Aldor. Revered. Yeah. One of the few good things about Shattrath City, (aka Sh!ttrap City,) is the factions and their awesome gear.

No, it’s not mine. But it shall be… it shall be.

And speaking of gear, many a hunter may want to know with which Shattrath faction they should align. WoWWiki has a good article and general-use chart that I am reproducing here:

While none of my epic PvP gear has been replaced yet, I have equipped a new ring, trinket, bracers, and replaced my belt two times. A little while ago, I actually replaced my melee weapon. And what a sweet piece of polearm it is. This Survivalist’s Pike is a quest reward, so every hunter should have a chance to get one. This weapon is just another reason to avoid the AH; save your money for your flying mount, why dontcha?

It doesn’t look like much… ok, honestly, it’s hardly more exciting to look at than a stinking fishing pole. But with the +25 agi enchant, it glows a pretty green. I love the super-slow attack speed; the Dal’Rends were great for stats, but the fast blade was, for me, like attacking a mob with a butter knife.

Other gear news: CTProfile’s website is slowly creaking and jerking toward being Outland-Compatible. My profile link on this page works, but not completely. It does not show my bracers at all even though, when I upload my items cache, they say they already have them in their database. Also, my stats, (health, mana, agility, etc.) are not being calculated correctly. But the gear itself is what I’m wearing. WooT.

Tonight, BRK will ding 64 and I’m gonna get a Warp Hunter. More pet-news as it develops.

Blizz has secretly admitted that the trolls on the WoW forums are correct; hunters, warlocks, shaman, goblins, and Hogger are overpowered and need a nerf bat sufficiently applied so that holy priests, resto druids, dead rogues corpses, and cockroaches should be able to win in a duel against them. Thus, Blizz has decided to make one huge change to the core values used to develop all classes. Before they slap an injunction on BRK, read this and distribute it hinder and yon:

Every spec of every class should have exactly the same capabilities as every other spec of every other class.

No longer should hunters be the most capable ranged dps class. Protection warriors will gain Shield Discus and will be able to cut mobs in half from behind rocks and trees, up to 46 yards away.

No longer should warriors be the best tanks. Mages will be given Kevlar Bullet-Proof Rainments; cloth sets with armor in the five-digit range for each piece.

No longer should mages have the most potent AOE spells. Rogues will be given Backstab Cascade, an AOE attack where the rogue throws a box of daggers into the air and that damages all mobs in an area and roots them to the ground.

No longer should rogues be the highest melee-dps class. Priests will be able to train Nurse Ratched’s Touch of Death. A purely melee skill, when it crits, a giant pillow is placed over the enemy’s mouth and they suffocate.

No longer should priests have a strangle-hold on healing. Warlocks will be given a Demonic Doctor pet that heals like a paladin but looks like a Fel Reaver.

No longer should warlocks be the only class that can cast DOTs over numerous individuals almost simultaneously. Druids will gain Mark of the Plague and cast it as a debuff on enemies, causing nature damage and bad breath.

No longer should druids be capable of morphing into whatever a party needs most at any given time. Paladins will have Housewife Aura, which, when active, will cause all affected by it to be able to tank, heal, dps, cook, clean, and repair broken mechanostriders.

No longer should paladins have the greatest abilities against the Undead. Thus, Shaman shall be given Totems of Buffy the Slayer which cause holy damage to all undead within a 50 yard radius, and cause an unnatural attraction to Freddie Prinze Jr.

And no longer will Shaman be the only class to be able to use totems. Hunters will get Totem of the Pet Sitter. TotPS will act like a stable slot that a hunter can use to temporarily store their active pet while they train another one to get a new pet attack skill.

Now back to reality.

Every class is not designed to “beat” some other class; it is not rock, paper, scissors. Every class is designed to fulfill specific roles in the WoW Society. It only makes sense that the class designed to provide large amounts of ranged and sustained dps would be the king of honor kills and hardest to beat one-on-one in PvP. One can argue that a class needs a nerf, but not based upon the fact that, “you cannot beat them”.

DamageMeters is an excellent addon that, I believe, at least all DPS classes should install and use frequently. When I lead a party or raid, I use it to ensure that those people responsible for doing damage are not slacking. On many occasions I’ve had to remind mages that, while sheeping is critical to our success, it’s not their only job. Fury warriors get a gentle reminder that, if they don’t get their dps going, I’ll ask them to put on their shield and off-tank so the mages can concentrate on damage-production. However, using DamageMeters to inspire competition among the rogues, warlocks, and hunters can be counter-productive if they start pulling aggro from the tanks. Judicious use of spamming the reports is recommended.

