The most useful pet in the game

8/25/2010

Hey, only one month since my last post!
I've actually been mulling over a few topics, but one of them leapt to the front of my brain tonight.

The most useful pet you can get is.......a Death Knight of the opposite faction!
If you're stuck trying to get reputation from rarely visited areas like Hellfire Peninsula (Thrallmar/Honor Hold rep) or Nagrand (Mag'har or Kurenai rep), they can really help you out. Now, I realize that you can just grind rep by killing ogres, but if you want Halaa Battle Tokens, you're usually outta luck. And why would you want those Battle Tokens? The two Talbuks that you can buy, of course! If you're going for the Mountain o' Mounts achievement, every little bit helps. I'm currently at 89/100, and getting those plus the 8 Talbuks from exalted with the Mag'har would definitely come in handy. So, do the daily PvP quest in Nagrand, and after 17 days, you'd have 8500 rep extra, plus 170 tokens.

Here's the catch, though. You gotta be around the same level as the DK. They have to be at least green to you, so they give you honor for kills. No honor, no tokens. So, the only way I'd be able to get those mounts for my main Bloodshrike would be to get my friend to level up his DK to whatever level gets him to be green to an 80. I'm not sure that's gonna happen anytime soon.....
If you've blown past Outlands, you really have to kiss those mounts goodbye, because it's gonna be extremely hard to find a level 80 cruising around Nagrand, that's also landed around the outskirts of Halaa, and the chance of you killing them 170 times is slim to none.
You could still kill your pet DK to get the daily quest done, for an easy 500 rep with the Mag'har, but you won't get the tokens unless they're green to you.

In contrast, Thrallmar rep can still be earned fairly easily playing solo, in 2 ways. One, with the daily pvp quest. Two, you can solo Shattered Halls at 80 for the rep needed to level from honored to exalted, since rep from Ramparts and Blood Furnace stops at 5999/6000 Honored, and you can't earn any more from mobs until level 68, and have access to Shattered Halls. But guess what, at level 68 you can go to Northrend, and so nobody runs those dungeons anymore.

Here's where the rules get fuzzy. Any level player can kill a player of the opposing faction when in the three stadiums, and still recieve a Mark. Turn those marks in 5 at a time, and get a rep boost buff. Now, if you manage to get a rep run with other players, or do it solo, you're getting more reputation per mob than normal.

Getting those marks is also pretty sweet for a toon that just hit Outlands, too. My paladin Clockwrknyt was able to get her first Libram and a sweet trinket that should help her with tanking. Mana AND life back, without having to use judgements or seals!
She earned the marks with a combination of the daily PvP quest, which gives you 3 tokens, and also laying the smack down on my pet DK, one kill at a time.

The reason that this came to mind was because of an encounter I had while doing the daily pvp quest for the tokens and rep. My pet DK was standing outside one of the stadiums, waiting for Bloodshrike to fly over, whereupon he would go inside, tip the balance to neutral, and let Bloodshrike recapture it. A level 80 Blood Elf DK swoops down, and slaughters him. I whispered to him to please leave him alone, as I was using him to do the daily. Not only did he try to camp the DK's corpse, he also squatted on the stadium, pushing the balance all the way over to max Horde side. He also pretended to speak french when I asked him to stop it.

When I armoried him, I just had to laugh. Apparently, he liked the starting Relic and trinket so much, he kept using them. He also seems to be unsure of whether to PvP, tank, or DPS, based on his gear and gemming. I truly understand the term "faceroller" after dealing with this illustrious gentleman.