WTB Mana!

I absolutely believe that there is a point when you have a raid team that meshes, sometimes you have to make exceptions for a player that’s a great player but an annoy/know-it-all person.

Sometime, just sometime you get it JUST right.

With my most recent Disc Priest acquisition I believe I’ve gotten there.

I reviewed an email earlier this week indicating that Unity had an application for the guild filled out on the website, this is unusual for us since our recruits generally come, friend of a friend, or word of mouth. Rarely do we ever get someone that just fills out an application.

So imagine my surprise when I go to check it and see the name Alystasia, which if you follow the blog you’ve probably seen him comments pop up occasionally.

I was thrilled that one of my readers applied, and even more thrilled when it turned out to be one of the best applications I’ve ever read. Here I let you guys have a gander:

Character Name:

I have a few. Alystasia and Ballyntine were whom I were raiding with mostly in Cataclysm. I have Selestia, my paladin and Alysandra, my druid. Between BC and Cata, I’ve raided with one or all of these characters. All as healers.

Class: Alystasia (Disc/Shadow Priest and currently 90, no raiding experience this content). Selestia (Holy paladin, 85) Ballyntine (Rest/Ele Shaman, 85) and Alysandra (Rest/Bal Druid, 85). I’m also leveling a monk by the name of Alysanya, at 55. Mistweaver, because healing is a blast.

Primary Talent Tree:

Restoration/Holy/Disc/Mistweaver/Whatever the healy types are.

Secondary Talent Tree:

Far away pew pew, if I can help it.

What is your average iLvL:

455 on my one level 90. I’ve taken her nice and slowly through MoP.

How long have you been playing your primary spec? What resources do you use for knowledge, tips, and tricks on your class? Note: We do not require that you play a cookie-cutter spec, but this a doublecheck that you have done outside research about your class using an up-to-date and accurate source for your class. Maxdps.com or armorying a top-end player from a world rated guild are not acceptable resources.

That’s a super-loaded couple of questions! Long of the short, I started raiding with Kara, during the last year of Burning Crusade. I’ve been healing my way through wrath and cata since. Most of my research is done through plusheal.com, since I’m a bad monkey and read at work and that’s the only site that isn’t blocked off. At home, I’ll cycle through elitistjerks (though they’re slow to put newest content stuff up), mmo-champion and for the last year or two, Talesofapriest.com. (Derevka is a mad genius). I also read through blogs (like Aunaka’s, who I ended up on by chance cycling through bossy pally, stories of O, somewhere around there…), life in group 5 and Shaman Nebula.

What previous raid experience do you have? If most of your raid experience is on a character that is different than the one listed on this application, please provide an armory link to your other character(s).

I started raiding torwards the end of Burning Crusade with Alysandra, my druid. I became a healing officer for Circle of Freedom and later The Unwanted (emo guild name ftl.) and thought it’d be a good idea to learn more about the other classes and how they operate. So I leveled each. During Wrath around Ulduar, I was raiding with my druid, shaman and paladin. I leveled a priest for Cata, since that was the one class I hadn’t raided with and I liked shiny bubbles. All of my progression has been earned under Alystasia, my priest.

In addition to required addons like DBM, Omen, and raid frames, which other addons do you find essential to YOUR performance in a raid?
Note: Recount/Skada are not considered essential add-ons and should not be cited as such.

Vuhdo. I used to swear by Grid, until Wrath and then Cata came out, each time I would load in until they updated for the expansions.. I’d immediately log out and cry. I hate healing without clicky-heals. Target-healing is hard, especially with as many tools as healers have. I know people that can heal without stuff like that, and hats off to em, but that’s not my cup of tea. I also use a combo of Raven (buff/debuff bar) and quartz for tracking. Powerauras to for a visual in-my-face reference to said cooldowns. Shame on anyone who doesn’t use DBM or some form of raid tracker. Seriously. Take em out back, /shun em with a stick and throw smelly fishes at em.

We expect all of our raiders to have a reliable, stable connection and a computer which can run raids effectively. “I lagged out” or “my FPS is too low” are not valid excuses for poor performance. What type of internet connection (DSL/Cable/Fiber/etc.) and what type of computer do you have (desktop/laptop and basic specs: processor/memory/graphics card)?

