1. Character Info: Name, Class, Main Spec (Link armory): I am willing to join and raid with either or both of my two main characters: Aedden - discipline / shadow priest NOTE: I am wearing 4pc T10 in anticipation of the upcoming patch when the bonus will no longer be horrendous. Shadow gear is good not great, enough to pull 7-8k Torvan - protection / fury warrior Fury gear is a work in progress, appx. 6-7k dps and badly needs a few upgrades. 2. Explain your talent selection (theorycrafting source, specialization choices etc): Aedden: I use the base disc build, there aren't a lot of other viable options really - and I picked the 3 points in spell warding because I like the slight edge of survivability (dead priests can't heal). I read EJ on occasion, shadowpriest.com when I dip in shadow, and tankspot. Torvan: Similarly, I use the base prot build. Unlike DPS specs, there isn't a lot of debate or good things to quote for the specs I mostly play. 3. Your Age: 29 4. Current professions and their raid benefit: Aedden: Inscription (sweet shoulder enchant), Jewelcrafting (best prof for dual spec roles) Torvan: Blacksmithing (excellent combo with...), Jewelcrafting (best prof for dual spec roles, and very good with blacksmithing) 5. How long you've been playing WoW and what PvE progression you've accomplished: I have played WoW since vanilla, always PVE. Did most of MC toward the end of Vanilla, BC progression all the way from Kara through Illidan, and then of course everything in Wrath. Most of that time was tanking on Torvan, I switched to Aedden for Ulduar / ToC / Icecrown in order to fill a much needed disc priest spot - I have starcaller and twilight vanquisher back from when they were impressive. Killed Yogg (in 10m), destroyed heroic ToC with all 50 attempts (10m, at least) many times (gave away the mount twice, sigh), and at the moment, I'm 11/12 in 10 man ICC and 9/12 in 25-man ICC (no BQ, Sindragosa, and LK). Both characters are well geared, though Aedden has been my main for the past months and so is at a higher gear level (top 5 on server, last I checked). Torvan is good enough for 25 man ICC, but primarily has gear from a 10m that I generally run with him as the main tank Sunday mornings. 6. Describe how you theorycraft your class: I like to do a lot of forum trolling on sites like EJ and tankspot, talk to others who play a similar spec, and mostly try things out to see how they work in the game. Theorycrafting is great, but it only matters in how well it can be applied to an actual raid setting. 7. Occupation and living arrangements that impact raiding (family, schedule, etc): I work in IT at a small liberal arts college, and am married with no children. My wife will always come before WoW no matter what, but she is used to me raiding 2 nights a week, and I often play when she's sleeping since she seems to need much more of it than I do. 8. Guild History - where are you leaving and why: I have been in W A R since early BC, through many ups and downs. Just recently, our primary raid group was disbanded and our secondary group formed their own guild. W A R was great and I had fun with them, but with everyone scattered to the winds I'm looking for a new home. 9. How did you hear about us? List any friends/references within the guild: Elystus was in Xen at one point, though I don't think he is now. 10. List your raid consumables and your method for maximizing them: Aedden: Frostwyrm flask, pots of wild magic, fish feasts / SP food, mana pots. At this point in his gear, it's all about maxing throughput. Torvan: Stoneblood flask, healing pots, and typically rhinolicious wyrmsteak to make up a few points in expertise with my current gear. For either character, I have several types of food that I'll use depending on the situation (hit, expertise, spell power, etc.) instead of just relying on fish all the time. 11. List scheduling conflicts (include times for possible weekend 10mans): My only big scheduling conflict is that I will be able to do 2 days per week at most for the full 4 hours. Sunday mornings are great for 10mans, as my wife goes to dance class until about 2:30 server time. I may occasionally be able to do all 3 days, but not on a regular basis. 12. Provide your raid damage/healing performance. Examples are Recount Screenshot with personal breakdown of attacks, WoW Web Stats (WWS), or World of Logs: This isn't the best chart ever, as it was during a tuesday night lagfest, but it'll give you an idea (most of our weekly charts on WMO seem to have been corrupted =( so I improvised) 13. Provide a screenshot of your UI: A little old, but it pretty much looks like this (I've since switched to Vuhdo over healbot) 14. Can you take constructive criticism and being call out on mistakes (both in and out of raid)? Indubitably =) 15. Final comments you feel could help your application: I am a loyal guild member, and a versatile, solid raider capable of any major role (tanking, melee dps, healing, ranged dps). I'm always on time, always prepared, and will give my all for those 2 days. I value a good attitude over everything else (yes, even gear and skill), and I don't care about being sat sometimes, and won't take offense - I really, really want to kill Arthas!
