How about a linkage post? We have time for one of those, we hope. The kids are eating Froot Loops and watching Clifford, we should have a few minutes.
As always, no particular order, no guarantees, no responsibility, no promises, no demands, no fault, no money back, no u-turns, no extra-credit assignments, no running on the pool deck, no grace period on credit charges, no right-of-way, no turn on red, no Vista-approved seal, and no illegal formations.
So what else can we pull using our BRK Pet-Misdirect technique? How about the Pit Commander. You know that 72 elite demon who is the “general” for the demons at the Dark Portal? How about we pull him.Download the 960×600 full-sized movie here.
Friday. Moroes, Opera, Curator, Aran, and Prince. Our dates for this evening are set. Barring unforeseen noobishness, we should be done in under four hours. While the Prince DPS-ring would be nice, we’re not drooling over it. Our T4 helm would be spiffy, but our Aran-drop helm - this hideous thing - is basically an equivalent and we’re quite happy with it. We’ve twice passed on the Sunfury bow; we love our gun and the bow isn’t really an Upgrade with a capital-U.
We shall get no gear tonight.
So why go? Why put up with the hassle? Obviously we want to help get the guild geared, but also because we are trying to coax the raid in the direction of our new leggings. The one thing we really, really want are either our T4 leggings from Gruul or the Rip Flayer Leggings from Netherspite. We want our raid to take Netherspite again; we’ve only done that boss one time. Shoot, we’ve taken Gruul twice! We’ve done Illhoof and Nightbane many, many times. Now we want Netherspite and the small chance he’ll drop a piece of gear, really the only piece of kara gear, we can use.
We’ve mentioned how our guild has 100,00 druids. Well, they want Illhoof and the staff he drops. The plate-wearers have all gotten their uber-shields from Nightbane, so maybe we can quit doing that boss for a while. We have three raiding hunters and we would love Netherspite.
Can a hunter get some love? Netherspite, please?
Sunday through Tuesday we have company. No WoW, no blogging, no nuttin. We may - notice we said may - hire a Substitute Blogger. Maybe even let a lesser class have their way with this space.
Maybe even let a non-WoWer write something about how she hates WoW. We know just the person…
Dear BRK, I need you to convince me. I’ve been looking at beast mastery, and I’m likin’ it, and I like everything you’ve written so far. I agree with all your points and have put long thought into the things you’ve said, chosen my pets on your list, reworked my shot rotation a lot of things, and now I think about spec’ing away from MM. All you need to do to have me is convince me that it’s all worth losing silencing shot over, for I love Silencing Shot more then I love my pet and armor; it tells casters where to stick it. If you can do that, you have another conversion. Amiia.”
“Is it worth it” is a feeling, a non-quantitative measurement. We cannot tell you you’ll feel better as a BM, that’d be stupid on our part.
We encourage you to try Beastmaster. If Bestial Wrath and the highest potential DPS output doesn’t make you happy, go back to MM. If Silencing Shot makes you happy, good on ya. Our goal is not to convince you that Beastmaster is better, but that it’s viable and awesome.
We still get emails from hunter who are being told to respec MM because that’s “The Raiding Spec”. Bullpucky. Every hunter-spec is viable if properly played. What makes Beastmaster so great is Serpent’s Swiftness and our pet’s ability to survive AoE attacks and, with healing, off-tank like a champ.
Beastmaster is not for everybody, but don’t knock it until you try it.
This week’s column, which I may or may not be able to get done today due to my work schedule, is going to be my last.
With my new job – I got a new job without changing companies – time just isn’t on my side do to everything there is I want to do and give it the attention it deserves. I could continue to do WoW Insider columns and not give them the work they require, but that would not be good for my self-esteem, WoW Insider readers, or all of you.
I want to specifically thank Mike and Elizabeth for hiring me and working with me to make BigRedKitty on WoW Insider as much fun as it has been. You folks are wonderful and I very much appreciate all you’ve done.
Thank you, Good Luck, and I’m going to miss this terribly.
Daniel
aka
BigRedKitty
Edit: Just to clarify, this blog isn’t going anywhere. As you may have noticed, the number of multiple-posts per day are dwindling. But the existance of this happy hunter haven isn’t in danger.
“Dear BRK, I’m a pretty avid reader of your blog, and i have learned quite a lot from your posts. However, until just recently, I was a MM spec hunter with just enough SV to get improved traps. This worked out great for what my guild was running, the normal 5 man instances and the occasional Heroic mode.
“However, I was a hardcore MM enthusiast, and I thought I knew it all. I had over 2200 attack power and 21% crit chance, with a about a 5% chance to hit- I though of myself as one of the finest hunters around. Then I get an invite to pug prince in Kara. I never cared much for raids, but I wasn’t about to let this chance go by, so I went.
