BBBB tagged us. We couldn’t shut off the flow of ideas. This might be a really bad idea. If your delicate constitution or frail disposition becomes upset, please, let him know how you feel.

BRK’s Top Five Lessons Learned from Gaming

5. The likelihood a person will listen to you is inversely proportional to the amount of knowledge that person believes he has.

4. A person who has too little faith in their capabilities can be just as destructive as a person who has too much.

3. When you make an uber-noobtastic, craptacular mistake, don’t press the Push To Talk button and scream obscenities. Go ahead and scream, just keep your personal issues to yourself.

2. There is greater safety in numbers, except when those numbers are a gaggle of @sshats bent on conquering new and exciting frontiers of n00bisim. Knowing the difference is the key to survival.

1. The good player is rare, the humble player is rarer. The combination is the rarest.

BRK’s Lessons That Were Rejected As Totally Too Controversial, Too Silly, Or Whatever, They’re Just Not Right, We Probably Shouldn’t Publish Them

Members of the fairer gender make better team players 90% of the time. But that other 10% of the time, they can easily make you willing to sacrifice that original 90% of the time.

Given the choice, people would probably sacrifice battleground AFK-reporting and replace it with a “Can Be Killed By Own Faction” label applied by a GM. This can be expressed as The Spock-Trump Principal: The need to kill morons outweighs the needs of the many.

If it looks like a female, walks like a female, talks like a female, and strips down at a mailbox like a female, it’s probably a 13 year old boy. But not always.

Everybody is a loot-wh0re. Not everybody wants the same things for the same reasons, but everybody wants something. Controlling your own desires and not letting someone else manipulate them is a key to happiness.

People will whine and complain for weeks, but it’s not until every gem in the Auction House is being sold by the same person, and for 20% more than their traditional cost, that people will take action. But when they do, you’re going to get hammered. Like a bounty put on your head by several members of the alliance paying gold to any hordie who emails screenshots of your death in battlegrounds or world PvP. J _ _ _ _ _, we’re talking about you.

Female dwarves are short, have large tracts of land, bobble pleasantly when they walk, and can have long dark hair and angry faces. Why can’t they be warlocks? The answer is probably extremely cosmically important, but we don’t know what it is.

There are as many @sshats in the game as you think there are. Maybe a few more, but the numbers fit within most standard deviation models.

There is nothing wrong appreciating the sway of a female space goat. Buying a female space goat outfit for your significant other is way way WAY wrong. Trying to return it is even worse.

If your significant other thinks female blood elves are pretty, he’s normal. If he thinks female tauren are, he’s not.

If your significant other likes gnomes, egg her on; you’ll probably impress her at some point.

No matter how big your two-handed weapon is, there is always someone with a bigger one. But that doesn’t mean they know how to use it as well as you do.

Yes, sometimes the game really does hate you. You. By name.

Book Editor, female: “So BRK, WTF?”

BRK, male, writer-wanna-be: “Hmm?”

“Your draft proposal, I have a concern.”

“Concern-away, we can take it.”

“It’s huge. It’s too huge. It’s way too much too huge.”

“This is gonna be a big book.”

“You’ve got to cut it down.”

“OK, I’ll eliminate everything about X*.”

“No. You’ve not getting it.”

“Give it to me, then.”

“You’ve got 115 chapters.”

“Yep!”

“Cut that in half.”

“… half?”

“Half. And those cutsie chapter titles you made?”

“Oh no… you want me to redo the cutsie chapter titles? I love those.”

“No. I want more. If a chapter doesn’t have a cutsie title, make one.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Be more funny.”

“Should I tell my potato joke?”

“What are you talking about? Be more funny in the proposal, not now.”

“Oh.”

“Everything else is fine. Just cut the chapters by 50%, crank the humor, don’t lose any of the details, and get it to me two hours ago.”

“Check.”

“Check?”

“Check.”

“You’re not freaking out?”

“Nope.”

“You realize I’m asking for the impossible, yes?”

“Oh yeah. But I’m immune.”

“How so?”

“I’m eating Cuban. Nothing sounds unpleasant or unreasonable with roast pork, black beans-n-rice, and tostones plantains in one’s face.”

“That’s the funny I’m talking about. Get to work.”

“After lunch.”

“I have leftovers here. Can I have a plantain?”

In other news…

No Gruul-movie today because Gruul didn’t die last night. We lost a rogue due to illness, a rogue due to him selling his account, our primary mage-tank, a warlock, and a boomkin druid due to work issues, the main tank was almost evicted from his apartment during the raid, and a shadow priest – we think it was the shadow priest – had his WoW account run out of minutes during the push to Gruul. Add two people new to the instance and two puggers, and our raid’s DPS was woefully low.