I pay for the 44.95 20mbps connection with Time Warner. I would cry and or flop around like a boneless cat if I didn’t have a stable connection. I’m fairly sure my wife would too. She’d probably get our daughter involved in the flopping as well. Internet is serious business. I’m proud of my desktop. Bought most of the parts back in christmas of 11. AMD FX 4100 Quad-core processor, 8gb (soon to be 16) DDR 3 1600mhz ripjaw (with the cool spikey things on top for heat dispersion) dual channel. I just picked up a new card: MSI Radeon HD7850, 2GB GDDR5, Mini DisplayPortx2, DVI-I, HDMI, PCI Express 3.0 Graphics Card R7850 Twin Frozr 2GD5/OC back in july. Only thing from my old computer is my harddrive. I have two, one is a backup. I’m planning on replacing both with an SSD for boot and windows and a 2 tb drive for storage, likely for christmas or right after.

We require high raid attendance for our raiders (at least 80%). During the course of an average month, what type of out-of-game activities, if any, may cause scheduling conflicts with our raid times?

I work from 9am to 7pm, est. When I get home, I usually put my daughter to bed (she’s 10 months currently). During raiding nights, my wife can put her to bed for me (she’s a good wifey, and I owe her lots of chocolate). Outside of that, I periodically have to take online training and schooling (I work in IT, I’m taking classes in Microsoft Sharepoint and will be involved in Cisco networking classes next year) but none of those should interfere.

If you have any friends or have been encouraged to join Unity from a current member, please list them here (also please mention how you know this reference, PUG, work, BFF etc.)

Aunaka was my reference. She has a spiffy blog and I hope she keeps at it, I like her writing style.

Is there anything else you would like to add which was not already covered?

Alright.

Down to the nitty gritty.

I’m not necessarily wanting to raid right away. What I’m hoping for is a trial-ish period with this guild on a leveling toon. I would love to get to know Unity more before I decide to plop $50 into server transferring and switching factions. I need a change of pace. I believe switching factions will not only flesh out the Warcraft story more for me, but will improve my feelings on the game, which has been almost 100% raiding since wrath.

What I offer in return: Aside from my winning personality *big toothy grin, “Ting!” noise in the background*, I offer you a pick of one of my healing characters to bring into raid once I decide this guild is right for me.

While I’m working on a toon here, I will also finish leveling whatever toon is decided on based on need and do my daily rep and grinding to prepare me for raid. I will lfg and join pug raids, no I won’t join you for raiding just to be a scrub, that’s wrong and I should be shunned should that be the case. Odd application I know.

I was drawn to this guild because I’ve read about the interactiveness of the raids and you guys seem to have a pretty nice dynamic with each other. I enjoy a laid back, fun (and funny) atmosphere, and come raid time I am serious business. I bring my own flasks (or giant pot o’ flasks, as the case in Cata), my own food (or giant lobster pots). I know the reforge guy in stormwind (biblically, giggity giggity) and he has more of my money than any other vendor I’ve encountered in the game.

I’ve played MMO’s since Everquest, played Star Wars Galaxies for a good while until it got weird, then moved to WoW. I stopped playing wow during Vanilla because of my job at the time (constant travel, crazy work hours) and came back during BC, where I finished leveling my druid and started healing. I was never a healer in any game I played until I went with a good friend of mine to Shadow Labs heroic and he wanted me to heal him through it. I was scared out of my ever lovin’ mind – an accomplishment, because I rather enjoy being inside my ever-lovin’ mind, it’s fairly warm and cozy, and there’s scotch. We 2-manned SL Heroic, the battle with Murmur was epic, and I came away completely sold on healing.

I’ve switched guilds a few times, mainly to follow my friends. I started out in Safe Haven (my guild from SWG) and followed my friends to a new guild, Circle of Freedom. I stayed there for a good while, eventually left with some of those same friends who wanted to try something new – to form The Unwanted. Some friends that had stopped playing came back from CoF and formed Redux, which I am now a part of. I’m considering a new guild for a few reasons. My raiding team likes to raid late (12-3am est, often going over). My daughter enjoys waking up around 7, and I like sleeping too much to want to keep up with a late night schedule. Also, some of the people I enjoyed raiding with left, some to persue a more hard-core guild, one because he wanted to spend more time with the wife. It’s a bummer to lose people you’ve come to enjoy being around as part of the regular game you play. So there you have it. My Novella. My Publisher should be proud, I’m still waiting on the royalties check. :X

I appreciate your consideration and look forward to any questions, redicule, slice of pie(s) or speculations you might have for me. Thanks for your consideration (and happy thanksgiving!) – Alystasia

As you can see he wasn’t going to be joining us for a couple if weeks, but I am happy to say that we chatted and not only did that couple of weeks turn into next week, but last night when I was down a healer he transferred early and got to raid with us.

It was like he’d been there the whole time, even having never seen the fights he picked up on them fast and was an amazing healer!

I’m very thankful that he reads my blog  A. because yay readers, and B. because now I’ve completed my raiding team.

I hope that everyone finds the players to make up their dream raid team!

/Cheers