[Pengin]

Basic Info:

Name: James
Age: 16
Gender: Male

General:

1. What raid experience do you have in: Vanilla, BC, and WoTLK? On which characters/roles?

Classic: Did not play WoW
Burning Crusade: Very Casual Player; was not into raiding
WoTLK: Naxx 10/25 Cleared
Ulduar 12/14
Regular ToC 10/25 Cleared
Heroic ToC 10 Cleared (Tribute to Skill)
Heroic ToC 25 1/5 (Have attempted 4/5)
ICC10 8/12 (Havent raided it much in the last couple weeks due to lack of a solid guild to raid with)
ICC25 7/12 (Same as ^)
OS/EoE/Ony etc. 10/25 Cleared

2. Why do you want to raid with Enigma instead of your current guild? If you are not in a Guild, why? Why do you raid in general?

You guys seem like you have it together. You down bosses and you decline applications in which the applicant can't speak english properly. I like what I see here and want to be a part of it. My current guild isn't a competitive guild when it comes to icc; my friend invited me to it because I was guildless. I left my last serious guild because a few of its members really rubbed me the wrong way.
I raid because after numerous wipes, there's nothing quite like finally nailing some huge dragon because everyone is able to do their small part just as it should be done, it gives you a great sense of accomplishment.

3. Are there any members of Enigma that you feel would give you a strong recommendation?

I do not know any members of Enigma.

4. Do you have ventrilo and a working microphone? What kind of computer/internet connection do you have?

I have ventrilo, but my microphone broke 2 weeks ago. I should be able to get a new one by next week.

Gear & Spec:

5. Please provide a link to your armory profile.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.x...l&cn=Pengin

a. Describe your main spec gear set: Include reasons you have obtained certain stats over others, as well as your gem and enchant choices.

First, the only difference between my Affliction and Destruction gear is that in my affliction spec I use the nevermelting ice crystal trinket instead of illustration of the dragon soul. Warlock stat priority is shared by all specs for the most part. First, you need to make sure you're hit capped (also taking raid buffs that will be available into account). Once your hit capped, spell power is the single most important stat. After that comes haste, after haste comes crit rating, and after crit rating comes spirit. This is why all of my enchants either directly, or in the case of my chest enchant, indirectly increase my spell power. The exception is my boot enchant, tuskarrs, which does a great job of helping me do things like move out of fire faster; after all, you dont do any dps while you're dead. Many of my gems are +23 Spellpower gems. I also have two 12 spellpower/10 spirit gems to activate my meta, and a few 12 spellpower/10 haste gems since the socket bonuses make it worth not taking direct spell power gems.

b. Describe your secondary spec decision. What is your gear and knowledge level for it? Would you be comfortable using your secondary spec in a raid situation if needed?

My secondary spec is affliction, though I use it almost as much as destro, depending on the fight. (On spank and tank type fights such as festergut, its amazing, on fights with adds-not so much) I also have raided with demonology. I am experienced and skilled with all 3 specs.

6. What major and minor glyphs do you have? Are these the best PVE glyphs available for your class?

Major:
Glyph of Conflagrate- Essential for destro warlocks
Glyph of Life Tap- Essential as long as you have a decent ammount of spirit (which I do)
Glyph of Incinerate- Increase the damage done by my number 1 damage spell? Yes, please.

Minor: (note that no warlock minor glyphs boost dps in any way; they make some things more convinient though)
Glyph of Unending Breath- Me (and whoever i buff) can swim faster
Glyph of Drain Soul- I can collect soul shards faster
Glyph of Ritual of Souls- Saves a little mana

7. If you could have any three pieces of gear available currently in game (that you do not already have) what would they be and why?

