In this game, there’s a wide variety of individual player skill.

Skill is not necessarily reflected by gear at any level, either. It’s not rare to find someone better geared performing much worse than someone lesser geared when directly compared and all other things are equal.

During leveling this is pretty normal - you’ve got experienced players and completely new players all mixed in together, and in the low levels there are more young players with short attention spans who tend to delete their characters and start another when the leveling slows down around 35-40. Plus, in any given lowbie party, it’s likely everyone will be at a different character level, which introduces its own imbalances.

But in Heroics and End Game Raiding where you’re dealing with all well-geared level 70’s, there’s still a marked difference in skill levels and the amount of “output” any given player can get out of their character.

Raiding Guilds Recruiting Standards

I’ve been looking around for a guild that is still raiding in this lull before the WoTLK opens up, and have applied to, and been rejected from, a couple of the high-end ones still raiding.

Rejected mainly because I have no inside references who can vouch for my skill, which then makes the raiding guild recruiters turn to the websites that look strictly at gearing, and make their judgements from there.

My gearing isn’t BAD, but the quality of guilds I’m applying to (according to their charter of expectations for their membership and leadership and my experiences with their members) is definitely beyond where either of my toons are right now - they’re at the end of Black Temple or already in Sunwell Plateau, and my gear is just touching into those places.

So, while I work on the social end of getting into a high-end guild by trying to look for opportunities to party up with high-end raiders in Heroics and low-end raids and spark up conversations that lead to more runs to demonstrate my skill and lead to many good things, I also work on improving my gear.

And, I compare my skills against others when I have the opportunity to do so - and PUG raids tend to be the best place for this direct comparison.

Results From Friend’s Magtheridon PUG

Last night a Mage friend of mine put together a Magtheridon PUG in an attempt to finish off his Champion of the Naruu title, so I came along on my Priest Healer, who had just recently respec’d into Circle of Healing, and was sporting 1868 +heals unbuffed.

The PUG itself wasn’t a successful run - it was my friend’s first attempt at putting it together, and we didn’t have enough Warlocks to handle the infernals, but it was a good couple of tries and a good experience for him as a newbie Raid Leader.

I got a chance, however, to compare myself directly against two other Circle of Healing Priests of varying gear levels during this run - at least in the early parts of it where we were all close enough together that Recount and the Combat Log could be trusted to have caught all of the activity.

Pre-Magtheridon Healing Results

Here’s the basic results for the run, highlighting what I consider to be important - overall amount of heals, heals per second, and overheal percentage.

Priest Stats:

Healing Results

Summary Of Above Results

The summary of the above results is that Priest #1, being +250 healing to Priest #2 and +400 healing to myself, did not only the most healing, but the most group overhealing.

The high percentage regarding the Group Overhealing, however, is as a result of doing so much of the overall healing, however. Priest #1’s individual overheal percentage was better than Priest #2’s individual overheal percentage (ie: Priest #1 had less individual overheal, and a lower percentage than Priest #2).

As the least-geared Circle of Healing priest, Shrimproll looked good on the charts. I know that charts aren’t everything in a raid (at all) but consider: With 150 less healing than Priest #2, Shrimproll did:

• 2.9% more overall healing
• ~150 higher Heals per second rate while healing
• ~16% less overhealing (ie: more efficient healing)

This kind of stuff is hard to demonstrate in one’s raiding resume, however.

So, I will continue to grind for Heriocs badges and gear upgrades, and continue to PUG raids and put more solid efforts into making new raiding friends…

And continue to strive to perform better than people better geared than me. I do it not as a mean way to compete and put others down (or I’d have named Priest #2), but as a way to improve my own play and abilities.

When I find a great guild with other skilled players like myself, I know it’ll pay off.

All of the things like reputation can change so quickly when one hooks up with a few good players and rushes through things everyone needs, so I put a date on the post, because I forgot to put a date on the Resume itself.

I’ll put a date on the updated version I do, whenever that may be.

Check it out, here’s my first attempt at a video resume for my Mage and Priest who are both geared for raiding T5+ content, and looking for an excellent home on the realm of Zul’jin, Horde side.

Any suggestions on what I should change/improve for my next version?