Go read MMO-Champion for all the official 2.4 Test Realm Patch Notes goodness. We’ll be along in a bit; got some drool to clean off the desk first.

Doesn’t use a quiver or arrows, it makes it’s own… /faint

Trading card game Rocket Mount… /passout

Now wait a d@mn minute. This isn’t fair. “Phoenix Pet”? Non-combat thing or Hunter-pet? We think Mania will start raiding 24/7 if this thing can be tamed.

By now you’ve probably read about the disclosed modifications for Alterac Valley in Patch 2.4. But as usual, Blizz keeps a large number of these thing secret until a patch is deployed.

Never fear! The BRK Drywall and WoW Patch-Crackin’ Team has absconded with the patch beta by dumping large piles of Hostess Ho-Hos in the Blizz cafeteria after having injecting them with a combination of Red Bull and prune juice.

What can we report?

The BRK Top Ten Secret Changes to AV in Patch 2.4

10. Gnomish engineers can make a [Babblefish Trinket]. This puppy allows the user to read, comprehend, and speak into the other faction’s battleground-chat.

“Alliance turtling! Send everybody to Stonehearth and grab the rams!”

“Dude, WTF?”

“NO! STOP! Fishing! There’s explosive fish we can chuck at Belinda! Everybody fish now!”

“FISH!?! Who the F**K are you!”

/snigger

9. Summoning Ivus the Forest Lord gives 1000 bonus honor and an Ivus Buff that increases all damage delivered by 20% and reduces all damage received by 20%. If Ivus is alive at the end of an AV, all Alliance toons get an, “I <3 ItFL” tabbard; the coolest tabbard in the game, (which, unfortunately, isn’t saying much.)

8. The harpies become their own faction. All female players can chose to fight for them instead of the dwarfs or orcs, but guys can only dream what really goes on in that cave now.

7. Flying-Mount Combat! /squee! (No, not really. But see how much you want it?)

6. A neutral inn has been placed at the top of Snowfall. If you’re gonna go AFK, at least you can have a good time doing it.

5. But beware, the AFK-Debuff is now a Hack My Account flag that alerts account-hackers as to who really needs their special attention.

4. General Stormpike goes full Ret Pally! The Alliance is still not sure if this is good or not, and kinda looks at the guy funny now.

3. The secret Toboggan Run from Snowfall to Frostwolf is finally revealed. It’s like Magic Mountain, but with drunk dwarfs manning the controls.

2. Blood Elf females are hereby banned from AV as they don’t have enough meat on their bones to deal with the cold. Someone get those chicks a sandwich, would you please?

1. Turn-ins, rams, and wolves have been eliminated ’cause nobody does AV right anymore. When was the last time you saw an aerial bombardment, anyway. /sulk

Arcane Shot, properly employed, is OP. Problem is that not enough hunters have a dang clue how to use it. Thus the complaints remain minimal. 

If one right-clicks on a soul well but misses and hits a Magtheridon captor, the event begins. That’s just the way love goes, sarsaparilla. The sight of 25 unbuffed, unready raiders begging to get through the gates won’t do anything but look pathetic. Die with some dignity.

Before you whisper anybody in game, do a “/who Theirname” first. Maybe they’re trying Magtheridon and really shouldn’t be disturbed. But if you do send a Hello at the wrong time and you get a “WTF! PLEASE JUST SHUT THE F-UP AND TAKE YOUR BUFFS, YOU OBNOXIOUS PITA!” response, don’t blame us or think we don’t care about you. Mistells happen.

When in doubt, listen to the healer.

Hunters have Freezing Traps. By habit, we’ve almost always got one at our feet. If you get something chewing your squishy butt, run to a hunter and avail yourself of our trap. It’s totally cool.

Why is it that federal employees can view 190,000,000 pr0n sites in 2007, yet we can’t play WoW from the NASA supercomputers? Got 52″ plasma monitors everywhere and fiberoptic networks underfoot and no WoW at all here. It’s a d@mn travesty, it is.

The news women on CNN have said “panties” and “pr0n” about 100 times. That’s pure win.

The chick on the cell phone who ran the stop sign at the 4-way stop on our way to work didn’t even blink at the pileup she almost caused. We really need a hood-mounted crossbow with “I’m A Total Noob!” arrows installed.

