How Not To Recruit

(warning: long post, not for the weak and feeble!)

We often have posts on blogs explaining how to apply to guilds. Rarely do we have one giving advice to guilds on how to recruit. I suppose that's because deep down, we're all loot whores and will accept entry into any guild we can... BUT, sometimes it just doesn't work. Let me recap a fun scenario from yesterday.

I am currently guildless. I haven't found a suitable guild since my return to Coilfang. I pug quite often with our various raiding guilds and have been used as a filler since I'm guildless and agree not to make a fuss about loot. In the end, I'm using it as exposure more than anything.

With my current gear, I top out around 1150 dps if I'm firing at all cylinders and there are no damage modifiers nor any damage mitigation on a boss. I have 20% spell crit, and depending on my gear I have 136 to 191 spell hit. I've found that for some reason, I only get about 2.8% of my shadow bolts resisted against bosses, even though the numbers point towards 6%. For that reason, I've stayed at 136 hit but maxxed out my shadow damage at 1206 self buffed.

I'd say it's a good tradeoff. To attain 191 spell hit (the most I can do right now), I would need to sacrifice roughly 110 spell damage and 2% crit. I'm no theorycrafter, but I've found through trial and error that equipping the gear I have now gives me more dps, and that maxxing out my spell hit actually diminishes my final damage output. Why? Ignoring the precise numbers, it's like this: having 2.8% resisted out of 100% of my dps is better than having 0% resisted out of 90% of my dps. Follow the logic? Right, I do too. And I understand the need to cap spell hit as a warlock asap, but again, I think my logic is pretty good and I back it up with personal experimentation on raid bosses.

Anyhow, on to the main event!

Saturday, I joined a TK run with one of the server's more progressed guilds, and through trash + VR I ended up 2nd in damage. Around 1200 dps. Not excellent, but good. Main thing is: I never died. Others with better dps died, a lot. They got hit by orbs, they let orbs hit others as they ran for their lives.


Sunday, I joined the same guild for an SSC run. Through trash + Lurker, I ended up 6th in total damage. Let me explain this one, though. There was a group where 3 better geared warlocks were put in. They had a shaman and a boomkin in that group. That's a totem to increase their spell damage by 101 and an aura to increase their crits by 5%. On top of that, they tell me "Hey Latus, put up CoE". Ok. The main warlock, t6, topped the raid with 1550 dps. The t5-t6 warlock was a close second with around 1520. The third warlock, the class lead in the guild, had 1240 dps. I had 900.



The caveat? I was 6th in damage, with the class lead having done less than 50% of my damage. Again, let's keep in mind, they've got a bonus +101 spell damage and +5% spell crit, on top of having better gear. Two of them died on Lurker on the first or second spout, BOTH times we wiped. We got him on the 3rd attempt. The top Warlock was a beast, he was insane, doing 750k damage on the boss each attempt. I did about half of what he did, but on top of being assigned to CoE, no buff group and worst gear, I was also the one fearing nagas while they all dps'ed (assuming they survived that long!). I'm not saying I should have stood toe to toe with the t5-t6 warlocks, but I definitely eclipsed the moron that called himself the class lead.
At some point, the split second Lurker resurfaced, the class lead screamed out on vent : "WHY IS THERE NO COE ON HIM!" I figured it was obvious that it was because the curse is removed during the submerge phase, and as I was furiously casting shadow bolts to finish off the naga dude that had started molesting the healers, it would take perhaps 5 seconds before Lurker would get his CoE again upon reappearing. In fact, I wonder why he even had Lurker targetted instead of focusing on getting rid of the adds along with the rest of the dps. The adds, he would have noticed, wiped as on the first attempt at 1%. Oh wait, he wouldn't have noticed, he had died on the first spout! Nonetheless, I eloquently responded on raid channel with "?" and just went about my business, CoE'ing, then bolting.

Raid ends, we all go home, I'm happy overall with my performance based on what I described above. Suddenly, the top dps of the raid, a hunter named Fatimah, whispers me "Hey are you looking to join a guild". I'm not particularly impressed with the efficiency of the raids I've seen this weekend (3 hours to down one boss is unacceptable, and 20 minutes to recover from a wipe is obscene), but what the hell, let's see exactly how it would work out. I ask when they raid, what times... they're a weekend raiding guild. Sure, I can join and see if I stay home in the coming weekends... if so, why not? I respond finally that yeah, I'm interested, send me an invite. Fatimah: "hang on speak to Razielz hes class lead". Ok, sure, they like to have class leads inguild, why not.

