Name / Alias: Promarks

Country of Origin: Sweden

Age: 30

Main Character Name: Promarks – Sylvanas (https://www.warcraftlogs.com/character/id/39851351#partition=-1)
Main Character Class: Monk

Main Specialization: Windwalker
Off Specialization: Mistweaver / Brewmaster, I try to maintain and be comfortable with both.

Screenshot of your UI: https://i.imgur.com/bTArn9O.png
And if you want to see it in action, then this is my old guilds first Sylvanas kill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2WVOzo2kqs

Warcraft Logs Link: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/character/id/39851351#partition=-1

Previous PvE Experience:
I’ve been raiding on and off since TBC but I used to only really raid with real life friends from school or played in pretty casual guilds until mid BfA when I wanted to play a little bit more seriously.
Kara: Cleared
Gruul: Cleared
Mag: Cleared
Naxx: Cleared (with undying)
ToC: 4/5 heroic
ICC: 7/12 heroic
SoO: 14/14 normal
HM: 2/7 mythic
BRF: 0/10 mythic
HFC: 11/13 mythic
EN: 7/7 mythic
ToV: 2/3 mythic
NH: 4/10 mythic
ToS: 5/9 mythic
Antorus: 9/11 mythic
Uldir: 5/8 mythic
BoD: 9/9 mythic (world rank 1.6k)
EP: 8/8 mythic (world rank 700)
Ny’alotha: 12/12 mythic (world rank 900)
CN: 10/10 mythic (world rank 1.4k)
SoD: 10/10 mythic (world rank 300)
Sepulcher: 9/11 mythic (guild disbanded around rank 300-400)

History of Previous Guilds:

Various guild with real life friends from 2005 to WoD when the IRLs quit.

Shadows of Darkness – Bronzebeard (my first raiding guild, took things a bit too seriously for a guild that whose only goal was curve), HM – ToS.

No Retreat No Surrender – Bronzebeard (primarily a social guild but was raiding every now and then, everyone in the guild ended up being super good and we achieved a lot more than I had anticipated), ToS – BoD.

Asperity – Sylvanas (first serious raiding guild, ended up achieving my first 4 CEs with them), BoD – CN.

Duplicity – Sylvanas (first, and so far only, HoF), SoD – Sepulcher.

Why did you leave them?:

Shadows of Darkness: I ended up becoming an officer and the progression raid leader for this guild in HFC, but spring 2015 I was starting my bachelor thesis and wanted to focus on that so asked the guild master to step down as an officer in a few months time when the thesis was due to start. The guildmaster was a pretty toxic dude that was bragging about how easily he could manipulate people around him so he just said “No” and tried to lecture me how I was wrong and I did in fact have enough time to do my officer duties, raid lead, and work on my real life stuff at the same time. He actually went as far to say that I wasn’t doing enough as it is and told me that I should spend at least an hour a day recruit in trade. As you can imagine, that wasn’t quite what I had expected lol. I ended up staying with the guild but abandoned most of my officer duties in favor of real life ones but after a couple of months I once again asked him to step down, and once again he said no and so I left and joined a social guild my friends were in.

No Retreat No Surrender: The guild was a primarily social guild that just happened to have really good players in it, this meant that while we were actually the nr 1 guild on the server at the time we would always just take a break until next tier whenever the bosses became difficult. This worked fine for me for a long time but in BoD a lot of the raiders decided to quit the game completely, I however still wanted to raid and so I joined Asperity which has been one of our sister guilds on our old server Bronzebeard that had transfered to Sylvanas.

Asperity: The officer team burnt out in CN from torghast and the maw and quit the game as soon as Sire died. I got an offer from Duplicity shortly after since I was the strongest Windwalker on the server and they were missing one going into BoD

Duplicity: The guild made some questionable decision when it came to loot, roster, tactics and general time management in Sepulcher, combined with an extremely long and difficult raid were causing a lot of friction in the raid team and people were starting to get annoyed at each other. This caused our 26 man roster to slowly shrink until we had to start recruiting / asking backup raiders to join us for progression. Once we reached Jailer the raid leader announced that this would be his last boss and once it was dead, he would quit the game. At this point however we only had exactly 20 raiders including backups so when our last backup raiders computer died and wouldn’t be able to get it fixed for another few weeks, the raid leader decided to call it quits and left the game and the guild died with him. I decided to take a break until Dragonflight.

How did you find out about Violent Circus?:
I was searching through wowprogress for guilds with similarly experience (250-600ish) on alliance side and yours was one of the few that caught my eye, so I checked warcraftlogs and it doesn’t seem like you had any monk in your recent reports so here I am.

Why do you think this guild is fit for you and what are your expectations from us?:
Honestly, I just wanna raid and kill some bosses and as long as I get to do that with you guys, you are meeting my expectations. If we kill them faster than some other guilds and gain ranking? Cool. We did it a little slower and lost some? I don’t mind at all. I just really enjoy raiding in this game and I find myself enjoying almost every guild I have been part of in my 17 years in this game and I am sure I would have a great time with you as well.

What can you bring to the team?:
I should start by saying that I absolutely hate trying to talk myself up and that I am gonna try to be as objective as I can and gonna try to back up the things I claim with examples or “proofs”.