Stay tuned, maybe next time. And we have time for a quick “Dear BRK” email!

“Dear BRK … Pig always dies. He is very weak against AoE of any kind, and I am coming to realize that people are serious when they say he should be respecced for every instance run. I have toyed with the idea of getting a new pet … but I have had Pig since I was a wee level 10, and can’t bear the thought of losing him … I would greatly appreciate any thoughts you have on the matter. Calliope.”

BRK is a strong advocate of keeping the love alive. Keep Pig by your side and keep him happy: train Avoidance Rank 2 right now. It is a pet-spell you absolutely must have. It mitigates 50% of all AoE attacks, and that’s everything you could ask for in one handy package. On top of that, train resistances to meet the needs of the instance you’re attempting.

There is no need to get anything higher than a Rank 3 of any specific resistance, but that level plus Avoidance Rank 2 will keep your pet alive under just about any circumstance you’ll find.

Boars are awesome pets. They aren’t the max-DPS pet, but then the max-DPS pets cannot switch to tank-mode like a boar can. If you love your pig, and we know so many of you do, keep those squeals of death flowing with the proper pet-specs.

* – We don’t talk about X, or anything associated with X, for fear we won’t get to write a book at all. Shhh!

Here’s an example of why this Internetty thing rox our sox.

Some nice person asks us a question about Ignore Armor. We answer it.

Someone else says, “Yeah, but how does this apply to raid-boses? Karthis answers it. He went to the Elitist Jerks, grabbed their theories about bosses and their armor values, and put up a nice list. Sweet.

Then Someone says, “That’s cool, but static info sucks. How about a web app?” and Someone builds it. He made a downloadable spreadsheet into which you can plug your personal Ignore Armor stat and see how much their physical damage mitigations will be reduced.

And since nobody emailed BRK to say, “OO! OO! OO! Lookie what we did!” we whip out our fun Technorati tools to find out who’s is saying what about da blog, find both their posts, and then link to them here.

Snazzy? You bet it is.

Zul’Aman. Our raid’s number one goal was to defeat the Bear-boss under 20 minutes. Done, and done. The bear-boss dropped the Bladeangel’s Moneybelt, so Doomilias was a happy camper. Then the freed prisoner dropped the Life-Step Belt, (thanks Fio). You all know we want Trollbane and Tuskbreaker, right? Right. Oh well, maybe next time.

We felt really good about ourselves and decided to just take the next bosses easy and not push it.

Eagle-boss down, first try. Lynx-boss down, first try.

Dragonhawk-boss. Let us tell ya about Dragonhawk-boss. We had him. Three times. We handled the eggs and the spawns beautifully. We were talking about the loot that might drop. He was at 20% and getting demolished.

Without warning, our holy pally got one-shotted. From what, we still don’t know. Tank followed immediately after and it’s wipe-city, population us.

“Why’d you die?”

“I HAVE NO G’D@MN IDEA!”

Or the priest died. Or the tank got one-shotted. Just horrible, terrible, beat-our-wife godawful luck. We loathe this boss. With a hatred that burns with the heat of a-thousand suns. Next time, we’re doing Bear-boss and then we’re going straight for Dragonhawk-boss, and he’s going to get a great big, tall, frosty glass of Shutup Juice.

So sayeth BRK, so let it be done.

Also, WoWWebStats has been updated to include proper parsing for the Zul’Aman bosses. We’ll post our report as soon as we can.

So we got our War-Feathered Loop and immediately the BRK Email and Christmas-Catalog Black Hole was overflowing with questions about how the Ignore Armor feature affects DPS. As usual, the answer is:

It depends.

To start with, the formulas that govern damage mitigation are not linear; they are partially based upon your target’s level. If your enemy is between the levels 1-59, their armor-mitigation is calculated with this formula:

%Reduction = ( Armor / ( ( Armor + 400 ) + ( 85 * Enemy_Level ) ) ) * 100

And if your enemy is 60-73 – remember that heroic bosses are assumed to be level 72 and raid bosses are assumed to be level 73 for mathematical purposes – the damage-mitigation formula is this:

%Reduction = ( Armor / ( ( Armor – 22167.5 ) + ( 467.5 * Enemy_Level ) ) ) * 100

Now then, let’s pretend you’re fighting a level-70 BRK and he has 6142 armor. How much physical damage is he mitigating?

