Humming right along

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The team is 65 now, and level 66 is not far off. Questing has been pretty easy, as would be expected. At level 60 I took the team to Winterspring and tamed a Frostsaber Pride Watcher for each of them. The shimmering, powder-blue animals look pretty amazing, and when they're running around as a group they're quite a sight!

Shortly after hitting 65, though, I realized that I would want to have a more robust pet for the Ring of Blood quests in Nagrand. So I dropped two of the cats and tamed two Scorpid Bonecrawlers. I also decided that it was time to mix things up a bit. The hunters that still have cats as a pet are now Marksman spec, and the ones that have a scorpid as a pet are Beastmaster spec. I made sure to have all of them spec into Aimed Shot. The end result is two pets that should tank very well, and two hunter/pet combinations that should provide good DPS. In fact, the attack power and other stats for all of the hunters went up a bit after all was said and done.

Under the prior setup, the pets were doing a very large portion of the work. They were doing anywhere from 69-73% of each hunter's total damage. This may not be typical for a solo BM hunter, but could be a result of running four hunters in tandem. I usually wait for the pets to engage a target before I start firing, and even with the relatively quick attack speed that the hunters had (around 1.80 before I redid their talents) the pets would finish a mob before the hunters got off a third shot. For my needs this has worked just fine. But we'll see how the new arrangement works. The previous one allowed me to complete the full complement of Nesingwary quests in Nagrand at level 64. This included killing three level 67 elites and one level 68 elite.

An aside- Blizzard has continued to shorten the leveling curve prior to level 71. A number of quests in Outland have had their requirements lowered. For example, the first two series of quests from the Nagrand Nesingwary camp used to require 30 kills of each type of beast, and then 30 more before you were given the quest to kill the elites. Now the totals are 12 in each series. Other quests have likewise had their requirements lowered, or their drop rates increased. This makes leveling a breeze. Find a quest hub, grab every quest that you can, complete as many as you are able to, discard any that do not seem worthwhile, and go back and collect your tons of experience.

And gold, as well! I had decided that I would putter around on the low-level ground mounts until such time as I was able to afford the faster ones, which would require approximately 600 gold from each character. By the time they were level 65 they had surpassed 630 gold, so they purchased the new riding skill and new mounts. Now, with about 30% of the level still to go, they've almost got 100 gold each. This is just from quest rewards and vendoring items. It should be noted that I'm not even selling the BoE green items that drop-- those go to the guild bank to be disenchanted.

On that note, one of the nice things about being relatively self-sufficient is that I can save money and upgrade the characters via the tradeskills and materials I have learned and gathered with my characters. For example, instead of buying four Adamantite Cleavers and paying someone to add the Greater Savagery enchant, I simply had my level 80 hunter create the bars I needed from the ore stored in the guild bank. Then my level 80 shaman created the axes and enchanted them, using the enchant materials available in the guild bank. I've also sent enough materials into the guild bank for my level 74 priest to produce five Imbued Netherweave Bags. And there is still some 12,800 gold in the bank, which might not shrink much at all in the coming future. Not only do I still have a level 73 rogue and level 74 paladin, warlock, priest, and mage who can continue to quest and build up gold-- my level 80 hunter can do daily quests for fast gold and the level 80 shaman still has an enormous amount of quests to complete as well.