Raider Application - Druid (DPS) - Delroth

[Applicant]

Hello, Iron Edge!

I am applying for the main raid.

Character: Delroth
Armory: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-gb/character/eu/Kazzak/Delroth
Class/Spec: Druid (DPS)
Member Type: Raider

Personal Info:

Hi folks,

I'm Pierre, 27, french expat in the German part of Switzerland (Zürich). Working there as a software / security engineer and enjoying living 1h away from the Alps

Similar to many of your recent applications, I didn't really play actively since Legion. Played and raided mythic as a DPS warrior (sometimes 3rd tank) back then, and now I came back to BFA a month ago playing moonkin / resto druid casually (as in, M+15 and heroic). I'm open to playing either of the two classes in Shadowlands depending on comp requirements, for this application I'll talk mostly about druid because it's the most recent in my mind. For my Legion warrior knowledge I hope my old progress & logs will be enough.

Class/Spec:

I mainly play balance but I've off-spec resto in M+ and heroic when that makes it easier to find groups (and actually would be possibly interested in healing in high level content too). I'm 467 equipped in my ST DPS set, and around 465 in my M+ / healing sets.

Will only talk about moonkin here, happy to reminisce about Legion warrior if you want in a follow-up.

Gear-wise, I'm chasing haste/crit for my ST set and Azerite pieces with Streaking Stars (+ 1 with Arcanic Pulsar). Haste/mastery for my M+ set, with still 1 Arcanic Pulsar on Azerite pieces but also trying to keep some mix of Power of the Moon / Blood Rite / OP.

Rotation: playing moonkin is at its core balancing (pun intended) Solar/Lunar stacks with Astral Power while keeping dots up and using dot refreshes and starsurge for movement. On top of this, Arcanic Pulsar & Vision of Perfection add small burst windows to try and maximize the value of while alternating spells for Streaking Stars. Excluding encounter specific things (movement, etc.) my priorities look kind of like this:

1. Don't cap Astral Power
2. Don't cap Solar/Lunar stacks (i.e. don't starsurge if there is already one stack at 3)
3. Starsurge
4. Keep dots up
5. Consume Solar/Lunar stacks (alternating if during Alignment)
6. Fill up the gaps with Solar.

Additionally I play around Arcanic Pulsar, pooling some astral power before the 9th Starsurge so I can usually get two Starsurges inside the 6s Alignment window.

This is all for ST, I could go into more details for MT if you want.

Alts:

I have an alt warrior at 120 which I haven't played much with since Legion (Delrothh-Kazzak).

Professions:

Usually I go any gatherer+enchanter on my main and I try to get one alchemist and one JC on alts for consumables. But that's subject to change if there are some nice BoP attached to professions, e.g. I played a tiny bit at the beginning of BFA with my Warrior and I went blacksmith for the gear.

Raiding Experience:

I started playing WoW at the beginning of Legion. Didn't raid "seriously" until Nighthold when I joined a mythic raiding guild on EU-Archimonde. We... weren't very good, ended up the tier at 9/10M when we were starting to prog Illidan phase on Guldan.

For ToS I really wanted my first CE (in retrospect: not the easiest raid to try and get CE on). I migrated to EU-Ravencrest in a 2 nights/week raiding guild called Valor. We ended up getting our 9/9M CE the last week of the tier, which wasn't bad given that most of the guild started raiding seriously in Legion.

I continued raiding with Valor in Antorus, still at 2 nights/week. The guild ended up getting CE top989 world, after we choked pretty hard on Argus (we were at top850 on Aggramar). I say "the guild" here because I was unfortunate enough to be away the one raid night the guild ended up clearing, and everyone was just done with raiding afterwards so I never got a reclear for my own CE :-( So technically I have not seen Argus dead while current, but I've seen the big red boi at 5% health or so.

All of this is as DPS warrior, though in reclears I sometimes went 3rd tank to let our DK 3rd tank have some fun too

Previous Guilds:

EU-Archimonde Ethernium: I joined them when I was a noob, they were pretty much the only serious alliance raiding guild on that server, and I'm super thankful to them bearing with me when I was still learning a lot about raiding. The main issue is that we basically had 10-ish players aiming for CE, and 10-ish players just there for the ride and not trying too hard. At the beginning of ToS it started becoming very clear that we wouldn't be able to get CE with the current roster, and I jumped ship to...

