Our plans for world domination have been dealt a severe blow. This is two times in the past 48 hours that Nihilum has gotten our dander up.

But being linked at all by WoWHead is wicked cool! /party!

The editor liked the rough draft of our book proposal, asked for a few changes, and we’re going to submit a final proposal on Monday. It’s the best news we could have hoped for! /WooT!

We specifically asked if we could discuss any details of this experience on our blog, she said,

“No, hoser! Keep your trap shut!”

“But…”

“Absolutely not. You want royalties, you play by our rules, capice?”

Edit: Thanks for all the opinions of the Lurker fight. We’ll review and implement something, we promise.

“Yeah but…”

“What part of NO don’t you understand?”

“But can’t I…”

“Don’t make me get angry. You won’t like me when I’m angry.”

/whimper

Have we mentioned that we love strong women?

/Austin Powers look of intrigue

Other news:

Aetherial Circle went to SSC and learned the Lurker fight. We got it all down and were going to take him out when the fish respawned. /TJ’esque-shriek

The pattern for the Boots of the Crimson Hawk dropped off a trash mob. We have it already because we bought it off the AH a month ago. /simmer with rage

Right now, our pet has a choice in the Lurker fight: A) sit on the center ring and attack the boss, B) sit with us on an outer ring and tank the adds. We prefer B and, as such, our DPS suffered. This is one of those cases of doing what is best for the raid is more important than our ego. Of course, we are hopeful it will be the only time in SSC we have to do it.

And on Monday, assuming AC goes to Gruul’s Lair, we’ll be filming and making a BRK Hunter’s Guide Movie of Gruul himself. Our guild can get him down at ten growths so we should have a good movie done.

Edit: Thanks for all the Lurker-info. We’ll break it down and see what’s what out there. Stupid fish.

Dear WoWJustu,

Scan Drenden already or we’re taking you off our blogroll. Scanning the big-guilds over and over again while leaving everybody else in the WoW-universe in the dark is crappy business and insulting.

And some of those being insulted have methods of spreading their disappointment where others may read about it.

/glare

BigRedKitty

We’re totally busy! OMG, it’s crazy. Tizzy, thy name is BRK. No blog posts, no emails answered, nothing except keeping our desk clean and our brain focused on doing our work.

We’ve been writing the draft of our book proposal for a two weeks now and it’s due tomorrow. We’ve just sent the rough draft to the editor and are waiting for her to reply with a thumbs-up, a list of questions, or hysterical laughter and reject letter.

What kind of book? Honestly, we don’t even know if we can talk about it yet. Perhaps we should ask if we can divulge the title…

Or perhaps we should just keep it to ourselves so the pain and anguish of rejection will be minimalized.

“Dear BRK … I am … having difficulty pulling and chain trapping simultaneously.

“Is there a way to BOTH pull and chain trap on the same group of mobs? … I guess what I want to know is whether or not my having to CC is a legitimate excuse to let the tank pull in most circumstances, or if I should try to do both. Ursantile and Ammit”

Ramparts. Where does everybody wipe? At the end of the very first bridge when you have to make that around-the-corner pull and avoid the orc-and-two-dogs patrol, that’s where. The tank runs across the bridge, marks the pull, then proceeds to make his pull exactly when the patrol is standing right beside him. He body pulls the patrol and fires his ranged weapon at the marked mobs… wipeage ensues.

If only the tank had Feign Death.

Well he doesn’t. He shouldn’t be there. Let the hunter make that pull. Everybody stands at the other end of the bridge while the hunter marks and pulls the mobs as the patrol goes away. The hunter places a trap at right under his own feet, he pulls, he runs back to the rest of the party. The mobs run, one of them gets trapped, the tank grabs aggro from the rest of the mobs, the party burns them down safely away from the patrol. The trap breaks, the hunter has his next trap ready, chain-traps FTW, and the tank eventually picks it up.

Simple.

More complex, you want it? OK, how about…

The Misdirect-Cancel and Trap Pull

You have four mobs, like a standard pack in Steamvaults, and the hunter is going to Misdirect pull. Drop the Freezing Trap, throw MD on the tank, target the Blue Square - or whatever raid icon you use for indicating a trapped mob - and the hunter gets into position to fire his Pullshot Macro with his left hand on the macro button. With his right hand, he places the mouse cursor where the MD “buff” will appear in the upper-right corner of his UI. When the party is ready, the hunter fires his macro:

/cast Arcane Shot(Rank 1)
/stopcasting

Now all four linked mobs head for the tank. The four mobs were linked; once one mob was aggro’d the other three were too, automatically. However, this link breaks after an initial aggro. Once the link is broken, you can peel one of the mobs off by exceeding the threat it has on the tank.

