Versaya, frost / arcane mage (armory)
Who are you?
Jelmer, 21 year old male from the Netherlands
To which Raid Group are you Applying?
RG1
Experience
I first started playing WoW shortly after the TBC release. I've played every expansion since then, although I have taken some (long) breaks, so I have not raided every tier. Throughout the expansions I have played on the realms 'Talnivarr', 'Defias Brotherhood', 'The Maelstrom' and 'Emerald Dream', so I will omit guild names. Apart from TBC, all kills listed are during current content.
TBC:
I raided rather casually on my rogue (dps), and later my priest (healer). I cleared Karazhan, Gruul's Lair, Magheteridon's Lair, and I think 1/4 in TK and 4/6 in SSC. I'm sure this experience is not too relevant.
WotLK:
Throughout WotLK I only played my priest (healer). We cleared Naxx25, Malygos25 and Sarth25+3 before the release of Ulduar. Shortly after the release of Ulduar my guild ran into some issues, and thus I didn't raid any further and unsubbed. Later, in patch 3.3 I resubbed and joined a new guild and we made it to 11/12HC in ICC10. Unfortunately we didn't get LK himself down before the end of the expansion.
Cataclysm:
I only played in Cata at the end of the expansion, during Dragon Soul. Again I played on my priest (healer), but didn't raid very seriously. Cleared normal DS and the first 2 bosses on HC, but that's it.
MoP:
I unsubbed right at the launch of MoP, so again didn't get to experience the start of the expansion. I only started playing again well into 5.4, after being contacted by some of my friends I raided with during WotLK. I rolled
(healer) to raid with them, and we cleared up to and including Siegecrafter 10 man heroic (now called mythic). Shortly after we had some attendency issues, and sadly ended up disbanding. Myself and some others joined another guild, where we killed Garrosh 25 heroic (now called mythic, it was pre 6.0), yey!
This is also the period in which I created my warlock alt, Leah, on which I joined The Raven Council as a social.
WoD:
At the start of WoD I remained in the same guild. After a very early Highmaul heroic clear and killing Kargath and Twin Ogron on mythic, we hit a seemingly brick wall on Tectus and Brackenspore. This was around the holiday period, so again there were attendency issues, and we disbanded. Time for another break...
At the end of the summer (2-3 months ago), I made my mage, Versaya, and joined TRC. At some point I joined a raid from RG2, and from then onwards have been joining almost all of them. As you probably know, we have cleared normal HFC and killed 7/13 on HC HFC. With the RG2/RG3 merge last week I killed 3 more bosses, and I also have Mannoroth and Archi HC kills from joining a friends run. This technically puts me at 12/13HC, but I don't want to take too much credit for these
Raid Role
As a mage, of course my first and foremost role is dealing out a ton of damage. To achieve this I've read a lot of guides, such as the ones on the mmo-champion forums and Icy Veins, but mostly the ones on Altered Time (Frost / Arcane). Another great resource is the HFC Mage Tips thread on Altered-Time. Lastly, I've talked a lot with a very good / experienced mage friend of mine.
To decide what talents I use for a certain, I use a combination of common sense, the resources listed above and checking Warcraft logs to see what other people are using.
Asides from doing a lot of damage, mages also have a lot of utility spells, which can prove very useful to handle or even trivialize both individual- and raidwide mechanics. I'm talking about spells like alter-time, iceblock/evanesce and greater invis. The HFC Mage Tips thread I mentionened before is a great resources to read about usages for these abilities.
Usually after raids I check my ranks on Warcraftlogs to see how I'm doing; I find that I'm usually ranking quite high. Up til now it hasn't really been needed to analyse combat-logs very much because 1) I've only been doing heroic content (which we mostly overgear), so timer's aren't to tight, or 2) I already know what went wrong. If the need arises, Warcraftlogs can be a very good resource to analyse my own performance in more detail.
Lastly, I often read the mmo-champion front page or the /r/wow subreddit, so I'm usually up-to-date about future changes.
Your Spec
I currently play frost / arcane because because I believe the general concensus is that these specs are the strongest for progression in HFC. I started playing mage a little under 3 months ago, and such I have never played fire. If in a future tier fire proves to be the best spec, I will of course switch to that spec. I am confident that I will be able to pick it up quickly. For the majority of my time on mage I've been playing frost, and thus I'm comfortable playing this spec. I've only been playing arcane for 3 weeks now (shortly after receiving t18 4p and legendary ring), so there's still some things to learn for me there, but I feel I'm learning- and getting better at the spec very fast.
