“Dear BRK, I was looking over your talent tree, as well as that of my first math-heavy Hunter-mentor and noticed something. My mentor, when he went to BM and after crunching numbers, went to something that looks almost exactly like the BRK tree except there’s 5 points in Improved Aspect of the Hawk rather than 3 in Thick Hide and 2 in Improved Mend Pet. What he had in mind was for raiding and instancing.

“So is Thick Hide there to help with Cat family armor or is there something else I’m missing? Grimia”

Let’s talk about Improved Aspect of the Hawk, shall we?

You’re spec’d with IAotH. You’re running around Skettis killing Warp Hunters for the meat to make Warp Burgers. When does IAotH always proc? On the killing shot, right. Does the tooltip say 10% chance from any shot? Yes. Does it work that way? No.

Are we saying the tooltip is wrong? No. What we ARE saying is that ATotH is a stingy, heartless, cruel son-of-a-bleep and NEVER procs on the first shot when we’re grinding, which is we NEED it.

/outraged primal scream

IAotH in a grinding spec? BRK says No; he’s been burned by the IAotH Mistress enough.

You’re spec’d with IAotH. You’re running Shadow Lab trying like crazy to get your Sonic Spear, (hold the snarky comments). You’ve got Aspect of the Hawk active because IAotH will only proc if AotH is running. You’re on Murmur and IAotH has proc’d a few times, which is spiffy. You’ve been DPS-ing like a Mo Fo because you just KNOW this time he’s gonna drop that d@mn spear. Murmur is down to 50% and… you run out of mana. Ooo, that’s not good.

Your party had a warrior, healer, mage, rogue and thee. No external supply of mana-generation was available so you really should’ve been running Aspect of the Viper, right? But then your IAotH wouldn’t have proc’d!

Confucius say that if you regularly run without a Shaman or a Shadow Priest or a massive supply of Fel Mana potions, you’re going to need Aspect of the Viper. And if that’s what you’re running, might as well dump those 5/5 points in IAotH.

You’re spec’d with IAotH. You’re raiding Karazhan with a Shadow Priest and a mana-totem-slinging Chamois… we mean Shammy. Your guild alchemist dumps Fel Mana potions on you like John the Baptist. You’re running Aspect of the Hawk, getting the full benefit of your 5/5 points in IAotH and are the envy of every hunter everywhere. Good job, you lucky, smug b@stard.

If you’re a lucky, smug b@stard, you can go right ahead and enjoy IAotH and forget the other lower talents. If you’re like BRK and never know from one week to the next who’s going to be in your raid, we recommend you not bother with IAotH because you don’t know if you’ll be running AotV which will make those 5 talent points worthless.

If you’re like BRK and aren’t given the luxury of going 5/5 in IAotH, what are your choices? Improved Revive Pet can be helpful if your pet is dying a lot, we admit. However, if you spec your pet with Avoidance and the proper resistances, we have yet to find a boss in Kara that will nuke your pet regardless of how much attention you pay to him. This includes Nightbane, against whom Hobbes took craptacular amounts of fire damage and never died.

BRK takes the armor-bonus talent because, frankly, everything else stinks. What’s left, really? Pathfinding? Pfft.

Bonus Coverage: BRK was in Kara Group 2 and we cleared through Nightbane, yes. But Kara Group 1 got Prince down to 1% before wiping. Can ya go give Brigin - tankage extraordinare - some plate-love. The poor guy is thinking about respecing Arms.