Not BRK - BRK is at work and can’t take care of this right now.
With regards to the post below - I didn’t post it, so I don’t have access to edit the comments - if I could, I would. The vast majority of the comments are completely and totally appreciated by BRK and AC as a whole, I am sure.
For the very few of the rest of you - show some d@mn respect, if not for a lovely woman you didn’t know, then at least for the guy who writes this blog for you every d@mn day.
THANKS.
-TJ
Our family has suffered a great tragedy. One of the sweetest and kindest people we know, Sharvan, passed away.
Sharvan was a founding member of Aetherial Circle, she’s been with Cay and Fio for much longer that we have been. Aside from the fact that she was smart and funny, anybody who knew her knew her great love… was cows. Especially “moo”.
Shar would greet us with an exhuberant MOO!! every time we’d log in. A “Moo back atchyou!” was our typical reply. She had moo-toys. She had moo-clothing.
We named our wind serpent DrMooPhD just for her and she loved it.
Sharvan passed today. Aetherical Circle is reeling from the shock and loss of one of the best people in our guild. If the good die young, He got the Best.
Aetherial Circle and the entire BigRedKitty family extend our most heartfelt condolences to Sharvan’s parents and family. God Bless you all, and may you find comfort and peace in the days ahead.
Sharvan had already created her character for the Running of Da Bulls. And while she will not be able to run with us, we shall run for her, and carry her memory with us:
The Running of Da Bulls for Sharvan
It shall be neither canceled nor delayed. There will be a voluntary 500 Moo Salute before the start of the race, for she would’ve loved that. You honestly have no idea how much she would’ve laughed at the idea, and we cannot help but hope she’ll get to see it somehow.
Goodbye Sharvan. We’re going to miss you.
Gettin’ ready in Mount Hyjal, all warm and happy,
Our latte is gone, our feet are all tappy,
We dream of Vashj taking a long, wet, dirty nappy,
Huzzah! We really can’t wait to raid!
To say we’re hooked is a little absurd.
We could’ve easily quit if we’d only heard,
That Mrs BRK was loudly flipping us the bird,
As from our approved WoW-schedule, we’d strayed.
“They need us!” we cried loudly into the dark,
“Rage Winterchill awaits, this isn’t a lark!”
But we saw at the end of a match a small spark.
Our Mac was to meet a fiery end.
“Zoinks and geepers, you’re batty!” we threw in her face.
As her footpads grew heavy, her hand like a mace,
She approached our computer with malice and hate.
And the mouse from our grasp she did rend.
“You dumb b@stard, you moron, you’re simply a ‘tard!”
She pummeled us loudly, without care or regard.
“You think a woman like me just grows in the yard!?”
She challenged our manhood, yes she did.
“I put up with WoW, I put up with your blog,
I deal with men and women agog!
Right now I think you care much more for the dog!!”
Holy jeez, the woman was livid.
“Sweetie, you’re not Number Two on our list, don’t be silly,
But this boss drops some bracers that we covet tremendously.
Could you give us an hour to finish this quickly?”
The room grew still, then she spoke:
“I’m gracious and kind, not to mention a lady.
You may not have one hour, but two for your raid-y.
Then you’re all mine, or a replacement agency
Is where you will find me, no joke.”
She huffed away satisfied, content with her display.
Although this hunter was sadly ignorant of her sway.
But Rage did go down in a magnificent display,
Of ranged DPS and big heals.
So logging off quickly, we jumped in the shower,
To smartly avoid more wifely shouts and glowers.
But by the time we returned, asleep hard was our flower.
This sucked; tonight neither loot nor fun squeals.
A lesson for everybody can be found in these words:
Don’t allow WoW to interfere with your herd.
Give more to your family than the flight-point birds!
Turn the dumb game off tonight.
So that’s where we’ll be, abed with our mate.
Watching bad movies and devouring cake,
Praying to Elune not to watch, “The Wedding Date”.
While dreaming of Vashj on Sunday, right?
Al’ar smacked us around, we forgot to put on our Ashtongue disguise one time, and of course that’s the time Al’ar died. No hunter loot, nothing amazing, more frustrating than anything else. The delay made us have to choose between Solarian and Mount Hyjal.
Well of course we went to see Rage Winterchill.
One shotted him. From what we understand, and experienced, this is no big deal. Again, no hunter-loot, and our DPS was crappy.
We were asked to kite some of the mobs into the NPCs behind us. Otay, we did that. Didn’t seem to help much as our warlocks and mage made mincemeat out of the trash. We got to Volley and use Explosive Trap a few times, but otherwise we just single-targeted the main-tank’s target and burned it down.
Aetherial Circle is a Mount Hyjal raiding guild. Hooray. We knew it was going to be anti-climactic, but not this much.
Can’t wait until Wednesday and more SSC!
