In the meantime, my spriest gets leveled. There have been three problems with this:

Hunter-noobs. The never-ending parade of “incorrect’ pets. Not using pets at all. Walking into extra trash. I mean, I have seen hunters just prance into a second group of mobs more than any other class. Not using anything but Autoshot; my shadowfiend has out-dps’d some hunters. Just awful stuff.

Tanks who think ever pack must be destroyed. Yes we clear instances pretty quick, ignoring most boss-mechanics, but do they have to clear the ENTIRE instance?

When the healer drops and people think the spriest can heal.

/gulp

First off, I never switch to my Discipline spec because, frankly, I never remember to. I go OOM faster than any healer in the history of WoW as a result.

Second, I have no idea what any of those Disc spells do. I need a d@mn training dummy for healing.

I “healed” all of Botanica, except the final boss, with only two DPS. I haven’t sweated that much since downing Rags in Firelands for the first time.

BRK: AAUUUGGGH! THE TANK HAS 80% HEALTH!

Brain: Just throw a Flash Heal on him.

BRK: WHERE’S THE BUTTON?! WHERE’S THE BUTTON?!

Brain: Same place it is when you’re dps’ing; you didn’t let me change specs.

BRK: HE’S HEALED?! IS IT OVER?!

Brain: Yes, the four mobs are dead.

BRK: HE’S MOVING TO HE NEXT PACK AND I’M AT 80% MANA!! /OOM D@MN YOU!

Brain: You don’t need to drink. You have plenty of mana for these trash pulls.

BRK: IF THE TANK DIES I’M GONNA PASS OUT!

Brain: Shield him; throw a HoT, then standby with a Flash Heal. He’s a Paladin; he’ll be fine.

BRK: IF I SHIELD HIM HE WON’T GENERATE RAGE AND HE’LL FREAK OUT!

Brain: He’s a Paladin; he doesn’t use rage.

BRK: THE HUNTER JUST WALKED INTO ANOTHER PACK!! HE’S TAKING DAMAGE!

Brain: Target the hunter using your Party plates, hit Flash Heal, retarget the tank.

BRK: THE PARTY PLATES ARE WAAAAAY OVER ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SCREEN!! I’LL NEVER MAKE IT! I NEED MACROS!

Brain: The hunter is a noob; let him die. Keep that rogue alive.

BRK: THE ROGUE?! WE HAVE A ROGUE?! CHRIST ON A POGO STICK WHERE?!

Brain: It doesn’t matter “where”; just target him and throw a Flash…

BRK: THE ROGUE AND THE TANK TOOK DAMAGE AT THE SAME TIME!! AUUUGGHH!

Brain: You really do need to change specs someday.

BRK: I JUST SHIELDED MYSELF!

Brain: Why?

BRK: BECAUSE MY MACRO SHIELDS ME IF I DON’T HAVE A TARGET! I THINK I HIT THE ESC KEY WHILE I FLAILED!

Brain: Tell the party to wait while you drink.

BRK: /p DPS LIKE YOUR MOTHERS’ LIVES DEPEND UPON IT! I MIGHT SHIELD THE BOSS OR SOME STUPID CRAP! I NEED MANA POTS! I NEED TO DRINK!

Brain: Calm in the face of danger, I see.

BRK: THE ROGUE IS IN PRISON AND I CAN’T HEAL HIM! /slam slam slam slam

Brain: Heal. The tank.

BRK: LOOK LOOK LOOK I FLASH HEALED THE ROGUE!

Brain: You’re a god among men.

“Holyhanna has joined the party.”

BRK: I wanna go solo Dragon Soul; it’d be less stressful.

Brain: And quieter. Now go get me a Dr. Pepper. And a brownie. A small one.

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Post from: Brain Needed Space

I’ll Never MD on a Healer Again. Probably

Enter Looking for Group and my Shadow Priest, Julzie.

If it were just a matter of questing, I would have quit her long ago, as I always have in the past. However, as I’m actually able to actually run 5-man instances with her, I’m really enjoying this! When I leveled my hunter it was almost an impossibility to get into an appropriate 5-man instance. Now it’s just a matter of a few button clicks and I’m doing DPS in an instance with similar people with reasonable skill and (usually) moderate temperament.

