So attempting to sort all the submissions for the big raid-contest is going to take a while. /sigh

Folks, this is one day… ONE DAY of BRK email.

Do you have any idea, any idea at all how much we need a staff of, like, twelve to handle you all?

Half of those Spam messages are raid-submissions!

The draft is the one email we started to write, then collapsed in a frothy-mouthed mess on the kitchen floor.

We’re going to have to do this differently than we planned. Unfortunately, there is no plan B; we’re just gonna wing it.

Yes, this was an actual AC raid makeup the other day for Anetheron, Mount Hyjal. But that point is irrelevant. We had no spriests, no arms warrior, a couple of boomkin, etc. Unless your guild strictly controls exactly who is allowed in the raid and mandates their specs, you’re going to have raid makeups like this. How you organize them is critical to your success.

Ensisor & Snaggletooth came up with a pretty nice raid in our opinion, his descriptions were really good, and his ideas intriguing, so we’re going to write his makeup here.

Tank Group - This group benefits from the pally aura for tanking, the imp buff from the warlock for extra health, and the tree aura for added healing on the tanks.

Prot warrior (MT)
Prot warrior (OT)
Prot Pally
Demo Warlock
Resto Druid

Melee DPS Group - Resto Shaman would be dropping Windfury totems for this group, which all the DPS in the party could benefit from. Some might argue and say put the Enh Shaman in this group, but ideally the he should be dropping Grace of Air as it is a big boost to the shaman’s DPS as well as the rest of [his soon to be shown] group. This Resto Shaman should be alerted ahead of time so that he could spec Improved Totems.

Combat Rogue
Feral Druid
Ret Pally
Fury Warrior
Resto Shaman

DPS Group One - This shaman will be dropping Grace of Agility which everyone in the group benefits from. The raid also benefits as the GoA will improve the AP bonus that Expose Weakness gives. Again, I fully support the Enh Shaman for this group because GoA benefits the Shaman as well. This group will out-DPS all the other groups hands down. Especially on the kind of boss fight that we are building for.

BM Hunter
BM Hunter
SV Hunter
Feral Druid
Enh Shaman

DPS Group Two - This group gets the benefit of the moonchicken buff. Holy priest is in this group for Prayer of Healing for efficient group healing.

Frost Mage
Arcane Mage
Destro Warlock
Balance Druid
Holy Priest

Healer Group - Put the strongest healers in this group so you get max benefits from the Shaman totems. The casters also get the crit bonus which will really help the Paladins with their mana return.

Holy Pally
Holy Pally
Holy Priest
Balance Druid
Resto Shaman

Is this the Winner, the best and only way to make this raid? Heavens no, we saw lots of intriguing ideas. We also saw a lot of Crap, like putting five healers in the Healer Group.

Folks, just because it’s a Healer Group doesn’t mean you can’t put non-healers in it. Our guild’s Paladin healers crank out 10k healing crits. If you’re in their raid, don’t you want to be hit with one of those? We sure do. We also like seeing Holy Paladins with full mana bars. Paladins get mana returned when their heals crit. Giving them a +Spell Crit buff with a Boomkin makes huge sense.

Here’s something we’d talk about changing: swapping the warlocks. Our guild’s Demonology Warlock regularly competes with us for the top of the DPS meter. Making him park an imp in the tank group is a huge waste of his DPS. Making our Destro Warlock put an Imp with the tanks would allow our top-DPS caster to get some Balance Druid +Spell Crit buffage. Again, this would be guild and player-specific tweaking. YMMV.

Will you necessarily agree with the Enh/Resto Druid dynamic suggested here? We’re sure some of you will take great offense and may even find a voice in the comments to register your displeasure. Nearly everybody wanted an Enhancement Shaman in the Melee group, but Ensisor makes a good argument about the Resto being a better choice in this instance. Plus, it would mean we get Agility Totemz! /approved

Please remember that you may disparage this raid makeup if you must, but refrain from personal attacks. We’re dignified at BRKWWA, right? Right.

/scratch armpit

11:40pm and everybody in the BRK House of Insanity is mega-asleep, so we can sneak into the kitchen nook and write a blog-post in the dark without waking anybody up.

Tonight Aetherial Circle took down Kaz’rogal, the third boss in Mount Hyjal. We weren’t there. Why? We were playing legos.

Today is the last day of the month, and Mrs BRK is in sales. You can guess what that means: quota-time. We make a good income, but it’s Mrs BRK who makes the mortgage and funds our lustful habits. Regardless of how late she needs to work to make her bonuses, she’s got to do it. Her normal home-time is 7pm, which on Mondays and Wednesdays is plenty for us to greet, exchange pleasantries, and to pass the boy over as we get ready to raid.

