So BRK had broken out the ShopVac and was trying to clean out the Chinese junk mail from the BRK Industrial Waste and Spam Burial Ground when an actual question from an actual player was actually asked of actual us.

“I was just curious what you thought about a boar tank for PVE? I’m trying to level fast, I’m currently 36. I have a boar and wasn’t sure where to place my points. I was also unsure whether to use dash or charge as a skill for boar. I’ve had mixed reviews and you seem very knowledgeable.”

Our ability to bamboozle our readers aside, it’s an excellent question. As we all know, hunters can have three pets. BRK recommends you get an Offensive-DPS pet and a Defensive-Tank pet, and use the third slot for experimentation.

Note: BRK is not advocating animal experimentation. After the “Gimme BRK” fiasco, we want to make sure we’re on the same wavelength.

Here’s da scoop. The Beastmaster spec is the fastest leveling spec, period.

“But BRK, I love Marksman and I level just fine!”

Pfft. No you don’t, you just don’t know any better. If you want to level, go Beastmaster, that’s your first step.

Next, get an Offensive-DPS pet. Don’t worry about it’s health or armor; you’ll be killing things too quickly for them to do anything to your pet.

Now then, BRK has often said that there are many Right Ways to do things, and some very specific Wrong Ways. An Offensive-DPS pet will have one of the following:

• Dive
• Dash
• Charge

If your pet cannot be trained one of these spells, just say no, and we really mean that.

BRK wants you to try a couple and find a pet that speaks to your Inner BRK. The pet that you look at and with whom you feel an affinity, who is an extension of you. Wonder why cats are so popular? There are more species of cat than any other pet, so they can meet the requirements of so many peoples’ personalities. The acquisition of your pet is should be a manifestation of your feelings about being a hunter, and thus of you.

(Oh, if you’re not a hunter, you probably don’t understand any of this. Don’t worry; we still like you.)

On the opposing side, many people disdain cats specifically because of their popularity, and that’s just peachy. Those hideous Plagued Swine in the EPL? Some hunters love them and get a thrill of bringing them out, like a rock star at a concert, very dramatically…

You’re a dwarf hunter in a party of Night Elves and female Humans. They are all tall and shapely, you’re a piece of rock, scarred and craggy. You bring out your level 70 Plagued Swine, you named him Pretty, and the girls all go “Ewww”. You laugh; you know Pretty is gonna max DPS the cr@p outta those squishies and probably save their lives once or twice. “Cmon, ladies,” you say, “let’s kill something…” You love to get dirty and bloody, your pet Pretty is ugly as sin, and you love her to pieces, doncha? Of course you do.

To Rapidfire, the hunter with the posed question: for your boar, BRK recommends Charge due to the Stun effect it imparts. Don’t forget Gore, and BRK would say not to worry about Bite at all as the Charge will give your boar more than enough aggro to prevent you from pulling accidentally. Don’t sweat the magic resistances, pile on the health and then armor.

There is an exceptionally large Boar-Hunter community. We are sure you’ll get some “Yay Boars!” posts in our comments. They will agree with me: Good choice.

We gotta make this quick, The Man is watching us, demanding we actually produce a working product in exchange for our salary.

How repugnant, right? Pfft.

So, BRK is not going to be a WoW Insider Blogger. The writing style for which they are looking isn’t our bag, our thing, or our mojo. Amicably, we agreed that it was in the best interest of both parties that this occur.

So now we’re a WoW Insider Columnist. /grin

What is BRK gonna bring to this party? The Editor has a simple demand:

“You [will] be our ‘hunter’ expert, and so we want to make sure that every post you write has a few insights that only you can bring from a hunter point of view. Personality is fine, just make sure you back it up with insight.”

Insight? We’ve got insight coming out the ying-yang, (we saw a doctor; it’s ok). We gotta face the facts, folks. BRK’s head has swelled so big he cannot fit through the Dark Portal. Excited is not a powerful enough work to express our joy, our hysteria, our get-down-and-get-funky feelings.

Spread the news, ring the bells, blow the horns, and bring out the champagne, ’cause BigRedKitty is back and better than ever!

Um…

Perhaps, “as good as before” is more appropriate.

It was suggested by a wild-n-crazy reader that our subtitle is a bit out of date, pre-BC, not with the times, not particularly “funky”…

Succinctly, we have learned a lot in the past few days. Please allow us to recap:

Many folks have, both privately and publicly, asked us why we’re going to WoWInsider, and why can’t we post in BRK and at WI at the same time. The answer is easy to guess as it is to type:

We sold out. Totally.

We’re corporate, baby. Due to the diligence of the WoWInsider Professional Grooming, Dressing, and Dental Hygiene Tigerteam, all our socks now match, the ripped and shredded underwear has been discarded, our ties are not clip-ons, and Hobbes’ breath is best described as “pussycat fresh”, (Amanna, we suggest you keep your distance, especially in cat-form.

Folks, we even have a WI Rocks R Sox tattoo and everything, (no you may not ask the location).

BRK has already picked out the car he wants to buy with his Blogging Cash, a 2008 Audi A5. Our demands for the material things in life must be appeased, natch. Due to our insatiable thirst for German engineering, sumptuous leather seating, and high velocity travel, we cannot, must not, absolutely won’t post here until the WI checks start flowing.

Of course, it would completely inappropriate for us to recommend you start bombarding WI Headquarters and every single WI post’s comment form with “WE WANT OUR BRK“. That would be outlandish and childish.

You’re better than that, aren’t you.

The papers were all signed, faxed, and we’ve even written our first article for WoWInsider.

