tried to push the envelope as much as possible. I was even allowed tanking one of the adds in the Magtheridon encounter.

When the new pet talents were introduced I was really thrilled. When most hunters saw the new ferocity abilities, I was looking at the tenacity pets. I became an avid reader of Big Red Rhino. It was finally time to bring out the big guns. I leveled in WotLK as a tank, and tanked every single dungeon on my way to 80. Besides tanking a few heroics, I’ve also tanked raid encounters in both 10 and 25 man version of Naxxramas since.

I also love soloing things, be it Onyxia, AQ25 or lvl 70 instances. I’m always ready for the next challenge.

At the moment I am BM dps spec, waiting for the dual spec system to arrive. My guild decided the fun was over and I followed their decision even though I got questions from the healers the very next raid asking where the gorilla was and telling me to bring it back.

I think that pretty well explains what kind of hunter I am. And as Ihlos would say: Let the hunt begin!