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.

Once upon a time, there was a comedian who did a bit about Troy Aikman. Mr. Aikman is a famous, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback who was forced to retire due to receiving multiple concussions over his career. The joke went like this:

"Troy, you've been a Super Bowl MVP and are one of the greatest quarterbacks of the 20th century. How do you feel having to retire after receiving your 10th concussion, and how has that incredible series of blows affected your brain?"

"Ummmm... I like... pudding!"

How is this pertinent to WotLK and hunters? Well, the new 51st talent point in the beta of the Beastmaster tree is named Beast Mastery. As written, it's kind of obscure, a little open-ended, and the programmers don't seem to have a clue what it could really mean:

"We're still working on implementing this particular talent. The talent will allow you to train a different "class" of pets which we're calling "exotic" right now. Only hunters with this talent will be able to train those pets. They won't necessarily be "stronger" (though will all have unique abilities that you can only get from exotic pets), the extra power you should get from the talent will be from the additional pet skill points (pet talent points).

"Devilsaur anyone?"

So when pressed for an answer on the WotLK beta forums for what "exotic" entails, the blue-poster basically said, "Pudding!"

But did you ever have a doubt that BigRedKitty wouldn't know what "exotic" is? We sure hope not! We're totally on the case, ready to spill the beans on "exotic" pets, and announce what you 51/15/5 Beastmaster hunters can expect to find come expansion-time.

Devilsaur, indeed.

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.

It's Zul'Aman, baby, and you're playing the roughest, toughest ten-person instance in the game! You're feeling good, looking sharp...and all of the sudden, Bam! Hex Lord Malacrass rears his ugly mug. He's not fun, is he?

You wanna do your job as a hunter, right? Right! Well let's see if a BRK Hunter Guide Movie can give you some insight and testicular fortitude for this guy... can we say that? Yes? Oh OK, good. /whew.

Hex Lord drops something really pretty Hunter-loot for us Hunters, too! Well, let's rephrase that.

Hex Lord drops the single most hideous piece of Hunter-loot known to Dwarf-kind, the Coif of the Jungle Stalker.

/wretch

Great stats, loads of Win there. But... just don't look at it under bright lights for too long.

You are most welcome to download this movie (118.5 MB) by right-clicking here.

Another great big Thank You to the WoW Insider editors for allowing us to publish this movie both here and on our little blog at the same time!

I am just finishing things up in Los Angeles (E3 ended yesterday, and most of the team here is still recovering from the Joystiq meetup last night), so while I'm on the plane tomorrow, the one and only Matthew Rossi will be kind enough to host the WoW Insider Show for me. The show goes live on WoW Radio at 3:30pm Eastern, and he's rumored to have not only everyone's favorite ursine posterior, John Patricelli, as well as an appearance by none other than BRK, the Hunter with the Big Red Kitty. And Turpster should be on as well, rounding out an excellent team of podcasters. It should be a bang-up show, and I'm sure they'll chat about the beta, as well as the brand-new achievements system announced for Wrath, and whatever else I missed this week while playing amazing games at E3.

They'll also be chatting in the IRC channel, which you can find at irc.mmoirc.com at #wowradio, and they'll be reading your emails I'm sure -- you can send them messages at theshow@wowinsider.com. Rossi, in particular, is definitely a big fan of the new hairstyles, so be sure to ask him how he's going to dress up his main tank.

Definitely tune in and check them out, they're sure to talk about something you're interested in. It kicks off tomorrow afternoon at 3:30pm Eastern -- just load up WoW Radio around that time, and keep your ears open.

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.

Void Reaver used to be called Loot Reaver, thanks to a nifty addon called VoidReaverAlarm that made this fight as simple as, "Run to the Happy Face!" But then Blizz went and bamboozled us all by honking-up the Combat Log for this fight, making that addon useless. Since then, great gaggles of guilds have come to detest this fight and avoid it out of fear of wiping.

Well no more; it's time for you to get back in there and get your shoulders.

Void Reaver is a great opportunity for you to hone your huntering-skills and impress everybody with your ability to do damage when it counts and avoid damage when necessary. Void Reaver drops your tier five shoulder tokens and some awesome hunter-pants. With a little instruction, you and your guild can get back to Tempest Keep and score some phat loot for yourself.

/ninja hunter-pants

This video demonstrates the "traditional" method of fighting Void Reaver, not the, "Everybody in the middle except two kiting-hunters" method. We hope to do that movie in the near future.

You are most welcome to download this movie (101.6 MB) by right-clicking here.