Mulgore
Go east and get the heck out, head into…
The Barrens
Hang a left, go north, take the 2nd right to…
Durotar
Find the capital city of Orgrimmar and get on a zeppelin for…
Undercity, Tirisfal Glade
Yes, the flight point is north of the city, not in it, but whatever. Go southwest toward…
Silverpine Forest
Don’t leave the road, go south until you reach…
Hillsbrad Foothills
If you want to flag PvP and try to wipe out Southshore, we can’t stop you.
Otherwise, keep heading east toward…
Arathi Highlands
You’re almost there, but watch out for the roving kniggets! Get your happy, furry tuckus to Hammerfall, find Ratshag’s friend, open a trade with him/her, and you’ve totally won!
That there’s just too much badge-loot in the game now. Clearing Kara seven times, or one heroic daily a day for a month, now has the same loot-cache as clearing SSC and TK. Isn’t there something wrong with that?
That the skinning daily is our favorite. We love farming those Clefthoofs.
That we made a Buttload o-Gold off of selling Clefthoof leather once the badge-vendor appeared. Stacks that normally sold for 40 gold were being snapped up for 70 gold.
That the Russians almost chunked another Soyuz, and in our line of work, that’s a Bad Day.
That there is no better two-piece set bonus than hunter Tier 5 for any class, period.
That our new work computer has Office 2007 and the new Outlook interface both frightens and angers us. We just want to print!
That when FreeRefills updated and broke, we were furious that we had to manually buy our ammo.
That we just discovered the goggles-daily this weekend. /bashful
That thunderstorms do not cause oil changes. (This is from a TJ-conversation, if you didn’t guess it.)
That our wind serpent, DrMooPhD, and our unnamed ravager, have been stuck in the stables and probably always will be.
That the Hellfire Peninsula dailies are the worst in terms of being so far out of the way, and are always the last ones we do.
That we updated Omen before entering a 5/6 cleared SSC, and by the time we finished assembling for Vashj, it had updated again.
That we got a new C++ development platform and it took us an entire day to figure out how to make a HelloWorld console app.
That the N52te review is basically done, but we need moar time!
That BRK/Team Ratshag has developed a new race course for the Running of Da Bulls. It involves Ogrimar and Undercity, but not Stormwind.
That we rocked our elemental-add and core-chucking duties against Vashj.
That we don’t care what Cheeky says, we want the gun from Al’ar tonight.
That it’s about time we took Ratshag the Spriest through an instance, yes?
That someone sent us a picture of a gaggle of Blood Elf cheerleaders, and though we don’t know what our BRK Misogynist rating would be if we posted it, we’re pretty sure it wouldn’t be good. But it is a good picture.
That Mrs BRK has started fleecing the hairy… um, started working at her new job and is doing great.
That we’ll be more excited to kill Vashj next week than get the first boss in Mount Hyjal.
That we ran our last raid with six druids, four shaman, three hunters, healers, tanks, paladins, and no rogues. What are we now, mini-Nihilum?
That our kiting-shammy has a “ZOMG HEAL ME!” macro because he doesn’t have a microphone. The raid leader put a blue square over his toon. From our elemental-squishing perch, we see him kiting his strider past us while screaming “ZOMG HEAL ME!” A hunter would never, ever scream for heals while kiting, that’s all we’re saying.
BEWARE, PC-13 VIOLATION IMMENENT!!
That when one of our guild’s mages, Kneigrodamus, got his name reported and banned, he changed it to… Tossmysalad.
Did everybody survive that? OK, moving on.
That we need to do three things:
That our BRK Hunter Guide Movie of Hydross is done. And we hate it. We’re gonna redo it.
That if you want really good franchise Italian grub, Romano’s Macaroni Grill > Olive Garden, and RMG > Carrabba’s, but Buca di Beppo is still the best.
That sometimes well get a buff or a mana-regen and we have no clue how or why we’re getting it. We don’t know what it is, who’s providing it to us, but we squeal like a little girl when we see it in our scrolling combat text.
That we have seriously considered doing away with our 2/2 in Improved Mend Pet since we got 2x Tier 5 gear, but the cleansing effect of the IMP is so awesome that we’re not gonna do it.
That we miss TJ raiding.
We are through Phase 2; Aetherial Circle can get all four generators down. Now we just need to not die, kill the adds a little faster, and clean up phase 3.
We’re almost there!
We are using an elemental Shaman as the kiter, and we personally are doing dual-zone duty, keeping the population of the elemental-adds at zero and tossing cores when needed.
Tomorrow is Al’ar and Solarian, and then our first look at Mount Hyjal.
We remember when Burning Crusade was coming out and the attunement chart was… daunting. Well, heck, here it is:
BC came out January 16th, 2007. Tomorrow is April 21, 2008. That’s how long it’s taken us to get here. No we haven’t completed the original final-attunement requirements, but still, tomorrow is a Big Day.