So the hunter then right-clicks his MD “buff”, which turns MD off, and then fires his optional Pullshot Macro:

/cast Distracting Shot
/stopcasting

Arcane and Distracting shots are immediate and do not share a cooldown; they can be fired right after the other. Since the hunter canceled the effects of Misdirection, any threat he causes will be his own. The to-be-trapped mob is aggro’d by the hunter as the Distracting Shot causes more aggro than the tiny Arcane Shot-threat that was MD’d onto the tank.

The to-be-trapped mob runs at the hunter and gets trapped while the other three mobs keep on truckin’ to the tank, to be dealt with however the party previously devised.

Sweet? It’s like swatting a fly with a Maytag; not always the best approach but f-ing-A it’s impressive.

Is it necessary for a hunter to both pull and chain-trap? Nah. If you have a competent tank who can avoid drinking noobjuice and just pull the pack of mobs you need after patrols go away, you’ll be fine. The “Let the tank pull and the hunter will peel one off” method of pulling is much easier and, like the Moroes and Maulgar fights, sometimes a much smarter strategy.

Can a hunter pull and chain-trap? You bet your bippy. When Blizz fixes the double-trap bug, you will even be able to pull and chain-trap two mobs.

We once spec’d SV for Blood Furnace and were able to pull and triple-trap. Get out there and practice; it’s the only way you’ll learn.

Edit: Instead of right-clicking the MD off, just add a line to your optional Pullshot macro:

/cancelaura Misdirection
/cast Distracting Shot
/stopcasting

+5 BRK Cool Points to Erwinor for that bit of awesome-sauce.

61 Badges of Justice minus 60 Badges of Justice leaves 1 Badge of Justice and a new belt, the War-Feathered Loop. We forgot to take the delta-screenshot, but this was a nice upgrade from our Ebon Netherscale Belt.

And since we broke the Netherscale Set, we might as well upgrade from the Ebon Netherscale Bracers to our banked Stalker’s War Bands.

Shoulders, gloves, leggings, bracers, and belt in two days. That’s a lot of change! And there might be more.

Our Saberclaw Talisman might get swapped for our Worgen Claw Necklace if we see our misses become too great in the WWS report after tonight’s Magtheridon run. We’d like to keep our current set up, but we have a sneaking suspicion that our +Hit is just too low.

WoW Armory beamed directly into our brains. We have 61 BoJs and need to know how to spend them. Belt, regular-epic trinket, AP-epic trinket, or Crit-epic trinkekt? Hmmm…

Triple H is a gnome warrior. In his commercial he is shirtless, as is his gnome.

Milk. We’re out and left the new 1/2 gallon of premium skim at home.

A decision on whether to buy the boy the Lionel Polar Express or the Lionel Thomas and Friends for Christmas.

The guild to work out how they’re bringing the Dragonhawk boss down. As a hunter, we’re really completely out of the loop on how the guild is doing the strategy on this guy. We sit quietly munching raiding snacks while Fio and the gang work out the theory, then we blast the bejezus out of the boss. AC has one-shotted Bear, Hawk, and Lynx bosses this week - missed the timed event by one minute - but Dragonhawk continues to be a pain.

Speaking of the Dragonhawk boss, those scouts need to be exterminated ASAP.

Randy “Macho Man” Savage is an Orc Rogue. “I sneak around, quiet, in the shadows… then I JUMP OUT AND GUT YOU! OH YEEEAAAH!”

The Squeekie Priestie to not drink Redbull at 9PM during a Gruul’s raid. Our ears are still ringing.

People to quit disconnecting during raids. Demetria was better, but our mage-tank almost got a Misdirected Gronn Priest on his 15,000 health @ss. Wake up Fulgor!

To quit dying in Gruul’s. That floor hasn’t been cleaned in, like, forever. Phew.

A bottletop for our raspberry syrup. Our current vat is caked with goo due to an unexpected upending.

