“Dear BRK, I am trying 41/20/0 (after seeing a lot of more progressed raiding hunters switch and from your long standing advocacy) now from my 0/45/16 marksman build, and need some advice from an experienced BM hunter. My guild can clear Karazahn and are trying to setup runs for Gruul’s, Magtheridon, and possibly BC outdoor world bosses so I want to be able to step it up a notch.

“When should I pop Bestial Wrath? As a MM hunter the closest I had to this was rapid fire for a long cooldown ability. If I pop bestial wrath should I pop the bloodlust brooch and rapid fire too? It hardly seems worth doing on normal mobs or am I mistaken? Gorgor & SpiderPig”

There are three keys to the effective use of damage-enhancement spell and items:

1. Do not overload yourself with attempting to execute a memorized script and then freaking out when the battle diverges from what you expect.
2. Do not allow your trinkets and spells to cause you to overtake the tank on the threat list.
3. Do use them for maximum effect during the battle-sequence by paying attention to DPS-interruptions.

You’re fighting Shade of Aran and you know what you want to do; pop Bestial Wrath and a haste trinket and start beating Aran’s @ss. Wham, Aran casts Blizzard as soon as you walk in the door. Start running, don’t worry about your plan. Don’t allow this unforeseen event to frustrate you into inaction. Go with the flow, get through the Blizzard, wait for a Flame Wreath and then pop your trinket. Beat his @ss.

You’re fighting Gruul and you’re ready to tear him up. The fight begins, you pop Bestial Wrath, your trinket, Rapid Fire, and a leatherworking drum. Your DPS rocks the house! You grab Gruul’s aggro, you get crit for 102,000 and are punched so hard you come out on the other side of the WoW universe. Bad hunter.

Allow your tank to get aggro and don’t go DPS-insane right off the bat. Use Misdirection and an Aimed/Steady/Arcane salvo to help him establish aggro. It shouldn’t take too much time before he’s solidly in control of the threat list and then you can give Gruul what he deserves.

You’re fighting Nightbane and your Rapid Fire spell’s cooldown is up. You’ve been watching your cooldown bars and are salivating to jam your attack speed through the roof. You pop it just in time for Nightbane’s Fear bomb to hit you. Not good, you just wasted almost the entire Rapid Fire bonus.

Pay attention to the raid warnings and the sequence of the fight. If you know Nightbane is about to drop his Fear on you, hold off on the Rapid Fire until you can extract maximum benefit from it. This means paying attention to your environment and the battle, not just your macros and your cooldown bars.

As for popping Bestial Wrath with your trinkets, our opinion is that you should use Bestial Wrath by itself and combine a trinket with Rapid Fire.

Bestial Wrath decreases the mana cost of your specials by 20%. Extract as much benefit from that as possible. Get off as many Steady/Arcane/Multi combos as you can without interrupting your Auto Shot. If you pop a haste trinket or Rapid Fire during a Bestial Wrath, your Auto Shots will come much faster and you will clip them frequently with your specials.

Pop Bestial Wrath, take advantage of the mana-savings and get as many specials in as you can. Once Bestial Wrath fades, slam a haste-trinket and Rapid Fire and let those Auto Shots flow. When they crit, grab the Kill Commands as they become available.

Don’t interrupt the Auto Shots, don’t clip them, by trying to insert specials during this phase of your DPS. You just got 20% mana-savings for specials during the Bestial Wrath, now let the super-fast Auto Shot damage accumulate and your mana to regenerate during the trinket/Rapid Fire session. Greater mana-efficiency leads to higher sustained DPS.

Say it with us, “The purpose of a Hunter is to provide massive quantities of sustained, ranged DPS”. Notice we chose the word ’sustained’ not ‘burst’. Always use your trinkets, Rapid Fire, and Bestial Wrath to maximize your sustained DPS, not your burst-damage.

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.

The BRK Executive Assistant is out sick. She’s a sad panda and we’re not going to ask her to comma-check our WoW Insider column today. We’re delaying that particular load of bunkum until tomorrow. Or later.

