Battle Chicken!

Engineering

Gnomish Battle Chicken
This post will not only be about the poor misunderstood mechanical creature that is the Gnomish Battle Chicken, but how raid worthy Engineering is. Lets get started.

Firstly, there is some wildly inaccurate data out there on this lovely beast known as the battle chicken. Most of it is unimportant to the actual usage it has, however some actually does matter. Before we get too deep into what this does, I'll tell you a bit about it. Gnomish Battle Chicken is an engineering trinket that can be used once every 20 minutes and has a 1m 30s duration. You may swap trinkets and it stays active. While it is out it will attack the target you are engaged on, or once you engage it. It will hit for ~1-4 damage, really low I know, unless it is berserking, in which it will do a moderate amount more for ~10 seconds (still sub 100 per hit). While it is berserking it has a roughly 40% chance (I believe it to be higher but I remember 40%) to Squawk. Battle Squawk. This buff is melee only; it does not effect casting speed. It is a group wide buff so stacking other melee haste beneficial classes in a group with 1 or 2 engineers is highly advantageous to your raid dps as a whole.

The chicken itself is quite fragile and dies on nearly all encounters, especially with AoE. In addition to its fragile state, it can also attack targets you would not expect it to. If there is an engageable aggressive target, even docile ones or ones that don't have proximity aggro, the chicken will try to attack it for some strange reason. Take care and don't try to use the chicken on those fights.

The Gnomish Battle Chicken in name may be somewhat misleading as well. You may train the schematic from a Gnomish Engineering trainer, which means you need to be specified to Gnomish Engineering. What you may not know though is you can have a Gnomish Engineer craft one for you if you're Goblin, or unspecified, and you may still use it even though it says Bind on Pickup. (Note: I'm not sure if it is still tradeable, credit to Nored if it still works.) Or you could level Engineering, specify Gnomish, make a chicken, and respecify Goblin.

The chicken is Power Word Shieldable but cannot be healed. It is useful to raid dps if you have a priest macro /target Battle Chicken /cast Power Word: Sheild to increase its surviveability and increase the chance you'll gain the buff. The chicken has a 20 minute cooldown so you can use it on most fights depending on how much trash or how long the actual boss fight is. The raid dps increase depends on what classes are in the group with the Squawk buff and the duration of the fight, but it is always quite a large raid dps boost and is seldom, if ever, talked about anywhere.

So, now for a few things that are incorrectly written in some places. The chicken buff DOES stack with windfury (retest credit to Putin) and survival hunters buffs. It has always stacked with other buff since vanilla, and I tested it within the past week to confirm this is still the case (it is). The buff given also used to be multi-stackable, which would mean you could get a group buff of 25% melee haste (in vanilla we had 3 or 4 engineers who used them frequently) however I also recently tested that and it no longer multi-stacks. What happens now is this: if the first chicken squawks and then the second squawks, the second chicken to squawk refreshes the buff of the personal user of that chicken. If my chicken squawks it'll buff us all, then if your chicken squawks it will only refresh your battle chicken squawk buff to full duration, but not mine.

The chicken only takes 230 engineering skill to use, but it is very beneficial to max out engineering for other reasons such as Synapse Springs, bombs, and the Goggles (unless you're clearing heroic Nef or other heroic non-tier helm dropping bosses). You can customize them to be perfectly itemized for BiS pre-heroic. For most classes it would be best to have goblin engineering, especially since shrink ray no longer works on bosses in 4.2 (I think). I'll tell you why goblin is better in a while here. Also in case you were wondering, the chicken is not a one time use; it is permanent.

Synapse Springs
Synapse Springs : These are valued at ~80agi. I value them much higher due to the customized usage. It has no random use proc which could be largely wasted like other proc based profession gains, ie: Tailoring. For example, Magmaw typically has ~2 minutes until his first exposed head slam. As you gain experience and you notice these things you can hold your synapse springs and use them during a more beneficial moment in an encounter, like this. Use them immediately on engage and then again on first cooldown, then hold until exposed (or it'll be up a few seconds into expose) therefore giving you maximum benefit compared to certain other higher valued professions which have random procs.