But at 8pm tonight, she wasn’t home. The paycheck difference between making and not making quota is thousands of dollars. Mrs BRK was not coming home until it was done. The house and the boy and the dog and the cat needed us, so our raid was going to have to grab someone to take our place.

When people ask us how we make the time for WoW and blogging and Real Life, well, the answer is always simple: sacrifices have to be made. Tonight, we sacrificed a guild first-kill in order to stay up with our son who wanted his mommy to come home and tuck him in, as she does every night. We’re not going to send him to bed and let him sit alone while his mommy is out working. Nope, that’s not how we roll. Legos FTW.

Spaghetti and meatballs is easy, but when Mrs BRK comes home at nine and finds a nice, hot, homemade meal ready for her, we get massive Wife Karma. The boy is fed, washed, pajama’d, teeth brushed, and happy. The family is safe, she’s exhausted, and we missed our raid.

But the lego houses, trees, and one scary, eye-less duck, are shown with pride and love to Mommy. She excuses herself, changes, takes the boy to bed, reads to him, tucks him in with the expertise motherhood instinctively imbues, and he’s done for the night. Mrs BRK grabs the bowl of pasta, comes to bed, carefully eats her fill as we watch… sheesh, we don’t even remember. But we watched TV together and talked about her kills. Customers. Yeah.

She was asleep by 10pm, snoring like a miniature, redheaded, Sales Goddess.

We take her bowl and place it in the sink. (Putting it in the dishwasher doesn’t allow her to fuss at us in the morning, and we’re not going to take that away from her.) We take the dog for a last walk, gulp our vitamins, including the B-12 which is not delicious, regardless of what the bottle says, and settle in to bed.

Then we pop open the iBook, check the guild forums and see they’ve progressed without us. And it hurts. These are our best friends, our comrades-in-arms, the only people on the planet crazy enough to call this 39 year old systems engineer, “Kitty”. We loathe missing raids, and first-kills are especially rare and momentous and fabulous blog-fodder and makes all the wiping and learning and cursing and computers thrown in the pool worthwhile. D@mn.

We see Mrs BRK sleeping, exhausted. Our boy mumbles loudly in his sleep, “That’s my house!” And the darkness in the kitchen covers us with a comfort and joy few people will ever know. Crickets, the air conditioning, a snoozing 100lb yellow lab at our feet, and the snick-snick of laptop keys being struck; these are the sounds of Family, and it’s what we hope everybody remembers is the most important thing. Even more important than Mount Hyjal, if you can believe that.

Vashj better go down on Wednesday, though. /fistpump

“Dear BRK, [my] Guild has a DKP system in place, and long story short the rouge(sic) with less DKP got [the Dragonspine Trophy] over a hunter with more DKP because certain member of the guild felt that the rouge(sic) would use the item to its full potential. Of course I was like that is Bull Shark because I feel the trinket benefits both classes equally. What say you? Cort.”

Cort, you’re right and you’re wrong, foshizzle.

Here’s how you’re right. If a guild has a DKP system, the rules of the system are written somewhere, are understood by all, and that’s Law of the Land. If the rules of the system are changed during a run or after loot drops, that’s going to make people gquit. What happens is that your guildies start thinking,

“What’s the point of running Gruuls if the GM is just going to arbitrarily decide that certain gear is going to go to certain people? I’ll have more success if I just go to the elemental plateau and farm fire motes.” And your guild’s 25-man runs end, the guild disbands, fire and brimstone come down from the skies, rivers and seas boil, forty years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!

And it’s all so easily avoidable.

Everybody in the raid must know the rules ahead of the run, and the loot-master must abide by those rules, or else there’s no point in going.

Now notice we didn’t say that the person with the most DKP must win. That’s not the case at all. The rules can be anything the guild decides.

BRK’s Dream DKP System, Where Nobody Ever Quits the Guild

DKP is in effect, everybody bids for whatever they want, highest bid wins, except in the following cases:

1. Main Tank gets priority for gear. If a tier token drops that he can use, he gets it and sacrifices all his accumulated DKP, regardless of his balance. Nobody may outbid the MT on tokens. His survival is the guild’s survival.

2. The Main Tank’s primary Holy Pally healer gets priority on her gear. If a tier token drops that she can use, she gets it and sacrifices all her accumulated DKP, regardless of her balance. The MT’s survival is the guild’s survival.

3a. Any 1h or 2h weapons with +Str is not hunter-loot and hunters may not bid if another class wants the item.

3b. Any 1h or 2h weapons with +Spirit is not hunter-loot and hunters may not bid if another class wants the item.

3c. Any 1h or 2h weapons with +Agi, +Int, and +Sta is pure, honest-to-Elune hunter loot and other classes may not bid if a hunter wants the item.

3d. Hunters get priority on every ranged weapon. Nobody who needs a ranged weapon for stats may outbid a hunter for a ranged weapon.