On top of that, we just got back from a visit to the BRK Doctor Of Uberness. We’re not going to say he’s the best general practitioner who’s ever walked the surface of the earth, but he does two things that makes us swoon:

1) No computer in the exam room. We hate doctors who spend more time slapping keys than they do talking to their patients.

2) Dude knows how to poke and prod, (nothing p0rnographic, folks, calm down.) We don’t want a doctor to take our word about what’s good and what isn’t. What do we know about our own body; most of us can’t even feed it properly.

The BRK Pulse was a resting 56 beats per minute, blood pressure was 97/60, 6′ tall still, (thank Elune, we fear the day we start shrinking,) and a very tidy 189 pounds. We thought we’d been good but he ordered about 1200 blood tests, we assume to punish us for some unspoken faux pas. That pink paper was marked up like our highschool English essays; X’s everywhere.

/insurance rant

Why the bleeping h3ll can’t the nurse at the doctor’s office take our blood?! Why do we have to drive 35 miles to the f-ing “insurance approved” phlebotomist?!”

/insurance rant off

So here we are drained of blood, bruised, no food, no coffee, no executive assistant and no gumption to do much of anything.

Well, we should say the following:

Nobody here appreciates the efforts Shifttusk has given the hunter community more than we do. He’s popped on Drenden and we’ve said Howdy in-game. No bad feelings exist from us. Frankly we thought the whole thing was pretty funny, but we’re gonna accept blame for presenting it in a manner where people could have thought otherwise.

Shifttusk, we’re sorry if we caused you any problems. That wasn’t out intention.

As for the Auto/Steady debate, we have a nice simple solution to show you, but thanks to the Patch we can’t do it.

Did anybody else feel like everything was a mess last night? The sounds of our shots didn’t sync with the graphics. It felt like we were pressing buttons and nothing was happening. This phenomenon was experienced by everybody in our Black Morass and Steamvaults runs last night.

We really dislike advancing This Is Right theories without statistical analysis to back them up. But right now we don’t trust the WoW universe to provide a stable platform for study. So until things settle down on the server and we can trust our action buttons again, we’re going to put the Auto/Steady debate on hold. We’ll then boogie to the ol’e BRK Proving Grounds and do our statistical analysis and make a pretty spreadsheet and chart and everything and slap it up here for all and sundry to peruse.

One of the problems of running this blog is responding to all the great comments and emails. There just isn’t enough time. For example, Pelides made a great comment about allowing Auto Shot to run unfettered during bonus-haste periods because he didn’t want to clip his Auto Shots. Very wise, we advocate that thouroughly.

Then we have the “missing 57 shots” disgrace of an analysis and the “what was going on” illogic. That deserves a giant /slap. If you’ve been in Gruul’s you know exactly what’s going on - people are dying and running and healing and potting and learning! 57 shots missing shots? Call it 60. Say our attack speed is 2.0. That’s 120 seconds we’re “missing shots”. Does you actually think we’re AFK-AutoShotting for 2 minutes? OMG yes, that’s EXACTLY what the comment says! That’s a pretty astounding statement; it takes us aback, it does.

And the next person who calls us “old guy stubborn” is gonna get a whuppin. We take a lot of abuse from Mrs BRK, we’re not gonna get it here, too. /shakes fist menacingly

The reason we don’t do the Auto/Steady/KC macro isn’t because we morally object to it - although we do - it’s because we have tried it, don’t like it, and never saw a DPS increase because of it. But you might be different! You may love it. You may think it’s all that and a bag of Funyons. There are hunters who adore it and wouldn’t leave home without it. Just because we don’t espouse it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try it.

Now Rionsy made a point about how we shouldn’t, “…expect everyone to accept that your play was flawless.” Oh no, no no no. We most certainly aren’t without flaws. We’re not the best hunter who posts here. We’re not the best hunter on our server or maybe even in our guild.

Our pathetic claims to fame are a fun anti-Forum blog and having advocated the BM spec before BM was cool. We don’t have the best gear, the most experience, or the biggest accomplishments, and we’re certainly not perfect. Anybody who has heard us scream obsenities into Vent knows we screw up quite royally on an almost minute-by-minute basis.

(We hope to add BRK Screw-Up Movies to the blog soon!)

