Quel'Thalas seemed determined to turn its Ranger Corps into a force capable of almost anything except magic. They needed the superb archery of elven marksmen, the nimble movements of Rogues, and the powerful head-on combat skills of Warriors. Higher-ranking Rangers even had to learn powerful magic.
By the time Yu Lin Bloodhawk finished the two books, his head was swimming and aching so badly he thought it would burst. There were heaps of skills to learn. He was absolutely certain that any Ranger who truly mastered every skill in those two books would be a major boss-an absolute monster of a boss.
Anyone would dread facing someone with a Warrior's powerful close-quarters combat abilities and a Rogue's agility. Worse still, the bastard could shoot from a distance with a sharpshooter's precision. And if you were unlucky enough to face one at a higher level, he could attack with magic too. How were you supposed to fight that? You couldn't beat him at range or up close, so was there even any point in fighting?
Unfortunately, the elves had set their hopes too high, and the Rangers buckled under the burden. No ordinary person could complete that much training; anyone who could was extraordinary. As a result, the Ranger Corps became a common force. They could do a little of everything, but aside from their original specialty, archery, they were utterly average at every other discipline.
What Yu Lin Bloodhawk couldn't understand was why none of the training plans included beast taming or any related skills. As someone whose original class had been Hunter, he found the lack of combat pets absolutely intolerable. The difference between Rangers and Hunters was obvious. Apart from their shared requirements in archery, Rangers emphasized protecting themselves in melee, while Hunters emphasized fighting in coordination with their pets. To put it more vividly, it was the difference between a melee Survival Hunter without a pet and a Beast Mastery Hunter with one.
Once Yu Lin Bloodhawk had worked that out, he decided to assess the hundred or so men under his command and find out exactly where they stood. He summoned his two squad leaders and assigned the task. The results came back quickly. That evening, both leaders brought him thick stacks of documents.
The next day, Yu Lin Bloodhawk spent an entire day reading through the documents in detail before he gained a general understanding. Then he fell silent for a whole evening. His unit really was treated like a stepchild. The standard Ranger composition in a main combat force was 2:4:4, while auxiliary forces used 2:3:5 or 1:4:5. Yet his unit had ended up with 1:2:7.
Those ratios-2:4:4, 2:3:5, and 1:4:5-represented the different categories within a Ranger force. In the Kingdom of Quel'Thalas, High Elves were classified primarily by their aptitude for understanding and using magic. This was very different from every other race in Azeroth. The only group that came close was the Blue Dragonflight.
Every High Elf in Quel'Thalas possessed some magical ability, however little. An elf with no magic at all simply did not exist. That made every other race envious and resentful. Yet it was also why, after the Sunwell was destroyed, all the High Elves of Quel'Thalas developed arcane addiction, and many became the terrifying creatures known as the Wretched.
After most people in Quel'Thalas with the aptitude to become mages were sent to Falthrien Academy, most of those remaining joined the Ranger Corps. Within the Ranger Corps, they were divided again into three tiers: high-magic Rangers, Medium-Magic Rangers, and low-magic Rangers. A 2:4:4 composition meant that each combat team had two high-magic Rangers, or one high-magic Ranger and one mage, four Medium-Magic Rangers, and four low-magic Rangers. Medium- and low-magic Rangers made up more than eighty percent of the Ranger Corps, with low-magic Rangers slightly outnumbering Medium-Magic Rangers.
His unit, however, had a 1:2:7 composition. If regulations hadn't required every team to have at least one high-magic Ranger to serve as its leader or as a magical attacker similar to a sniper, he probably wouldn't have had a single one. His hundred-man unit didn't have even one mage, either. The numbers of high- and Medium-Magic Rangers had been slashed in half, and low-magic Rangers had been shoved in to replace them.
He would have been lying if he said he wasn't angry. If he had remained ignorant, as he had been before, he could have let it slide. Now that he knew the full picture, how could he possibly be happy? Even among auxiliary forces, this company was the worst of the worst. No wonder he so often saw inferiority in his men's eyes when they looked at Sylvanas's troops. They hadn't said anything, and Yu Lin Bloodhawk hadn't known, so everyone had tacitly agreed to muddle along.