You want to know when your country’s economy is in the toilet? Look at the quality of the work performed by your favorite drive-through restaurant. If you get everything you ask for, the person at the window speaks your language, provides the correct number of straws, a spoon for your frozen chocolate sundae, extra napkins and ketchup without prompting, and looks as if they actually know one end of hand wash station from the other, you know the available job applicant list is huge. In other words, the economy sucks.

If you get someone else’s order, get the wrong drinks in the wrong sizes, no napkins, pre-wetted straws, they hand you a torn and soiled bag, and then slam their Window of Absolute Power when you raise a hand to ask a question, you know the job-pool is shallower than an oasis in the Gobi. In other words, the economy is going gangbusters. One could base one’s investment strategy based upon fast-food service. We should write a paper.

The Devil got to do The Aristocrats Joke - which you’ll have to search for yourself, we ain’t linking it - on Sirius’ Raw Dog comedy channel this morning. He totally rocked; we got a little nauseous.

Speaking of Sirius, the Playboy channel would be 100x better if they stopped taking calls, period.

Speaking of Sirius again, if you don’t have it and you drive a car, get Sirius now. Tell ‘em BRK sent ya.

We are so torn between getting a MacPro with the 8800GT card and building our own PC specifically to play WoW, we’re frozen and can’t make a move.

May we raid our 401k and buy a Porsche Boxter for our birthday? Hello, IRS?

We want the Gnaked Gnome race to be fun for boys and girls, adults and kids alike. When we really feel like shoving a Pike of Pestilence up our reader’s rears, we’ll hire every warlock on Drenden to help us do a Gnaked Gnome Race from Shat to the Dark Portal, foshizzle. Don’t think we don’t know how to Bring It.

Mrs BRK wants traffic on her blog. It’s become a nightly plea. OK, we surrender. You, gentle reader, are under no obligation to visit or comment whatsoever. There are no Gnaked Mrs BRK pics, or anything else you’re probably interested in over there.

We’re sorry, but Jimmy Buffet FTL. C’mon, can’t we agree on this by now? Every time we go to our new-on-the-rotation lunch place, it’s all they play on their PA system. Enough!

Winner of the award for best performer and musical artist who should get the kind of street cred that JB gets? No contest: Neil Diamond.

Lake Effect Snow. You poor, sodden b@stards. /opens door to lanai

All sympathies to the Heath Ledger family, of course, but supplanting Jack Nicholson as the Joker just seems wrong. We’re not mad or sullen, just a little confused.

In more movie news, Daniel Craig is making the next 007 movie, Quantum of Solace. Mrs BRK’s pheromones are accumulating at this news, we may have to get some big Tupperware containers to hold to overflow.

Mortal Strike is gonna get the biggest, baddest, meanest Blizz Nerf Hammer we’ve ever seen. We’re not the first to predict that, but we are the first to predict The Great Tank-Strike of 2008!

When we were a young lad, middle school-age, the BRK Mom posed in her homemade, pink bikini on her 1969 VW Beetle for a contest by a local radio station to win a car makeover. She won. Her bug was completely repaired, painted black, and had the radio station’s call sign painted in blazing orange on the sides. She drove that car for twenty years.

You think we’re nuts? Blame our genetics.

Patch 2.3.2 has come, sat on the sofa, drank your Mr. Pipp, ate that last bag of Funyons, cast shadow-damage on your bathroom and made it unholy, and generally made itself at home and comfy. Who’s the next party guest?

Patch 2.4 is neigh! What’s this puppy gonna unleash on us? The Sunwell, baby, the first new 5-man, patch-introduced instance in two years. But actually, this place will house two instances: Magister’s Terrace and Sunwell Plateau.

Magister’s Terrace will be a 5-man instance with both normal and heroic modes. That rocks, totally. We’ll be there with bells on.

Sunwell Plateau will be a new 25-man raid for all you Black Temple-geared pimps and pimpettes who have your Tier 6 loot already. And this is where, if our spies are to be believed, that a new Hunter’s Legendary Bow shall drop.

Just so you know, we call Loot Shotgun. If it drops, it’s ours.

It’s all very exciting, yes indeedie-do. But something has already creeped into our brains and we’re not quite sure what to make of it.