“Ravishing” Rick Rude is a Blood Elf Priest. In pink, natch.

A day off this week to finish our proposal.

The 24-slot ammo bag rocks. The ammo vendor in Shatt is truly wonderful. Now put some buzzards in Lower City so we can farm buzzard meat for Kibler’s Bits without having to trapise to Hellfire Peninsula.

Make Kibler’s Bits last two hours and persist through death, as long as we’re being unreasonable.

“Stone Cold” Steve Austin is a Tauren Druid. “Austin 3:16 says I just Moonfired your @ss!”

The chocolate cake to do more than spit fireworks out our butt.

Speaking of fireworks, make Volley look like a volley from 300; darkening the skies would be nice.

To not blame us for announcing the Snake Trap bug. At least you knew what was happening and reacted accordingly, right? An educated hunter is an smart hunter. (But we loved her post!)

“Hacksaw” Jim Duggan is a Dwarf Paladin. In his commercial, he must have have the Hammer of the Naruu slung over his shoulder. Tough guy!

We have one of these at work, we needed one at home, so we added this to the store. Do you want one? Probably not, but that’s OK; we still love the drawing. We have some NASA mugs and Rocket Scientist mugs, but this one is our favorite.

And if you think this is shameless, wait until WotLK ships and we get in the midnight-opening line at our local GameStop with a boxload of BRK shirts and hats!

We’ll probably go home with the same boxload, but the fun is in the “doing”, right?

Holy cow did we clean up in Gruul’s tonight. We’ll try to let the pictures speak for themselves ’cause we’re outta our mind with excitement.

Here’s our first excuse to use a Primal Nether on ourselves: our own Nethercobra Kit for our new Tier 4 leggings!Then, to the Auction House and some pretty Agility gems for the new Tier 4 shoulders!And wny not replace a piece of Tier 4 with some fabuloso new gloves! Moar agility gems and a big Thank You to Doomilias for the spiffy agility enchant.What is the result? Here’s the Old BRK:Followed by the New BRK:/happy little dwarven dance of joy!

A BRK-reader just wrote an email from Holloman AFB. Those folks just went through a very horrible week due to an Operational Readiness Inspection. So for them and all the military-folks out there, here’s:

The Totally True, We Swear It, BRK ORI Story

/daniel-mode on

In 1996, I was stationed at Misawa AB, Japan when I first met the thing called an ORI.

An ORI? The Air Force has this little thing called an Operational Readiness Inspection where it tests a military base’s capability to respond in time of a war or other surprise. What happens is a plane lands and a high-ranking military official respectfully requests the base commander’s presence. They meet and the base commander is handed a folder that says,

“Congratulations, your base is at war. Be prepared to deploy to Location X in 48 hours. Good Luck, your chance at a promotion to Major-General is in the balance. Love, The Chief of Staff of the Air Force.”

The base commander has a heart-attack, the vice-commander slaps him back to consciousness, and the base goes into ORI-Mode. Pack this, move them over there, get the airplanes airborne, load all your equipment on the C-5, don’t sleep for 36 hours, then get your duffel bags filled with 2.8 pairs of underwear over to the processing facility to get shipped out. All of this under the watchful eyes of the ORI Inspection Team.

So you get all your equipment loaded on pallets and driven over to the loading facility, you don’t sleep, barely eat, pretend bombs are dropping around you, and put on your chemical warfare suit and suck rubber for hours at a time while the bomb-disposal and Weapons of Mass Destruction teams go through their shenanigans “decontaminating” the base. Then, when everything is over, it’s time to pretend to deploy.

You take your bags and your helmet and your exhausted and malnourished and stinky butt over to the big hanger where they pretend to load you on a C-5 bound for Location X. A truly mind-numbingly frustrating situation.

Those people processing you, the ones inspecting your dogtags and your shot records and your 2.8 pairs of underwear, they are being inspected too. And one of the things being tested is their ability to respond to the unexpected.

So I was standing with my bags and my helmet, loudly denouncing the state of affairs in the processing facility when I was pulled aside by a full-bird Colonel. Uh oh, Daniel is going to prison, right?

Wrong.

“Sergeant Howell, would you be interested in participating in a role-playing game to assist the inspectors?”

Duh. Like I’m going to say no.

“Yes sir, what do you need me to do?”

“When you are processed, I want you to refuse to deploy on the basis that you are a conscientious objector.”