Remember that Healer Kharma is a wise investment, so throw them a Healing Meter to keep them happy and arguing amongst themselves.

But another use of DamageMeters is to track the ratio of hunter/pet damage. Hunters are split-classes with their damage coming from two sources: the hunter and his pet. If you are a Marksman hunter and your pet is doing as much damage as you are, there is something “wrong”. If you are a Beastmaster hunter and your pet isn’t doing any damage at all, there is something “wrong”. If you are a Survivalist hunter, there is something “wrong” and you don’t need DamageMeters to tell you; I’m doing it now. Respec, I’m begging you.

Yesterday, I turned on DamageMeters to track what Hobbes and Damh were doing damage-wise relative to each other. For an hour or so while I quested in western Zangarmarsh and didn’t party with anybody, I tracked our damage. As you can see from the little bar graph at the top, it was about 2:1 damage for Damh and Hobbes, which is about what I expected. But let’s look at the data in more detail.

Damh is doing just over 65% of all damage, which means BRK is doing 35%. This is a little less that I expect in PvP, (in many cases, I am just kiting while BRK does the majority of the damage), but if we take into account that I specifically did not train BRK with Bite 8 so that he had more training points for defensive skills, then I don’t feel so bad.

What is also interesting is that Damh’s damage-taken is just below 9%, which means BRK is absorbing 81% of all damage. That’s some good tanking, and BRK is supposedly a “dps pet”. It is worth mentioning that that while BRK absorbed all that damage, he never went below 50% health, let alone die. Also, while he was absorbing the vast majority of damage, he was also dodging - an estimation based upon my observations of the combat chat - every 6th enemy melee attack, which is approximately 15%. This does not include parries or enemy mob misses.

So, BRK is holding aggro, doing damage, and easily surviving all encounters. This is, of course, exactly what I hoped to accomplish with my PvE Pet Build. If you don’t have the DamageMeters addon, install it and see how your pet is doing.

From the Public Test Realm notes, we learn the following nerfs are probably headed our way:

“Silencing Shot” now does only 50% of weapon damage instead of 75%.

I don’t use Silencing Shot, but if I did, I really wouldn’t care. The purpose of Silencing Shot is to keep a caster from healing or doing damage for 3 seconds. It is now on par with Scatter Shot which also does 50% of weapon damage, and so this nerf kinda makes sense.

The base damage for “Arcane Shot” has been reduced by about 9% and the bonus damage from ranged attack power reduced from 20% to 15%.

The big ole Blizz smackdown arrives. With the 2.0.1 patch, they reduced our agility contribution to RAP by half so they can give us, paraphrasing, “New and unique weapon and gear stat combinations.” Now with 2.0.6 we get a 25% RAP-bonus nerf, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. If the bonus damage from RAP is reduced from 20% to 15%, that’s a 25% cut in RAP contribution. All hunters are gonna be angry about this, but if you’re a Marksman spec’d hunter, you have my sympathy. The more RAP you have, the bigger a slap in the face this is. Damn. Invest in some quality ear protection, because the anger from the Marksmen is about to shatter the forums like the Burning Crusade blew up Outland.

The bonus damage for “Barrage” is now 4/8/12% for ranks 1/2/3.

A reduction from 5/10/15%, yet another Marksman kick in the groin.

The bonus damage for “Improved Barrage” is now 4/8/12% for ranks 1/2/3.

Another reduction from 5/10/15%, and this final blow means that Walgreens is gonna sell a lot more high colonic packages to get Blizz’s foot outta our Marksman-spec’d, collective @sses.

If these changes go live, we’re gonna be one angry class, folks. Just don’t expect a lot of sympathy; keep your vitriol and venom contained to this blog and other hunter-only Internet hideaways. Last things we want warriors and warlocks to think is that we’re a bunch of crybabies.

(sniff…)

Sometime during the night, Big Red Kitty surpassed the one thousand visitors mark. A big BRK-thank-you to all of you who have put us in your Favorites list, linked to us, and found us from Google searches and browsed a bit. It’s our pleasure to have you visit.

Ding 63, and more pet-talk.

My guild was unanimous in its derision of my Big Red Spore Bat. One young female warlock called it “disgusting”. Mrs BRK called it “sperm-like”. If Spore Bat were a car, I’d be dateless.

It has no special abilities, and other than its utter silence, didn’t really impress me at all. Although that silence was eerie, I must say. It was quieter than a bat and just sailed to its target.

We did a speed-test and the Spore Bat outpaced a 62 cat pet if the cat’s Dash was disabled. However, the Spore Bat was much slower when Dash was used. If you think a Spore Bat is the coolest thing ever, go ahead and get one. Just don’t be hoping for The Best Pet Ever. Spore Bats? Eh.

