Heisenberg- 533 Fire Mage

[Heisenberg]

I know you said you liked to be romanced... but that just isn't my personality. Instead, I am just gonna talk about myself and you can decide if you like me or not.

Some Background Info:

I started playing this game during TBC on a shit server Boulderfist and I played Alliance to make it worse. My first level 70 was a hunter and a fellow hunter from the top guild on the server showed me I could increase my dps 2-3 fold if I made a simple steady shot macro and just pressed 1 button 24/7. Man that macro made me feel so pro, I pwned all the noobs on the meters. Those were the good ole days. Since then I have raided as a resto druid, destro lock, holy paladin, made a full circle back to my hunter and now I play the incredible class of mage.

You probably already have 2 questions, and if you don't you are probably are skimming hard or just don't care. The first question (in statement form) is, "Damn Heisenberg, you switch toons quite a bit!" I would have to agree. See my problem is I never have been in a guild that lasted more than just a few months, so usually when guilds fold I reroll if I find a different class more appealing. The second question is, "Why did you pick mage?" This is a 2 part answer, first it is because of hunters. At the end of cata, blizzard took all the damage out of the "normal" part of hunters rotation, and gave them 18 million cooldowns to compensate. I said fuck that, this class is garbage so I need to get another class ready for MoP. I thought long and hard and found that while I played the game, mages nearly never sucked balls and mage was the class I wanted to make since I started the game.

I can say I absolutely hate the level 90 talents, mages kind of lack raid utility (can be a big deal in 10 mans), fire RNG can at times make me say bad words and I dislike the constant stream of nerfs that is mage atm; however, I am in love with the class. I was reading forums the other day and there are tons of mage rerolls to locks saying how awesome lock is and people should quit mages yada yada. Turns out I have a 90 lock, geared him 460-490 one weekend and as awesome as moving and casting is... I will play mage till I am done with the game.

Where I am in the Game:

So, start of this expansion I helped make a guild on Illidan, Triple Pow. After numerous roster problems (we went through at least 15 tanks) we finished the tier 16/16H pre patch raiding close to 30 hours in the final weeks. My job was to make the raids happen and help with strats, Dance was the raid leader. Neither of us were absolutely happy with the roster and after seeing quite a few weaknesses on Sha we thought we didn't have what it took to make 5.2 enjoyable. No one likes raiding with a team you don't feel is competent.

I saw a recruitment thread for Entensity and immediately was intrigued.

-Entensity is well established. We have a solid core, and have been raiding together for years. Cataclysm brought us a lot of success, and we are looking to make Mists our best expansion yet.

-We are a laid back group of raiders. We know when to focus up, but that dosent mean raiding should feel like a second job! No raging, no screaming we just dont have time for that.

-Community. Unlike a lot of guilds out there we do not have a 'dictatorship'. The guild is run by Irial and Jackbower but the atmosphere is very much open. Our raids are open forums. If you feel like xyz might help the raid on a certain boss we are open to hear you out. This is not a 'our way or the highway' type of guild.

-NO BENCH. Our core consists of 12 people. This means we are able to cover any AFK that might arise, or if a certain class is better for a progression fight. Everyone sees playtime and a lot of it. If accepted for a trial it is because we want you to eventually become part of the main core.

So what was so intriguing? Solid core... like I said every guild I join breaks up. Laid back, I hate elitist raging pricks. Raiding shouldn't feel like a second job, yeah I already work full time. We have a bench, good when Ihtepandas has to miss raid cause his grandma's cat is on fire, we don't have to call raid. No dictatorship, good I like helping with strats.

Seems kind of like your guild doesn't it? Unfortunately, like most guilds, Entensity broke up. At the end of the day I love to raid, but to be honest with you I have wasted a lot of my 20's on this game. I refuse to give into my temptation to join a guild and raid all the time, my responsibilities IRL have become far too important. That is why it is important for me to find a causal guild that doesn't have downs so I can have the best of both worlds... 1) Fulfill my IRL responsibilities 2) Finish Tiers in a reasonable amount of time.

Why Me?

I won't lie... I do make mistakes on occasion. T14 my biggest problem was not having a cast bar for Amber Shaper when I got mutated. I wiped the raid maybe 3 times and still hear about it weekly. Other than that, I very rarely make mistakes. I usually am one of the last ones standing but I can't really take credit for that, mages are much like cats between cauterize/greater invis/cold snap/ice block/temporal shield/ice barrier/mirror images.

