No skill just luck

Edit:

Cleaned up some parts after having a coffee and realising how messy they looked
Added a couple of bits I missed in my tired state
Updated my gear on the armory as I realised I had my blood stuff on.

Character name: Lothyhar

Character class: Death Knight

Professions: Engineering and Enchanting

Talent specs, gear level, Armory link (advanced mode): Main Frost/Unholy depending on patch strengths and available equipment (High Gaps in item levels on weapons tend to boost a weaker spec over the top spec, although I'm unsure if this still holds true post stat squish).

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/t ... r/advanced

Character is a bit of a mess atm due to the long break and playing casually in LFR/Flex recently as blood.

Talent Choices:

Tier 1 - Plague Leech due to the Rune Return, provides 2 death runes every 25 seconds.
Tier 2 - AMZ for the raid utility, Purgatory sometimes has it's uses
Tier 3 - Death's Advance all day long, unless the raid is desperate for an AoE slow or stun
Tier 4 - Blood Tap provides the greatest rune return and DPS when managed properly
Tier 5 - Death Pact due to being the best Oh Sh*t! button of the tier, with no resources wasted.
Tier 6 - Swap and choose per encounter, usually Gorefiend's due to it's uniqueness.

Respeccing: Have played Unholy and Frost to a competent Herioc raiding level for most of my career, and I am also fairly comfortable at playing blood if needed.

Class Info: I Honestly don't know what originally drew me to the DK, but I've played it for my entire raiding career. I've leveled many alts to max level but never found a class I've enjoyed more than DK. I find the rune resource system a lot more engaging than other classes and the game play elements of Unholy (Particularly enjoyed Fester blight, RIP) and 2h Obliterate Frost have to be my favourite specs in the game. I can't say I enjoy DW Frost as much, but will play it if the Patch/Gear demands me to to maximise damage output. My gear is currently a bit of a mess due to tanking for friends casually for the past month or so, but I'm currently spec'd for DW frost which Prioritises Str > Mastery > Crit > Haste.

Current Spec (DW Frost) Priority/Rotation:

1). Soul Reaper on CD if target is below 35% HP
2). Maintain Diseases
3). Frost Strike with KM proc or when next ability would cap runic power.
4). Howling BLAAARGGGGHH!
5). Obliterate to use up Unholy Runes

CDs:
Plague Leech on CD for Rune Return.
Pillar of Frost on CD for obvious reasons (sometimes saving for a few seconds to line up with raid mechanics, but this usually isn't an issue due to it's insanely low CD and nearly 50% uptime with the CDR trinket.
Army of the Dead channel Pre-pull leaving enough time for runes to recharge.
Empower runic weapon when all runes are expended and low on Runic Power (Always good to do this whilst Pillar of Frost for optimal burst).


Raid experience: So Previous Experience is:

T11 - Cleared all 3 raids on Normal. (Joined the game early in this tier)
T12 - 6/7 HC
T13 - 7/8 HC (we got 8/8 on prepatch for mop)
T14 - MSV 6/6 HC HoF 4/6 HC ToS 1 or 2/4 HC
T15 - 5/13 HC
T16 - 14/14 Normal Cleared back in March.

Guild history: So my longest term guild was a little 10 man guild based on Emerald Dream Alliance, which was my home from T11 right the way through to early T14. It was a guild composed of 4-5 competent players who helped out close friends who weren't as capable. Unfortunately when MoP hit we hit a brick wall where the raids had gotten too difficult for them to keep up with, compared to the IMHO easier raids of Cata, so many of the weaker players moved elsewhere or left the game. The remaining 4-5 players merged with another guild on the server. This lasted until we cleared normal ToT, where the merge began to cause a rift in the guild. I was an officer in the guild as part of our early agreement that the merger was 2 equal guilds coming together. This eventually caused problem between me and a handful of raiders and the 2 GM of the original guild where we simply didn't see eye to eye anymore. This did lead to the eventual forced removal of myself and a couple of other players. The incident was handled poorly by both parties myself included, and i regret this stain on my otherwise pleasant wow history, but i feel honesty is the best policy here. I will happily indulge further details if required.

Your recent performances: It's been so long unfortunately, Last time i properly raided was very early 2014. I've managed to grab a few records of me on Epeen Bot, not entirely sure how accurate these are however, and they really only focus on DPS. Any logs of me have been deleted due to the time gap.

When can you play: I am reliably online from around 5.30 on weekdays and weekends I can always plan around raids.

