Trial - Garrens - Retribution Paladin

What is your age? - 19
Where are you from? - Netherlands
Do you have Mumble? - No, but I can download it, not an issue for me.
Microphone? - Yes
Name - Julien
Class - Paladin
Level - 90
Spec - Retribution. Offspec Holy (I'm going back to prot regardless)
Gear - Was told this did not matter since I am applying for WoD content

- Are you willing to change spec if needed? If you have a dual PvE spec, what is your gear like for it?
Yes I'll be just as happy to play either prot or ret. Gear : "Was told this did not matter since I am applying for WoD content"
- What is your former experience?
I've been raiding since Early -WotLK did Tempest Keep and Sunwell but unfortunately did not manage to complete either one due to ( largely ) people being unskilled/not having enough experience, myself included. But we had alot of fun nontheless.

I "really" started playing and raiding mid/end Wrath. I did everything besides Ulduar and ICC with the pugs that /trade was overflowing with.

VoA, TotC, OL, TRB etc. I did Ulduar or atleast five 5/6 of it with a Dutch guild I was in, but unfortunately it disbanded because the GM and some officers couldn't get along anymore. Never really got the chance to do Ulduar anymore so I rushed in as soon as Cata went live.
With that guild I still managed to get up to Sindragosa in ICC though, unfortunately that's when the shit hit the fan :/

Would like to stress by the way that the guilds I have been in so far all raided 25man so most of my 10man achievements still leave, well, being achieved, to be desired.

I had to put WoW on hold during cataclysm because I needed to focus on work and school, I got held back in my 3d year of highschool ( because I was playing too much WoW)  I think you'll understand my folks weren't too happy about me still playing.

When MoP hit the servers I did everything including world bosses up to ToT, where I joined another (partially) Dutch guild, but left because the progress was going too slow for me. We got up to flesh shaping halls but it took ages. I joined a Danish guild with whom I did SoO everything was going great they were happy with me and vice versa and then I had to quit again because final exams were giving me quite alot of shit.
I think you can notice a pattern here that shit tends to hit the fan with me right before I get to the good stuff.

- What Guilds have you previously been in? What was your reason for leaving each Guild?

The guilds I was in end BC/ Early-Mid WotlK were mostly social guilds. I was in a social guild for almost the entire LK expansion (founding member) until I started raiding. Great guild, some of the best times I had in WoW yet. I left it for the Dutch guild to go raid and alot of other people had already done the same.
The Dutch guild I joined was called either Warriors of Holland or Raiders of Holland. Did not leave it, it disbanded.
The other partially Dutch guild...actually I explained that pretty well in the previous part.
Same goes for the Danish guild, except that I was inactive for a pretty long time so I was kicked out.

- Do you know anyone in Disbanded that would vouch for you?
Nope, had a small talk with Camulos in game ( I hope I got that right, ) But I don't think that counts.

- Why do you want to join Disbanded?
Well. I've been playing this game for years now, and I still never really got to enjoy the major final content with a good guild ( not for long at least) because every time so far I've had to quit WoW or something else happened that got between me and the game. And I'm really looking to break that pattern. I love playing the game, especially working as a guild to get shit done. and I think Disbanded would be the right place for that.

- Tell us why we should pick you
Well, let's start with my previous answer. I've been playing this game for a long time. I know the ins
and outs by now. I know raiding and the preparation it takes, I'm used to all that by now. I'm a nice guy if it helps, haha. I don't rage when people wipe, I stay motivated so we can get done what we came to do. I can joke around and be funny and shit, but can also focus when it's needed. Finally, I mean, look at my battletag. I am THIS GUY. http://cs5565.vk.me/u144428169/a_21bd2e37.jpg
Who wouldn't take that.

- How long have you been playing WoW/Char that you are applying with?
I've been playing Garrens for 25 days 14 hours and 40 minutes.

- Can you give us a short description of what you do when you're healing, dpsing, or tanking? (Note: this is where you show us how well you know your class)
I'll go with dpsing for since tanking is going to be on offspec.

