Gotmilk - Resto Druid Application

Introduction:

Character Name: Gotmilk (Armory: http://tinyurl.com/al94q58)
Total time played: 240 days, 10 hours, 1 minutes, 32 seconds (at time of writing)
Time played at this level: 11 days, 3 hours, 13 minutes, 41 seconds (at time of writing)

Real Name: Ian
Age: 31
From: London, England

Hey guys

Firstly let me apologise for a couple of things. 1) the length of the application; I tend to be quite verbose, and I feel that any applicant to a top guild should put forth the required amount of effort to be vetted fully. 2) the time taken the get the application done. I've read through your Q&A and lots of old applications so that I was fully aware of what was required, so it took me some time to get my WoL working as well as time to get the writing up of this app done and do the required LFR's to provide some adequate logs. I've been off for a few months, so there were some things that needed fixing prior to my applying such as addons needing updating etc.

As you may or may not know, I'm currently the Guild Master of Sons of Liches, a guild that came over from Agamaggan in the hopes of finding better raiding due to the improved population. However, our guild pretty much fell apart when I had my son a few months ago and I took extended leave from wow. These things happen. A couple of my members joined your guild, Nheali and Zacharie (Lakita), and having made my return to wow I'm now looking for a top flight guild to ply my trade and have fun. Harry has spoken highly of you guys and having listened in on mumble to how you run things I'm confident that your guild would be a good fit for what I'm looking to get out of wow (as well as I a good fit for your guild).

During the application I'm going to assume little to no knowledge of the druid class, and will be as detailed as I can so as to allow anyone to follow what I'm saying. This should allow everyone, regardless of druid knowledge to chime in / critique and ask questions. I will assume some knowledge of spells, as this is a top flight guild don't want to come across patronising.

I won't bore you with anything else to do with me, I'll get into the meat of the application as I'm sure mumble is a much better place for any further discussion.

(1) Main Spec: Restoration

(a) Priority system and basic spell information

As we all know, healing doesn't have a 'rotation' but a toolkit of abilities that are used in either a proactive, reactive or situational way depending on the situation / boss / mechanic.

A 3-stack of lifebloom should be kept on the tank at all times. Now, whilst there are niche cases in low damage situations to move lifebloom around (using the Lifebloom glyph (http://www.wowhead.com/item=40915) raid members in the name of mana efficiency (rather than chucking out an expensive Rejuv or Wild Growth), 99% of the time the lifebloom will be moved between the tanks as tank swaps occur. This not only provides a steady stream of efficient healing on the people getting battered by the boss, but is also our source of Omen of Clarity (OOC) procs (clear casts) which are spent on our expensive spells Healing Touch or Regrowth. Usually these clear casts are spent on the tank if there is no major raid damage going out and nobody requires topping off, as they not only save mana on the big expensive heal, they also refresh the lifebloom stack for free which in turn saves more mana (which is really vital for druids) and refreshes our Harmony buff.

A Rejuv is always kept on the tank, for the same reason as the lifebloom stack, so there is always a steady stream of healing on the tank which stabilises some of the spikey damage the team has to deal with. Whilst druids don't really have any single target nuke heals that we can use on a regular basis, our strength lies in the constant flow of healing through our heal over time spells to support our healing team.

Harmony - Each 480 Mastery rating that we gain, we gain 1% on our resto specialisation, Harmony (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=77495). This is a flat percentage bonus to our hots, and as our hots are our main source of healing, the uptime on this is an important boost to our healing. Harmony is maintained by using a single target heal such as Nourish, Healing Touch and Regrowth and the buff lasts 20 seconds. This is usually refreshed during Omen of Clarity procs as mentioned earlier, or by using Nourish (the cheapest of our single target heals).

The above three things are the certainties, or the things that need to happen every attempt of every boss fight. The usage of the druid tools are used in different ways on every fight, and before I go into some specific scenarios that we encounter during fights, I'll explain a bit about some key abilities and their usage.

Wild Growth is used whenever a chunk of the raid takes some damage, and it will target the 6 lowest people (when it's glyphed with http://www.wowhead.com/item=45602) in the raid. There's not much more to say on this spell for now, until I talk to the heavy AoE phases below and discuss haste break points.