Now we don’t disagree that adding more Steady Shots to our arsenal is a bad thing. The next time we’re AFK-AutoShotting, we’ll see if we can muster the energy to push another key or two.

But going Auto/Steady Macro-happy? That’s not us.

And finally, Jabari asked, “Who was responsible for keeping Scorpid up in those fights? Those shots don’t show up in WWS.”

We were. We always volunteer to keep Scorpid up, even against two mobs. Another of the “things we were doing” that affected the number of Steady Shots we used.

Two mobs?

Well, certainly. Let’s take the Attumen fight. Midnight and Attumen have to be tanked separately until they join. One hunter can keep a Scorpid up on each of them at the same time. What’s even cooler is that our timer bars even keep track of each Scorpid Sting separately. Tab-target, Scorpid, Tab-Target, Scorpid and resume DPS.

OK, so for a post where we were going to say, “we’re not going to be posting much today,” this has turned into one mongo-blather of a post. To everybody who comments and emails, thank you, we love getting the stuff. This Auto/Steady discussion has been heated but informative and, most of all, pretty un-Forums-like. We’re proud to be a part of this community.

OK folks, the comments and emails have made us feel uppity. Please standby for a rant.

/rant on

What is Ranged Attack Power? RAP is a damage-modifier. The higher your RAP the more damage you do.

What is Crit? Crit is a damage-modifier. The higher your Crit the more damage you do.

What is Hit? Hit is a damage-modifier. The closer you come to being hit-capped, the more damage you do.

What is Attack Speed? Attack Speed is a damage-modifier. The faster your Attack Speed the more damage you do.

What is Mana? No, mana is NOT a damage-modifier. The amount of mana you have does NOT affect your damage.

Mana is a Resource. Converting mana to Damage is damage-method, not a damage-modifier.

“WHOA!! Time OUT BRK! That there is a total load of bunkum. We hunters use Mana for our shots and stings and THOSE are damage-modifiers, ain’t they?”

Yes. But mana is not. Neither mana nor your Mana-Efficiency are damage-modifiers. The whole Auto/Steady argument is based around this mistaken concept:

Mana Efficiency = DPS

And that is totally, completely, off-the-wall Wrong.

Hunter #1: Has a pool of 5000 mana. He fires everything he has, goes balls-to-the-wall crazy. He kills his mob in 10 seconds and has no mana left.

Hunter #2: Has a pool of 5000 mana. He uses an Auto/Steady macro. He kills his mob in 13 seconds and has 1500 mana left.

Who wins?

Hunter #1 did the same amount of damage as Hunter #2 but he delivered it in a less time. His DPS was higher. He used more mana, he consumed more resources, but he did more DPS.

New mob, tougher and with more health.

Hunter #1: Has a pool of 5000 mana. He fires everything he has, goes balls-to-the-wall crazy. He runs out of mana after 10 seconds and has to rely on Auto Shot to kill the mob, which takes 20 seconds.

Hunter #2: Has a pool of 5000 mana. He uses an Auto/Steady macro. He kills his mob in 15 seconds and has 1300 mana left.

Who wins?

Now this time, Hunter #1 didn’t have enough resources. He was not capable of sustaining that level of DPS and used all his mana before the mob died. That certainly wasn’t optimum, of course not.

And this is when Hunter #2 yells out, “DUDE WTF! If you used Steady Shot you’d do more DPS!” And while technically Hunter #1 would’ve done more DPS with an Auto/Steady rotation it wouldn’t be because that combination does more damage. It would because Auto/Steady automatically manages mana consumption.

It is entirely accurate to state that Steady Shot increases people’s DPS because it alleviates them from having to manage their mana properly. But if you effectively manage your mana yourself you can do a lot more damage than Auto/Steady spamming.

Look at our data. Our Arcane Shot does more damage per shot than Steady. Yes, Arcane uses more mana, but if we don’t run out of mana then SO WHAT?!

We do more DPS with Arcane Shot because we deliver more damage at a faster rate than we do with Steady Shot. Now if we were a different spec that might be reversed, we’re not arguing that. But for Beastmasters, Arcane is a more powerful shot. Look at the data, it’s all there.

