[RG1] Shantie, level 100 Balance Druid

[Shantie]

Who is your character?
My character is Shantïe, a resto druid transitioning to balance druid.
Armory link: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/g ... e/advanced

To which Raid Group are you applying?
Raid Group 1.

Experience
Going quickly through what is many years ago, I did not raid in vanilla and had nothing ressembling serious progression in TBC. In WotLK I was progressing on ToGC10 hc with a small guild while it was still current content, though I do not think we ever got further than faction fight, and I also made it to LK10 with the 10% buff, but guild drama ensued and from that point on I only did some pugging at the end of wotlk and throughout cata, never progressed heroic in either expansion. I did not play for MoP.

In WoD I pugged Highmaul 7/7hc sucesfully multiple times before BRF was out. For BRF I took a break and returned about 45 days after HFC launched. For HFC I started pugging again eventually having cleared 13/13nm before I started raiding with “For The Invicta” in october, starting on heroic. I reached 13/13hc a couple of weeks before the valor update was released, but it took a lot of time moving on to mythic due to lack of members. We have eventually gotten into mythic and current progress is 5/13mythic, starting out on Gorefiend.

Raid Role
My Raid Role would be ranged DPS. It means I will primairly focus on dealing damage from afar, often being required to kill adds and focus on strategies which happens outside of the immediate range of the boss, as the raid loses too much damage if melee DPS is running aorund unable to attack. I prepare for performing my role by constantly making sure I am able to play my spec at a high level, read up and use other forms of materials to study up on bosses before I attempt them and also look for class and spec specific tips for the encounters, like manually triggering void stars and using displacer beast to not get knocked off on Archimonde. My source for learning new things vary greatly. I use Icy-veins for establishing a baseline understanding off a spec, but from there on it becomes far more fragmented. I use the subreddit /r/competetivewow and class forums on MMO-champion to great effect, I look for active, class specific forums like altered-time for mages, and sometimes if I get the chance I ask high end players or theorycrafters. Comparing myself to others who did more damage in similar gear is also another way to gather information about how to improve, but this should be taken with a bit of caution as they might be “meter padding”. I find that finding a lot of sources, going through the information, and testing out all information is a great way to achieve great results.

My Spec
My spec is balance druid. As a balance druid, which spell you cast is mainly dependant on several factors.

First of all you always want your starsurge stacks rolling, preferably at 0 or 1 stacks, this is because of our passive shooting star sometimes gives us one charge instantly, if you are at 2 and a half charge when this happens, that’s half a charge wasted. So you will always use your starsurge if you are at 3 stacks, and use it as soon as possible if you are above 2 stacks, but you should not override your current empowerment buff to do so. If below two stacks, you will want to use it as you approach 100 energy on either side, though I prefer holding it for lunar side if I know I can get away with it as starfire is far more usefull than wrath. The reason for why you do it as you near full energy is because that will ensure your empowerment buff is used on strong wraths or starfires, giving you a lot more value for it.

Besides this, it’s simply about using starfire and wrath corresponding to where in the cycle you are, on lunar side you use starfire and on solar side you use wrath, and keep 100% uptime on your dots, as they are what can trigger shooting stars (refreshing a starsurge charge).

In this raid tier, use of starfall is largerly irrelevant as any fight where you would want to use it, seed of creation is the trinket you use for that fight, which will proc it 90% (with my current seed, 96% with warforged and 100% with mythic) of the time when you use starsurge. It does however make you want to hold starsurge in some scenarios when you know adds are going to spawn.

The biggest change in rotation from single target to multi target is that you will be using less starfire in order to get down moonfire on as many targets as you can. Solar cycle is largely unchanged as sunfire hits in aoe. While AoEing you also want to emphasize even more to use starsurge towards the lunar phase because of starfalls damage being empowered by the lunar cycle. This means that all empowered starfires have a huge chance of being wasted, because of this, using the minor glyph “The Solstice” is recommended for fights where you will aoe more than singletarget, as it will place starfall on the solar cycle and thus let you use empowered wrath from using starsurge in astral instead of lunar cycle.

The only talent affecting your spell priority is stellar flare. Stellar flare is another dot which you simply want to keep up with 100% uptime on targets that is going to live for some time. It’s lower priority than both moonfire and sunfire as it’s damage is lower and it can not proc shooting stars, and for this reason will only be used on adds that are expected to live for at least some time.

For stat priority, your most important stat besides intelligence and spellpower is mastery. Mastery affects the bonus of your cycle. As a baseline you get 30% increased damage to the cycle you are alligned to, so if you have 100 lunar energy with 50% mastery, you will have 50% increased damage to lunar spells and 0% to astral spells. When you are at 0, it will be 25% to each. If you are at 80 solar energy, you will get 45% increased solar damage and 5% increased lunar damage. This stat is our strongest purely through numbers, providing nearly 22% damage per 1000 mastery rating. It’s also our attuned stat, meaning we get an additional 5% mastery rating.

