DonaldDarko <Boomkin/Resto Druid> {Withdrawn}

My name is Jacob. And I want to be inside you.
Your guild. Inside your guild.

I'm 26 years old. Recently married, and I have 3 children.
I'm Technical Support and Customer Relations for a local ISP in the middle of nowhere, Kansas (born and raised in a field of corn).
I peaked in High School and played basketball and football in college, but now I just play WoW rigorously to work up a sweat.
When I'm not playing WoW, I'm either eating, sleeping, working, or feigning interest in my wife's tv dramas (she still watches One Tree Hill and she's 25 years old! Help MEEEEEE)

As for my WoW life.... I'd be applying to the guild as a Boomkin primarily, with a Resto set that I play very comfortably. However, this class/spec is still fairly new to me. It's hard to cite credentials and link logs and experience on an account that you just recently started, but.... That's exactly what I'm going to have to do.
I started playing WoW right before BC came out, and played a Holy Paladin almost exclusively (had a few other max level characters to play around occasionally) from raids like Kara, all the way to Heroic Lei Shen. Healing all the way, pretty much. ToC 4 times a week for 28 years, Ulduar (Firefighter was so intense!), Naxx, ICC for another 28 years, etc. I've done it all.
However, during HM ToT progression (somewhere around Dark Animus), my wife got very sick, and I had to take some time off to tend to that. Things got worse and my time on WoW dwindled. And right about the time I got my Heroic Lei Shen kill, I had to get my priorities straight. I sold my account to help pay for stacking medical bills, and as far as I was concerned I had killed my last end tier boss.

SoO was released, and all my old friends and family started progressing. And I tried my hardest to just ignore the urge to play again. I didn't have a choice, as my account was gone.
Thankfully, my wife recovered and quickly started becoming herself again. She could tell I had the itch (I'm sure I talked about WoW all the time, even though I tried hard not to! Honest!), and she gave her her blessing to start over anew.
And this Druid was born.

I leveled as quickly as I could, geared up on Timeless Isle, and started finding raids as I went week to week. I stuck with healing, as that was my most comfortable role by far, and fell in love with Resto. I healed several *almost* full clears on normal, and even got a Heroic kill along the way, and then the well ran dry. It seemed almost overnight, that I couldn't find pugs for SoO anymore. I just didn't raid anymore. Luckily, this gave me time to experiment with different aspects of my class. I built a Boomkin spec, researched for a week straight, reforged, re-gemmed, tested and re-tested, and started cheating on my Resto spec with a proper Boomkin spec. I got excited for fights again. Rather than the same old heal spam each time, I had different targets to react to. I had CDs and timers to watch, and burst to apply. Gameplay just felt different now, and I liked it. Soon, I had completely forgotten about Resto, and only swapped to healing when it was the only way a group would take me along. I was officially a Boomkin.
While I'm far from an "elite pro" Boomy, I certainly feel confident that my dps is competitive for my ilevel, and strong enough to keep up with other players in my raid. And it's only going to get better. My gear is essentially Resto gear that has been turned Boomkin-esque, and my experience in SoO norm/HM has primarily been healing. So, as I get a bit more experience with DPS'ing the fights, and slowly replace some weak spots in my gear, I have no doubt whatsoever that my damage is going to become something very respectable. And that's something I'm very excited for.

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Some things that I struggle with.... Hmm.
That's always a hard question to answer honestly, as it's just not human nature to critique yourself to other people. But... I would say that my biggest struggle related to WoW would be that I'm very impatient with myself in terms of improvement. I hate feeling sub-par. Hate it. I don't know if it's because I didn't get enough hugs as a child, or because nobody ever told me "I love you" on my 8th birthday.... or whatever.... But, it REALLY bothers me when I'm not performing at peak levels. And that's not healthy. And sometimes it can even affect my performance negatively, because I get flustered. Everyone has bad nights, but I struggle more than I should when they happen.

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Something I'm working on improving is becoming a better all-around player. For years and years, I was a one trick pony. I healed. And I did it very well. I prided myself on my ability to go beastmode on any fight that was very healing intensive (for about 2 weeks, I held the number 1 healing parse in the world for normal Amber Shaper in HoF, on my Mistweaver Monk. It's totally and completely meaningless, but it was my claim to fame). BUT.... That was all I could do well. I wasn't a flexible raider. If my raid needed to drop a healer to push more dps on a HM, they knew to not even look to me for that. Not because my healing numbers were good, but because my dps numbers were bad. And that bothered me.
So, I'm currently working every day to fine tune my rotation, and get to the point where my guild knows that when the time comes where they need someone to step up and get out of their comfort zone to push past a progression boss, I can be that person. And I'm getting there, slowly but surely.

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My favorite gaming moment of all time?...... Wow.
I've been playing video games since I was a young child. That's a toughie....
I've had highs and lows in video games probably every year of my life, so that's hard to narrow down.
I'll go ahead and make it WoW-based. Because there is a moment in my WoW career that ranks right up there with the rest of them.
That would be my server first 25 HM Anub kill, in ToC.
2 other guilds besides ourselves had been doing progression on it, and the trash talking was fierce. Every day, there were people taunting and squawking in a competitive spirit about it. It was a very very close race. The night all 3 of the guilds went in with a real chance to kill it, tension was very high. We had people whispering everyone looking for progress on % wipes, and it was basically anybody's game at that point. I had never before in my WoW career had such a stressful, close, kill. Anyone who has done that fight knows that the final phase was a bit of a nightmare for healers. Watching people go dangerously close to dying, and trying your hardest to find that sweet spot of healing, but just barely enough to keep them alive.
It was a sweat-inducing few minutes every time we entered that phase, but after so much competition, we killed it. "Server First" flashed across our screens, and the crowd went wild. Vent was an explosion of sound for about 45 seconds, and everyone was riding a high of adrenaline for the rest of the night. It was a beautiful moment.

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Unfortunately, due to the nature of my raiding experience on this Boomkin, I don't have any relevant logs to link, although I'd love to be able to.
I'm at work, so I also don't have a UI snapshot to attach, but if wanted, I'd be glad to whip something up when I get home. I use the basic default WoW UI with Vuhdo, Spellflash, DBM, Omen.... etc. Your go-to raiding addons. Nothing flashy or special.

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That's my story. I know it's a lot of words, so thanks for sticking in there and riding it out. I look forward to hearing from you, and answering any other questions you have for me.

Take care!
~Jacob