But no confirmation yet. No “go get em tiger” or “let’s rock, baby” emails. The BRK thumbs are a-twiddling.

Soon, we hope. Very soon.

Well, we have completed all the paperwork for WoWInsider. After disecting all the legalese, mumbo-jumbo, bunkum, gibberish, drivel, yammering, arcane references to the Magna Carta, not-so-veiled threats, promises of Sporeling Snacks, and held it under a black-light to see the “Things That’ll Bite Ya If You’re Not Good” sections, The Committee has come to two unavoidable and unassailable conclusions:

1) If one asks for an Original Formula Mai Tai and it comes with crushed - not shaved - ice, it is perfectly permissible to toss it and demand a “real” bartender attend your imbibing desires.

2) From this point on, we are gonna save all our ideas and posts for the WoWInsider blog.

Is BRK going away? Nope. Is it going to be updated? We’re pretty certain of that; not every article we write will be picked up by WoWInsider. For example, these posts probably won’t get published:

The Top Ten BRK Blog Posts That Won’t Get Published by WoWInsider

10. Holy Priests Are Wussies & We All Know It

9. Bow Users: WoW’s Obsessive-Compulsive Pantywaists

8. How To Cook TurDuckMoonkin

7. Male WoW-Players Just Stink: A Bathing Tutorial

6. If BRK Pulls Aggro, It’s Always the Warrior’s Fault

5. Warlocks and Their My Little Pony Fetish: A Pictorial (Rated NC-17)

4. Alliance Shaman - BRK Votes No, No, A Thousand Times No

3. BRK Has His/An Epic Flying Mount Woot!/How Sad That You Don’t - Haikus for Mocking the Poor

2. We All Hate Kids; If You’re Younger Than 18, Don’t Read This

1. The Top Ten Deepest, Darkest, Most Lurid and Shocking Secrets WoWInsider Doesn’t Want You to Know About, Cause You Can’t Handle The Truth

Those will be saved for BRK, we promise.

But when we write something and WoWInsider pays us for it, (YEAH! PHAT LOOT!) it becomes their exclusive property for a period of time. Well, that makes sense, of course; business is business. So the majority of our writing will be only found at WoWInsider for the foreseeable future.

It is with a tremendous sense of loss that I must write that BRK is changing in this fashion. We have a huge backload of email questions, test realm notes, instance ideas, PvP stories, and Top Ten Lists that we’ve been hoarding; we can’t wait to share them.

BRK shall return in Full Force once we receive the WoWInsider Secret Decoder Ring and Key to the Executive Stormwind Washroom… well, actually, we think we’re in the extreme minority as an Alliance Hunter at that site, so perhaps we’ll get the hammer that knocks the wooden lid off of the Executive Ogremar Water Trough. We shall see.

/bow
/thanks
/cry

The current headmistress of the BRK School of Art, Imagery, and Feral Druid Tanking FTW has graced us with a rendidtion of Damh and Hobbes as an enemy would see them, seconds before the enemy’s demise. It gives us goosebumps, and makes us want to PvP again.

WooT Luineannon! Thank you so much! +5 BRK Cool Points and I’m sure Hobbes will give you a very gentle *nuzzle* next time we’re in Mechanar or Botanica together.

If you’d like to see the other projects our headmistress has created, please visit her deviantart site at:

http://luineannon.deviantart.com

Hint: comments are an artist’s best friend

Today is the day BRK goes for some tests at the hospital. He’s not a spring dwarf anymore and needs to ensure all his parts are in good working order. Blogging this morning from the atrium of Florida Hospital Celebration where they have free wireless Internet, so +5 BRK Cool Points to them.

In other news, BRK has received the contract information from the WoWInsider people. BRK has contracted the services of the law firm of Dewey, Cheatem, & Howe from his heroes at Car Talk to to wring the essentials outta this stack of papers. More info on this situation as it develops.

There are several threads on the WoW Forums on the viability of the 0/31/30 build for raiding. You get all the fixed-crit percentages, Trueshot Aura, the good traps, and the agility bonus. All really super for 10-man instances where a hunter’s ability to control a specific mob may be critical, but one mob would be the limit; you will have enough rogues and mages etc. to deal with the rest. BRK has seen some nice numbers from this build, but if you’re running Karazhan, you’re probably not reading BRK for strategy and talent tips.

So, what do we want to discuss? Well, BRK is deeply involved with 5-man instances. He received his first Heroic key - Tempest Keep - and can also get into Arcatraz. It’s time to get Shadow Labs behind us and start getting the gear for Shattered Halls, Arcatraz, and beyond. Success here is going to depend upon efficient crowd-control and focused-fire dps. So what is a hunter to do when he wants to maximize his usefulness in a 5-man party where five, six, and even seven-mob pulls can be required?

BRK has a suggestion: the 7/21/34 build. In the PTR, the changes to the Survivalist tree aren’t overwhelming, but they are very complete and well-thought out. The new +4% to RAP with -4% damage-taken, +3% crit, +15% agility, 100% chance of Expose Weakness proc’ing, super traps, and Wyvern Sting will have enormous potential for maximizing crowd control and boosting dps to make up for the loss of Serpents Swiftness.

/sniff

Oh, Serpent’s Swiftness, how much we miss you. To say nothing of Bestial Wrath; no more Big Red Kitty.

No more Big Red Kitty?! What would we call the blog then, The Big Frozen-n-Sleeping Trash-Mob Blog?

…

Hey! Welcome to The BFSTM Blog! Today we’re gonna talk about Freezing Traps! Again. Just like we do every day.

My Elune, that would be boring.