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BigRedKitty: The better we get to know players, the more we find ourselves loving pets
Each week, Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the hunter class sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary. In case you haven't noticed, WoW Insider management has finally capitulated to the letters, emails, mass-marketing campaigns, sky-writings, bags of flaming poo on the stoop, and torch-bearing crowds that have been pelting the BigRedKitty doors with week-old nachos requesting, nay demanding, more than hunter-specific class columns. You got 'em now, so a hearty BRK Congratulations to your non-violent overthrow of the ruling class. WooT for revolution! It's the Big Pet Column this week and for many of you it's about frickin' time. We get daily garbage-barge deliveries of email asking pet-related questions. So many, in fact, that this subject hits #2 on our: Top Ten List of BRK's Most Commonly-Received Questions, Comments, and Threats 10. Where did you get that blue cat? (He's purple... he's a purple cat). 9. Can I have just one gold and then will you run me through Deadmines and then will you show me where my trainer is and then will you level my toon for me and then will you call me when he's about to take on Gruul so I can do that myself? 8. Would you please write another BRK-Self-Flame so I can steal it?
BigRedKitty: Proper hunter deportment
Each week, Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the hunter class sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary. Deportment: d?-pôrt'm??nt, noun. A manner of personal conduct; behavior. Why is it so important that we conduct ourselves in a manner in which the other classes don't have to? Because a lot of people think we hunters are expendable, that's why. We have a bad reputation and much of it fairly earned. In order to build up your Hunter Karma you'll need to work extra-hard at not being a PITA.There is a saying in the business community. Everybody who has a bad experience with your product will raise a ruckus and complain, but only one out of ten people who like your product will ever say anything to anybody. Negative press gets attention, folks, and hunters have a boat-load of it."Hunters break my sheep.""Hunters break my saps.""Hunters break my shackles.""Hunters always cry for pet heals.""Hunters grab aggro and then kite or melee the mob I'm supposed to be tanking.""Hunters think all loot is Huntard-Loot."So what can we do about this avalanche of negativity? How can we combat the Huntard Stereotype? What can you do personally to raise the awareness of proper hunter behavior? Get In, Sit Down, Shut Up, and Hang On. That's what.
BigRedKitty Patch Day Special: Top ten suprises in the new patch
Each week, Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for the hunter class sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary. Editor's note: We think Damh and Hobbes are trying to be funny. Rogues really don't need to be worried about what happens when they log in tonight. At least we're pretty sure they don't. 10. Rogues haven't just been nerfed, they've been completely eliminated from the game. Pfft. Gone. All Alliance Rogues are now Shaman, all Horde Rogues are now Paladins. Same gear though, so you'd better get to the Auction House quick. 9. Paladins can no longer pull. They can still tank but if they are in a party of two or more, they cannot attack a mob than has an empty threat list. The Blizzard programmers stated in the patch notes, "Until they learn how to pull without getting so much aggro that a hunter cannot peel off a mob to trap, we're not gonna change this." 8. Holy Priests, Holy Paladins and Resto Druids now get a monthly gold allowance sent in the mail. For every hour they play they get 5 gold tribute. "You'd pay them yourself if you could get a Shadow Lab run more than once per week, wouldn't you?" said Nikoli Bransdorf, instance programming intern and Beastmaster hunter. 7. New profession: Sheriff. Start out by putting the beggars in the pokie, move on to finding the level-one gold spammers and putting them in chains, and at 375 you will be able to fix bugged instances and quests with your Ancient Baton of Compliance. 6. The fishing arsenal has been upgraded to include spears, harpoons and an epic Engineering item, the Goblin Infisherator XL. Chunk this daddy into the ocean and a mild seismic explosion tosses enough marine life onto the beach that every Naga in Stranglethorn Vale will call you Master. Still want to hear the top five? Keep reading.
BigRedKitty: Five of the top ten things every class should know about hunters
Each week, Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for the hunter class sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary. Since there are more non-hunters who read WoW Insider than hunters, we've been asked to write a little something for the rest of the readers out there who aren't particularly interested if Hawk Eye is essential anymore, if the new Expose Weakness talent is going to be stronger than Trueshot Aura, or if guns are better than bows. Pfft. Guns FTW, right? Of course. There is a lot of goodness in the hunter class that BigRedKitty believes everybody needs to know about. So this column isn't for hunters but is instead for everyone else. This is the first in a two-part series about what a hunter can do for his party and bring to the table. When played properly, Hunters provide large quantities of sustained, ranged DPS, effective crowd control for all types of mobs and an amazing ability to rescue seemingly out-of-control situations. But there are things we love and things we hate. There are things at which we excel and things at which we stink. Knowing what a hunter can and cannot do will maximize the effectiveness of the next hunter who groups with you. "You mean hunters do more than wipe raids?" /snark Well, yes. Although we've known several hunters who would easily top the Raid Wiping category on the Armory, we do have some good qualities too.
