Thursday, September 8, 2011

What Hunter Class Leads Look For in Raider Apps

I'm the hunter class leader for my guild.  This was a bigger deal when we were actively raiding 25mans.  Now it's just a level of leader within the guild.  But I do evaluate applications for raiders.  For a ten-man raid, we like to have 15 or more active raiders so we can have a good group on any particular night.  People are absent some nights and you want to keep a balance of tanks, heals, and damage.  So we try to keep a few hunters on the raiding roster -- active or non.  We take posted applications ("apps") for raider positions.

When I look at an app, I want to see it written well.  It isn't a resume, but it is a reflection of the person behind it.  Will the person mix well?

After that, I go through a little checklist.

I look at the gear.  Does it all make sense?  Is it what they should be wearing at that stage of the game?  If they haven't done any FL content, have they done what they could with normal Valor points?  Have they done what they can with rewards from dailies?  AH items?  Rep?  Specifically, do they have the iLevel 365 items?  The two rings.  The boots.  The cloak. How are they progressing on the three tier-12 items?  The bracers?  The neck?

Then I look at gems and enchants.  Do they have the appropriate bonuses for BS, LW, Ench, JC, etc?  Are they using Agility gems unless they get a +20 agility socket bonus?  Do they have the helm and shoulder rep enchants?  Do they have the right meta gem?  Did they get a belt buckle?  The enchants don't need to be the most expensive versions, but really those prices are coming down a lot.

Then I look at talents.  Are they completely nuts, or is it a reasonable approximation of a good spec?

Then if things look okay so far, I look at their reforging.  I load them up in femaledwarf.com and/or askmrrobot.com.  I really like to see their hit really close to 100%.  I want to see mastery sacrificed for crit and haste.

And finally, to know what they know, I look at what boss kills they've done and how many times they've done them.

In a nutshell for the TL;DR crowd:
  • Decent written app.
  • Badge gear.
  • Dailies / Rep gear.
  • Proper gems.
  • Proper enchants and rep enchants.
  • Reasonable talents.
  • Good reforging.
  • Bosses they farmed.

2 comments:

  1. As a raid leader & hunter myself I agree with everything except one. Boss kills.

    I rarely look at bosses killed. While it might help some it doesn't mean a hill of beans. A raid is made up of 10 or 25 people. That person is one person. They could suck and have been carried.

    Awesome article however. I wish some of the apps I have seen would read this. I am sure you have seen some of the same doozies I have.

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  2. I should have mentioned two points regarding boss kills.

    1) The app that inspired this mentioned that they knew and had experience with the first 6 bosses in Firelands. Their character sheet for their hunter (they didn't mention any other characters or apps) had Firelands rep at honored but had never killed any of the bosses in the Firelands raid.

    2) The boss kills section on the bottom of the battle.net character sheet shows you the number of times the character has killed the boss -- not just they did it once somehow. So if someone has killed a boss many times, they probably understand their role and maybe even other roles/mechanics in the fight.

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