Another great big Thank You to the WoW Insider editors for allowing us to publish this movie both here and on our little blog at the same time!

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.

The third boss you meet in Serpentshrine Cavern is Leotheras the Blind. Well, you could do Morogrim Tidewalker, but he seems to only drop caster-loot. Hunters don't care about that bubble-blowing doofus, so convince your guild to skip him, natch. Leo is where the Tier 5-gear loot flows!

You are most welcome to download this movie (36.8 MB) by right-clicking here.

Another great big Thank You to the WoW Insider editors for allowing us to publish this movie both here and on our little blog at the same time!

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.

The first boss you meet in Serpentshrine Cavern is Hydross the Unstable. Please allow us to present a Hunter-perspective into defeating this guy.

And yes, TJ really does need a present. Don't freak if you don't get it; it's not important to the fight.

You are most welcome to download this movie (34.9 MB) by right-clicking here.

Another great big Thank You to the WoW Insider editors for allowing us to publish this movie both here and on our little blog at the same time!

As planned, BigRedKitty and Ratshag had a very succesful "Running of da Bulls" last Saturday -- almost 400 Taurens ran their way from Mulgore all the way over to Hammerfall, and from the videos, the pictures, and other accounts, much fun was had by all.

BRK says that they made 200 purple shirts, which were apparently gone four hours before the race even started. The 500 person guild they formed filled up quickly, and estimates say that at peak, there were probably about 630 people on for the event, double the number of Horde on there most of the time. The winner of the race, Slokoshka, picked up a game card for their troubles, and then, not content with leaving hoof marks across half of Azeroth, the Tauren decided to raid Ironforge and made quite a mess of things there, too.

Seems like a lot of fun, and it all went for a good cause, too -- not only did everybody /moo for Sharvan, BRK and Ratshag's friend who passed away recently, but they also raised over $500 for Sharvan's family, who we're told also attended the race and were completely touched by how generous the WoW community can be. Very awesome.

Many of you might remember that a while back, we organized a Stormwind Stampede, where a bunch of us created a herd of Tauren over on Zangarmarsh, and then had a little footrace all the way to Stormwind. Our friend BigRedKitty is apparently putting something similar together this weekend -- he's calling it the Cinco de Mayo Running of da Bulls, and the final goal appears to be from Mulgore to Hammerfall (which means there's an Org to Undercity zepplin ride in there somewhere).

The whole event kicks off this Saturday, May 3rd over on Cenarion Circle. BRK is organizing the thing along with Ratshag of Need More Rage (he's the one who created the route, and it'll be his friend you're hunting for in Hammerfall). He's got more on his blog, including that the race is a tribute to a friend of theirs who passed away, and all the Tauren will be saying "moo" in respect.

Sounds like a lot of fun. If you want to join them, meet up in Mulgore on Cenarion Circle at 4:00 server time (which works out to 7:00 Eastern). And make sure to take some screenshots. For the Herd!

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.

Everything you ever wanted to know about The Lurker Below, Serpentshrine Cavern, The World of Warcraft, Hunterism, and Life Itself is right here, right now, oh yeah!

OK, OK. That's overboard, even for us.

Ahem.

We hope you like our little movie on how we play our hunter when fighting The Lurker Below in SSC. Better?

For those interested in WoWWebStats reports, here's a link to the anonymous report of this fight. We are Titan, Hobbes is Aristocat.

You are most welcome to download this movie (36.4MB) by right-clicking here.

A great big Thank You to the WoWInsider editors for allowing us to publish this movie both here and on our little blog at the same time!

Daniel Howell continues his quest to enslave... NO, EDUCATE! yeah, educate the WoW-playing masses as the hunter-pet duo extraordinaire known to lore as BigRedKitty. More of his theorycrafting and slanderous belittling of the lesser classes can be found at www.bigredkitty.net.

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.

We'd like to present for your entertainment pleasure a short movie of a hunter's perspective of the Moroes pull in Karazhan. The concept behind this project was to give hunters a visual guide for what their roles and responsibilities are, and the skill-set they can bring to a raid.

Your feedback will be most appreciated. Download the 48MB wide-screen version here.

Daniel Howell continues his quest to become the WoW-Scorsese as the hunter-pet duo extraordinaire known to lore as BigRedKitty. More of his theorycrafting and slanderous belittling of the lesser classes can be found at bigredkitty.blogspot.com.