If you had Infinite Mana what would you use, the most mana-efficient shot rotation or would you go balls-to-the-wall crazy? That’s the key, right there. As long as you can maintain your mana reserves then you don’t need to use the most mana-efficient shot rotation. You can go balls-to-the-wall crazy if you practice one very important thing:

Better Mana Management.

High mana pools, high mana regeneration, Fel Mana potions, Mana totems, Mana Oil, Vampiric Touch, and Aspect of the Viper. There are loads of ways to increase your mana reserves and mana regeneration rates. If you can keep your mana reserves high there is no reason in the world not to use Arcane Shot instead of Steady Shot.

Weaving Auto/Steady is the most mana-efficient method of increasing your DPS. We have no argument with this statement, it’s a fact, end of story.

Weaving Auto/Steady is the most effective method of increasing your DPS. Bullpucky.

If you can maintain your mana reserves, using Arcane/Multi/Steady whenever their cooldowns are up, and without affecting your Auto Shot delivery, will provide the highest-sustained DPS possible.

Nobody calls Auto/Steady “Balls to the Wall DPS” for a reason. It ain’t.

However, it become your responsibility to modify your shot-rotation based upon the mana regeneration methods available to you. If you’ve got a shadow priest, mana totems, and an endless supply of Fel Mana potions, your clearance to go balls-to-the-wall crazy is granted. If you’re stuck in the MT and MH’s group and are potionless, the Auto/Steady rotation and Aspect of the Viper will probably help you the most.

Running out of mana in the middle of a fight is very, very Bad. But likewise, there is no bonus prize for finishing a boss fight with mana in reserve. The ultimate efficiency-goal is to watch a boss drop as you consume your last mana point.

Any mana you have remaining after a boss dies is Damage you didn’t do.

/rant off

P.S. Of course, we hope nobody takes this post as a personal attack. We expect lots of theorycrafting, number-crunching, STFU, and ElitistJerksFTW comments. As usual around here, that’s totally cool with us.

Edit: /mini rant on

We just looked at the WWS stats pics again. We did >25k damage more than the #2 and #3 total-damage folks and somehow Auto/Steady is going to make us do MORE damage? The people in our guild didn’t just fall through the Dark Portal wearing Winterspring greenies, folks.

/mini rant off

“Dear BRK, I ran Slave Pens for the first time this week and because our healer was MIA, we pugged one excellently-geared shammy. As we cleared the last trash before the final boss, we [got the Shaman's] sweet buff of nature resist. Because I am an Uber-Hunter-In-Training, I decided to put up Aspect of the Wild and further increase everyone’s nature resist and thus make them love me more. Suddenly, I’m getting yelled at by the pugged Shammy that, ‘AofW doesnt stack with the speacial buff, you n00b, L2P ect. ect.’

“So that got me thinking — when do I use AofW? Does it ever stack? How does it work? Please explain this strange aspect. Shlayer & VasDeferens”

Aspect of the Wild, Rank 3
150 Mana
Instant cast
The hunter and group members within 30 yards take on the Aspect of the Wild, increasing Nature resistance by 70. Only one Aspect can be active at a time.

So sayeth WoWWiki, so let it be done.

Now all the cr@p that they don’t tell you:

AotW does not stack with a Shaman’s Nature Resistance Totem.

AotW does not stack with a Druid’s Mark of the Wild.

AotW does not stack with magic-resistance potions.

AotW does stack with nature-resistance gear.

We have never seen a tank say, “OK, lemee slap on my nature-resist gear,” for a 5-man instance.

You know what stinks about being a tank? Having to collect resistance-gear. We remember our AQ-tanks b!tching up a storm at having to get nature-resist gear. What you guys should do is get your guild’s tailors to outfit you with those 20-slot bags gratis, just so you can lug around all that garbage.

But we’re a hunter not tank; maybe we’re just being stupid.

When running with a Shaman, always tailor your aspects to his totems. And it is perfectly acceptable to beg like a little boy crying at the grocery store for Crunch Berries for the Chamois to drop the agility totem. It’s that good.

However, when one of those mail-armor thieves decides to start mouthing off with “n00b-talk”, be sure demand a Totem of Adult Behavior.

