Tymage, Fire Mage

A. Your Toon
1. Armory Link:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Spirestone&cn=Tymage

2. What is your primary spec?

Fire

3. Can you play a second and/or third spec at a high level? If so, what is your gear level for these specs?

I have played both fire and arcane at high levels. I am geared for fire completly right now except a couple of wierd gemmings choices on items that I use in PVP. These "poor gemmings" equal less than 30 total dps and I am more then willing to change them if it is important to the guild leadership.


4. Do you have any alts that you are willing and able to play at a very high level for progression? If so, link their armories and let us know the specs you have mastered.

My level 80 alts are for gather professions only. They do not have the gear to play at high levels.


4a. If you do not currently have two raiding professions, are you prepared to respec your gathering profession if you are given a trial?

Alchemist and Tailor here. 450/450 for both. Elixir master.


B. Game History
1. How long have you been playing? How many long breaks have you taken and why?

I started playing WOW about 6 months after release and have taken 3 long breaks. The first was a 14 month break for my deployment to Iraq and the second was a 15 month break for a deployment to Afghanistan. My last break was for about 6 months when I got out of the Army and traveled Australia for an extended period of time. There are no anticipated breaks from WOW in my future. I am stuck in the work/school/sleep cycle familar to most current and former college students.

2. What are the two most recent progression guilds you have been in? Why have you left them or are considering leaving them?

Redux is the only real progression guild I have been in. I joined them half way through thier Ulduar HM progression and have been a raider with them through Yogg+0, Algalon, Anub HM and Wraith server firsts. I did over 400 attempts on HM LK with them. I work at Target and was forced to work a few weeks of nightshift. This reduced my raid week to 2 nights a week. Redux killed it on the one night of the week I couldnt attend. The following week we all went for our 25 man ICC drakes. Since that day we have not had a true raid. The majority of the guild is done until Cata while I still have a STRONG(400 attempts invested) desire to kill HM LK.

TLDR: Redux doesnt raid anymore and I want to raid.



C. Theorycraft
1. Link your most impressive combat log parses. How did you maximize your performance on these fights? Note that if you are a DPSer without any ranked parses, you are very unlikely to be considered.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/guilds/85267/
http://www.worldoflogs.com/guilds/2972/

There are more parses on the second link which I found under the inactive guilds tab of world of logs :,(

To maximize my DPS I make the proper gearing and spec choices. For "optinal" talents in specs I prefer to take the range talents over other dps increasing talents. Range talents allow me to reduce
movement and maintain my DPS rotation longer.

2. Link a screen shot of your UI with keybindings highly visible. How have you set up your UI to maximize your performance in raids?

http://picasaweb.google.com/116407729481982094735/DropBox?authkey=Gv1sRgCPTf_82YidPHPw#5510027654313075490

Easy to see buff and debuff tracking. Omen in the bottom right with audio and visual alerts when I am in danger of pulling. Forte cooldown tracker to align my cooldowns with trinket procs. Power auras to track reactive procs like pyroblast procs. I also have the standard boss mods which were not active durning the trash screenshot but are located on the center right(above my living bomb tracker). I hide the side bars and though it looks clusterd the open center area is about 20 inches of my 26 inch monitor.


3. How do you set yourself apart from other players of your class? Give us a detailed answer that shows us you truly understand the nuances of your class.

I always so up prepared. Flasks and potions are not an option in my mind. I dedicate a portion of every week to read up on EJ about specs and gearing choices. Like I stated above I when talent options are presented to me like A) more range or B) more spirit I will favor the range talents . I like the flexibilty that ranges gives. I also consider myself a team player. I will not place my personnel DPS over the good of the raid. It is easy to faceroll marrowgar to set records and let the rest of the raid kill bonespikes but that makes the raid take longer and wastes 24 other peoples time for the sake of my epeen. I wont do it. Overall world of warcraft is a pretty easy game and I have found that if all 25 people are standing where they are supposed to be and doing what they are supposed to be that raids will run really smoothly.



D. Your Technical Specs
1. What kind of internet connection do you have? (DSL, cable, etc.)
Cable internet.

2. How stable is your internet connection?
Very Stable

3. How stable is your computer?
Very stable. Brand new i7 920 2.67 GHZ, 8 GB DDR 3 ram, ATI Radeon 5800 seris card with 4 GB GDR 5 ram.

4. What kind of ping and FPS do you get in a 25man raid environment?

60 Ping with over 60 FPS on all fights.


E. About You
1. Have you read the "About You" section in “About Zephyr: Part 1?” And are you able to meet most of the criteria? If not, why?

I can meet almost all of the criteria. Currently I have class that goes to 7 PST on wensdays which would make me 10-15 mins late. The teacher often lets us out early so it should not be a "huge" problem. After this semester I would have no interferance with raid times.

1a. Do you meet any of the "Bonus Criteria" from "Applications: Part 1?"

I was a top 20 Starcraft original player on the eastern Bnet server. Currently a mid platinum SC2 player.

I was a avid Team Fortress Classic player and my clan held the top STA (platinum level) position on and off for over 2 years.

I am currently at 2500 MMR in 5s and 2400 MMR in 3s but I team hop to help friends out consistently so my acutal team rattings can vary. Fully geared and capable of PVP play. It is one of the aspects I really enjoy in the game.

2. Name

Ty

3. Age, Location, & R/L Occupation:

25, Boulder Colorado, College student and part time Target employee

4. Describe the last 2 times you screwed up in a raid, or played at a noticeably suboptimal level. How frequently do events like this occur?

