Shadowmoon Valley had a wider variety of tameable pets than Frostfire Ridge did (a lot of the ones in Frostfire weren’t yet flagged as tameable on the alpha). Some of the ones in Shadowmoon still can’t be tamed, but that’ll be fixed in time.
Is your stable full? You might want to make room for some of these guys, and this is only the stuff from a single zone… nevermind any rare spawns we haven’t even seen yet.
Continue reading New hunter pets in Shadowmoon Valley
These lumbering beasts wander the shallows of the Nightmarsh in Shadowmoon Valley. Hydras are one of the 3 new hunter pet families being added in Warlords of Draenor, the others being Rylaks and Riverbeasts, which I’ll feature shortly. Hydras bring the Keen Senses (mastery) buff.
There’s a little bit of a bug with these guys in the alpha right now. Instead of playing their run animation when they move around, they instead play their walking animation at superfast speeds. Oh, and they’re very stompy. Even more stompy than a regular hydra. For the sake of hunter ears everywhere, let’s hope they tone those noises down just a smidge. 😉
Continue reading Pet of the Week: Echidnian Hydra
I’ve been in betas before, but never in something as early as a F&F alpha. I’m used to betas basically being finished products, minus some balancing or minor issues. This is a lot different from what I’m used to. A good deal of my time is filling in bug reports or crash reports it seems, but I’m happy to do it as it’ll help make the final product better. There’s still lots of fun to be had too.
The alpha starts you right after the Dark Portal intro event. Your 90-91 XP bar is half filled, which presumably will be where it’s at once you’ve completed that intro event. I was basically thrown right into my garrison, and the vast majority of the questing in Frostfire Ridge is tied into setting up your garrison and gathering followers.
Continue reading WoD Alpha Huntering: Day 1
The previously announced Hook Wasp exotic pets are going to be folded into the regular Wasp family and will no longer be exotic. Replacing them as the new exotic family in Warlords will be the Rylaks. If you’re wondering what a Rylak is, it’s the same thing as an Iron Skyreaver mount (minus the rocket boosters) as seen above.
@Bro_ketsu Update: Rylaks now tameable (exotic). Hook wasps have joined the wasp family. Still no unicorns.
— Jeremy Feasel (@Muffinus) May 29, 2014
Continue reading Hook Wasps are joining the Wasp family, Rylaks will be exotic
Sorry. I couldn’t resist.
.@Bro_ketsu That is the new ravager, tameable in the ravager family 🙂
— Jeremy Feasel (@Muffinus) May 14, 2014
Blizzard teased this new mount on twitter yesterday. Remove that little saddle, and you have yourself the new Warlords of Draenor Ravager pets.
Darkbrew was also impressed by the savagery on display here.
So much savage.
Update 8/22: This article is still mostly accurate but is slightly depreciated. It will give you a good overview of the  overall changes but you may want to view more recent posts under the Beast Mastery tag for more info and recent opinions.
If you missed it earlier, Blizzard released the first version of patch notes for the Warlords of Draenor alpha. I’ve summed up all the relevant hunter info in this post if you want to catch up. I’ve already taken a closer look at both survival and marksmanship, but today we’re focusing on beast mastery.
Overall, beast mastery looks like it’s going to see the least amount of changes in Warlords. Blizzard’s goal with the hunter changes was not to revamp the class, but to give each spec a better identity. Beast mastery already had its own identity as the pet-focused spec, but it looks like Blizzard is aiming to reinforce that even further.
Continue reading A closer look at beast mastery hunters in Warlords
More fun hunter stuff from the Warlords of Draenor alpha has been datamined! First up, it looks like all buffs will be able to be provided by non-Exotic pets, including bloodlust/heroism. It appears that some exotic pets will be getting new special abilities instead of having access to exclusive buffs.
We currently know about 5 new pet families in Warlords:
To learn more about the new pet families in Warlords, check out this video.Â
Below is a handful of the new pets you’ll find in Draenor.
Continue reading New Hunter pets and pet buffs in Warlords
