So where in the selection process are we? Many guildies have voiced their particular preferences, spouses have espoused their selections, and children have eaten Buttered Cinnamon-Raisin Bagel with Cheese Sandwiches.

My son is nuts, but that’s another blog.

But anyway, we do have some finalists!

Beowulf
Kitty - late entry permitted
Norbert
Smaug
Warpy

Many voted for Spyro, but as it means little to me, I shall release it into the nether so another hunter who really likes it (cough! Lassirra) may select it and not feel kinda cheated.

The Committee is well aware that long character names are always shorted. Luineannon becomes Lui, Glitlock becomes Glitty, Hipnatizd becomes Hip, you know what I’m saying. Nobody will care that you selected Dungorumgh because your family came from a long line of Scottish nobility; you shall be Dung. It is because of this cruel twist of human nature that so many names were rejected by the Committee.

Agnamemnon - Aggy
Ancalagon - Calgon
Apalala - Apy
Deuteronomy - Deuty
Gorynych - Gorny
Pokemon - Pokie
Smushface - Smushy
Y Ddraig Goch - Cox

However, there is a winner! WooT! The public dissemination of the warp hunter’s nom de guerre - there’s yer French, Harf - shall coincide with… something, I don’t quite know what. But it should be kinda big. Bigger than small, at least.

Ding 67. Aimed Shot is back and you’re gonna be in trouble, hey nah, hey nah, Aimed Shot is back.

Kill Command - “Give the command to kill, causing your pet to instantly attack for an additional 127 damage. Can only be used after the Hunter lands a critical strike on the target. “So sayeth Thottbot, so let it be done.

What Thotty does not say is that this spell - and it is a spell, not a talent or pet spell, to use it in a macro, one would /cast Kill Command (Rank 1) - scales with your gear. My Kill Commands regularly hit for 300-500 and crit for almost 1000. Is that nice? Of course it is. What could possibly be the downside?

Well, since it is a hunter spell and not a pet spell, it works with your global cooldown. Essentially, if you have a shot rotation that you like, using Kill Command will disrupt it. If you choose to use Kill Command whenever you crit, you won’t really have a shot rotation anymore; you’ll have to pay a lot more attention to your crits, the Kill Command cooldown, and the global cooldown cycle to maximize your dps.

Is Kill Command worth the extra effort? Marksmen, if your shot rotation is where your bread is buttered, I would say no. Marksman aren’t relying on their pet for damage and would rather have a Steady Shot crit for 1400 than a 400 damage Kill Command. Understandable, you may leave the class.

Beastmasters, wake up! Kill Command is your buddy. The usefulness of this spell is most applicable in instances where your pet can tank. Why? Because the whole key to tanking is aggro control and Kill Command allows your pet to do more damage, thus doing a better job of holding aggro. When I send BRK with Growl, Bestial Wrath, and Intimidation, he procs Frenzy, I proc Kill Command, and BRK gets an extra 900 crit, you cannot pull aggro from him; that mob is his, end of discussion. I dare mages and warlocks to try grab aggro, it just doesn’t happen.

As a Beastmaster, do I use Kill Command when I’m soloing? Yes. As I go up in level, my crit rate continues to fall; it is now down to 17%. I would rather BRK have a chance at a Kill Command crit then hope for a Steady Shot crit.

It can be hard to wrap your head around this concept. I was once a 0/21/30 Survivalist with 28% crit chance. Most of my damage came from crits and I was the highest damage dealer in my guild. Now, I’m a 47/12/0 Beastmaster giving up crit chances so my pet can do more damage.

Pretty freaky.

Well, Mr Anonymous Warp Hunter dinged 66, got respec’d for instance tanking, and is in the stables as I bring BRK up to 66 also. This new guy has performed admirably soloing with me, but his speciality seems to be main and off-tanking in instances. Since Warp has a very small cooldown, he just zips from one mob to the other. But more importantly, when the healer is so busy watching everyone’s health that she doesn’t notice the Orc bashing her little blonde head in, our Warp Hunter just warps to her, drops an Intimidation on the mob, and pow, instantly-saved priest. I look forward to learning more about this pet as he has really shown me a lot of versatility. BRK recommends that all hunters experiment with a Warp Hunter when they hit level 64.

