Elemental Shaman Application

Your age: 26

BattleTag: Zaeden#1542

Armory Link of Main:http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/velen/Xaeden/simple

Armory Links of Notable Alts:

World of Logs/WMO Parses:

Screenshot of your UI:https://i.imgur.com/Imr973g.jpg I was healing in this picture btw thats not my dps....

List the days you are raid available (Sun-Thurs 8-12pm EST):   Every day

What add-ons do you rely on most? LUI DBM Recount

What resources do you use to keep up to date on how to play your class? Wow Heroes, Icy Veins, Youtube, Top Guilds,

What previous raid experience do you have? Off and on again since 2004 and have played many other MMO's never really left the MMO scene just tried new ones and always came back to WOW

What guilds have you been a member of and why are you leaving your current one? Started with Veritas then I went to the Military and when i came back i lost my raid spot for being inactive for so long now i am currently in chasing purple and i am not liking the set up and how things are going.

Why do you want to join Shade of Arrows (Be thorough with your answer)? I like end content and I love challenge. It is not about the gear to me.  I am fine with being the last person to get gear if that is the way it is I just want to be to clear the bosses and have first server drops before other guilds on the server.  

How did you find us (Friend,Forum,Trade Chat,Officer, etc.)(specify)? In Veritas we were Rivals and chasing purple is not performing if i can get into Shade it would be a kick into the face to my old friends if i get server firsts.

Are you competitive by nature? If so, who do you compete against (Yourself or others? Specifiy other)?  I am very competitive I am the most gimped class right now and I try my best to beat all the DPS on the meters by what ever means possible and still follow all the mechanics I am always using the best food dps pots and flasks at all times and the hardest rotation for elemental shaman which is a pain in the ass btw.

Tell us about yourself to help us determine if you would be a good fit here (The more you put here, the better it looks): I am a fun drunk shaman the loves to work on my corvette in my off time and work out.  In game I am usually crafting pots and running raids that we are not currently progressing to get hear that we have not completed to help the raid out. If we have not downed a boss and premades can do it well ill spend the whole weekend trying just for the chance at getting that one piece that might down the boss next week for us.

Bonus question >>Do you attend couple's cross-stitching?<< Sorry,  I don't know what this is....

Thanks for your app, one of our ranged officers will follow up soon.

Thanks for the app. Do you have any logs we could look at? You don't have much obvious raid experience and without logs it's impossible to gauge your performance.

Add me Xzan#1894. I'm sure we'll do some normal/heroic runs this week sometime and I'd like you to tag along. I have exams until Thursday so I'll probably get you in touch with another officer who'll be raiding more this week.

If you got some logs today, go ahead and post them here and we'll check them out.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/jFZt964P1QCacJRr

Was in a Pug Group and I think this is how I link it.

Thanks, appreciate it. I'll provide some feedback to our officer group and perhaps ask a question or two after I have some time to look at this before raid today.

Just a few high level questions about how you play to start before I get into the logs.:

1. What do you use for tracking, or how do you to monitor your flame shock durations, in particular for multiple target situations?

2. Almost all of our raiders use weak auras in some capacity to monitor spells and cooldown duration / availability, but also for sharing critical warnings and messages. Have you used weakauras?

If so, I suggest you consider the following as well: http://www.totemspot.com/vb/entry.php?b=112

3. You've chosen a build favoring mastery and haste. Can you describe your choices in prioritization here? Although, there could be an armory bug since it says you have 32 total multistrike in the stat field summary, and that is 12% - which is odd.

4. Can you provide your rationale for talent and glyph choices? Are those which you are currently using your default go-to or an encounter specific choice?

