Beware the Shadows

[Urmac]

The Undead know best when it comes to the darker side of magic. And setting foot in the unholy ruins of Lordaeron, one must always...beware the shadow.

One of the highest and most skilled practitioner of the art of shadow is one called Urmac, a Pandaren Shadow Priest hailing from the unknown realm of Akama. This lonesome Shadow Priest has been practising her dark arts for 172 days and 20 hours, but who's counting? Beginning her humble beginnings destroying the Scourge with her companions who claimed to only be smiting evil because they were <Rep Farmers Inc> yet still defeating all her enemies during the reign of Kel'Thuzad before the terror that was Yogg'Saron surfaced. Times were tough during the reign of the old god, and the poor Shadow Priest and her companions were unable to conquer the old god, and only defeat two of its heroic followers. Then on to the Trial of Crusader to prove her worth along side her companions, defeating the corrupted Nerubian King Anub'arak, but not bothering with the more heroic trials of the crusader. Then she went on in an attempt to conquer the Lich King himself, but her companions were unable to vanquish him, despite being with her companions for a year and a half, only two of his heroic underlings were defeated.

Urmac was unsatisfied with her companion's inability to defeat the Lich King, so she moved on to another group of companions, who were <Hellbent> on defeating the Lich King. Her new companions were fierce, and she was able to defeat all of Icecrown Citadel's most heroic foes...but yet, the true power of the Lich King proved too much for the group. After defeating the evil Twilight Drake Halion the Shadow Priest found herself alone in the sea of companions who had all decided to go their separate ways after 8 months of fun, but with some luck, she was brought into another group of companions who loved to play <Team Sports>.

All those hours on the court, rink, and field paid off, as the Shadow Priest and her companions defeated the Lich King once and for all, along with the more powerful Halion with only 10 of their strongest companions. Then...the real terror came. The team found 15 more companions and began to fight against a new threat, the one they call, Neltharion, Deathwing. The Shadow Priest and her companions went off on a slow start, only defeating 5 of the 6 minions of Nefarion the Risen, 2 out of 6 of Cho'Gal's underlings, and only the Conclave of Wind that was summoned by the Wind Lord himself, all challenging heroic foes. Suddenly, the ground shook, the fires of Hyjal blazed harsher than ever, as Ragnaros was risen once more. The companions managed to defeat Ragnaros, if not for it escaping their grasp at the last second. Only able to kill one of Ragnaros' most heroic challengers, but then something unthinkable happened to Urmac. After 8 long months with the great team, it all went wrong.

A Terrible darkness invaded her soul, leaving her unable to raid, no matter how hard she tried. For four long months she struggled to find the strength to even enter the world of Azeroth, but finally once those four months were over, she had returned once more. Though her sports Team was not the same when she returned. They too sought to move elsewhere, and with the help of her friends, she moved on to a guild that certainly was an <Acquired Taste>.

The Shadow Priest was inexperienced and under geared from having been down and out for those four months, but she managed to bounce back, completely terminating all of Ragnaros and his foes at their strongest, and not just that, she also destroyed Deathwing himself, along with his Spine, and his Warmaster at their most heroic, being the first group of 25 people to do so in their realm. The Firsts did not stop there either, the Shadow Priest discovering the land of Pandaria, where she and her 25 companions were the first to down all of their most heroic kills on their realm. Downing 11 our of the 16 mightiest foes. The Shadow Priest also has experience in progressing on the Heroic Protectors of the Endless, and the Heroic Lei Shi.

Though the Pandaren was quite aware of just how much of an <Acquired Taste> her companions were, it seemed that some were unaware just how strong of a taste it could be. This caused several companions to flee the realm in search of greener fields, along with others leaving Azeroth forever. Urmac stayed determined, however, though the New Year was not a good one for a Shadow Priest who's single target strength was not as strong as others. This caused the Priest to have to relax and cheer on her companions on the bench, but until now, the Priest is not waiting around anymore. The guild is no longer trying to progress and has allowed their members to move on if they wish, and the Priest is tired of not progressing.

