They Weren’t Fishing
Y’all will have to get that Black War Bear another night, now, ya heah?
Being Dependent Upon Another Class Stinks
“Hey Brain?”
“Yes BRK?”
“We’ve been in front of the hunter-trainer for thirty minutes now.”
“Yes we have. That’s some good counting; proud of you.”
“Our point is… we’ve been here a long time.”
“By some standards, yes we have. “
“What’s the hold-up!”
“We have a talent point remaining.”
“We’re respec’ing?”
“Yes we are. And we have a talent point just sitting here, and we’re not sure what to do.”
“Why did we respec?”
“Because our guild’s resident ret pally hasn’t been in our raids, we’ve been going out-of-mana faster than Megs can count to her shoe size.”
“Now that you mention it, we have been spending way too much time in Aspect of the Viper.”
“We certainly have, BRK. That must change, and we think we have a good answer: Invigoration.”
“Why haven’t we used it before?”
“Invigoration requires a pet’s special attack to crit; melee-critss don’t count. When we take Hobbes to a raid, he has two special attacks: Claw and Rake. When they crit, and we have 2/2 in Invigoration, we regen 1% of our mana.”
“What’s our mana in a typical raid?”
“We’re averaging around 12,000 mana. So 2/2 in Invigoration will return 120 mana when our pet’s special attack crits.”
“Sounds snazzy! But you haven’t answered our question; why haven’t we used it before?”
“The reason we haven’t used it in the past is that our pet was Missing so frequently that our number of pet-special-crits was seriously low. If our pet is missing 30% of the time, that’s a massive number of crits we’re not getting. The guaranteed return from 3/5 in Efficiency – reducing the cost of our shots and stings by 6% — seemed to be at least as good as the small mana-return we received from 2/2 in Invigoration. But there was also the stigma of going overly-heavy in the BM tree. Do we really need more than 51 points in BM? Can we justify it? You always preach Balance, and going 55 points deep into BM certainly seems to fly in the face of that basic tenet.”
“So we’ve got some mathematical and psychological reasons why we’ve avoided Invigoration, yes?”
“Quite so. However, we thing we can overcome the psychological with a healthy dose of mathematical reasoning.”
“We’re going Invigoration?”
“As you would say, Darn tootin’,Foshizzle.”
“FOSHIZZZLE!”
“And here’s why. “Misses” are more than Misses. “Misses” are Misses, Blocks, and Dodges. When we analyze our WWS report, we’ve seen that by taking 2/2 in Animal Handler for the +10 to pet-Expertise, we’ve basically eliminated the enemy’s ability to Block or Dodge our pet-attacks, which were the vast majority of our pet-Misses. This has reduced our pet-Misses from 30% to 5%. We saw that with 2/2 in Animal Handler, against a typical Naxxramas boss, our pet would special-Crit 40-60 times per fight. If we add 2/2 in Invigoration to grant us 120 mana/pet-Crit, we’ll regen 4800 to 7200 mana per boss-fight.”
“That’s not bad!”
“No it’s not bad at all. The key, of course, is to keep our pet attacking even if we’re not, due to ranged-DPS having to reposition. Keeping our pet alive becomes, if you can believe it, will become even more important than ever. “
“What are we giving up to take 2/2 in Invigoration? Longevity?”
“Never. We’re not giving up anything in the BM tree; it’s all too good to lose.”
“So… we’re dumping Improved Stings?”
“Out the window, yes.”
“We’re sticking with 3/5 in Frenzy?”
“Data shows that 60% proc instead of 80% proc isn’t hurting us. So yes, we’re staying 3/5 in Frenzy.”
“We have 55 points in BM?”
“Yes. That seems like a lot, I know.”
“It really does.”
“And of course we sticking with the basic 15 points in MM, like every hunter should: Lethal (5) and Mortal Shots (5), GftT (2), and Careful Aim(3).”
“55 and 15… um…”
“That’s 70 points, BRK. Which means we have one point remaining. And it’s being trixy.”
“Trixy?”
“Yes, trixy. We’re not sure what to do with that point.”
“What are our choices?”