1. Currently I do not have a tracking for flame shock but I have no objections to picking one up.

2. I have not used weak auras but I can try it out.

3. I am not fond of the mastery I just seem to get it on a lot of pieces I would prefer Multistrike over everything with haste then crit coming in close behind. I choose to run AS for the passive haste buff and the instant cast LB when on the move or instant EQ for AoE fights and also it helps since i right Glyph of Reactive Shielding which lets my lightning shield proc every 1.5 seconds down from every 3 seconds I feel that this is why I like running haste since every LB will give me a Fulmination stack. For Unleashed Fury I choose this cause I feel that it is just the highest DPS choice out of the talents that I have to choose from on single target and has the highest reliability. EM is my third choice and Haste is also a factor into here as in more haste = more FS ticks which is more LS procs which is more LvB and more empowered Earth Shocks and Flame Shocks.

4. I Switch between Both Spirit Walkers glyphs and flame shock and chain lightning glyphs depending on current fights.

I don't really know how to read logs. And I understand there are a lot of questions you guys might have. But this was just a random group of people in a premade group I went to last night and was not in the best scenario to perform in some boss fights went ok and others not so much I could not log the first fight against the spore boss. But I was on the Flame Thrower and I understand why you are asking about the Flame Shocks it is more than likely the up time on it. I understand it was not applied the entire time but I was under a lot of moment and we had healers DCing or not performing there roles correctly and I would off heal just to keep myself or the someone else alive. So my dots or my DPS might a have dropped for a few moments. I believe the key point to last night is that I managed to get some data to be looked at and to show that I do know mechanics. I can take criticism and I am a very fast learner. I am willing to download any addons that you think I will need to perform better. I believe in my build if I have a more competent group to perform with. I do also understand that a few of my secondary stats are not where they should be but I am doing everything that I can trying to replace those pieces with multistrike.

Ok, thanks for the quick response. I haven't actually looked at the logs yet. I just saw your UI and addon list and wondered how you kept track of dots on targets without something like tidyplates or boss frames ala Elv UI to see the dots on. I would urge you to download weak auras, and also to try out Binkstein's ele shaman weak auras to see if you like them.

When I do look at logs I will filter out Brackenspore since you were on the flame thrower and even I do odd things dps-wise when I do that job.

In terms of secondary stat choices, I just wanted to understand the rationale - with the changes to gear and reforging, availability of secondary stats is a limitation for all of us.

Yeah Ill download weak Auras and give it a shot when I get off work tonight. I usually just watch the boss frames or focus target frame. But that might be a little too noobish lol.

Xaeden wrote:Yeah Ill download weak Auras and give it a shot when I get off work tonight. I usually just watch the boss frames or focus target frame. But that might be a little too noobish lol.

I use binksteins weak auras just so I don't have to look at action bars when I play.  Take a look at tidy plates for dot tracking, I find it the best for dot tracking since you can mouseover the nameplate and see the dot duration.

Comments on suvivability
You cast shamanistic rage 17 times. Take this in contrast to my use 43 times. Healing is pretty tight these days and proactive use of CDs is imporant.

On our mythic Kor'gath kill, you died twice to berserker rush, and were the only player in the raid who was not an assigned kiter to do so.

On Twin Ogrons, it appears you died to too many stacks of Blaze, getting hit by fire a total of 9 times - tied for most overall with Mikbar. You also took damage from the first and second hit of Pulverize on three separate occasions.

In terms of healing, you used 6 healthstones, cast 32 healing surges, and dropped 22 healing stream totems. I had about the same on the totem, half as many healing surges, and I used 10 healing tonics. Roughly equal, maybe you could use the healthstone more. I think this is good to see in terms of survivability.


Comments on Damage
You didn't use any potions on any encounters.

In terms of spellcasting, considering only boss encounters, here is a breakdown of your total spell usage. I'll provide mine for context in parenthetical.
They key message is that you likely need to be casting more to increase your dps. It roughly looks like you're casting 2/3 fewer spells (than I am) in the equal amount of time. I respect you died at times and we did not res you, but you weren't dead 33% of the time - maybe 5% or less.