After mastery we want to prioritize crit, this is because shooting stars (refreshing 1 starsurge) have a doubled chance to activate when moonfire or sunfire ticks critically hit. Starsurge is an incredibly powerfull tool in the balance druid kit, and since crit also provides the same benefits for balance druid as everyone else (as in, critical hits), this is a very attractive stat for us.

Critical strike combats closely with haste for which stat to take after mastery, and while critical strike provides a damage advantage, haste provides an utility advantage in form of being able to finish casts more reliably in fights where you know you will have to move. Haste also increase the frequency of your moonfire and sunfire ticks, also increasing the ammount of starsurges you get. There are however several disadvantages which should be noted, haste also increase your need for starsurges as you will consume the empowerment buffs provided by it quicker. Also, starsurge, our strongest hitting ability, do not benefit from haste in any way besides more shooting star procs, which crit does better. For all of this, I value critical strike lower than haste, especially since it’s strongest point (ability to finish casts) is often still doable simply by being a druid, as we have pretty strong mobility.

Multistrike and versatility are our two weakest stats, in that order. They do not interact with our kit in any meaningfull ways, and are just flat out damage boosts, and at that point it’s enough to do the math to also see which one you will do more damage with. Multistrike is also a consistent enough stat to not need to worry about that. Versatility however do have the advantage of reduced damage taken.

For talent choices there are not much choice. First tier we can choose between Displacer Beast and Wild Charge, both have strong sides. Wild Charge is very versatile with it’s multiple uses, but might take more skill and preperation to use if you want to use it in a similar sense to displacer beast, but also have a shorter cooldown. Displacer beast is a blink and therefore have some unique uses which wild charge do not have, you can blink through waves on kromrok without suffering damage as long as you get all the way through and other similar situations where you want to pass a spell effect. Both theese are usefull on different encounters.

For tier 2 talents it’s a question between Ysera’s Gift or Renewal. I personally prefer Renewal, as even though it will throughout the course of a fight heal less than Ysera’s Gift, it have the possibility to save your life, which I value higher than a little healing every few seconds. Ysera’s Gift can be a solid choice on fights without any form of sudden damage, though no such fight exist in the current raid tier.

Tier 3 and 5 are utility and should be changed based on the encounter if they are required, in most situations they are not required though, and if they are required it will be used for adds and dependant on how you need to handle them. Examples of uses for some of the spells I find myself using is Incapitating roar in order to aoe interrupt imps during vision of kilrogg or ursol’s vortex to slow down bloodthirsters during kilrogg, theese two are on the same tier so that would be a choice you make based on wether you enter vision or not. Fearie swarm can also be taken to slow bloodthirsters outside. Typhoon sadly have little use as most mobs are immune to knockback.

Tier 4 talent, as far as competetive damage goes, only soul of the forest and incarnation is viable, force of nature is more about the utility provided in entangling roots, but in raids you do not need roots that often, if it is needed you will usually go with mass root as it is instant too. Between the two choices, Incarnation is superior because of it being on-demand and lining perfectly up with your other cooldown. You will also find the damage provided by being able to line it up with other cooldowns, burst phases and more, will put it ahead of overall damage compared to soul of the forest.

Tier 6 talents Dream of Cenarius (DoC) is not viable, it’s a 24k heal which happens 3 times every 40sec, or 1800 HPS. Nature’s vigil provides 40% of your Single Target DPS as healing, with about 33% uptime, maybe lower if you try to apply it during high damage phases, but that just makes it more usefull. In order for Nature’s Vigil to surpass DoC in HPS, only about 24k DPS is needed, which is easily done in this raid tier. Heart of the wild will nearly never be taken, unless it somehow fits into your guild composition very well. An example would be that there is an add that your tanks just can’t handle, or a healing phase too intense for your healers. This will let you step in for one of them for 45sec once per fight, so it’s not a viable option if it’s needed more than that one time unless you have multiple druids to rotate this cooldown. This is a talent that can only be taken based on raid needs, and by default you should always go Nature’s Vigil.

Tier 7 have 3 viable choices, used depending on which fight. First is Euphoria, which you will go with any fight where you mainly focus on a single target, like Iron Reaver, Kormrok, Zakuun. It changes up your rotation a fair deal by halving the time spent in each cycle, and also reduces the cast time of your starfires and wraths when they are empowered (affected by the buff given by starsurge). Theese are strictly single target spells, which is why this talent is not that strong for mutlitarget. Stellar Flare and Balance of Power are multitarget spells, Stellar Flare pulls ahead when it will be used against multiple (3+) targets living for a long time, in this raid tier that is mainly hellfire high council. Balance of Power is superior when you expect adds to not live for long, like mannoroth and archimonde.

For major glyphs, there are up to 4 you will want to use. Stampeding Roar and Rebirth I take as default as the effects provided by them are really strong. The last two is Dash and Moonwarding. I find myself not taking Dash as the reduced cooldown do not help very often, as it is not many encounters where you need dash every 2min over simply planning your positioning better. The loss of armour might sound like a disadvantage on bosses who mainly deal physical damage, but armour do not reduce physical damage from bosses abilities, only auto attacks. The 10% HP can not only save your life by letting you survive what you normally shouldn’t, but it will also increase the effect of your tier two talents.

