Returning Mage 7/8H LF Weekend Morning and/or Fri Night Raid

Edit: I posted with the wrong mage in the header. My mage is Klilk on Area 52

Raid Days/Times

Before we get into any details, I’m specifically looking for a team raiding Saturday and/or Sunday mornings and/or Friday nights . If any of your raid times, required or optional , fall outside of these times, I am, unfortunately, not interested.

About me

I’m a returning player with extensive mythic (formerly heroic) raid experience. I spent 1 tier in a top 10 US guild, and a few years in a ~US 200-300 guild (specific details below). The vast majority of this experience was as a shadow priest with mage and lock alts.

I came back to the game about 4 weeks ago, and in that time, I’ve gotten my mage ready to raid heroic/mythic content (at least gear-wise, with socketed benthic gear, BiS wrists from Mechagon, BiS azurite traits & BiS trinkets - I’m 427 in my raid set, but it’s a highly optimized 427). I’m still working on becoming 100% comfortable with my mage (an EP log with my own detailed notes is provided below) and I’m also still working on my comfort level with the new encounters. I’m posting now because I feel the best thing to do to get back into raiding shape is to transition away from pugging and back into organized raiding.

My Attitude

I come to raid with a productive, progression-focused attitude. I demonstrate professionalism and respect for my team by arriving early and prepared to raid, doing my homework on my class and the encounter, fully utilizing weak auras, boss mods, etc, and providing and receiving feedback in a productive, progression-minded, manner.

How I approach a new tier

I’ll briefly discuss how I approach a raid tier (I’ve taken a pretty casual approach so far this tier, while getting readjusted to the game, but I’m working my way back into raiding form). I start with reviewing logs & vids from raid testing to familiarize myself with new encounters. As part of learning the encounters, I build a weak aura set for the raid (taking others’ weak auras when it makes sense, but mostly making my own), and I modify my bigwigs timers, changing bar colors (red for important/deadly things, green for things that cause movement, purple for add spawns) and emphasizing or removing alerts as needed.

How I approach learning and perfecting my class

I regularly check others’ logs to compare gearing decisions, cast sequences, cooldown timing, ability usage, and damage done to specific mobs or in specific phases. I also regularly check for positional mistakes, damage taken form avoidable sources etc. Whenever I have significant changes in gearing, I resim my stat weights, taking the time to sim multiple situations and build weights that make sense for the situation I’m using the spec for. I’ll sometimes also skim altered-time or icy-veins, though I take anything I read there as secondary to actual log data.

What I expect from my raid team

I expect my teammates to demonstrate an attitude similar to mine as described above. I’m looking for a raid with stellar communication, excellent organization, and general professionalism. I’m looking for a team where players easily acknowledge and address their mistakes and optimize their performance for progression purposes (read: no padding). My top priority in finding the right fit in terms of attitude; progression comes second to finding people I can enjoy playing with.

Prior Raid Experience

Since Legion launched, I’ve done a bit of pugging & a handful of current mythic fights, but nothing much to report. Below is my raid progress from Cataclysm through Warlords:
Hellfire Citadel: 13/13 Mythic <Easy> @Aerie Peak – Shadow Priest (also 13/13 Mythic Warlock, 12/13 Mythic Mage)
Blackrock Foundry: 9/10 Mythic <Vox Immortalis> @Hyjal – Shadow Priest
Highmaul: 7/7 (5/7 pre-BRF) <Vox Immortalis> @Hyjal – Shadow Priest
Siege of Orgrimmar: 14/14 10-player Heroic <Vox Immortalis> @Hyjal – Shadow Priest
Throne of Thunder: 6/13 10-player Heroic <Forward> @ Stormrage (formerally <Cataclysmic> @ Elune - Shadow/Disc Priest
T14: 7/16 10-player Heroic <Forward> @ Stormrage (formerally <Cataclysmic> @ Elune – Disc/Shadow Priest
Dragon Soul: 5/8 10-player Heroic <Cataclysmic> @ Elune – Holy Priest

Prior to DS, I played casually. I started playing late in Vanilla but didn’t hit level cap until Wrath. I raided casually in Naxx 3.0, Uld, ToC & ICC. In cata, prior to DS, I limited my play mostly to dungeons.

Log & Log Notes

As part of this recruitment/evaluation process, I put together a normal mode log last night with some notes on how I did and where I can improve. The TLDR is I’m still rusty; I still need to do more homework on the fights; and I’m still 100% comfortable as a fire mage; but I’m rapidly improving.