“Improved Tracking for +1% damage to everything we’re tracking, Hawk Eye for an extra two yards range…”
“We like that one, actually. There are some fights where some additional range wouldn’t be a bad thing.”
“I agree, which is why I mentioned it. But we could also go 4/5 in Frenzy to ensure our pet’s Frenzy is always up. We could take a point in Spirit Bond for the +5% bonus to healing for our pet and ourselves…”
“Spirit Bond shouldn’t be sneezed at.”
“No it shouldn’t. We could take one point in Improved Stings for +10% damage to Serpent Sting….”
“We’re really tired of having to refresh Serpent Sting to keep the Glyph of Steady Shot working; it’s such a mana-drain.”
“Can’t disagree with you there, either, but +10% to Steady Shot is so good we have to use that glyph, and thus keep using Serpent Sting. Our final choice is taking a point in Rapid Killing, reducing the cooldown of Rapid Fire by one minute. This would allow us to use Rapid Fire more than once per-boss fight, if the fight is longer than four minutes.”
“There doesn’t seem to be a clear-cut choice, does there.”
“No. And that is why we’ve been standing in front of the hunter-trainer for thirty-five minutes; that one point is trixy.”
“And this whole thing is a result of not having a second paladin in the raid?”
“Yes, the paladins are, once again, totally to blame for this. If we had another in our raid, we could just dump Invigoration forever and put those two points and our trixy-point back into 3/3 in Improved Stings and be done with it.”
“Cockroaches! All of ‘em!”
“If there’s another class more thoroughly reviled more so than paladins, we’re not aware of it.”
“Warlocks?”
“No. Warlocks are suffering their own Blizzard-induced h3ll right now. They don’t need any hate from anybody else.”
“Mages?”
“Hate? Nah. Although ‘give us bread and port us’ certainly isn’t the basis for a long-lasting relationship, that’s for certain.”
“Sporebats?”
“Bingo, chief. Sporebats and paladins.”
“Although if our guild’s ret pally shows up to our next raid?”
“…”
“Brain?”
“We’ll kiss his plate-covered, mana-regenerating toes, that’s what we’ll do!”
Spidys
“Dear BRK … Icecrown, in front of Argent Vangaurd there are spideys. Normally I hate spideys, but these ones drop Nerubian Chitins, Borean Leather, Arctic Fur and hardcore amounts of Frostweave cloth. I’ve also had four Titanium Lockboxes drop here, never seen those anywhere else.
1) Many spideys
2) People quest there, so many spideys are already dead
3) Vendors and Dalaran super-close.
4) When you shoot the webs to free the spideys, sometimes you free an Argent fellow who thanks you buy giving you a BoM and healing you.
“Best farming spot ever. Audacious”
The market for Frostweave has gone down by 50%. A 20-stack that was once selling for forty gold is now going for less than twenty. We don’t recommend you choose farming cloth for profit right now, as the leather-market is still off the charts, and you’ll get a greater return on your time by selling a 20-stack of Heavy Borean Leather for upwards of 200 gold.
The epic tanking cloak that leatherworkers can make require forty Nerubian Chitins, so if you’re not running AN and AK frequently, the spiders (spidys) that Audacious identifies are a source of these mats. *We* prefer to make the epic DPS-cloak, as there are 3-10x as many DPS-people as there are tanks, so there’s a greater market for them.
One of the things *we* consider in choosing a preferred leather-farming spot is the number of other people in the area. If there are too many, they’ll kill everything and not loot the corpses. (Not looting your corpses is travesty and earns many demerits as well as horrible phat-loot-karma.) So we prefer to farm in areas where people aren’t around to drive us crazy.
So is our personal Skinners’ Paradise in Ice Crown? Nope. Keep guessing, foshizzle.
Pet Alert!
While normally we leave most pet-info posts to Mania, this one is important enought that we feel we need to post it ASAP.
One of our five favorite pets from WotLK is on the endangered-list. The LSD Wasp of Doom, aka. the Sapphire Hive Queen, may no longer be tamable once 3.0.8 arrives. If you’ve ever wanted to try her out, you now know that your time is limited.
Thank you to JayCanuck for the PTR-pic, and of course Mania for keeping all the pet-info so we don’t have to.