For minor glyphs, there are up to 4 that you could want to use. Solstice as I went through earlier. Untamed Stars should be used on all fights in this tier. Grace can reduce your fall damage, there are no fights where this is relevant. Flapping owl can reduce your fall speed, it could have a use on shadowfel burst on archimonde, it also have a use on mythic blackhand (starting phase 2 on the balcony.

Off-specs and Alternate Characters
I am very comfortable playing my restoration offspec, as it is what I mainly have been playing up untill now. I have no experience with feral or guardian offspecs. I also have no geared, available alternate characters at the moment, though rerolling is definitely a possibility.

Communication
As far as written communication go, I will usually be able to do participate. Forums and other out-of-game sources are not an issue. When it comes to talking with a microphone, my current microphone is broken, and even if it wasn’t I would still not be comfortable using it, sorry.

Combat logs
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... 8/latest/#
http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/combatlog ... rview#c=20
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/p4YJdFhb2WBjnk7H/ (Same as the AMR)
NOTE: Socrethar my damage is low because we had 1 tank and I was in construct, AskMrRobot does not look at what you do while in construct.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/N6 ... pe=summary

Not a lot of logs atm, our guild does not allow uploading of public logs because another guild is attempting to poach our members every time we do. While we do not mind another guild looking into and attempting to recruit our members, there is server history which makes us want to avoid any kind of dealings with that particular guild.

UI
http://imgur.com/a/UPdsa
There should be 3 images here, 1 with me in combat against a training dummy, 1 with me just standing around in LFR for the sake of taking a screenshot and 1 with all my anchors toggled. It’s mainly just a standard ElvUI.

Guild History
I will exclude my guild history from vanilla-cata, as I either don’t remember, they were not raiding guilds or I was social in the guild.

I joined For The Invicta in july or august, do not remember exactly when, and have been with them since. I’m looking to join The Raven Council because I so far have enjoyed playing with them through alt raids and also with a fair few of your members on other occasions.

Raid Availability
I am available for all of your raids.

References
I heard about you primairly through Emix, a hunter in your guild. I’ve later been introduced and spent some time with Tufib in your guild, and I think thosse two will be able to answer most questions about me as a player/person you might have.

About me
Hi, I am a person that likes reading, learning and video games. My least favourite topic is myself, not as in I dislike myself, but I am not a fan of sharing too much about myself, so appologies if this section gets very short. I smile and laugh a lot, and am in general a positive person.

Miscellaneous
Stukov's runs are so amazing, I want to be with you guys forever, hugs and kisses Shantie <3


Edit: Added more logs.

[Jimmble]

More chikkins?

Yay!

Lanabooby, look! Pillow!

[Lanaiba]

It's a transparent chikkin! DISASTER! Jimmble, she can't even flap...

[Jimmble]

No way!

Tell her to bring feathers then!

[Shantie]

I am sure we can work out a solution! First of all I would like to point out that while I am in combat, aproximately every 3min, I am fully clad in feathers for 30sec, that's 16.67% of the time! Would a slight change to my transmog to add some feather help on this issue? Please don't take my dresses away.

[Lanaiba]

*looks at Buhar's wardrobe* Let's get those feathers and put them to use!
RP intensifies

[Jimmble]

Put da feathers on the chikkin!

[Shantie]

I decided that I should not have to choose between feathers or pretty dresses. I am a shapeshifter, so I should be able to don feathers when I want to don feathers, and wear pretty dresses when I want to do that! I even made sure to have some pictures taken of me in my featherdress to share my featheriness with you all!

http://imgur.com/iczcCK6
Here is me dancing around in my featherdress donning not only feathers but also my happyface!

http://imgur.com/WW2PGWu
Here is me discovering the advantages of feathers.

http://imgur.com/idNnK9Y
Here's me having a good time with a not so feathery Tuffie, but he too can enjoy my feathery pressence!

[Jimmble]

Then it's okay.

Lanabooby, I fix'd the chikkin!

[Shantie]

I feel this is an unfair teft of credit. The chikkin fixed itself for Lana, so either it's the chikkin or Lana!

[Lupo]

Hi Shantie,

Pleased to announce that we would like to give you a trial by fire...I mean raiding. Please contact an officer for an invite if you haven't already.

Carn

P.s we currently employ EPGP and Angry Assignments for our raid loot distribution and notes, so please have these for raid nights.

[Lupo]

Jimmble has hopefully sorted out forum access, so please use this to update PhP (calendar thing at the top of forum) for your availability for raiding on RG1 nights.

For long absences (full resets or 50% attendance due to exams, site work etc) please use the AFK thread on TG1 forums AND the PhP raider for your availability.

Carn

[Lupo]

Apologies for the delay in paperwork. Only just been given a shiny gavel.

<recruited following successful trial>