1. Dislodged Foreign Object (277 heroic version). BiS trinket, tons of spell power. A warlock's dream.
2. Bloodsurge, Kel'Thuzad's Blade of Agony (284 heroic version) Drops of the lich king; probably the most desired caster weapon in the game. Not only does it have incredible stats, but it is very sexy looking as well.
3. Jaina's Radiance(ilvl 272).. I wanted to include one semi-old school item. It's still very challenging to get, and its stats are still very impressive. Of course, since I'm also a sucker for the way gear looks (though look always comes second to stats of course), this is one beautiful cloak.

8. What is, in your opinion, the best source of information about your class/spec/gearing choices?

Elitist Jerks' trinket thread for warlocks has tons of great information and simcraft data, and has helped me a lot in the past. I tend not to rely on too many other threads too much though. I also observe the discussion in the Warlocks Den (wowmb.net), though I make sure all advice i find from there is correct. Ive developed enough knowledge to make 95% of all warlock related decisions on my own.

9. What unique things does your class/spec bring to raids or do better than any other class/spec?

Healthstones (aka 'Lock Cookies) are great to have during a fight and have saved me many times in the past. Of course warlocks can also soulstone, which is very powerful especially in fights where its crucial to have certain people alive. I can also use curse of elements (debuff which increases magic damage taken by 13%), though it only needs to be used if there is no unholy death knight or boomkin with you, as they apply an equal debuff which does not stack with curse of elements. In my affliction spec, I also apply a debuff to enemies to increase critical strike chance against them by 5%)

10. What combination of raiding consumables is the best for your class/spec?

Flask of the frost wyrm (spellpower), firecracker salmon (spellpower/stam) and potion of wild magic or potion of speed are the best consumables for warlock dps.

11. What are the primary spells or abilities you use in a raiding environment? If you have a rotation, what is it?

BASIC rotation (Assuming life tap self buff is up): Curse, immolate, conflagrate, chaos bolt, incinerate until either conflag or chaos bolt is off cooldown. I also have to make sure the immolate debuff is up at all times.

Additional Questions:
(If you don't feel you need to take the time to correctly post Q12 & 13, don't bother applying)

12. Please link or add a screenshot of your UI in a raid setting. What UI mods do you use? Which is the most important?

http://img138.images...06/38299372.jpg

Main UI mods for raiding: Bartender, Omen, Deadly Boss Mods, parrot, quartz grid, ora2 (if my raid group is using it), other misc. addons that do not make a noticable difference while raiding. I like to keep my ui relatively clean.

13. Please provide a few links to your previous WWS reports.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-tzqs...1819&e=2123

The parses from this night/raid are the only recent ones I have, I no longer have access to my old guild's. The parse i posted does have plenty of fights and should give you a decent idea, though.

14. Our current raid setup is 7:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. (CST) on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Are you able to make these raids for the duration? How many of our raids per week would you be able to make on an ongoing basis?

I can make all of these raids on time, unless I have something unusual going on. In all honesty, I'd probably miss one raid night every 3-4 weeks.

15. Do you anticipate your attendance level changing in the next few months for school, family, work, etc?

I do not.

End note: I'm sorry about the walls of text. If I could potentially be raiding with you guys long term in the future, I want to put plenty of time into my application to make sure you know what I'm all about. I look forward to your response

EDIT: I forgot to include my computer's specs, sorry.
6 gigs ddr3 ram
xfx 9600 gso
intel quad core processor
qwest dsl internet

My FPS is usually 40-70 in raids and my latency is usually about 100.

This post has been edited by Pengin: 07 March 2010 - 07:44 PM

[hanataro]

Hey Pengin,

Thank you for applying to Enigma.

Can you explain your decision not to place any points in Soul Leach in your destro spec.

What was the reasoning behind taking the Life Tap Glyph for your third, over Imp or Immolate?

The app overall looks pretty good, I may think of some more questions as I keep looking at the application.

-Hana

[Pengin]

hanataro, on Mar 8 2010, 12:43 PM, said:

Hey Pengin,

Thank you for applying to Enigma.

Can you explain your decision not to place any points in Soul Leach in your destro spec.