Innervate - This is our source of mana regen, and is used at around 80% of our mana and is pretty much used on cooldown after that (depending on other sources of regen being used thoughout the fight, and what our current mana state is). 90% of the time, this is used on cooldown.

Tranquility - This is our main raid cooldown, and is very powerful nowadays. In most cases, the usage of tranquility is planned and is not a spell that is used in a reactive fashion. However, there are some cases when the raid takes a tonne of damage (either through player error or something unexpected) and a quick reactive tranq can save the attempt. Now whilst this isn't ideal (as we have probably lost our planned raid cooldown), on learning attempts this can often help get you into the next phase so that you can at least take a look and get more experience with the encounter. Once comfortable with the mechanics of the fight, there should be very little excuse for the reactive use of tranquility unless it's not part of the planned cooldown rotation for the fight in question, at which point it becomes a backup cooldown.

Ironbark - A targettable barkskin, 20% damage reduction with a 2 minute cooldown. A nice addition to the druid cooldown toolset added in MoP. If not part of the cooldown rotation, this can be very useful if unexpected damage is taken and a reactive cooldown is needed on the tank to reduce damage while being topped off.

Tree of life - If this is talented through Incarnation: Tree of Life (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=106731) we are granted additional power to our existing toolset of abilities. The use of Tree of life is extremely useful when planned around heavy raid damage during key points of the fight. Tree of Life is very rarely used in a reactive fashion, as it is not only an excellent healing cooldown, but it is also a very efficient mana cooldown. Tree of life is mainly used by blanketing the raid in lifeblooms (the ability to do so being granted by the talent) which allows us to spam a very cheap and efficient heal across the raid for very little mana cost, and also allows us to benefit from the clear casting Omen of Clarity procs that are going off from all of the additional lifeblooms. These OOC procs can then be used to spam instant cast Regrowths (also granted from this talent) per OOC which lets us get off lots of big free heals during these high damage phases also. Tree of life also grants us two additional targets for Wild Growth, which increases the effectiveness of an already excellent spell even further. In short this is an excellent healing cooldown, as well as a mana saving cooldown and can be used as either, but very rarely both unless the timers of the boss fight dictate otherwise.

Soul of the Forest - If this is talented (instead of Tree of life as the level 60 talent choice) then following a SwiftMend, the druid is granted 50% haste on the next spell they cast. Where this spell comes into it's own is when it is combined with Glyphed Wild Growth during heavy damage AoE phases. Not only does the raid benefit from the swiftmends efflourescence, but also the additional and faster ticking Wild Growth HoT.

The use of Tree of Life or Soul of the Forest is an encounter by encounter decision, and I'll discuss that in a bit of length further on.

Symbiosis - Symbiosis (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=110309) creates a link between the druid and another raid member allowing the two to share an ability with each other. A lot of the abilities are extremeley situational, but there are a lot of survivability options provided by this spell that shouldn't be overlooked and can be very useful as an additional raid cooldown. The decision on which symbiosis links are used is an encounter by encounter decision, and other druids in the group should also be taken into consideration, as they can also provide symbiosis links, so as to make best use of the symbiosis options.

(b) Talents

I will talk to the talent choices I've made, as well as some of the situational changes that are made frequently depending on the encounter. Other less useful talents will not be discussed, as their PvE utility is so small compared to other choices in the tier, they are unlikely to ever be used (at the time of writing) and are therefore not worth the time to discuss.

My current talent spec: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#ddH|AsbVMc

Tier 15: Feline Swiftness - A flat 15% movement speed bonus, very useful mobility talent. Mobility is very important for healers, not only getting out of 'fire' but also moving around ensuring that raid members are in range of that all important heal. The other two talents in this tier are simply not good enough at this point to replace the constant movement speed granted by this talent.

Tier 30: Nature's swiftness - A major boon for druids, and has been for a very long time. Without the ability to do a quick big heal that other classes are able to, Nature's swiftness (NS) allows us to use an instant cast Healing Touch up to every minute, giving us an important emergency button when a raid member (usually a tank) drops dangerously low. Renewal (30% self heal every 2 minutes) and Cenarian Ward (another, less useful targettable HoT every 30 secs) are just not up to scratch against Nature's Swiftness. It's worth noting that CW is possibly being redesigned in 5.2 to provide 100% increased healing (following PTR testing), which will improve it somewhat, but the theorycrafting community still seems to feel that the change is not enough to pass NS in terms of raid effectiveness.

