Kheldul Obërgraff's Background

Kheldul Obërgraff is an old dwarf who has seen more than his fair share of the beauty and cruelty of Azeroth. He picked up his gun late in life and became proficient with it only five years ago. In his dark time before that, he was commissioned as a scout under the banner of Bronzebeard. He was not lonely, nor did he seek the company of others. He maintained the path, alerted caravans of dangers, and was watchful. After two decades of this service, he traded his hatchet and crossbow for a rifle and ironically put his darker thoughts behind him. He opened himself up to true camaraderie.

Kheldul had a wife many years ago at the beginning of the Great War. She was killed when he was supporting the war effort in the mines. His entire defenseless homestead was massacred. He now firmly believes in the unfair fight to any aggressor.

He was brought up living the life of stonework and metalwork north of the Redridge Mountains. He knows the ways of mining and forging well, but abandoned the life of his father. This of course was no simple rebellion but was quite literally a breathe of fresh air. Unlike others of his race, he can keep his bearings better above ground than below.

Kheldul maintains his gear. It is well-oiled. It is not shiny, but no one would call his kit unclean. He is always ready to leave and calls no one place home.

Kheldul puts his whole being into what he sets out to do. If he sets a goal he surpasses it or so help him would die trying. He doesn't look back and lives in the moment. Yet, he maintains a display case of old rifles in Ironforge. On the inside stock of each rifle are the names of those enemies to civilization he has slain.

"Master Hunter" Kheldul

BTW, this isn't something I call myself. It's something that others started calling me a while ago. Perhaps it's tongue-in-cheek.

Pets

So, I pulled all my friends out of my stable and got a group photo. Let me tell you a little about them.

Jason
Jason is my Gorilladin FTW. He's named after a friend who is/was a great paladin tank. I still keep a couple pieces of Tier-5 gear around just in case we need to solo an easy instance. He usually does fine with just normal mend pet casts, but he needs a real healer for instance elites. He does pretty amazing dps in AoE-heavy fights. The last time that was a good enough reason to bring him to a raid was Mt Hyjal though. ;-)

Fluffy
Back just before? Wrath hit, a few friends and I hopped into MC and grabbed me a Core Hound. We were all fresh new Jenkins's. I haven't fully leveled him up yet, but she'll be my PvP pet once I do. Other than her wonderful caster speed debuff, she has the added bonus of tingling old MC memories of seeing an enraged massive core hound coming at you. She was my first exotic.

Chuckles
Chuckles is my fun dps pet. Chuck can rip stuff up quite nicely. Sadly he does a little less damage than cats and scorpids. He also has a pretty bogus hitbox flaw. He starts off with a rather large hitbox. The hitbox grows when he gets his specials off, and of course when he is en-wrath-ed. This makes some encounters pretty much impossible to keep him alive. He's bigger than the holes in the flame waves of Sartharion. He's eatting almost every Heigan the Unclean spew. My cat doesn't have these problems.

Malcom
Malcom, the one in the middle (gaaah), is just the gimmicky ghostly three-headed hydra. Also known as crocolisk tank pet.

Pedicure
Pedicure is my raiding pet. He does pretty excellent dps. Yes, scorpids can buff-stack-poison better and higher, but that's getting nerfed to oblivion in 3.0.8. Cats are getting hit, but not too horribly and will remain a top choice for all talent trees. Having Pedz will allow me to try out other talents when the axe falls on BM.

So, there you go. /wave to the nice people

Played

There we go.

Kheldul the Hunter and Me

Kheldul has been making his way through Azeroth since November of 2004. I'm an East-coast player, playing on a West-coast server. Back then it didn't matter. All servers were housed in a server farm in CA. Doing the East on West thing meant that I could play a little later and have plenty of people on to do things with. It also meant that I could get on at times that weren't typically crowded if I wanted to.

Kheldul has never had a name change or a server change. He's been in a surprisingly small number of guilds. Somehow the guilds always are well-run, mature, and without too much drama.

I do have a few alts. I never max-leveled any until BC. When I did, I did it quickly and geared it up very quickly. I haven't done much of anything with them since Wrath. Kheldul deserves to get as geared and played as possible. He has a lot of iLevel200 epic gear in the bank. All the drops from Heroic 5mans that a hunter could want. (I'm planning on needing haste someday.) My equipped gear may be my PvP gear, may be the gear I'm planning on using once it's enchanted, or it may actually be my PvE gear. Don't obsess over armory. ;-)

I may start leveling another character to fill in the time between raids and be available for when we have a raid shortage, but Kheldul will always be ready and willing and the thing I think about.

I was talented in Marksman for a very long time, until BC. Since then I've been Beastmaster spec'd and thoroughly enjoy it. I got through half of the 1.0 raids (MC, BWL, ZA, AQ20, 3/4 of AQ40), much of 2.0 (but never killed Illidan and only 2/4 in MH and just trash in Sunwell), and now with 3.0, getting enough raiders and surviving MT DCs seems to be the biggest challenge. I've been looking at SV huntering quite a lot lately.

I'll most always be talking about PvE. However, I do enjoy PvP BGs quite a bit and it may slip in from time to time.

I'm closely watching all the PTR reports and GhostCrawler statements about the incoming hunter changes in 3.0.8. I remember the great pre-BC hunter nerf very well.

I'm a numbers guy. I'm an engineer IRL. I like macros and addons. I like being the best and don't like "being-that-guy".

I don't play every night. I've never been in a guild or alliance that raided more than three nights a week. I usually don't play on weekends.

I'm (/gulp) middle-aged, a husband with a great wife, and a father to some mind-blowingly great kids.

I hope you enjoy reading stuff here and find it useful.