Hey guys, thank you very much for the quick responses. I will try and answer them in order, while being honest, and keeping my smartassery to a minimum.
Hip pt. I first:
For now, why prot war? Have you played other tank classes? I have pretty much always had ol' Nerdrage as my main. Quite a bit of time, effort, and sweet nerd memories went into the making of him. As such, I don't really alt around much. I do have a lvl 85 DK, who is/was quite a bit of fun, but I have not looked at him in years. I have worked with every other type of tank before (except for Monk, not much experience there) in a raiding environment, and as such I am quite aware of the strong suits and perceived weaknesses of each class.
What's your favorite tool in the prot war toolbox? Whats something another tank has you feel is missing from your arsenal? To be honest, my 'favorite' ability currently is probably SBArr. It is nice for Prot Warrs to finally have an ability that is able to absorb magical damage, and as an active mitigation ability it on hand to use as opposed to SBlock in sub 60/55 rage situations. Especially when Vengeance is running high. Well, DK's and their ability to self heal would be awesome. Yes, yes I know, Enraged Regeneration. It's just not the same. Oh, and the old school Pally Tank AD. Oh you died, oh wait, no you didn't! Such a nice ability.
How often do you get pissed? How often do you get supper pissed? I don't. I mean for real. I have been in guilds where losing it over vent is the norm, and that approach is not so much my bag. Now, please do not equate my lack of nerd rage with apathy. It's not like that. I do care about this game quite a bit, and I play for progression, and for the sense of accomplishment and celebration when a strategy and performance come together for the death of a new boss. The internet is a funny place my friend. Given the fact that there are 25 people all with various backgrounds, all with different reasons for playing this game, I always try and look to the bigger picture when someone is losing it, and giving them the benefit of the doubt. For myself however, I prefer an analytic approach and try and make noticeable change towards facilitating a Win. If there is static, I usually will try and speak with that person after raid to try and come to a consensus of how we can address the issue.
On the pull of a raid boss, do you manually count down or use an add-on? /dbm pull 10.
What add-ons are you using to track your CDs (uptime and availability)? I use a few. I use an add-on called SlamandAwe. I also use Raven and NTK.
Ashin pt. 1:
I definitely enjoyed the personality in the post. But I'm concerned about schedule for sure. You've said that our time was kind of early but you think you can do it. You've said you'd like to do two nights but you think you can do three. You've said you've left guilds for requesting a fourth night but you wouldn't mind if we did occassionally. I'm getting tremendous mixed signals here. The tank's crown is heavy, as you acknowledged. If you're late, we're late. If you're tired, we're tired. If you're not available, we're in a bad situation.
Help me out with all this? Right now it feels uncomfy.
Hi Ashin, thank you for the response, and I am glad you asked. The short answer is this: If picked up as a Trial for your guild. I will not screw around. I will be on-time. Researched, Flasked, fooded, and ready to roll. I can and will fit those times into my schedule.
Now here comes the longer answer: I was personally really taken aback with the release of Mists, regarding the amount of extra-curricular activity necessary to be raid ready. The new advent of dailies, charms, and bonus rolls, really all added to my play time. Reputation grinds and the cost of Valor items, with the nerf to drop rates for Valor also added to this. This coupled with no dungeon tabards for rep grind = Me spending too much time playing WoW.
Blizz has heard their clients, and said; You Want Content?! You Got IT! As such they have released an inordinate amount of raid instances, and things to do outside of a raiding environment. Now this, may be all in my head, and due to the fact I am getting older, and as such my brain is shrinking, and as such I get easily confused...But in all seriousness I was really pretty overwhelmed.
So, how did this affect me in a raiding environment? Well, I personally feel like many guilds that were able to complete HDS (and prior), and do the metas, raiding only 2-3 times a week, now really saw their progression rating dropping over those other guild who could poopsock raids, due to the fact that many of the guild that raided 5 nights a week, had the time to hit up all the different instances, and complete them in Heroic Mode.
I have noticed the new approach that many guild that are pressed for time have taken. Many moons ago, it used to be that generally speaking, each week a new boss would die in Heroic Mode. Then, upon the subsequent raid reset, the guild would go back to the same instance, and farm all the bosses in Heroic Mode that they knew how to during the first 2 nights, and then would work on the new boss for the last night. If a kill did not happen, then maybe an additional night would be added to kill that boss. Then the next week rinse and repeat +1.
Currently, what I have been a part of is this: To maintain or improve rankings, there is the new paradigm, which is Kill new Heroic Boss, and never go back. Due to the fact that there are so many bosses now, and the Heroic Modes are quite well tuned imo, there is always one-more-boss that needs to die.