You know as well as we do that 27 seconds after that patch comes out, Nihilum, Death and Taxes, and the rest of the, “We do nothing but WoW for world-firsts” guilds are going to clear Sunwell Plateau a couple of hundred times. We have nothing against the uber-raiders, honestly we don’t. At least we don’t think we do. Maybe we really do, though. Perhaps we are a little jealous.

Are we afflicted with Progression Animosity?

Our guild has cleared Kara and Gruuls and working on SSC. In the grand list of guild-progression, we’ve got a long way to go. But we’ve come a long way, too, and of course there are people who haven’t gotten as far as we have. Makes us wonder if some folks reading this have a small progression-jealousy of us.

Hmm. It’s logical, isn’t it. But we don’t want people to be “jealous”, that isn’t why we blog. And perhaps the D&T folks similarly don’t want us to be “jealous” of their accomplishments. Can we give them that benefit of the doubt?

We are. As such, we’re going to act in a fashion that we would hope others would act towards us.

Go Big Guys! Go bring Sunwell Plateau to its knees. We’re rootin’ for ya! /cheer!

And remember - Loot Shotgun, we totally called it.

MMO Champion says we’re getting Patch 2.3.2 today, and that’s all win.

Boat and zeppelin vendors and NPCs are are back on duty. Slackers.

Reduced network latency by disabling the Nagle algorithm. Nagle, just say No.

/timetest is a command that can be run to provide information on game performance. /timetest 0 turns the command off. When the command is issued, the next time a player uses a flight master to travel, certain statistics will be measured and displayed at the end of that flight. All weather effects and spawns are shutdown during the test. Does it tell you if a hunter is a melee hunter or just leveling his melee skillz? That’s game performance, isn’t it?

A “Withdraw-Repair Only” button has been added to the guild bank controls. If this is set for a guild rank, then that rank cannot actually withdraw funds from the guild bank, but they can still use that daily amount of money for repairs. How about a Blows Up Thief’s Computer control?

Arcane Shot: Ranks 1-5 will once again deal bonus damage based on attack power. Moar leveling, cause Arcane Shot is our favorite.

Aspect of the Viper effect increased. (From 50% of total intellect to 55%). Every little bit help until our new shadow priest is surgically attached to us.

Freezing Trap is no longer limited to one target at a time. Amen and hallelujah, brothers and sisters! /dance!

Pet leveling speed has been increased. You’re preachin, baby, and we’re loyal and slavish followers! Now give us another stable slot, you conniving, heartless b@stards.

Increased the range of leatherworking drums to 40 yards. Drums of Panic remains unchanged at 8 yards. Drums of Battle just keep getting sweeter. It wins the award for Best Drum of 2007.

The Netherscale Ammo Pouch is no longer a Unique item. The Knothide Quiver is no longer unique. Just one more excuse to give the 99 Light Feather Quest to beggers. Have you macro’d your Quest reply yet?

/s Oh yee begger, hear my disdain. For thou art a foul and loathsome creature and must be cleansed! Bring me 99 Light Feathers, no more and no less, and thou shall be rewarded with the grand sum of 10 gold, and furthermore, your soul shall be redeemed. So Sayth BRK, so let it be done.

Ready check (/readycheck) will now display a visual display of each party/raid member’s status next to their name. This will display in the Party UI, the Raid UI and the Raid pullout UI. A player will get a check mark if they are ready, a question mark if they have not replied and a red X if they are not ready or are afk. Still relies on the raid member to actually click the f-ing button. Yes, we mean you.

Clockwork Rocket Bots will no longer attack each other in Shattrath City. But can we amass an armada of them, say in the hundreds, and have them attack a Fel Reaver we kite to the city?

New Patch Notes, brothers and sisters! The latest from the PTR is Patch 2.3.2! No preamble, let’s just dig in!

Um. Wait, we just did a preamble. Saying there’s no preamble is a preamble.

Uh Oh. Saying there’s no preamble then realizing there really is a preamble is two preambles…

Ah heck. Here’s what we care about:

Arcane Shot: Ranks 1-5 will once again deal bonus damage based on attack power. Well we’re glad they’re fixing this “Oops”. Thank you fellas.

Aspect of the Viper effect increased. So it wasn’t just us who thought it was more than a little underpowered. We need AotH up for our IAofH to proc, but sometimes we’ll kick in AotV to speed up mana-regeneration. Dang if it didn’t seem like it was unimpressing us. Another check in the Woot-Column.