aedden is a solid healer and has the right attitude for progression, he isnt someone that would just show up on easy nights in WAR. i think he would be a great addition to xen
As far as Aedden goes, we're really full on healer spots and not in the market for a second disc priest (especially one who uses the wrong gems).
Which wrong gems, might I ask? If you mean a few too many purified dreadstones, I like to get the socket bonuses on most of my gear, and in some fights the extra regen can come in handy - it's a preference, and not a strong one. Would be happy to discuss and gem more SP <shrug>
i know our healing officer also likes to ask about more details on the shadow gear since due to the number of healers we have. very well written application though. i'll need to check out the tank in more detail but i know that dps offspec will once again be something needed setup since we have a tank with a very outdated dps set already. as for the gems, you are picking the "right gems" but you are taking 5sp sets for 10 spirit (loss of 6SP). while the benefit of one vs the other is sometimes elusive to number-crunch, i'd advise using a spreadsheet to see the SP and healing endurance estimates for mix color vs 23SP on 5SP blue socket bonuses and 7SP 2 non-red bonuses
I'm happy to log out in shadow / fury gear and spec if asked - that might be the best way to see how they are looking (I'll have to wince a little and bear it, I rarely got a chance to gear too much off spec in W A R, so both will need a bit of work, though I imagine I can do at least decently with both, particularly with a few key upgrades). For now though, I'll leave them in primary spec so people can see them as such. I also have a warlock and DK for DPS fun, the DK is a bit better geared then Torvan's fury set, but not by a whole lot. For grins, my unholy DK (cause I'm sure you need more of those) - I'm pretty close to getting shadow's edge with him though, just need 6 more primals. The warlock is my worst geared character and probably only appropriate for 10m ICC and 1st wing of 25m, I won't even bother linking his armory
for your tanking setup, im curious about gems and enchants you picked and if you are attempting to go for a better weapon from prior content and which weapon i am indicating (as a demonstration of theorycrafting familiarization). also, what craftable pieces could either of these toons in which you want to raid be able to obtain with the materials for an alt's shadow's edge?
Head: best meta no question, and I slot +15 expertise and +15 stam in the red slot to pick up the +12 stam bonus (only losing 3 stam for the extra expertise rating). I'll do this with red slots until I'm at expertise cap (26, currently at 23). No contest on enchant. I'll skip explaining gear where I gemmed or enchanted pure stam piece by piece - in general, I go for pure stam unless there's a reason not to. Shoulder: I prefer the extra avoidance stats over the 30 stam / resil shoulder enchant - while getting as much stam as possible is good, I think it's important to keep up other stats (particularly avoidance and, to a lesser degree, threat as well when the difference isn't large). Cloak: 225 armor - with armor being a better stat these days in ICC due to chill of the throne and being hit more often, this one is now better than either +defense or +agi imo. Chest: Could go either way on that one gem, have tossed it around in my mind about whether to just slot 30 stam as opposed to 15 hit / 15 stam. I like to have a decent hit rating for threat and not having to respam key abilities like demo shout and TC (let alone taunt), so for the moment I landed on the hit gem. 6 stam difference <shrug> Weapon: Bladeward is still the best avoidance enchant around, edging out mongoose just a bit. Blood draining might be good for EH, but I do like that parry proc a lot. Shield: I picked 18 stam over 20 defense mainly because in the few places where I've made close choices between stam and avoidance stats, I mix it up a bit in current gear to have some places I picked pure stam, and some I picked more avoidance. The difference here isn't a large one, and I'm at 573 defense. Could go either way on this, and would likely end up with multiple tanking sets to a greater degree than I do now with more focus per set (I have 1 main set at the moment with mostly switching out a couple trinkets, so I try to get a good balance). Gloves: 2% threat scales nicely at this point in the expansion, and while I don't tend to have threat problems, there are times when I'm glad I have some consideration for threat in my gear (such as this enchant and the 2 hit gems). In a situation where I'm getting hit like a freight train and threat is a non-issue (say, Fester), the armor