She Has A Glowy Stingie
While we cannot verify how accurate that statement really is, we can show you our LSD Wasp of Doom and let you wonder, “What the heck is that on her tail?”
Would it help if we told you that we were running with a Discipline Priest?
Don’t Understand It At All
“Dear BRK, make a Facebook group, now!”
Ok, here.
Like we have any idea what to do with it.
We Shouldn’t
Tell innocent druids that hunters crave Expertise.
Carry the joke to an extreme and roll into heroic Gundrak to get the epic expertise-ring, but it drops and it’s better than what we had, so we’re totally using it.
Expect a proto drake in our first Oracle egg.
Get mad when we didn’t get a proto drake in our first Oracle egg.
Assume that any fist weapon can go on either main or off-hand.
Have rolled need on a “blue” fist weapon when we’ve got a “purple” fist weapon, and they’re both for main-hand.
Let our pride get hurt when someone questions why we have a green gem in our gun.
Spend a couple of hundred gold on a blue gem for our gun when the upgrade from our green gem is +1 agi and +1 hit.
Put on a frown-face when people want to raid Naxx but haven’t used WoW-head to find out the easily attainable pieces of gear they can get from guildies who manufacture.
Tell you where our Skinner’s Paradise is, ’cause it’ll lose it’s “Paradise” motif once everybody goes there.
Not tell you that Sholazar Basin isn’t it.
Wonder why we can farm leather for two hours straight and not get a single Arctic Fur.
Wonder why we give up farming leather and go do Oracles dailies, and see the first cobra we kill, just to get it out of the way, drop an Arctic Fur.
Give in to our Arctic Fur Muse and tell her about the Big News. (Our Arctic Fur Muse is a resto druid who, when she’s online, causes Arctic Furs to drop for us. But she’s bogarting her AF-Mojo until we tell her our secret.)
Tell you that it’s January 3rd, and we’ve got the door open to the pool, letting the nice warm breeze tickle our toes.
We Are So Not Totally Making These Up
Holy Elune, but that’s the end of another year! BRK the Blog is rapidly approaching its two-year anniversary, and 2009 promises to be another massively profitable endeavor. We may buy a twelve-pack of Hot Pockets this year!
On WoW Insider today, we gave our rundown of the best hunter-loot of 2008. And since we can’t specifically tell you what we’re going to be ninja’ing any time soon, the least we can do is spill our guts about a few of the changes we know are coming.
BRK’s Top Ten WoW-Predictions for 2009
10. The elimination of the warlock-class is finally made public. All warlocks are given the option of receiving a mage or death knight in exchange for their warlock before it’s deleted. The outcry from the warlock population is massive, but eventually, all nine warlocks take their DK and slink back into the shadows.
9. The second rare-exotic hunter pet is deployed: Critters. Rats are ferocity, Bunnehs are cunning, and Cockroaches are Paladins, which totally completes the circle.
8. Tailors got flying carpets in 2008, but in 2009 Alchemists will get a travel-thingie of their own: the Flask of Dune-Spice. By drinking a bottle of this, the Alchemist can travel anywhere by “folding space”; no vehicle or mount is necessary. Anybody who is clicking on the alchemist is pulled along for the ride.
7. The Survivalist tree for hunters is finally given its due. The 51st talent point is changed to “Master of Zorg”, which allows a SV hunter to use the new ZF-1 ranged weapon.
6. The next hero class is announced, “Disciple of Freya.” Basically a druid on steroids, this class is allowed to use plants as combat-pets for both DPS and healing.
5. The [Gnomish Jackhammer] will grant miners +25 to their mining skill and extracts an addition 10% more ore from all nodes. The [Miracle Goblin-Gro Sprayer] will grant herbalists +25 to their herbing skill and extracts and yield 10% more flowers from each harvest.
4. There are hundreds of cooking recipes, but the lack of a real stimulant has been noticeable absent. No longer, as cooking gets a major buff with 15 varieties of Coffee recipes. Some examples:
*Naruu Sunrise: increases all reputation gains by 10% for one hour.
*Orcish Delight: increases strength by 10% but reduces intellect by the
same amount.
*Blood Elf Blend: increases all magic by 10%, but reduces reputation
gains by 10%, ’cause nobody likes Blood Elves.