“I was one of three hunters, both of them BM spec. I was intrigued. I knew that BM was better top end sustained DPS for raids, but I wasn’t prepared for just how much more top end they were. I was bottom of the hunter dps, which really shocked me, being used to the top dps for my guild (non-raiding guild, good people).
“I switched to BM that night, and ran steam vaults with my guild. I was top dps, but that was normal, and I hadn’t figured out all of the BM play style yet.
“Headless Horseman comes up the next day, and I just go nuts with bestial wrath and rapid fire - my DPS was 834.9 for the headless horseman fight. My jaw hit the ground when I saw those numbers, i hit about 640 dps as MM, and I had no idea that the damage jump was that incredible.
“Anyway, thanks for showing me around the BM tree and how to use it right. Dancinglion.”
Hallelujah, brothuhs and sistahs! We’re talkin’ ’bout DPSSSSS-en and puttin’ the smackethththth down! Spec-thumpin’, voice-a-raaaaaasin’ and praaaaaaisen’ the almighty Powerrrrr that is Beastmassssstah!
Why oh why have you not convurted, yee Mawksmen and Suhvivulists?! Praise be to the Powah, come join us in our shangri la! For there is always room here for Hunters… who desire to fullfill their Destructive Potennnnntial.
Hallelujah!
Absorb the posts, get out of them what you must, then continue reading here.
OK? Ok.
“Though he DID kill me in Kara last weekend. Seriously.”
We killed TJ. Totally. We didn’t just kill her, we basically wasted 0.04 of a second when we were given the slightest opportunity to kill her before we did. We were efficient, we were. Lethal.
Stupid? Oh yes. On a scale rivaling the OJ jurors, New Coke, and fury warriors thinking they belong in the Gruul “DPS Party”, we were stupid. Stupid, but efficiently lethal.
Our raid just finished Prince. It wasn’t an easy kill as four infernals landed right on top of the tank. We started Prince being tanked - if the door is in the southeast corner - in the northeast corner. Infernal drops on the tank, the tank moves Prince to the door, the rest of the raid backs up along the south wall. Infernal lands on the tank. Tank moves Prince across the southern wall, raid moves into the southwest corner. Infernal lands on the tank. Tank moves Prince almost to the southwest corner, raid moves screaming and cursing along the west wall. Infernal lands on the tank. Tank moves Prince halfway up the west wall and we complain so bitterly and colorfully - especially the Squeekie Priestie - that Prince cried “OK, sheesh” and died. A hellish Prince run, just a PITA. We were all frustrated and tired.
The next boss on the list was Nightbane and we were going to run down to the terrace from the top of the circular stairs from Prince when TJ asked when we were taking a break. We have developed a sixth sense of when TJ needs a timeout from raid-excitement and we could tell she needed a break immediately. We offered to let her “follow” us and we’d run her to Nightbane. She put herself on follow and said,
“Don’t drop meh.”
Before we could say, “I’d never drop yeh” we made a wrong turn on the stairs and went in one of the off-rooms that you’re never supposed to go in. Wham, aggro meter registers and we just body-pulled an elite trash mob. Thinking quickly, we run back on the the stairs and Feign Death.
Woohoo! Out of combat!
WHAM!!
TJ was still on follow, had “followed” us into the alcove, and when we FD’d…
We call it Dumping Aggro on a Squishy and we admonish hunters to never do that. Well, we do’d it. With a vengeance. That mob smashed TJ so hard her minions laughed. So hard her wardrobe took 10 seconds to reattach. So hard that she screamed in raid-chat,
“BRK YOU AS$HOL3 YOU KILLED ME!!”
And all we could reply was,
“Swear to god, it wasn’t on purpose. But it was so funny I wish I had.”
Oh, and after swatting TJ into oblivion we just happened to be close enough to that “fight” that we body-pulled that same mob again and, since our FD was on cooldown, we died too.
Hunters, it may be fun to misdirect onto your priests, but DO NOT body-pull elite trash mobs and dump their aggro on bio-break-desperate warlocks. It’s just not the done thing.
“Dear BRK … Last night I had the chance to take [my hunter] into Kara with my guild and … I didn’t respec my pet to absorb Arcane because I hadnt planned on going to shade. He did real good up until the elementals spawned. Then it seemed Aran was two shotting him. I was keeping Mend Pet on him at all times, but he would loose three quarters of his health all at once and if I didn’t get him recalled he would die. This happened twice and the last time we had Aran at 3% so I didn’t take the time to rezz him again … What should I do to be sure to absorb the hits better? Tempest.”
If you haven’t spec’d your pet with Avoidance Rank 2 and Arcane Resist Rank 2, do not leave your pet on Aran during the Arcane blasts. There is never a reason not to have Avoidance Rank 2 trained, but you can swap your resistances around based upon the fights you have planned.