I think my main strength that I bring to any raid team is that I don’t accept just being good enough and will always look for things that I can improve. If I kill a boss and I feel like I played well enough to get a 99% parse, and I didn’t, or that my damage was lower than I had anticipated then I will spend the next few hours / days figuring out why and what I could do differently. If I think I played a mechanic correctly but still died, then I will shadowplay it and rewatch it or analyze the logs to learn what I did wrong. It’s pretty rare for me to mess up, but when I do I learn from it and I don’t let it happen again. If I think I can do something better, then I will just research and practice until I make it happen.

But my drive to always be better isn’t only related to improving on past performances, but also by always being prepared, whether it’s bosses, mechanics or even my own character I will always go into every boss 100% prepared. I’ll watch streams and kills and I’ll break down logs from other Windwalkers before me and I don’t just look at what and when they are doing stuff, but I also try to figure out why. A lot of times the why is very simple, but sometimes it’s not as clear why some are doing certain things, like possibly cd timings on longer fights like Sylvanas or why guilds are dealing with mechanics a certain way (like why you move the ranged cross back in p3 of Painsmith, or why you bait Sylvanas veil in p1). It’s often pretty easy to just go into a fight and approach it like any other, use your offensive cooldowns whenever they are up, deal with the mechanics normally, and then later adjust to whatever problem comes up. But I will always try to eliminate the need to make those mistakes before they happen. I will spend my time learning those mistakes outside of raid from everyone that has killed the boss before us instead of inside of the raid. Something I think is even more important when you only raid 2 nights a week.
And if preparation means learning a new talent set (or covenant like this expansion), farm gear or what else have you, then I will make sure that I have already prepared and practiced it before we pull. Example being getting rank 1 on Daus on our first kill (and my first night as Kyrian inside of a raid over a year).
(https://www.warcraftlogs.com/character/id/39851351#partition=-1&boss=2540)

I think all of this has lead me to be a very reliable and calm raider, I never pull a boss without already having every cooldown and defensive planned out, having all the necessary weakauras and addons and in general already know how to approach the boss and all of its mechanics. In my last guild (Duplicity, rank 300 world) I actually ended up being the one that explained most of the tactics and shared/made all the weakauras because most of the time I was the one that was the most prepared. Although rare, I will also make spreadsheets to plan my cooldowns properly as well as to remember and learn from past pulls. The image below is my spreadsheet I used to optimize my damage on Sylvanas when we were progressing on her. The right side of the sheet is a script I made to keep track of my Storm, Earth, and Fire charges since I found it a bit annoying to just do normally in my head. The last time I used it was apparently during Anduin prog.
(https://imgur.com/a/gmUugvL)

I should also add that while I do enjoy logging and trying to parse, I don’t ever let logs get in the way of kills. I usually try to aim for top 50 world for my spec and class but I hate the padding mentality that is often required for aoe bosses and would much rather just focus on killing the boss which is why I almost exclusively try for logs on ST bosses. I always take initiative with mechanics and logs and parses are secondary, I couldn’t give a damn about what parse I got as long as the boss dies. And just to demonstrate that I am not just talking out of my ass, this is our KT reclears back from SoD (I was asked to lead the inside team after our second kill and so I played pure single target for 4 months)
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/character/id/39851351#zone=28&boss=2422

Finally I am just gonna attach two images, although they do need some context.
The first one is from right before Sepulcher with our raid leader, he had offered to give feedback to anyone that wanted it.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/607680971675795476/1044044560428437584/image.png

Once we reached Halondrus mythic, I was benched (this was before any of the WW buffs had happened and WW was simming lower than blood dks). Their reasoning was that WW was about 1-2k dps behind every other spec in single target and the officers thought the dps check was more difficult than the mechanics check. This caused quite an uproar and the boss ended up taking a pretty long time to kill. Once the boss finally died and we reached Anduin, the mood of the guild was quite a lot worse, which eventually lead to the following exchange in the healing channel (Neiiah is an amazing MW, currently rank 1 world in SoD and rank 7 in Sep, Praisebe is the guy that sent me the screenshot and Elftits is one of the officers).
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/828684923522908180/973305959923482624/unknown.png

I don’t ever rage, raise my voice or get annoyed with anyone, not even in my own head, I focus on my own stuff and how I can do better, and as long as others are doing their best as well then all is good to me and I will gladly help anyone and everyone that wants it. I have been offered an officer / raid leading spot in every guild I have been in and people have come to rely on me for mechanics and tactics, and I think that’s because I have been playing this game for 17 years, always being critical of my own play and trying to improve. I hate to say it, but I do consider myself to be a genuinely good raider with a good progression attitude. I’m just really consistent at pretty much everything when it comes to mechanics, damage, survivability, and preparation and don’t think I’ve ever tilted even once in my 17 years in WoW. I just don’t really mess up and I cannot remember the last time I caused a wipe, drama or negative atmosphere.
So I think that’s my biggest strength that I would be bringing to this guild, just a very consistent, good, prepared and positive raider.

Availability(How often are you available, etc.):
Absolutely whenever.

Anything else you would like to add?:
I apologize for some of the sections getting a bit longer than they probably had to be, but I wanted to do my best to not miss anything that you might think is important that I might have otherwise glossed over.
No matter what, I thank you for taking the time to read and consider my application and I wish you and the rest of the team the best of luck in Dragonflight! :)