“Dear BRK, I started reading your blog when a hunter friend in my guild recommended it not too long ago. At the time I was playing as a MM build of my own designs, respecced from BM at about level 65. After reading your blog and debating with myself, I respecced back to BM using your 41/20/0 build and I love it to pieces.

“Thanks a ton for reading, I love your blog! Cielidor and Hawkbane”

We don’t have access to the WoW Armory right now so we have to make an educated guess as to your gear. If all you have of the Dungeon Set 3 gear is the Beast Lord Leggings - the single worst piece of the bunch - then we’re going to guess that you are, quite frankly, undergeared for Karazhan. But no worries! It’s not like you can’t go or anything. It’s just that compared to people - like mages and arms warriors who have their DS3 gear - your damage totals are going to suffer.

But not so badly as you are reporting, for the following reason:

Hunter A is running damagemeters and has it set to count his pet in his totals. Hunter B is running damagemeters and has it set to count his pet in his totals. When these two sync, their data should merge fluidly.

Hunter A is running damagemeters and has it set to NOT count his pet in his totals. Hunter B is running damagemeters and has it set to NOT count his pet in his totals. When these two sync, their data should merge fluidly.

However, if one hunter is set to count his pet and the other is set to NOT count his pet, damagemeters can get buggy. Likewise, if the raid has several members running damagemeters and some of them are including pets and others are not, damagemeters is gonna be very buggy. And Elune help you if someone changes their setting in the middle of a run. You can just ignore damagemeters for the rest of the night after that.

BRK likes to keep his pet separated so that the entire raid can see how important it is to send Hobbes healz. For two weeks in a row, Hobbes has off-tanked two of Moroes’ adds without healz and died both times. Our guild likes to try to use a rogue to off-tank a caster on the initial pull, but Hobbes grabbs aggro regardless if Growl is on or not.

But that add isn’t the problem, it’s the melee guy we’ve been trapping that nukes our pet. When he is to be DPS’d, we slap Growl and Intimidation and Pet Mend and send him to save our rogue’s @ss. Yep, Hobbes cannot off-tank him and survive, but it’s a sacrifice we’re willing to make for the raid. Once the 2nd add is down and all DPS focuses on Moroes, we run to Our Spot and rez Hobbes, slap a Pet Mend on him, shove a Sporeling Snack in his jowls, and get him back in the fight. We’d rather be out of commission for a few seconds than have a dead rogue.

And we’re off-track. Sorry.

What we think you saw was your pet not being included in the reporting. If your top DPS folks are in good gear and you’re not they could quite easily out-DPS you, but probably not by 7-10%. As a BM hunter in below-average gear, we’re thinking your pet did 3-5% of the total DPS and that wasn’t being reported due to conflicting damagemeters settings.

At the beginning of the run, ask all the raid members to select not to include pets. That should solve your immediate problem of Lack of Information and Confidence in the reporting. Then go get your DS3 gear.

And if you’ve got gold-problems, consider dumping your manufacturing professions, hmm?

We’re sure to get the obligatory “SW STATS FTW!” comment but we’ve been unsuccessful in convincing our guild to switch. Frankly, a new damage meters addon isn’t our biggest concern; it’s getting our tanks to generate threat. More on that in a later post.

We’re sitting in the garage, on the iBook and the wireless network, enjoying some reheated beef and broccoli, watching the boy using the flowerbed at the mailbox as a sandbox when he’s GOT a sandbox in the backyard… and we just finished installing MMO’s new character pane iframe tool dealie-o. Scroll to the bottom of the page and you’ll see it.

1) It doesn’t show gems
2) It doesn’t show enchants or scopes
3) It doesn’t show set bonuses
4) It’s not scalable so I can’t put it in my right side bar or the main blog section, I’m forced to put it at the top or the bottom of the page
5) Our Armory profile is a single mouse-click away, anyway, and it has everything but #4 covered

Opinions?

Edit: It is gone; not a single, “I like it” comment so poof.

“Dear BRK, I’ve been a faithful reader for a couple of months now. I check your website religiously at work and appreciate that you update so frequently. Your blog gave me the encouragement to switch to BM from MM in my early 50’s and I’ve never looked back - I love the spec and am looking forward to endgame as I am now a 67.

“I am not one to get into major calculations, math is the bane of my existence. Do you think the extra crit percentage will make up for it? Should I just wait for the Hellforged Halbard? Why is the sky blue? I just don’t know. Please help. Back to work, Krutang and Maverick”

Rule #1 of Comparing Gear: Ignore Enchants. If you wanted, you could put a +35 agility enchant on your pike and increase your crit, too. You could put a Savagery enchant on the Quill and ram its RAP up. It doesn’t matter; the base stats of the gear is our concern, period.

