This time Z & Cinder wonder whether “Blizzard nailed it on the head, or is it just leaving you cold and wanting to re-write the way your toon’s class is portrayed”. Blog challenge accepted!

I’ve always been a die hard fan of class specific lore so, my answer to the question is most definitely: “Yay, Blizzard nailed it on the head”!

Beast Mastery: Among the most gifted hunters, there are those who have from birth felt a profound bond with the creatures of the wild. These beast masters are drawn to the perilous primal world, invigorated by its dangerous and untamed nature. Primitive landscape becomes home. Ferocious predator becomes kin. Whether in the thrill of the hunt or the heat of battle, beast masters call forth a litany of vicious animals to overwhelm prey and gnaw at their enemies’ will. – Blizzard

Pet Taming

The taming of beasts is reserved to hunters only, and has always been one of the things I truly enjoyed about that class. I remember, in Draenor, the secret quest chain to tame Gara… The day that I discovered that there was such a thing for us, beast masters, I went ecstatic. Class specific lore adds so much more to your character. Sardoken and I eagerely jumped into this taming adventure to obtain the magnificent ghost wolf, Gara.

With the release of Legion, Blizzard started implementing more and more “special” tameable creatures throughout the entire game. Imagine our suprise when we heard about this awesome news!

The first to be introduced were the mechanical pets. If you’re not a Gnome or Goblin, you must acquire the engineer-crafted Mecha-Bond Imprint Matrix to begin with. Once crafted and learned, you can tame about any mechanical hunter pet available in the game. Some are quite easy to obtain like the mechanical sheep Tekton, while others remain a little bit more challenging, like the Arachnodrones found in Alcaz Island.

The new Hunter pet family added in patch 7.2: the Feathermanes. My favourites being the Wolfhawks, that’s why I’ve tamed all three of them. The possibility of taming this new pet family requires the completion of certain achievements and quests. Wowhead, as usual, has a really nice guide that you can follow blindly.

Then there is the most ultimate challenge: Fenryr, whom you can only tame by soloing Halls of Valor mythic. Yes, you’ve read that right: you have to solo a mythic. I’ve never tried it myself, but I will… soon… one day ;p

As you can see, the range of tameable pets seems to grow day by day. It’s a hunter only thing and I’m very, veeerrrryyyy happy that Blizzard has put so much effort in our taming experience.

Class Order Hall

The Class Order Hall for the hunter is the one and only “Trueshot Lodge”. There is no place better for hunters than the Lodge. I love this place… It’s beautiful and cozy with bonfires, snow, pinetrees, and it has various bows, guns, and polearms on display from the history of World of Warcraft.

Trueshot Lodge is the home base of an ancient order of hunters known as the Unseen Path. The Lodge was originally built by night elves and tauren working together on Talon Peak in Highmountain. It serves as the order hall for hunters.
Talon Peak was known by another name that has not been mentioned. The site was blessed by Ohn’ahra herself through [Talonclaw] and thus inspired the change. – WowpediA

As you can see on the map, there are three watchtowers: the southern, northern and northeast tower. Only the southern tower has survived the centuries, the other two were apparently damaged beyond repair, and were replaced by smaller towers that are, currently, seen around the Lodge.

We also have a portal to Dalaran and the flight master has a unique set of flightpaths only for hunters. Inside the Lodge, we can imbue our artifact weapon and consult our command map for missions and objectives.

The artifact researcher is named Holt Thunderhorn. He is located near a large book at the east side of the lodge. The tome starts blank, but will grow to hold the “Tales of the Hunt”.

Around the Lodge there’s the Gladiator’s Sanctum, the stables, and a hidden cave where Ogdrul is trapped in a rune circle.

I could have never imagined a more beautiful Class Order Hall than the Trueshot Lodge. I’m happy that my hunter can call this her home, but I’m also a bit sad when I think that, after this expansion, I’ll be spending less time in this beautiful place.