“Dear BRK, I suffer from a terrible plight right now, nothing short of the dreaded ‘Only Marks spec is viable to raid’. And it’s hardly a ‘we’ situation, being my beloved pet is now so much less effective. So, after having to leave my last guild because they would never see the dizzying heights of Kara, I joined (name changed, for obvious reasons). The GM’s reasoning? Your pet will die too much in raids, and your damage will be gimped. This is from the very same GM who insists upon a constant application of Serpent Sting. I think you can now begin to understand my problem.

“I guess I’ll need to either tough it out, or go where proper hunters are really appreciated. Thanks for being an inspiration, and convincing me long ago not to be part of the problem. Cheers, Okssen & a not-so-big-and-red-Hemmingway.”

Well you know every commenter is going to preach “Leave the B@stages!” but dig a little deeper before you throw the /gquit tantrum. Get you, your guild’s Main Tank and your GM in a private channel. Explain to them the difference between Serpent and Scorpid Sting and what it means about pushing crushing blows off the tank’s Things to Worry About list. Let the MT voice his opinion of which sting he’d prefer.

If he chooses Serpent, you know you gotta leave. If he chooses Scorpid and the GM still insists on Serpent, you know you gotta leave. If they both say, “Yeah, Scorpid sounds good,” you have your opening to discuss all the other ways in which you know how to help the raid.

The number one way, of course, is to provide massive quantities of sustained, ranged DPS as a Beastmaster hunter.

“Dear BRK and Hobbes, I’ve just gotten Aspect of the Viper and would like advice on when and how to juggle … it with Aspect of the Hawk. Am I supposed to switch it off when using bow and on if in melee? It doesn’t seem to do much so I’m probably doing something wrong. Zaw and Miss.”

If you’re in Melee - yes, we just shuddered - you should have Aspect of the Monkey active, unless you’re fighting a warrior who will ZOMGOVERPOWER!! you if you dodge him. It’s always best to just trap their clanky @sses than fight them toe-to-toe.

Anyway.

Aspect of the Hawk (AotH) increases your ranged attack power, which increases your damage.

Aspect of the Viper (AotV) increases your mana-regeneration.

We have fixed quantity of mana. Hunters use mana for shots, stings, traps, etc. We need mana to do Our Thing.

All classes who use mana regenerate it in and out of combat. We regenerate mana at different rates depending upon our combat-state. We regenerate more mana out of combat than in. The mechanics behind mana-regeneration are best left to The Mana Experts, like The Egotistical Priest. Just stay out of her way while she’s cleaning and her blog is pretty safe, but you’ve been warned.

Mana-mechanics aside, hunters do run out of mana. The longer a fight lasts, the more often we perform mana-intensive activities, the more quickly we run out of mana. Running out of mana is Bad.

How can we keep from running out of mana or at least delay its onset? Aspect of the Viper, yes, good job.

(It’s at this point where we totally forgot the question and need to scroll back up and make sure we’re still on-track. A moment, if you please…)

OK, we’re back.

You switch AotV on when you are preparing to enter a situation where your mana reserves are going to be taxed. The Ring of Blood event in Nagrand is a good example of a mana-draining activity. A Karazhan boss-fight is another. If you are certain your mana supply will be sufficient so you don’t Die due to Lack of Mana, keep AotH running for the extra damage. If you believe your mana reserve will fall short, switch on AotV.

We can make a small macro that switches between these two aspects:

/castsequence Aspect of the Viper, Aspect of the Hawk

Instead of having both spells on our action bar, this single macro will switch between the two aspects and save an action bar slot.

Is there more? Sure; there’s always More. But for Zaw we want you to get the aforementioned basic concepts down. A solid foundation of fundamental concepts is critical to achieving your potential.

Mana good, Viper good. So easy a caveman could do it.

You cannot Misdirect a Karazhan rat onto your priest. Distracting Shot causes no damage, a rat is a yellow… thing, it should work! Yet when you Misdirect the rats, they just bug-out and run all over the place. Extremely disappointing, to say the least.

You cannot be flying over Halla, see a PvP-flagged horde in mid-air, become a Pararescue Skydiver, dismount, pop your Sha’tari Skyguard cape to cause a slowfall for ten seconds, shoot that horde and dismount him. They always get out of range, even on a 60% flying mount. We want a Quicker On The Draw enchant.

