The Birth of Big Red Kitty

I’ve been a World of Warcraft addict since March 2006, and as my one year anniversary of making my wife watch her bad 80s movies alone, I’ve come to realize that I just can’t go on posting in my guild’s forums, hoping some other hunter learns from my mistakes, gains some of my wisdom, or laughs at my jokes. But I love talking about my hunter, so I’m making this page for me to yap knowing full well that nobody is going to read it. Well, I don’t care, this is for me.

My first WoW toon was a gnome mage and I was terrible. I made level 20, had crud for gear, no money, and couldn’t kill anything my own level or higher. Stuck in Loch Modan, the Wetlands were my Waterloo, I couldn’t get through that damn locked tunnel, and that desert zone to the south was instant death. So there I was, bouncing around Thelsmar when someone asked me if I wanted to go kill Chok’sul. Me, in a party? I’d never really done a pick-up group (pug) before… but sure, why not try. I sure wasn’t getting anywhere on my own.

We swam across the Loch and arrived at the Mo’grosh Stronghold where the leader started talking about how to fight the elite ogres. And what a leader he was, a level 21 dwarf hunter with wicked-cool red goggles, a gun that blew smoke when he fired, and a pet bear named Snugglez. He told me,

“Let the warrior charge the ogre, wait three seconds, then hit the orgre with all the fireballs you’ve got, ok?”

My success with my fireball spells had been limited thus far. Usually, I would send a fireball at a mob, it would hit causing the mob runs toward me really quickly. I’d have to freeze it in place, run away, hit it with another fireball, and hope the thing died. But this hunter says that the warrior will keep the ogre from running at me? How cool.

Then he told us what mob to attack by putting this big, bouncing, red arrow to mark it… how do you make a big red arrow mark? Can I do that? Of course not; I learned that only hunters can. Well no wonder he was the leader then, he can make big red arrows; it only makes sense. We watched the warrior attack the first ogre… waited three seconds… and let loose with our demolishing barrage of ammo and fireballs. I watched the health of our warrior go down, and tried desperatly to kill the ogre before the warrior became ogre dung. And Poof! His health went back up! How did that happen? Oh. A priest. I got it, now that makes sense. Nobody died, the warrior was bloody but standing, neither the priest nor I had any mana, but the damn ogre was dead.

“Eat and drink, folks,” the hunter said, “we have a lot more ogres to go.” Fascinatingly, his health hadn’t been diminished at all, and his mana was more than 3/4 still full. His pet, which had dutifully attacked the ogre then run back to his master’s side, was calmly munching some meat. The hunter just stood there, watching, waiting for the rest of us to be as ready as he.

We clawed and scraped our way through the ogres, got into the big cave at the back of the stronghold, and pushed our way to the back where we saw two more ogres… and Chok’sul, himself. How were we going to take on three at the same time when we can barely down one without someone dying? Our glorious hunter leader explained that my job was to polymorph one of the ogres while his bear tanked the other and we would all kill Chok’sul together. My main priority was to keep my polymorphed ogre polymorphed; doing damage to Chok’sul was secondary.

And the strategy worked perfectly, and I was in awe. This hunter was a master tactician, a MacArthur, an Alexander the Great. He understood class roles and exploiting them while minimizing weaknesses. He took command and got us to work as a team. He had a pet bear, and wore goggles, and made loud, smoky gun sounds, and had a big red arrow-mark, and under his leadership, we took down Chok’sul.

I shelved my mage, whose name today I cannot remember, and rolled a dwarf hunter.

Today, level 60, my hunter is decked in mostly epic PvP gear and a survivor of ZG, AQ, and MC. I am a raid leader, hunter-class master, and guild officer. I lead PvP battles and teach hunters how to kite and jump-shot. My writings on hunter tactics, equipment, and instance and pvp roles have both enlightened and bored my guild to tears.

And now I finally have a forum to gab all I want about hunters.

Let’s Talk.

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