This last week I pulled aggro multiple times and generally played poorly. I chalk it up sleeping very little while working night shift and having a sub optimal raid comp. We had offspec tanks and a lack of tricks/misdirects. I try to minimize mistakes. I will on occasion make mistakes like everyone but I pride myself on not making the same mistake more than once.


5. When and how often would you miss scheduled raid time? What is your availability outside of our 25man raid hours?

Besides the first 10 minutes of each wensday raid I do not see myself missing any raid times. I have a tenitive plan to vacation in Flordia sometime in Jan 2011 but I should be 100% until that trip. The trip will be a week long and after it I will be back to my normal routine.

6. Give us a brief introduction to yourself.
I am currently living and going to school in Colorado. I was born and raised in Minnesota. I joined the Army right out of highschool. Completed 5 years with 2 combat deployments. One to Iraq in 2005 and one to Afghanistan in 2007. In between school and work I enjoy remaining in shape. I run over 30 miles a week and enjoy hiking while the weather is nice. My most current adventure was climbing two 14ers(mountains over 14000 FT high) in one day. My group of friends are all avid gamers. My roomate is a Smourne DK in a 11/12 HM guild. I have been playing a lot of SC2 with them. I also enjoy doing 3s/5s in arena. I am a full wraithfuly geared Frost speced PVPer and will be looking for teams to join if I end up transfering.

The best way to get ahold of me is by emailing me at Withbravado@gmail.com

Thanks for reading my app and feel free to ask any questions you may have.

-Ty

Hey ty, your gear/spec/gemming all seem pretty spot on, and your app is pretty good, I only have one question and that is with your keybinds. Can you elaborate a little further on them? Why do you have keybinds that reach past 6? And why are things like manasheild bound twice whereas some useful spells aren't bound at all?

The mage is a class that is required to be your highest damage players. The reason being is that they do not bring anything valuable to a raid. Thus it is one of the most competitive spots in a raid.

The only logs I looked at are your August 10th parses. You have a 69% living bomb uptime on your kills. I consider 80% to be a very poor uptime so 69% is extremely bad. You have the gear to put out Ayala's damage but you are unable to track your living bombs, and you probably don't maximize your pushing the limit buff as I only see 50% uptime which means your probably refreshing it when not necessary which puts you significantly behind his damage.

Wow,

Amzaingly fast responses, very impressive.

Let me address my UI first. Things bound past 6 are all on my mouse. I have a 7 button mouse. That coupled with a alt modifiers to change bars make everything very accessible.

Common binds like Blink and LB are all on the mouse to increase reaction time. Things like evocate and mana gem are bound to buttons V and B which is faster then clicking.

Mana shield is on there twice because in PVP my 1 button is replaced by frost shield and so i use Alt+e for mana shield while frost. I will admit that my bindings may not make a ton of sense but I have everything bound. From set focus to livingbomb focus to mirrior images I have all the bases covered. If there are any binds you are specifically interested in just let me know.

As for my logs I will look for older logs becasue these last month do not showcase our raids very well. We havent had a true raid since the HM LK kill so I will look for logs prior to that. I have to go to my last night of nightshift right now but I will follow this post up early next morning.

Thanks for the fast responses!
-Ty

Sounds good, why aren't things like flame strike flre/frost ward combustion (counterspell/spell steal? looks like they are in a macro but I can't tell) I know they are all very situational, but it still helps to have them all bound (they could be hidden too, but just making sure)

ewww you really bind those kosi? lol

They used to be very useful in prior content and have minor use now, so I just kept them bound

kosinissa wrote:

Sounds good, why aren't things like flame strike flre/frost ward combustion (counterspell/spell steal? looks like they are in a macro but I can't tell) I know they are all very situational, but it still helps to have them all bound (they could be hidden too, but just making sure)

This is gonna look crazy but its what they are bound as.

Counterspell is F
Counterspell focus is alt+F
Frost ward is Alt+4
Fire ward is Alt+5
Spellsteal is Alt+2
Flamestrike rank 9 is mousewheel forward and rank 8 is alt+q
Iceblock is alt+3


Most everything on my screen is macrod becasue I have found things like /stopcasting /cast iceblock very useful.

I agree, I use several stop casting macros myself for wards ss and cs, I just couldn't see the bind was the problem. Also do use the cancel aura iceblock macro?

Looking back most of the logs are in line for deletion by WOL because they are over a month old but I found this set of HM LK attempts.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/7bwgfnlkolep3itl/details/4/?enc=bosses&boss=36597

It puts me more in line with the other redux mages. My DPS shows lower than the other 2 mages at first glance but my LK damage and ice sphere damage where higher. For example I had 700k compared to thier 68k and 6k on ice shperes. It all goes back to the team play mentality. I refuse to LB ghouls just for fluff DPS and when the raid leader says "help with ice balls range" I acutally turn and help. This parse still has my LB uptime and Pushing the Limit uptime at lower levels then I would like (though they are in line with the other mages in my guild). I just changed my Pushing the Limit power aura to be more visable. I am hoping that helps. I am very open to critiques and acutally enjoy being challanged with observations like that. I beleive that there is always room for improvement and having multiple sets of eyes on things like that only make me a better player in the end.

kosinissa wrote:

I agree, I use several stop casting macros myself for wards ss and cs, I just couldn't see the bind was the problem. Also do use the cancel aura iceblock macro?

Yes, it is the only way to PVP!

We acutally scrapped together a raid tonight. Still not ideal comp but here are some recent logs at least.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/hhg4cwz7ek9himdv/

I also got heroic DFO after 3 months of waiting.