You cannot farm Motes of Air in Shadowmoon Valley without that d@mn rare elite floating eye showing up.

You cannot see that d@mn rare elite floating eye show up without announcing its presence to the entire guild, even though you know some crazy people are going to want to kill it, even though the entire guild knows it drops cr@p.

You cannot farm just one Cobra Scale, you must have two. And when you finally get that second Cobra Scale, the very next Cobra you kill will drop another scale, putting you at an odd number yet again. Maddening is not the word.

You cannot tease us with the +12 agility enchant to boots. Some things are sacrosanct.

You cannot tease us about our DPS when we Auto Shot our way through an instance because we know the tank is an undergeared alt and we didn’t want to pull aggro. This is fine, but getting uppity and snarky in the private chat-channel, even though we all know it’s totally in jest, demands retaliation! What we’ll do is get Brigin to tank Arcatraz for us - because he generates more threat than any tank we know - and then go full-bore DPS-insane. Yes, we’re that immature.

You cannot run Arcatraz without stopping to listen to those two bosses argue. They are a riot, especially when you kill the female boss first and then the male boss thanks you.

You cannot have enough leather. Ever. It’s an addiction. It’s sick. We need help, an intervention, a frontal lobotomy, something!

You cannot get fair market value for manufactured goods. If one buys four Primal Airs at 20 gold each, two Cobra Scales for 20 gold each, and four Heavy Knothide Leathers for 8 gold each, the material cost for a Cobrahide Leg Armor kit is 152 gold. If a we say, “I’ll charge you mats-costs only,” and then quote you 152 gold, don’t get mad. We’re not going to run around Shadowmoon Valley to farm Cobra Scales for you for free; that’s not our job.

You cannot have enough Sporeling Snacks. Ever.

You cannot try to rip us off and try to sell us a stack of 20 Strange Spores for 20 gold. What’s the d@mn matter with you?

You cannot argue about “No Summonses to Kara” rules. You don’t have to like it, but get yer @ss to the instance yourself like everybody else and shut up.

You cannot get the Sonic Spear to drop if Fate is against you. We stepped into a Shadow Lab run where the party was at Murmur and someone had to leave. Hobbes tanked Murmur, we rocked the house, Murmur down. Nada, no Spear. We may have to think about getting some of the daggers that drop in Karazhan and hold them for when the +20 agility enchant to one-handed weapons comes out.

You cannot fear a Bestial Wrathed pet, even in Halaa. Priests, you will live longer if you heal yourself for eighteen seconds and scream for help.

You cannot tell us that was a fat-free orange mocha! It wasn’t, my god we can tell you screwed it up! Just admit it!

You cannot try to sell us either Fel Mana Potions or Elixirs of Major Agility for more than three gold apiece. We’ll just buy the mats off the Auction House and have one of our guild’s 238 alchemists make them for us. We understand the concept of Making a Profit, but don’t be an @ss.

You cannot NOT have a scope on your bow or gun. That’s a hunter license-pullin’ offense if we catch you.

You cannot NOT know how to make a macro. One need not be able to program to be able to do a simple “/target demon chains” macro. If you’ve never messed with macros, do so now before it’s critical.

You cannot NOT use your pet. No no no no no. No.

You cannot dual-wield and then complain you cannot afford the +15 agility enchants. There are any number of two-handed weapons that will do a great job for you and will accept the readily-available +35 agility or +70 attack power enchants. You want to dual-wield that’s your business, but getting your +15 agility enchants is a You Problem.

You cannot wash your foot when you step on a slug and it explodes and gets slug juice and dirt and leaves all over you. The mucus a slug produces chemically reacts with water and gets sticker when wet. The trick is to dry the slug-stuff completely then peel it all off, then wash. If you do those procedures backwards, you’ll have dried, sticky, slug juice on you for the next couple of days.

Sorry TJ. We should’ve looked that up first before giving you advice. Our bad, totally.

We need to answer a question about Snake Traps, but we cannot get a good website for research as everything we try to look at is blocked. We have conflicting information and need an answer ASAP.