Tier 45: Typhoon - This is the CC talent tree, and depending on the nature of the fight an choice could be made in this tier. The options are a armor debuff & slow, a mass CC (5 targets) and a knockback & daze. The knockback is ocassionally useful as the raid CC is often handed out to DPS classes and knockback can sometimes be useful to get a stray add off me if I'm pulling healing aggro, but this tier really is a horses for courses tier and the decisions in this tier are made on a fight by fight basis and whether any CC is needed.

Tier 60: Soul of the Forest / Incarnation: Tree of Life - This is the most interesting and volatile of the talent choices, as this tier needs to be change depending on the nature of the fight. I have touched upon the mechanics of these two earlier in this application,and will discuss them in greater detail below but these are the only two options in this tier. Force of Nature is slated for a redesign in 5.2 to provide more damage and healing and to provide more transparency on the numbers expected (following PTR testing). This will allow the theorycrafting community to look into the effectiveness of this CD. At the present time, Soul of the Forest (SoTF) and Tree of Life (ToL) are the two major contenders in this tier, as they both provide a huge benefit to the raid under specific conditions. I will elaborate more fully, further along but these two talents are often changed regularly depending on the fight.

Tier 75: Ursol's vortex - The choices in this tier are either two Melee range CC abilities, or a ranged CC ability. As resto druids should always operate from range, there is little to no utility in the melee fear and stun so the decision is fairly cut and dry here.

Tier 90: Heart of the Wild / Nature's Vigil - Currently I've been favouring Heart of the Wild, as it's a flat 6% increase to intellect and Stamina (and agi) as well as boosting damage and reducing the mana cost of spells outside of the resto tree to zero. This has situational usage such as pre-potting an int pot and wrath spamming for 45 secs at the start of the fight if mechanics allow. By doing this I am able to achieve up to 120K dps at the start of a fight, and do 1-2 million damage during the first 45 seconds of a boss fight mana free. Provided that the first part of the fight is not healing intensive, this is 1-2 million additional damage towards beating an enrage timer. Nature's Vigil increases all damage and healing done by 20% for 30 seconds, and any single target healing spells do damage to a nearby eneby (such as the boss of single healing the tank). Nature's Vigil is useful if another 3 minute cooldown is useful (due to timing of mechanics of a particular boss fight) but the 6% flat increase to intellect is going to be outweigh that benefit most of the time. However, there is a bit of wiggle room on this tier, but it depends on the boss and the timers. Dream of Cenarius is currently not optimal given the need to cast a damaging spell to boost the effectiveness of one healing spell (and given that tranquility is excluded from this healing boost).

(c) Glyphs

Lifebloom - Allows druids to move the 3 stack of lifebloom to another target by putting one lifebloom on the new target. This can only be done if there are more than 2 secs remaining on the lifebloom. This is something that I've personally been posting on the forums to get for a number of years, and was a very welcome addition to the druid toolset in MoP. Saves 3 GCD's on a tank swap, yes please.

Wild Growth - Wild Growth affects 1 additional person. No brainer.

Regrowth - Removes the HoT from regrowth, but increases the crit chance by 40%. The HoT from Regrowth wasn't a game changer, so the increased crit chance on regrowths when they are needed provides some additional utility for when raid members are dropping low at times of danger. When combined with ToL inclear casts, a significant amount of healing can be done using these instant casts regrowths.

I won't cover the minor glyphs as they're cosmetic / not worth noting.

(d) Stats

Intellect is our main stat for throughput.

Haste is our main secondary stat up to important breakpoints for our abilities. 425 Haste rating provides 1% spell haste, and at certain breakpoints we get additional ticks of our abilities. The most noteworthy

breakpoints are currently 3043 (Which gives an additional tick of WG and Tranquility) and 6652 (another additional WG tick) or 5730 if utilising SoTF. These numbers are taking into account the 5% haste buff from Moonkin, Ele Shaman or Shadow Priest (which I know you currently have in your team). I am currently at the 3043 cap (precisely) and am currently unable to reach the next cap so I am now reforging into Mastery at or above the 3043 haste soft cap.