Where are you from: UK - English

Age: 20

Communication: I own a microphone and am completely comfortable communicating via voice chat if needed during raid. I also enjoy chatting out of raids if there are those who enjoy that in NSJL

About you: I'm a 20 year old data processor from the midlands England. Played wow on and off due to various IRL issues which I will happily discuss, but would prefer to do so less publicly. My hobbies include gaming (duh!) spending time with mates and family, and the occasional drunken stumble into town. I'm also one of those guys who loves their job (not sure if thats a good or bad thing!). I'm pretty laid back and chilled, love a good laugh, happy to help anyone who needs it.

Why do you want to join and what do you expect from the guild: I'm looking to get back into the high end raiding scene, it's been waaaaaay too long since i felt the thrill of finally getting that boss you've been working on for hours down. Nothing beats it!

UI and keybinds:

http://i.imgur.com/T5FD7FP.jpg

That's my UI, it's probably not the cleanest especially as i'm waiting on some updates to some of my favourite addons but it works for me.

Keybinds are Q E R F T G, 1 through 5 and then those with Alt/Ctrl modifiers. My defensive cooldown's are bound to my Razer Mouse Buttons along with some AoE/utility on the Scroll Wheel.

Anything else: I'm not sure what else to put really! If there is anything anyone wants to ask me hit me up in game, Lothyhar - Thunderhorn / Lothyhar#1361

Heya,

Thanks for the reply, first of all.

Regarding stat weights, I've come back from a rather long break so I guess my knowledge of the current state of the class is pretty outdated apart from what I've read on my lunch hour at work and such. With the addition of the new stats I'm sure the stat priorities for specs will shift. I'm frequently visiting EJ as well as Mendenbarr's blog for any updates regarding this.

Regarding Rotation (to my knowledge)

1). Soul Reaper on CD if target is below 35% HP.
2). Maintain Diseases.
3). Frost Strike with KM proc or when next ability would cap runic power.
4). Howling BLAAARGGGGHH!
5). Obliterate to use up Unholy Runes to keep them from CD capping.
6). Frost strike to dump RP and Generate Blood Charge Stacks.

AoE

1). Unholy Runes on Death and Decay.
2). Howling Blast
3). Tab Target Plague strike on different Enemies to dump Unholy Runes
4). Dump RP without capping on Frost Strike.

Obviously weaved in there is Blood tap to avoid capping and wasting charges.

Probably need to clarify Plague Leech usage. I aim to use it as often as possible when it would generate both death runes (so at least 2 are completely depleted) and having those runes generated and needing to be used quickly wouldn't cause me to cap on any other resources.

To be completely honest I'm unaware of the fact there's a mastery breakpoint, I'll have to look into it. I'm assuming there's a point where mastery becomes less valuable per point?

I've always used Magic Runes for tracking Runes, which I can't find a version to work in 6.0 yet (it goes in the large hole under/to the left of the disease and CD trackers) and Weakauras for blood charge stacks. I need to clear my weakauras and start again as i've got a LOT of outdated trackers that are clogging it up to the point where i'll probably just fresh install it.

Regarding the Keybind on Ress, fair Comment. I'll find a comfortable keybind for it.

Right, me again!

First off, the above was a result of a rush to apply after an awfully painful time running a Herioc Seige clear, so I really must apologise for the absolute mess on the class mechanics. Probably hasn't got me off to the greatest start in regards to impressions of me but, hey it's done now, can only go up from that!

Moving swiftly on. I spent yesterday scouring the web and various Death Knight resources I'm aware of to pick up everything I've missed. Once I'd found everything I needed, for the sake of doing this properly I grabbed the 6.0.2 version of simcraft and plugged myself in, and simmed my character using the 2 priority systems for DW frost. What I discovered was that dropping obliterate out of my rotation in favour of the increased howling blasts was a very small DPS increase (~15 DPS).

As this rotation is just straight up more forgiving regarding mistakes, plus as a bonus it's a small increase, I've decided to use the rotation for now to get myself used to playing wow again, and allowing me to remaster the resource handling with smaller penalties for teething issues. This playstyle will be going away come warlords due to the new Rime perk, and the fact reaching the mastery break point likely won't be possible for some time, so will get some practice in with the obliterate rotation before hand as well as with the other specs.

So the ST priority list I've come up with is as follows:

1). Blood Tap with 11 or more stacks of blood charge
2). Soul Reaper when target below 35%
3). Frost Strike if Killing Machine is procced, or if RP is 89 or higher
4). Howling Blast with both frost or both death off cooldown
5). Plague Strike if blood plague is down/nearly down
6). Howling Blast
7). Blood Tap
8). Frost Strike if RP is 75 or higher*
9). Plague Leech
10). Empower Rune Weapon
11). Death and Decay
12). Plague Strike

*With some of the changes to DKs in 6.0 is increased downtime, where with the reduced activity due to the increased Frost Strike cost and the AMS soaking changes, that it's beneficial to hold onto RP so any KM procs can be used ASAP. I'm currently playing with the aim of bouncing between 50 and close to cap on RP, so I've got at least 2 Frost Strikes banked in the case of 2 consecutive KM procs.