Frost shines when then are targets to be cleaved, in which cases it will provide very reliable and high DPS. It also tends to be more mobile than arcane, although with t18 4p and class trinket the difference is not as big as it used to be. In HFC I'd probably play it on Council, Tyrant, Mannoroth and Archimonde
Arcane is great in either single target, or for AoE on many targets. A problem with arcane is how RNG dependendant it is ('casino mage').
Talents
Please note I don't know all mythic mechanics yet, so some choices may change:
L15:
Evanesce: Very useful on some fights to cheese a mechanic (such as barrage/artillery on Iron Reaver or chains on Xhul)
Ice Floes: When not using Evanesce, provides a lot of mobility.
L30:
Alter-time: Can be used to negate a lot of damage (such as when dropping overlapping pools on Gorefiend or breaking chains on Archimonde) or provide mobility (such as heart seeker on Kilrogg, artillery on Reaver or shadowforce on Mannoroth). I use this on pretty much every fight.
Flameglow: If there's really nothing to use alter-time on (such as HF assault or Socrethar)
L45:
Barely ever used.
L60:
Greater invisibility: Very useful for ignoring mechanics (such as Chakram on Iskar), removing DoTs (such as Heart Seeker DoT), or soaking a big hit (such as clearing fire on Xhul)
Cold Snap: If no use for GInvis and I need double iceblock (such as Gorefiend, so I can iceblock of the Touch of Doom)
Cauterize: If I don't need Ginvis or double iceblock (such as Socrethar).
Arcane L75:
Supernova: On AoE fights (such as HF assault), fights where AoE burst is needed (such as Kormrok), or the knockup is useful for interupting (such as Xhul).
Unstable Magic: Whenever supernova isn't needed. So mainly single-target fights.
Frost L75:
Ice Nova: When AoE burst is needed (such as Kormrok) or the root comes in handy (Socrethar ghosts).
Unstable Magic: When Ice Nova is not needed.
L90:
Rune of Power: On low mobility fights (like Zakuun or Kilrogg)
Incanter's Flow: On high mobility fights (like Xhul or Socrethar)
Arcane L100:
Arcane orb: On AoE fights (such as HF assault, Xhul). This generates a ton of arcane charges (allows more arcane barrages) and more importantly arcane missiles procs. Very useful for getting AM charges when PoF trinket procs.
Prismatic Crystal: If Arcane Orb is not needed. Provides huge increase in burst damage.
Frost L100:
Thermal Void: Always. Prismatic crystal is mainly useful for providing a second target to cleave on, in which case I would likely play arcane. With t18 4p + class trinket, this can make your icy veins last very long.
Glyphs
Arcane:
- Rapid Displacement: Double blink, yey! Pretty much always use this.
- Arcane Explosion: If I'm going to be using AE for AoE.
- Slow: If there's targets that need to be slowed (like on Kilrogg)
- Cone of Cold: If there's going to be tons of enemies stacked up and I can be near them to use CoC.
- Regenerative Ice: If I don't need the AoE glyphs, because why not...
- Icy Veins: Always.
- Splitting Ice: Always. If not using this, I would probably play arcane instead.
- Rapid Displacement: Almost always. I might use Cone of Cold glyph or Water Elemental sometimes, but usually I prefer the double blink.
I won't go into too much detail about the rotation, but only mention what I think is important. If you are interested in a more in-depth version, please let me know and I can tell you more about it. I just don't think it makes a lot of sense to more or less copy the guides I linked above
Time for more acronyms...
Arcane
(all of this is assuming PoF, ToSW and t18 4p)
Arcane consists of a burn phase and a conserve phase. Burn phase happens every 2 minutes (when AP, PC, evocation and ring are up). If the ring is being saved for some mechanic, I might do a new burn phase after 1.5 minutes (when AP, PC and Evocation are up).
Before the burn phase I get 4 AC, 3 AM and close to full mana. I will use all AM to try to proc 4p.
During the burn phase I spam AB, using AM when possible (otherwise I'll dip too low on mana before AP is over). If I'm running SN I'll likely use it early in the burn phase because I'll be high mana (mastery) and probably have a lot of 4p procs up. At the end of burn phase (roughly around 50% mana / when AP drops) I use evocation and go to conserve phase.
In conserve phase I try to stay as high mana as possible without capping. I also try to pool as many AM charges as I can (again, without overcapping) for when I get a PoF trinket proc.
