Comments on 4 Haelz: No Man's Land

Chin up, Bell!I'm a recruiting officer for Collate...

2008-04-28T13:28:00.000-04:00

Chin up, Bell!

I'm a recruiting officer for Collateral Damage of Vek'nilash a guild just finishing up SSC/TK (6/6 3/4) and I can say with confidence that if we were recruiting, we'd take someone at your level in a heartbeat. Now, it takes a guild with good organization to both gear someone up and teach them what to do in 25 man encounters that are new to them, but we do just that all the time. We have 5-6 new recruits right now, all "behind" our regular raiders in gear and experience. Our healer turnover is rather high, as is everyone's. It's probably because healers are, first of all, a rather rare personality type in game (nurturers), and they also tend to get a large share of the blame for anything that goes wrong. For some reason, the women healers on my team stick it out better than the men--perhaps that is my rampant feminist leadership? Or perhaps women are accustomed to thankless jobs. But for whatever reason, quality guilds are always looking for healers, and one thing I've learned from recruiting over the past two months is that a guild has to look for potential rather than achievement in a recruit. You can sell yourself on your application by being intelligent and informed. I know our guild has geared a resto druid from pre-Kara level to end-level T5 in about a month. It takes some doing, but with a competent guild, it's very possible.

Oh, and remember that turnover I talked about? CD will likely be recruiting healers again soon enough. If you ever feel like server-hopping, look me up on Vek :)

In all seriousness, when you do look for a guild I suggest the following steps.

1. If you want to stay on your own server, post in your server forum (on the official WoW forums) an intelligent little quip about yourself and see if anyone contacts you. Be prepared to weed out the Kara guilds. (If you want to leave the server, a post in the Guild Recruitment forum will net you 10-15 invitations to apply from all over everywhere).
2. Look at Wowjutsu rankings for your realm and identify 3-4 guilds at the progression level you're looking for. My advice is to look for someone who's 5/6 3/4, or, even better, a guild who's killed Vashj and not Kael so that you can avoid a guild whose inability to kill Vashj has stressed it to the brink of collapse. The sea-witch is a notorious guild-killer. What you want is an organization that's still farming T5 and will continue to do so for at least 3-4 weeks.
3. Apply to all appropriate-level guilds even if they're not recruiting. They may see a healer app and take a chance. Likely, a group of officers is going to debate your application, and with healer turnover what it typically is, someone may stick up for you and you may get a trial period.
4. Impress the hell out of your new guild in the trial period. I'm sure you will have no trouble; I've been reading your blog for a while and the posts are quite thoughtful. Here's what I would do to impress.
a) Flask for everything, even easy bosses in ZA. Our new priestly recruit did this and, well, I was floored. It goes without saying to always bring your own consumables--or at least it should. I keep 50 or so extra mana/health potions and a few elixirs all the time, and I tend to give out 10 of them or so every raid to folks who run out. And this is to regular raiders in addition to recruits!
b) Sign up for everything. Raid leaders tend to think well of people they can count on to fill rosters, particularly if the guild has no attendance requirement.
c) Show your personality at appropriate moments in raids. When it's ok to talk, as when the group is getting formed, socialize over vent. This may be a no-brainer, but some of our recruits have thought they needed to sit quietly, but I prefer the ones I get to know.

I am confident that when your schedule settles down, you will be able to find a guild home that lets you enjoy the game and do the content you like.

--Sydera of Vek'nilash

Is best of lucks to ya. Shall be keeping good hope...

2008-04-28T11:21:00.000-04:00

Is best of lucks to ya. Shall be keeping good hopes going what you'll find the right home.

I knows that the difference between a green gem and a blue gem isn't that much, but a blue gem can be paid for with only 4 or 5 dailies. Upgrading these would help say "I's investing in meself to help be the bests I can", which is always a good when ya needs to get a foot in the door.

And yeah, shoulder enchants is the same way. But I totally respects helping a friend first. Don't forget Aldor rep marks can be bought at the AH, which with dailies can be more time efficient than pure farming. Plus, there be the one SSO daily in HFP what rewards 5 marks.

@sonvar- a server transfer is a little extreme for...

2008-04-28T11:06:00.000-04:00

@sonvar- a server transfer is a little extreme for me, and I know AC is only looking for pallies and locks. :) And I can't do anything about my Aldor rep for a few weeks, as all my rep items are going to a friend who needs them much more than I.

Good luck with your search. I'd almost suggest AC...

2008-04-28T10:16:00.000-04:00

Good luck with your search. I'd almost suggest AC but they have too many druids as it is anyways. I'm also not sure what the deal with having some PvP gear is. Granted its not the ideal gear to have going into raids but its better then alot of the pve blues out there if you haven't gotten other purple drops to replace it.

Oh and get your Aldor rep up.

For the love of ... do the guilds think you need t...

2008-04-27T15:58:00.000-04:00

For the love of ... do the guilds think you need to be at 1700 healing to be heading into SSC and TK? Christ, I went in there probably below 1400.

Your gear is above and beyond fine for it. You might have wanted more regen before 2.4, but that's not the case anymore.

Honestly, if the guilds are needing their resto druids to be at that level of gear to get through those encounters, there's something wrong. I've been screwed on lots of loot, but in Hyjal/BT I've just hit over 1800 and am still a very effective healer.

It sounds like you need a chance to prove yourself - skill > gear, as we know. Unfortunately, it simply may not happen till a guild there needs a healer or two fr a night :/

I'm actually in a similar situation, although it's...

2008-04-27T13:45:00.000-04:00

I'm actually in a similar situation, although it's a small group of us instead of just me. Our guild has even backslid a little and are barely doing Karazhan. We're in a raiding group, but they're still doing Gruul and we're ready to move on.

Right now we're sticking it out and trying to help them get us and them to SSC.

I won't go look for something by myself because I don't want to leave those 5-6 people behind, but our schedules are fairly uncompromising (I'm on GMT but on a US server, so it's tough finding raids early enough).

There seem to be a LOT of people in this situation, where they don't need to do the tier 4 stuff, but can't find the right group to get to tier 5.

I imagine there might be this gap between tier 5 and 6 too, but I've not experienced it myself.