Battle Pet Theme Teams

My initial pet battle team was formed a bit haphazardly; I had played around with it on the beta (for about three days exclusively), and from that I knew that mechanicals were strong against beasts, beasts against critters, and for most of my early fights, the third pet was going to suck if it was something else.  So my initial team looks like:

• Mr. Grubbs
• Mechanical Squirrel (Bolts)
• Rustberg Seagull (Sully)

There wasn't really any rhyme or reason other than that Mr. Grubbs is my favorite pet; Bolts seemed good as an engineer, and the random third pet is strong vs. aquatics, and I keep running into Toads.

Beta Team

But, as I've been assembling themed stables for Stampede (Aesop for Dusk, undead for my Forsaken, August Celestials when my Pandaren is higher level... and I'm not sure yet what for the other two), I've also been thinking about some themed secondary and tertiary pet battle teams, preferably ones that don't use two of the same pet.

I can't do all of these (I'm missing a handful), but I can do most:

Aesop again:

• Jade Crane Chick
• Fox Kit
• Gilnean Raven

Watership Down:

• Spirit of Summer (Frith)
• Rabbit (El-ahrairah or Thlayli)
• Sea Gull (Keehar)

Valley of the Four Winds:

• Black Lamb
• Chicken
• Feral Vermling

August Celestials:

• Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling
• Jade Crane Chick
• Winterspring Cub

Obscure Star Trek:

• Shimmershell Snail
• Bombay Cat
• Fishy

Jungle Book:

• Panther Cub (Bagheera)
• Dun Morogh Cub (Baloo)
• Emerald Boa (Kaa)

Rudolph/Island of Misfit Toys 1

• Winter Reindeer (Rudolph)
• Tranquil Mechanical Yeti (The Abominable Snowman)
• Father Winter's Helper (Hermey the Misfit Elf)

Rudolph/Island of Misfit Toys 2

• Pint-Sized Pink Pachyderm (Spotted Elephant)
• Guardian Cub (King Moonracer)
• Tiny Snowman (Sam the Snowman)

Cataclysmic Ladies

There are a handful of female NPCs I enjoyed questing with or around during Cataclysm; some of them will fade into the background now that we've moved on to the Mists of Pandaria, but I'm hoping we get to see some of them again.  (Especially Lorna, because Lorna is cool.)

The ladies:

Lorna Crowley - We first meet Lorna during the initial battle for Gilneas, when she saves your nascent Gilnean from death at the hands of a worgen.  We see her consistently through the zone, assisting in or leading efforts to combat the ravaging worgens, helping flee the flooding from the Cataclysm, and fighting the invading Forsaken armies.  (I have to say - one of the things that impressed me when I first played through Gilneas in the beta was that there is a distinct moment in the starting quests when the Cataclysm happens.)  Lorna is often seen toting what is one of the prettiest gun models in the game.  Eventually she trades in her rose for armor, and when we last see her (for now, I'm sure), she's going back into Gilneas with her father to continue the resistance against the Forsaken.

Matoclaw - Matoclaw is basically the organizer who makes sure the rivets are ordered and arrive on time to make the invasion of the Firelands happen, on schedule.  Her quests all basically revolve around making sure the supplies and people get where they're supposed to be and do what they're supposed to do.  I think of her kind of as the Pepper Potts of Firelands:  Malfurion and Hamuul are calling the shots, but she makes it all work.

Fiona - Fiona drives a caravan around the Eastern Plaguelands, ferrying members of the Horde and Alliance and the Argent Dawn alike.  She takes the responsibility for her charges very seriously, and when push comes to shove, she carries a sweet-looking rifle (same model as Lorna's, actually - must be a Gilnean make) to take care of trouble.

Zaela, Garona, and Lady Cozwynn - Zaela starts out in Twilight Highlands as an opposition leader amongst the Dragonmaw, and you help her become their Warlord.  Garona is much older than Cataclysm in terms of lore, but you meet her in the Twilight Highlands and help her fight Cho'gall and his cultists there.  Lady Cozwynn helps coordinate the assault on the Twilight cultists in the Highlands.  Taken together, though, these three ladies are your support for taking on Skullcrusher the Mountain.  (The Alliance are stuck with three guys.  Much less awesome.)  When the three were assembled together, I had a FFX-2 flashback.

Offspec

I'm a marksman hunter, yeah?  I have been for what, 7.5 years now?

And since the 5.0 patch, I've been doing raids and dungeons as beast mastery.  *shudder*

The results were pretty marked: an 8-10k increase in DPS on Zon'ozz probably says a lot at just how bad I am at marksman sometimes, especially when I'm macroless as BM and have been running with a cast sequence macro on MM.

It also suggests that maybe it's time for me to try running without the macro as MM and see how that goes, as well.  I really like Aimed Shot and Chimera Shot, and I miss them - especially Chimera Shot - in the BM spec.  I could get a self-heal through talents, but it's not the same - it's really just one more thing to cram onto my bars somewhere.  Sure, there's a trap pull-out now, but that's not particularly handy for keybinds.

On the BM front, I've picked up one of the gorgeous green cranes (Lucius) and a black goat (Aurelius - there is a pun there, but it's not really explainable outside my marriage).  They're not exotic pets, but they're pets.  I have four exotics at the moment - Skoll, a devilsaur, a worm (named Larry, because he just seemed like a Larry), and the cat from Hyjal that I'm probably going to dump because I really don't care about it and it's taking up space.  I kinda just tamed it because it was there while I was getting tokens to try for a scorchling.  The devilsaur is pretty, but he may get axed, as well.

In other news:  I spent the first... day and a half? of Mists doing pet battles to get to 250 pets.  Then I finally went off to leveling.  I'm up to 88, and I've discovered that Stampede will just make extra copies of pets if your 5 active slots aren't full.  (Good to know if you want to keep an empty slot to tame something pretty.)

Professions have been much less painful to skill up, other than the Spirit of Harmony requirements for damn near everything I actually want to make.  The engineering pet takes two - two - when you can make the inscription pets for some paper and ink.  I've gotten inscription, engineering, and alchemy maxed, and enchanting and blacksmithing are close.  Jewelcrafting is also close and is currently restricted mostly by my lack of blue gems to bump it up the rest of the way.  I'm not appreciating the inability to mine for gems without a rare-spawn pickaxe.  Cooking is maxed!  Well, the Way of the Oven is maxed.  Working on the others.  Overall, the guild just needs fishing and archaeology to get its heirloom pants.  I've been working some on fishing - it's at ~555 - but got distracted by clearing out the map in Krasarang.  I've caught one rare fish so far, but I'm still a Stranger to Nat Pagle. :(

Despite having played in beta, I'm still impressed by the size of the map and the sheer quantity of stuff to do crammed into it in Mists - the minigames add interesting layers, and the farm makes me want to get all my toons into Valley of the Four Winds.  I need either scallions or leeks for my next recipe. >.<