You want the link to our GM’s critkin blog? OK, don’t say we didn’t warn you, though.

The BoP FAQ:

Fiodrahal? Fiodraphal? Don’t bother; it’s just Fio, (Phi’-oh or Phee’-oh).

He has a propensity to discover alchemy recipes during raids.

Puns. Be innoculated and insulated or don’t visit.

Do not taunt the BoP. He controls the raiding schedule!

Do not let him feed his wife candy. A Squeekie Priestie on sugar… you should be afraid.

He cannot tank. He can Boomkin, he can heal. Tanking isn’t in his repotoire.

He is responsible for the lion.

He runs a mean guild-bank. Although most of the cloth-stamina gear we put in there has disappeared…

As always, not presented in any order. No satisfaction guaranteed. We may have accidentally linked to a gambling for p0rn site. Our grasp of your delicate and frail hold on sanity is skewed at best. Do not operate heavy machinery before, during, or immediately after reading. Side effects include nausea, headaches, jaundice, nail-biting, halitosis and wild hallucinations involving ducks, tomatoes, a Maytag appliance - probably a dishwasher but this varies depending upon altitude - and Dora the Explorer. You’re on your own, people.

Laser Chicken

Rebel Without a Clue

Highway Rants

BigRedCow

Nurturing Instinct

Of Teeth and Claws

An Eye for Annai

Go Stalk Go!

Tree of Life

Kruncs Blog Fury

Grumpy Old Dwarf

Fathgar the Nameless

Apathy Inc.

BRK loves druid tanks but that in no way is influencing our demand that you read Big Bear Butt Blogger today. What that post, he’s now on our sidebar.

And as for the Squeekie Priestie mind-vision thing, a quick recap of the whole rigamarole.

Karazhan, after Curator, after the big mechanicals and the mana sparklies that we all have to gang up on but not really but we do anyway, up the curved ramp, another mechanical, into the room with the elementals, and now we’re at the bottom of the ramp leading to Aran, Illhoof, et. all. OK? OK.

Squeekie Priestie casts Mind Vision to mark the mobs for Tank, Off-Tank, Shackle and Fear/Banish/Whatever. Tank pulls ‘em down the ramp and ZOMGTHEYCAUGHTME the tank gets made a mess and the priest has to immediately heal him instead of shackle and the whole thing is a disaster.

Hunter to the rescue.

Put a Frost Trap on the ramp at the feet of the tank, run back down the ramp, get ready for the pull. Tank pulls and runs down the stairs. The four mobs trip the Frost Trap and get sloooowwweeed.

Tank makes it safely to the bottom of the ramp, priest shackles, MT and OT do their thing, Fear/Banish/Whatever is cast. Good clean fight.

/cheer Hunter

“Dear BRK, thanks to your articles when I group with random people I get messages like, “You’re that guy my guildy told me about who can chain trap, how do you do it?” This just makes me feel happy and sad at the same time.

“I guess the whole point of my rant here is to say thank-you for your insight on chain trapping and advising on how not to be a huntard, but I guess my major question is: How do I inform the other less-fortunate hunters without hurting their all-so-delicate egos. They always seem so tender when you try to advise them on the basics like turn Growl off, take the pet off of Aggressive, or don’t multi-shot that sheep. Rosca & Karen.”

Thank you for the nice email, Rosca. /wave

Fictional Conversation Number One:

Druid says, “I like vanilla ice cream.”

Hunter says, “I’M OFFENDED!”

Raid says, “That hunter isn’t rational. What a loser. Get him out of the raid.”

Fictional Conversation Number Two:

Druid says, “Don’t Multi Shot and break a sheeped mob, please.”

Hunter says, “I’M OFFENDED!”

Raid says, “That hunter isn’t rational. What a loser. Get him out of the raid.”

Fictional Conversation Number Three:

Druid says, “MORON! Can’t you Chain Trap!? My little sister’s 34 hunter could trap better than you, and she plays WoW with a Dora the Explorer keyboard that only has two keys, and they’re shaped like Dora and Boots!”

Hunter says, “I’M OFFENDED!”

Raid says, “That Druid isn’t rational. What a loser. Get him out of our raid.”

Nobody should be upset for having basic fight strategies restated at the beginning of every major battle. It takes just a few seconds to remind people that there will be crowd-controlled mobs and to watch their Multi Shots, AoE attacks, etc. However, being polite, sincere and honest on your part is required.

If people want to get upset, that’s their business. But it is your business whether or not you want to raid with them.

Druid says, “Hunter, we need to talk about your performance in that instance. You need to learn to chain trap and not break crowd-controls so frequently. I can point you in the direction of some hunter-guides that will help you if you’d like.”

Hunter says, “I’M OFFENDED!”

Druid says, “OK, be offended. But be offended in another guild because you’re not raiding with us anymore.”