And I get lots of phat loot, fozhizzle!

Things I Enjoy About Spriesting

1. Running amok in a pack of mobs being AoE-tanked and dotting the place up. As a gnome, I get +10 to bouncing, so this activity is a big favorite.

2. Watching my BoA-gear scale with my level.

3. Laying the smack down on hunters who roll Need on my wands.

4. Pulling aggro from tanks. As a hunter I worked hard not to do this, but as a spriest I take great pleasure in this. There’s no logic to it, but it’s true.

5. Shadow Word: Death. I don’t care how much damage I take, I love this spell.

5. Since getting into an instance is easy-peasy, I get to tell-off bad tanks and DPS when they’re screwing up. In Scholomance I had a tank pull Rattlegore’s entire room three times, wiping us each time, and then complain that all I did was Wand. I let him have it and we eventually kicked him. Five years ago, as a hunter, I would’ve had to shut up and take it as I got into only two or three instances per week.

Things I Don’t Enjoy About Spriesting

1. I really can’t AoE. At least not yet. I always thought a spriest could AoE. Color me “Ignorant”. Dot dot dot dot, Big Dot, Mind Flay, SWD, drink like a mo-fo as the group runs ahead of me.

2. Mana-conservation is nearly impossible. I should drop Inscription and take Alchemy just for the mana potions. When I’m behind a tank who doesn’t want to take drinking-breaks, I end up Wanding trash the entire way.

3. There’s no Spriest Community. Should I be Power Word: Shielding the tank as a spriest? If there’s another priest, I know the answer is to let him use his more powerful shield to the work, but if I’m the only priest, should I drop shields? I macro’d it to PWS my focus before boss fights, but perhaps I shouldn’t. I have no idea and there are no good spriest blogs to let me know.

So I really do have an alt. You might want to stack up on canned good and bottle water; the end of the world is nigh.

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Post from: Brain Needed Space

Don’t Mock My Bouncing; It’s Critical to My DPS

/blown away

My Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle is reborn. I could cry! I missed my boom-stick so very much.

/sniffle

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Post from: Brain Needed Space

Tickled!

I like Looking for Raid and I like the up-scaling for 10-man normal. I like not having an hour’s worth of trash to pull to start. I like not having to do something other than Be A Hunter. I like that there’s a nice mix of Boss Dancing and DPS Like a Mo-Fo.

Why in blue-blazes am I always number one DPS in LFR? And it’s usually not close. When I raid 10s with my guild I have to fight to be on top of the meters, usually with a feral druid and two rogues either barely beating me or nipping at my heels. But in LFR I’m blowing people away. Yes I think I have good gear – GuildOx says I’m in the top 100 of ilevel on my server – but should I be out-dpsing people by 3000dps on Ultraxion in LFR?

There’s few things that make ranged DPS more giddy than listening to melee whine and cry on Morchok. /gigglesnort

I know LFR raid bosses are scaled down damage-wise, but my guild fights like the dickens on Bouncy-Ball Boss, while in LFR we just ignore the d@mn thing. Is completely ignoring the fight-mechanics and being successful at it “Good Design”?

I am confident enough to try my Survival spec in my next Dragon Soul run. On the target dummies I do ~1500dps more than I do as a Beastmaster. I should do something to show how I use PowerAuras to make SV easy-peasie.

For all you hunters thinking about going SV, remember this: your SV-pet is still putting out more than 2400dps. If you let your pet die, you’ll be doing less DPS than if you ran BM, guaranteed. You cannot, CAN NOT, run as SV and ignore your pet. The entire point of running SV is do to more DPS than BM, not less.

Exception that proves the previous rule: If you just stunk under glass as a BM hunter, go ahead and run SV. Run MM if you want. Reroll as a squishie, preferably.

I had more fun wiping/learning Ultraxion than any boss in Firelands. Getting Rags down was a relief, getting Ultraxion down was a rush!

Those tendons on Spine kill my pet almost every time! I need to re-spec a spirit beast just for that fight, methinks.

Yes, I raid with four differently-spec’d spirit beasts. And a devilsaur which I pop out if the tank gets mouthy.

I still really have no idea what’s going on during Madness other than accomplishing my DPS-target rotation.

