ph34r me, or at least my stick.

--Warning: This is going to be another WoW post. Those uninterested in WoW can just skip this one.--

One of my other commonly played WoW character is the level 51 Tauren Shaman named Longhorn (so named after the Freakazoid villain who planned to hold Nashville for ransom unless they gave him a recording contract). The Shaman is an interesting and powerful class. Many other players complain about the Shaman's über l337 skills, but that is because they fear that which they do not understand.

Anyways, much of the Shaman's über power comes from his ability to use totems, which are essentially just sticks that the Shaman places in the ground. Oh, but these aren't any ordinary sticks. These are special, magical sticks. They do magic things, like explode, shoot fire, make enemies run slowly, make the Shaman even tougher.... Many players (and normally I refer to these players as "whining Paladins") don't understand this concept of sticks in the ground. "How," they ask, "does shoving a stick in the ground suddenly make you invincible?" They of course fear us, because they do not understand. These are magic sticks.

Now, one stick, er, totem of particular note is the Stoneclaw Totem. The tooltip for this totem reads "Summons a Stoneclaw Totem at the feet of the caster that taunts creatures to attack it." It does this by drawing "Aggro". Aggro, or threat, is essentially a measure of how much things hate you. Apparently, this can actually be quantified. Monsters in the game will attack whatever they hate most, i.e., whatever holds the most Aggro. The Stoneclaw Totem attracts monsters to attack it by generating threat.

Now, let's take a look at this totem:


Nothing terribly impressive about it, but man, those creatures just hate that thing. You can be in the middle of some pitched battle, and when a Shaman whips this thing out, the MOBs (Mobile Unit/Mass Of Bacon) will just have at it.

Which brings me to my point (Yes! There is one!). So, alledgedly, this totem generates a lot of "threat". More so than, say, a ten-foot tall Bull with an axe:


Now, I don't know about you, but I, personally, would feel a lot more threatened by that bull. I mean, c'mon! He looks seriously peeved! I think if I were fighting some Bison on Steroids, that was easily twice my height, and he whipped out some glowy-green three-foot tall stick, I'd totally be like "WTF, Dude, a stick? You expect me to attack that?" But those monsters in the game, they seriously hate the stick. They're all like "OMFG! A stick! This is the single greatest threat to my existence! I must destroy it." And meanwhile, there's a ten-foot tall Buffalo wailing away at their back with an Über Axe of Ultimate Destruction, and another stick that's all shooting fireballs at them, but no, they have to kill that stick! I don't know what's going on there. Maybe the stick, like, insults their mother or something like that. It's all "Hey, yeah, you Blisterpaw Hyena, your mom, like, totally wears Scarlet Crusade boots." And the Hyena, who was about to deal a critical strike to the Juiced-up Bison is like, "OMGWTFBBQ did you just say? You n00b, I'm going to pwn you, you suXX0r."

Yeah, so in conclusion, Hustle and Bustle are like my right and left arms.