You got the Pike and that’s 21 Agility and 40 RAP, so we’ll call that 21 Agility and 61 RAP. If you get the Quill, that’s 54 Agility period, or 54 Agility and 54 RAP. With the Quill, you get a bonus of 34 Agility which is almost a full percentage of Crit, (to be precise, it’s 0.85% +crit), and losing 7 RAP. Yes, you’re getting +dodge and +armor, too, but let’s simplify and just worry about the +crit for now.

The stamina on the two polearms is basically equal.

The intellect on the Pike is +20. Now that’s 300 mana plus the 5 mana per 5 seconds that Aspect of the Viper is boosted, (AotV is 25% of intellect every 5 seconds).

So what’s the trade? To gain 0.85% crit, you’re giving up 7 RAP, 300 mana, and 5 mana every 5 seconds if you run with AotV.

But what does that mean in terms of damage, that’s the real question. Is 7 RAP something to worry about? Not really. Is 300 mana? That’s a single Arcane Shot. The 5 mana per 5 seconds? If you’re running Aspect of the Hawk it’s not there to begin with, but if you are, and you’re in a fight that lasts two minutes, you’d be getting 120 mana over that period, which isn’t even a single Arcane Shot. Is all that worth a little less than 1% crit?

No way. Take the crit, baby. Take it and run. Crits are, of course, more damage for you, but it also procs Kill Command. That’s a double-damage-bonus for critting, so don’t pass it up. Then slap the +35 agility enchant on it for another 0.875% to crit.

But what’s after the Quill? The [Sonic Spear] is what you’re gunning for. BRK has the [Hellforged Halberd] because, A) we have the rep with Honor Hold after running Shattered Halls 1048 times, and B) because the d@mn sonic spear never ever ever drops for us.

Ever. Did we mention that the Sonic Spear never drops for us? It doesn’t. Ever.

We want a new website, we’ve been saying that for a while. We’ve got a prototype, it’s basically done, thanks to a volunteer web designer who has graced us with his time and energy. But we want a new banner. We want a banner that will amaze. We want it to be the best. We want the Greatest Warcraft Banner of All-Time.

So we decided to hire someone.

And not just anybody. If we’re gonna blow our own kinda-hard-but-really-just-faking-it earned money on a banner for our non-profit blog, we want some Name Recognition. We want the Internet Michelangelo, gosh dang it!

So we hired him.

But he doesn’t play WoW.

Training. We have to train him up, we do. This is going to take some time. What does a Tauren look like, an Orc, a Dwarf, etc. We’re taking screenshots of just about everything you can imagine and feeding our hired gun everything we can think of to help our project along.

So who is “him”? His name is John Cox and he is the John Cox of Cox and Forkum, the premier political cartoon website on the Internet. He has his own website you can peruse to get an idea of the amount of talent this guy has coursing through his veins. It’s staggering what he can do.

Do you want to see the first rough draft of what he’s done for BRK? We’ve been sitting on this drawing for a week now and we cannot hold it back from you anymore:

Is the general concept what we asked for? Yes. We want the hunter to be smug and the cat to be fierce, though, so that’s got to be swapped. Are the characters “right”? No, far from it. They are fleeing in fear, running amok and with a sense of “every creature for themselves” but they aren’t “WoW toons” yet.

But we have no doubt that this will morph into the Greatest Warcraft Banner of All-Time! Frankly, we’re so excited we can’t sit still.

Seriously, we brought a peach to eat for lunch and it’s totally blah. What the h3ll? It’s a beautiful peach, it’s soft and smells nice, but it tastes like we’re eating a piece of tofu.

Anyway, it’s Wednesday and that means BRK on WoW Insider. Our login and password are working so it’ll be on time. Actually it’s done already, WooT! We have a new piece of art from Moony, so /cheer for that, too!

But now it’s Really Long Letter Time, so get something to drink and maybe a banana or a kiwi; the peaches stink right now, FYI.

“Dear BRK, about 9 hours ago a friend suggested I take a look at your site. They had just discovered WoW Insider and thought I might find it interesting, principally because in our guild Big Red Kitty is the term used to describe my cat, Amber. I honestly wasn’t expecting much – I really only looked because I told my friend I would do so.

“This all makes good sense to me, but (especially at 3:00) I may easily have overlooked something and I would welcome a refutation. Thank you again for all your work examining and promoting the Beastmaster Hunter. I’m more eager now to play and progress than I have been since reaching 70. Sincerely, Xetheral and Amber.”