Log:
https:// www.warcraftlogs .com/reports/NkFgQCnZY6MjXt17/
Note: I don’t have permission to post logs in the new bnet forums, so I had to get creative. Remove the spaces to get the link

  • About these notes
    • These are notes I typed up for myself after the raid. Some are about places where I can improve; some are about places where I did well, and some explain things that might look weird in the log.
  • General Notes
    • As a returning player taking on a class that was an alt for me before, there’s a few things I see in my own play that I expect to get worked out with a few more weeks of practice
      • I’m still learning the timing of encounters and timing my combustion sequence and the meteor between combustion sequences is still something I’m working out. I did it rather well with Orgozoa on this log, despite the tanks running the adds around the room randomly (pretty sure some of the meteor hits missed)
      • My dmg dips quite a bit in weird places because I’m not yet 100% comfortable with the spec or the fights. When you’re doing prog, you’re typically learning the timing & whatnot of the fight, but you’re very comfortable with your class. Atm, I’m working through both the fights and the class, so there are dips in my dmg that will go away with a bit higher comfort level.
    • I still sometimes mess up my cast sequence for combustion:
      • Sometimes forget to save meteor – getting much better about holding it
      • Sometimes just fatfinger combustion before getting my essence, rop or meteor off – its becoming pretty rare, but I think it happened once somewhere in this log
      • Often (maybe every 2 combustions) waste a fire blast by double clicking it – getting better at this
  • Abyssal Commander Sivara
    • I had a bad pull, mechanically speaking. It was my first pull of the night, so I’m comfortable writing that off.
  • Blackwater Benemoth
    • RL wanted lust on second platform instead of first. No idea why.
  • Radiance of Azshara
    • Ended fight with CDs up (they had just come up) because I incorrectly expected to get another add phase (boss died JUST in time to not get more adds) & didn’t realize we wouldn’t until the last few GCDs of the fight
  • Lady Ashvane
    • Used 2mins on pull incorrectly assuming our dps would be way lower than it was (and therefore ended up holding CDs for almost a full 2 mins before the 2nd shield)
    • I used only natural cleave (ignite etc) on bubbles. In a progression environment, I’d likely be timing my Meteor with bubbles (I didn’t have enough experience with the fight timing to time much of anything properly on this pull) and possibly also be switching to bubbles, despite the dps loss (the way ignite overwrites itself with the highest ignite available means that you lose dps whenever you switch targets that are within 8 yards of each other at some time over the 8 second ignite period. TLDR: in a prog environment, the situation would dictate whether I hard swap &* it’d be clear within a few pulls. I don’t pad meters, but I do optimize dmg properly & this is one of those situations where dmg optimization is interesting
  • Orgozoa
    • Messy as hell. Bosses & adds got moved around unpredictably & at the end we have no tanks (I tried to invis after I got aggro but got hit just before invis popped – obviously would have had better dmg had both tanks lives into p2)
    • Adds got pulled in seemly random directions with these tanks, so meteor dmg could have been better
    • As a fire mage, because of ignite, I probably should be targeting the last add to spawn just about immediately, but here I messed that up. (I’m not sure if I should be switching back and forth between the 3rd add and the 1st once the first drops below 30% for some guaranteed scorch crits, but my intuition is I probably should) This is something I can find out by searching through some logs
  • Court
    • I only used my natural cleave (ignite & other incidental dmg) - this situation is similar to the bubbles the spawn on Lady Ashvane described above
    • I need to look into whether I should have used <30% hp sparks for guaranteed crits to proc heating up for ST dmg. A cursory glace at top parses says no, but I bet I could find someone who’s tried it and parsed well if I searched.
  • Za’qul
    • We pulled without a timer
    • I held 2 minute CDs for delirium because I thought our dps would be higher. Our top dps had just dropped the group however, and I could have had another use of 2-min CDs at the pull had I considered how much slower our dmg would be.
    • Our lust timing was also pretty bad for my
    • In P4, I did the first wave of adds before going into the delirium realm & took my sweet time getting back down there. Obviously, I should’ve gotten back in quicker.
  • Queen Azshara
    • The quick wipe in the log was intentional – someone clicked to start the boss while we were setting up
    • On the other pull (the kill) I died to getting 8 stacks instead of running out at 5 – its hard for me to make an excuse for that one. I just made a dumb mistake.
    • I also didn’t pop CDs during the 2nd intermission when the boss was literally standing still and we popped lust (I expected her to phase out like she did between p1 and p2 – I’m def still learning this fight) but instead used CDs as P3 started. This is something I write off as inexperience of a returning player.

Other Stuff

Prior to joining <Easy> I made a rather thorough post about how I approached raiding. Obviously, quite a lot has changed as I’m looking for a significantly more laid-back environment, but I wanted to link it here because it elucidates my capabilities as a player. I’ll still be doing my homework, even if I’ll never skip out on work hours for raid testing (for example) ever again:
https:// us.battle .net/forums/en/wow/topic/18704217465?page=1

I have a similar, though much shorter post, I made when apping to Vox:
https:// us.battle. net/forums/en/wow/topic/10161136748#post-11

btag: Klik#1399

good night folks

We raid thurs/fri 10pm-1am PST
7/8H and are building last few dps spots for mythic progression.
add Decrapitator#11851
Cheers!

If your raid just ended in the last few hours, it might just be for me!

Can’t wait to find my new raid

Hi, i am very interested in joining your Thurs and Fri night guild!

Those are perfect times for me. Battletag: Evenflow223#11674