Best moment in LFR so far, wiping-on-Ultraxion blather:

Mage: Can the #1 dps get Focus Magic?!

BRK: I don’t need it, thanks for thinking of me, though.

Mage: LOL. Nub. I’m #1 dps.

BRK: You have #1 dps because you died after three seconds pulling aggro from the tank. You were dead for five minutes. If you look at the meters again, you’ll see that doing 100,000 damage in two seconds isn’t something to brag about when the rogues and I each have 4,000,000.

Mage: Well if I hadn’t died…

BRK: If you hadn’t died you wouldn’t be a Squishie. Now get your FM and enjoy your #8 spot on the meters while the rogues and I teach you a lesson on Staying Alive.

Mage: /silence

Rogues: /silence

BRK: Notice how the rogues aren’t talking because they’re too busy wondering how a BM hunter kicked their @sses? That’s another lesson for you.

Rogue #1: HEY!

Rogue #2: Shut up n fight.

BRK: Gotta give those rogues Legendaries to make them useful nowadays. I’m here in greenies and shooting with a Fishing Pole.

Rogue #1: LOL

Rogue #2: how u get in LFR with greenies?

Rogue #1: He’s not in greenies, he’s messing with us.

BRK: My pants are on backwards, I’m using a shield, and some Arcane Mage just FM’d me. Pull already; I got loot to ninja.

I am seriously considering macro’ing that last line and using it every time I go into LFR. It reminds me of my Alterac Valley days of macro’ing stupid stuff to encourage people to all rush the mine or KILL RAMS FTW!

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Post from: Brain Needed Space

Thoughts on Dragon Soul

I declined, I believe using several foul invectives. A gesture might have been involved, too. And a projectile.

But then thought better of it, and accepted!

The gift basket had nothing to do with my change of heart. Nor did the envelope full of McDonald’s Monopoly pieces. Nor the Krugerand.

If you’ve not listened to Hearthcast, the are a podcast for the “average WoW player”. Check it out, Facebook them, Twitter em up, whatever it is the kids do.

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Post from: Brain Needed Space

Another 100

Elvui working properly? Nope, the first update blew up and the second update barely worked.

Accurate Recount to see if the BM-buffs are good? Nope, all pets in the area are included, so I’ve got tiny trees and imps corrupting my reports, not to mention the new bosses aren’t parsed.

Loot-success in our guild’s first Dragon Soul 10-man raid?

Um, yeah. A little.

We dropped two bosses and BRK got gear from each of them. We don’t have an Enhancement Shaman so all the DPS-mail gear is mine. Not only that, but the BoEs are dropping from trash again and we got a new belt as well. Three pieces of iLevel 397 gear in two hours for da Hunter.

What’s even sadder? We had a second hunter in the raid for a while as our feral druid had Internet problems. While that hunter was in, a new leatherworking pattern dropped from the trash. That’s right, it was a mail agility pants pattern; moar Hunter Loot. I passed as I won the gloves from the first boss. Had our druid been on-time, I would be wh0r3ing it up even more in this post!

It’s fun to be on the cutting-edge of loot again, fo’shizzle.

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Post from: Brain Needed Space

Haven’t Done One of These Posts in a While

Now I don’t usually get into hunter mechanics anymore other than tell you not to always believe what other peoples’ stats think they tell them. Here I’m going to show you exactly why I believe this.

My friend emailed me two World of Logs links, one with an ilevel 376 Marksmanship hunter and his 26k DPS against regular 10-man Baleroc and another with my ilevel 381 Beastmastery hunter and his 23k DPS against regular 10-man Baleroc. Using this as an example, he supported his position that BM is broken and needs a buff.

Perhaps BM is broken. Perhaps we need a buff. But we can exclude this example as supporting evidence as we cannot determine how the DPS was obtained. In other words:

The results of the experiment are invalid without a thorough examination of the METHOD of the experiment.

On regular 10-man Baleroc, the strategy my guild uses is to rotate each of the six DPSers on the shards so nobody takes too much damage. There are some people who can take many more stacks of the shard debuff than others, but we don’t ask them to do so as it’s easy enough to kill Baleroc without asking some people to absorb shards while allowing ranged to stay at range and not stop dps-ing. Everybody dances!