Freezing Trap is no longer limited to one target at a time. Well this smells like double-trapping has been re-bugged, un-nerfed, or whatever you want to call it. We’re surprised but thrilled; we’ll be able to do our BRK Double-Trapping Movie soon, we hope.

Pet leveling speed has been increased. Oh happy day! Now give us a bloody reason to want to level more pets, like more pet slots in the f-ing stable.

The Netherscale Ammo Pouch [and the Knothide Quiver are] no longer … Unique item[s]. Whoa whoa whoa, hasenpfeffer! The 24-slot ammo bag is no longer unique, and the 20-slot quiver is no longer unique, but the 24-slot quiver IS still unique? That doesn’t make sense.

No, you don’t understand. The 24-slot quiver was never Unique but the 24-slot ammo pouch was. Blizz is making all four of the new recipes - 20-slot ammo pouch, 20-slot quiver, 24-slot ammo pouch, and 24-slot quiver - non-Unique. If you are a non-LW gun-hunter and desire a 24-slot ammo pouch, you should be able to get one without paying epic-mount-quantity gold soon.

Pulled from the Animal House that is the WoW Hunter Forums, both US and EU, here are some very important blue-posts you should know about.

If you don’t know, a blue-post is a post on those forums written by a Blizzard employee. They are as Official a post as you will see and can usually be trusted to be accurate.

================================

I have a bit more information for you all based on some dialogue I’ve had with our QA department.

First, we’re not seeing any change in the loss of Happiness at current from our own tests. If you all have more specific information in regard to the pet you are using, the level, etc, please feel free to post in the Bug forum so that our QA team can try to reproduce the issue and track it down.

We are also not able to see the stair issue in our own testing. Again, if you have more specific information on what exactly is happening (specific boss, mob) , please go ahead and post in the Bug forum so we can better track it down. There may be a particular situation or key element that is causing this issue for you.

We also are working on a fix for an issue where pets weren’t attacking if a player had their back up against a wall or corner.

Any further pathing issues that seem strange, please keep note of where you are and what mob it may be related to. We’ll do our best to see if we can find these issues if they exist.

===============================

Just to reiterate from another thread, we are planning to allow Hunters to feed their pets during combat in a future patch. It’s in the works right now.

===============================

One concern that has come up in this thread is the ability to feed pets during combat. I just wanted to stop back in the thread here to relay that the ability to feed a pet during combat is in the works for a future patch. Hopefully that will be one less concern for hunters in general. Once we’re a bit closer to implementing this, we’ll do our best to get you more information on what we have planned.

================================

Just so everyone aware, there was a bug fix that unintentionally didn’t make it into the release patch notes, but has been added into the bug fix listing on the forum as well as is being added onto the Web version of the patch notes.

Here is the actual note for you in regard to this-

• Fixed a bug in which Hunters were able to disengage from combat using Feign Death during boss encounters.

Please note that this should only apply for when you are engaged in a boss fight and shouldn’t affect trash mobs.

================================

I was just about to get to this one. This was another bug fix that unintentionally didn’t get into the patch notes. It’s getting added in now in order to clear up the confusion. Here is how the note actually reads:

• Fixed a bug in which Hunters were able to use Readiness in conjunction with Freezing Trap on two different targets.

Being able to double-trap was not intended to happen so the bug has been corrected. As always though, constructive feedback on changes are always welcome. What should happen is if you trap another target, the first trap should release much like what happens when a Priest Shackles Undead or a Mage Polymorphs a target.

================================

“I was really excited to make a 24 slot ammo pouch come patch day, and have a bunch of hunter guildies that had gathered the mats, and got in line to have one made. Only one problem… even though the pouch is BoE, it is also Unique, meaning after I make one for myself, I can’t make any more for friends or selling.”

This is being fixed in an upcoming patch.

================================

“Please list the Arrow Maker and Shell Machine under the Projectile tab in the Auction Ho[u]se.”

Done! Upcoming patch will have them listed in the appropriate section of the Auction House.

================================

Blizz listens and will implement your ideas. However, they also sometimes say, “No”. Feeding pets after a FD looks like it’s coming back, but it sounds like Double-Trapping is gone.

