Sheitan - Priest (Shadow MS)

[Sheytan]

Hey guys! My name is Mike, Aka Sheitan. If you've seen the movie, you know who I am. If not, no worries. I haven't either, though people mention it to me occasionally when I'm AFK in Org. Before you start mispronouncing my name in your head as "Sheeetan" and it sticks, please allow me to explain that it rhymes with Satan, which is appropriate, since it does mean Satan in Arabic. I also think the name is appropriate for a guild named <South of Heaven>, but I'll try not to assert my underworld dominance here. I'm 30 years old and about to begin a hopefully short career as a substitute teacher while I search for something to do with my recently earned MBA. My bachelor's was in Psychology with a minor in the Maths, so I can read your mind and calculate the volume of ANY object. How are those for super powers? I have an 8 year old boy who is a budding nerd obsessed with Minecraft, Portal, and currently also My Little Pony. I can't wait to teach him to farm ore and herbs for me. Because of being a father, the nature of substitute teaching and also that any job I'm seeking thereafter is going to be a 9-5 sort of deal with my master's, my life and schedule are very stable.

I have been playing this game since vanilla, though I have taken 2 somewhat short breaks. I started raiding with a guild named <Adversaries>, where I became the rogue class officer. After raiding for a while through MC and BWL, I took my first break for RL reasons and returned in BC not too far into the start of T4. I joined a guild called <Bad Anatomy> after getting to level 85, and I raided with them essentially through T9, with a little break after T6 and returning towards the end of Naxx, a month or two before Ulduar released. When T10 came out, BA was falling apart, so I joined <Church of RNG>. I raided with them until we called it quits early this year in T14. I found a guild named <The Inner City Gym> after that, but it's just not turning out to be as great a fit as I hoped. As you hopefully see from my past guild history, I'm seeking a guild that will fit very well and become a long-term home for me in this game. I've also been on the same server since my return in BC, so even considering a server transfer took a lot of motivation to finally branch out in order to find the perfect guild for me.

After doing some searching around, I feel that you guys are just that for me. Your stability and consistency are very important to me, as I want to be part of a guild that isn't about to crumble and leave me searching again any time soon. The slim raid times also meet my needs exactly, and the times fit well within my schedule. I want to kill bosses, but I don't want to dedicate my entire life to doing so. While many guilds simply claim to raid at certain times for certain amounts, a quick glance at their raid logs shows otherwise. It seems as important to you as it is to me to really stick to that. I like the community aspect of the guild as well. I don't want to spend as much time in this game as I do without spending it with great people. I enjoy alts, pvp and other aspects of this game when I have the time, so being part of a great community outside of raids is important to me. I love the fact that you guys have an open-ended application! Every other guild has the same copy/paste crap, and they might as well just ask for a table of numbers listing ilvl, current/past progression and DPS/HPS values from recent kills. The fact that you look for much more than that really impresses me.

So let me tell you why I am what you're looking for. As far as performance, I do my homework and put in the time to be able to execute the theory behind my class even in a chaotic progression environment. Competition brings out the best in me, and worldoflogs provides an abundance of other priests for me to compete with. I know I'm a giant fucking nerd here, but I have a folder which holds screenshots of worldoflogs pages. Whenever I'm in the top 20 for my class/spec, I take a screenshot of the page listing the top 40 for that and put it in that folder. It's my little trophy case, so to speak. I don't care about purples - they're a means to an end. I care about being the best Shadow Priest in the world. I've also noticed Twelvesoft, who seems very exceptional. I love playing with other Shadow Priests for the friendly competition, and I imagine it would be a lot of fun to play with such a talented one. I hope that I can spark his interest into checking me out. I've touched upon my consistency, but as far as attendance, unless I have a vacation planned and give at least a month or two of notice, I'll be there. I'm not going to decide to go to the bar on a tuesday or be banned from my computer by my parents for bad grades. I'm not shy at all, so if there's something that needs to be said over Mumble, I won't hesitate to press my button and communicate. Not to toot my own horn too much, but I'm also just a generally all-around good guy. I'm patient and helpful, understanding and dedicated. I also think I'm hysterical, though my girlfriend usually just looks at me like she's sorry for me when I make jokes.