Just last night, our guild’s Kara group 2 cleared Prince and Nightbane and we re-spec’d Hobbes with Fire Resist Rank 3 and no Shadow resistance, (we wanted to be able to show some stuff for this post; we’ll explain.)
Let’s look at the damage Hobbes took against Prince:
(We recommend you open the picture in a separate window while we analyze the Shadow and Fire damage.)
Hobbes is trained with Avoidance Rank 2 which reduces AoE attack damage by 50%. Prince’s Shadow Nova attack deals approximately 3000 damage. We would expect Hobbes to take 13,500 damage, 9 hits for 1500 damage each. But no, Hobbes took 15,000, averaging 1666 per hit and a maximum of 3000.
What if WoWWebStats miscounted? What if it was really 10 hits, not 9? Then total damage would be exactly what we would expect with a 50% mitigation. That’s a possibility.
Hmm. If we subtract one 3000-damage hit, that means there were 8 more hits that did 12,000 damage. That averages to 1500 damage per hit for 8 hits, which is 50% of the standard 3000 damage that Shadow Nova deals and meets the expectation we had for the Avoidance reduction. Perhaps for eight of the nine Shadow Novas Hobbes ate, his Avoidance mitigated them by 50%, and for one shot he really did take the full 3000 blast. Perhaps Hobbes’s Avoidance get “resisted” or the Shadow Nova crit. Possible, we think.
We don’t know the correct answer. We would like to get another raider’s combat log, merge them, and find out if they recorded only nine Shadow Novas, too.
But for now, let’s “say” that without Avoidance Rank 2, Hobbes would’ve taken 27,000 damage from those Shadow Novas; all 9 shots at full-3000-damage-value. If you don’t have Avoidance Rank 2, get it and get it now.
Now the Fire damage comes from the Infernals. As we saw from the Shadow damage, WoWWebStats does not report the damage mitigated by Avoidance. However, it does report the damage mitigated by spell-resistances. Fire Resist Rank 3 mitigates approximately 50% of fire damage and our WWS report confirms this by showing Hobbes mitigating 49.3% of the fire damage from the Infernals.
Using a simple extrapolation was can calculate that had we not had Fire Resist Rank 3, the 25 hits of fire damage Hobbes took would’ve been 15,290 instead of 7645. Extrapolating once more, had we not had Avoidance Rank 2, the 15,290 damage would’ve been 30,580 damage.
Did we mention that Hobbes didn’t die during our Prince fight? Well now we know why. Avoidance and spell-resistances can be of tremendous value to your pet, depending upon the situation in which your pet is placed.
Had we trained Shadow Resist Rank 3, the Shadow damage Hobbes took would’ve been reduced to 7,500. With the priest’s frisbies flying all over the place, we might have gotten away without having to toss a single Mend Pet for the entire Prince fight. Pretty amazing.
For Aran, get that Arcane Resist. It’s incredible what your pet can withstand if he’s trained properly.
Want to know how to resist-train your pet? Look here.
One of the great bonuses of being a father and a husband is that one never gets sick. Can’t happen, no sir. We are the protector and provider and boogie-man chaser. Sickness is not in our vocabulary. Weakness cannot be allowed to take a foothold on our person. We forbid it.
One of the great bonuses of being a man is that when we do get sick, we get to let out every little-boy instinct and thought that has been buried in our DNA since our first male ancestor slithered out of the primordial ooze. We get to whine and complain and make everybody else miserable. Nothing is fine, nothing is well, nothing is good enough, not even the tomato soup we really hope Mrs BRK makes for us tomorrow.
/sniffle
We need skim milk, not whole, (the fat in 2% makes us woozy.) And not the bisque, just regular soup. We bought a case of it before the last hurricane for just such an emergency. No crackers. No parsley sprinkled with love on top. Just tomato soup. In a mug. The big one. Not the cracked one, not the one with the cute saying, just a manly mug. For we are manly in our sickness.
/sniffle
And NyQuil. Yes, we buy the generic stuff but we really need the brand name or it won’t work, trust us. She’s stronger than we are. She makes babies, we make movies. She wins, we surrender. NyQuil FTW. Gallons of it. Pour it in us with a funnel. Dump it on our body like we were on fire.
/sniffle
And don’t worry, we’ll recover in time for our Kara raid tomorrow night, or we’re gonna throw a whining hissy-fit the world hasn’t seen since Anakin cried over what’s her name, Pandabear.
/sulk
/pout
/snore
Sometimes things just don’t work out right. Case in point, our Big Bad Wolf movie.We actually got him down on this attempt but quit recording after… well, you’ll see.
8MB full-size 960×600 movie is available here. Why you’d want it, we’re not really sure.
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