[Raider] Tuft - Protection Warrior

[Tuft]

Who is your character?
Tuft - Protection Warrior - 430 ilvl - Armory - WowProgress


Who are you?
My name is Mark, 37 years old and I live in the Netherlands, I have been playing WoW since mid 2005, and have been on Defias Brotherhood from the moment the server went live. I live with Pop (the other Gnome) and the ritual of playing WoW is quite a big part of both our lives.

People might otherwise know me as Rayne, but since recently (bfa) I've changed my name to a more Gnometastic-compatible one. I still hold the spiritual rights to my old name, but sadly the poor sod lost all her numbers and caught a terrible illness while trying to mosey her way out of Gnomeregan.


Experience
Since this will be a lengthy list, I'll limit any progress from a 'when-it-was-current' perspective.

My very first character was a priest called Minerva, with whom I healed and raided until late BWL. At which point I made the switch to tanking on my warrior named Rayne, which I stuck with until this day. Every raid mentioned after this I've only done as a protection warrior, apart from the odd anomaly. (seizures and general insanity)

I've raided through MC/BWL/AQ40 and a bit of Naxx40, up till Thaddius. In TBC I've tanked pretty much every raid, until my guild dwindled on the very first boss in the Sunwell.

I took quite a lengthy break after that, only coming back in late Wrath to tank through ICC on Heroic. In Cataclysm I raided 10man non-stop, usually hitting a wall mid Heroic before the next patch would hit.

Come MoP I took another break, and only came back to casually do content such as dailies and LFR. It wasn't until Legion when I got back into raiding.

Clearing Mythic EN, Heroic ToV, and Mythic NH up to Krosus. I missed out on ToS, but cleared Heroic Antorus. In BFA, starting with Uldir, I've progressed up till Heroic Mythrax. Cleared Heroic BoD and CoS, and currently I am 7/8 Heroic TEP.


Raid Role
I've been a tank for as long as I can remember. And the role hasn't really changed that much, if at all.

Some say that DPS as a tank is more important now than it used to be, but I remember the chilling race of threat all too well, and I've always tried to min/max my performance around the bare necessary survivability pool.

Like most, I stay up to date on my class via the class Discord, theorycrafters, and not only my own but also the parses and logs of other protection warriors.


Your Spec
My necklace is currently at level 56, just enough for a minor essence. The majority of my gear setup has been aimed at DPS, with focus on Single Target, since the current tier for tanks is quite AoE lackluster, bar a few encounters.

Even some of my Azerite choices, like Reckless Flurry (yes it does work in prot spec) synergizes quite nicely with Devastator's auto attacks. My aim here really is parsing, while having enough of a defensive foundation to easily survive anything Heroic could throw at me.

Swapping trinkets, changing talents, and essences is often my main way of trading in DPS for a more beefier tankiness, although I've definitely felt that proper cooldown management/rotation is more than enough to comfortably tank your way through on Normal or Heroic.

Haste is our best stat, bar none. Yet the weights are close enough for a +5 ilvl upgrade to take precedence over any single stat. Rings and trinkets are an exception to this rule, where it often is worth downgrading your ilvl for more favorable secondaries.

As far as Prot Talents go this tier, they've been quite boringly set in stone, with the odd switchup between either Single- or Multi-target dps, whereas survivability is not affected at all.

Speaking of Talents, currently Prot Warriors revolve around 'Anger Management', which reduces major cooldowns based on rage spent. Which in turn makes 'Unstoppable Force' mandatory, which in turn makes burst DPS via 'Avatar' and 'Thunder Clap' our bread and butter, but overall locking our playstyle into a cookie-cutter approach with not that many viable choices.

Essences are quite a lot more interesting, with definite specific progression choices to make. As of now, with no surprise there, I've focused mine on maximizing DPS rather than more survivability.

But don't let all this talk of DPS coming from a tank discourage you. Surviving will always be our first priority. And as a bare minimum we should at least keep the healers comfortable enough to not panic. But once all the proper bottles are lined up, I almost always try to squeeze the most out of an opportunity to push a phase or help out on beating that enrage timer.

Although at the end of the day I've found that hitting most of my buttons randomly while having Taunt macroed into every one of them seems to work out well enough.

Yes, I've actually seen tanks do that O.o


Off-specs and Alternative characters
Sadly enough I never felt comfortable in any other role than support. Pure DPS has never been my thing, and the times that I did switch in a raid can probably be counted on one hand. (I vaguely remember whirlwinding on Akama in BT-- could have been a dream though).

So to be absolutely clear, I aim to tank, and to tank only. It's what I love about the game; the role, the utility and... ffs blizz, make another super interesting tank raid again already, will ya?!?

