Be sure to check out Megan Harris’s Barrens Chat gallery here!

“This is your brain speaking. Are you awake?”

Hey brain! What’s up?

“Have you had your coffee?”

Yes! It was scrumptious.

“Good. Now if you have a moment, I have some concerns.”

Whatsamattah, brain? Talk to us.

“Your performance in Alterac Valley last night is giving me pause.”

We rocked AV!

“You did not.”

We went 8-1. That’s ‘rocked’ in anybody’s book.

“You were a train wreck of insanity and non-conformance to basic PvP rules. Frankly, you shut me out almost the entire time.”

We crushed ‘em! What you talkin’ bout, Willis?

“Question #1: Where did you get the mage bread?”

…

“Where. Did you get. The mage bread.”

No idea. We started the first AV and after taking IB Tower, it was in our bags. We never clicked on a table, nobody opened a trade with us, but there it was, a nice 20-stack.

“You have no idea how you got it.”

None.

“You obviously clicked on a table.”

We didn’t! We swear! Tell us when we clicked a table.

“I have no idea either, hence my confusion.”

Maybe we can make bread all by ourselves… we’ve morphed into… OMG, we’re a Mag-unter!

“Right. Question #2: Why did you charge that 5-man team defending IB Tower and how did you survive?”

We charged it because… we didn’t have Track Humanoids on.

“I told you to turn it on, didn’t I.”

Yes, you did.

“But you didn’t do it, did you?”

I hit the macro.

“You hit your Fel Mana potion, doofus.”

Oh, so that’s why we only had 14 of them left, not 15…

“Yup. You slammed a Fel Mana pot, charged into IB Tower with Track Elementals cooking, ran into a 5-man team guarding the tower… and lived.”

We did! /cheer!

“How?”

No idea.

“DO YOU REALIZE HOW MAD THAT MAKES ME!”

Totally understandable, but it was awesome! The mage went down so fast, then we put Hobbes on the priest and the warlock tried to Fear but Bestial Wrath FTW and the warlock ate hot arrows… and maybe the paladin fell off the tower…

“Yes, the paladin fell off the tower, that’s why you lived.”

We crushed that tower!

“You lucked out, you punk.”

Whatever. We got the tower.

“So why did you leave it?”

Um… because someone whispered us to go take SH Bunker.

“So you left your tower unguarded and tried to take the bunker.”

We TOOK the bunker!

“And they took it right back.”

Not for three more minutes. That helped us win that battleground!

“How did you know there was a rogue and priest going to SH Bunker with you? You forgot to whisper the people back and say you were going!”

We did?

“Yeah. You got a whisper saying, ‘Go take SH Bunker!’ and off you trotted. Did you ever think of communicating with them to find out who was going and who was going to guard your tower?”

No…

“Leaving a tower unguarded is pretty dumb.”

Horde never took it!

“Dumb.”

We won…

“D.U.M.B. Now, about that mage.”

Ooo! The frost mage we beat into a pulp! Yeah?

“You had no cooldowns.”

No, we didn’t. That was a mistake. We were going to make him eat Bestial Wrath, but it wasn’t ready. Neither was our PvP trinket. But we killed him!

“How did you manage it?”

Not a clue. He was Blinking and freezing and cone of cold or something and we just jump shot in-place and sent Hobbes with Mend Pet and the mage died before we did.

“You had 118 health when he died.”

Yup.

“He just had to call your mother a bad name and you would’ve been killed.”

Yup.

“You were fighting inside the base of the west Frostwolf tower without any cooldowns, against a full-ready frost mage, and you won.”

Yes!

“And you don’t have any strategy you made up or wisdom you can impart as a result of your victory?”

Not a sausage, no. Don’t be stupid and go against a frost mage when you have no cooldowns, that would be a good lesson.

“I hate you sometimes.”

It was a beautiful thing!

“How did you end up pulling the entire Horde pack of vendors into Drak’s room?”

OK, now that was pretty cool.

“Can’t wait to hear this one.”

We were taking the east Frostwolf Tower, and we got blown off and landed right next to the Shaman cave…

“Blown off the tower? You didn’t fall?”

No! We flew and flew waaay down the hill into a huge pack of horde vendors by the cave where the Shaman hang out. We might have been hit by a snowball, remember those?