When fighting a raid boss I : Always start with judgement into exorcism into crusader strike. I use the 3 holy power to keep Inquisition up. Call in Guardian of Ancient Kings( before I use judgement ), go through the same rotation as before ( hoping Art of War procs for a free exorcism ). When at 3 or more holy power I use Templars Verdict. By now 2 things have happened : Ancient Power has stacked to around 8/10, 12  if I'm lucky, which means I can pop the rest of my burst which is macro'd together (Holy Avenger and Avenging Wrath)this is also when I use Execution Sentence  AND, Seal of Truth is stacked up to 5, which means I can use my macro SealSwitch to switch to Seal of Justice until SoT is about to expire, then I switch back again etc etc.
For the duration of my burst I change my rotation. Instead of Judgement>Exo>CS>TV , I now use either Judgement, Exo, or CS>TV>Hammer of Wrath and so on, making sure that HoW and TV are always on cooldown. When my burst ends Inquistion has about 10 seconds left so I make sure to get holy power back to get the duration up again and then I switch back to my normal rotation, switching seals and all that. I will use ExS when I can, ( which is once before my macro is back up, and when I've used my HB ( HolyBurst ) for the second time, I wait untill GoAK is back up so I can stick those two together again, and then the entire charade starts over.

- We normally raid Mondays, Wednesdays and Sundays from 20.00-23.00. Sometimes we have to move our raids to other days due to exams and other rl stuff. Would you be able to attend?
I should be able to arrange standard working days or atleast shift my working times around so I can attend. Right I'm working the evening shift 4 days a week. But obviously in the "grown up world" asking for an extra free day because "this game is really important to me" isn't going to cut it so I'll need to see how I can get the monday off. But I'll cross that bridge when I get there. School ends in february for me this year though, so from that point on I can really start clearing evenings and shift work to daytime.

- Tell us something about yourself.
Alright, my name is Julien, besides WoW I play(ed) some other MMO's Like League of Legends, S4League and SWTOR. I'm attending a parttime acting school , next to that I do acting in plays and musicals, I snowboard, like to do parkour/freerunning when I can. I work as a Chef de partie (< meaning that when I work I run one part of the kitchen, in my case the starter dishes and soups) in a restaurant 3 minutes away from home. Ehm..I say fuck alot, which I must say I have masterfully abstained from sofar. But that's kind of IT. about me.

- If possible, provide a recent raiding log here. If not, tell us which kind of ice-cream you like least.
Melon. Yuck.

- What is your current progress on the legendary quest chain?
Working on A test of Valor. 1/3d of the way in. Assuming this won't matter much either for WoD. Have not looked into that yet.

So, that's my life story, thank you for your patience, I hope you guys will take me. Really looking forward to raiding again
Peace!

Honestly, your application LOOKS really nice, but I would really like an armory link, just to see what kind of effort gear-wise we can expect. Also, your answer to the "show us how well you know your class"-question is a bit, ehm, chaotic. Could you break it down in a part about your opener and a part about what you do as a rotation/priority midcombat, so just when the bossfight is going on? I also don't think HA is the best talent to be fair, but I've not checked it for some time, I'll ask one of my officers that knows it inside out for more details on that.

Hello there. I have a few questions regarding your CD rotation.

But first (this is my most important question btw). How would your CD rotation change as soon as you get hold on the galakras trinket. This is for in depth knowledge reasons.

Now to the rest. Are you always popping TV at 3 or more HP regardless of everything else? Because from what you've written its wrong. You dont do that. But i would like to hear from you what i mean with that in case you know what i mean but did write it incorrectly in your application.

Your execution sentence rotation is wrong aswell (depending here btw. Dont get a false assumption). By the time you intend to pop it there are the following problems of optimizing its dmg output. The wasted CD on it by delaying its usage (depending on how well you handle your interface in terms of proc timers this question is invalid as the problems would be negated) aswell as possible trinket/weapon str procs that have run out considering ES works with the amount of str you have at the moment you pop it. Not afterwards. Only AW modifies it after it got popped because of its mechanic of increasing all dmg currently ongoing.