What was the reasoning behind taking the Life Tap Glyph for your third, over Imp or Immolate?

The app overall looks pretty good, I may think of some more questions as I keep looking at the application.

-Hana

I do not have soul leech currently because I'm barely above hit cap with suppression, and I can't currently rely on a boomkin/shadow priest to make up for that 3% hit loss that will come from speccing into soul leech. Assuming I can get my 3% hit in the future, I can easily switch.

As for my glyph choice, when you have as much spirit as I do (500 unbuffed), the spell power from this glyph easily outperforms any other option in terms of overall dps.

[hanataro]

I'd like to talk to you in-game before a final decision is made. Let me know when a good time would be.

-Hana

[Pengin]

hanataro, on Mar 8 2010, 08:13 PM, said:

I'd like to talk to you in-game before a final decision is made. Let me know when a good time would be.

-Hana

Any time this evening would be fine.

[hanataro]

Spoke with you in-game, posting for visibility.

Accepted, Welcome to Enigma.

Please update the post with your name when you get onto Vek.

[Leotharius]

These are mostly my own musing over your app

Pengin, on Mar 7 2010, 10:39 PM, said:

First, the only difference between my Affliction and Destruction gear is that in my affliction spec I use the nevermelting ice crystal trinket instead of illustration of the dragon soul. Warlock stat priority is shared by all specs for the most part. First, you need to make sure you're hit capped (also taking raid buffs that will be available into account). Once your hit capped, spell power is the single most important stat. After that comes haste, after haste comes crit rating, and after crit rating comes spirit. This is why all of my enchants either directly, or in the case of my chest enchant, indirectly increase my spell power. The exception is my boot enchant, tuskarrs, which does a great job of helping me do things like move out of fire faster; after all, you dont do any dps while you're dead. Many of my gems are +23 Spellpower gems. I also have two 12 spellpower/10 spirit gems to activate my meta, and a few 12 spellpower/10 haste gems since the socket bonuses make it worth not taking direct spell power gems.

Is there any particular time you'd see fit to gem a 12sp/10spr gem instead of a 23sp gem, aside from activating your meta?

Consider this: As destro, you gain a total of 59% of your spirit as spell power. If you considered just the 10 spirit from a purified dreadstone, that's 5.9 spell power. Add to that 12 spell power from the gem, you're at 17.9. If you have a socket bonus that's +6 spell power or more, that blue socket becomes, in effect, worth 23.9 spellpower. You can put together something similar for affliction, but gaining 50% rather than 59%. It's a small difference, but every bit counts.

Also, how much more important would you consider spellpower when compared to haste? Especially at higher gear levels.

You also mention the [item]Nevermelting Ice Crystal[/item], what the beginning of a standard fight look at when you're using this trinket look like? Is there any time you'd consider using [item]Illustration of the Dragon Soul[/item] instead of NMIC?

Pengin said:

As for my glyph choice, when you have as much spirit as I do (500 unbuffed), the spell power from this glyph easily outperforms any other option in terms of overall dps.

What do you consider the spirit "break point," after which you would switch to either Immolate or Imp? And given the incoming buffs to immolate, which would you take, given the choice?

This is mostly an aside, but:

Quote

My secondary spec is affliction, though I use it almost as much as destro, depending on the fight. (On spank and tank type fights such as festergut, its amazing, on fights with adds-not so much) I also have raided with demonology. I am experienced and skilled with all 3 specs.

Affliction can and does shine on certain add fights- it depends entirely on the type of add you have to deal with. If there is a large amount of aoe-trash type adds, affliction sustains an enormous amount of damage. The same can be said of fights where the add lives through a full dot rotation. Shadowbolt is your filler only when you can't use your other dots, because they still have a higher DPCT, so if there's a large add that will live through a full dot rotation, it is more damage to throw your dots on the add, rather than simply casting shadowbolt on your primary target. Affliction does stutter on add damage on fights where there is a low number of short-living adds, but even then it is not totally ineffective.