enchant would be better. Legs: With a nice +12 stam socket bonus and the fact that I still need expertise, I went ahead and slotted the expertise / stam gem here and then the hit / stam gem to get the bonus (- 3 stam). Boots: I picked Tuskarr's Vitality because I think that the run speed boost, while not necessary, is helpful for the amount of movement required on so many fights these days. Of course, as gear changes and stats adjust, I pretty freely socket different gems or switch enchants. Ogrim's deflector, and even Blood and Glory (from Anub tribute run) would both be better. Blood and Glory should be pretty easy to get as well, provided a good enough group A case can be made for Ardent Guard too, but it's a bit less clearcut because of a big drop in avoidance stats (i.e. dodge) - I'd use it on a set emphasizing stam and EH though over my current weap. For crafted items on these two guys, I'd go for boots of kingly upheaval and, of course, pillars of might on Torvan (which I'm plenty willing to do rather than get a shadow's edge - remember that my warrior has also effectively been an alt for the last few months). For Aedden, certainly sandals of consecration, and leggings of woven death. With the 5% increase to PW:S coming on 4pc T10, I think I'd be most likely to switch out the leg pieces with tier depending on if I'm shield spamming the raid or focusing on tank heals.
As for gems on Aedden, thanks for pointing it out to me - I checked into it a bit and replaced 4 gems with pure SP (2 in chest, and my bracers and gloves). The ones with the 5 sp socket bonuses (or in the case of chest, 9 sp split between 2 sockets). I'll think on the others as well, but I think the difference on the orange slots with sp and int is less compelling. =)
well, having seen you enchant defense, i was wondering why you didn't gem it for avoidance too. # Hit Rating: 280 after the expertise/hit gems were fixed. also, ardent guard is highest effective health due to 522 armor (and blue sockets are always nice) also, pants 2 non-blues with 12 bonus is -18stam (30 from gems + 12 from bonus - 60 from 2 blues). its 1 gem/+6 stam bonus in there and you elect to skip other +6's (id say in the expertise spot you are in that a purple for +6 is worth it, but yellow is not) and you would still be 7 over cap with the way your chest's bonus is good enough to keep. as for the priest, i'm not exactly sure where dukhat's thoughts were detailed, but i know we have a 100% attendance disc priest now for 25s and another disc offspec in the 2nd 10 man on top of a few other priests make it hard for us to have room for another without a lot of people sitting raids. i'd say that depending on the dps set, your tank would have a better shot, but we have no need for a tank lacking a competitive dps set. since that's as you point out, an alt, i wouldn't want you to go overboard on him if you really want to raid as a priest.
Alright - I actually prefer to raid with my warrior (he's been my main through most of the game) and will begin to work on his gear more (especially his off set). I honestly enjoy playing both classes a lot, but my warrior will always be the closest to my heart =D Let me do a bit of work on him and I'll log out in fury spec / gear so you can take a look.
Alright, I got the crafted tank boots for Torvan, and replaced a few gems with pure stam. I logged him out in his fury spec / gear - still obviously a work in progress (laughably over expertise cap, for example) but not sure how it compares to the DPS gear of the guy you have now. I'm running H FoS every day at the moment to replace that expertise trinket with the needle encrusted scorpion, which will make a large difference, and will work on other pieces too. (I gave up after doing that place 25 times and losing the roll 6 times... but I'm back at it again, I assure you). In case you care, I also logged out my priest in his shadow gear and spec. Here's a quick look at his shadow DPS on Toravon
Hey there - been a few days and I'm curious if I can get an answer soon so I know if I should app elsewhere or not.
Interested to know other officer's take on adding another tank...with myself/kag/arizair generally around when needed and dark/brozo available to dual spec tank nearly every night I do not see an urgent need for another dedicated protection spec tank in the raid
well, the dps gear is not up to par and obviously with 3 MS tanks, the dps would be needed to be as solid as tanking which is unlikely for an alt. at this time, we are looking for the most dedicated of players that already have the theorycrafting knowhow we expect... our healing officers have decided to decline this application. best of luck finding a place with need of the classes you wish to raid with.