“Of course; remembering stuff is my job.”

So all these vendors attack us, we send Hobbes after them, we Feign Death, and then we ran all the way up the hill, back into Frostwolf camp, and attacked Drek. But Hobbes was following us, we had a Mend Pet on him, and the vendors just beat on him all the way with us and into Drek’s room.

“You pulled the vendors into Drek’s room. Why didn’t you just put Hobbes on Stay, let the vendors smack him around, and when you got far enough away, Hobbes would’ve despawned. Then you could’ve Called him and he would’ve appeared right beside you, the vendors nicely resetting?

Hey, that’s a good idea…

“IF YOU WOULD LISTEN TO ME, YOU COULD’VE DONE THAT!”

We were busy trying to get tower and contemplating that bizarre flight into the vendors to really pay any attention to you at the time.

“You’re a colossal goober and the fact that some people listen to you at all is frightening.”

Did you see us ninja that graveyard?

“See you? I was screaming at you to watch out! You thought you were going on Defense and were going to ‘help’ at that graveyard, but you arrived and it was already captured by the Horde, and they forgot to defend it.”

Yeah! Then we captured it again, which totally stalled their offensive, and we won!

“You never looked to see if there were any Alliance attacking it or defending it, you just showed up and there was nobody there to stop you from taking it back. That’s not being a ninja, that’s being stupid and having dumb luck.”

We are a ninja; don’t take that away.

“You’re not a ninja; you’re a moron.”**

We took out their leader, a paladin who kept trying to take our graveyards, several times. We defended a lot.

“That paladin was a typical cockroach who you put Scorpid Sting on instead of Viper Sting.”

Really?

“YES! You didn’t even have Viper Sting on your action bar the entire night!”

Scorpid is pretty useless against a paladin…

“OH!? You don’t SAY?!”

No wonder he had so much mana…

“I’m ashamed to be related to you. You should sell your blog and give the proceeds to the Noob Society of America.”

Well, tonight we buy our Merciless Gladiator’s Helm thanks to all the honor we made yesterday!

“Fine. Just don’t screw up and buy the Shaman helm, OK?”

Honestly, we promise nothing.

** TJ approves this sentence.

We’re getting tons of screenshots of devilsaur pets, and while we like them all, we’re not going to publish the “just tamed and in un’goro” shots anymore. Send us something more unique and you’ll have a much better chance of seeing your picture posted here.

Devilsaur in Alterac Valley or in Karazhan? Now that’d be news-worthy.

But a big BRK /whoop of thanks to Intimidation for this loading-screen pic! That pet just doesn’t look like he’s… well, a “pet”, does he?

Many /bows of respect to conOsinSemilia.com for the video.

Question #1: Hmmm. We sacrifice the bonus to crit-damage from the old Slaying talents in exchange for a pure bonus-damage to everything we are tracking.

/hmm

This talent is a no-brainer for people deep into SV, as well as MM with a desire for super-traps. But for those of us planning on staying BM, will sacrificing Efficiency and Aimed Shot be worthwhile for this? Will the 51/20/0 BM spec be modified to 51/15/5?

Efficiency vs. Improved Tracking, we just don’t know the answer yet.

Question #2: Is anybody at all paying attention to this oft-forgotten talent? Look at what has been added to it: 60% spell resistance for 10 seconds.

{demonic wailing in the distance…}

What you just heard was your battlegroup’s entire population of warlocks and mages screaming in indignation, yes you did. Will this be throttled down? Perhaps, but can you imagine a hunter with Bestial Wrath, Deterrence, and Pain Suppression running amok in an arena, or running the flag in EotS or WSG?

Not to mention, this should give us Holy Resistance as well…

The 51/8/12 BM PvP-spec is born.

Question #3: The old talent said, “chance movement imparing effects will be resisted increased by 15%”. Well this has been changed to just a flat reduction in time, and this needs to be investigated.

A warrior’s Hamstring lasts 15 seconds. 3/3 in Surefooted will reduce this by 30%, or 4.5 seconds, meaning the Hamstring will last 10.5 seconds.

What would you rather have: a 15% chance to avoid the Hamstring all together, or always reduce the Hamstring to 10.5 seconds? You know, we think we’ll have to go with the latter and call this talent modification an upgrade, but we would entertain your dissenting opinion.