Now we have done Baleroc and allowed BRK to stay at range and not take shards. This was done earlier in the expansion where my DPS was necessary to be maximized to make up for the lower DPS of the rest of the guild. In that case, some casters were asked to absorb more shard damage than they are now. Their gear and talents permitted them to absorb that damage, and thus by not putting this hunter in melee range, overall raid DPS increased. So back then, I just sat back at range and used Baleroc as a target dummy. No dancing for the hunter.

My gear back then was not as good as it is now, so my target-dummy DPS was lower. However, as I didn’t have to dance and cease DPSing as I stood on a shard in melee range, my total DPS on Baleroc was not gimped like it is now. Now when we do Baleroc, I take some shard and have to stop DPSing and thus my place on the meters goes way, way down.

lesser gear + no melee range >= better gear + melee range 

What happens when I’m allowed to sit back and smash a boss without interuption?

This was from 10 Nov 2011, regular 10-man Staghelm. (We blew through regular 10-man instead of practicing heroics as a lot of raiders wanted to rush out and buy another game, apparently, and we wanted our reg Rags phat lootz.) Yes, it’s regular Firelands. Yes, it’s 10-man. But I sure don’t feel gimped or broken.

Maybe this is just me. I do go out to the target dummy with a Marksman spec and a wasp pet and try to DPS, you know. To me, it feels clunky. Aimed Shot freaks me out. A pet doing 2k DPS makes me a sad hunter.

Is my gear not maxed for Marksmanship rotations? Am I not using Rapid Fire properly? Is a wasp the dumbest choice for a raiding MM hunter? I love my LSD Wasp of Doom!

Maybe, just maybe, I just plain suck at Marksman. The big cheese. The big enchilada. A great big tall frost glass of AwseomeFail.

Might be me.

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Post from: Brain Needed Space

The 2012 Beetle Isn’t Bad

New Expansion – Mists of Pandaria

The connotation is cool, quiet, reflective, peaceful, and even spiritual. I like it.

Pandas.

…

Pandas.

…

I’ll vote with the “Let’s Wait and See” crowd for the moment. But still… Pandas?

New Class – Monk

Hand to hand combat specialist using Chi? I’d buy an xpac just for this alone.

Level Cap – 90

Duh.

Five Zone Continent (Single Unified Continent)

• Asian Influence
• Auction House, Bank, Central Questing Hub
• No Flying till Max Level
• Scale is 3x bigger then Twilight Highlands

Rock me, sock me, at the launch party ya better not block me. The single greatest thing I’ve ever experienced in WoW was the initial portal into Outland. Gimme that again!

As far as the content itself, I am a huge lover of Chinese movies with English subtitles, so the “Asian influence” is an instant Yes for me.

The Wandering Isle – Giant Turtle Starter Zone

Hijacked from Avatar, the Last Air Bender. I actually really like this cartoon, although the movie was warlock-awful. Let’s hope Blizz goes cartoon, not movie.

First Neutral Race with a One Way Choice to be Alliance or Horde

IS THAT PANDA MY FRIEND OR MY ENEMY?! Aside from that little bugaboo, I love it.

Pandarian can be Hunter, Mage, Monk, Warrior, Shaman, Rogue, Priest

DEAR ELUNE I get to be a Panda Hunter with a Bear pet!! That’s a great big tall frosty glass of Win, right there.

Monk

• Brewmaster – Tank
• Mistweaver – Healer
• Windwalker – Melee DPS

Brewmaster? That’s a Dwarf title! I’m outraged. If this doesn’t get changed, I’ll be surprised. It just doesn’t seem to fit the theme.

Pandarian Racials

• Bouncy: reduces fall damage by half
• Inner Peace: double rested XP
• Gourmand: +15 to cooking
• Epicurean: double stats to food buffs
• Quaking Palm: puts target to sleep for 3 seconds

Bouncy? You could apply this to being a tank as well, couldn’t you? Inner Peace means I’ll actually level this guy. Epicurean I like, but how about making a Sommelier that gets double stats to drink buffs, too?!

