I have several characters, my main being my Paladin Illanor, however I have every other class at 110, and several characters geared to nearly 900ilvl, most notable of which are The WoWprogress page for each of these characters can be accessed through my wowprogress profile.
Playing these characters I have typically focused on both the tank specs, and one of the DPS specs, those being namely,
- Protection, Retribution
- Brewmaster, Windwalker
- Blood
- Guardian, Feral
Who are you?
My name is Aleks, I'm 21,
Living in Ireland I have just finished University, taking time to enjoy WoW and a long-awaited break from my studies!
To which Raid Group are you Applying?
I am looking to join RG1.
I am looking for dedicated mythic progression, and a team of people that are interested in performing well for both personal accomplishment, and to be a valuable asset to the raid team.
Experience
I have started playing WoW in the last year of WoD, at the time I spent my time getting my bearings around every class and role, and exploring different aspects of the game.
I started raiding in Legion with the release of the Emerald Nightmare, initially attempting to raid it with a team of friends, until attempting to move onto better teams to make further progress.
I had pugged normal EN as I wanted to complete it before the end of the week, and also picked up some heroic kills on my Warlock Ashbel, after which point I had moved over to playing on the Alliance and looking for another raid team.
I was picked up by a heroic clearing guild that has since moved servers, however I stayed in search of a stronger team.
I then joined Sanity's Team 2, with whom I had cleared all of normal and 9/10 HC within the first week, and then personally pushed the team for an extra raid night to kill HC Gul'dan within the first week, as I had known it was attainable for our team at the time. This was at the time done on my Death Knight Vonshala.
I have played ranged DPS specializations with the heroic guild, however throughout my time in Sanity I raided as a tank, after the initial few weeks of Nighthold on my DK, I had transferred my Paladin to Alliance and re-started maining it.
With this Paladin I had cleared the first 4 bosses of the NH on Mythic, I had also progressed on Krosus, however I had to leave WoW for my final year studies and the team killed him without me the very next day.
I had also helped the team on Tichondrious progress one night, as they were missing players, playing Retribution and bringing the boss down to 1% twice in one night, unfortunately however I did not get the kill.
Raid Role
As described earlier, I spent a lot of time playing Protection within the team, however I also enjoyed spending a lot of time playing Retribution in my spare time.
Typically, in preparation for a boss kill, time is spent studying the mechanics and how they change or are enhanced from the previous raid difficulty, to help have a solid foundation on which to base my learning of a fight in progress, then as the fight happens I learn of
- As a tank, timings for heavy damage, for example on Krosus certain phases have extremely heavy raid damage, and using tank cooldowns to avoid as much damage as possible in this hard phase to allow the healers to, in a stable fashion, restore the raid team, without taking too much pressure from the boss due to the now divided attention of the healers.
- In playing my Retribution spec, I spend time learning of certain phases of the fight where my cooldowns would be most useful, for example timing and ramping wings 5-7 seconds before adds spawn on Alurial to get maximum benefit,
- How many times I get to use these cooldowns, to for example determine if Convergence is a viable choice,
- What are the high damage phases of the fight to use personal cooldowns and relieve healer pressure
Also looking at top performing logs and comparing their uptimes, talent choices, and itemization to then determine of some of the things involved I can pursue myself, such as seeing a common high ranking trinket choice, or stat distribution.
Alongside that, I actively spend time within the class Discords to discuss both theorycrafting, and get opinions on the true effectiveness of certain choices in builds, as well as spending a lot of time watching streams of top performing players, learning from their decision making and play, and asking them about things related to the specs I play.
Your Spec
My most developed character within the current patch is my Paladin, with it's artifact levels for both Prot and Retribution sitting at 45, and Holy lagging behind a couple levels, I have not had the time to work on these levels, as I was finishing my studies. However as far as I'm aware by the AK we'll have before the release of Tomb the 52nd artifact level will be attainable. If, however, I am to play on the main team's roster for finishing current Nighthold progression, then naturally the grind will resume to attain the last few levels in the required spec as soon as possible.
I don't think I can simply and at the same time with sufficient detail explain my talent choices for Protection, as I could write a novella on the decision making involved in optimizing the spec for any particular fight or situation, however if you would specifically be interested in this, this is something I could talk through over VoiP in a tutoring-style fashion.