Mastery is our second favoured stat after haste. After reaching the haste soft cap that we are able to reach given our gear, Mastery is the next stat to reforge into. As I touched upon previously, each 480 mastery rating provides 1% additional harmony, which buffs our HoT's. Therefore, our heal over time spells are stronger the more mastery we have, so this is our preferred stat once we have achieved our haste breakpoint.

Spirit - Spirit is the only other noteworthy stat that we really should pay attention to. Once our haste breakpoint has been reached, we need to ensure that we have a comfortable leve of spirit to be happy with our regen. Once we are happy with this, everything else goes into mastery as I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

(e) Gems

Meta: Currently Revitalizing Primal Diamond (Regen focussed Meta). Once I gear up, I'll be moving into a more throughput oriented meta (Burning Primal Diamond) but I'm finding the regen at my gear level very useful.

Red slots: Intellect
Blue slots: Either Int+Spi or pure spirit dependant upon regen needs
Yellow slots: Int+Haste. It's acceptable to sacrifice some intellect in order to reach the haste breakpoints which is our main priority.

(f) General healing discussion / UI discussion

For the most part, healing on a druid is all about maintaining the lifebloom stack where it is needed, maintaining good harmony uptime and being smart about how you use your healing spells. With smart use of our tools, we can be extremely effective healers, but mana is easily wasted if not careful, as much of our healing can be overheal due to the HoT nature of our spells. Gone are the WoTLK days when we can blanket the raid in Rejuvs and WG on cooldown, however there are times when throwing out lots of rejuvs can do a tonne of healing and is completely worth the heavy mana cost, but only if the rejuvs are guaranteed to overheal very little.

To be an effective druid healer, it's imperative that you know where your HoTs are and how long they have left so that you can effectively refresh them before they expire (such as lifebloom / rejuv on the tank) but not refresh them too early which wastes mana. For this I use Grid2, which allows me to add a timer for each of my spells (Lifebloom with a stack colour indicator, Rejuv and WG each having their own corner indicator). I also have a corner indicator for Regrowth if I should ever choose to unglyph it, but at the moment that doens't seem like something I will be doing, but it's there ready if that's ever the case.

Debuffs are tracked using Grid2. I also have Power Auras for other important information such as Harmony (to maintain uptime) and Soul of the Forest proc (with a timer, so it's not wasted). In order to track cooldowns of my major CD's (such as Tree of Life, Berserking, Tranquility, Innervate etc) I use a mix of Power Auras and ForteExorcist. Power Auras allows me to have icons placed around my grid (for easy viewing) for each of my major cooldowns, and when the cooldown is used another icon (with less opacity) pops up for the cooldown in question indicating it is on cooldown, with a timer over the top. This allows me to quickly and easily glance at my CD's to see when they are coming off. To track smaller cooldowns such as WG and SwiftMend I have the ForteExorcist spell cooldown timer directly above my grid (again, for quick and easy glancing).

With regards to my UI, all of the critical information I need to keep track of has to be towards the centre of my screen surrounding my character. As this is where my eyes are during the fight, this allows me to not only keep an eye on where I'm standing, but on my boss timers / debuffs / grid /cooldowns / extra action button / extra power bar etc with minimal eye movement. This means that I'm very unlikely to ever stand in anything bad, as my eyes are always on or very near to my character. Any peripheral information that I don't need anywhere near as often, such as raid cooldowns used / buffs etc are further away from my eye line as to avoid clutter. Also, all healing / dps combat text is turned off as it's impossible to process any of that information during the fight, and it just adds to screen clutter and provides a distraction; any and all analysis of healing / dps performance in my mind should be done using logs after the fight.