I don't bemoan, the new way of doing things really at all, but as I am sure you can appreciate, there is always juuuuuust one more boss that needs to die. This can create a cycle in which, as I mentioned in my earlier post, where 3 days a week guilds, are suddenly 4-5 day a week guilds, and guilds that normally raid 5 nights a week, well...let's just say they are beginning to run out of socks...
Blizz knows what they are doing. They hire Behavioural Psychologists, and ask them, how can we get out players to spend more time in-game? How can we provide a better system for rewarding players? What they have come up with is the current raiding model. I do like it quite a bit. There is now always something to do (and I don't even really PvP at all). With the release of 5.2, this is really the first time I can remember where they are releasing a new raid instance before many of the upper end (top US 600) guilds even have their meta drakes. Always leave them wanting more.
I have the time available to definitely raid the 9 hours a week and still get the majority of my outside of raid responsibilities taken care of. However, I cannot put aside the time to be raiding 20 hours a week, and still get things done outside of raid, and still be present for my family and work. If you guys would like for me to be there for a 4th night. I will be there. If it is like every week, with the occasional 5th night. I really just can't do that on a regular basis. I would love to, but cannot.
Also, I am honest to a fault. Now of course, 'being honest' is subjective, (somewhat) but I usually call them as I see them. In my perfect world, SoH would raid 2 nights a week, 4 hours at a time from 6.30 PST until 10.30 PST. We would kill all the current content at the hardest available level on the 1st night, and then all chill in Vent and do Transmog runs / old content, on the 2nd night.
However, back to reality. Getting 25 peoples schedules together is like herding cats. Your guild seems like it would be a great fit for me, and I know a good Opportunity when I see it. As I stated earlier, your times do work with my RL, and I will do everything that I can to contribute to the guild at a high level.
Were you able to receive a validation e-mail on your hotmail account? Yes I was.
Hip pt II.
Are you going for expertise hardcap? You’ve stacked quite a bit of it, but aren’t to cap yet, what’s the plan? Yes, we were planning on LeShi Progress, and as such I was running towards hard cap. However, hard exp cap is my somewhat preferred way of doing this as opposed to 7.5/7.5%, Mastery all after. The reason being is this: I find it puts me in direct control of my rage income. This then given me control over my passive mitigation to ease the transition of working with healers to whom I am new. I am happy to play in either hard cap / or mastery. The reason I am currently below the cap threshold, is I felt a good way of doing things would be to reforge all exp/hit, while maintaining all mas/sta gems. I do have one gem that is currently exp/sta, and as such that is an oversight on my part.
What add-ons are you using for multi-target threat? Its actually quite simple. I use Tidy/Threat Plates. I have it customized that if I have threat, the plate becomes very small and quite transparent. In other words, if I see a name plate, I need to pick that add up. If I do not see any name plate, then they are on me. (I should caveat this with the nameplates do not fully disappear. I am still able to see the cast bar underneath them.)
Is your current prot talent build your usual one? If so, why double time? How are you using Safeguard? Why Glyph of Death from Above? I have found that with Mists, the raiding game has change slightly. Gone are the days of a single spec as a catch all, and now changing out spec and glyph prior to a fight is now the custom. Having said this, Double Time is primarily set up for mobility more so than anything else. Really just a personal preference. Juggernaut would make equal sense due to the rage generation income. I just mostly like DT, so that if I need to charge to grab an add I can.
I find this Tier in the Tree to be the most encounter specific. I have it on Safeguard 90% of the time. Why? Because it would be the most useful in a pure tanking environment through the use of a focus macro. However, I have found the actual use of it to be few and far between as the vast majority if the time, I am either tanking something else, or there would be some mechanic (Phermones for example) perhaps being in the way of using it effectively. I found it to be most useful back in HDS for DW and the tank soaking of Tentacle Smash.
Mass Spell Reflect is really useful for things like Challenge Modes, and Dungeons, but not so much in raiding encounters.
Vigilance is tricky. I just don't go bustin it out too often, as due to the fact that I then take 30% of all incoming damage, it is a real balancing act between tank/OT/Healers before using this particular talent. If I were to use it for a specific fight, I would probably do by:
/ra Nerd is Casting Vigilance
/ focus Tank Name Goes Here
/ cast Vigilance
In order to give the heads up, However, I would have it worked out prior to the pull the timing of when everyone could expect to see it coming.
Nerd, it’s log time.
Protectors fight, the one you specifically linked so the one I assume you’re showcasing (?). Let me start by saying that I get that this is 10 man normal and that outgoing boss damage isn’t really a concern at this point (or really even on 1/1/13 when the fight is from). However, you’re not applying to a 10m normal guild so I feel I should only evaluate with a 25 HM mindset.
Looks like you glyphed into gag order, which is awesome, gives you tons of interrupts for that fight (3; on 15, 30 and 40 sec CDs) yet you only used heroic throw once. Even without gag order there would be more opportunities to heroic throw through the course of a fight lasting 5:44.