Our snakes use a Deadly Poison attack that stacks five times, but individually does:

A) 15 damage per 2 seconds - thanks to Liatra for the confirmation that this is correct
B) 15 damage per 12 seconds

Can anybody answer this? Which is the typo?

Edit: Thank you for the quick responses! However, you see the problem in that there are conflicting notes out there. Some say 15/12, some say 15/2. Can someone go drop a snake trap in-game and report back with the debuff really does, please?

That’s right, Patch 2.2 has hit the test realms. BRK has the total inside scoop on what hunters need to know, so let’s dive right in!

Aspect of the Cheetah: This ability will now cause Hunters to become dazed when struck while sitting.

And that’s how we bring it hard at BRK. Isn’t that great!

/sigh

Let’s hope for something worth mentioning next.

Aspect of the Pack: This ability will now cause party members to become dazed when struck while sitting.

/boggle

Ok, if we don’t get something good next, we’re gonna just delete this post and go back to readers’ letters.

Aspect of the Viper: This ability has received a slight redesign. The amount of mana regained will increase as the Hunter’s percentage of mana remaining decreases. At about 60% mana, it is equivalent to the previous version of Aspect of the Viper. Below that margin, it is better (up to twice as much mana as the old version); while above that margin, it will be less effective. The mana regained never drops below 10% of intellect every 5 sec. or goes above 50% of intellect every 5 sec.

/ponder

Intewesting, veddy veddy intewesting. So Viper is linear now and is going to become a scaling/logarithmic function. Not sure how this will play out; some testing shall be required.

Freezing Trap and Scare Beast duration against PvP targets has been reduced to 10 seconds.

Because hunters were too overpowering in PvP nowadays? Really, thanks. As Elaine said to the Soup Nazi, “NEXT!”

Hunter’s Mark: The duration remaining graphic will now display properly for Hunter’s Mark after it has been refreshed on a target, and will properly consume mana when recasting it to refresh its duration.

Now this is a good fix. Not the “properly consume mana part” of course; that was nice.

Kill Command will not charge the hunter mana if their pet is on passive.

We’re missing something here. If we’re attacking a target with our pet, he’s not on Stay or Follow, he’s on Attack. However, he can be on Defensive, Aggressive, or Passive and still be attacking. Does this mean we all get free Kill Commands now? Can anybody clarify this? Sometimes we think the patch notes need Patch Notes.

Misdirection: Items used while Misdirection is active will now consume a charge correctly.

This smells like Multi Shot, Volley, etc. fixes for Misdirection. If we fire a single Volley spell, it should consume a single Misdirection. If we fire a single Multi Shot, it should consume a single Misdirection. Testing on the PTR will confirm/deny our supposition.

Steady Shot: The tooltip stating the percentage of Attack Power gained by Steady Shot was inaccurate and has been corrected. The damage remains unchanged.

Thanky.

Volley: This spell is now affected by area damage caps. Its bonus damage coefficients have also been increased. It also correctly consumes charges of Misdirection.

Our totally useless Volley spell is getting a buff! The question is, just how buff is this buff? PTR, here we come.

Formula: Enchant Gloves - Superior Agility: This enchanting recipe is now available from the Keepers of Time Quartermaster. The reagents required have been adjusted to match the level 70 content.

Anybody beside BRK feel like singing? Oh happy day!!

Formula: Enchant Weapon - Greater Agility: This enchanting recipe is now available from the Violet Eye vendor.

This is the +15 agility to a 1h weapon, correct? This is more good news, but we don’t see anything about the “adjusting of reagents” which would be super-spiffy.

Edit: This is the +35 agility to 2h, we’re told. It’s already an Outland-Reagant enchant, so we’re totally cool with this.

Double Edit: We hate enchanting. Now we’re being told this is a new enchant. Is it, isn’t it? H3ll if we know. It’s agility, so it’s good. End of discussion.

Leggings of Beast Mastery: The stamina and armor granted by this item for your pet have been increased.

We’ve got ours in the bank. PTR-testing shall indicate just how nifty the next upgrade to these epic pants are.

And see? If we were named Thunderpants we could say, “Why yes, miss, we do have upgraded Epic Pants.”