Name: Sarcilis
Race, Class, and Main Spec: Resto shaman
Armory Link:http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/defias-brotherhood/Sarcilis/simple

What's your name and where are you from? George and I'm from Greece

How old are you? Please express your answer in Reverse Polish Notation. 33

How long have you been playing WoW? What experience do you have of endgame raiding? About 6 years now. Raided up to BWL in vanilla, TK in TBC, some Icecrown hcs in wotlk and 1/8 hc DS atm

Is this your main? How often do you play this character? Tell us about your other characters, including any serious alts.Yes this is my main.Playing whenever possible. I got an MM hunter and a Spriest as semi decent alts(cleared DS normal on hunter,7/8 on priest). I have alts of every class in this server, most of them maxed but not geared

What's your complete guild history, on this realm as well as any other? Why did you leave / are you leaving your current or previous guild? Gah, long history of guilds on this one. Most of them disbanded. Gonna mention the reasons why I left my last 2 guilds though. I was in Paradox (ex Brotherhood of Doom) but a group of friends was formed as the main raiding group and I wasn't a part of it. Was given 0 raiding time so I left,on civilized terms. My last guild was The secret society. They recently merged with Dogs of War and started raiding together. Raid performance plummeted and when I commented "come on guys" after the repeated failures of a DK tank to absorb an "impale" on Madness I got dissed even by my old guildies,telling me to stfu and so on on Vent and that I was negatively predisposed and aggressive to the new guys. So no reason to stay in a guild that you are unwanted

Provide the names of some people we can get in touch with in-game as references. Please note that references are required: give names of characters on other realms, if necessary. If you know anyone on the Path, either in-game or IRL, mention that here also. I don't know anyone from the Path. I guess you can ask Venomys and Razzerian from Paradox, Nayan from Second gurubashi, who is a personal friend. Dunno maybe I have raided with you guys as an extra pug and I may not remember

What is your role in raids? How do you judge whether you're doing a good job or not? My role is to keep people alive. If people that I'm assigned to die due to predictable raid damage it's my fault. If they die due to avoidable raid damage it's their fault. If by the end of the fight they are alive I did a good job.If they are alive despite the fact that they took tons of avoidable raid dmg, then I have done an excellent job

Describe your choice of spec, how you came to your current build, and any other things you feel we should know about why you spent your talent points the way you did.
My build is pretty much staightforward TC build with a twist, spending only 1 point on elem precision and 1 point on elemental weapons. Reason I did that was that I had obtained a significal amount of spirit to allow decent hit rating with a single point in elem precision leaving a free point to spend on a healing output increase talent. With 2 points on elem.precision I'm way overcapped hitwise

Where do you go to read about your class outside of the game?Wowwikki, Noxxic, EJ. But what i like mostly is visit the armory page of well-renowned shamans and see their approach of the spec I'm working on

Please provide a screenshot of your UI during raid boss or dungeon boss combat. Well none available atm.Using Blizz raidframes, quartz castbar and totemtimers, with clique to assign mouseover casting

Roleplaying Section: End your application with a short in-character biography, a note from your character to the officers, or other RP story or RP statement about yourself. Effort is much more appreciated than length or content, and your application will not be considered without it.
Hey mons! Dis is Sarcilis of da Darkspear tribe. Me be wantin' to fight alongside ya to kill da big black lizard for Thrall, da true warchief, not dat murloc-brained gorilla dat acts as warchief in his stead. Stay away from da voodoo,mons!

Additional notes. Optionally, mention anything else you'd like us to know about your application. I want to mention before you consider my app that I have a rather busy work schedule. Though I will most likely be able to raid 70% of the time but I'm bound to miss some. If you are oriented towards a very constant raid team then I'll probably won't be suited for you.When I raid I make sure to bring all the consumables necessary and be on the top of my performance. I'm not very talkative on vent and such, but i do have a mic and do communicate when it's needed. I prefer to listen and stick to whatever strategies are suggested by the officers though than just mumble incoherently all the time thinking that I'm funny during raids, like many ppl in my previous guild did.

Hey there Sarcilis,

Thanks for your application, I enjoyed reading it.
I appreciate your honesty with your workschedule and all. Right now I don't see that being an issue.
Some of the officers are currently away for a short while, so a final answer might take a little longer than usual.
Here's a few questions though to keep you busy.
- What type of a healer do you see yourself best at, focus healing or raidhealing and what do you think shamans in general are best at?
- What made you decide to take Convectionin favor of other (in my opinion) better talents like Totemic Focus?
- Also like to hear your your thoughts on moving down in the Elemental tree instead of Enhancement tree to benefit from Ancestral Swiftness with all the movement going on in this tier of raiding, apart from 1 boss. You mention in the application that you go with a TC build but could elobrate this a bit more with thoughts on what you're missing out if you would spec another way?