/cry, we never even got to make a BRK Hunter-Guide Double-Trapping Movie

So some unexpected nuances to the Hunter class have been gently nudged into the game mechanics. And as expected, there’s such an outcry on the WoW Forums that their collective screams have managed to change the Earth’s orbit around the sun. They’ve caused panic not seen since Cabbage Patch Kids hit the scene. People are huddling together to survive the hysteria in such numbers that the BRK Center for Population and Pudding-Pop Analysis is predicting a ‘Hunter-Nerf Baby-Boom’ in September, 2008.

We’ve received thousands and thousands of emails begging for guidance during these dark times. To these scared and jittery people we have one thought that should calm and soothe you:

IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD! RUN!!

OK seriously. There are big differences when comparing a correction to an obvious game-mechanic flaw, an “oops!”, and a nerf.

Removed the ability to double-trap: Corrected game mechanic flaw. Yes it rocked but no other class can crowd-control multiple mobs, why should we. Our “speciality” is that we can crowd-control just about any type of mob; beasts, undead, humanoids, mechanicals, etc. It was never intended that we could crowd-control multiple mobs. It was cool, it was clever, but it was not intended.

Lower ranks of Arcane Shot not scaling: That’s an “Oops!” of course. They’ll fix this, don’t worry. Stay tuned for 2.3.1 OK?

Feign Death not taking hunters out of combat: That’s another “Oops!” except in the case of boss-fights. They’ll take care of it.

As for FD’ing against bosses, we kind of think of this of a nerf, but not a really big one. As a hunter, if you’re taking cr#p-loads of damage, usually that’s a sign that something in the party-mechanics has screwed up. Either you’ve grabbed aggro or you’re too close and absorbing AoE attacks, or something else that has put you in the wrong place at the wrong time. The only really big reason we ever FD’d against a boss was to feed Hobbes after he was killed…

Can’t feed pets after a FD in a boss fight: Corrected game mechanic flaw. If you allow your pet to die in a boss fight and rez him, you’re supposed to take a hit of some kind. The hit is supposed to be that your pet decreases his happiness and thus his DPS is decreased. Perfectly legitimate but was easily overcome by FD’ing and feeding your pet back to 125% damage capability. Sorry, Blizz is not going to re-break this.

Pets not attacking: Big-time “Oops!” but completely expected. When they changed pet-behavior so that they always try to attack from behind, it should hardly be a surprise that something in the code got a little wonky.

We were grinding Wind Scales yesterday and watched helplessly as Hobbes refused to get into combat when the wind serpents were facing a particular way while on an incline. We knew that this was a problem most like caused by the reworking of the pet-attack mechanics. They’ll fix it, don’t freak.

Do you see any real nerfs there? Not really, no. Of course, you are totally allowed to feel disappointed, like when you ask your dad for a cookie and he says Yes but then mom catches you grabbing your “legal” cookie and she brings the hammer down. You know the law; no cookies before dinner, no matter what dad says.

You may be cookie-less, but it was never really your cookie to begin with.

Are we temporarily gimped with the pet-attack thing? Yeah, we’ll agree with that. Should this have been seen on the PTR? Frankly, yes it should’ve been. We’ll even go so far as to say that this is a big ‘WTF’ and those in charge should be flogged. But it’ll be fixed, we have faith.

Does the loss of Double-Trapping make us sad? It does, and it also really hurts those Survivalist hunters who could astound their friends with their flair for Double and even Triple-Trapping. Is there a hunter out there who has been double-trapping their way through heroics because their guild has zero other crowd-control options? Dude or dudette, you have our sympathies if you answered ‘yes’.

Oh. Does this relieve you of your obligation to learn how to properly Chain Trap? H#ll no.

Does the Feign Death stuff hurt? Yes. Will you have to become a better hunter to overcome it? Yes. Will more non-Beastmaster hunters suddenly decide their pets aren’t worth the electrons they’re made of because they can’t “repair” their pets on the fly? We sure hope not.

You want some BRK Happy Thoughts to tide you over until 3.2.1? You got it.

Arcane Shot removing a buff from a target makes us giggle. Even those silly wind serpents in Netherstorm with their stacked electric field get that buff totally removed with a single Arcane Shot. Our favorite shot gets some unexpected love and Blizz better not touch it again. They tossed that ball in our yard and now it’s ours!