That being said, destro's incredibly short build-up time is nice (Relative to other warlock specs), so any fight where there is a large amount of target switching and short-lived adds, destro will put out respectable numbers.

*edit* seems as thought Hana posted while I was writing this out- congrats on your acceptance.

[Pengin]

Leotharius, on Mar 8 2010, 11:05 PM, said:

These are mostly my own musing over your app



Is there any particular time you'd see fit to gem a 12sp/10spr gem instead of a 23sp gem, aside from activating your meta?

Consider this: As destro, you gain a total of 59% of your spirit as spell power. If you considered just the 10 spirit from a purified dreadstone, that's 5.9 spell power. Add to that 12 spell power from the gem, you're at 17.9. If you have a socket bonus that's +6 spell power or more, that blue socket becomes, in effect, worth 23.9 spellpower. You can put together something similar for affliction, but gaining 50% rather than 59%. It's a small difference, but every bit counts.

Also, how much more important would you consider spellpower when compared to haste? Especially at higher gear levels.

You also mention the [item]Nevermelting Ice Crystal[/item], what the beginning of a standard fight look at when you're using this trinket look like? Is there any time you'd consider using [item]Illustration of the Dragon Soul[/item] instead of NMIC?



What do you consider the spirit "break point," after which you would switch to either Immolate or Imp? And given the incoming buffs to immolate, which would you take, given the choice?

This is mostly an aside, but:


Affliction can and does shine on certain add fights- it depends entirely on the type of add you have to deal with. If there is a large amount of aoe-trash type adds, affliction sustains an enormous amount of damage. The same can be said of fights where the add lives through a full dot rotation. Shadowbolt is your filler only when you can't use your other dots, because they still have a higher DPCT, so if there's a large add that will live through a full dot rotation, it is more damage to throw your dots on the add, rather than simply casting shadowbolt on your primary target. Affliction does stutter on add damage on fights where there is a low number of short-living adds, but even then it is not totally ineffective.

That being said, destro's incredibly short build-up time is nice (Relative to other warlock specs), so any fight where there is a large amount of target switching and short-lived adds, destro will put out respectable numbers.

*edit* seems as thought Hana posted while I was writing this out- congrats on your acceptance.

I'll go ahead and answer your questions while I wait for my transfer.

First off, when there is a +7 spell power bonus that I could get by using a 12sp/10spirit gem, I use it. The only place where I currently have that is in my helm.

As for spell power being compared to haste, I've been told that after having a certain amount of spellpower unbuffed, haste becomes better. I haven't spent a large amount of time looking into this as my spell power is still considerably below that threshold.

About my the NMIC: I implement it as such when it is used- Shadow bolt, haunt, pop NMIC, corruption, ua, coa. Obviously the reason it's so great is because as long as I keep refreshing corruption with haunt/sb/drain soul, it keeps the entire crit buff until it falls off. When the boss gets below 25%, and if my NMIC is off cd, I'll usually pop it again and recast corruption so it can benefit from the new effects. On fights where my corruption has a decent chance of falling off (Putricide comes to mind) IOTDS is going to benefit me more.

I've always had plenty of spirit, so I haven't researched this much, but off the top of my mind I'd say I would probably consider switching glyphs once my spirit gets below 400 or so. With the new buff to immo, the glyph will definitely stand out more, but it seems like glyph of life tap is still better for me. If I see simcraft numbers or anything else suggesting otherwise, I'll be the first to switch glyphs.

Affliction for add fights: when I was talking about how destro is better for those, I was talking more about fights with adds that I have to switch to and kill in seconds. I guess an example of this is toravon (horrible example, I know).

I look forward to raiding with you soon.

Note: Character transfer is still pending, I'll update when its done.

[Pengin]

Transfer Complete, name is Pengin.

This post has been edited by Pengin: 08 March 2010 - 10:47 PM