Next on the list of “Pets To Try” is the Warp Stalker. Big Red Warp Stalker…. its better than Big Red Spore Bat, that’s for sure.

Watch.

The results of my pet retraining were astounding. BRK and I ran around Zangarmarsh killing everything and he never dropped below 3/4 health except when we faced the two Naga 63 elite bosses. Wow did he hold aggro, too. As I really like the results of my pet-talent modification, a little Damh-talent tweaking seemed to be the next logical step.

Let’s welcome Catlike Reflexes to the stable. Yesterday, we increased BRK’s armor and his resistances, why not increase his dodge rate by 9% as well. The extra 3% dodge I receive is just gravy.

A single talent point was put in Improved Pet Mend; if I’m going to go through all this effort to make BRK so powerful, it makes sense to keep him healthy, too.

Four yards of range were wiped out as the points in Hawk Eye were cut to one, and my talent point in Improved Hunter’s Mark was lost as well. All in all, not a great loss. My next two points are going to get my 46 yards of range back, though, as I can’t imagine PvP without it.

And a big BRK shout-out to AggroQueen. Thank you for the 17 Jan “awesome”, that was very nice to read.

Ding, 62. WooT. Hunters FTW. That’s outta my system, let’s talk pets.

BRK performed brilliantly in Hellfire Peninsula. I kept him in the same configuration as I had him for PvP, and he tanked and held aggro with aplomb.

However, he did take a lot more damage than I wanted him too. With the mob respawn rates at their current levels - they’ve gone Plaid - Hobbes and I have been caught fighting mob after mob after mob with no down-time. That quest from the Longbeard Dwarves to get the feathers? Those NPCs that raise the d@mn birds are practically rezing before they die, the birds do some serious dps, and those casters spit out nasty nature damage. A couple of times I was unable to extricate Hobbes from a small village of rezzing mobs and he tasted Hellfire Peninsula dust. A situation I do not want to allow to continue, I’m sure you can imagine.

I’ve been monitoring BRK’s damage in Scrolling Combat Text and watching just what is going on with his attacks. His Bite 8 costs twenty-five training points and it just doesn’t seem to proc enough to justify using it in PvE. With Hobbes dinging 61 yesterday, and thus a total of 305 training points available, plus the fact that a complete pet-training point respec only costs 10 silver, I thought it was time to tweak BRK’s setup. Off to Ironforge and the pet trainer, shell out 10 silver, and get all his training points reset. Let’s build a kitty for Outland, shall we?

Growl 7 is zero points. If I have to explain, go roll a Shamen.

Dash 3 is twenty-five points and if you don’t have it, for what purpose do you even have a cat?

Claw 8 is twenty-five points and my favorite attack because it has only a 1.5 second cooldown and only uses 25 focus. Bite 8, on the other hand, has a 10 second cooldown. Bye-bye Bite.

Those are our basic skills, we’ve spent 50 talent points, and we have 255 remaining.

Great Stamina 10 is 185 points and increases BRK’s stamina by 40. Like the Bee Gee’s said, it’s all about Stayin Alive.

70 training points remaining.

Natural Armor 5 is 25 training points and increases BRK’s armor by 330. In PvP, I don’t get Natural Armor because BRK’s main purpose is to destroy casters and cloth wearers. But in Hellfire Peninsula, where tanking melee mobs is a standard occupational role for hunter pets, this seems like a good choice.

45 training points remaining.

Arcane Resist 2and Nature Resist 2 are 15 training points each and increase BRK’s resistances to those magic classes by 60 each. If I were building Hobbes to go into Molten Core, I’d max Fire Resist and ignore the others. In Outland, I’m seeing a lot of Nature attacks. Why Arcane Resist 2? Because I haven’t run across Fire, Cold, or Shadow in sufficient quantities to warrant “resisting” them more.

15 training points remaining.

Fire, Cold, and Shadow Resist 1 are 5 training points each and increase BRK’s resistances to those magic classes by 30 each. Nothing spectacular, but enough to mitigate a little of the damage from each class.

And that uses all the of the available training points. Let’s see what BRK looks like now:

Not bad, I’m especially pleased with the 7100+ unbuffed armor, BRK’s white damage was unaffected by my elimination of Bite, and his resistances are now better than zero, (60 Arcane, 36 Fire, 60 Nature, 34 Frost, 30 Shadow). Tonight we’ll see how much better he fares in the swamps of Zangarmarsh.

But why did I use a pic of a Warp Stalker for this post? Because I’m working very hard to get over the fact that I don’t have one in my stables yet. If I keep looking at it, maybe I can convince myself not to get one tonight. Warp sounds so cool…