T14 I had much greater success as far as ranking goes. This tier has kind of been a struggle. Part of it is lag. On Illidan I have 30 ms, on Stormscale I have minimum 200 ms which is quite noticeable. The other part is gear. I was a trial for something like a month (only get the leftover gears) then I found out my only (sadly) IRL friend was moving to Montana. I posted out about 1.5 weeks of raiding cause I wanted to spend time with him. He is pretty much like a brother to me. I got demoted to probation rank for missing and again was ineligible for loot. The moral of the story is I am doing the best I can with what I have. On top of not having the gear that most top parsing mages have, fire is ALL about LUCK. How many pyros can you get to crit, can you get them to crit when your cooldowns are up, and can you get your cooldowns up when your trinkets proc. I've read about mages getting 160-200k ignites off alter time+pom, maybe that's a 25 man thing cause I would shit myself if got 150k ignite.

Here is a link to wol http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-8pjezn3ns9ngpoo3/

We did normals this week for achievements, you can look back to other raids though. One thing that is good about me is that I despise padding. Last tier it wasn't such a problem, but this tier the opportunities to pad are beyond plentiful. Last thing I have to say about logs is enrage timers. Combined t14 and t15, I might have wiped to enrage 5 times and that is being generous. The other thousands of wipes have been due to not understanding mechanics or people dying prematurely. It is the triage of success, output, mechanics, and surviving. While my damage might not be amazing so far this tier (I am missing a weapon and a trinket both big deal for combust), my strengths lie in the last two characteristics.

Besides Raiding

Wait there's more to wow than raiding? I do enjoy RBG's, currently rated 1900 though I have only rbged like 2 weeks. They would be much more fun if I didn't have to pug them from battlemasters. I also enjoy random bgs, heroics, challenge modes and arenas. I have an open mind about other's opinions and way of life, went to school at University of Minnesota which embraces diversity above all else, so differences among us are interesting to me.

Finally, I play this game for FUN. If logging on and raiding seems like a chore and you guys are all chodes and yell at each other... DISCLAIMER: I won't be on for the next raid. Entensity has shown me what enjoying the game is like and I don't plan on going back to the way I have played it all the other years.

Thank you for reading and enjoy Tornado week, may you and your families be safe from the EF5's =)

Heisenberg

PS: If you want to check out my sweet item upgrades

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormscale/Heisenberg/simple

[Estarriol]

Hmm. I was wanting flowers and you bring me words.

Even so, hello, Heisenberg. It's a bit of nostalgia to see you apply here (I was Fatal Americans' tank if you don't recall). Best of luck with your application and welcome!

[Ashin]

Hey Heisenberg,

I'm glad to see your app. Even tho it wasn't very romantic, you clearly took a lot of time to type it up and you seem to understand the type of guild you're applying to, so that's good.

To get things started, could you actually just pick a specific log or two that you feel represents your best gameplay? That will make it easier for our mage (Shek) to look under the hood and make sure your gameplay is sound. We'll be looking for key uptimes, cooldown usage and of course avoidable damage.

Could you also let us know how old you are and what you do for a living? What is Heisenberg's life like when he's not raiding?

As for raids, you mentioned that mage does not offer a great deal of utility, and we're inclined to agree. Nevertheless they do have a few tricks up their sleeves. Could you provide a specific example of how you used some of these tricks / utility to further your team's progress during either T14 or T15?

How was cataclysm for you? What did you raid with then, and how many guilds were you in?

How did you get involved in helping to create guild - did friends enlist your help, or you just found the project and thought it would be interesting? What were the best and worst parts of that experience for you?

Cheers.

[Sheytan]

Hello! 200ms - yikes. That would be very rough. Stormreaver and Illidan are hosted at the same data center, so it should be just like it was on Illidan.

What did you study at the University of Minnesota?

[Twelvesoft]

Numbers look decent considering ya still have a T14 weapon.

[Shekjey]

I had a quick look at a few of the logs from early May and I did not see any major issues. On may 7th the horridon fight it seems like you may not be using combustion at the right time which results in your low dps. With the ability to spread such a strong cool down to additional targets it is very important to make sure it is being used at the appropriate times to maximize damage. Another concern is your glyph of deep freeze, I don't see any use for this ever in a 25 man pve guild raiding ToT. You should replace it with glyph of inferno blast which will increase your dps on fights such as H horridon and H durumu where spreading your dots is very important. Invokers energy uptime looks good as well as NT uptime, I didn't have a lot of time to go much more in depth with the logs but it seems like for the most part you know what you are doing as a fire mage. It looks like you are over hit cap by a considerable amount, are you using an addon such as ReforgeLite to do your reforging?

[Ashin]

I don't think he ever came back.

[Heisenberg]

"I don't think he ever came back.

Kind of going through a transitional phase, new job, new place, was just making sure that everything was gonna work out and not interfere.

"On may 7th the horridon fight it seems like you may not be using combustion at the right time which results in your low dps."