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More about the Shadow Priest:

- The Priest has always done what she could to attain the best gear possible. http://us.battle.net.../Urmac/advanced

- The Priest always does everything she can to be at her most valorous every week since she set foot into Pandaria. http://i50.tinypic.com/t9ihif.jpg

- The Priest is well prepared for Wrathion's future tasks. [the 40 Trillium Bars in case you don't catch it] http://i47.tinypic.com/2wmktq8.jpg

- The Priest has shown her capabilities in battle.[see December 30, January 10] http://www.worldoflo.../guilds/222762/

- The Priest has many lovely different outfits. http://i50.tinypic.com/2gspvm8.jpg

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Now about the player...who is not a girl, GOTCHYA.

My name is William, I am 27 years old, I am from Ontario Canada, and I have a Master's Degree in Teaching, a Teaching Degree, and an Honours in English Literature, I currently have 9 characters of each class 85 and up, a 71 BM Monk, and a level 0 Hunter. I work as an executive administrator at a Health Centre, and can easily make raid times. The only unforseen circumstance that could make me late for a raid is if after-work meetings take longer than they should, which should not happen anyway since your start times are later than my previous ones. My average FPS during high graphic encounters is 30, my average latency is 100ms. I have Vent and Mumble, I have several high tech toys, one of which is a SiberiaV2 headset which I have no problems using and being vocal.

Aside from WoW I also play Minecraft on a private server with some RL friends, a large Steam collection. Currently working on the Dead Space 3 campaign, my favourite colour is Blue, I live with 2 roommates, in a tiny apartment.

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Last few things (promise) - This is the first and only guild I have currently submitted an application to. This is because I tried so hard to stay on my server, but it just won't happen. My guild has called it quits and none of the officers, or the GM himself are trying to recruit back to 25 for 5.2, so I am moving on. Any other questions I am more than happy to answer.

Shadow is also looking much better for single target in the patch. I always stay up-to-date with the PTR changes, and those that are implemented so far look to be putting Shadow in a much better overall position. Of course it is PTR and things could still change, but so far these changes are quite good:

- 5% increase in damage from all sources when in Shadowform

- Maximum Number of Shadowy Apparitions increased to 10

- Both tier bonuses are increases in single target DPS [Apparitions have a chance to increase the duration of SWP/VT & VT has a 10% change to spawn an apparition]

- Shadow word: Insanity has been greatly improved: a 3 orb Devouring Plague with the Talent makes Mind Flay tick for 100% increased damage while DP is on the target.

In closing, I think I would make an excellent addition to your guild. My attendance record has been nearly flawless in every guild, and as a teacher, I am always looking to learn and improve be it about my class, encounters, gear and beyond.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

[Hip]

Whats up Umac,

thanks for the app, I certainly have a sense of some personality.

Good times.

Few questions.

So you took a 4 month break during Cata? If it's something personal I'm not asking you to go into details, but if it was burnout or something like that I'd like to hear about it. Basically, how likely are you to need/want another extended break form the game?

You were benched because of your DPS? Can you explain that a bit more please? Even if Spriest theoretical DPS is a bit lower than some classes I've seen first hand that it can perform very strongly when played well.

Welcome to the boards and good luck with your app process.

Hip

[Urmac]

Hello Hip,

So the 4 month break was a forced break because I decided to take a teaching job on a fly-in-only First Nation's Reserve, which had very poor internet which prevented me from connecting to the game. The job only ended up lasting 4 months due to several issues that I will not get into, but long story short, I don't plan on ever doing that again, or moving anywhere without decent internet.

So we ended up being forced to go down to 10 players in the New Year because of how many quit/transferred, and I was in for some fights [Jan. 10th I helped kill heroic Amber Shaper for the first time] but my guild has been trying to 4 heal Empress attempts, which they have been working on for 6 or more weeks, leaving only 4 DPS that can go, so they wanted to bring their best geared DPS, taking 3 classes with high single target [Warrior, Mage, Rogue] and one good ranged AOE [Hunter/Lock]. My guild leader was adamant about having the best composition possible, so he felt that a Spriest would not have been ideal for 10m Empress, which is why he told me that I would not be brought in for it, which I did not try and argue, I just accepted it.