Loss of the Dead Zone. Now this is a bit of a misnomer. We still have a Dead Zone, it’s just five yards instead of eight. Helpful? Sure, especially now that we can get a Concussive Shot off earlier. We did a massive Halaa engagement and had tremendous fun kiting warriors with our improved Dead Zone. Can we point-blank pop a cap in someone’s noggin’, a la Trinity? No. You must still have mad skillz to know how to get to range.

Twenty-Four Slot Ammo Pouches and Quivers. Do you have yours? You’d better get one. No more storing extra ammo in your regular bags for those long instances. Load up a 24-slotter and go crazy for a long, long time.

Aimed Shot reducing all healing a target takes by 50% for 10 seconds is one of the biggest buffs this hunter has ever seen our class get granted. We used Aimed Shot right before Magtheridon’s channelers healed themselves. When an interrupt failed, the channeler only healed himself for half of what he normally did. Yes it hurt our own DPS to change our shot rotation, but holy batdung, if a channeler normally heals himself for 80k and we prevented 40k, that was essentially a 40k Aimed Shot.

A 40,000-damage Aimed Shot. Chew on that, ya whining, sniveling b#stards. Makes Curse of Doom look like a kid popping bubblewrap.

Complaints or deeply-held grievances? Go ahead and let the comments fly.

P.S. The time-stamp on this post is appropriate to those of us with an Air Force background. /teehee

“ZOMG BRK!! The patch! Talk about the patch! Sincerely, Everybody on the Planet.”

Okay okay okay. Wow, y’all can be a pestering cult following, ya know?

While the entire Test Realm patch notes are linked here…

What BRK Cares About for All Hunters in the 2.3 Patch Notes:

Zul’Aman is a 10-player, level 70 outdoor instance located in the Ghostlands. Players will be able to confront six new bosses including the Forest Troll Warlord Zul’jin. Bring it, baby. We’re totally psyched.

Dwarf/Troll: Gun/Bow Specialization now increases chance to critically hit with Guns/Bows by 1% rather than increasing weapon skill. If we have to lose Crit to get our Hit back, it’s a moot point. If we can raise our Hit without losing Crit, this could rock. But this really seems to be a subtle maneuver to get more folks to go Survival for raiding. That’s where Surefooted gives the 3% Hit bonus and where Crit is King. Survival hunters are cheering this development, that’s for sure.

Pets will try to get behind their targets when engaging in melee combat. Now this is fascinating. Just how much melee-time will be lost as our pets reposition will have to be measured against the amount of damage they end up not taking by being behind mobs. Take Ramparts for example. A pet standing in the dragon boss’s flames dies quickly and does zero DPS. If he positions so that he’s behind the dragon, and thus totally avoids that fire AoE, he does a lot of DPS, and a heck of a lot more than if he were dead. We are cautiously very optimistic.

Arcane Shot (Ranks 6 and above) now dispel 1 Magic effect in addition to their normal damage. An obvious attempt to boost hunter-use in arenas, this could be pretty spiffy. Now if a warlock throws underwater breathing on his team and this is what the Arcane Shot dispels, it’s either a pretty crappy addition to our arsenal or just smart play on the warlock’s end. Or both.

Explosive Trap: The initial damage dealt by this trap is now also increased by 10% of your ranged attack power.

Immolation Trap: The total damage dealt by this trap is now also increased by 10% of your ranged attack power. We are wary of the differences in the implementation of these bonuses. What strikes us as interesting is that these are RAP-based. Most hunters who use traps for damage are Survival. Had these been agility-based we would’ve appreciated the buff to traps more. As it stands, we’ll take a wait-n-see approach.

Misdirection: This spell will now always be removed correctly if multiple Hunters overwrite each other’s Misdirection. We may actually miss having our Misdirection over-written by another hunter and watching the chaos ensue. Currently, this potential ‘whoopsie’ requires hunters to coordinate their Misdirection in raids. If this change comes to pass it’ll make Misdirecting less deadly, but maybe a little less fun.

Serpent Sting: The total damage dealt by this sting is now also increased by 10% of your ranged attack power. Another Marksman buff and yet another temptation to take Improved Stings. If your Serpent Sting does 660 damage over 15 seconds and you take 3/3 in Improved Stings and get the 30% bonus damage to stings, your Serpent Sting will do 858 damage over 15 seconds. That’s nice but not good enough to justify taking it over something else. Now take that Marksman hunter and his 2300 RAP and give his Serpent Sting another 230 bonus damage, boosting it to 1088 damage over 15 seconds. Perhaps the warlocks out there would even say that this constitutes a real DoT, (probably not, but they don’t usually cheer us on anyway.) We’re scared to say it, but we actually think this is pretty nice.

