In case you haven’t heard, WoW Insider needs more bloggers. They really need one specifically for PvP and want another dedicated columnist.

BRK is a “columnist” and generally writes one huge mongo post per week. Our contract - and there is a legal contract - calls for 1000 words but we usually churn out 1500-2000. Our post today - 1:00pm EST, a little early again - is a neat 2001 words. A blogger will be asked for two or three posts per day, in the 400-words range each.

Blogging for WoW Insider FAQs:

Ya get paid. Not enough to cover tuition for a semester but enough for books and an Orangina. Bloggers get $10 per post, so at two posts per day you could bring down $600 per month if you’re really prolific like our editor, Elizabeth.

Ya get slammed. People love to be rude, crude and lewd in the comments and frankly don’t care about hurting feelings. Fortunately, we laugh a great deal at the flamers and derive much pleasure to see them make fools of themselves. But if your ego is fragile and your constitution delicate, you must prepare yourself for the maniacal rantings of the masses.

Ya get shamed. Sometime you make a mistake. When you say that a gorilla’s Thunderstomp stuns mobs and it doesn’t, when you mess up a mathematical formula, when you are positive that something works as Method A but it really works as Method B, your ego takes a battering. Over 3 million people read WoW Insider every month and your mistakes are made public, Big Time.

Ya get praise. The amount of love we’ve received from the readers is enormous. Each “thank you” is worth 100,000 “you sux”. We love getting emails from people who have learned something from our blog and column and are happier for it.

Let us know if you apply. We have been credited with pushing a lot of people into the blogging arena and would be fascinated to see if a new WI blogger was borne from the BRK Ranks.

Our WoW Insider column is done and it’s being proofread. Thank you TJ, our BRK Executive Assistant. She’ll complain about our commas, just you watch.

Simple Attumen, Moroes and Maiden run for some newly-keyed guild members and we were happy to provide massive quantities of sustained, ranged DPS for them. All bosses down, no real problems. Well, healing and cleansing on Maiden was troublesome, but they were new and BRK and Brigin were there to keep everything in check.

Maiden’s curse nuked a few people before the main tank was smooshed and Brigin took over. Of course some Boomkim chain-critted at just the wrong time. Maiden smashed her way over to the druid ready to do some Impure-Thought buttkicking, but Brigin sauntered over, casually bellowed, “COME BACK HERE!” while doing something Tanky, grabbed Maiden by the hair and dragged her back to the center of the room where we burned her down. People, there is nothing better in the game than a competent tank. So sayeth BRK, so let it be done.

After Attumen and before Moroes, the raid brought in a shadow priest. We didn’t notice - even with Vampiric Embrace pumping us full of mana - until we were about three pulls away from Maiden. Paying Attention FTW.

We’re not sure if mages die a lot because they wear cloth or if the wear cloth because they die a lot, but d@mn did our mage die a lot. Like on every AoE pull. Splat, sploot, splosh, dead squishy all the frickin’ time.

We have requested a dungeon guide from a new hunter-blogger. He said he knew everything there was to know about Deadmines, so we’re putting him to the test. Seriously. We’re quite excited; the rough draft looks very promising.

Edit: We were right, she loathed our commas. Also, we were bumped up in the rotation. BRK on WoW Insider is available right now!

“Dear BRK, after weeks of Karazhan runs as a MM hunter I grew tired of fighting with all the other MM hunters to avoid being last in the damage list. Watching all those smug warlocks, mages, rogues and DPS warriors reveling in their high damage positions was too much. So, I re-specced to the BRK build and retrained my cat, Tom, to be BRK standard.

“For all the doubters, rules lawyers and math wizards out there: Arguing about which build CAN do better DPS and damage is moot as the only thing that matters is which build DOES do better DPS and damage. Consider me another data point that shows that if you want to max your damage out then you’ll spec 41/20/0 … {Some heavy-duty trash-talking followed that, while we appreciate it, might be offputting to others, so we’re keeping it to ourselves. Imagine Rowdy Roddy Piper on Piper’s Corner and you’ll get the idea.} … Dbloadpants”

So it’s Wednesday and that means BRK on WoW Insider. The column is being scrutinized by the new BRK Executive Assistant and, baring any massive problems, will be published at our traditional 3:00pm EST slot.

STS-118 is being launched today, so it’s busy on the Kennedy Space Center / Cape Canaveral spaceport. Add our dental appointment to our schedule and we’re not going to be posting much more today.

“BRK, I love you. If it weren’t for the infamous prowess of Mrs. BRK, the fact that you are many many years my senior, that I’m already dating a Shadow priest [and] that [I'm] incredibly intimidating, I would stalk you. That said, PLEASE find your *ahem* manly parts and don’t be afraid to use them on WI, not just on your site. Vixenytli”

What the h3ll is this “many many years my senior” stuff?! We’re totally wiggin’ out! (Is that what the kids say nowadays?)

But aside from that, we are NOT going to allow our… manly parts be challenged. We know exactly where they are and how… um, this could get way beyond the PG-13 rating-limit we’ve set for ourselves if we’re not careful.

