Last night we dreamed we ninja’d the [Worgen Claw Necklace] from Hawthorn, our feral druid guildie who wants an epic mount more than life itself.

Seriously, our dream was totally real. Our GM forgot to put on Master Looter - our guild only takes down bosses when we forget to put on ML - and we screwed up our SWAPS bidding leaving Hawthorn the DKP-winner. So we just waltzed over to Attumen’s corpse and took the necklace anyway. The guild was discussing our punishment when we woke up.

We’ve had Warcraft dreams before but they usually involve being tremendously overwhelmed with whispers. Never before have they taken such a dark turn such that we become The Hated Ninja’ing Hunter. Perhaps we feel some subconscious guilt for having had such great luck in Karazhan lately. Perhaps we feel upset because we let those T4 gloves slip out of our hands and into that warlock’s.

Perhaps we’re just nuts.

Note: Our two warlocks just nuked the everliving beejezus out of the imps on Illhoof. If you split our damage into hunter/pet, the warlocks finished #1 and #2 on total damage from the Opera trash through Illhoof. Nice work Diyami and Hellion. Seed of Corruption Spamming FTW!

Mrs. BRK has worked her magic and selected Toolio as the winner of the BRK #200,000 Visitor Contest. Toolio gets to take his pick of the items on the BRK Store and we’re shipping it to him totally gratis!

Thank you to everybody who sent emails and refreshed us right into Bandwidth Abuse City.

Yap about it and it just may drop. Actually, before the Big Bad Wolf opera event started, we commanded him to drop our gun. He was so spooked by our uberness that he also dropped:So where does that leave us today?After opera we boogied up to Curator and that’s when our problems started. Hobbes went nuts. Attacked everything all on his own and wouldn’t stay by our side at all. We’d kill an arcane add and Hobbes would run right back at Curator.

The boss went down and we lost the DKP-battle for the gloves. We had enough DKP to win, but couldn’t bid the required 20 points more than the current bid. It’s just as well; we got two epic pieces and it’s good to spread the wealth.

But Hobbes was still insane. We dismissed him and brought him back, no help. And then we saw it. Somehow, we put Hobbes on Aggressive after the Opera event and before Curator. So we are again a proud member of the Super N00b Crew; where the h3ll’s our tabbard?

And then we took down Illhoof. It was our guild’s first meeting with this boss and on the fourth try, he went down like 40 year old scotch; smooth, baby. Here’s a little celebratory screenshot, just because it’s fun.

TJ wants a [Captured Firefly] and is farming Bogflare Needlers for it. We have issued a BRK Challenge! She shall do nothing save farm for the Firefly, except to empty her bags and purchase consumables, until she surrenders.

Should she capture a Firefly, we shall send her a shiny, perfectly legal, dollar bill. Should she say No Mas and retire from grinding this non-combat pet, she shall send BRK a similar piece of currency.

We think we’ll put the dollar we win in a frame, next to the BRK iMac of Destiny, so we can gaze at it frequently.

Note: We know the firefly is classified as Common, not Uncommon. But the white “Captured Firefly” text was illegible, so we made it green.

“Dear BRK, I played BM for like two weeks, in soloing, arenas, battlegrounds and Karazhan. BM’s damage seems to be higher than MM, which I have been ever since using my first five talent points in pet health. So I don’t like BM. Having highest DPS in raid groups is nice, but I had that already. The only difference is I don’t even have to think about whether or not I’ll top our two big DPS-rogues, I just do.

Zemulous“

Let it be known that there was a final paragraph from Zem that we have omitted for overall clarity of the blog. It wasn’t horrible or cruel, it just confused the issue at hand.

What issue, you ask? The Spec-You-Like Issue.

Do you think BRK is gonna tell Zem to use BM if he doesn’t like it? Nope. However, he tried it, for which we award +5 BRK Cool Points, and he acknowledged our favorite BM commandments:

1) BM is the highest-DPS spec, (both in tool-tip in in instance use, BM is the schiznit, although we wish he had also included his pet’s white damage DPS for each spec)
2) Pets are not point-n-click destruction machines; they require micromanagement
3) Playing BM is not easier than the other specs
4) Arenas, regardless of spec, are painfully frustrating for our entire class

As for his new 0/31/30 hybrid Raiding Spec, we think it’s pretty cool. We’re not that big of a fan of the 8/41/12 or other variations of the X/41/Y school. Now 0/41/20 we understand and bless, and 7/20/34 is interesting, too. But the 0/31/30 is a proven raiding spec and the only BRK-Approved Hybrid Spec we can think of right now. We think Zem will like it.

As for the whole arena issue, we have read some blue posts where the GMs acknowledge the lack of representation of hunters in arena-uberness. Zem nails the half the problem as being able to get to range, but the line-of-sight issue is what keeps us out of arenas. There is an obvious terrain issue when hunters dominate the total-damage-done and total-kills statistics in battlegrounds - Alterac Valley, Eye of the Storm, etc. - but are consistently destroyed in arenas. Big crits and massive burst damage is necessary in arenas because players know if they move just a couple feet in any direction, some obstacle will save their @sses from a hunter. This is why MM do better than any other spec in arenas. If you like arenas and want that gear, go MM; it’s really the best option.

If you’ve got something to say and want to see it on BRK the Blog, just send it in! We love posting reader emails. As Zem will attest, we do some light editing for clarity, spelling, and maybe some grammar. We’re not an English teacher, though; we don’t grade or give quizzes.

Edit: Zem’s numbers have been corrected.

