If you play a Hunter at all, then you probably know who Mania is, the one person that I consider the absolute awesomest resource and authority on Hunters in WoW.

When I first created my Hunter, and I desperately wanted guidance on how to find new skills for my pet, learn what pets I could choose from, and what the stat difference between a Cat and a Wolf were, Mania’s Petopia was what I found, and has long since continued to be my “Hunter’s Bible”.

Mania also has a wonderful blog which I follow every day, Mania’s Arcania, and a regular feature is “Name that Pet”, where readers mail in with screenshots of their new critter friends, asking for help from the community in finding an appropriate name. This will become relevant later in the post.

Yes, I know when people think of Hunter blogs, they usually think of that other guy, but in my book Mania deserves the crown. Her dedication to keeping us informed of Hunter and Pet changes is legendary. 

Well, that, plus she never said in MY hearing that she thought Druids should be tamed as Hunter pets. Which clearly shows her ego isn’t writing checks her class can’t cash.

Or at least not in my hearing.

On a side note, last night Cassie had a question on pets, and I told her, naturally, to go visit Petopia. I gushed on for about 5 minutes about the greatness of Petopia, I reminisced over when I was but a Tadpole Hunter, trying to figure out where I could go at the earliest possible level to tame a critter that could let me learn my next level of Claw, so I could then scurry back to the Stables to teach it to my beloved Moonclaw…

And she called out from the living room, “How come Petopia isn’t linked on the blog?”

Sigh.

Anyway, my version of “Name that Pet”.

I went wandering into the bank in Shattrath, looking for mats to make a gun.

I stopped, dead in my tracks, staring transfixed at the glorious sight before me.

This was on the live server, Kael’thas, October 1st.

And as I saw this, I knew,KNEW, that Papa Hummels Pet Biscuits only affect non-combat pets.

This, THIS was a creature of beauty.

I whispered to Kahel, saying something along the lines of “Oh, how beautiful!”

After a bit, he replied back, saying, ”What is?”

“Your pet.”

Remember, I’m whispering him out of nowhere.

He replies back, very nicely, “Oh, thank you. Vilebranch Raiding Wolves have the same skin, you can find them in the Hinterlands.”

Very nice, very helpful.

“Well, those may be cool, but your wolf is the most awesome I’ve ever seen.”

There was a pause of a second or two, and then he whispers back, cautiously;

“Does she look big to you?”

I answered, justly, that she was the biggest honking pet I’ve ever seen in my life.

He whispers, “Oh no, she’s bugged again.”

LOL!

Can I please have that bug hit Moonclaw for just 5 minutes? In Alterac Valley? Please?

This is the first I’ve heard that Rema may sometimes bug so that she goes back to appearing as her huge, giant form to other players. Awesome!

I, personally, hereby name that pet, “AWESOME.”

Edit to add: I looked Rema up on WoWhead, and found out in the comments that it’s been reported for a long time that anyone with Rema as a pet would have that huge size thing as a permanent bug, but someone that tamed one recently says that his Rema is now normal size. So it may have been fixed for new taming… or not, since apparently the Hunter himself sees a normal size pet, it’s only other people that still see the massive honking wolf.

Expect me to tame her tonight and find out!

My buddy Manny has signed on with the Muscular Dystrophy Association to take part in a recent program, where he is ‘behind bars’ until October 23rd.

The idea is, his ‘bail’ is set at $3000, and he’s hoping to get that much in donations by the 23rd to spring him from lockup.

I know Child’s Play is coming up fast, but I’m hoping that you won’t be too upset if I ask you, or at least encourage you, to help him out and get his butt out of jail!

Until the end of the MDA event, I’ll have the button leading there up on the side of teh site.

Thank you for at least thinking about it.