New Talent System

I’ve looked at the preliminary talent calculator and I gotta say I’m not impressed, especially with the Hunter tree. Once I get into the Friends and Family Alpha I have more to say about this… although I’ll be NDA’d say I won’t be able to say anything about it. Yes, Blizz is dumbing it down. However, if they can dumb it down while simultaneously making lots of specs raid-viable and reducing the need to run a cookie-cutter spec, I might give the eventual product a thumbs-up.

Pet Battle System

I’m a hunter; I have real pets. You non-combat pet collectors can go talk to yourselves about this.

Dungeons

• Nine New Dungeons
• Six dungeons across Pandaria
• Heroic Update to Scholomance and Scarlet Monastary, Wings 1 and 2

Nothing not expected. I was never a fanatic of Scholomance or SM, so having these updated doesn’t really intrigue me too much. YMMV.

Raids

• Three Raids
• Raid Finder, Normal and Heroic Difficulties
• World Bosses Return!

World Bosses FTW! Raid Finder FTW!

BUT WORLD BOSSES!

…

Yeah, I’m a little over-enthused. But if I can kite world bosses to Goldshire again, then we’ll have something.

Weapon Updates

• Hunter Minimum Range – Gone
• Hunter Melee Weapon – Gone
• Ranged Slot for all others – Gone
• Relics – Gone
• Rogues and Warriors can throw weapons
• Wands become Main hand Weapons

YES, YES*, YES, /blank stare, /blinks, /nods.

* This big YES is dependent upon the melee weapon replacement. Can we have quivers and ammo pouches back that we can manufacture or modify with stats?

As a Leatherworker, it gets tiring making gear that get replaced with the first tier of raid content. Let me make ammo pouches are quivers that replace the melee stat-stick and I’ll be a happy camper.

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Post from: Brain Needed Space

Blizzcon: They’re Not on Crack but I’d Test Their Water

…

BAZINGA.

Here! Take $10,000 and buy the fastest car you can.

• Car 1: 2001 Mazda MX-5 Miata, 4 cylinder, automatic transmission.
• Car 2: 2004 Ford Mustang, 6 cylinder, automatic transmission.
• Car 3: 2004 Ford Mustang, 6 cylinder, manual transmission.

Which car is fastest?

It depends. It depends upon the driver and the race course.

Car 1 is the Survival spec. The Miata is light and nimble as it responds to the driver’s every thought. Everybody can drive it, but to drive it well one needs to do more than just stomp on the gas.

Car 2 is the Marksman spec. It’s got a powerful engine and it’s easy to drive. Everybody can get in it and go fast, as long as the track is not terribly curvy and braking is not an issue.

Car 3 is the BM spec. If the driver cannot drive a manual transmission, then no matter how powerful the car is the driver will never be able to drive it well. If you cannot control your pet, and maximize ITS dps and keep IT alive, then it doesn’t MATTER how good a shooter you are, you’re going to lose out on the DPS meters.

Now if you’ve only got $10,000, these are your choices. And with your limited budget, if you’re like most people, you’re going to choose Car 2 because you can get as much performance for as little money and effort as possible. If you raid a couple of days per week and have a life outside of WoW, the MM spec will get you where you want to go, similar to a manual-transmission Mustang.

One can breakdown the spec-stats on who plays which spec, but can we break that down based upon how much time the player plays?

What if you have more money, i.e. more time to play? When heroic Rags was first defeated, I read that it took them hundreds of wipes to win. Who has that kind of time? Compare that to someone with lots of money buying a Porsche and driving against that dude in his $10,000 Mustang. The Porsche-owner may or may not have mad skills, but he has a much faster car. He has an immediate advantage over the rest of us. If we were to breakdown the spec-stats of people who play more than 40 hours per week in WoW, he’s playing a different game than we are because he’s got lots more experience, a much more cohesive raiding team, and frankly, better gear, i.e. a faster more expensive car.

If that extreme player is using the Marksman spec and doing tons of damage, does that mean you should too?

Let’s grab a professional racecar driver and slap him in the $10,000 automatic Mustang. He’s going to get more out of that car than you are. He’s going to go faster because he’s a much better driver. Let’s take my nine year old son and put him behind the wheel of that Porsche. He’s going to wreck it because he has no experience. You in your $10,000 Mustang will be much faster than the Porsche now! Just because Mario is doing something does not necessarily mean that you should too, because his entire environment is different than yours, even though you’re both driving on the same road, (i.e. playing the same game.)

