Hard Mode Oriented Balance Druid

[Balt]

To Ashin, Fulgshift (I would take as my specific observers) and members of SoH,

Let’s see if I can keep from taking too much of my time or yours’. Character: Baltruid of US-Stormrage

Raid/guild leader for past 2 years. I have played for 6 straight years (Boomkin at least 3) and no plan to discontinue. I have only been in three main guilds – 1 reformed and renamed 3 times within the final 3 years of play time. I find that the longer I am with the guild, the better I get with that group and more rewards there are. Therefore, I am looking for a concrete “home”.

Do not need the best guild, but one that steadily progresses with a three day raid schedule to allow for life responsibilities.

That said, I am out of school and college with 1.5 jobs – one during day, outside of raid times, the other with chosen hours after a raid schedule is set. Any travel is on the weekends, again, outside of raid times; leaving only emergencies/natural disasters in the way. I give my time and if I cannot make a raid, there is at least a 2 week notice IF it comes to that.

I am VERY loyal and dedicated. If I join a guild, I look to stay until there is none. If you need me to farm, ask me. If you need me to kick turtles, ask me. You get the picture. For every plan, there is a pre-plan. I plan each fight to maximize how my specific class is to be played to aid in downing the boss. If any extra tasks are needed from me, tell me the basic strategy and I will maximize my class around it. I come with my own flasks, pots and food - and plenty of it. If any support, financially or related to materials are needed for the guild, again, just ask.

I am not the best or worst geared; I gave most gear to my raiders first in this current tier because gear is NOT what makes me. Yea, I rank on normals but, no, not too much on heroics. I could care less; the bosses die whether I am top 50 or 200 as long as I am hitting the target that needs to die. My DPS usually increases as the group becomes more organized and comfortable. If I need more DPS, I do my research, make my contacts to others in my class and theory craft, simulate and test changes as needed. Can I do anything else besides dps? Yes, I can heal when needed, but obviously I do not obtain the second nature of the spec and orientation to it.

I am educated, professional and productive. I am tolerable and do not get offended easily, (esp. in a game) so tell me if there is a problem as mature raiders should. Otherwise, I may not be aware and it will not be fixed – and I hope I can do the same in return. Some call it criticism or “getting at someone”, but I call it team improvement.

I can match anyone’s personality. I am quiet or goofy for whatever the environment calls for. I may not always stick around in mumble/vent after raid because of rest for work, but I am 150% for communicating to ANYONE at any time before raid for improvements or alt runs.

Again, I have raid and guild led for a few years now. If any of my past experiences are of use or needed to fill in, just ask. I am not picky as long as the raiders around me are working as hard as I feel I am.

I only have current experience on 4 HM fights, I may be behind the curve, but I do not feel incapable of any HM in this instance.

I can see I have discussed more than expected. I do apologize if this is long winded, but I wanted to cover all the points necessary or that I would like to see in an initial greeting if I was on the other end.

If you need to know my favorite color or movie we can always discuss that at a later time and why chick flicks CAN be good

Computer specs - built my own and it is more than enough to handle a 25M raid.

If you are interested in me at all, I would like to hold a conversation above the level of text (in mumble/vent). I have screenshot(s), epeenbot/logs, past guild names or whatever is needed (if you have not already looked me up) to draft a further application for multiple officers’ viewing.

I hate to post these because I am always tweeking for improvements, especially 10 to 25man but:

UI: http://i1048.photobu...1413_002642.jpg

Epeen: http://raidbots.com/...mrage/baltruid/ (REALLY hate linking this, but I am aware of the specifics and the depth you check withIN the logs, so I do not not mind as much.)

Thank you for your time folks, and I hope to hear from you shortly.

[Synnical]

if you were a pokemon, which one would you be

[Ashin]

Hello,

Just briefly before I go to bed:

1. Please just tell us your computer specs.

2. Please link your armory for our convenience.

3. Are you currently raid leading? If yes, what do you anticipate will be the best and worst things about becoming "just a raider"?

4. What are you most likely to be doing on a Friday night?

[Fulgshift]

Balt:

Howdy! Thanks for the shout-out and the application in general. I'll throw some links up for everyone:

Logs: http://www.worldoflo.../guilds/225236/

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

From the general perspective, talents/reforges/enchants/gearing all look fine. Only oddity is your Mastery enchant on gloves -- surely the haste enchant would be better here since you seem to be valuing haste > mastery according to your reforges. Thank you for running both HotW and Incarnation, as it saves us a lot of time and questioning. And sorry about your lack of a weapon upgrade -- that's some pretty terrible luck!