Screenshots of my UI during combat:

Screenshot1: http://postimage.org/image/l1kvgynx7/full/

Screenshot2: http://postimage.org/image/riy9ppa7l/full/

Addons used (relevant to this spec):

Deadly Boss Mods
Grid2
Clique
Power Auras Classic (Working version, not 5.1)
ElvUI
Recount
BigBrother (Raid leading addon)
Satrina Buff Frames
Death Note
Fatality
ForteExorcist
IceHuD
ORA3
RangeDisplay
TidyPlates

(g) Pertinent mechanic scenario

AoE Damage -

Druids really shine when they are able to deal with AoE raid damage, as our single target healing is somewhat lackluster when compared to many other classes. During heavy AoE, there are several ways that we can react, depending on how the encounter is setup and depending on the talents we bring to the table.

When the boss has a constant AoE hitting the raid, Soul of the Forest really comes into it's own. With a swiftmend (plus efflourenscence), and a 50% haste increase on the next Wild Growth, the amount of healing that can be output increases dramatically. In a 10 man raid, 6 of the most injured will receive a hasted Wild Growth which is already an extremely effective heal. This goes a long way to help with one of the issues that druids have at the moment in our AoE healing toolbox; we are unable to blanket the raid due to the cost of Rejuv. In 5.2 the cost of Rejuv is coming down by 9% (TBC on PTR following testing) but the change is a greatly needed one, and is a repeat of the treatment the spell got last expansion. Whilst druids are not able to use rejuv quite as freely as we need to be, Soul of the Forest fills the gap somewhat, and the hasted Wild Growth allows us to be competitive on high AoE damage encounters.

For fights that have a much more structured approach (timed) but far heavier AoE phases, Incarnation: Tree of Life may well be a better choice. With Tree of life, the cooldown is timed and can be popped when needed during the expected AoE phase. The healing potential for ToL is extremely high in a short burst given the 15% flat healing increase, the ability to blanket the raid in lifeblooms, as well as all of the clearcasted, instant cast, 40% increased crit chance regrowths from Omen of Clarity procs. Also, the Wild Growths thrown out during the ToL cooldown target 8 of the lowest people in the raid, so for a short burst of extremely heavy AoE, the Tree of Life cooldown is a better choice than SoTF due to the delay between each SoTF proc due to the Swiftmend and WG cooldowns. With Tier 14 set bonuses, this changes somewhat but not completely, as the cooldown for swiftmend is reduced (4pc) and therefore SoTF can be used more regularly during an encounter and increases the potency of SoTF. However, the rule of thumb for the different usage of cooldowns for both types of AoE scenarios stands.

As mentioned previously, ToL also provides a mana cooldown of sorts by keeping us mana neutral during the AoE phase. This can really help bridge the gap between the next innervate or mana tide when the druid is struggling with mana. If there isn't a heavy AoE phase incoming any time soon, a well timed ToL can really make the difference. In order to use ToL effectively in this manner, it's really important to know
the structure and timing of the abilities for the fight, so that smart usage of the cooldown can be used.

2) Offspec: Balance (Please note - I'm not going to go anywhere near as in depth as my resto information but am happy to elaborate on my offspec further if required at a later stage)

Notes - I have very rarely played my offspec, as my mainspec was always so strong, I would always be the last choice as an offspec dps. For a period of time in Dragon Soul I switched my offspec to Feral Tank (now Guardian) for some bosses as we progressed and it was the ideal setup. I am happy to play any offspec given the time to gear and practice it, but as balance is the better known spec to me, that's what I'll provide here. My knowledge of my offspec is limited and after having 3 months off I would be rusty with an offspec I haven't played for some time. However, I would have no issues at all getting up to speed on any offspec required.

(a) Priority system and basic spell information

The priorities for balance are to keep dots up on the target(s), refreshing at the start of each eclipse provides a dps increase and there's very little reason not to do so.

StarSurge should be used as many times as possible during an encounter. However, if there are one or two casts before a new Eclipse, it's a dps increase to wait for the new eclipse and then cast an eclipse buffed StarSurge.