Lava Burst 702; (1,141)
Lightning Bolt 927;(1,097)
Flame Shock 188; (279)
Earth Shock 149; (262)
Unleash Flame 0; (307)
Ascendance 31; (39)

Lava Beam 4; (
Chain Lightning 114; (124)
Earthquake 17; (34)

Searing Totem 761; (1,460)
Fire Elemental Totem 20; (11)


For Lava Burst, it is likely I have more lava surges due to having higher gear. However, the number is substantial and our crit rating only differs by about 6%. You cast 40% fewer lava bursts. This may be also to be multidotting, especially on tectus and twin ogrons (to my point yesterday about how you are managing flame shocks on multiple targets)

For unleashed fury, it looks like you've spec'd into this and did not cast the spell entirely. Is this correct, or did you use another talent last night?

For searing totem, you have roughly 50% fewer hits than I do. This makes me think you're roughly at 50% uptime on it.

For the fire elemental, you actually had more uses than I did and I gather you used this glyph for the encounter. The maximum use based on our total boss time is 14 and you had 20, ergo I think you had to glyph it. I need to work on this later in the fight it seems since I missed 3 possible uses.

Thanks for looking over his logs, Firestyle.

For the SR I know I need to start using this more it is a work in progress I saw this when I checked the logs myself earlier. Now that I know what logs are it is a really impressive thing on that not starting off.

For the Mythic Fight the First death was a bad luck stroke as I was taking the Pillar and it dropped as soon he got near it. The second time I died was my own fault and I admit that it was due to cockiness he was at 1% left and I thought we could kill him before he would get to me.

Twins fight I swear to god and everything it was server lag and I know people must make this excuse all the time but it felt like the server was lagging every few seconds. I am sorry for this.

On the potions I was not prepared and I am sorry I will have Int pots. I just honestly did not expect a raid invite. I was a shock. But I will never make that mistake again I promise.

On the damage note the only thing I can think of is I was trying my hardest not to die and might have been to focused on my positioning and I did pick up the flamethrower on the sporeboss that one fight. I did die a few times. I don't know how multistrike plays a factor into this either or if it does at all it might count as more cast for you if not then yes I need to improve greatly on that. I was not running the fire glyph by the way I just used it more than you.... Also since I talented into unleash flame please recheck on my buff page it should be called Unleashed Fury now I cast it 256 times.

Here is the Unleashed Fury screen Shot https://imgur.com/mCY3a8Y

And yes I need to improve on my searing totem also. Thank you for showing me and explaining everything I messed up on. XD Not being sarcastic it will help me be a better player.

Got it, thanks. I forgot unleash fury doesn't do damage any longer and I was looking in the damage done by ability section. For your searing totem, I definitely think Binksteins weak auras will help since it provides a nice tracking bar.

Otherwise, I've provided the information and analysis here - but it is up for the officers to decide on next steps.

Downloaded it and have it set up and you know this cause you helped me set it up but posting to let everyone else know I do have it.

Don't take it personally that we aren't bringing you in; it has nothing to do with your performance so far. We're trying to keep our progression steady and we take the most geared/experienced people we can. We'll keep you as a backup for the remainder of the week. Take the things Firestyle said to heart and try to improve your play in the meantime.

Don't worry I take nothing personal.  If anything it is all a learning experience for me and I am just grateful for the little time time that I am allowed to get if at any at all like I stated in my application I am all for progression.  If being the best means I need to be benched at times to stack a group that is all fine and well.  And I am not used to your guys strats yet as in everyone has there own set ups and runs things a little different than everyone else.  I also understand that my gear is a lot lower and it is easier with people who has better gear than me so no worries.  I will be researching him today on breaks at work though

I have a question on the Flame Shock multi dotting is there a point to when it becomes a DPS loss? Or do I want to apply it to as many targets as possible or is it like no more than 2-3 tops?

You can't effectively maintain more than 3. Logistically you can do 4, and I think even swing some overlap with 5. However, after 3 you are spending more uptime on the dots than you are maximizing the lava surge procs.

Moreover, once you hit 3 you really want to think about if you can move towards chain lightning since it's superior dps. The only reason I still multidot with 3 targets is A) if you can't CL, or B) if you want something to die first (which is almost always the case). So for example, on heroic protectors in SOO when the bosses are stacked - I would use CL, but still also multidot because I want to dump into a priority add for a reason.