To answer the enchant/leatherworking question, here’s a nice and quick list of stuff you should go after:

http://hunterguide.wikispaces.com/Hunter+enchants

We link to hunterguide on our sidebar and they’ve got loads of stats, formulas and FAQs that have helped us enormously in the past. Of course, if you have more questions as a result of those answers, drop us an email.

You’re absolutely correct about your analysis of Health; a dead hunter is a non-DPS’ing hunter. However, Health is more than just a measurement of a stamina number. Your ability to control aggro and chain-trap is directly linked to your ability to provide your raid with massive quantities of sustained, ranged DPS. If you have 1 health but never take a hit due to your ability to control aggro and chain trap, you’ll still be doing the same amount of damage as if you had 18,000 health!

Now we’re not advocating running around with no health at all, perish the thought. Naked instances, as we’ve been taught, should only be attempted by over-geared tanks. Except Kelmar; that sh!t would scare the dead.

Who is the Mysterious Anonymous Person? Perhaps they shall choose to reveal themselves. Perhaps they shall choose to remain hidden.

Perhaps they’ll choose to pursue a course of action that involves multiple acts of heinous violence upon our gentle person… brb, gotta check our State Farm paperwork.

“Dear BRK, I am still pretty much a noob. I do have a 70 hunter, but still trying to balance my gear and stats. My question is on your leggings, where did you get the +40 AP and +10 Crit? I have looked at all factions assuming it was similar to the shoulder slot enchants. Love your site and it is very informative. Mebad”

Negative ghost-rider, the leggings “enchant” isn’t an enchant but a leatherworking item. Yes, leatherworking does make some interesting stuff nowadays. As always, for all your crafting needs, be sure to visit Kaliope’s Crafting Tome.

BRK is currently sporting the Cobrahide Leg Armor kit that adds 40 attack power and 10 crit. There also exists a Nethercobra Leg Armor kit that adds 50 attack power and 12 crit. However, the NLA requires a Primal Nether and thus isn’t seen very often.

For PvP, you might be interested in a Clefthide Leg Armor kit that adds 30 stamina and 10 agility. It too has a big brother, the Nethercleft Leg Armor kit, that adds 40 stamina and 12 agility to your leggings. And it too requires a Primal Nether, of course.

During our first week of writing this blog, we came across a story on the WoW Europe forums that was just tremendous. We posted it here and it received a whopping three comments. We were thrilled at our popularity! /cheer

And in the intervening months, we’ve completely forgotten about it. But a unplanned but entirely lucky mouse-click brought it to our attention. This story deserves a rez, so we’re breaking out our old Goblin Jumpercables and reposting it for your reading pleasure.

I often play PUGs, and I encounter a lot of bad players on the opposite team. But, I just can’t take it when they’re female gnomes. I have a heart, and it just feels so bad killing those small buggers, especially around christmas times.

My story begins with me playing my shaman. I run up to a female gnome mage and slay her without her being able to do anything. Now I do this another 5-6 times and that poor female gnome mage is like the only alliance who dares to step outside their flagroom (EVERYONE DEFEND FTW!)

It is a really bad player, I don’t even have to try very hard and could just autoattack kill the poor female gnome. She tries to channel fireballs, I ES and she wont even channel another fireball before my ES is ready again. She never silences and overall she’s like one of the worst players I ever seen. (but at least she tries to move out from the flagroom and WIN the game!)

So, I just can’t take it anymore. I see that gnome mage running up to me for like the 7-8th time and I look at the scoreboard, the mage got like 0 HKs and 10 deaths. She starts channeling a fireball and I just let it hit me. And let another fireball hit me. She doesn’t have very good gear, it’s noticable - still decent gear though. I hit her 2-3 times, with windfury deactivated to not get some lucky instant killing WF crits.

And I die after a time. I don’t know why. Somehow in my mind I see this dad, who actually plays the character, who sits with his kid and lets him play. Because it was really THAT bad play, slow reactions and everything.

And that female gnome.. I just couldn’t.

I respawn again, the score is 2-0 at this time and we’re really dominating the game. The female gnome, who still is the only alliance stepping out of the flagroom, is now in our base, running VERY slowly and stopping on every corner. Which only makes me believe even more it’s a someone showing a small kid the game. Move around the corner, standing still for a few seconds, move a bit further.

The only reason she managed to get this far, was because all other 9 hordes are killing the defenders in their flagroom.

I follow the gnome (looking at the female gnome around the corners by rotating my camera) slowly into our flagroom. She entered our base from the ramp, and from entering it took probably 1 minute to get into our flagroom - which for a “normal” player takes a few seconds tops.