So I was not benched specifically because of my DPS, but because Shadow's current single target damage compared to most classes, is lacking.

[Twelvesoft]

That is odd, I feel like shadow is quite good for Empress, during the add phase we can do quite a bit of damage to all of the adds and also provide very beneficial off-healing by using halo after sonic discharges and through VE. As for our DPS next patch, I was very excited, but recent changes have left me with a bitter taste in my mouth, mainly MB being nerfed and the fact that apparitions are still quite buggy according to what I have seen and read about on the PTR. I like what I read in the application, definitely shows off some character and I enjoyed how you tied in the guild names to the story. If you could please link some of the fights on which you felt you did exceptional, and one or two in which you think you could improve, in order to give me something to look at, that would be great. After briefly perusing e-peen it looks like you put up very good numbers on Feng, one of the more lackluster fights for S-priest this tier, but fall a little flat on Garalon and Stone Guards, which are some of our better fights. If you could share your thoughts on these fights and let me know what is going on there that would be much appreciated.

Also, what are your usual glyphs? As an Spriest in this expac so far I feel like we have only one that is a must-have, and then 2 or 3 others that we can swap in for different fights, however there are also a few that are completely unnecessary in almost all situations.

Look forward to your responses, and thanks for the intriguing app.

[Ashin]

Hello Urmac,

Thanks for an interesting application. I do want to be clear that we're not an RP guild, though I don't mind that you had a little fun with your app.

I'm aware that spriest sim lower than other ranged DPS. But we have a skillful spriest on our team and he is able to remain competitive with everyone else. So personally I do not feel the deficiencies are nearly as pronounced in practice as the simulations suggest. Moreover, spriest brings such huge utility to the team, they're just great to have. So I don't understand your GM's rationale as you've laid it out, but of course he is not the one applying.

epeenbot is an easy way to see how you are doing with your class, versus your peers. Here is yours:

http://www.raidbots....us/akama/urmac/

I look mostly at heroic fights because the competition provided by the normal mode population is much less. What I see here is mostly average to above average performance from you, and I'm actually quite fine with that provided that you couple it with excellent raid awareness, smart use of class utility, and so on. Actually these other parts of the package are very important to us. Can you talk to us about your views on spriest utility and provide examples of how you have used it in practice to the benefit of your team? On that note, why do you love spriest so much?

These logs are old and don't give me much opportunity to scrutinize your gameplay. I can see your last Feng kill here:

http://www.worldoflo.../?s=1008&e=1389

How are you monitoring your dot uptimes and what can you do to improve on the 86% uptime on Vampiric Touch?

I don't exactly understand what happened to your guild, but I see that your 25m had 2 to 3 spriests and that they did retain one of them for subsequent 10m heroics. However that player's performance seems to be similar or inferior to yours. Was there some other reason why you were not raiding with them? Something doesn't quite make sense to me here. Why did you wait two months before deciding to look for another guild if they had made it clear they were benching you?

[Urmac]

Don't get me wrong, I still showed up every week despite not being asked to in the hopes that they would being me in to give me a chance, but they never did. I totally agree with you, but it seems that their focus was that Shadow's abilities in multi-target was not enough to outweigh the poor single target abilities. Again, I could have fought for it, but the guild itself has always had quite a negative attitude towards all members, so I only stuck around for as long as I did since we had done so well in the past.

The two dates I have shown are really the only two recent logs I have unfortunately, as the guild's WoL account is a free one, some of my better older parses have since been auto-deleted, so that Dec. 30 and Jan. 10 logs are really the only ones I have, my apologies on that. I am not including the 10H runs of MSV as admittedly, I did not give 100% since it was farmed content and the overall atmosphere of the guild was that nobody else except for a handful of us needed gear out of MSV still [i FINALLY got an off-hand 4 weeks ago, and still no Elegon Trinket] so please do not allow poor performances in those 10m MSVs reflect on my actual performance as a raider.