Razielz: "Hey what's your gear like?" I find this question odd, he was just in a raid with me, why is he asking me again? I know exactly what everyone's gear was like in my raid, based on their performance and based just on me inspecting them as we wait around. I answer what it's like, the sp.dmg, crit and hit. "Cap for warlocks is 202". He's referring to the spell hit cap. Yes, I know, I respond. "Can u get it to 202". I'm beginning to see how this is going to go, but I play along for now. "No", I say, "Not without at least 1 drop most likely in TK". "Are u scryer" "No, I'm Aldor." "ouch" "Listen, I looked into it, and the dps I get despite getting resisted 2-3% of the time is better than if I elevated my spell hit to the max and sacrificed a lot of spell damage." I added, "Like in the entire SSC run, I got resisted 2.9% of the time, which really isn't the end of the world." And then silence. I realize he logged off. Amused, I respond to Fatimah, who also isn't there anymore. A few minutes later, Fatimah comes on and whispers me "Warlock class lead said no and he decides on new warlocks" "Oh? How come?" "He says ur not geared enough and not willing to listen to a much better geared and more experienced player". Wow, ok... that's a lot of psychoanalysis from Raziels based on an exchange of 5 whispers before he qq'd without saying a word.

I respond, "How so? I was 2nd in overall damage in Saturday's raid and 6th today." "He said you're not geared enough sorry don't take it personally". Intrigued, and realizing this is like trolling the wow forums, I pressed on. "But that makes no sense. Only 4 members of your guild were ahead of me on the damage charts in 2 raids combined, and I never died on trash nor on bosses save for full wipe." "He also said your spell hit is not high enough" I explained to him what I explained to myself and to you all earlier in this post. "Go on any warlock forums they say you have to have 202 spell hit" "Ok, so you didn't understand a thing I just said, did you. All right, so anything else you want to add here?" "Yeah he said you also have a attitude problem and you dont want to take advice from someone who knows much much more than you" Wow. "For someone who knows so much about the game, Razielz spent a lot of time dead on every pull, fell in the water, and just didn't dps." "You dont know anything hes an amazing player i've seen him pull 1500 dps on Hyjal bosses" "Yes... that's because there's AoE attacks for about 16 minutes prior to the boss, every warlock should be way up there on the dps charts."

"No he had 1500 dps on boss only" "That's impossible with his gear, I'm sorry." "Omg i saw it ok" "Look, I'm not here to argue with you that you don't know anything about the warlock class, I'm only saying that his gear allows for 1150ish dps tops." There was silence, I did not want to let go of making him feel silly yet, so I persisted: "By the way, perhaps you don't realize, but I was the only warlock in that group that did not have a boomkin and a shaman in my group to help my damage and dps." "Your not hit capped thats all it is you need to learn your class" "Ok, so would you be more impressed if I was spell hit capped but had done half the damage I did? Because that's exactly what your warlock class lead did and ended up in the bottom 3 on the damage meters. Is that the kind of player you're looking for?" "He is much better than you" "I'm sure he is, but he did less than half my damage, and he died a lot like a noob does." "It's not all about the damage charts!" "I know, absolutely! So why is the spell hit such a problem then if its not about the damage charts?" "Its a problem because you got resisted 5 times on Lurker that's 15k damage... 15k is a lot when we wipe with boss at 1%" "Yeah, you're right... so tell me, how much damage did the other two warlocks do that attempt? I see a combined output of 24000 damage, they seem to have died on the first spout. Think that helped us down him or was it just my 5 resisted bolts?" "If you didn't get resisted he probably wouldve died." "Probably not, since those 5 resists were spread out over 3 attempts, btw, but again, you think your dying guild members helped the raid?"

At this point he actually started insulting me, to which I responded, "Don't take it personally, it's just a game." He blew up at me. After a while of me not responding, I caved in to my dark side and tried a diplomatic approach to mock him, "Look, sorry if we got out of hand here, you're a great raider, so is Razielz I'm sure, and you guys have a good steady guild. I wish you all luck, and I'm available to help you out when need be. But one more thing, what was wrong with my attitude?" And the moron took the bait. Like a big fat oaf he took it. "Its just that you have to remember when your trying to get into a guild that you're the one who wants to get in and you want to make a good impression, not the other way around." "HMM!" I said..HMM! "You're the one who approached me about joining your guild. I never asked to join you guys, and your class lead started things off with me by qq'ing on me without giving me any answers, then you took over and implied I'm an idiot who knows nothing. And you tell me I'm the one with the wrong attitude?"

I never heard back from him. :(

Ironically, the next day I got invited to the currently top progressed guild to join their core raiding squad since they lost one of their dps to a server transfer, and one of the established members remembered running a few heroics with guildless me. Downed VR, Solarian and was top 3 in damage and pumped out 1250 dps, second only to one of their warlocks' 1450. Hmm, inadequate indeed!