All for now
/ Vedder

Thank you for your quick response. Well about the talents choice. Convention was chosen cause I had to spend 5 points on the first tier in elemental to get elem.precision for TC build. Was chosen over increased dmg (by concussion) cause the mana gained is better that way ( for concussion to top that extra mana through increased dmg you must have like 30000 sp). As for improved ghost wolf, it's not really worth it in raid environment, at least as a healer since you need to sacrifice other useful talents to get it, at least if you go for TC build. Now on the question on my choice of TC build, let's say I feel comfortable with it, since I'm rarely hard pressed for mana. In the content I've raided so far raid damage spikes and then normalizes. If you know what to expect and when then there's always time to cast some LBs and get significant amounts of mana back. Other shamans just skip TC completely and go for a crit based setup that allows mana returns from resurgence talent. It's totally viable too, I just like the way my shaman is set up atm cause with the increased haste I have he feels more responsive. On the other hand, in longer fights, like madness fight for instance, TC shines. Have played with well geared shammies that didn't have TC, and they go oom in the end despite proper cd rotations both mine and theirs on mana tides. Haven't raided hc content excessively to see how things are and if the healing output requirement is such that you don't have resting periods to replenish your mana, but on normal content my current build allows me to have the mana efficiency to go crazy when needed,using high throughput but mana inefficient heals without regretting it later on.
On the question of how I regard shamans as healer, I think in 4.3 we got the love that we deserved. Due to stacking quite often in the majority of the fights it made our signature heals (healing rain and chain heal) incredibly potent, far from the chances we had to use them in the previous content when spreading and moving a lot was mandatory. Shamans stand between palas and druids,they are a hybrid type of healer that can easily switch between tank healing and raid healing on the spot, without any cds or preparation,procs and so on.That's how I remember shammies to be ever since I started healing with them tbh. I remember shamans shining in fights where there are moderate amounts of both raid and tank damage. In extreme scenarios other types of healers excel (heavy raid dmg it's usually priests and druids, heavy tank damage is definately palas). In general I consider shaman a good overall healer who can adapt very fast to different scenarios and different types of damage spikes, not excelling in anything in particular, but capable of filling successfuly every possible healing role

Hey again,

Thanks for your answers, your spec is definatley viable and looks interesting. Just want to mention that you seem to misunderstand the Ancestral Swiftness talent. It does not just get you an instant cast Ghost Wolf but also increases your movement speed by 15%. Even though it's hard to (or impossible) calculate how much healing you would gain with this. It should definately be a lot though. Faster movement=less time on the move=more time to cast healing spells.

You mention that with your spec and gear setup you are very comfortable with your mana. Still I would like to bring up the Totemic Focus talent again. In my opinion this is mandatory to take. Not because you may or may not need it but your other fellow healers might need it. This talent increases your mana tide totem with almost 5 seconds and will count for a lot of mana gained if you place it correctly so all healers get the gain from it. This factor alone makes it required in my book but naturally your other totems gain this buff as well (including your Fire elemental).

Hello thar,

Pretty nice app and wish you luck with it. ^^

I like your talent build and the reasoning behind it. To share my own ideas, I think with current gear its setup and fight dependandt if you really need totemic focus.

The ancestral swiftness is definetely skippable easily. I haven't seen many movement dependant fight so far in this tier, except Blackhorn ofc, but we are not at the hc part of that yet, so I'd say you're better off without ancestral swiftness.

About the totemic focus, depends on our setup, I think we can agree that when we reach the point that your increased mana tide duration could make a difference (I think spirit link's duration is affected too?), you will have to consider respeccing into it. For now, I think it's a safe call to put the point from the cleansing waters to totemic focus. Only on one fight you get the opportunity to dispel anyway. I would even risk saying that the Improved Cleanse might be droppable too.

But meh, by the looks of it, you know your trade. ^^ And if something is not appropiate for a fight, we can always respec anyway.

Yeah totemic focus does indeed affect mana tide ( it will give about 4 extra secs fully talented). Anad as you pointed out some points from imp.cleanse may go to it for taht reason only, otherwise it's a more useful pvp talent than a pve one since you don't need to refresh your totems all the time. In hcs though, at least for Hagara, dispelling is required, and that fight is generally mana demanding, esp if you got for the healburst strat. As for ansestral swiftness I can't see it fit in any pve setup I can think of, especially since in phases where movement AND healing is required you can pop spiritwalker's grace, which btw is awesome with tier13 4p bonus and it will cover you. Otherwise 15% speed when you have to move like 5-6y back and forth is hardly noticeable. Shamans have instant heals too that can be used while moving for a bit also (riptide, unleash elements) so there is actually no downtime in most fights I have played (take hc Morchok for example which is a movement heavy fight, still manage to top healing in my previous guild vs 2 well geared druids,especially after we got the fight down and we got crystals in predicted positions). As I posted earlier, what makes a good healer is the clever use of his tools according to his playstyle, knowing the ebbs and flows of an encounter and anticipate dmg spikes and damage downtimes, and good reflexes to react to unexpected damage taken. So even with limited mobility that we have vs let's say priests or druids we can still output alot of healing if we play our cards right. Of course the spec is subject to change any time and according to the requirements of the fight. I also have some pieces in the bank that I may use to alter the way the char behaves (like some mastery pieces if I see that the raid isn't generally topped most of the time, like I expect it to be in some hc encounters and so on).

This! Also, welcome to our corner of the web

I got a couple of questions for you as well. You say you got a busy work schedule. Do you work on set times every day/week or is it irregular? I don't foresee this becoming much of an issue though.

How did you find us and why do we appeal to you


Regards, Sav.
P.S.: Venomys is awesome!!

Well I just looked up on wowprogress to find a guild that fits my progress so far and where I can hold my own in a raid team, not been boosted or boost other ppl, because honestly I think DS normal has become trivial for me at least in 10man and I'd like a guild that ventures into hcs, not too deep in hc content though cause they'll prolly feel like they boost me and I wouldn't like to fail on encounters that may be on farm status for the guild I will join. So you seemed a perfect option. Now that I think of it though, I'm pretty sure i joined as a pug in a DS run with you guys with my hunter...some 2-3 weeks ago. Well if it were you, we one shotted everything and i got some loot, plus it was a relaxed and well executed raid, so all the more reason to join. Now concerning my work schedule it's irregular since I need to spend some nights at work (usually 7 days a month) and sometimes they drop on raid days. But as I said I will most likely be able to attend 70% of the time

Thanks for the reply! Very satisfying And good to hear you've already sampled our awesome raid environment


Sav.

Hi there,

All in all we are pleased with the application and won't grill you anymore . I would just like to clear out a few things in an in-game chat. Will you be online this evening?

/ Vedder