4. Nobody may bid on an item they already have, except in the case of dual-wielding. If you have your tier four shoulders, another tier four shoulder token drops, and you want it for off-spec, everybody else in the raid who can use that token for their primary spec must decline to bid before you may. You may not run-up the DKP bidding if you have the item already.

5.The Dragonspine Trophy is the single-best rogue-trinket in the game, and if a rogue in the raid needs it, he gets priority. However, since so many other classes can easily use it, the rogue must outbid all other classes who bid on it. The bidding ends when the rogue is incapable of raising his bid more.

6. The raid-loot rules can be amended before the start of the raid, but all members of the raid must agree to the change. For example, we bring a new Holy Pally in the guild who desperately needs her tier four helm from Prince. If that trinket drops, she gets priority for that loot, on that run only. The raid is told at the start what to expect, and anybody who disagrees with the rule may opt-out of the raid.

And so on. This is not a complete and inclusive list, and we’re sure you’ll find things to get outraged about, and that’s just dandy. But you can hopefully see that it’s a decent starting-point for developing a guild’s loot-rules.

So that’s where you’re right, Cort. Changing the DKP rules mid-raid both sucks and blows and is one of the most sure-fire methods of imploding your guild. Bad mojo, all around.

But here’s where you’re wrong. The DST is great for hunters, but it’s the Dream Trinket for rogues; it does not benefit both classes equally.

Just because a hunter can use it very effectively does not mean that a rogue can’t put it to better use. If we were in a raid with a good rogue who needed it, we would be hard-pressed to take it from him. How would you feel if that rogue took your Golden Bow of Quel’Thalas just because he could use easily use it for stats? You’d freak out and throw your computer in the pool, that’s what you’d do.

But the most basic preventative measure you can take is, if you’re not sure what your guild’s rules on loot is going to be, just ask beforehand. It’ll save a lot of headaches and broken hearts.

MT died at 17% on Anetheron. Anetheron stomps a whole bunch of DPS into the ground, including us.

Let’s talk about what happened…

“GUYS!! The druid is tanking him!!”

But the healers didn’t notice in time, and the druid died, too.

“GUYS!!! ANOTHER DRUID IS TANKING HIM!!!”

And she was! And she got heals and Anetheron went down. Finally. We love druids at BRKWWA, darn tootin’. Good thing AC has 1.3 billion of ‘em.

/exhausted

As we sit here weak and weary
Another night of SSC clearing
Is under our belt and we are leary
That we will go insane.

We took out bosses one through five
And left no silly trash mobs alive
There is no place left for Vashj to hide
But we fear we’ll drink no champagne.

There is no challenge to be found any more
In putting Leo down on the floor
FLK is not but a bore
But Vashj, she makes us drool.

We have new raiders, we have new pride
In stomping SSC until the bosses cried
So to finish the job, we wish to stride
Back to Vashj and back to school.

It may take time, we may have to Wipe
There may be folks who whine and gripe
That their Tier 5 set is not quite ripe
But luck doth favor the bold!

We’ve killed her once, we shall return
That d@mn ugly naga we wish to burn
For Tier 5 helms we ache and yearn
With nothing else shall we be consoled.

Make the schedule, a new campaign
We’ll be there to bring the pain
BM Hunter DPS shall reign
The squishies are challenged again!

So to our GM and our raid boss
Don’t hold us back or give us noob-sauce
A flurry of bullets we wish to toss
At Vashj. For Glory. Amen.

(Note from TJ: I just post the stuff. I’m… sorry. I’m just really sorry.)

Our first movie using the new iMac and the new iMovie. If there are issues or problems, let us know and we’ll see what we can do to rectify them.

Go right ahead and right-click this link to download the full-sized (84.5MB) movie.

The timer-mod with which we’ve been playing is OmniCC. It is NOT recommended for timing your traps, but for cooldowns it’s nifty.

Edit: Anonymous WWS report is here. We are Lapetus. 1344DPS while being sent to two watery graves isn’t too bad.

Zul’Aman has four fights that are very hunter-friendly: Eagle, Bear, Lynx, and Hex Lord. Dragonhawk is horribly pet-unfriendly and Zul’Jin is a pain regardless of class. But the fight that is just a full-bore DPS destruction party is Bear.

Obviously, we are Calisto. This WWS report confirms all our theoretical testing: the combination of the 3:2 Steady/Auto macro and Tuskbreaker is the highest sustained-DPS we’ve ever been able to deliver. Yes, it burns through mana like crazy, but we cannot argue with the results. It’s not perfect for every boss-fight, and sometimes a more mana-efficient manual shot rotation will prevent us from going OOM in longer battles. But for this guy, the 3:2 is awesome.

The 3:2 Steady/Auto Macro

/cast !Auto shot
/cast [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command
/cast Steady shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

And you can download the full movie (36.8MB) by right-clicking here.