BigRedKitty: Bad hunters are born, not made
Each week, Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for the hunter class sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary. Back in the days when 60 was the echelon, Molten Core was a big deal, and 72% of all hunters weren't Marksman, BigRedKitty had a different role among our peers on Khaz Modan. We were a simple Hunter Class Leader in a nice guild with many friends, both hunters and of the lesser classes, and providing large quantities of sustained ranged DPS was the simple order of the day. And then one day, we went into a Lower Blackrock Spire 10-man raid, but we took another 60 hunter from the guild with us. We were a 0/21/30 Survivalist and our hunter cohort was a 5/31/15 Marksman. He used a very fast bow, we used a very slow gun. He was a night elf, we were, of course, a dwarf. He had a wolf, we had our favorite cat, Hobbes. Opposite sides of the same class, as it were. Now this hunter loved to pug. He pugged everything, and I mean everything. As such, loot drops for him were an everyday occurrence. Eventually he had a Beaststalker Set, whereas we never saw the chest piece of shoulders drop, and it took BRK 25 runs to Warmaster Voone to get the Beaststalker's Gloves. Dang. Voone... I need to kill him again. Just out of spite. Anyway, by the time we finished the Troll boss – the guy who would "frog you", remember him? – we were very much ahead in the damage meters and our "uber-geared" Marksman was way down the list. His solution: my DamageMeters were broken. Of course, six of us had the most current version, we were all syncing, and we all had the numbers the same way. Still, it was obviously our fault. He asked, very haughtily, how anybody with my gear – the rare PvP set - could possibly out-DPS him. Of course, the explanation was simple...
BigRedKitty's List of Talent No-No's
Each week, Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for the hunter class sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary. The hunter talent trees stink. OK, that's an overstatement; not all of the individual talents are terrible, of course they're not. But there are several choice nuggets of rottenness that are so pungent they can befoul an otherwise pleasant afternoon of island-diving in Nagrand. Lest we forget, there have always been talents that people avoided like Stitches in Duskwood. (An aside: have you smacked Stitches to Undercity and back since you hit 70? Do it; it feels great.) Back in the day before the Burning Crusade, there were many analyses of the talents, mocking of the garbage, and culminating in the subsequent "correct talent builds". Eventually, the hunter community basically agreed upon the big three: 31/20/0 The Leveling Beastmaster. A common enough spec, yet very rarely used in instances as our pets were basically hindrances, both because of the weakness of our pets and the incompetence of the hunters who controlled them. Did you wipe your raid in Lower Blackrock Spire on the first jump? Of course you did. Hunters used this spec to level and get to 60, then they'd respec and do Zul'Gurub, Molten Core, etc. 5/31/15 The Raiding Spec. Proclaimed to be the best at maximizing steady DPS, this build eschewed crits for lots of Ranged Attack Power. There was nothing particularly wrong with this spec, it did it's job well. Equip a fast ranged weapon and let the Improved Aspect of the Hawk procs flow. It was also derisively called the "cookie-cutter build" by those of us who followed the other primary talent spec. You know, the one the cool kids used. 0/21/30 The PvP and Crit Specialist. If you wanted to one-shot squishies, this was your spec. Get a slow ranged weapon and lots of agility, stand at Iceblood Graveyard and when a late-arriving horde tried to get by you, crack him with Scatter Shot, back up just a bit, load Aimed Shot, wait for the crit... and take in the heady aroma of a beautiful one-shot kill. Golly, BRK has some fond memories of those days. Fast-forward to today, and the number of viable talent builds are too numerous to count. BigRedKitty has seen many examples of avante-garde talent specs that, while BRK wouldn't choose them, others have made very successful. In the Burning Crusade-era, we generally believe that whatever you select, if you can make it work, is just dandy. It's your $15 so do what you like. However...
BigRedKitty is thrilled to be here
Each week, Daniel Howell contributes Big Red Kitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for the hunter class sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary. So here we are in our new WoW Insider beach-side bungalow, a home-away-from-home, as it were. It's spacious and clean, but begging for some paint on the walls, trophies on the shelves, and some Sporeling Snacks in the fridge. Let's see what we can do about that. My name is Damh and I've been a World of Warcraft addict since March 2006, and have played a hunter since that April. As this new year arrived, the expectation of the Burning Crusade expansion blossomed in our hearts, and the one-year-anniversary of making my wife watch her bad 80s movies alone came closer, I decided I just couldn't go on posting my ideas and thoughts in my guild's hunter forum where they sat alone and unread. Perhaps I was naive, but I wanted to impart some wisdom and hoped someone might learn from my mistakes, gain some of my insight into the hunter class, and laugh at my jokes. So I made a blog upon which I could yap and babble, knowing full well that nobody would read it. I didn't care; it was for me. Ridiculously, my silly blog has surpassed 40,000 hits and, in its prime, averaged almost 900 hits per day. Our hunter brethren are apparently thirsty for knowledge, so I wrote, got email suggestions, and tried to make the site very personal and like a community. Remember that WoW Insider ran a contest looking for new columnists? Well, someone forwarded that page to me, I applied, was accepted, and *poof* here I am. But how exactly did I get here? Read on...