Class Mount

The scenario to obtain the hunter class mount was amazing! It starts with a cinematic where everyone is gathered around the fire and celebrating. Then, the scenario begins…

First, you have to go out into the night and must use your tracking skills to find four great beasts, which you have to defeat. After that, you have to put the spirits of the Wolf, Fereki, and Hawk, Vetholnir, to rest to be able to proceed to “Challenge the Wolfhawk”. Haukenulfnir, the wolfhawk, is an elite and a bit harder to defeat than the other NPCs. Once she/he is down, the final stage can begin: “Revel the Night Away” – Return to Odyn and feast the night away.

After the scenario, you return to the Trueshot Lodge, where a wolfhawk flies into the camp and chooses you!

The Feathermane mount has a different color for each spec. To get all three of them, you must unlock Concordance of the Legionfall with all three specs. I did and it was totally worth it! This is one of my most favourite mounts throughout the entire game so, once again… I can say that I’m a happy hunter 🙂

Artifact, gear, talents,…

Before Legion came out, I wasn’t very happy with the hunter changes they had announced. In fact, I was very negative. Once Legion was released, however, I rapidly became aware on how ridiculous that was. I love the changes they’ve made. Each spec is more distinct from one and other. Granted, I’ve never been a fan of Marksmanship or Survival so, needless to say that I couldn’t care less about these two specs. I’ve always played Beast Master, and I’m glad to see that everything that Blizzard has done until now, made me love my favourite class (and spec) even more.

Beast Master feels more than ever like a real master of the beasts… We have two pets, thanks to the artifact weapon, which I really love. I sincerely hope that Blizz will continue focusing on more than one pet in the next expansions. I would feel too lonely without my entire zoo around me 😉 The thing I like is that our talents are more focused on the damage done by our pets. We still have Cobra and Multi shot, traps, and some really cool utility spells/abilities like “Flare”, “Tracking”,… All in all, when it comes to the talents, I am a happy BM hunter.

Our artifact weapon, Titanstrike is pretty cool. Eventhough I may not like every appearance, there are plenty of great looking ones. Overall, I like the artifact system. It adds a lot to each class lore, which must be very refreshing for altoholics or lore nerds. If I would have more time I would love to level all classes and specs, only to see all the different stories.

Talking about stories, I loved the entire Hunter Class Hall Campaign! From the most simple quest to the night with Rexxar, the entire campaign has been a wonderful adventure. Not to mention the title “Huntmaster”, that we gain after completing In Defense of Dalaran.

Last but not least, I think that, in this expansion, the gear for the hunter has made a bit of an upgrade. I mean, look at the Hunter Class Order Hall set: Guise of the Unseen Path. Sardoken has transmogged his last gear into this set, which proves how great the hunter set in this xpac really is.

TLDR, I’m very happy that Class Fantasy took such an important place in Legion. It adds so much more depth to each of the classes, which makes me love the game even more (if that was even possible ;-)).

I know, it’s a bit late to start talking about an event that happened last thursday, but that’s the kind of luxury you can afford when you write a blog and not in a news website… The truth is that, if I would have posted right after the stream, I would have used way too many superlatives… Now I’ll use it only once and I’ll do it right now: Amazing!

Ever wondered what makes Blizzard games so incredibly popular? There is, of course, the legendary level of polish and the insanely fun gameplay but I believe that the lore is also a huge part of their success.

There are not so many MMORPGs where people know the names of the vilains or the leaders while most WoW players know Sylvanas, Thrall, Arthas,… Their lore is articulated around very charismatic characters, and their stories are very well diluted all along the gamer’s experience. I know that not everybody is a lore whore but I’m sure that everyone’s experience is affected by the stories of Blizzard.

With Lords of War, they take it even further by creating out-of-the-game story content.
Having seen how The Shattered Hand was started will make me even more attentive to pieces of lore related to that faction in the next expansion.
Everyone knows now that Garrosh was defeated and brought to trial, but to see him handing back Gorehowl to his father after having kept him from drinking the cursed blood was mind-blowing.

On a final note, I’m so happy about the release date. We are moving to Brussels during the month of October and I would have had a lot of difficulties focusing on a new expansion and a moving at the same time. We will be well installed in our new quarters when WOD will be released and without our daily train trips, we’ll have plenty of time to enjoy it!