Trueshot Aura (Marksmanship) no longer costs mana to cast and will last until cancelled. ‘Bout time. Next!

New recipes are available from Grand Master leatherworking trainers to make 20 slot quivers and ammo pouches. Spiify. But we’re not going to get to make one because…

New recipes are available from the Honor Hold, Thrallmar, and Lower City quartermasters to create 24 slot quivers and ammo pouches. Why Lower City? Could there be a 24-slot ammo bag with a 15% haste rating from Honor Hold and Thrallmar at Revered, and a 24-slot ammo bag with, can we dream, an 18% haste rating from Lower City? We are looking forward to jumping on the PTR just to see these vendors.

New macro command to target by entire name: /targetexact Woohoo! Your “/targetexact Demon Chains” macro won’t target someone your raid named Doomilias or Demetria anymore.

New macro command: /petautocasttoggle Again, woohoo! Our Growl macros shall be halfed.

When you inspect another player, you can now see their talent choices as well as their equipment. Huntard examinations just got a lot more fun. And probably scarier; how many Pathfinding level 70 hunters do you think we’re going to find?

So we just get our new Aspect of the Viper running and before we can proclaim “Buff or Nerf” we’re getting rumblings of Patch 2.3.

The Big Thing in this patch is, of course Fel Reavers as hunter pets. Yes, we’ve advocated this development in many forums and columns and it looks like sending those prepaid subscriptions to Playgnome have paid off.

Fel Reaver pets are gonna rock for many reasons:

They’re immune to Fear and Fire. Totally and completely.

X-Ray Vision replaces Bite. Rogues get hit with the biggest nerf-howitzer ever as Fel Reavers can see through Vanish.

Aspect of the Fel Reaver is only available when you have a Fel Reaver as a pet. AotFR gives the hunter a buff to all Aimed Shots where the damage from it has a 10% chance of inflicting 100% of the total health of the enemy. Basically, AotFR reintroduces One-Shotting to PvP and it makes us quiver in places we shouldn’t while at work.

This is all super-nice and all, but we’ve been toying with a Fel Reaver pet for a few days now on the PTR and we must report that there’s one huge obstacle to having one.

Taming it.

Basicially, you need to be able to tank a Fel Reaver in order to tame it. As everybody has been smooshed by one of these contraptions, y’all know how hard they hit. They are immune to Freezing Trap so you’ve got to stand there for 30 seconds and take some serious blows to the head and shoulders to complete the taming process.

Now pre-2.3 it was “illegal” to assist a hunter while he’s taming a pet. No longer. But one healer isn’t going to cut it. You’ll need at least three level 70 healers popping instant and HoTs on your @ss in order to survive the taming process. Guild-assistance will most definitely be needed in order to get yourself a Fel Reaver as a pet. Expect to be blackmailed most enthusiastically by your squishy-heally buddies.

Oh. And Fel Reavers eat Defias Brotherhood bandits for food. By the cart-load.

Now as for the other stuff, the more boring and yawnable things we’re reading about, we still have some big-time questions.

20 and 24-slot ammo bags. Craftable? Purchasable? World drops? Faction rewards? Who knows. They’re coming, though, and it’s about time. We just want to know to whom we need to suck-up.

Serpent Sting getting bonus damage based upon RAP and Marksman hunters of the world rejoice. Just how long it take before we hear the cries of “Improved Stings FTW!” we don’t know and don’t want to know.

Arcane Shot Rank 6 will now also dispel a magic effect. You want to talk about buffing hunters for arenas, well this is just the ticket, holy cr@ppola. That’s mean, that is.

The mechanics, however, concern us.

Hunter attacks Paladin. Hunter shoots Arcane Shot Rank 6 and gets to dispel a magic effect. Which one gets dispelled? Does it just randomly dispel, does it dispel alphabetically, by order of power, by a list the hunter can create? How is the spell-to-be-dispelled get chosen?

Personally, Zul’Aman is the biggest and best thing coming. To say Karazhan hasn’t been the most fun we’ve had in WoW would be a lie. Gruul’s is great but much harder to coordinate. The 10-man instance is our favorite mixture and we can’t wait to get into a new one.