The basic Eclipse rotation:

1) Pre Lunar - Cast Wrath until an Eclipse
2) Lunar Eclipse - Finish the current Wrath and then start casting Starfire for the duration of the Eclipse
3) Pre-Solar - Continue casting StarFire until the next Eclipse
4) Solar Eclipse - Cast Wrath
5) Rinse and repeat refreshing dots and managing StarSurge for the duration of this process

Cooldowns:

1) Starfall - Starfall should be used during the first Lunar Eclipse and every Lunar Eclipse thereafter. There should be no reason to deviate from this, unless there is a mechnic in the fight that dictates otherwise.
2) Force of Nature - Should ideally be used when Nature's grace is active and every time it's available
3) Celestial alignment - Should be used when an eclipse ends
4) Incarnation - should be used when it can affect an Eclipse and a CA straight after. Should be used at the beginning of an Eclipse when planning to use CA.

(b) Talents

Tier 15 - Feline Swiftness - passive movement increase in excellent bonus for raiding.
Tier 30 - Nature's swiftness is the only dps increasing talent in this tier
Tier 45 - Typhoon - the only ranged crowd control ability in this tier
Tier 60 - Incarnation is the strongest DPS talent in this tier. On a timer so it can be aligned to encounter mechanics
Tier 75 - Ursols Vortex is the only ranged CC option on this tier, so that's a no brainer.
Tier 90 - Heart of the Wild is the most consistent DPS talent in this tier

c) Glyphs (very slim picking in terms of dps increasing glyphs, mainly used for utility.

1) Glyph of the Moonbeast (in case Nature's vigil ever becomes needed)
2) Glyph of Hurricane - Adds a slow to Hurricane
3) Glyph of Solar Beam - Increases radius of Solar Beam

d) Stats (I'm currently not gemmed or reforged for offspec and have no offspec gear. Only my resto gear)

Intellect is once again our primary stat.

Stat Priority: Intellect => Haste to breakpoint ~> Hit (to cap) > Crit = excess hit (reforged to crit) > Half int gems > Haste > Mastery

Basically, as with resto druids, the haste breakpoints are the most important stat. Outside of these breakpoints, the value of haste drops dramatically. Breakpoints of note are 5273, 10289 and 15318 and with 4pc Tier 14 they drop to 3706, 8089 and 12517. At these breakpoints we get extra ticks on our dots. Each 425 haste rating gives 1% spell haste.

Currently, outside of haste and the hit cap Crit is our strongest stat.

e) Gems

Meta - Burning Primal Diamond
Yellow - 320 Crit
Red - 80Int + 160Crit or 80Exp + 160Crit
Blue - 160Spi + 160Crit

f) General DPS Discussion / UI

As I've not had a tonne of experience using my offspec, I'll keep this brief.

I currently use Balance Power Tracker underneath my character, so that I can easily monitor my eclipse state and keeping my eye on my character position / fire etc. Much in the same way that I use Power Auras for my resto spec, I also have Power Auras to monitor balance cooldowns such as Starfall, Force of Nature and Berserking. I also use ForteExorcist for my short cooldowns as such StarSurge.

If I have to plan my DPS around an AoE phase that will require heavy mushroom usage I'll ensure that I hit that phase in a Solar eclipse even if it means sacrificing some casts, so that the damage from the mushroom is greatly increased. Other than that, I will begin the normal rotation, using the rules I've laid out above with regards to StarSurge / Starfall etc.

With the lack of expeirence using my offspec and the time I've had off recently my dps will be poor and has not been tested. I've not played it for some time and would need time to get everything second nature and get the muscle memory back for the abilities. However, that wouldn't be an issue if I was needed for a particular encounter.

2) Raiding Experience

I've been raiding since Karazhan was released and the guild was actually put together in the beginning so that we could actually put some structure around our raids. I didn't do any kind of competitive raiding really until the release of WoTLK when I started to look into theorycrafting and how to become better at my class. It was then that I started to try and get a much better standard of raiding in the guild and started recruiting for 25 man Naxx raiding.

On Agamaggan, our previous realm, we always had an extremely difficult time recruiting. After WoTLK launched, the population dropped to a ridiculous low and it made it hard to maintain the 25 man raiding so through Ulduar and beyond we went down to 10 men and over the years that followed we went through the same hardships as many guilds. We would get a team together make some decent progress, then lose 1 or 2 people to either inactivity or to another guild and then have to start again. As you're well aware, losing 1 or 2 good people from a 10 man team is extremeley punishing to progression and morale.