And a final note.
For The Horde (Because It Sounds So D@mn Sexy) had a great bit about what it’s like to be a BM hunter who understands shot-rotations and aggro and mana-management:
“My DPS goes through the roof and even though I keep up the same shot rotation, the difference is totally noticeable. I’ve been soloing group quests, killing elites and just pretty much running amok on anything that crosses my path.”
Yeah, baby, that is sexy. /applaud
“Good lord, BRK, this is terrible advice. First, Fel Mana potions give the same regen regardless of whether or not you’re in or out of the five second rule. It’s silly to use them like that.”
We would prefer a less confrontational introduction, but we’re putting our Big Boy Void Reaver Greaves on and not retaliating with similar style. We can accept that someone may not agree that our methods are The Best, but terrible? We think our weekly raid statistics are pretty solid proof that our techniques work.
Now nobody said Fel Mana potions had anything to do with MP5, but we do want to regen as much mana as we can, in as little time as possible. That’s why we do everything possible - Fel Mana, AotV, and non-casting MP5 - at the same time, to maximize our mana-regeneration phase’s efficiency.
“Also, your OO5SR regen is so pitifully low as a hunter, the regen is pretty small. On my T6 hunter, for instance, I have 92/32 MP5. So you’re gaining 60MP5 while cutting your DPS in half. That’s silly, BRK. Not using Kill Command, which costs around 75MP5, gives more gain at a much smaller dps loss. Moreover, Rapid Fire reduces the cast time of steady shot! You’re utterly wasting Rapid Fire like that.”
We certainly aren’t cutting our DPS in half, that’s an overstatement. With the combination of Rapid Fire and our RAP-trinket, we are able to maintain a very high DPS rate during our non-casting phase, although we readily admit that our DPS is diminished. But it’s only for 10 seconds, during which period we regenerate ~60% of our mana. That’s the tradeoff we want you to recognize as a Win.
Max mana regeneration, minimum time, that’s what we want to achieve.
“Here’s a better strategy. Always use AotH (it’s well over 100dps) unless you are less than 10% mana, then switch to AotV.”
AotH grants 155 RAP, not 100 DPS. An additional 155 RAP will not achieve an additional 100DPS in any way, shape, or form. It’s statements like that that make an otherwise reasonable argument suspicious.
If one has Improved Aspect of the Hawk, AotH will proc it and that will jack your DPS considerably. However, a level 14 hunter can have 5/5 in IAotH and there’s no way he’ll do an additional 100DPS with it. AotH’s DPS modification is unique to each hunter; do not try to correlating the additional RAP to anything without knowing the specific hunter you’re talking about.
We advocate never even getting to 10% mana. With your double 1h weapons and +30 Intel enchants and shadow priests and mana totems and Fel Mana potions, how the heck are you letting it get that bad? Oh that’s right, you never stop Steady Shooting.
If you stopped Steady for just ten seconds and followed our movie-example, you’d regenerate so much mana you’d never have to worry about going OOM and the implications thereof.
“Use Fel Mana potions as soon as you are 2500 mana under your cap (why 2500? because you’ll use 700 more in the time it takes for all its ticks to go by).”
That’s a sh!t-load of Fel Mana potions, holy cr@p.
But Fel Mana potions have a two minute cooldown. You mean to say that with non-stop Auto/Steady, you won’t burn 2500 mana in two minutes? That doesn’t sound right…
“The good (and bad) side of AotV is you get more regen the less mana you have, but generally you get enough to maintain a steady shot rotation without running out of mana, so if you get THAT low, just go AotV and stay there using only steady shot.”
And if you’re running with nothing but AotV, you’ve just wasted those 5/5 points in IAotH. We would rather spend 10 seconds in Mana Regen Mode than half a boss fight with zero mana and perpetual AotV.
If you’ve run out of mana and the boss is still alive, you Failed. The simple solution is to get around 25-35% mana, chug a Fel Mana, switch to AotV, keep your DPS high with Rapid Fire and a trinket, and regen almost all your mana in 10 seconds. Switch back to AotH, let the IAotH procs fly, keep your DPS massive and your mana reserves high.
Do you all not see the benefit of taking a small DPS hit to regen all that mana? And when you have the mana oil and totems etc., you’ll only be getting to 35% mana once or twice every boss fight, anyway. The most we ever chug in one fight is three, and that’s against Lurker Below where we’re never in range of any mana-regen constructions. Look at our DPS and total damage reports; does it look like we’re suffering?
AotV does do more regen at lower mana-levels than higher, which is why we recommend not slamming a Fel Mana as soon as you can consume one. We want to combine our Fel Mana potions with AotV. As you saw in our demonstration, we went from ~30% mana to 87% mana in 10 seconds. Any remark that stopping Steady Shots for 10 seconds, while we regain 60% of our mana pool, is bad because its hurting our DPS, is something with which we will not agree.