As for improvement, one area I know I need to improve on is what I refer to as "Shadow: Word Death Sniping" meaning that I tend to let most adds just tick down until death without thinking to SWD them. Clearly, that is not ideal as SWDs contribute more orbs which makes more Plagues, which is more DPS. I have recently invested in a World of Warcraft MMO Gaming mouse, and now that it is better bound, I think my 'sniping' abilities will improve.

Garalon - I am not totally aware of what the most ideal execution plan for Garalon is, but this was ours: All ranged/healers sit in the middle of the room and essentially sit still and dps. We were told not to DPS legs, and invest all of our DPS into killing Garalon's main body, which I did. I did, however, use ToF to snipe legs in order to get the procs, and to get more orbs. Some of the logs from WoL will show that in some instances, I was multi-dotting all legs regardless, but that was when we had it on farm and we were not being belittled for doing so.

Stone Guards - Even in the higher gear levels and the boss being on farm for some time, we still were told to get and lay down tiles. Another problem with the guild I was in is, those who were long time members or officers, NEVER did what they were told. They would yell at everyone else, who was not part of that group to do it, so they could stay still and do whatever they wanted to maintain top. Therefore, my low performance there is due to having to run and distribute tiles, and on some nights have to do it more than once per crystal since so many were not doing it, though the later logs we would just whoever was willing and leave it at that.

The two glyphs I always run with no matter what is VE, and MS. VE because I was regularly asked to pop it on fights during high raid damage. MS because instant MB is better for heavy movement. The DB glyph I have just left in for awhile just to toss out PoMs or renew myself during dungeons/scenarios/LFR. The only other glyphs I would see replacing VE or DB would be one of the two armor glyphs to reduce magic/physical damage, or the SWD glyph, as I recall it being more ideal for not having to deal with the BlizzUI delay in letting it become active when a target falls below 20%. The last other one would be Mind Flay, in fights were there is heavy movement. Only other ones I can think of that are usually rare-use scenarions is Dispersion or Mass Dispel.

[Urmac]

Haha, well aware that you are not an RP guild, just wanted to make a good impression!

Can you talk to us about your views on spriest utility and provide examples of how you have used it in practice to the benefit of your team? On that note, why do you love spriest so much?

In terms of utility, some of the things I have used in practice to benefit my guild are as follows: Void Shift - The only other real Lay On Hands in the game. Invaluable for those split second moments to save a dying member of the raid. This ability is bound as a mouse-over macro, so it can always be ready at a moment's notice. Another form of utility that assists the team is glyphed Vampiric Embrace, which acts as a strong healing CD in times of high raid damage. Thirdly, the simple fact of being a hybrid is utility in and of itself. Coupled with the glyph of Dark Binding to toss out PoHs and Renews, it can also assist in lessening the load on healers throughout long encounters. The last thing I can think of for utility is having Mass Dispel, crucial for Spirit Kings, and of course dispel, which helps for both boss abilities and raid assistance.

Finally I love being a Shadow Priest because it seems to be the one class out of all the others that just comes naturally for me. Having played it for several years, to me, despite the changes over the two expansions, it still feels easy to me. Others say to me 'Uhg, how can you play a dot class, its so confusing' and I just sit there and shrug because I do not find it challenging at all. Of course, the challenge is to be better then average, not just so, something I always strive for.

How are you monitoring your dot uptimes and what can you do to improve on the 86% uptime on Vampiric Touch?

I use Tidy Plates along with my ShadowedUnitFrames with built-in timers to monitor my dot uptime. Admittedly, when things get hectic and there is lots of movement, they tend to fall ot sometimes. For Feng, as per the example given, I would use the two examples. One being if I have the fire in that phase, if bad timing shows up, I have to move first, then redot. Also in shield phase, same thing, keeping Mind Sear up until all of the adds die is more important than refreshing dots on the boss in time. In other words, closer watching of ability timers, and anticipating the refreshing before the abilities go off would be an area of improvement.