On the subjects of alts; I still have my old little faithful priest, aptly named 'Pear' nowadays, with her shiny golden candy-cane. But since life has gotten more and more busy, I've opted to focus on my main only. I've never really been into alts anyway..

I do have a mediocre geared Brewmaster Monk named 'Bun', which I leveled, yet never used, in the awful desperation of Uldir progression; you don't know pain until you try and kill Heroic Fetid in the first week with a BDK and a Prot Warrior... Yet we pulled it off!

But luckily Prot is good again-- do you hear that, Sco? Get off your bombmonk already, you class traitor!


Communication
I've grown quite comfortable using a microphone, which is still on push to talk, for quite obvious reasons when you have a decomposing gnome sitting next to you screaming "For the love of Mekkatorque, taunt the boss already!". Sheesh.

I love the fact that you guys still use forums and applications! It's a dying breed, and one I really hope to see revived, if this game is going to keep it's community-guild feel.

My Battletag is Tuft#21835


Combat Logs
Tuft - Defias Brotherhood - Warcraft Logs


Your UI
https://i.imgur.com/qc3MF4s.png

I'm using Elvui, but the majority of my spells and bars are custom weakauras, and mostly going on colour indication and custom sounds.


Guild History
Having been on Defias from the very start, my guild history goes back over a decade. Notable olden-day names would be 'Zealots', 'Elysium', 'Redrum Inc', and finally 'The Core' during my Cataclysm days.

Coming back to WoW in legion, and after meeting Lu, we've tried our hand at a few casual guilds, that either fell apart due to lack of member activity, or lack of raiding motivation in general. It is a sad trend that we've seen plenty in the flex raiding community.

We did join the Raven Council back in 2016, in hopes of regaining that sense of guild-coherence, but after it became clear that it would be very unlikely for a raidspot to open in either raid group, we set our minds on a place that would have a spot.

This turned out to become Violent Circus. And quite frankly, as far as progression raiding goes, it has been one of the best experiences that I've personally had. That is why it's double-sad to see them throw in the towel after all these years.

We had to leave them in 2018 due to real life circumstances (see Pop's post for more details), and by the time we got back into WoW's fold, our goals were set a tad lower than cutting edge.

In our search to find a Heroic/Mythic guild that would accept two tanks, we transferred to Frostmane, and quickly after that to Silvermoon (worst decision we ever made...) only to find that most progression guilds are littered with elitism and overall toxicity. Ironically the same exact reasons why Violent Circus eventually gave up.

We both want to be part of a fun community again, in which we can raid, and where pugging is a last resort rather than a given. A friendly guild-atmosphere, where the raiders are more interested in collaboration and perfecting their individual efforts, rather than being ilvl obsessed, in the hopes of gear making up for mistakes.

Our current guild, despite it's progression, doesn't offer us that place we would feel happy in, turning showing up for raids into a job without the social rewards, which is neither favorable for us nor the guild.

Now that we've learned that TRC is looking for a stable tank and a possible backup tank, it didn't take us long to decide to try and apply. We thoroughly enjoyed the social time we spent in TRC back in 2016, and in my humble opinion, it houses the last remnants of the old Defias Brotherhood vibe. And despite the near loss of real server identity, we would very much like to stay here.


Raid availability
We're technically available on all aforementioned raiding times, and as tanks we both understand the importance of reliability and 100% attendance.

[Gnomish] Plus we don't want to miss out on all the secret underground Gnome parties either.


References
Sherelia would probably say a few nice words about us. Or any Gnome for that matter. Except the ones on Silvermoon. They might be a bit mean. And slightly taller.


About you
Hi, as I've mentioned before, my name is Mark, and I currently live in the Netherlands with Pop. Our lives have been hectic the past few years, with tragedy, emigrating, Brexit, and a severe lack of Jaffa cakes.

But finally we've managed to settle down and start a-new. Currently I'm being a housedad, but without the annoying toddler existing, and am trying to get back into my passion, which is graphic art and 3d design.


Miscellaneous
I'm really not sure if this came across at all in the application. It's really a small thing to mention and it's a little easy to miss. I mean with tiny details like these, it's no wonder. I know a lot of tall people often like to poke fun, so I'd rather be upfront and mention that yes indeed, I am a liberal.

[Fahranya]

Thanks for your application. Please give us some time to review it and all that jazz.

[Sherelia]

References
Sherelia would probably say a few nice words about us. Or any Gnome for that matter. Except the ones on Silvermoon. They might be a bit mean. And slightly taller.

Yay! Good gnome very handsome!! Also very strong at keeping big monsters away from me, yet i do still die but not sure if that's his fault :'( Always in for laugh, this gnome will fit right in!

[Jimmble]

It's zis gnome!



Daeron is sulking.

[Fahranya]

Accepted for trial. Feel free to poke an officer for a guild invite.

[Jimmble]

<recruited>