"Motherfuckers. They're only picking on me because I've got nobody backing me!" Yu Lin Bloodhawk cursed.
He actually considered talking to Sylvanas and asking her to help adjust the ratios. But they had all been together for so long that deciding who should leave and who should stay would be difficult. Those sent away would feel even more inferior, while those who remained wouldn't feel good about it either. Wasn't he supposed to be their big brother? Hadn't they agreed that if one of them was wronged, everyone would stand together? This would leave his men bitterly disappointed, so he abandoned the idea.
But could sentiment alone improve this unit's fighting strength? Could it put them on equal footing with the others? It wasn't as though other units were divided and disloyal, either. What could he do? What could he do? He wrestled with the problem all night. In the end, he decided he had to train all ninety of his mid- and low-magic Rangers as Hunters and equip them with combat pets.
Although he still had no methods for training beasts, he made up his mind. If he didn't have a way, he would find one. He thought of the Troll beast tamers in the Troll prisoner camp.
The next morning, he held his first military meeting for team leaders and above. The meeting took place in his tent, with twenty people attending: fourteen team leaders and their deputies, and two company commanders and deputies, including himself.
Everyone found this first meeting a novelty. The discussion about improving the unit's combat strength grew increasingly heated, and more and more suggestions emerged. None of them suited Yu Lin Bloodhawk at all, though. He thought that was probably because his attachment to the Hunter class from the game ran too deep, but he didn't care. Back in the day, the Arathi Hunter team had swept through the battlegrounds, crushing everyone in its path.
Once everyone had said most of what they wanted to say, Yu Lin Bloodhawk stood up and tapped the table. "Quiet down. You've made some good suggestions, but none of them are what I have in mind. I have two proposals. First, find a way to equip every Ranger below the high-magic tier with a combat pet. Second, revise the training syllabus around how to coordinate with those pets. Today's meeting will focus on those two points."
The moment Yu Lin Bloodhawk finished, all the chatter in the command tent stopped.
"What's wrong with all of you?" Yu Lin Bloodhawk asked with a frown. "Why aren't you saying anything? If you've got something to say, say it!"
"Commander! Are you asking us all to become beast tamers?" one team leader asked uneasily.
"What do you mean, beast tamers? I want you to become Rangers who take pets into battle. Let the pets stand in front of you and fight the enemy for you, while you stay behind them and put your strengths to use. Pick the enemy off one by one with your bows and arrows,"
Yu Lin Bloodhawk said.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. To be honest, beast tamers really didn't enjoy much status. Most of the merchants in Silvermoon City trained small pets purely for people's amusement, such as miniature Dragonhawks or Lynxes that never grew large and were only good for playing with. Most of these merchants had little ability and didn't live particularly well, barely making a living from their trade. Others specialized in training Hawkstriders with brilliantly colored plumage for the military or nobles. Those merchants were wealthy, but they kept their training methods secret. The large Dragonhawks ridden by the Dragonhawk troops were extremely difficult to train. The kingdom kept them under strict control, and their training methods were never disclosed.
"Commander! By combat pets, do you mean large wild beasts?" someone asked.
"Of course I mean large wild beasts. What else would you do, take kittens and puppies onto the battlefield? Wouldn't that just be sending them to their deaths?" Despite what Yu Lin Bloodhawk said, he thought of police dog units. Those dogs certainly weren't sent out to die; they were deadly. He had heard that they ate better than people and even wore bulletproof vests on missions.
They still shone in Earth's age of firearms. There's no reason they couldn't succeed here! But he truly had no idea how to train them. This wasn't a game, where showing a beast a little love made it obey your every command, willingly die for you, come when called, and leave when dismissed. It wouldn't be that simple.
Ever since he discovered that he didn't have a sixteen-slot bag with him and had to carry all his equipment himself, he had known that nothing would be as simple as it was in the game.
"But we don't have any methods for training large predators!" the squad leader said again.
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