And we don’t want to be on the receiving end of [The BRK Ban Hammer].So what are we gonna do about? We’ll tell you what we’re going to do about it. Here’s the title of next week’s column:

We’ll may get fired, we may get a Bridport prize, we may get both.

Our 3:00pm WoW Insider publishing time has been delayed until 3:30pm so that more BlizzCon coverage can swamp the front page of WoW Insider. We feel like we got bumped for Charo on Johnny Carson.

Tonight is our guild’s first attempt at two simultaneous Karazhan groups. We hereby bet that at least three people will be no-shows, forcing a merger of the two groups and making seven people really, really angry.

This is BigRedKitty and we run a blog for Hunters.

We don’t use the singular pronoun “I” as it is our humble belief that a hunter is a dual-entity; hunter and pet.

We don’t moderate comments but reserve to delete anything above PG-13.

We encourage friendly debate and disagreements with the author and other commentors.

We give out BRK Cool Points to those folks who provide insightful or humorous contributions.

We encourage you to register and to not comment anonymously.

If you are going to criticize, you are free to do so. If you are going to criticize, make sure to use make your armory profile readily apparent so we have some indication of your experience and accomplishments.

There are several people here who are frequent contributors and their opinions hold some weight around these parts. BRK doesn’t always agree with them but does always take their views seriously and won’t dismiss them out-of-hand.

We believe - and we hope we’ve proven beyond any reasonable doubt - that Beastmaster is the highest sustained-DPS spec. This does not make BM better than MM or SV, just capable of the highest sustained-DPS.

We believe there are many Right Ways to play a Hunter and just because you are different doesn’t make you Wrong.

We believe there are several Wrong Ways to play a Hunter - melee hunters top this list - and will proselytize against them when necessary.

We will readily admit when we are wrong or make a mistake. We will post edits to correct incorrect data. But we demand facts, references and in-game analysis before we capitulate. “Everybody Knows” is not a fact.

We started this blog because we wanted a place to post our questions, our ideas and our rants without the lunacy that is the official WoW forums. For some silly reason people have latched onto this idea and found BRK the Blog a fun place to hang out. Please keep it that way.

Every Wednesday, we post a column on WoW Insider at 3:00pm EST. We are paid for that column and it becomes their intellectual property once published. We cannot repost it here.

We love getting email! Send us your questions, comments, ideas and maniacal ravings. Many questions are used in the blog, so be sure to include your hunter’s name and your pet’s name. If you play a Lesser Class, we’ll read your mail, too.

If you link to us, we’ll know it. If you have a cool WoW blog, we’ll link to you. If you keep it going, we’ll include you on our BRK’s Links to Good WoW Blogs list.

This blog now has 500 posts concerning the hunter class and other assorted oddities and interesting things. There’s lots to read, so we hope you have a good time here.

/wave
/greet

BigRedKitty on WoW Insider, tonight at 6:30pm. We’d like to thank the rotten b@stards who f-ed with our computer for screwing up our cookies so we couldn’t log on until we got home.

Well, we’ve had it with Improved Aspect of the Hawk. Again. Well, really, more like for the 20th time or something.

Our latest Curator fight really made us aware that if we’re not going to be running with a Shadow Priest, Aspect of the Viper is crucial to our efficiency. And since we’re going to continue to be running AotV, IAotH isn’t going to proc. For our current situation, IAotH isn’t helping us at all, so away it goes.

What gets to be on-stage in its place? We’re grabbing 3/3 in Thick Hide and 2/2 in Animal Handler. More pet-hits is more pet-damage and that’s our bag, baby. Thick Hide bumps Hobbes’ armor back above 10,000 again and Felreaver’s - our Warp Hunter - is above 12,000. Basically, our pets get 20% more armor which, according to the tooltips, translates to an extra 5% reduction in melee damage. Are we excited about that? Meh. Big Melee Things should be tanked by players, not pets. Hobbes can tank a caster easily, but without heals he is really no more capable of tanking the Moroes melee adds than he was before. Which is to say he can’t.

But what else are we gonna take? Improved “I can’t keep my pet alive”? Ehhh, no.

As for BRK on WoW Insider, we’re having technical issues in that we cannot log on the site to upload our column. We’ve sent emails full of outrage and crying to the WebLogs folks, but so far no luck in resolving this. Will BRK on WI be delayed? Quite possibly, yes.

We used to have a password-archival utility on our computer for just such an emergency, but The Company stripped all our “non-essential” software - like WinZip, Adobe Illustrator, GraphicsConverter, PDFWriter, WoWWiki.com and the URL to our gambling-for-porn addiction - and then locked down the operating system so we can’t do anything “essential” anymore.

But we do have MS Project now. Yay. /pffft

“If we take out a Fel Reaver, can we use the MacGuyver Accessory Kit to patch it back up, and turn its AA weaponry against the other faction? Because seriously, nothing would make Engineering more fun then a Gnome piloting a Fel Reaver and using it to shoot down all incoming flights to Thallmar. Tridus“

OMG! Yes you can! This is the type of brilliant thinking that propels man to the stars, that makes us expand our consciousness into places undreamt. This is Big Thinking and we love it!

+5 BRK Cool Points! (Sometimes we feel like Professor McGonagall awarding House Points, you know?)

/sings Amazing Grace