But the fact remains that the Warp Hunter needs a name, and soon. So what are the candidates so far? Here’s a quick run down, in alphabetical order:

*Agamemnon - Veto’d name for my RL son
*Ancalagon - Black dragon from The Silmarillion (Tolkien)
*Apalala - Indian river dragon who was converted to Buddhism
*Balaur - Romanian dragon
*Beowulf - Classic tale that ends with the slaying of a dragon
*Deuteronomy - Another RL son name veto
*Dilithium - Star Trek
*Draco - Latin for dragon
*Dulcy - Dragon from Sonic the Hedgehog
*Gorynych - Russian dragon
*Hakuryu - Dragon in the anime series “Gensomaden Saiyuki”
*Nidhogg - Polish dragon
*Níðhöggr - Norse dragon who eats at the roots of the World Tree
*Norbert - Baby dragon from Harry Potter
*Pokemon - Guildie suggestion
*Puff - The magic dragon
*Smaug - The Hobbit
*Smushface - Mrs BRK
*Spyke - Guildie suggestion
*Spyro - Video game classic
*Temeraire- Chinese celestial dragon
*Warpy - What I call him now
*Y Ddraig Goch - Welsh dragon
*Yong - Chinese sky dragon
*Zefram - Star Trek

Yes? No? Maybe? Any ideas?

The hits just keep on coming, and we’ve blown through the 2000 mark. I’ve been watching how this site is being found, and I must say I’m totally pleased at how many hunter-information-hunters on google are finding their way here. Only one search for porn showed up among the list of searches that resulted in BRK being visited, and that was from Finland. I’d post the word that he was looking for, but I don’t want to insult my Finish readers. BRK is sensitive like that.

But more impressively, someone found this blog while searching for information on how to kite Fel Reavers. This is Big Thinking, and deserves a big “BRK Woot!” for even considering kiting one. I wish I had thought of it. Could you shoot, Feign Death, get on your epic flying mount, and kite it to Shattrath? I love to burn that city to the ground, and a Fel Reaver would do the trick.

Ooo! Would it follow you through the Dark Portal? Could you get it to Goldshire? You could sell screenshots of that. Heck, I want a teeshirt made, “I pwnd Goldshire with a Fel Reaver”.

Someone get on that.

My nifty Warp Hunter finally became my “Best Friend” today. He may still be nameless, but he’s my buddy, dagnabit. And now that Hobbes and my Warp Stalker are the same rank and the same loyalty level, we can do a comparison of them configured for the jobs that are typically recommended; cat as a dps machine and warp hunter as a defensive tank.

Here is Hobbes built for PvP. He has Claw 9, Bite 9, and Dash 3, maxed health and as much armor as I could get. With seven points remaining, he got Fire Resistance Rank 1. In PvP, you rarely go for the Hunter’s pet, so I don’t do any resistances unless I have points left over. PvP pets are all about max damage, so Bite and Claw are trained, ready, and loaded.

And here is the anonymous Warp Hunter configured for PvE. Warp 1, Claw 9, no Bite at all so he has more Focus for Growls, a mix of very high health and armor, and the three most popular magic resistance I’ve needed in Outland. While 60 resistance isn’t incredible, when added with a Paladins’ Fire Aura, my Warp Hunter will sport in excess of 150 fire resistance. With my Aspect of the Wild, he’ll have 120 nature resistance. This configuration is meant to be the typical Jack of All Trades, Master of None. If I chose, I could max any of the resistances, say, for specific boss fights.

But really, the purpose of these pics is to show that it really doesn’t matter which pet you choose; you can configure any pet to perform just about any job. My two pets, built for two distinct arenas, have a difference of 18 dps and 600 armor. Pick a pet you like based on its special abilities and how you feel about it. If you love Raptors, get one. If you love Spore Bats, get one. There is no wrong answer.

Ok, Tallstriders are the wrong answer. But aside from that, have fun.

Macros are a wonderful tool. One of the easiest uses for macros is to spam Frequently Asked Questions in guild chat. You can store many guild messages and spam them when necessary, like the IP address of your Vent server, by using the /g command.

/g Legendary Vent Server Info IP 123.456.789.012 port 1234

But macros are much more powerful than simple message tools. Here’s a rundown of some of the more simple macros I use every day.

The Pull Shot - This macro is designed to bring a single mob by doing the least amount of damage possible, enabling a warrior or our pet to grab aggro easier.

/cast Arcane Shot (Rank 1)
/stopcasting
/cast Hunter’s Mark

Walking through this macro, we see an instant Arcane Shot with the lowest damage possible, then prevent the Auto Shoot feature from engaging with the /stopcasting line, then cast Hunter’s Mark. We could’ve marked the target first, but we would’ve increased our RAP against the mob, and we wanted to do as little damage as possible.

The Totem Shot - This macro is designed to automatically kill those low-health, hard-to-find totems that Shamans drop in battlegrounds. As fast as they drop them, I take them out.

/target Totem
/cast Arcane Shot (Rank 1)

Notice that you don’t have to specifically name the totem; the macro will find the closest “Totem”, no matter which one it is. And since totems only have 5 health points, it’s a waste of mana to use anything higher than Rank 1. This particular macro can be modified for many situations.

The Eye Shot - The spawning eyes in Strat Dead have more health and can be hard to see. So, when the “The Living Are Here!” text is seen in your chat log, just spam this macro while spinning in place.