The talent choices for Retribution however are very easily explained, as they are simply the optimal choices for the gear and legendaries I have, sim the highest and offer the widest flexibility in being optimal for practically any encounter.
Again, to re-iterate, this is not a section I can explain in sufficient detail without turning this application into a novella, however if this is something that is important we can discuss it.
Off-specs and Alternative characters
My alternative characters and their specs that I feel confident in are as mentioned previously. Ultimately I would love to spend time playing all of them, and depending on how competitive the team wants to be in terms of progression switching to different characters or specs is not an issue, however with the progress speed I have observed overall on this realm, I would not feel comfortable spending extended time playing anything other than the Paladin, however if for example some encounter and our raid situation, for the sake of progression requires me to play another character, such as for example Guardian for Gul'dan, as long as the team makes an effort to facilitate switching to that character I have no problem of playing it for the sake of progression.
Communication
I have a working microphone and have never had issues communicating, either through physical ability of confidence in discussing issues with people about for example strategies or approaches to encounters, or communicating my status within an encounter so that immediate decisions can be made on how to keep control, such as calling for external cooldowns, calling people to take on responsibility if I am unable to for whatever reason or I see them accidentally forgetting, all to ensure that I can help contribute the most I can to maximizing the team's chances of success.
If you wish to to contact me directly via Battle.net you can add me on Scy#2351
Combat Logs
I have not used combat logs within the last patches, as my previous raid team has used live logging within their private warcraftlogs, and my personal logs made in Retribution were from 7.1.5, however if it is vital, I can create these logs on Reset as I re-clear Nighthold and other raids, however these will be logs for trivial content.
Your UI
Mythic Spellblade Aluriel Raid UI
My UI features the typical damage, healing and threat meters, raid frames are non-intrusive however still easily accessible for me to Hand of the Protector, Sac, PoB of Lay endangered team-mates, a personal frame showing durations of personal buff and debuff durations, and a clear health bar as health management is integral to Protection tanking. Also a lengthy target frame showing buffs and debuffs on the target, as well as the target's target to help in identifying how the unit will behave, here we can see that Spellblade is perfectly content pounding me.
There is also a list of Encounter timers in the Middle-Top-Right, helping me manage my cooldowns to spread over the fight, as well as boss frames to more easily manage units as they appear in the encounter, without fumbling to click on them in the world.
You can also see Angry assignments, as well as the DBM debuff frame and range check, and typically the main tank frames are right underneath the raid frames to help me manage the current status of the 2nd tank and assess if relief is needed, to for example either Sac, Lay, BoP, or Hand of the Protector them, or taunt to soak a deadly mechanic with Bubble and help ensure their survival.
There are also large cast bars underneath the target frames to help control the fight with interrupts or to optimally time cooldowns.
Guild History
As said, my previous guilds were a friend's guild at the start of Legion,
Then Shekel, a guild that has since moved server, with which I completed heroic and started my first progression into Mythic,
Then Sanity's Team 2, with which I progressed Mythic Nighthold.
My reason for leaving the current team is, as among the dynamic within the guild with a realm first team and a 2nd team that does not appear on WoWprog, essentially the reason for leaving is the same as the reasons for leaving my previous guilds, that being that I feel that I have outgrown them in my dedication to progress and playing with the team and making decisions to be an asset to the team, rather than at any point to hold them down in any way. The current team's ethos lacks this, and I hope to find it in a new team.
Raid availability
I am currently free to raid any amount of time on any days, including the ones your team uses.
About you
I have never been a gamer until recently, when I had picked up Dota 2 some 5-6 years ago. That was the first time I had started going hard and learning how to learn to improve as quickly as possible to play as well as I can. After reaching some 6k MMR in Dota, and winning a LAN, I had started growing tired of the community in the game, and was simultaneously introduced to WoW, with which I became very engaged, and am still working on being the best player I can make of myself, constantly learning and improving as I go along, and attempting to play more and more competitively.
Apart from that I also enjoy superhero movies, all kinds of music, and having a good time playing the video games with friends and guild mates, chatting over VoiP.