For AoE (may need slight tweaks):

1). Blood Tap with 11 or more stacks of blood charge
2). Frost Strike if RP is 89 or higher
3). Howling Blast
4). Frost Strike if Killing Machine is procced
5). Death and Decay
6). Blood Tap
7). Frost Strike
8). Plague Strike on tab targets
9). Plague Leech
10). Empower Rune Weapon

I'm thinking it's going to be less beneficial to hold back resources on AoE due to more Frost Strikes = More Blood Taps = More Howling Blast Spam, although I haven't had much opportunity to test AoE yet. Further to that, I'm also yet to do any real testing on the power of blood plague and whether spreading it immediately is worth it. If it is AoE priority would become:

1). Blood Tap with 11 or more stacks of blood charge
2). Frost Strike if RP is 89 or higher
3). Plague Strike/Blood Boil for Disease Spread (Likely only once in any given Adds lifetime, in theory adds would either be dead in ~30seconds or tab target plague strikes to use up unholy runes would keep it rolling).
4). Howling Blast
5). Frost Strike if Killing Machine is procced
6). Death and Decay
7). Blood Tap
8). Frost Strike
9). Plague Strike on tab targets
10). Plague Leech
11). Empower Rune Weapon

ONE final thing on AoE, there's likely a number of adds where 1 soul reaper is going to be more damage than 1 howling blast, but I imagine that with the 5 second wait for the actually useful part of soul reaper it's going to be quite rare (this may change with soul reaper damage being greatly improved with the current iteration of upcoming perks), so didn't include it.

I'm hoping that's everything covered and a bit more up to date (and less TL;DR), will keep my eye on the thread for anymore comments or questions. As we move closer to WoD, some of this will change. If I get accepted into trials, I'll happily update this once again at the time if needed or maybe have a sit down with you to discuss them.

Cheers for the patience!

Loth

Hey there Lothyhar!

First of all, I'd like to thank Racefoll for extensive handling he has done for your application.
Next, I have to say I enjoy overall tone of your application and they way you handle criticism. While you have been out of the loop, as you claim as well, it seems like you are able to catch up - I just want to make sure you do this on your own in the future, and not just on request of someone like Race.

To points of the application itself:
1) Your UI indeed seems somewhat messy. Everyone has their preferences, but I think you went bit overboard with your timer bars and size of your action bars, since majority of bottom half of your screen is taken up, and that may pose an issue when avoiding some mechanics in raid. That's just my personal suggestion, I usually don't criticize people's UI for overall look, but I believe having cluttered UI is big disadvantage in raids.

2) I'm not really familiar with DPS DKs overall, but it seems like Race has handled this side well. I'm gonna hold my judgement until Race checks your last response.

3) Just out of curiosity, you've mentioned you play many alts but never like any as much as DK - what class was the closest in terms of your enjoyment?

Hey Cynique,

Thanks for the kind words

Absolutely, as I have done so in the past, and going forward into WoD, I will do my utmost to ensure I'm playing to a high, and up to date, standard.

1). My Rune tracking addon was broken at time of the screenshot, so I was forced to use the version that my unitframe addon had to offer (which forced me to scale it up for clarity and move everything else up to accommodate it). I've now managed to find a version that works, and have scaled the player unitframe back down to the size of my target one, and have moved NeedToKnow Cooldown trackers and diseases down and cleaned up things I don't really need to track with such detail anymore or that were removed with ability pruning. I'll happily take an updated screenie when I get home today, the area around my character is a lot cleaner now!

2). I eagerly await Race's comments and would also like to thank Race as if I am unfortunately unsuccessful in my application here, he's pointed out a couple of things I might have missed with the input, which should help me if I have to apply elsewhere. Regardless of the outcome of the app, it's been a positive learning point for me.

3). Probably the closest class, which i almost main switched too early T14, was WW Monk. I've also recently used my WoD 90 boost on a holy paladin which I am enjoying immensely (I've steered away from healing until now). However I've played little of these classes compared to my DK, with only Normal level raid experience in alt runs/pugs

Thats more like it
I know its fairly unnecessary to have you do all this research just for the last weeks of MoP (especially considering how easy mythic SoO is) but i had to make sure your able and willing to put the necessary effort into getting the most out of your character.
Im not gonna ask you to re-gem (dat meta ) but just keep in mind there are some "interesting" stat combinations on gems nowadays.
Other than that, i hope to see you in our next raid and, assuming you perform well, im looking forward to not being the sole recipient of all the DK-hate in g-chat.