Throughout the years I haven't been fortunate enough to have any 'prestigious' kills per say, our best being a 15% nerf (if I recall correctly) kill on Deathwing. Prior to which, we never really finished a tier before the next was released (finished in terms of normal + heroics for all fights). In all fairness, we would have got a 10% or less kill if it wasn't for the recruitment issues we experienced on Agamaggan before we moved over here and finished off Dragon Soul, as we had an excellent team by the time we finished off dragon soul. Be that as it may, it was a 15% kill and not as prestigious as it eitherwise would have been.

Therefore, I'm afraid I don't have any 'pre-nerf' kills to shout about, but that's definitely something that's going to change going forward.

3) Raid leading / Guid Leading

I've been running Sons of Liches for over 5 years now, and as enjoyable it has been, it has also been a very long and hard journey for me personally. I've pretty much been running the show alone for much of that time until recently when Harry joined and shared some of the burden, but up until then it had basically been a second job for me for the duration. Don't get me wrong, I love my guild and I have tremendous memories to look back on, but now as I return from my 'paternity leave' from wow, I'm looking to take much more of a back seat on the organisation and leadship side of things and just do what I love; Raiding at a high level and pushing my character and team to it's full potential and sharing in some nerd screams when the boss hits the deck.

Running a long established guild had lots of perks and you make a lot of friends along the way, but every day duties also fell to me as most people just want to play the game, which is fair enough. I was never really able to find officers that wanted anything other than the title and when I did, they didn't really last very long in the position or put in the required effort. There have been very few exceptions along the way, but for the most part managing the website, recruiting, guild bank etc all fell to me. Outside of raiding I was doing guild admin, and it was draining just as much as it was rewarding.

Raid leading is always something that I enjoyed, but after years of doing it, it does also get tiring. Sometimes you just want to read up on the tactics, be told what your job is and execute it to perfection. Over the years I've lead my various teams to success in dozens and dozens of encounters, and there's no feeling quite like it.

I am an experienced raid leader. I look at tactics (if they are available at encounter release) at every possible source to get different points of view, tactics that may suit different group comps and any ways that you can squeeze out additional dps / healing. I don't believe in one tactic from one source being the correct tactic for every fight for a particular group (especially in 10 man). I believe that the correct tactic is the one that gives you the kill, and more often than not, this comes about from a multitude of ideas, discussion and brainstorming from a pool of people and resources. I have no problem at all talking during the fight if needed, and discussing any pertinent points after a wipe or progression attempt.

Closing remarks

I have a lot of experience in running a guild and in raid leading, and can bring a lot to the table in these respects if that will be any benefit down the line. I have had an extended period of time away, so my experience with the current content is very limited and although I have watched the videos for all of the normal and heroic mode fights that are now available, having not done them is a disadvantage. In order to be optimal for a fight you need to learn when to use your cooldowns, when best to move, when to stand still and when to regen etc. This is knowledge I'll be picking up over the coming weeks as I put things into practice.

I am not playing at my VERY best at the moment, I don't think there's any shame in admitting that after 3 months off and having been back less than a week. In the next week or so I'll be back on top form and I'm an extremely competent healer and team member. If my application is successful, I would not expect to get into your progression team straight away, and would be happy to sit out for as long as it takes to gear up, get experience and gain the confidence of the team in my ability to perform at the highest level. However, just so we're on the same page, I am aiming for a first team spot and progression kills once I have gained that confidence (allbeit happily sitting out for any progression fights where druids are not optimal). I will always put the guild progression over my own agenda and progress sitting out whenever needed, and I am looking for serious progression with a serious team. I want to be routinely clearing content before the next content is released, and I know that I can find that here.

I am someone that is always looking at how to improve my play, and am always looking at what is coming in at the next patches. I like to keep up to speed with progress in the wow community to ensure that I stay on top of my game. I'm out of the loop somewhat at the moment I'll admit, but I've already started catching up on what's been happening while I've been away, and wha'ts to come in 5.2. This gap in my knowledge won't last for long and is easily remedied. I like the fact that the guild is hardcore, but your raiding hours are casual, as someone with two small children this suits me perfectly. I'm able to put in extra days if it calls for it, but am happy to push hard during the tight schedule that you currently have.