Also, (another in depth knowledge question i want to have answered) do you always intend to give judgement the highest priority in your rotation above all else (except of TV and HoW obviously) regardless of gear level?

Next question are regarding your talents. Why are you specced into long arm of the law aswell as glyph of blessed life? I expect its for PvP reasons but i want a clear answer from you on that to avoid missunderstandings as said glyph has no place in PvE aside from malkorok HC maybe and the long arm of the law is quite useless in the current raiding tier compared to the sprint or the passive speed.

Last words: Why havent you supplied us with a screenshot from your UI? I personally prefer in fight UI screenshots so i can see everything. It easily avoids alot of questions (for example the ES part) and shows us your UI is for example not clustered with addons and blocks 80% of the screen (no offense intended here btw. You would be surprised how often i saw that in the past)


On a side note: I would love to see a small/quick PoV from you on the rotation of rets in WoD (or wednsday for that matter)


- Kretias

Hi! Sorry for the late reply, and the chaotic/unclear stuff, I wrote this in a rush before I ran off to work.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/auchindoun/Garrens/simple Here is the armory link
-note You're going to see alot of raidfinder or worse, my excuse for that obviously being the downtime in playing and as easy of an excuse it might be, a little bit of bad luck on the dropside. Every single one of the flexible items dropped in 1 single run with the Danish guild and after that every loot table in game said Hasta La Vista Motherfucker.

Kretias, thanks for you reply and clear questions, I'll try to answer them to the best of my ability.

I'd like to start off with your last words actually, I left out the screenshot on purpose, the reason being that I just really, really needed to leave for work and couldn't figure out how to do it within 20 seconds, maybe i'm just incredibly blind but it seemed to me like the picture needed to have a URL which it does not, it's just on my pc. So just let me know where to dump/send the SS and you'll have it right away. I can however already assure you that my interface is definitely not crowded by 675000 addons. I know what you mean. I honestly have no clue how people play this game like that.

Now then I'll answer your other questions going from easy to in depth.

-Why are you specced into long arm of the law aswell as glyph of blessed life? I expect its for PvP reasons but i want a clear answer from you on that to avoid missunderstandings as said glyph has no place in PvE aside from malkorok HC maybe and the long arm of the law is quite useless in the current raiding tier compared to the sprint or the passive speed.

Simple answer, I did alot of solo transmog farming and I still farm Anzu daily and long arm of the law lets me blaze through that, but you were right, the original reason was for PvP since I did some 2's with a friend at the start of the expansion. Still debating whether to take Speed of Light or Pursuit of Justice. Glyph of blessed life was also for PvP, I mean to change it to either Glyph of Avenging Wrath or Glyph of Inquisition.

-Do you always intend to give judgement the highest priority in your rotation above all else (except of TV and HoW obviously) regardless of gear level?

This is what happens when I rush. Shit like this. Sorry for being unclear. I just start with Judgement because of the debuff it applies.

Now to the rest. Are you always popping TV at 3 or more HP regardless of everything else? Because from what you've written its wrong. You dont do that. But i would like to hear from you what i mean with that in case you know what i mean but did write it incorrectly in your application.

I hope this is what you want to read and to be honest it's the only thing I can think of : I do ofcourse use Divine Storm instead of TV when fighting adds/mobs etc. There's just no keeping up with 100% WD + a given amount on say..10 mobs for a single target attack like TV. Also, there's the fact that always popping it at 3 when you can instead squeeze in another CS and Excorcism, is just not maximizing your dps. I see alot of Ret Pally's do this. "Oh I have 3 HP I MUST DUMP TV NAAAOW". <--If however this is NOT what you ment please explain, if there's something I've been mucking up or something I'm already doing and just aint thinking of it right now I'd very much like to know!


-How would your CD rotation change as soon as you get hold on the galakras trinket. This is for in depth knowledge reasons.