Bombs!

Big Daddy
There are many types of bombs you have to choose from. The reason why I said I would recommend Goblin specific is because of Big Daddy bombs. These bombs are 440 engi skill; unlike the Chicken you must be Goblin specific to use them. There is no extra utility gained by being Gnomish other than the Chicken, which once you have made you may switch specializations (or have someone else make the Chicken for you in the first place). If you scroll down in the comments for Big Daddy someone says, "Before you throw it, ask your target 'would you kindly stand still?'" Now that isn't entirely true as you will read further on.

When I leveled engineering on my alt I picked Gob just because it was a caster and I didn't expect to high-end raid so a chicken wouldn't be very useful and I wanted to use different "toys". When I discovered the Big Daddy bomb I read the text and started testing it on "unsuspecting" targets. Bane (aka Starboard-Lightbringer and soon to be IBanel, I believe) helped me test originally. He is an exceptional Deathknight and if you want to be pro DK model yourself after him. Moving on, Bane would go out to Stormwind gates and duel me, then he'd sit still, we tested throwing from behind, throwing from the front, using army, throwing in combat, out of combat, and having him mobile, etc. The bombs did 40k DPS, yes 40k dps, on him + his army when they were not targeting me. The bombs do ~5k, but are enhanced when the target(s) are "unsuspecting". The bombs do around 4 times as much when the target(s) are "unsuspecting". Oh did I mention they can crit? For 25-30k dmg, yes, yes they can. The main issue with these is that you cannot throw them while moving; where as saronite bombs (addressed later) can be thrown while moving (in case you need to not stand in fire).

One thing I do want to mention since I'm pretty sure this is not intended: Fire spec Mages get 25% bonus to bomb dmg, which can be incredibly significant. If you look at a normal Big Daddy it will say Big Daddy does 3750-6250 fire damage. If you look at it on a fire mage it says ~4087-8047 fire damage. Every other bomb pales in comparison to this one. The bombs on my fire mage do 20k self buffed non crit and 40k on a crit. This is on a target who is not targeting me, that is what "unsuspecting" means. They can be in combat, or out. They can target someone else, but just not you, they can also be mobile or immobile (credit to Ledranos for letting me bomb him a bunch). They have a 2 second cast time and a 1 minute cooldown. The damage can also be modified by a dps DK or a Boomkin (mushrooms are supposed to put earth and moon up in 4.2? They don't right now, I checked). So add on another 8% if you have that making it 21.5k reg and 43k crit respectively. I believe the crit ability of the bombs is spell based since the bomb itself is, meaning it would be less damage for a melee vs a caster, especially those who stack crit like Fire spec Mages. Big Daddy bombs also incapacitate the targets it hits for 5 seconds or until they take additional damage. Extremely helpful on Magmaw adds, Cho'gall adds, Maloriak adds, Halfus whelps, and so on.

This is another example of how engineering is undervalued as a profession and can far exceed all other professions as for dps gains and raid utility.

Saronite Bombs
Saronite Bomb only do around 1150-1500 dmg, but the radius is pretty high (10 yrds) and you can use them while moving. As a rogue you can use them while you are energy pooling. This used to be incredibly effective during LK and is far, far less beneficial now, but I still occasionally do it.

Just so you don't think I've forgotten about this: High-powered bolt gun does 6800-10200 damage, does not specify fire (it looks nature-based but specifies no modifier). It has a 2 minute cooldown, a tiny radius, and it takes a reagent. I don't use it.

Hope this information was beneficial and I look forward to hearing how many of you become engineers!

Edit: My editor corrected some grammatical errors, and generally made it easier to read. The actual content has not changed. I had an issue recently in ZA on lynx trash where the bombs hit a pack of lynx but only did ~5k to each. They were not targetting me and I've never had this happen. There were no resists and I retested on multi-target and single target over all situations I previously stipulated with the normal results of 17-21k non crit bombs. I will be trying to reproduce this in time or find the error.