Beta build 9014 went live late last night, and in it there were four changes most affecting Feral Druids;

1. Swipe now has the ‘no limit to number of targets’ implemented.
2. Mangle (Cat) has had it’s damage significantly buffed.
3. Rake has had it’s damage buffed.
4. Protector of the Pack now provides 1%/2%/3% Damage Mitigation, instead of a flat 3% at all levels.

Okay. So. Why should you even care about the cat stuff when none of it is live yet? 

Because, my friends, it shows that things are still changing. The Developers have heard about your concerns for Feral DPS, and are still working on things.

I hope that knowing our class is still being actively worked on, adjusted, and tested encourages people to provide level-headed, clear and well written feedback to the Devs on the Beta forums.

And to shut the hell up with all the whining.

Seriously.

Yes, I KNOW you have valid concerns. So do I.

I know that PvP is looking painful right now for Feral. I know that you are concerned about Protector of the Pack being dependant on the number of people you are grouped with. I know that the lack of INT on our gear, and the corresponding shrinkage of our Mana pool and the way it drastically limits our shifting, are issues that concern you.

I know.

And your concerns need to be shared with Blizzard. Help give them areas to focus their attentions on. YES!

But please, please, go to the Beta forums, and try to present your concerns clearly, describe what exact mechanic, Talent or situation concerns you, in what setting, tell them how you see it affecting how you are playing in the Beta, and describe how this either limits or impedes your play. And share your delight with what you feel works well.

Articulate your thoughts and ideas in a thoughtful, polite manner.

And stop whining and BITCHING about it.

Seriously, if all you are going to do is post that, “This sucks, Blizz sucks, thanx for the nerf, I reroll warrior, kthxbai”, then just shut the hell up.

Just stop the whining. Provide some useful feedback. Give specifics, be polite, and try to pretend for a minute that you are a mature adult interested in being part of the solution. If you can’t do that, then you fail, sir.

This morning, Ghostcrawler posted the following;

However, we are probably going to have to nerf bears. If we don’t, they will be the only MT choice for serious guilds. At the moment, bears in decent gear take less damage, have more health and generate more threat than the other 3 classes by a wide enough margin that we think it’s a problem. This is even true on bosses that do a lot of magic damage (like Malygos).

I use the word “nerf” because players use it, and I don’t want to hind behind euphamisms. But changing the numbers doesn’t have to mean nerfing you into the ground. We just don’t want you to dominate. I’m sure you’d feel the same way if Protection paladins were just head and shoulders above the other tanks.

We understand that some Ferals felt they were nerfed in BC either prematurely or in such a way that kept them steadily behind other tanks. (Though Sunwell Radiance was largely for bears.) We will try to make intelligent changes so that you’re still out there tanking the Lich King himself. We want you to be about as good as warriors, paladins and death knights, not way above or below them.

I do NOT want to see people going on to that thread and exploding into whining little QQ fests. We do not know what they are seeing in their data. Unless you are actively raiding in the Beta right now, how do we know how we are performing? Especially in comparison?

But it is appropriate for you to go to the thread, and politely state your views on what you hope they focus on for our tanking future; things like (just a possible example) asking them to make sure that our core abilities and Talents allow us to scale evenly throughout all levels of raiding with our gear, and not just the first raids, no matter how our final numbers look.

Okay, ranting aside, point 4 on that list? That last one is, in my mind, an expected but still painful change. I know I, for one, had planned on only putting one point in PotP to get the max Damage Mitigation benefits, so I’d have two extra points for kitty Talents. Damn it.

Yes, the increased damage of Bear form and the Rage it would bring would make me invest in all three points by 80, but at 70 I know I’ll be leveling Cat more than tanking, so I was going to only stick one point in for the 3% Mitigation. Curses, foiled again! Oh well.

I now return you to waiting for a real post.

For those that want some actual Druid information today, check out BBB’s latest massive article on Wow Insider here.  He takes a look at the upcoming patch and how it will affect bear tanks in terms of skills, gear and more. 

Thanks!

I’ve been meaning to write this one since last weekend (and BBB has been nagging me to do so).  With his food related post today, it seemed like a good time for this.