I am very excited to have found a guild that seems like such a great fit. I hope that you will feel the same way about me. Let me close my first post with some of the more basic details. Thank you for taking the time to read this!

Current and past progression while content is current:

T15: 2/13 HM

T14: 15/16 HM

T13: 8/8 HM

T12: 6/7 HM

T11: 8/13 HM

T10: 12/12 HM

Armory: http://us.battle.net...heitan/advanced

Logs: http://raidbots.com/...9;gall/sheitan/

Here's a link to my UI: http://i.imgur.com/mtxQjLa.jpg

It's TukUI slightly modified and Raven, Dominos, Grid plus a heavy dose of WeakAuras.

I've been on a chicago server since BC, and my ping is usually 40-50.

I'm comfortable and competent playing all 3 priest specs. Though I prefer to be considered as Shadow primarily, if a fight requires an extra healer or one starts DC'ing, I really do enjoy the chance to heal from time to time. Feel free to peruse my Disc/Holy logs on my Epeen bot!

My realid is Sheytan#1932 if anybody wants to contact me in-game.

I look forward to hearing from you!

[Araenith]

Welcome to the boards. Your app was very enjoyable to read. Good luck

[Sheytan]

Thank you! I appreciate it.

[Ashin]

Hey there,

Thanks for putting together a solid app, and for further inflating my spriest's ego.

I think you're applying for the right reasons, so that's a great start. Your epeen makes it clear that you're capable of delivering performance, which is also good. However, my initial concern is that your app makes no effort to disguise your focus on ranking. While DPS naturally like to show off, we've found that someone who is overly distracted by their meter scores does not necessarily improve our progression, even if they deal great damage.

Particularly in your case, shadowpriest is capable of bringing great utility to a raid team. But delivering that utility may sometimes be at odds with your ranking. Likewise, ranking is highly influenced by the type of assignment you are given. We do not assign targets or jobs based on what we think will result in the highest rank, but rather what we think will get us the kill the most smoothly.

Can you please address my concern? In your response, please talk about spriest utility and provide specific examples of how you used your class utility to enhance your team's progression during this tier or the previous tier.

Lastly, and without getting into too much dirty laundry, can you explain why your current team is not working out?

Cheers.

[Inedit]

So few people name drop Vincent Cassel movies! Welcome to the forums!

Why are you a nerd and not a geek?

If you'd like to win 12's favor, buy him Molton Brown shower gel, so he can become a fully functioning member of society.

[Sheytan]

Don't worry. Given the chance I'll help deflate his ego in the near future

You have some very valid concerns, and I also agree that great damage isn't really that essential for progression. I am completely okay with doing odd jobs, such as HM Will/Elegon soaking or Garalon kiting. I was on add duty for Protectors, and while my dots tended to be overkill on them and cost me some damage, it helped us get the kill, so I didn't have a single complaint. Getting bosses down is the most important thing, as I do see myself as part of a greater whole in raids. While I love fights that allow me to purely maximize my DPS, not every fight is like that. I can eat my veggies!

Here is some utility that I've found for Shadow:

• Dispersion has been put to great use this tier and last tier. I soaked for HM Elegon and Will, taking very little damage and allowing healers to focus on others. I could also solo soak Unseen Strikes on Blade Lord, probably annoying Disc priests that have already blanketed the raid in shells but I think helping out overall Currently, I solo soak Static Shocks with it. On a similar note to dispersion, I found that I could negate Korthik Strikes on Wind Lord to take no damage by taking Phantasm (before it was nerfed for PvP reasons) and popping Fade as soon as I was targetted. I had such high hopes for Spectral Guise, but it's been a let down in raids so far.
  