And as I thought about it, as the Colonel later described, a sh!t-eating grin grew on my face.

“Yes sir, I think I can do that.”

Back to the chairs and more waiting. But eventually my group of people was called forward to be put on our plane. And as I reached the E-2 who was assigned the critical job of making sure my military ID wasn’t a fake, I stopped.

“No, you can’t see it.”

“What?”

“You can’t see my ID, I’m not going.”

“Sergeant Howell, I need to see your ID so you can complete processing.”

“No way. I’m not going. I can’t go to Location X now, my wife will have a fit.”

Stunned silence.

“I signed up because the recruiter promised me I could be a pilot. Well, my eyesight shot that to h#ll and now here I am in northern Japan about to be sent of to Location X. Where is Location X? I demand to know! It’s Korea, isn’t it! You’re sending me to die in Korea? My wife will absolutely blow a gasket! Have you seen my wife? I’m not going! You hear me? No way, no how, no no no. I’m one of those subconscious contractors! I won’t kill anybody, got it?!”

The processing facility was so quiet you could hear the underwear in my bag rustle. The E-2 was sweating, the rest of the people in the line were stunned. Suddenly, a door opened and the senior enlisted sergeant in charge of the processing facility emerged. He knew what was going on; he’d been through a few ORIs before.

“Sergeant Howell, are you declaring that you’re a conscientious objector?”

“BINGO, Chief!” And I slammed the counter with my helmet a few times for emphasis. “No way you’re shipping this guy to Korea to eat cabbage out of the ground!”

“Airman, send Sergeant Howell to that room over there.”

“Chief! I want to see my lawyer, right pronto! When you call the MPs, make sure my lawyer is right on their heels!”

“Yes, Sergeant Howell, I contact the the legal division for you.”

“And a Chaplain! I got lots of moral and ethical issues here. I need to spill my guts before you send me to Korea or prison!”

“Yes, Sergeant Howell, I’ll contact the base chaplain’s office too.”

“I’m half Jewish, make sure that gets noted and I get the right representation.”

“It says on your military ID that you’re Presbyterian.”

“I can’t be too careful, now can I? I might be knee-deep in Sojo and doggie-appetizers by nightfall. Priest and a Rabbi; I know my rights! I’m an unconscious objectifier!”

“To the room, Sergeant Howell.”

And into the room I flounced. Ten minutes later, the Colonel blew open the door, slammed it behind him, and began laughing his head off.

“Sergeant Howell,” the Colonel bellowed, “How in the h#ll did you think of all that?”

“I’m exhausted, sir. If I had had more time, I would’ve asked for a meal and a shower as well as something besides CNN on the TV. It’s hard to control my words when I’m sober. Keep me from sleeping for 36 hours and all my internal filters shut down.”

“Just so you know, I had to leave the facility I was laughing so hard, but I interviewed the processing personnel and wrote everything down. My god that was perfect. I’m changing our procedures to makes sure all these agencies are ready to respond to something like this. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, Sergeant Howell, but neither your lawyer nor spiritual councilors are here yet. They’re on the clock.”

Sure enough, the calls had gone out and the commander of the legal squadron was in a tizzy trying to figure out how to get a military lawyer to the processing facility to handle the case of a conscientious objector in the deployment processing line. But that was nothing compared to the base chaplain’s office trying to get their on-call chaplain out onto the flightline when he had no credentials to be in a classified area.

The lawyer eventually arrived with aplomb and dignity and began an interview under the Colonel’s gaze. After five minutes, the Colonel ended the scenario and dismissed the lawyer. When that guy opened the door, the chaplain was opening it from the other side. His helmet was on sideways, his flak-jacket was only halfway over his shoulders, and he was immediately jumped by the Colonel.

“You just went through a contaminated zone without a chemical suit? You’re dead, you know that? Head on over to the infirmary. Chief! Get me another chaplain!” The chaplain looked like he was going to really keel over, he was so upset.

“Sergeant Howell, you’re released. Thank you for your assistance.”

“Any time sir.” And I saluted the Colonel, he returned it. I performed as nice a facing movement as possible, walked through the door, past the Chief, the lawyer, the dead chaplain, and into the hanger where we all sat for five hours waiting for the “plane” to land at Location X.

Ask me if I miss the military. I dare you.

/daniel-mode off