/gkick Huntard

Problem alleviated.

Beware, the Egotistical Priest is on the warpath, speaking her mind and taking no prisoners. Put on your Fire Resist gear, grab a snack and visit.

What did we say our new goal was? Get our guildies some phat purple loot. So BRK joins a pantheon of bloggers in a heroic Mechanar run: Doomilias, Cayleigh, Brigin, Tredezar (who has a blog but we haven’t asked him if we may link to it), and your humble host.

What do we want?

The Sun Eater for Brigin!

What do we get?That’s what we’re talking about! Calculator respected our authoritah and gave our tank the phattness he deserved.

Not a single wipe until we foolishly went back for Heroic Sepethrea. Her heroic fire elementals heroically burned us into heroic dust. We could’ve tried her again, but we were not gonna let her ruin our heroic night.

Four badges of justice, one super-tank sword, and a big Grats to Brigin, you threat-monster you.

Egotistical Priest - “An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the priest class in the World of Warcraft gaming universe. Updated Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

We like the blog and the scheduling. While describing a party makeup, we come across this gem:

4) DPS “I’m going to kill them all, Sir.” This person needs to top the damage meters without stealing aggro. BOOOOOOM. I love these guys, they tend to be batsh!t crazy, but I love ‘em. Heck, I married one.

So did Mrs BRK.

OMG WE HATE HEALERS. WE HATE EM. WE HATE THEIR SQUISHINESS AND THEIR MANA AND THEIR TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE SUPERIORITY COMPLEXES THAT MAKES US WANT TO SMACK THEM WITH THE BACK OF OUR HAND LIKE THE PIMPED OUT BABIES THEY REALLY ARE.

/PANT PANT PANT

Coffee. We need coffee, BRB.

/runs to Starbucks
/sees they’ve changed the raspberry
/gets an orange mocha, but it isn’t the same

So we take Doom out on a guild run for heroic Botanica and we have never, ever seen the DPS fly like we did last night. BRK and Hobbes had 35% and Doom had 34% and we destroyed and flayed and ripped cr@p to shreads. Ever been in a group where ya felt like Rambo? Everything just falls into place and the instance begs for mercy? D@mn if we didn’t bring heroic Botanica to it’s flippin’ flappin knees!

Until Tender.

That b@stard kept sacrificing the tank. We couldn’t get the healer in range of the tank when he was sacrificed and Tender would murderilize the mage. Four tries and, basically, we didn’t get Tender below 90%. Well, he doesn’t drop capploa anyway so we decided to skip him. Pfft, whatever.

Laj went down fine but then Warp Splinter…

Sigh. We could DPS him no problem, without even worrying about the sapplings. But the healer… the healer was getting destroyed because his aggro was so high. We watched him on the meter, going higher and higher, time after time. He’d get pummeled by the arcane missiles and the adds, then because his health was only 5000 or so, he’d have to stop healing the tank to heal himself.

What does BRK know about healing? Bubkis. We’re not positive what a Renew is, or whatever a priest’s HoT spell is, but the tank wasn’t getting anything like one. As soon as the priest stopped healing the tank to heal himself, WHAM. Dead tank.

Five times we tried it, and like the definition of insanity, we kept expecting something different to happen. It never did. BRK so wants heroic Botanica because Warpy drops epic boots that we crave.So after four hours and 57 gold of repair bills, we called it. Whole heroic instance, except for a boss we didn’t care about and Warp Splinter, cleared. We cried salty man-tears, we did. Do you know how hard it is to get a heroic Botanica run? For a hunter, it’s near to impossible.

And today we were told that we were standby for Kara. /sigh

We may just roll a Dranei shammy as we go sulk.

So we’re running around doing our BEM daily quests and this warrior bandages us.

Bandages us, we tells ya! /boggle

So we say thank you, give a little bow, act all gentlemanly. So she asks if we’d like to do our portal-quests together. Sure, why not; we love tanks. Thirty demon souls sent back to wherever - Jersey maybe - and we’re off to turn them in. She asks if we’d like to do the dailies in SMV. Hey, free money and someone nice to talk to while doing it, you bet we would. We hop the Ray Train from BEM to Skettis, fly to the Shelf and start beating the beejezus our of everything in the cave.

Then this conversation happens:You know you found a winner when she rescues hedgehogs and knits.

We’re gonna try to wheedle a pair of socks out of Battleblonde, but keep it quiet; we need the element of surprise on our side.

We all know that Amanna has a great grasp on all things druid, but Fiordhraoi - no, we can’t pronounce it either - is gonna start a Balance Druid Blog. Good for him! And since he’s the Loot Master for our Kara runs, we probably have to be nice and give him a shout-out.

No, we’re not “sucking up”… well, maybe just a little.