"Dear BRK, I heard somewhere that Hit will eventually reach a point where it "maxes out" and adding more won't do any good. I figured if anybody knew where that point was, it would be you. I'm up to 167. Eric."

Great jumpin' night elves, Eric, you're stacking Hit like it was being replaced by Original Coke. Like hiding your Halloween candy because your older sister is trying to trade you all her mini-Snickers for your Pixy Stix. Like hoarding DKP because your raid group has Druids and Shaman oozing from every orifice. Like trying to sell Netherwing eggs.

You're stacking Hit for no reason.

Is that a problem? You bet it is. It's like running your 1987 Ford F-150 on super-unleaded. Like attaching an eleven-inch amber CRT to your $500 Nvidia video card. Like using 5-DPS bullets with your Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle. Like borrowing your dad's Porsche to take your first cousin on a bowling-date.

It's overkill for no purpose.

There's a lot of hullabaloo out there about what and why and why-not about Hit, and every class has a different set of rules when it comes determining the difference between smacking a mob in the face or whiffing into the air. So what are the mechanics of Hit, the least-understood Hunter statistic?

Let's take a peek under the Hunter-bonnet and see how we tick.

"Dear BRK, my guild of the past eighteen months is basically evaporating. So many people have left we've dropped below the critical mass necessary to do anything. We can't even put together a five-man instance run without a week and a half of chaotic scheduling. And this happened just as I hit 70. So at the point in the game where the focus really shifts over from solo content to multi-player content, I find myself effectively without a group.

"Last night I had a long whisper conversation with a recruitment officer for a larger, more active guild, and she basically handed me an open invitation. But I don't know whether I should take it because this guild is focused on raiding. Since I essentially soloed my way to 70, I barely even know what raiding is.

"I'm not a total noob; I understand my class fairly well, I can manage my pet, we make a good team. But the two of us have very little group experience. We've only been in three instances in a year and a half of playing the game! I don't want to join a hot new guild only to embarrass myself and frustrate my teammates with my ignorance. Where should I go, or what should I do, to learn the basics of how the multiplayer parts of the game work?

"Is there some quick get-up-to-speed briefing online that will at least let me get the vocabulary down, so I don't have to say stupid things like 'What's Kara?' and 'What does attunement mean?' -- Name withheld by request --"

What is Karazhan?

Karazhan is a 10-person instance where your guild goes to beat thirteen bosses and have loot drop that nobody in your raid can use. Basically, Karazhan is a place enchanters go to level their sharding skills.

But what is a hunter's job in this place? Why are we there and what do we do? How about we go through the bosses one at a time and talk briefly about what you can expect your role to be.

This shall be quick and dirty. We expect the comments to overflow with recommendations to help provide more details.

You know the sleuths at the BRK Patch Notes Spelunkers and Code-Crackers Institute have been hard at work delving into an ASCII-text dump of the new patch. They get paid little, get zero vacation, and are injected daily with vaccines and growth hormones. Their sacrifice is done for your benefit and our profits; they should be praised loudly and often.

But we're a little busy, so we're putting that on our BRK To-Do List.

Unfortunately, the results of several mangled code-scanning attempts had to be trashed, including what we thought was a new demon-minion for Warlocks but was really just the rantings of a highly-tortured programmer venting his misery in the code-comments. But we now think we got the parsing right and are ready to proceed. All systems are Go.

Since the blue-posts have been made and the workings have been finalized, we can release our report.

Believe us, it's a doozy.

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 the lovely dawn of the Burning Crusade era, before the bugs were patched, the mobs scaled-down, and the promise of ten more talent points gnawed on our brains like termites in a house made of sticks, there were some wonderful situations that required skill, patience, tenacity, and guile.

They needed, in a word, a hunter.

And you and your hunter brethren were there to fill the void, to complete the circle, to provide the key ingredients toward making those impossible dreams come true. It was glorious, it was awe-inspiring, it was waves of gratitude from the massive collection of the lesser classes crashing over the Internet and into your headphones inspiring you to greatness. You were giddy. You were excited. You were quasi-but-not-really god-like.

And then Blizz nerfed it all to Sporeggar and back again. Typical.

But the echos of past glory still exists. For many of us, those memories are fresh and intoxicating. For others, they are a myth and only spoken of in hushed tones and in quiet, dark places where we meet to plot our return to prominence.

Let's bring our pain and suffering into the light. Let's remember what has happened and what has been and talk about it openly and with pride. BRK teaches young hunters to hone skills that are not needed in today's game because the day may come when our talents are once again critical to our guild's success.

Do you remember when they were?