%Reduction = ( Armor / ( ( Armor – 22167.5 ) + ( 467.5 * Enemy_Level ) ) ) * 100

%Reduction = ( 6142 / ( ( 6142 – 22167.5 ) + ( 467.5 * 70 ) ) ) * 100

%Reduction = ( 6142 / ( -16025.5 + 32725 ) * 100

%Reduction = ( 6142 / 16699.5 ) * 100

%Reduction = 0.3678 * 100 = 36.78% and if you check our armory profile and the armor tooltip, you’ll see that these figures match.Now you buy your new belt with the “ignores 70 of your opponent’s armor” capability. How does this affect BRK? When you attack him, it reduces his armor by 70 and thus decreases how much physical damage he mitigates.

%Reduction = ( ( Armor – 70 ) / ( ( ( Armor – 70 ) – 22167.5 ) + ( 467.5 * Enemy_Level ) ) ) * 100

%Reduction = ( ( 6142 – 70 ) / ( ( ( 6142 – 70 ) – 22167.5 ) + ( 467.5 * 70 ) ) ) * 100

%Reduction = ( 6072 / ( -16095.5 + 32725 ) * 100

%Reduction = ( 6072 / 16629.5 ) * 100

%Reduction = 0.3651 * 100 = 36.51%

You’ve just reduced the amount of physical damage mitigated by armor from 36.78% to 36.51%. Congratulations!

Now let’s switch your target to Aetherial Circle’s main druid tank, Kelektra. Fully raid buffed, she has 27,801 armor and mitigates 72.48% of all physical damage. What does your little belt do against her?

%Reduction = ( ( Armor – 70 ) / ( ( ( Armor – 70 ) – 22167.5 ) + ( 467.5 * Enemy_Level ) ) ) * 100

%Reduction = ( ( 27,801 – 70 ) / ( ( 27,801 – 70 ) – 22167.5 ) + ( 467.5 * 70 ) ) ) * 100

%Reduction = ( 27731 / ( 27731 – 22167.5 + 32725 ) ) * 100

%Reduction = ( 27731 / 38288.5 ) * 100

%Reduction = 0.7243 * 100 = 72.43%

You have now decreased the amount of physical damage Kel mitigates from 72.48% to 72.43%… Congratulations? Kinda.

How much DPS does Ignore Armor provide? As you can see, it completely depends upon the armor and level of the mob you’re fighting.

What’s he saying, what’s he SAYING!!!

So you’ve wanted to know, which is better: The Skyguard Silver Cross or the Crystalforged Trinket. Well don’t think that BRK hasn’t been listening or doesn’t care. We just got back from Dr. Boom and doing a little testing.

We did two tests, one with the Silver Cross equipped and one with the Crystalforged. For both runs, we cleared the area, cleared all our buffs except Aspect of the Hawk, put 100 bullets in our ammo pouch, turned on the CLSaver combatlog, did not use Hunter’s Mark – refreshing it could interfere with out test – and let the Auto Shots flow.

Here’s our setup and stats for the Silver Cross run:And here’s our Crystalforged setup:WoWWebStats does an amazing job as always. For the Silver Cross run, we didn’t do anything but allow Auto Shot and IAotH to proc. The Silver Cross has no “use”; it’s a static trinket.

So here’s the report for the Silver Cross:The Crystalforged trinket does have a “use”, so for this run, we popped the trinket immediatly at the start of the run and then whenever its cooldown was up. In the 100 shot-test, we were able to crank it up three times and that is shown in the Buffs & Debuffs section of the WWS report as Valor.

And the report for the Crystalforged Trinket:Would you like to easily compare the two reports? We can do that by taking screenshots of both and combining them in another screenshot, like this:What can we learn from the analysis?

1. We expected the Silver Cross to give 1% more crit and the testing bears that out.

2. We expected the Crystalforged to give more damage per shot and that also occurs.

3. The extra mitigation during the Crystalforged run decreased the DPS and total damage, but not by so much as to cause a massive concern.

4. Total damage difference is 120, easily within the expected margin of error.

5. The total time was exactly the same, 2 minutes and 58 seconds, for both runs. That’s pretty cool!

6. This test did not take pet damage into account. The extra 1% crit from the Silver Cross would mean one more Kill Command and 50 more Focus, which would be two more Claws.

7. The extra damage-per-shot from the Crystalforged is advertised at +7, but our testing shows it only as +3, (447 with the Silver Cross and 450 with the Crystalforged).

8. Our testing is incomplete. This is a single test of only 100 shots. Multiple tests should be run for more accuracy.

Our recommendations:

If you’re a BM hunter, go for the Silver Cross. The extra crit gives more Kill Commands and more Focus for your pet.