Was there some other reason why you were not raiding with them? Something doesn't quite make sense to me here. Why did you wait two months before deciding to look for another guild if they had made it clear they were benching you?

I agree, this situation probably does seem odd, but the benching in question was only done when they began to work on Heroic Empress and even then, things were never clear. When the guild reached the point where we were unable to put together 25 people and switch to 10 player progression I spoke with the guild leader, and he said he wants me around and wants me in for the progression fights. So that for one kept me around, though they had a preference for the other two as both of them were former officers that started playing again. If you examine the logs, you will see there was none of us three in for Lei Shi, save for maybe a few attempts, because again, the officers pegged us as 'Not worth bringing to single target fights' as the other classes in the group (One being a Disc Priest) made up for what utility we brought. As for Imperial Viser and Protectors: They brought Midgeyy in for their first night of attempts, and their mentality for 10 player progression was to keep the same group no matter what because they have had the most experience with the fight so why teach the fight to someone new. For Protectors, I had to leave early due to work the next day so they brought in the other Priest, and again, used him for the continued progression until they got the kill.

But again, as you see, January 10th, was my time to shine as Midgeyy was not around so they brought me in for Amber Shaper progression, and once we FINALLY figured out the right strat, it went down in ~5 attempts with that new strat. So for the first month of January, I was under the impression that I would be brought and was needed if Midgeyy did not show up to help with progression. Then for February and those weeks of Empress attempts, they never outright told me they would rather not try than bring me in, ontop of us almost never managing to get all 4 healers online to give attempts at all.

Lastly, we finally had a guild meeting this past Tuesday where the officers told us that they were no longer even trying to progress on Empress anymore, and were just going to wait and see what happens in 5.2. So this whole time, they told myself and other members that they were working on recruiting back up to 25 for the patch, but it never happened, which I only started to catch on about two weeks ago when I noticed that officers and the GM were never online, and their "recruiting" was just endlessly bumping a WoW Forum thread, topping it all off with the fact that their "recruitment" was trying to convince another guild in a similar situation as us to transfer to Akama and merge with us.

Hope that clears things up, as strange it all sounds.

[Tnx]

Welcome to the boards.

Have you had a chance to get on the PTR and do some number testing with the 5.2 changes?

[Urmac]

No, Tnx, I have not, though this is something that I do like to do, and plan on doing in the future, I guess I just kind of assimilated a bit to the guild's current lackadaisical atmosphere and have not bothered. I do, however, frequent www.howtopriest.com, which looks like the changes implemented to far are serving us well.

[Twelvesoft]

I also have a question about your choices as to which pieces to upgrade with Valor points. Why look over LoTC? Even the non heroic version is extremely powerful, and the upgrades are definitely worth it, each single upgrade on the normal level trinket is worth almost as much as the two upgrades you did to your neck, bracers, and back.

As for the gylphs, dispersion is one that should never be used in all honesty, the CD reduction is so minimal and the only mechanics that we have to engage in that involve soaking give us more than enough time for our un-glyph disperse to be up and ready to go whenever we may need to use it. The MF glyph however is one that I find to be very valuable in just about every fight. Since our mobile dps is pretty crap, getting where we need to be faster is always a benefit, and this is the only glyph that I have kept on for every fight this tier. MS is another one that is very good currently, but is getting nerfed to hell next patch and will be almost entirely useless except on fights where we have to manually MS things (which rarely happens), and so unfortunately we will be losing that glyph for most fights. MD glyph is obviously exceptional for a few fights and almost entirely useless on many others, SK and Wind Lord both require this glyph, but it also comes in handy on Empress and Protectors and even Tsulong. VE is one that I have dabbled with but in many fights I feel like the extra 5 seconds gives opportunity for more procs, which in turn leads to more damage, and that translates into more healing, but I can understand and appreciate the use of it.

As for sniping, yes it is incredibly important, and the lag that we face with most little adds that we would want to snipe definitely makes this difficult, especially when you have a higher latency, makes it nearly impossible in some case, which is incredibly frustrating.