EU-Ravencrest Valor: we raided together for most of ToS and all of Antorus. This was a ton of fun for me and I have a lot of good memories. Unfortunately towards the end of Antorus we started hitting roster issues due to being Alliance... and after Argus died, several people just transferred horde. The guild disbanded not long after.

I didn't play seriously since then, right now I'm in a "parking guild" for guild perks

Availability:

My work day is usually 11am-7pm CET, but it's pretty flexible and I have no issue scheduling around raids.

The main source of unavailability for me is that I sometimes need to travel to the US for work, usually for ~10 days at a time. That is usually planned months in advance -- and I definitely don't mind sitting a boss prog for that reason. Of course, with COVID-19 that probably won't be a problem for a while...

Communication:

I am, albeit with a thick french accent :-)

I have TS3, can listen and talk with a good quality mic.

Computer / Connection:

I own a good gaming PC (i7-6700k, GTX 1080, 32GB RAM, game on NVMe) and a good internet connection (1Gbps FTTH) that doesn't randomly drop.

Addons/UI:

My most relevant raiding addons would most likely be:
- BigWigs: it's not as hand holding as DBM (I actually have to learn the names of the mechanics ) but the alerts and timers are much more configurable imo. Used to use DBM before though.
- Weakauras: for my UI customizations (buff trackers, etc.) & boss mechanics. I have some experience making and modifying Weakauras, incl. fairly complex ones, and that's often what I spend the raid breaks doing.
- Details: for numbers and death recaps.
- GTFO: very clear and early signal that I'm fucking up, usually early enough that I can recover.
- ERT for raid inspect, raid check, notes, etc.
- Tidyplates / IcyHUD / Bartender for my UI

I'm not in front of my gaming PC right now for a screenshot, but I have some old videos on

-- my UI hasn't significantly changed since then except for DBM -> Bigwigs.

Other Games:

MMO-wise, I filled the BFA gap by playing FFXIV -- it was a really fun experience but there just isn't enough high level content being released in the game. Whatever ends up being released is really high quality though. Clearing The Epic of Alexander (Ultimate) was one of my most fun raiding experiences in MMOs, and I'd say it was easily about as hard as Mythic KJ. 18min raid fight full of punishing and tight mechanics to memorize and execute perfectly (the text guide for this fight is about 40 pages long of explanations and schemas).

Otherwise, I'm a pretty big weeb, I play a ton of JRPGs and I spend my time playing rhythm games in arcades whenever I have the opportunity to visit Japan. I also play board games with friends quite often, currently having a ton of fun with Codenames, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, and more.

Why Iron Edge?

I'm looking for a friendly and stable 2d/week raiding guild with the goal of aiming at CE every tier. Looking for a guild and selling myself in applications is the most tiring part of WoW for me, and in fact what made me give up on BFA in the first place (even more than the state of the game...). So I'm hoping to find in this guild a stable base I can stay in for Shadowlands, and maybe even 10.x!

What can I offer Iron Edge?

I'm a consistent raider who has some experience at WoW high-level and is willing to put the time, effort, and focus to help the guild achieve its goals. I'm usually the kind of person who spends 1h after the raid looking at logs to understand how to improve my performance, and I prepare before new raids by reading in details the lists of mechanics, PTR strats, and making weakauras of my own with what I think is important. But I can still break the seriousness when outside of progress raids -- it's a game after all, and we're all here to have fun (I think?).

Where did I hear about Iron Edge?

Wowprogress.

Last Words?

Hopefully you'll find in this application what you're looking for. I'm happy to clarify anything as a follow-up if you've got any questions.

As already mentioned, while I've been maining Druid for the past month I'll be happily playing either Druid or Warrior in Shadowlands -- from the wowprogress page it seems like you'd be mostly looking for warriors, but let me know either way.

[Mooneclipse]

Hiyo Delroth,

Sorry for the late response to your application. I think you've done a good job in selling yourself as the time you've spent on your application shows. I would like to see how you perform with our raiding team in Shadowlands, so you can poke me or any other officer in-game for an invite