/target Eye
/cast Arcane Shot (Rank

The Mite Shot - There is a quest in Terokkar Forest called The Infested Protectors where you have to kill a bunch of very small wood mites that spawn 3-5 at a time. You can use this macro to really speed up your destruction of these things by taking advantage of Multi-Shot’s tendency to go after multiple mobs.

/target Wood Mite
/cast Multi-Shot (Rank 5)

You’ll target the closest mite, then Multi-Shot will kill three of them. Yeeha!

The Aspect Switch - When you get Aspect of the Viper, you’ll want to switch back and forth with Aspect of the Hawk frequently. Now we get to use a really cool feature of WoW 2.0, the castsequence tool.

/castsequence Aspect of the Hawk, Aspect of the Viper

With one button, you can switch between these two aspects.

The Track Switch - The castsequence tool can do more than two spells, so it is also great for tracking.

/castsequence Track Beasts, Track Humanoids, Track Undead, Track Elementals

With one button, you can switch among these four tracking modes! Isn’t that nifty?

Go play with these and we’ll do more later, including macros that act based upon what you have equipped, whether you are mounted or in combat, resetting the sequence of spells, and lots of other cool stuff. But now it’s time for me to try Kill Command.

So, as pointed out on The Hunter’s Mark by the kind and talented Larrissa, I really made a festering, sweltering mess of a macro on the WoW Forums.

The problem was to create a macro that would send a pet to attack and recall that pet, all by pressing the same button. I shall not befoul your eyes with the horror that was my macro, needless to say it didn’t work. My apologies to all those who wasted time messing with that offal of a macro.

However, there is a macro that I have devised and tested that sort of does the requested job:

/petfollow [modifier:shift]
/petattack [modifier:ctrl]

Assign this guy to a hotkey, perhaps F4.

If you hit F4 by itself, nothing happens. However, if you hit CTRL-F4, you will send your pet to attack. Then, if you hit SHIFT-F4, your pet will return. I don’t claim that it’s a useful macro, but it does solve the problem and is a nice research project.

Now, lets make a macro that solves a problem of mine. With BRK, I used a simple macro to feed him:

#show Roasted Quail
/cast Feed Pet
/use Roasted Quail

As readers of BRK may know, I am toying around with a Warp Stalker. BRK is a meat eater, while my nameless warp hunter prefers fruits. I want to use the same button to feed whatever pet I have out without having to swap-out macro buttons. We’re going to lose the “show” feature of the previous macro, but add some functionality in its place:

/cast Feed Pet
/use [pet:Cat] Roasted Quail
/use [pet:Warp Stalker] Deep Fried Plantains

And there we have it. A nice macro that will feed the appropriate food to the appropriate pet. Woot!

I use lots of macros in my WoW playing. They deserve a large post of their own, so I’ll save them for later.

And here he is, my nifty level 65 Warp Hunter. Interestingly, his name changed to Warp Stalker when I trained him. This is the second warp hunter I trained, because the first one’s name changed and I thought I had made a mistake and nabbed the wrong beast. Nope, I did it right and got the hunter version both times. Just a wierd game mechanic, I suppose.

Warp is a pretty nifty pet talent. He doesn’t always catch a moving target right off, but with Intimidation, he pulls any runner easily. If the target is stationary, bam, he is there. Plus, the 50% chance to avoid the next melee attack is pretty great, too. He is certainly a defensive pet; at a loyalty of Rebellious, his armor is 8507, which is about what BRK’s is at Best Friend.

He eats fruit and fish, which is awesome because the Aldor food and drink vendor three feet from my Shattrath hearth sells level 65 grapes. No running around to the fruit vendor in Ironforge, thank goodness. Finally, something about this city I like.

I will be leveling his loyalty to see what his final stats are. And a name… I need a name.

Ding 65, yada yada yada.

“No warrior worth his plate lets his priest tank.” This belief, paraphrased from a Legendary warrior, is pretty self-explanatory. However, if one were to be truly accurate, one should add, “Even if she begs to.” Squishies are different from you and me, and their insane requests must be dealt with swiftly and firmly. No, you may not tank. No, you may not get mana. No, we’re not going to give you our opinion of your new gear based on its armor rating. Armor rating? How can you even call a dress, “armor”?

But I digress.

Our friendly warrior makes a very good point; there are people who are designed to mitigate damage, and those who are not. Priests, natch, are not. Any warrior who allows a mob to run after his healer and not do a bloody thing about it needs to shard his gear and reroll.

But why am I bringing Warrior Wisdom into this Hunter outpost? Because we too have a similar philosophy, i.e. the Hunter Manifesto:

No Hunter worth his pet dumps aggro on a squishy.