Alright, let's get into specific logs. As you no doubt have read from other boomkin applications, I look for four or five different things in logs: DoT uptime (over 95% is ideal), offensive CD use, defensive CD use, utility ability use and overall DPS/survivability. We actually have not gotten many 10-man applicants, so this is a change and I'll try to skew my analysis accordingly.

5/1 H Jin'rokh: 97.5% / 96.6 %. Hooray! This is very well done and a good sign. It looks like you ran NV here...I would take issue with it, but it looks like you used your offensive CDs perfectly throughout the fight. My only area of concern is that it looks like you're sitting in Eclipse a lot during the transition phases. While I appreciate spamming Moonfire/Sunfire during the high movement/lightning ball phase, you can definitely get some casts off here. Defensive CD use also makes me swoon. 3 uses of Barkskin, 2 Renewal uses, proper AMS use for debuff. Looks like you also used Innervate and Stampeding Roar. 162k DPS overall, which seems a touch low (epeen bot puts it at about 50%). But I like what I'm seeing overall here. If the rest of your logs are like this parse, then we're in a good place.

5/8 H Jin'rokh: Looking for improvement over the previous week. You died very early, oh no! During a lightning ball phase! 91.4% / 89.9%, which is not bad given the fact that you were dead for 18 seconds. It again looks like you're spamming Moonfire/Sunfire during the transition phases. It also feels like your death really thew off your CD use in general, but you did triple potion (very nice) and line up all of your CDs the best you could. You ran HotW here and the results show how superior it is (overall higher DPS and you even died...HotW is pretty bad ass). Defensive CD use looks fine and it looks like you died with Barkskin active -- 2 renewals used, 2 healthstones, a HotW tranq and even some other off-healing with HotW popped. Outside of your death, this is another really solid log. Do you remember what happened here? How could you avoid this in the future?

5/13 N Durumu: Our next heroic target, so I figure I'd check it out. This fight sucks for a boomkin, as there is a ton of movement and no adds that last longer than 5 seconds. 95.4% / 94.4% uptimes. Solid, although I'll be picky and say these could even be improved given there is literally nothing else to do during the fight. CD use still looks fine across the board, and you even double-potted during farm content! Defensive CD use still looks solid despite the fact that it is a normal. 3x Barkskin, 1x Renewal, but no use of a symbiosis ability. What priority do you give to symbiosis? Why not symbio your warlock for Unending Resolve here? Overall, your DPS again seems fine -- epeenbot places it at about 66 percentile, which seems about fair.

Survivability on 5/13: Yikes, this raises some concern. You have the second-worst survivability across your raid team for the entire night. Going back to 5/1 H Jin'rokh wipes, you're again near the bottom for your raid team. Several of these deaths look to be the result of standing in the wrong spot (Lightning Balls, for instance, killed you several times). Any explanation here? Overall survivability matters in many ways more than your DoT uptimes or overall DPS -- we need to see that you stay alive with a bunch of stuff thrown at you, as the harder heroic modes will do.

Alright, I usually look at a few more logs, but I think I've seen enough generally. I think you're clearly very competent and, in fact, pretty good at boomkin. Your DoT uptimes and CD use (both offensive and defensive) are amongst the best out of all the applicants we've had for our second boomkin slot. This is a very good thing. But I have concerns with your survivability, despite your CD use. Can you talk to us about that, about what may be causing some of these early deaths and maybe if I'm being a little too picky about it? I think your overall DPS would sky-rocket with a proper weapon and if you could stay alive for the fights, you'd do pretty well in a 25m heroic guild as far as pulling your weight.

Look forward to your responses to this post and the ones above. Best of luck with your application!

Edited May 15, 2013 by Fulgshift

[Balt]

Synnical: Entei – flight, cool looks, great abilities – what more can you ask for?