I do feel that I am an extremely capable healer, but I'm always open to critique and advice from others. I feel that we can always better ourselves and improve on multiple levels, so I'm happy to hear any feedback either positive or negative on the logs or any other aspect of the application.

Thank you for taking the time to read the application, and I look forward to hearing back from you when you've had time to digest the above and go through the logs.

Milk

Apologies that I've not been able to post any logs yet. I'm getting an issue where WoL is showing one boss kill 3 times instead of 3 boss kills. I'll work on that, but I thought it would be useful to at least get the application up at this time.

Apologies for the lack of logs atm.

Cheers
Milk

Too long did not read! Ui pics was fun tho >:3

dunno exactly when the phone call came in but i was surprised at how close you were to my ssing priest as i didnt massdispel at all that fight.
so here's one log
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-5a6vg2ikij79h3b1/sum/healingDone/?s=2&e=375

omg i read almost all of it!!!
I skimmed some of the os things as we dont care too much about that, it falls on nic and me mostly to keep our os in place, though its nice if all healers have one for farm bosses so they can sit in and still get loot. (our healers absolutely hate to dps, though we do force them)

What I do feel is important to let you know is that: as a raider in CC you are technically a guild master/officer or whatever name people wants to give it. We dont use a raidleader either which might be strange to hear.

To further explain this I believe that members that can control their environment will be happy members.
This being said its up to each raider here to understand mech fights and social parts of the game. Though we are all cunts and take quite a lot of bantering we expect each player to be mature enough about it and respect each other both socially and in raids. We can obv all fuck up, but the important part is to admit to it or try to understand what one has done wrong so it doesnt happen again. Everyone can have a bad day in both encounters.

The reason to why we don't use a raidleader is because we don't want to hold hands as we try to perfect our own play. However its not uncommon that random members helps the raid by calling out things that can be helpful. Also having a set raidleader allows raiders to sleep and just wake up when called for putting a lot of work on one person.
What we do during our raids and how we do it is completely up to our members. I at times can to make some choices easier gather up quick majority thoughts and give us a slight gameplan that will benefit majoritys wishes.
This is how more or less everything is run here, majority rules and any member can put out thoughts and ideas.

The reason I've told you all of this is because I read that you would like to take a step back from some of this, which would be very normal for most guilds you newly enter. I rather have you aware that we would expect you to help out where you can by own initiative. The main thing we do expect is however that you are vocal when needed during raids and happy to talk tacs and any possible input you believe can help. Having said that I do understand that you should be more then capable to do this, the bigger question is if you are happy with having more responsebilities then normal for a raider.

As you might be aware of, what we are looking for is to get a fourth healer to our roster. This means that on a day where everyone shows up and a progress fight doesn't demand 3 healers there will be 2 healers sitting, who that will be is completely up to the setup & players skills. That being said the better your os is the bigger is the chance that you can sit in on a boss even a progress boss would the setup of a boss favour anything. However our raiders are quite busy bees and you will often find that not everyone is there, which is why os helps a lot in a guild like this. Also our current healers have made requests of being able to sit or take a day off from time to time which is why we want to make sure that there's always healers available.

And uhm sry for the wall of text, there's a lot more we could talk about but I rather just take it over mumble. As I said I mostly wanted to let you know what you would get yourself into.
Last of all I wanted to say that I'm aware that the terrace you did with us was the day you came back to wow and that I felt a clear progress on your char on the boss we did in lfr the other week so we are looking forward to see some logs with different bosses.

Hi Livvy

Thanks for the response.

I'm happy to be vocal during raids and discuss tactics etc, Harry has already filled me in on how things are run in terms of officers / GM etc and I'm confident that it will suit me just fine.

I'm fine with sharing the responsibility with the team, it's quite a change from doing EVERYTHING myself

Thanks
Milk

ye i know the feeling

btw if you still having issues with the logs I might be able to help you sometime on mumble. Harry says you might come along tomorrow on our optional raid if we need peps where you otherwise could slack and get logged by me.

the time taken the get the application done.

TYPO. APPLICATION DENIED.