Frost
(all of this is assuming ToSW and t18 4p)
The very essence of the frost rotation is alternating FB and IL.
I try to keep WJ on cooldown as much as possible without wasting it (i.e. casting it on low hp adds). During WJ I'll simply alternate FB and IL. I always try to end WJ with 4 stacks of FoF, so if WJ is about to end and I don't have 4 stacks of FoF yet, I'll cast some FBs back-to-back. If low hp adds do have priority (like felhounds on Archi), I'll cast WJ and FBs on a high HP target and cast the ILs on the low hp target.
Frozen orb is usually used whenever it's cooldown after casting WJ.
Try to avoid overcapping Brain Freeze procs.
Stat priority
It's hard to give exact stat priorities, because it tends to shift depending on the stats already on your gear. The basic version is as follows:
Arcane: intellect > spellpower > haste till ~2100 > mastery >= haste > multistrike > crit = versatility
Frost: intellect > spellpower > multistrike > haste > crit > master = versatility
To obtain proper stat weights I use simulationcraft.
Off-specs and Alternative characters
I an willing to play any of the specs on my mage. I, however, currently don't have any raiding-ready alts. I'm not yet sure what class I'll be playing in Legion, so there's some flexibility there.
Communication
Yes, I have a working microphone and use it a lot. I already check the website almost everyday for new posts, so that won't be a problem either.
Combat Logs
I log and upload almost all fights I do. Rankings can be found here on Warcraftlogs. Please bear in mind that my gear is relatively low ilvl and also vastly different throughout the logs, as I've geared up a lot.
If you're interested in seeing my ranking per ilvl bracket or the details of individual logs, please see the logs at the guild page or my personal logs page. Some examples: 1, 2, 3, 4
Your UI
Out of combat
Frost combat
The Water Jet icon you see above my pet frame is an icon that pops up 4 seconds before the CD of Water Jet is up. I have this for a lot of spells so that I immidiately see when a CD is finished. The rest is pretty self-explanatory I think.
Arcane combat
The snowflakes are the amount of AM charges I have.
Raid combat
I forgot to take a picture within a raid, and didn't want to queue for LFR just to get one, but I found this slightly outdated picture. I no longer have the Bloodlegion cooldowns (top-left) as I don't really use it as DPS. I also moved the BigWigs bars a bit and changed some keybinds.
Important addons for raiding I use are: ElvUI, BigWigs, Clique (for decursing), Iskar Assist, oRA3 (mainly for readychecks and BR timer), Skada, Exorsus Raid Tools and last but certainly not least, WeakAuras.
Guild History
I haven't been in any noteworth guilds on this realm. You can find my reasons for leaving previous guilds in the 'Experience' section, but I mostly left after the guilds stopped raiding.
I have been in The Raven Council on my warlock Leah as a social for quite a while now, and as of recently also on my mage Versaya. The guild offers a great atmosphere, and I've greatly enjoyed playing with all of you.
Raiding with RG2 has been a lot of fun, but I now want to push progression more seriously, and be in a bit more stable raiding environment. I do feel bad about potentially leaving RG2, so if any of you is reading this, don't hate me please!
I'm currently the raid leader of RG2, a position I fell into after our previous raid leader left the guild. If you decide to accept me, a replacement will have to be found, as I don't have the time to raid 5 nights a week. There's one particular individual who I think might be willing to take on this task, but we'll have to see.
Raid availability
Yes, I can make it to all raids, apart from the occasional real-life stuff that's already mentioned on the requirements page.
References
I have been raiding with RG2 for a while now, so I've raided quite often with especially Jimmble and Twiki, but also Alikh and Carn and possibly others. Of course there was also the recent RG2 / RG1 alt run, where I played with a lot more of you.
About you
So my name is Jelmer, I'm 21 years old and I live in the Netherlands. I finished my Bachelor's degree in computer science last year, and am now doing a Master. I work at the university as a student-assistant.
In my spare time I play a lot of video games (surprise!) or watch movies and series. Sometimes I even multitask and do both at the same time, go me! The game I play most is, you guessed it, WoW, but I also play other games like Diablo, Battlefield or one of the many games in my Steam library.
Miscellaneous
My Battle.net tag is Miles#2416. I'm already in the guild, so feel free to message me if you want to have a chat. Of course if there's anything I can clarify or any questions I can answer, let me know!
Wall of text crits you for 536,324 damage.
You die.