Now she stands in front of our flag, totally still. Nothing happening for 10 seconds, and in my mind I’m so sure that it’s the dad saying “Good kid, now rightclick on this flag and run fast back to our base!”. I’m so sure of it, I can’t believe anyone who’s level 60 can play this badly and move around so slow if they level hours & days by themselves.

She picks up the flag, and I run in. Hey, can’t have them capture without having to fight for it. The female gnome mage stops, looks at me for a bit and after 4-5 seconds starts channeling a fireball. After a epic battle of attempting to make it look like a epic battle, she brings me down. She slowly moves closer to my corpse, then a bit closer and then loots my corpse. She turns around, stands there 3-4 seconds before she runs the 10 yards to reach the tunnel in our flagroom. Stands still another 4 seconds then she turns facing the tunnel and after another 3 seconds she starts running forward.

I’m so sure now, but no matter - a player that bad and who’s the only one who actually is trying to win the game needs to be rewarded for the fighting spirit.

“/bg Hey guys, the one who picked up our flag is a friend of mine, it’s his little kid playing. He loves this game and is it ok if we let him score 1 time to make a little kid happy? It’s christmas week after all.”

Ok, it’s a lie. I don’t know the guy, and I don’t know if it’s a kid. It can just as well be a really bad player. But believe it or not, the brutal hordes all show a great heart. The female gnome runs through the middle to their tunnel, which takes probably a 3 minutes. The hordes are all ganking people who’s defending their flagroom now, it’s actually quite a slaughter. All of the hordes, including me, are in their flagroom killing everyone trying to get in there.

Then our favorite gnome comes running into the room, she almost hits the glasswindow straight ahead before he stop. Waits 3 seconds, turns 90 degrees to 3 seconds later walk straight into the middle of the room. He walks a bit to far to the west, so it takes another 3 seconds and he moves backwards a few steps with all the hordes watching. She turns around facing their flag. Moves forward, stops for a second, then moves forward again and the female gnome mage captures the horde flag!

Horde picks up the respawning flag and runs back to the base with a female gnome mage untouched shooting fireballs after them. Some people stops to /wave and /dance with the female gnome mage, and let her kill them - as she don’t have the speed to keep up with the flag carrier.

Horde wins 3-1, but one little happy mage ended 4th in killing blows (among alliance) with her 8 KBs and 17 deaths.

Maybe it wasn’t a kid playing, maybe it was a handicapped person, maybe it was a regular person watching TV while playing, or maybe someone who just opened a ebay account. I have no clue.

But I had a merry christmas.

“BRK, you’d be proud, well at least sorta… I’m a level 51 Draenei hunter and I’ve finally chain trapped for the first time. Yeah, that’s a bit embarrassing, but I’ve never needed it before.

“It was a trial by fire but it worked well, and best of all, I dinged 51 on the overseer kill, putting the point in The Beast Within. Thanks for all the lessons, they eventually pay off! Fearstalker and FlameClaw”

Do we all remember the Slag Pit? We hope so. That Overseer Maltorius is a PITA and basically impossible without crowd control, so grats for putting your chain-trapping skills to good use.

These letters are the reason we continue this blog. Hearing that you’re learning, trying to put into practice the skills we talk about, makes the whole deal worthwhile. Not every post or comment here needs to be about Karazhan or epic gear. The level of the accomplishment doesn’t matter as much to BRK as the satisfaction you get from the achievement does.

Thanks to Maniasarcania for getting the research and reporting done, but on the PTR it seems raptors have received Dash.

NOW LISTEN! Not everything that goes into the PTR makes it into the final patch; tailors can attest to that, right folks? However, if Dash stays programmed and we get to play with it for real, we’re calling a moratorium on the name “Dino”. Five BRK Cool Points will be deducted for violating that rule, OK? In fact, we’re gonna go a bit further in our obsessiveness:

Top Ten Raptor Names BRK is Totally Forbidding

10. Dino
9. Barney
8. Rex
7. Littlefoot
6. Aladar
5. Marshall, Will, or Holly
4. Michaelcrichton
3. Gertie
2. Earlsinclair
1. Kitty

Edit: Calvin and Hobbes is the single greatest cartoon of all time, no discussion. We will take no guff from the readers concerning OUR pet’s name; it’s a totally different deal than naming a raptor. No Guff!

Double Edit: Lindsay Lohan just got arrested for DUI, driving with a suspended license, and possession of cocaine following a car chase in which she, driving a GMC Denali, was tearing @ss after a Cadillac Escalade. She didn’t kill anyone, so feel free to laugh.