How will my CD rotation change. More like how badly will it get f-ed up T-T. For starters I can forget my HolyBurst macro with HA and AW, I can probably forget about HA entirely. Would have to switch to Sanctified Wrath or Divine Purpose. I have not exactly calculated the new CD of GoAK and AW since cooldown recovery and cooldown itself are two different things. To be honest right now, off the top of my hat, all I can think of is that compared to each other, GoAK and AW don't change in time, so I should still be able to squeeze in an AW in between GoAK. meaning that basicly, the rotation just takes less time, and it no longer includes HA. I could however be horribly wrong.

Right now it's really late, i'm extremely tired, and I can't really wrap my head around the issue with execution sentence besides that you say I can still gain damage in there. Could you please explain a bit more clearly if possible? From what I saw you noted that I do not account for possible procs that could affect the damage outcome of ES. That would be correct because I do not.

I'm also going to stop highlighting abilites now because it takes me literally 20 minutes to highlight everything, and I need to get out of bed in approx 5 hours. Given the fact that I'm not IN bed yet I'm going to hurry.

Merberan! Sorry for being chaotic I'll split it into two parts. (And correct the things Kretias noticed)

Start of the fight
I summon Guardian of Ancient Kings, then engage with Judgement to apply Physical Vulnerability. I then use Exorcism or Crusader Strike depending on which one does more damage (weapon related).

I use the generated 3 holy power to cast Inquisition after which I continue to rotate between the previous 3 abilities, using the holy power I generate to use Templars Verdict until Ancient Power has stacked up to 12, at which point I activate my HolyBurst macro (Avenging Wrath and Holy Avenger). As soon as I activate HolyBurst I also use Execution Sentence.

I squeeze any Art of War procs into my rotation between Crusader Strike, my regular Exorcism, Judgement, Crusader Strike and Templars Verdict ( and Hammer of Wrath for the Duration of Avenging Wrath) and keep rotating between these 5 abilities until my burst runs out.
During all of this I also keep an eye out for my Seal of Truth stacks, when they reach 5 I use my SealSwitch macro to switch to Seal of Justice and back again when Censure is about to run out.

During the fight
I rotate between Exorcism, Crusader Strike, Judgement and Templars Verdict (and HoW when target HP drops to 20%) I make sure to keep inquisition up at all times and make sure to use my SealSwitch macro to hop back and forth between SoT and SoJ to maximize damage output. I use Execution sentence as soon as it comes off cooldown. When my burst macro comes up again ES should be up aswell so I can combine the two as before. I use abilities such as Divine Protection/Hand of Freedom when I feel necessary.

I hope this gives some clarity regarding the..not so clear things in my application.
I would say good night but you'll be reading this tomorrow so I shall say

Have a great remainder of the day!

Allrighty, just a few more details:

@Kretias: Is seal swapping even a DPS increase nowadays?

How do you like the level 100 talents and how do you think they will affect your gameplay?

I do not have any inkling on how the paladin class should work - so I leave the technicalities to Kretias and Merberan. My 2c view is that for a 19 year old this chap seems very cordial, educated and well versed. These are always good qualities to have in a member and I think they fall in line with the kind of recruits we are looking for. Good luck with your application Julien.

Hoi again

Regarding your screenshot. Go to imageshack.us or any similiar screenshot uploading site and upload it directly from your screenshot folder (or copy it on your desktop before to make it easier to access) and then after you uploaded it give me the url to the uploaded screenshot.

Simple answer, I did alot of solo transmog farming and I still farm Anzu daily and long arm of the law lets me blaze through that, but you were right, the original reason was for PvP since I did some 2's with a friend at the start of the expansion. Still debating whether to take Speed of Light or Pursuit of Justice. Glyph of blessed life was also for PvP, I mean to change it to either Glyph of Avenging Wrath or Glyph of Inquisition.

For the sprint i give you that its a personal choice. But the sprint is imo by far superior compared to the passive movement speed. Especially because the passive MS might give you a wrong impression of speed after you for example need to quickly react but just had to use selfheal to save a raider (WoG) and are at 0 HP for instance. Causing you to not have your usual 10-15%.