Hunters have mail armor, traps, Aspect of the Monkey, a pet for Elune’s sake, Scattershot, Intimidation, Deterrence, Counterattack, Wyvern Sting, kiting techniques, and the wisdom to properly Feign Death. There is no reason in Outland to dump aggro on a priest or other cloth-wearer. Period.

A Study In the Practical Application of the Hunter Manifesto.

Hellfire Ramparts, three warriors, a hunter, and a priest. A holy one, at that, she’s a bone-china teacup in a sea of bulls. Her survival is our survival. So imagine if you will, three charging, taunting, foaming-at-the-mouth warriors accompanied by sleek and svelte BRK, while this hunter stands 40 yards away from the melee masters and beside our heroine, the priest, guarding her from danger while simultaneously providing massive quantities of steady and sustained DPS. And she’s cute, but that’s another story.

So, as is wont to happen occasionally, the hunter unintentionally grabs aggro and the mob starts a-coming. The warrior who was tanking him doesn’t notice, doesn’t care, thinks it’s funny, or trusts that the hunter can handle it… whatever the reason, the warrior switches targets and lets the mob go. What do you do?

As a hunter, you have the most potent aggro-management abilities in the game, bar none. Let’s run down a few of the options you have available:

* Recall your pet, slap Intimidation and Growl on, and let the pet off-tank.
* Concussive Shot and/or Wing Clip the mob and kite him until the rest of the party is ready to help.
* Run back to the warriors and Feign Death, allowing them to reestablish aggro.
* Freak out, empty the contents of your ammo pouch into the mob, and when he gets right on top of you, Feign Death.

So… what do you usually do in this situation? Think about it… cmon… yeah, every once in a while, you just pop FD and pray, right?

Except in this case, the only person within 30 yards of you is your priest. If you pop FD when the mob is on top of you, you’ve practically guaranteed that your priest is gonna get aggro. Your warriors are not going to notice in time to run to her and pull the mob off of her. You pop FD now and you will most likely kill the priest, which may wipe the party. I don’t care what percentage of the total damage you do, a hunter who wipes in this manner will not get a reinvite.

There is another solution that I prefer, other than the first three; drop a Freezing Trap and let the mob hit it. Yes, he is still aggro’d on you, but he is “controlled”. Let him stay frozen while you select the mob with the least amount of health, (circumstances may dictate a different target, but it’s a good standard operating procedure), and kill it. Tell the warrior whose mob just ate Rampart for lunch that you’ve got a frozen mob back by the priest and would he please come and get it. As quickly as his plate-shod feet will allow him, he’ll stumble and bumble over and take that mob off your hands.

By dropping the Freezing trap, you saved the priest’s life, did not disrupt the warriors and their hacking, and did not let up on your role of DPS Machine. The Hunters who master the subtle arts of aggro management get invited back to Hellfire Citadel, and the occasional kiss from that spiffy priest…

When she’s not calling you “booger”… but that’s another story.

Intimidation - “Command your pet to intimidate the target on the next successful melee attack, causing a high amount of threat and stunning the target for 3 seconds.” So sayeth Unleashed Gaming’s Create Your Own Talent Tree, so let it be done.

Scattershot disorients a target for four seconds, Intimidation for three. Scattershot has a 15 yard range, Intimidation has the same 100 yard range as your pet. Scattershot has a 30 second cooldown while Intimidation’s is one minute.

But it’s Intimidation’s “high amount of threat” that is the difference maker between these talents. The reason a hunter can do so much damage is because he has the best aggro management tools in the game, bar none. The only time a hunter doesn’t care about threat, or aggro, is when he is fighting another player; almost all NPCs and mobs base their target selection on threat.

With Intimidation, your pet becomes an even more powerful aggro management tool. He can pull mobs off of your squishies; a dead pet is always better than a dead priest. He can off-tank effectively and provide your group with more crowd-control options. If the healer is out of mana, your pet can grab aggro from a tank, thus allowing him to self-heal. Again, I’d rather my cat died than my main tank. But if you really want to see Intimidation shine, make sure you have Cower.

Cower, that much maligned and unused pet talent, is a wonderful companion for Intimidation and grants almost complete aggro control in a battle. Intimidation and Cower, used together, act like an aggro faucet that you can turn on and off. For example:

Your priest has died and your warrior is getting hurt. Smack Intimidation and Beastial Wrath to quickly grab aggro from the warrior. Mr Tank slaps on a bandage, quaffs a potion, and is ready to go. You manually cast your pet’s Cower, the warrior Taunts, is easily able to reestablish aggro and is back in business. You recall your pet, Pet Mend, and wait for Intimidation’s one minute cooldown to finish. Rinse and repeat until the mob is dead.

Ignoring the fact that you need Intimidation for Bestial Wrath and The Beast Within, Intimidation is a tremendous talent in its own right. A hunter who can control his pet and use him as an aggro regulator valve is a hunter that is invited back to the raid again and again.