Forged Alliance

Name (first name only): Brian
Age: 37
Character Name: Manatheros
Realm: Proudmoore-US (Alliance)
Class: Mage (Human)
Level: 70 (ilvl 385)
Main Spec: Arcane
Off Spec(s): I've played Fire/Frost in the past and am flexible to switching as needed

Have you read and understand the following posts?
- Read This Before Applying - Yes
- Raiding and Rosters - Yes
(I've also read the Expected Conduct on the About page)


Which of the following best describes your raiding goals?
1. Raid whenever you have time in whatever group is most convenient
2. Raid consistently in a normal / heroic mode group and maybe some mythic
3. Dedicated to progressing through mythic at whatever rate the group is capable of
4. Hardcore mythic progression
5. None of the above, please explain:


#2 -- I'll be consistently available for the Tu/Th 8 PM - 10:30ish PM Pacific raid times.

Normal and Heroic raiding content are adequate for me, but I'll go as far as the guild wants to go.

Please link your armory profile: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/chara ... manatheros

What is your raid experience? Please list as much as you think is relevant.

I've been playing since beta and most of my raiding experience was Vanilla -> Wrath of the Lich King, with my peak being Sunwell. Since then, I've casually played every expansion, dipping my toes into LFR until I move on to other games.

Dragonflight has had way more sticking power with me, and the itch to raid again has struck enough for me to consider joining a raiding guild again -- especially as I run out of sources for gear upgrades. :)

Currently I've been doing LFR on my main and an alt and I'm comfortable with Vault of the Incarnates encounters. In some cases I step up and assist with basic raid leadership to the LFR groups. I'm generally in the top 5 DPS and have hit #1 once or twice, but it depends on the ilvl and classes and encounters of course.

My priority is to execute the encounter mechanics well.

Why did you leave your previous (current) guild?

I never left (my alts on my previous server are still in it), but rather the guild no longer has any active members.

Heroic Anub'Arak (back in 2008-2010) was a blocker for the guild (yes, even after conquering Sunwell!) as some key healers left and it slowly fell apart after that.

How did you find our guild?

WoW Progress: https://www.wowprogress.com/guild/us/pr ... d+Alliance

I specifically targeted guilds in my search that were still actively progressing through raiding content. It's fun to be part of that initial learning experience.

What is the basic enchanting / gemming strategy for your character?

I follow the de-facto class guide for Mages (https://www.mage-hub.com/arcane) and confirm optimal choices using a simulator (https://www.raidbots.com/) -- it's been nice to see how much the tooling has improved since I last raided!

At my current gear level, most of my enchantments are the max quality -- but I'm holding out on the best weapon enchant until I get a new staff crafted in about two weeks.

What consumables do you use during raids?

All of them. :) Potion of Ultimate Power, healing potions, Vantus runes, flasks, food, and so on.

What boss mod(s) / addons do you use?

For bosses, BigWigs. I've grown to prefer it over DBM.

For gameplay, WeakAuras (which I configured myself for my Arcane Mage rotation) and Details! are the most relevant.

Is there anything else you want to tell us?

• The thing I value most is kindness to others. It pains me to see toxicity in LFR, where clearly new players are made to feel unwelcome instead of aided and lifted up. Not to belie responsibility and agency they have to pre-prepare, but I feel that you can be an effective leader without aggression or ego. I haven't personally been a target, but I try to help out and lead by example when I see it.

• I'm a huge gamer outside of WoW -- I grew up on classic cRPGs (Baldur's Gate / Planescape: Torment) and play many tabletop games too; my wife and I are up to 364 board games and expansions: https://geekgroup.app/users/manath/coll ... tReverse=1 -- If anyone ever wants to venture into modern tabletop games, I can talk their ear off with suggestions. :)

• I'm a software engineer by trade, focused on web development. I appreciate your guild having an active website. :) On my own time I maintain some gaming-related tools, including a website to track a user's Magic: the Gathering collection and its value (https://preview.mtgcollectionbuilder.co ... mplete%3A0 is my collection in the tool) and a Discord bot for a neat little tabletop wargame based on the A Song of Ice and Fire series.

• Last week, this little guy here decided to fire off a bolt at Raszageth after I applied a Vantus Rune to her pre-pull:
  
  (Pictured: Manatheros and his unruly Arcane Familiar)
  
  Blizzard mentioned this as a bug in their patch notes a few days later, but that was fun to try to explain to the LFR group. :) I now have trust issues with Vantus Runes.

Are there any ways that we can improve the application process?

I would consider adding the Expected Conduct section of the About page as a third item for new recruits to read.

Thank you for your consideration! :)

greetings, thanks for the app! and thanks for the thorough response, everything looks good to me.

Manatheros wrote: ↑January 27th, 2023, 2:38 pm Off Spec(s): I've played Fire/Frost in the past and am flexible to switching as needed

whatever you prefer to play should be fine

Manatheros wrote: ↑January 27th, 2023, 2:38 pm Normal and Heroic raiding content are adequate for me, but I'll go as far as the guild wants to go.

this is generally where we're at these days. if we have time or if earlier mythic bosses are relatively easy (as eranog apparently is) we'll play with mythic a bit, but for the most part out goal is to get aotc.

Manatheros wrote: ↑January 27th, 2023, 2:38 pm Dragonflight has had way more sticking power with me, and the itch to raid again has struck enough for me to consider joining a raiding guild again -- especially as I run out of sources for gear upgrades.

i've found dragonflight to be the same. this game has always had it's claws in me, but in my opinion dragonflight is the probably the best expansion since mists of pandaria.