I also see only 5 interrupts from you on this fight. There is so many spell cats and avoidable spell damage on this fight I’d really want to see more here. How’s your interrupting history? How capable are you of maintaining interrupts on multiple targets? Do you use focus or mouseover interrupt macros?
I see that you “Off-tanked” the fight while Gummybeaar tanked the kill targets? Curious about your active mitigation choices? 3 casts on Shield Barrier (4.6%uptime), what damage sources were you using this for? 13 casts of Shield Block (26.1% uptime), particularly concerning as you tanked Kaolan most of the fight and his melee is considerable. Overall your active mitigation use is poor.
Your raid awareness seems good. I see you took 8 casts of defiled ground, but no ticks so you moved out of it quickly, well done. I see Regail died first, so we don’t know if you can lightning dance, but again the whole white/30s thing.
Overall on this fight you’re not using your resources as I’d like to see them for our progression. A lot of your focus appears to be on DPS; 52 casts of Heroic Strike/Cleave (on only 12 Ultimatum procs), yet I don’t see any use of Recklessness, Skull Banner, Execute, Heroic Leap, or shattering throw. While these are normally things I would be less concerned about, there was a fair amount of time you weren’t tanking a boss and have amply time to dedicate to these spells.
Your active mitigation and defensive toolkit use is too low. So few interrupts, 29.5% uptime on your active mitigation, 1 Enraged Regen, no uses of Safeguard (while you spent a fair amount of time not tanking), no Demoralizing Banners, only 2 Demo Shouts, 1 use of your mastery trinket, only 1 use each of your big defensive CDs.
I see similar trends throughout your parses in ToeS. What are your thoughts on this? What’s your decision making process on what buttons to push throughout a fight and what could you do to demonstrate a higher skill level in survival and overall spell usage?
Hip, thank you for taking the time to looking over my logs in depth. My only regret is that I did not take the same level of detail looking over them prior to submitting them. I flippantly grabbed a somewhat recent log and dropped it. Poor play on my behalf.
Under your critique, you raise many good points and red flags with my application, I can see your point. Please allow me to make some excuses here if you will bear with me. This particular instance was essentially me not playing my best, or to the potential required within SoH. Essentially what was going on here was; it was the first time I believe that I had been to ToES other than RF. Gummy essentially would provide me with a quick 15 second breakdown, answer any questions that I had, and then game on. I had seen the fights and researched them prior, but this was the first time in the big show as it were for ToES.
As such, all I really paid much attention to was, make sure no water bombs go off, and the boss heals, and make sure that the boss swap and tank around the room phase went very smooth. I believe that the 5 interrupts were me sitting on all my interrupts, waiting for Cleansing Waters. When that orb appeared, I would unload with Pummel and then Disrupting Shout in an attempt to get the boss off the Water Orb.
If I recall correctly, the 1 HThrow was primarily used as a final resort to get Kaolan off his spot after using both pummel and DS with no effect. In retrospect, I was probably burning both of those interrupts prematurely without him actually casting anything. No cast + My Interrupt = No Moving.
There is vast room for improvement within this fight for me. Any 'bolts' could be interrupted with as you mention a focus or mouseover macro. However, again in my defense for this particular Normal Mode ToES, I was essentially pulling the line, doing the basics, and spending the rest into some half baked DPS.
Wow, this is really not my shining moment.
If I may, as an aside to this making excuses for my poor performance...
Working with Gummy at <Biblical Proportions> I was the OT/MT for their inaugural kills of HGaralon, HWindLord, and HWill of the Emperor. I have a proven track record of being able to compete at a high level over the longer term.
These logs do not portray me in a very competent manner. I will spend further time reviewing other logs and try and come up with something a bit more indicative of my performance level when progressing on Heroic Content.
I hype myself as an Excellent Tank. In reality I am a Very Good tank. I do make mistakes, I do fuck up from time to time, and unfortunately I have been 'that guy' in the past. However, I learn from my mistakes, and I always bring improvement on my game the following time. I try to carry myself in a proactive manner, and if there is room for improvement, I will take the necessary step to do so. I have a proven track record of when being in the right place, I can contribute at a high level.
Heroic Anub'arak
Yogg 0 light
US top 10 Meta Achievement for ICC (Prior to the All you Can eat Achievement nerf)
US Top 150+ Kills for many different bosses.
I would like to add a few more notches to that belt here at SoH, and I am sure that I can do so if given a shot. Just like that kid Rudy in that movie. Or like Forrest Gump for example.
On paper, not so much, in reality, I can shrimp like a motherf***er. edit: like a very powerful person, who has a lot of power. (The original just seemed a little crass, no?)