Can you drive a manual transmission car? Do you understand under-steer, counter-steer, heel-n-toe braking, and where the powerband is in a Mustang’s engine? If so, then you’ll get more out of the manual Mustang than you would out of the automatic Mustang, even though most other people will do better in the automatic.

If Blizz buffing BM and SV on the PTR because the spec is inherently weaker than MM? Or could they be buffing those specs because so many people are driving the manual Mustang that is Marksman and they want a few more Miata’s and manual transmission cars on the roads? We’d have to be privy to some internal memos and emails to know the answer for certain.
But regardless of the true answer, the case can be made that playing either BM or SV in Firelands is neither a hindrance nor blasphemous.

Put me behind the wheel of an automatic Mustang and I’m going to get bored. I’m going to wish I had my clutch pedal back, that my right hand will grasp for a gear handle and eventually be depressed to find a clunky PRND12 on the floor.

But put me in a manual Mustang and I’m going to work harder at driving, enjoying the effort and the rewards of actually Driving. I’m going to get more out of my manual transmission than you are going to get out of your automatic. And my speed is going to be faster than yours, even though many more people drive an automatic than they do manual transmissions. My BM-dps is going to kick your MM-dps to the curb.

Now if you happen to be Mario Andretti and you can get the maximum from a car as can be gotten, and my manual transmission car is inherently a little slower than the automatic, then you’ll probably go faster in the automatic than the manual; no matter how good I am at playing BM, Mario and his MM spec are going to beat me.

But that does not mean that I’ll go faster as a MM just because Mario does.

This is what I believe is happening in the spec-parses of the Best WoW Raiders. These people are great players, have lots of time to invest, and thus are able to crank out the more DPS out of MM because that spec has a slight advantage. But what happens is that the 99% of the other raiders see what those Andrettis are doing with MM and copy them, even if these other people happen to prefer manual transmissions.

I got an email from Dellyn just yesterday, saying she is playing a MM hunter but is a BM hunter at heart. She wants to get as much DPS from her BM spec as she does her MM, but doesn’t know how.

She’s driving an automatic Mustang and enjoying the power, but would prefer to drive a manual but can’t work the clutch.

Can I guarantee her that if she dedicates herself to raiding as BM for a month, she’ll eventually get as much BM-dps as she does MM-dps? No, I can’t. I can’t know for certain that she’s capable of driving a manual, and I can’t be certain that her dedication to learning to play as BM will overcome the apparent DPS-bias that MM seems to enjoy.

I raided WotLK as a SV hunter because BM was nerfed into oblivion. It was like comparing an automatic Mustang to an automatic Lincoln Towncar; there was no comparison. I didn’t like it, but it was necessary to fight for my rights on the DPS meters.

But I do know that it is possible to top the meters in Firelands, right now, as a BM hunter. You can drive a manual and go faster than the masses of people driving an automatic. There is no secret to success, there is no guarantee of victory, there is no shot-rotation that will put you over the top.

You’ve just got to try to learn to drive your BM-spec instead of ride it.

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Post from: Brain Needed Space

The State of Hunter DPS in My Head

Summer is over and your C++ class is a bore.

Or.

The new server rack was installed and you’re “balancing” it for a few weeks.

Or.

The grand-kids have gone and your hubby is sleeping while you farm herbs every stinking night.

Or.

The courthouse put really good WiFi in and the attorney who employs you is finally willing to let you raid during night court.

Or.

That shadow priest you leveled up is really a lot of fun and you’d like to see just how you good at her instead of watching Chopped every night.

Wrath of Medivh needs ya! We need ya, that is, if you’re a Mage, Pally Tank, Shadow Priest, Warlock, or a Warrior Tank.

How it is we need tanks I have no idea; BRK causes plate to drop like dew in the morning.

We are 7/7 regular and 1/7 heroic Firelands, raid 4x per week, have a very relaxed and friendly group of raiders, and need a few peeps to keep us cruising up the guild-rankings.

Check out our forums and place an app if you’re feeling frisky.

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LFM for Heroic FL and Beyond