• Mass dispel has also been of great value to raids. I felt very instrumental during Wind Lord progression because of how important the dispels were, and while it required me to VT for mana more than I would have normally, I was happy to lower my DPS if it means a kill. More recently, I've used mass dispel on Heroic Horridon at the first gate to frequently cleanse melee of the sunfire debuff. Again, this requires VTing adds for mana more than is really optimal for DPS, but I'm okay with that. Let's see. Mass dispel was great for Spirit Kings and for Tsulong's Terrorize, too!
  
• Vampiric Embrace is a cooldown that I try to use well. My "go to" glyph setup for raid fights includes the VE glyph. This makes it more potent, since I can pop it along with DP (and MF:I on many fights this tier) to get a much bigger burst of healing as well as larger overall amount of healing done. I try to time this for heavy raid damage when possible, and especially during progression try to use it several times a fight. At the very least, I'll use it at one time it's needed most, where I can make sure I have 3 orbs ready to go for it. We had a bit of trouble keeping up with healing at the 3rd gate of Horridon, so I'd use it there and then on phase 2. The same goes for Iron Qon. I typically use it after exiting Windstorm and also in phase 2. On farm content, healers seem to want me to stop nibbling on their slices of the healing pie, though.
  
• Void Shift is very underrated by many priests that I've seen. I can't say I get raid-saving shifts in on every fight, but am conscious of it and try to be pretty "handy" with my ghetto lay on hands.
  
• I've used Life Grip recently to save a few people that seem to have major issues with their computer during Lei Shen. It's no good to DC or freeze up when Thunderstruck is going out right next to them, but a quick grip buys them some time to log back in. It's hardly game changing, but I even remember way back during Bastion of Twilight's trash on the way to Valiona, those adds that blow up and knock people down into the abyss. I was able to catch a few tanks there!
  
• Fear Ward was a nice back up on Tsulong, just in case a healer got feared. I also tended to use it on Vizier to at least slightly mitigate fears during convert.
  
• Class Flexibility is what drew me to switch to this class to begin with. I've played every healer class in a raiding environment except a monk (who is 90 but hasn't been played in months), and priest healing is my favorite. I did HM Shek'zeer in 10-man, and we needed to 4 heal it. I was happy to go Disc for the fight, which seemed to help get us the kill!
  

As for my current guild, the stability is very much opposite of South of Heaven. It was supposed to be a 9 hour raid week, but I don't think it's been less than 18 for the past 2 months. It's frustrating to log on shortly before raid time and find that they've already killed a boss or two because enough people were on to start an hour early, so they did. It's even more frustrating when the GM/RL adds extra raid days on a whim week by week or extends the raid an hour late for no real reason. I'm actually totally in favor of staying a bit late if we're wiping at 5% or something, but "let's just get one more boss down tonight. I get to sleep in tomorrow" when all that's left is farm cleanup and we have another raid night left in the week isn't a good reason for me. There are some other issues as you may suspect from such erratic leadership, but I think that demonstrates the overall atmosphere that I'm not enjoying.

I always thought that Geeks were more awkward and weird, while nerds were more intensely focused on.. nerdy things, like reading text books or taking screenshots of ranks. How do you distinguish the two? Maybe I'm neither and a dork instead?!

Thank you for your responses!

[Ashin]

Alright that is a pretty solid response.

One thing I do want to mention is that, while we almost never allow the raid to go late (maybe 5 to 10 minutes), we do sometimes ask for a fourth raid night. When we do this, its on Mondays. The informal rule I've made is not to do this more than once a month. We have used two so far this tier.

Does that present any concerns for you?

Send me a btag invite - ashin#1840.

[Sheytan]

9-12 hours is fine, and Mondays are also not a problem for me. I'm really pretty easy going with times for the most part, but when the extra 4th day turns permanent, all raids are suddenly scheduled an hour earlier and are starting even earlier than that schedule, and they run late just about every night.. well 9-20+ hours is just too erratic for me!

[Negido]

Welcome to the forums Beelzebub.

[Sheytan]

Thank you! What's a devil gotta do to get that list of six questions?