Manatheros wrote: ↑January 27th, 2023, 2:38 pm At my current gear level, most of my enchantments are the max quality -- but I'm holding out on the best weapon enchant until I get a new staff crafted in about two weeks.

no worries, with the server / game economy still a bit out of sorts early in the expansion it doesn't make a lot of sense to get the three star weapon enchants at the moment, as it generally doesn't make that much of a difference for what we're working on.

Manatheros wrote: ↑January 27th, 2023, 2:38 pm

• The thing I value most is kindness to others. It pains me to see toxicity in LFR, where clearly new players are made to feel unwelcome instead of aided and lifted up. Not to belie responsibility and agency they have to pre-prepare, but I feel that you can be an effective leader without aggression or ego. I haven't personally been a target, but I try to help out and lead by example when I see it.

we try to keep things pretty laid back. i stopped doing lfr a long time ago mainly because of this, and i still find the occasional toxic people that i encounter in lfg to be extremely frustrating.

Manatheros wrote: ↑January 27th, 2023, 2:38 pm

• I'm a huge gamer outside of WoW -- I grew up on classic cRPGs (Baldur's Gate / Planescape: Torment) and play many tabletop games too; my wife and I are up to 364 board games and expansions: https://geekgroup.app/users/manath/coll ... tReverse=1 -- If anyone ever wants to venture into modern tabletop games, I can talk their ear off with suggestions.

i thought i misread 364 at first, that is a lot! i've not played anywhere close to that many board games but i usually find them to be fun. most recently i've played everdell, ticket to ride, puerto rico, and gloomhaven online (if that counts).

Manatheros wrote: ↑January 27th, 2023, 2:38 pm

• I'm a software engineer by trade, focused on web development. I appreciate your guild having an active website.

me too, although the underlying code for this site is mostly neglected. maybe one of these days i'll get around to updating it to something that isn't ancient.

Manatheros wrote: ↑January 27th, 2023, 2:38 pm I would consider adding the Expected Conduct section of the About page as a third item for new recruits to read.

thanks for the suggestion! re-reading the about page there are a few sections that probably need to be updated before more specifically directing people to it, but this is a good idea. thanks!

anywho, track someone down online and we can get you a guild invite. the easiest way of doing so is probably our forged alliance community:
viewtopic.php?t=5598

draven wrote: ↑January 28th, 2023, 1:21 am i thought i misread 364 at first, that is a lot! i've not played anywhere close to that many board games but i usually find them to be fun. most recently i've played everdell, ticket to ride, puerto rico, and gloomhaven online (if that counts).

Gloomhaven online definitely counts. :) That's our most played game for sure. Frosthaven should be arriving very soon! Those other games are all great. Today I'm hosting our first ISS Vanguard playthrough, which should be pretty epic.

draven wrote: ↑January 28th, 2023, 1:21 am me too, although the underlying code for this site is mostly neglected. maybe one of these days i'll get around to updating it to something that isn't ancient.

Same for my original MTG Collection Builder code (ancient PHP w/Laravel, as opposed to the new version's Next.js/React) -- but if it ain't broke, it's fine. :) Stable legacy apps are actually pretty beautiful.

draven wrote: ↑January 28th, 2023, 1:21 am anywho, track someone down online and we can get you a guild invite. the easiest way of doing so is probably our forged alliance community:
viewtopic.php?t=5598

Will do, thank you!

Hey Draven! Thanks again for the guild invite and raid on Tuesday -- it was pretty awesome seeing how well run everything was, from the succinct fight descriptions to the chill environment. I had a good time -- even if my adjusted-for-ilevel performance was barely approaching average for Razsageth. (I just got exposed to warcraftlogs recently and it's cool that there's an actionable performance treadmill to progress in with real data, in addition to the traditional loot treadmill. So much has changed in 15 years.)

Possible action item for you: Not the best timing, but I need to temporarily downgrade my guild membership from "raider" to "non-raider" due to a change in my real life obligations. If there's a list to remove me from or any other action item, feel free to do so. I'll still be around tinkering on alts and poking into LFR in the meanwhile. I'll update you if anything changes.

I have a profound respect for Forged Alliance's stability and history. Thank you for setting up and running this guild!

Manatheros wrote: ↑February 2nd, 2023, 12:00 am Possible action item for you: Not the best timing, but I need to temporarily downgrade my guild membership from "raider" to "non-raider" due to a change in my real life obligations. If there's a list to remove me from or any other action item, feel free to do so. I'll still be around tinkering on alts and poking into LFR in the meanwhile. I'll update you if anything changes.

no worries, thanks for the update. whenever you're able to raid again just sign up for the raider community event on the guild calendar.

Hey there!

As you may have noticed, my work and life schedule have recently changed and it's unlikely I'll be able to join a scheduled raid for an extended period of time.

During my recent break, I also realized that doing LFR on my own schedule is "good enough" in that I can still enjoy reaching BIS gear at that tier and testing my performance relative to that iLvl in Warcraft Logs -- when I have time to play, anyway.

While I've decided to be guildless for now, I really want to thank Draven and Forged Alliance for showing me a great time. I'll forever be impressed by the legacy and stability of this guild, and I can also guarantee never to forget my philialflasks™.

Take care!

thanks for letting us know, best of luck in your future adventures

Thanks -- to you all as well!