Question #4: Well now, isn’t this purty. Stand at range and you’ll kill stuff faster, we like that a lot. But it feels like it’s praising us for just doing what we should do naturally.

“Yay! You got up in the morning! Here’s $10,000 for doing the right thing!”

Makes you suspicious, doesn’t it?

Question #5: So how did this thing make it into the group of awesome talents that make up the revised SV tree? It doesn’t belong, you know what we mean?

Imagine Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts throwing perfect strike after perfect strike down the field at his receivers. He looks awesome, in control, and dominant.

Then he walks to the line, puts his thumbs under his armpits, squawks like a duck, takes the handoff, turns around, and walks into the line of scrimage, gaining a yard by pure luck.

That’s how we reacted when we read about Potent Venom. It’s not bad, just terribly, terribly out of place.

Question #6: This is a pinata of awesome-sauce, isn’t it. The talent that’s going to shake the foundations of raiding-hunter spec-diversity like nothing since Serpent’s Swiftness. Is this the talent that’s going to make you consider SV?

We love the BM tree, we think you all know that. But this talent, as awesome as it is, is going to shift the balance of hunters-specs tremendously, and we’re going to be hard-pressed to argue against it.

But… but we’re hunters, not mana-batteries! WE kill stuff, not help rogues and furylols and death kniggets* kill stuff!

Why do we see this talent and feel sad?

Question 7: First off, can’t we just simply the equation, please, it looks stupid. Just average it, huh?

[RAP * 0.2 + 380]

Next, you poor Marksman are gonna whine and b!tch and moan and complain, but aside from the impressive videos that we’ve seen, notice that the durations is only two seconds. Our RAP is around 1900, so if we had this, we’d be doing:

[1900 * 0.2 + 380] = 380 + 380 = 760DPS for two seconds to every mob within 5 yards of the target, or 1520 total damage a piece. What’s that gonna kill at level 61 or higher? Not much. It will be great fun against Mount Hyjal trash, but it’s not so OP that it’s going to rewrite the arena record books. It’s a long distance and nitro’d Explosive Trap, that’s all, and uber-traps belong in the SV tree, not MM.

This talent is icing on the SV-cake, not the penultimate second-best* talent of the tree, which is Hunting Party.

* “Death Kniggets” is copywritten and protected by the vast armada of trial attorneys and blackjack-wielding “associates” at BRKWWA legal headquarters, in beautiful Brooklyn, NY. Bogarting “foshizzle” is one thing, trying to steal our “Death Kniggets” is gonna get you hurt. You’ve been warned.

** All these years, we’ve been incorrect in our definition of penultimate. That explains why we didn’t get 800 on our verbal SATs, finally. Unfortunately, we cannot find a better synonym for “second-best”. Your recommendation is encouraged.

As Mania has reported already, Devilsaurs are tamable in the latest beta patch. Our hunter-buddy Eko sent us this lovely screenie of his new pet. Kinda blows Raptors out of the water, doesn’t it? It’s not officially an “exotic” pet, as any hunter-class can tame one, but this would be a good idea of what “exotic” means, we think. Notice that his Devilsaur is level 65? The auto-leveling feature seems to work nicely.

Hey squishies, do you want to see one of these charging at you in WSG? Think it’ll bring back bad memories? /buwahaha!

We may name ours “Cuddles”.

Nightdrifter sent us this fine screenshot of a “pet” clefthoof he chain-trapped from Nagrand, through Zangermarsh, and into Shatt. Where the residents promptly killed it.

/boo residents!

/cheer chain-trapping!

Looks like a broken-down bus, doesn’t it?

WORAR!!

Roar? Nah, that’s not Big enough.

WORAR!!

This total epeen moment was brought to you by the fine folks of In and Out Burger.

In and Out Burger! The official burger-joint of BigRedKitty Worldwide Amalgamated.

Ask for the BRK Double-Double with a wink and a nod.

Just what kind of trouble do you think we could get into with this? The BRK Forums are doing wonderfully, so perhaps we can do something in this area.

Honestly, we’re just impressed we got it all working.

This thing would be just another “nuke-it” project if it becomes a vast wasteland of filth and crud.