“If necessary, get two one-hand weapons and put +30int on each. Make a macro to switch to them. When you need mana, switch over, hit AotV. Keep steady shotting. This will give you around 30mp5. Plus, put Superior Mana Oil on both, giving you 28 more mp5 (and 14 more mp5 than a single weapon with the oil on it gives).”
We specifically did not cover Raid Buffs and How They Help. But we find it very interesting that some people are willing to sacrifice their 95 non-casting MP5, yet get special mana-regen 1h weapons with Intel enchants and mana oil, and develop a melee-weapon swapping macro, to gain 28 MP5.
“Use Elixirs of Major Mageblood.”
We use Elixir of Draenic Wisdom. EoMM is 16MP5 for one hour, EoDW increases Intel and Spirit by 30 for one hour. We don’t have the math in front of us, but we recall reading that, for hunters, EoDW provides more mana, (could be wrong here; we didn’t do the math ourselves.)
“Try to get in a group with a Shaman or Shadow Priest. Get a paladin to use Judgment of Wisdom. Get a Mark of Conquest.”
No no no. Of course you want to be in a group with a shadow priest, but they belong to the healers. You are there to assist the raid, not the other way around. Always assume you’re getting zero mana-regeneration help from the raid and prepare accordingly.
Wisdom is 2nd on the list of pally buffs, but not before Kings. And if you can get your raid to stop putting Salvation on you and give you Wisdom instead, you’re golden.
“There are tons of strategies, but for the love of god, don’t stop steady shotting! Never, ever stop steady shotting. Ever. You aren’t a priest, don’t try to play games with the five second rule.”
You’re really gonna get upset when we tell you our rules for going Auto/Arcane/Multi instead of Auto/Steady. Ha!
When you’re about to pass the main tank on the aggro list and your Feign Death is resisted, you’re going to stop Auto/Steady then, we hope.
You’ve got 5% of your mana left. You could switch to AotV, slam a Fel Mana potion, stop Steadys and in 10 seconds get your mana back to 50%, or you can swith to AotV and keep slamming Auto/Steady - except when your mana goes to 0% - never getting your mana back, and never seeing another IAotH proc. You’re recommending chooseing the latter?
Our non-raid-buffed, casting MP5 is zero. Our non-raid-buffed, non-casting MP5 is 67. Raid-buffed with Arcane Intellect and potions and everything else, we want to say we’ve seen our non-casting MP5 in the 150s and higher. Play games with it, indeed we can, and we do.
Are we trying to say our method of 1:1 Auto/Steady is the One and Only Way To Do It? Nope. Does it work? Sure does, our little movie shows you just how nicely we can regenerate our mana in a small amount of time.
“PS: Bonus tip, use BW and RF at the same time at first, then each when they’re up on their next cooldown; at the 6 minute mark, both will be up again. If you expect herois[m], save BW for the Heroism and use RF separately since using both together will cause clipping and GCD issues.”
Exactly. Since you cannot be positive what the rest of the raid is going to do, either coordinate explicitly on what spells will be cast when, or use your BW when appropriate; at the beginning of fights, not randomly when the cooldown is up. Bestial Wrath is more than a damage-multiplier, it’s also a mana-reducer. Use it wisely, not hidden in a shot-rotation macro.
For the record, the comment we dissected was passionate and heartfelt. He disagrees with us, and that’s totally cool. We like debate, we like presenting as much information to the hunter-reading public as we can.
We kinda do request that you resist calling our advise “terrible” until we start telling y’all to put Strength or Block enchants on your gear, though.
The purpose of this movie is not to epeen and show you how much DPS we can do. Frankly, our DPS in this movie is low. We’re not raid-buffed, we have no pet-damage, we don’t have party-buffs or elixirs or agility food or anything. The purpose is to show you why we have many more Auto Shots than Steady Shots in our WoWWebStats reports and the reasoning behind our madness.
Our 1:1 Auto/Steady rotation is based upon two phases: DPS and Mana Regen.
During the DPS Phase, we running with Aspect of the Hawk, go Bestial Wrath when it’s available, and use the 1:1 Auto/Steady rotation.
During the Mana Regen Phase, we switch to Aspect of the Viper, slam a Fel Mana potion, pop Rapid Fire and our RAP-trinket, and do only Auto Shot damage. This allows us to go into non-casting MP5 regeneration while our Fel Mana potion does its thing and keeping our DPS as high as possible.
Once the Fel Mana potion has run its course, we go back to Aspect of Hawk and the regular Auto/Steady rotation.
We’re sure you’ll have questions and we’ll do our best to answer them.
The 10.8 MB movie can be downloaded here.
Email icon provided by Nexodyne.