Ashin:

1. I will just through it all out their… (and yes I have a footpedal – don’t knock it till you try it #pcfootswag)

a. MoBo – ASUS Max. V Gene Z77 (Micro ATX)

b. PSU – Corsair GS800

c. GSU – EVGA GeFORGE GTX570

d. CPU – Intel I5 3470 3.2G

e. RAM – G.SKILL RipjawsX – 32GB

f. OS – Windows 7 Ultimate

g. Keyboard – Cyborg V7

h. Mouse – Razer Naga

i. HDD – Seagate Barracuda 1TB, 64MB Cache, 7200 RPM

j. Case – Thermaltake Chaser MK-I

2. Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormrage/Baltruid/simple

3. As I vaguely stated in my thread, my guild, after 2 years has come to an end. Not all bad news, as I can now find a group of raiders that will work as hard as others around them. I and excited to be just a raider for the first time in many years. I understand what a guild needs to stay on its feet, what is really important (i.e. progression > gear) and specifically what I personally need to do to fulfill their role within the raid group without being told. There are many advantages; if ever needed, once up to speed on progression or for even an alt run, I can step up to a leadership role if needed. This also gives me an opportunity that I have not had in a while to focus more on what I am doing and maximizing my class and overall gaming instead of worrying or instructing what the players next to me are doing.

4. On Friday nights and including Saturdays (unless we are getting personal) I would say working my second job. Like I said – productive- I like to keep myself going and busy at all times if not resting up. You will see my on late night or early morning getting my dailies, plants and LFRs in every day/week.

5. My favorite color is blue by the way!

[Balt]

Jin’ rokh:

My latest logs, where I SHOULD be improving, I had to fall behind because, as you can see by the wipes they were ANYTHING but clean kills on a HM that should be easy trash. The NV was to “theoretically” be nice for the constant damage during pools while healers did dispels and saved mana/CDs for the storm phases. Also, it seemed, unless a healer went down, that my regular tranq without HotW was sufficient enough as a CD (only able to use it once in our specified rotation) to heal up with the other CDs up. But, of course, you will see that is not the final outcome and I have switched. And, yes like I said before, the boss died, and that I am happy for. My DPS I am not, but that is sometimes the price to pay. It is kind of hard to tell from logs, but a lot of times going into second storm I would be around 200k and would project to end around 185k at by the end of the third pool – yano before it went SOUTH. As far as avoidance, simple went right to dodge one ball, leaving grate (open area) and running near extruded wall to catch cluster of three.

Durumu:

The dot uptime actually does confuse me because uptime and clipping are pretty large focuses of mine. Besides always being the one to intercept drain life, (due to convenience of ranged to keep point of target outside melee) which only occurs about 4 times for 3 seconds. Given application of dots may be fully handicapped during that time, it would still only be ~4% uptime effected in that length of fight, leaving the rest to most likely the fail hesitation for NG and dot ending previously. That means I lost potentially over 30 seconds of my dots, so about 2 applications. NOOO, my SS procs!! Yes, by the way I had to double check my log in slight disbelief lol. /hands cuffed.

Ashin, here is where the flattering comes into play by the way

Fulgshift,

I have contacted Ashin almost a month ago and had random looks at you. (Fulgshift’s head begins to grow) I like to get in contact and discussion with other boomkins, but I stuck mainly with the ones raiding 10 mans to acquire more relation in logs.

I hate to use excuses, but one big reason I am very excited about become the average joe raider is so that I CAN focus more on not ONLY dps but, yes, my survivability in which I feel sometimes got sacrificed during call-outs or worry about what player a, b and c are doing next to me. That said, I can promise you that would be a very light concern in the future. As for the pickiness; that is why I make a point to mention my thick skin. It will only help and that is how I view it. Furthe discussions, critiques and concerns are not going to be of worry to me; I look forward to them!

Yes, during the week, I and free most every evening and can chat whenever.

[Araenith]

What do you do for a living? You said you are educated, does your education relate to your work?

[Ashin]

Balt given your ambitious work schedule, when is a good time to interview? Fulg I'll ask you also since I'd like you to be present. My preference is Saturday afternoon, but I can make anything over the weekend work.

Thank you.

[Balt]

Site is great for mobile use i must say.

Araenith: I use educated in a sense of support that i can think for myself and have the drive and pick up knowledge without having to be told various things. But, if curiousity remains, I am an engineer which is my educational background.

Ashin: ANY time, basically between 430PM and 530AM on weekdays or after 500PM on sunday I can do. Also, late night on friday or saturday after 1130PM (all EST by the way) will be fine as well. So unfortunately, since my schdule has been set, I cannot make saturday afternoon, but let me know otherwise. And, yes, the more the better!

[Ashin]

I can do late night Saturday or early evening Sunday. I think I actually prefer Saturday night to be honest. Let's see if that works for Fulg.

Also - my question about raid leading - really what I was getting at is how well you think you will adapt to losing all that control. You'll be the guy who needs to hush up and do as instructed, and if you've been raid leading for a while, you may not be accustomed to that. Can you be an "Indian" rather than a "chief", essentially?