Since I work from home, I’m almost always on the internet during the day and part of that time (breaks) I’m often networking with others who do similar work.  Besides work topics, we often talk about things like how to save money, stuff about our families, etc.  Over a year ago, in a post on some forum board, there was a discussion about ways to save money.  Someone said that they saved a ton in groceries by purchasing food through something called Angel Food Ministries.

It’s a nonprofit organization that buys food in bulk and provides it at a very affordable cost to families - ANY family regardless of income.  I had checked in to it and at the time, there were no sites available in Minnesota.  The way it works is that a church or other nonprofit site has to take ownership of coordinating the entire process and it’s a pretty big undertaking.  They do get $1 for each box sold donated back to their site.    Last year there were a lot of sites in the south and west US, but nothing around us. 

The topic of saving money again came up last month on a forum post, particularly with the state of the economy and people’s jobs.  Again, someone mentioned Angel Food, so I decided to check it out and see if anything had changed.  This time there was a site around us.  It was about 20 miles away, but within reasonable distance if it was something we wanted to do. 

I explored the process a bit further and found out that each month they offer a regular box for $30. This box is intended to feed a family of 4 for one week.  They also offer a senior box of 10 frozen dinners that are nutritionally designed to be low-fat, reasonable calories and contain a protein, and 2 fruits or vegetables per meal.  Sounded like something for my mom.  Then they also offer 4 or 5 special boxes that you can purchase if you buy either the regular or senior box.  There were grill boxes, assorted meat ones, and a fruit/veggie box ($19).  There are no limits to the amount of boxes you can buy (at least that I’ve seen).  The menu for the regular box and fruit/veggie box sounded great for the price.  So my mom and I decided to give it a try and BBB agreed he’d go with to pick stuff up.

The church coordinating that site required you to order by the middle of the September and you could do it online and pay by credit card or in person at the church.  Then the food comes in the last Saturday of the month and must be picked up between 10am-noon.  BBB and I ordered one regular box and one fruit/veggie box.

Last Saturday was the time to pick it up and there are no words to describe the incredible organization of our particular site, especially after we found out this was the first month they had offered the program.  We arrived at our appointed time in the morning (set by alphabetical range of last names).  They had volunteers directing people in the parking lot, people directing inside the doors, a check-in area, and then a long line where you went along tables set up and volunteers put the items for the regular box into the cardboard boxes we had brought.  We were literally in and out in about 15 minutes and it was unbelievable how many people had come to pickup food.

The quality of the food so far has been very good.  It’s mostly brands that we haven’t heard of (somewhat like shopping at an Aldi store), but for the $30 box we got 4 steaks, 4 chicken breasts, 1 pound of ground turkey, 4 cheese-filled brats, a 2 pound pork loin roast, a 3 pound bag of unbreaded chicken nugget pieces (dark meat), a bag of french fries, a bag of frozen green beans, a bag of frozen stir fry vegetables, a bag of pinto beans, bag of black beans, package of chicken rice (like Rice a Roni), box of macaroni and cheese, a dozen eggs, a box of chocolate chip cookies, and probably a couple of other things I’m forgetting.  But basically a WHOLE lot of food for $30.

Then came the fruit and veggie box (which again was $19) - we got a 3 pound bag of apples, 3 pound bag of oranges, 4 pound bag of potatoes, 2 pound bag of yellow onions, 4 pears, 4 tomatoes, stalk of celery, 1 pound bag of carrots, head of cabbage, and I think one or two other things that I can’t remember now either.  Again, lot of food for way under grocery store prices (at least the stores around us).

The October menu looks even more tasty and wonderful.  We’re definitely in for another try.

We’d definitely encourage anyone (single or a family) to check it out.  Here’s the main website - Angel Food Ministries  From there you can search for a local site, review the October menu, and find out more about this incredible organization that will be helping us to definitely save money on groceries in the coming months.