If you’re a SV hunter, you’re an agility/crit hoarder already and are cradling your Silver Cross with both hands.

If you’re a MM hunter, you have a hard choice. Your crit percentage is not any higher than a BM hunter but your damage-per-shot and damage-per-crit is much higher. That extra damage-per-shot and haste from the Crystalforged may outperform the Silver Cross for you, especially if you have a pet specifically designed to hold aggro and tank, not DPS.

We hope you enjoyed this little experiment and maybe even inspired you to try a test of your own.

So when we expressed our disappointment with WuWJutsu over their methodology, the super-cool fella who runs Gankbang stopped by to drop some knowledge on us. We appreciate the networking lesson very much, thank you kind sir, but there seems to be a little confusion over our complaint.

We totally appreciate the problems with extracting vast quantities of data when the servers that contain that data are heavily taxed. Totally. You have no idea. Remember where we work and what we do?

Our concern is not with the frequency that these cool sites are able to gather armory data and update their data.

Our concern is with the methodology WoWJustu uses, targeting specific servers and guilds much more frequently than others. We disagree with this philosophy vehemently.

It is stated in their FAQs that they do this. Now of course it’s his site, he can do what he wants with it. It’s free to use, we don’t pay a penny to access it, and if we don’t like it, we don’t have to use it, right? Right.

So we won’t. Neither will we advertise it, promote it, nor mention how awesome it is. And it is awesome, of that there is no contention.

If you want to design, build, and publish a WoW-tool, that’s wicked-cool. If you want to tailor it for the few super-high-end raiding guilds, more power to you. But if you don’t discriminate against 95% of the WoW-population, you’ll probably have more happy visitors, don’t you think?

Are we going to check WoWJutsu to see Nihilum’s progression? Nah. We can just go to their site and see for ourselves. What do we suspect the vast majority of the 9 million WoW players want to see?

“Dear WoWJutsu, how is our little #18,984 guild progressing on our server?”

How to do this? Here’s our recommendation:

Don’t update your published data every day. Make a specific day to publish all the data you collect all week. Do it on Tuesdays when the servers are down and nobody can play. Collect data all week, publish your new stats on Tuesday, have forums where people can chat-slam as they pass their dreaded horde/alliance rival guild, and then charge your advertisers more to advertise on Tuesday. Happier visitors, a stable data-publishing schedule, and mo money.

During the rest of the week, publish opinion pieces on how guild progression works. Tell us about the technical side of the website, how the data collection process works, give the coder-geeks something to read, give the rest of us intro lessons on how all this magic comes together.

Everybody understands that nothing of this magnitude, where the data is in a constant state of flux, can be 100% accurate in a non-real-time analysis scenario. Give us the best you can and we’ll be stoked.

Just don’t label us as second-class citizens. We think that’s rude.

Our plans for world domination have been dealt a severe blow. This is two times in the past 48 hours that Nihilum has gotten our dander up.

But being linked at all by WoWHead is wicked cool! /party!

The editor liked the rough draft of our book proposal, asked for a few changes, and we’re going to submit a final proposal on Monday. It’s the best news we could have hoped for! /WooT!

We specifically asked if we could discuss any details of this experience on our blog, she said,

“No, hoser! Keep your trap shut!”

“But…”

“Absolutely not. You want royalties, you play by our rules, capice?”

Edit: Thanks for all the opinions of the Lurker fight. We’ll review and implement something, we promise.

“Yeah but…”

“What part of NO don’t you understand?”

“But can’t I…”

“Don’t make me get angry. You won’t like me when I’m angry.”

/whimper

Have we mentioned that we love strong women?

/Austin Powers look of intrigue

Other news:

Aetherial Circle went to SSC and learned the Lurker fight. We got it all down and were going to take him out when the fish respawned. /TJ’esque-shriek

The pattern for the Boots of the Crimson Hawk dropped off a trash mob. We have it already because we bought it off the AH a month ago. /simmer with rage

Right now, our pet has a choice in the Lurker fight: A) sit on the center ring and attack the boss, B) sit with us on an outer ring and tank the adds. We prefer B and, as such, our DPS suffered. This is one of those cases of doing what is best for the raid is more important than our ego. Of course, we are hopeful it will be the only time in SSC we have to do it.

And on Monday, assuming AC goes to Gruul’s Lair, we’ll be filming and making a BRK Hunter’s Guide Movie of Gruul himself. Our guild can get him down at ten growths so we should have a good movie done.

Edit: Thanks for all the Lurker-info. We’ll break it down and see what’s what out there. Stupid fish.