“Dear BRK, sorry to add to your flood of email, but I was wondering if you could help clarify the value of weapon skill for a hunter.

“I have read mixed reports, but +5 weapon skill rating seems to increase crit rate by .5% and have smaller boosts to hit rating. It’s unclear to me if this applies to ranged weapons or just melee. It seems like +.5% crit might be worth more than the stat difference on the weapons, but I’m not sure about that either. Can you provide any insights, or are the differences too small to worry about? Thanks, Geoffrey”

Weapon Skill is a modifier that uses your enemy’s defense rating to calculate how extra-deadly you are. One weapon skill point gives +0.04% Crit, +0.04% Hit, (and your opponent’s chance to block, dodge or parry decreases by 0.04%), for every point you have more than your opponent’s Defense Skill.

You’re a 70 Night Elf hunter using a gun. You have a 350 gun skill rating. You’re fighting a 70 Troll hunter who is using a bow. You both have 350 defense ratings.

As the NE hunter, your 350 gun rating matches the troll’s 350 defense rating, so your weapon skill gives you no bonuses.

The Troll hunter, however, has a +5 bow skill as a racial ability. Therefore his 355 bow skill rating gives him +0.04% Crit and +0.04% Hit for every point he has more than your 350 defense skill. Since his bow rating is five points higher than your defense rating, all those bonuses are multiplied by five. The Troll hunter gets 0.2% Crit and 0.2% Hit against you because of the troll’s racial bonus to bows.

Now this all changes a bit against mobs higher than your level. The 2.0.1 patch has notes about weapon skill that say, against mobs above their level, players gain +0.1% Crit, not 0.04%. If the 73 elite you’re fighting has a 350 defense and you have a 355 skill rating on your gun, you get +0.5% crit, and that’s d@mn spiffy.

Now if you really want to get jiggy with it, you have to start worrying about glancing blows and the crit-cap and other esoteric nonsense that we don’t really worry too much about on this site.

But it should be pointed out that Weapon Skill Rating is different than Weapon Skill. At level 70, it takes 3.9 points of Weapon Skill Rating to increase your actual Weapon Skill by 1. A piece of gear that increases your WSR by 16 is not increasing your WS by 16, but only by 4.1.

But our reader’s question is: does his racial bonus to guns make the gun a better weapon for him than the bow? Pfft, h3ll no; not in this case. If the comparisons were between the Wolfslayer and the [Steelhawk Crossbow], then we’d say the racial bonus was a deciding factor. But the Sunfury is a Big Upgrade; it’s a level 125 weapon, not a 115. Take your Sunfury and get another 200g scope. Such is the price for phat loot.

Pepi, aka Trigity, aka Tiggy, is trying to formulate a plan to make off with the BRK puppy, a 100lb yellow Labrador who lives to swim. Tiggy is enchanted with the big lap-dog and wants to take him home. We will thwart her, oh yes we will.

BRK has a Guest today and Saturday. Tiggy aka Trigity aka Pepi flew from San Francisco to spend some time with us. So we’re taking Friday off to show her a good time.

And no, not that kind of a good time. Yes she’s pretty and has an extraordinary form, but Mrs BRK is deadly.

Seriously.

“You don’t think your puppy wants to grow up and Intimidate and have Cobra Reflexes? Feed his fantasies with the BRK Doggie T-Shirt.” Thank you Moony for pointing this item out; it’s now available in the BRK Store.

We made a MASSIVE mistake in our calculations. Back when we hit 100,000 visitors, we had an average daily traffic of 950 visitors per day. As of this week, however, we are averaging 2500 visitors per day. Our estimate of 5-10 “winning” 200,000 screenshots was based upon the previous contest’s daily visitors.

Congratulations to the following 34 people who sent in Visitor #200,000 Screenshots!

Gromrot
Rockfang
DaveS
g8rcody
TJ
Mehdi
Wixted
jolson
wmft12805
Ahoni
Rizzah
shinjagunjin
Ilya
Jammall
kruncs
Felts
Sanlawen
Toolio
Tehkrons
Ripped Cricket
Nexxeum
Brinar
Chuck “CAR”
Uwishusoazhn
Sosweet
Galorfinor
Tezticles
Thebe
Darksilver
Bbroom
Kaxk
Gogey
Giuseppe
superjmsl

Once the lovely and vicious Mrs BRK assists us with selecting the prize recipient, we’ll let everybody know.

And our gmail account is WAY overblown with mail. If you’ve sent a question or comment in the past 2-3 days, we’re trudging our way through it all. Thank you for writing, we read everything and are grateful that you think our little goofy blog brings you some knowledge and laughs.

We’re gonna slam through 200,000 hits today and you know what that means! If you can get a screenshot of the counter at EXACTLY 200,000 hits and email it to us, you could win your choice of prizes from the BRK Store! The counter is being moved to the top of the page to make screenshots easier.

Why “could” and not “will”? Because sitemeter is still wonky. We will receive approximately 5-10 emails with the 200,000th “hit”. Don’t know why, don’t know how to fix it. But we will post the names of everybody who sends us a “winning” screenshot and use the BRK Totally Random Selection Algorithm to obtain a sole winner.

The BRKTRSA will involve Mrs BRK somehow, we’re not sure yet. But it’ll be fair, we promise.

Remember!

1) Counter = 200,000
2) Screenshot
3) Email to bigredkitty@gmail.com
4) Hope Mrs BRK isn’t wacked out on a Grande Skinny Sugar-Free Vanilla Latte with Cinnamon sprinkles.
5) If you forget the sprinkles, you’re sleeping on the sofa, (that rule is really just for us, though).