*Hunter Havana: a deeply aromatic blend that increases all DPS by 10%,
but prevents the quaffer from joining parties and raids.
(More examples exists, but we’ve lost our notes. Perhaps you’ve seen some?)
3. Engineers get one more cool ride, the [Trollmaster Fishing Boat]. Increases fishing skill by 50, can carry two additional passengers, but only exists for 30 minutes and has a 24-hour cooldown.
2. Hunters get the ability to use two pets at the same time. Said Ghostcrawler, “With the removal of the Warlock class, the servers have the extra memory available, so why the {explicative deleted} not, right?”
1. The Achievement system is scrapped. In its place, Blizzard offers its customers the option of using a credit card to buy “Blizzard Cool Points”. Blizz deploys a “BCP Tracking Page” to their website so people can see who has the most BCPs, and thus are deemed The Coolest Players in Warcraft.
Why The Posts Are Suddenly Slow
Our manufacturer is out of Gorilladin 3XL long sleeve shirts. We are pleasantly throwing a tantrum to get the situation rectified.
Trying to raid 10-man Naxx - no tanks.
Trying to make our bank accept the charge from our shirt-manufacturer. Required calling the people and demanding they let the charge go through. We’ve bought from them before!
Trying to raid 10-man Naxx - off-tank is sick.
The biggest thing in the history of BigRedKitty has been green-lighted. Green-lit? Whatever, it’s a Go. It required email and phone interviews and a conference-call with “The Board”, but we’re full-steam ahead. BigRedKitty Worldwide Amalgamated is about to expand, and we’re sure we won’t be convicted of insider-trading if we tell you to place your orders for BRKWWA stock now.
Trying to raid 10-man Naxx - no healers.
Where the {bleep} is TJ? Girl gets a boyfriend and she just ignores the rest of the Internet? /harumph
Trying to raid 10-man Naxx - no casters, three Death Knights.
We have achieved our goal of 20,000 gold again. We have successfully avoided buying the Dalaran-ring, the two rings in the Auction House, the Sons of Hodir mammoths, and replacing all our bank-bags with 22-slotters. Skinners’ Paradise FTW.
Trying to raid 10-man Naxx - three shaman and Heroism is nerfed.
Wii tennis. Four lego sets. A construction set so complex the instructions are in cuneiform. Mrs BRK’s new book light that has the luminosity of a pulsar.
Trying to raid 10-man Naxx - hunter arrives with a level 75 pet.
The garbage pickup schedule was changed and we missed the new day. The avalanche of cardboard in the garage is demanding its own zip code.
Trying to raid 10-man Naxx - get invite to 25-man Naxx and brain almost explodes trying to come up with excuse for avoiding 10-man Naxx. Fails completely, we don’t go to 25-man Naxx, so of course 10-man Naxx cancels ten minutes later.
The person who runs the snack bar at work is on vacation. There is no cafeteria. There is no food within walking distance. That pack of five year old tuna is starting to look really good…
Trying to raid 10-man Naxx - our priest is in greenies. We think he dinged 80 on the flight to Dragonblight.
The algae bloom, which has been resisting our chemical attack for over a month, is finally succumbing. Our pool is blue again!
Trying to raid 10-man Naxx - one of our three main tanks quits WoW.
Writing our 2008-close out piece for WoW Insider is done, except the WoWHead links. And picture. We need to keep up the theme of teasing Ghostcrawler, as we find it fascinating that people get upset when we do it.
Trying to raid 10-man Naxx - wanting to ask why our Shadow Priest isn’t regen’ing any mana for us, and deciding we’re sick of waiting for others to help with our mana-situation. It’s respec-time.
Our spittle-shrieks resulted in our manufacturer “finding” more shirts. /nods
We Are Humbled Beyond Measure
$5000 by January 5th? /pfft You people sure showed her! To everybody who’s donated, your WoW-karma just shot through the roof. Your drops shall be Epic and plentiful.
To those who haven’t, now’s a great time to push that number more towards the $10,000 mark, and have a chance to have your WoW paid for, for as long as you play.
/sniff
Y’all make us all verklempt with your kindness and generosity.
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