May 7th was a long time ago. In all honesty I was probably putting it into the boss. Once people got gear, the adds die pretty quick. Add in the pink dinosaur and it's not always so easy to get a decent combust off when 5 adds are grouped together. Maybe it was the positioning, maybe I am terrible, just being honest. Vykina seems to agree that combust on Horridon is a good idea if dps on the adds is sufficient (source:

). I know what you are saying though, in theory combust on multiple things is better than combust on 1. One thing to remember in these old parses is 1) its 10 man, 2)no weapon 3)no trinkets 4)no 4 set.

Another concern is your glyph of deep freeze

Hmm, that must have been bugged? Or I am retarded and forgot to change it after I pvp'ed fire. But yes you are right inferno blast is where its at.

I didn't have a lot of time to go much more in depth with the logs but it seems like for the most part you know what you are doing as a fire mage

Yeah, I'd like to think I do. I have struggled with gear so far this tier. Part of it was being a trial in Entensity (4 weeks of last loot priority). Part of it is the 12 man roster they raid with, I sit a lot, even on bosses I need gear. I thought I would be okay with this, but it really takes a lot of the fun of raiding away (sitting that is, I don't really care about loot). Part of it is also that after I made raider, I got demoted to probation rank. I missed about 4 raids due to some IRL stuff (my best friend that I do EVERYTHING with moved to Montana, so I wanted to spend time with him before he left) which in turn again made me last in line for loot. The bad thing about gear is that fire is so gear dependent since almost all the damage stems from pyroblast! and pryoblast! crits. You need 4 set, a good weapon, and 2 new trinkets to even compete on the damage meters. I can see my gear coming together now though, another trinket and a weapon and I should be doing just fine.

It looks like you are over hit cap by a considerable amount

That most definitely has to be a bug. I use reforge lite and am at 15.01%.

Numbers look decent considering ya still have a T14 weapon

Thank you. If you look at last tier where I was fed gear (for good reason), I raped pretty hard not only within the guild, but within all 10 man mages.

Hello! 200ms - yikes.

#1 reason I hate Entensity. I used to raid on Boulderfist back in BC, also CA based server, and had the same problems. Kind of forgot about that

That would be very rough.

And it is. The worst part is I have terrible jitter (variance in ping). Jitter tends to get really bad when I alter time--->combust. I get pissed enough to where I want to throw my monitor at the wall. Arena games are even worse.

Stormreaver and Illidan are hosted at the same data center, so it should be just like it was on Illidan

Welcomed news! I can't continue playing at 200ms+. Tried using WTFast but it gave me no results. Thank god for free trials.

What did you study at the University of Minnesota

Architecture for 2 years, then Biochemistry.

Could you also let us know how old you are and what you do for a living

I am a single 27 year man and I work for Humana... not exactly what I went to school for but they take good care of me

What is Heisenberg's life like when he's not raiding

I live in Wisconsin, so you could sum it up as beer, cheese, and the Green Bay Packers. The winters can be long here so I love the summer... disc golf, hiking, biking, white water rafting, camping, canoeing, kayaking, hunting, fishing. Really I love anything outside. I also love adventures, just got home from a 3 day rafting/camping trip. Almost got carried away by mosquitoes despite having the best bug dope on earth, but it was well worth it. The best is when you can combine my 3 favorite things, adventures, outdoors, and booze, its bound to be a wild time.

When I am not doing those things, you can find me trying to make cash money $$$$. I have those school loans to pay off, which I predict to be the next financial crisis of America. I was just talking to my room mate from MN who is just getting into his residency and hes over 200k in debt. That's some scary shit. Anyway, my new expedition is to start an insurance claim review business with my mom. Doctors' offices/hospitals fuck up billing all the time and something like 90%+ of medical claims are processed automatically within insurance companies which leaves large room for error and an opportunity for people that know coding and diagnosis codes to make certain that doctors are billing correctly and patients aren't getting overcharged for their health care. To put it in perspective, my mom has already saved one of her clients $60,000 in medical expenses.

Could you provide a specific example of how you used some of these tricks / utility to further your team's progress during either T14 or T15?

Vizier you could alter time the Mind Control. Sha you could alter time the huddle in terror (which you could also temporal shield). Elegon you could greater invis/ice barrier the add explosion soak and not take any damage. You can blink out of the pinning arrow on Spirit Kings. You can blink through the guards on Spirit Kings. You can ring of frost the adds on last boss of MSV (brain fart), you can also soak the orbs that spawn from those adds with greater invis and ice block. You can ring of frost the adds on Megaera if your raid sucks and can't keep them grouped. Combust has been invaluable for this tier. Tortos would have been challenging if I didn't rape the turtles with combust. Combust also did wonders on Council for the initial burn phase. Combust also great on Durumu. Greater invis the debuff on Jin'rohk or iceblock it before it goes out. Iceblock negates the frost shit the Frost King puts out when empowered. Blink makes sure you can get out of the tornadoes on Iron Qon. Spell steal buffs on Empress, Protectors, Windlord. I mean the list goes on forever. Mages major raid utility is the fact they never die. Unless I do something retarded, I am always gonna be one of the last people standing.