The third glyph is your option. But for raiding setup/support reasons i want to know from you what you would choose in that slot. I would welcome some example for why glyph A for encounter Y

This is what happens when I rush. Shit like this. Sorry for being unclear. I just start with Judgement because of the debuff it applies.


To what are you changing and for what reasons. What is causing the change in your rotation (In depth knowledge reason)

I hope this is what you want to read and to be honest it's the only thing I can think of : I do ofcourse use Divine Storm instead of TV when fighting adds/mobs etc. There's just no keeping up with 100% WD + a given amount on say..10 mobs for a single target attack like TV. Also, there's the fact that always popping it at 3 when you can instead squeeze in another CS and Excorcism, is just not maximizing your dps. I see alot of Ret Pally's do this. "Oh I have 3 HP I MUST DUMP TV NAAAOW". <--If however this is NOT what you ment please explain, if there's something I've been mucking up or something I'm already doing and just aint thinking of it right now I'd very much like to know!

This is what i meant yes

How will my CD rotation change. More like how badly will it get f-ed up T-T. For starters I can forget my HolyBurst macro with HA and AW, I can probably forget about HA entirely. Would have to switch to Sanctified Wrath or Divine Purpose. I have not exactly calculated the new CD of GoAK and AW since cooldown recovery and cooldown itself are two different things. To be honest right now, off the top of my hat, all I can think of is that compared to each other, GoAK and AW don't change in time, so I should still be able to squeeze in an AW in between GoAK. meaning that basicly, the rotation just takes less time, and it no longer includes HA. I could however be horribly wrong.

Correct. AW completely outscales HA and DP. By alot. HA and DP do not work with the trinket. AW on the other hand does. By hell of alot.

Right now it's really late, i'm extremely tired, and I can't really wrap my head around the issue with execution sentence besides that you say I can still gain damage in there. Could you please explain a bit more clearly if possible? From what I saw you noted that I do not account for possible procs that could affect the damage outcome of ES. That would be correct because I do not.

ES damage is calculated by the amount of STR you possess at the moment you activate it. The DoT damage stays the same after it got applied. For example: You pop ES at 100000 str and it will deal 800k dmg in total (this is an example). Now you get another 25k str after you already popped it. Those 25k str wont affect your already used ES. The damage will remain at 800k in total. Making it very important that you get the most possible STR out of your gear/cd/potions when you pop it to secure maximum dps by also taking into calculation the increased CD on ES by delaying its usage until you get the next ES (for example waiting 10seconds before you pop it) and the aprox dps it would deal at that point by delaying it for a few secs for example for goak (for example delaying it by for instance by 20secs because youre waiting for GoAK would be a quite big dps loss). That is what i meant.


- Kretias

Holy crap, you people and your colors, jesus.

https://imageshack.com/i/id81jNf0j <--Did it.

Regarding the glyphs :

If there's a giant army of mobs ahead I might switch to Glyph of Mass Exorcism.

For any boss with a hard hitting physical damage aoe I might take Glyph of Divine Protection to make it a little easier for the healers

Another thing I could do to help healers out, ( the absolute minimum though) is use Glyph of the Battle Healer but that would go at the cost of my dps.

^ Sorry Merberan >.<

I think you still missed a few questions from Kretias' post (Yeah I know, he's very demanding, but that's what you get if you apply as his current main spec :p)

I will give my final verdict after i get my missed questions answered. Aside from that i dont see any problems so far.

Final verdict pun intended?

Yes

Kretias can you please tell me which questions I missed, I don't feel like screwing up at the moment.
e.g. answering the wrong question or something like that.

It's fine. I will give you my vote regardless and we will simply test you until WoD performance wise or atleast as soon as WoD hits during dungeons etc until we can enter the raids 1month into it. That means you shouldnt slack whilre youre in a grp with us. We already let one trial fail yesterday during an alt garrosh kill for heirlooms so keep that in mind. If thats no problem then everything should be fine.


-Kretias

Allrighty, that's the verdict then, you're accepted for a trial We'll go over the details of signing for raids etc. at a later stage. Welcome aboard!