How was cataclysm for you? What did you raid with then, and how many guilds were you in?

I created a 25 man guild with a friend during ICC, which in turn server transferred to Mal'Ganis when my work schedule changed and broke apart right after, probably cause I did most of the work. I joined a 25 man guild called Demise that broke down into a 10 man for Cata. Needless to say they ended up being terrible. I carried the heals (was playing h pal) and people quickly became tired of our lack of progression. The guild broke up so I joined a casual guild on my hunter that ended up being the core players of Age of Aggression. They sifted the cream off the top, brought us to AoA and raided there up until the beginning of Dragon Soul. I fucking hated that raid, and hadn't left the game since I started playing back in TBC so I called it quits. I started playing again that summer in a friend's guild which brought me to MoP. I switched to mage after they ruined hunters with 18 million cooldowns.

How did you get involved in helping to create guild - did friends enlist your help, or you just found the project and thought it would be interesting? What were the best and worst parts of that experience for you?

ICC it was because my previous guild broke up (see a trend here?). A friend wanted to make a guild so I said alright. I mostly handled recruiting, roster, guild drama, and tweaking strategies. He raid lead. We quickly became a front page guild on Illidan with a good promise for the future. We raided early though and my work schedule changed making me chronically late. I think that pissed him off, so like a dick he picked up the guild and moved to Mal'Ganis. Can't ever trust anyone in this game.

Triple Pow I didn't create it. I joined shortly after it was created. However, I can be a rather engaged member. They wanted to make me officer for months for my help in recruiting and boss strategies which I always turned down. I like helping a guild, but I don't need some fake title to make me feel good. All GM/officer title does for you is add extra stress and pressure and the guild I made in ICC left a foul taste in my mouth. Eventually when the Officer that was doing almost all of the work, and really one of the few people I have ever respected in this game, threatened to leave if I didn't become an officer, I took the responsibility.

The worst part is making sure you have a raid every day. If you don't you let down the raid team and risk good members looking for a new home. The good and the bad is everyone in the guild talking to you about shit. You get a better relationship with everyone, but sometimes you just want to relax and have everyone just leave you alone for awhile. The good is when you succeed. After we killed heroic Sha, which was a feat for us, we went through something like 10 tanks on that boss alone, everyone stayed in mumble for hours after the raid, laughing and having a great time. I am a very selfless kind of guy and most times I get my happiness from making other people happy (it's a curse) so that was a very euphoric feeling for me, knowing that I helped lead this group of people to overcome a goal that they really wanted badly.

It's a bit of nostalgia to see you apply here (I was Fatal Americans' tank if you don't recall). Best of luck with your application and welcome!

Sorry, I wasn't involved much in Stormscale, the server is pretty much shit to me, over run by Divinelol and his monopoly of the AH. But I am guessing Fatal Americans is a guild there? If so, glad you got out!

To get things started, could you actually just pick a specific log or two that you feel represents your best gameplay?

http://www.worldoflo...hd/?s=515&e=700

I played pretty well that day. It's hard to find a log with Entensity cause I was the bench bitch. I can say I was in for every heroic kill save Animus. Apparently they are continuing to raid, but I am not continuing the lag. But if you are good enough for the first kill, that has to say something.

The bad thing about chronic sitting is that you do not get an intricate understanding of fights. It's hard to play as optimally as you should, when you only see a boss maybe every other week. Kind of ruins the flow. You can blame that on mages not having raid cooldowns or cool things like health stones, battle reses or portals.

Anyway sorry for the delayed response. Again I wanted to make sure WoW was something that I still wanted to commit to and that everything with the new job and such worked out. Thanks for reading

Heisenberg

[Heisenberg]

The best is when you can combine my 3 favorite things, adventures, outdoors, and booze, its bound to be a wild time.

I forgot titties in my face. Everything is better when there are a pair of titties in your face.

[Estarriol]

It's a bit of nostalgia to see you apply here (I was Fatal Americans' tank if you don't recall). Best of luck with your application and welcome!

Sorry, I wasn't involved much in Stormscale, the server is pretty much shit to me, over run by Divinelol and his monopoly of the AH. But I am guessing Fatal Americans is a guild there? If so, glad you got out!

I had a pretty aggressive monopoly of Golden Lotus while I was there. I didn't think Stormscale was all bad, though I will say I enjoy Stormreaver much more. May have something to do with the company.