Announcements 18 March 2013

"Bring it, Perpetual!" ~ Jin'rokh the Breaker 

 G'day, Perpetualeans.  We've received several new guild recruits these past two weeks since our guild has faction changed and server transferred.  If you are a brand new member to Perpetual, we are glad to have you!  Please refer to the Frequently Asked Questions blog post to help you get started.  I've also created a recent blog post just below this one explaining our guild rules just to make sure that everyone knows what we expect from you and what you should expect from our guild.  Now, on to announcements:

Prepping for Throne of Thunder

Next week will be the last week we do Mogu'shan Vaults to help get the new raid team members' feet wet in normal mode raids.  Starting Thursday the 28th and Sunday the 31st of this month (Game of Thrones premiers, plan accordingly!), we will start Heart of Fear progression and we're slated for the end of April to start doing normal modes for Terrace of Endless Springs and the first boss in Throne of Thunder.  What does this mean?  Start farming your valor!  Help each other through heroics and Isle of Thunder dailies and make sure to join the guildies for the weekly guild LFRs that Mirandah schedules (usually Tuesday evenings around 6:30 server, only I think these next two weeks she will be busy with wedding preparations).  I am trying to get our raid teams geared ASAP so we could start Throne of Thunder.  I propose to you the following gear check goals:

• By Thursday, March 28th, we need everyone to be ilvl 475+ for Heart of Fear.  You must know all boss intel for HoF.
• By Thursday, April 4th we need everyone to be ilvl 485+ for Terrace of Endless springs.  You must know all boss intel for ToES.
• By Thursday, April 18th we need everyone to be ilvl 490+ for the first two bosses in Throne of Thunder. You must know boss intel for at least the first two bosses in ToT.

* I post all raid guides for raids we are currently progressing on this blog.  Simply click on the label "raid guides" on the left-hand side of the guild blog.  All boss guides are posted in descending order with the first boss at the very top and the final boss at the very bottom.

In order to help reach these gear check goals, we will utilize a partner system.  I have randomly selected pairs in both raid teams (some of you will go solo until we fill empty raid team slots).  Effective immediately, you will each set aside some time in-game to help each other through heroics or Isle of Thunder dailies.  Even better, multiple pairs could team up to fulfill these tasks.  Already as guildies we should be grouping up to do these things, but I'd like you to place special emphasis on your partner.  Every time you meet them, ask them how their gear is looking or if they are improving their tanking, healing or deeps skills.  Help them out with whatever professions you have maxed.  We are a team-building guild after all, so this should not be too much to ask for.  I don't expect you two to get together every night of the week; I only ask that you two get together and plan at least one night where you two could get together and help each other out for a few hours.  At least once a week the two of you will meet with an officer in ventrilo (no mic required but it will make it heaps faster) to report your success: any gear upgrades? did you take the time to learn your rotation and achieve higher deeps? etc.  This meet with an officer should only be around two to three minutes, no more than five, so there should be no excuse to miss it.  Keep in mind I am only requiring this out of everyone because I am aiming for our success as a raiding guild.  I admit that team-building is not particularly easy because you are having to work with people of completely different play styles and personalities but I assure you it will be rewarding for the raid teams in the end.  I intentionally paired you up with someone that you're not very familiar with to make this a challenge worthwhile.  Posted below are the raid team partners.

A Team Partners

• Hidytwo (Ken) and Shegrooves (Paul)
• Mirandah (Mira) and Zhulong (Patrick)
• Thelduin (Murph) and Mathores (Tyler)
• Pigbawg (Julian) and Chenstout (Mattie)
• Tides and X

B Team Partners

•  Bluze (JOe) and Playpenz (Bret)
• Habei (Jared) and Krendistus (Dillon)
• Mormogh *or his warrior Ursid when 90* (George) and Troxus (Tyler)
• Frieria (Eric) and Rinzee (Eli)
• X and X

O Team:  You could either group up with each other because your schedule doesn't allow you to be consistent with meets/raids or you also have the option to join any of the A and B Team partnerships––whatever is optimal for your schedule.

* Also, please refer to our updated raid team rosters.

Tides says we've to be team mates...Here's my flipper. Epic penguin buddies!
 

* One more reminder as far as raiding goes: in order to ensure the success of our raids we will be doing weekly dummy trials (five minute deeps trials on dummies in Orgrimmar), random gear checks (especially modifications like enchants, gems, etc.) and random boss intel checks. I have looked our raid team members up on WoW armory and a couple of you have a few PvP gear pieces equipped.  I understand some of you may be using them because of the higher ilvl or you may have been having trouble gettting better PvE gear to drop –– I understand, I at one point have been rocking a pitiful ilvl 450 crafted PvE helmet and it took me over five months to get an upgrade.  But having any number of PvP gear pieces equipped for raids is very bad and I forbid it in our raids.  PvP gear is completely useless for raiding because you are giving up a very beneficial secondary stat for completely obsolete PvP power stat and resilience––these two stats do nothing for you when fighting dragons.  Please place special emphasis on replacing your PvP gear pieces first before the upcoming gear check deadlines if you wish to progress with our guild.  I aim to get as many of us prepped for Throne of Thunder but every one of us needs to make sure we are meeting raid requirements.

Player verse Player

Aside from raiding, we will ease our way into PvP action.  Effective immediately, anyone interested in gearing up for rated battlegrounds and arenas can join together on Saturdays starting at 6:30 PM server to help each other farm honor and gain experience on the battle field. Be sure to sign up through the in-game calendar.  For Sparta!

Jealous Sky Raid Team Rosters 2013

  Posted below are the team rosters.  If you would like to be assigned your own dedicated slot on our progression 10-man team, then speak with an officer or myself.  A brief summary of our raid team requirements:

• ability to commit to our raid times and have consistent attendance
• ability to contribute to our friendly, respectful team player raid atmosphere
• willingness to invest time outside the game to learn boss intel well before raid nights
• absolutely no PvP gear
• modify gear properly through enchants, gems, reforging (we can help if you collect the mats or offer a fair trade or have proven to be a consistent team member)

Notes

• A Team is recruiting x1 tank heals
• B Team is recruiting x2 tanks (unless Knovex chooses to commit on his paladin and bring his ilvl up a few more ilvls, currently ilvl 490)

Jealous Sky Rules

General Rules

• Treat all guildies courteously.
• No foul language in ventrilo or guild chat.
• Treat all non-guildies just as you would your own guildies. Anything that taints our guild name will result in immediate removal from guild.
• Do not share ventrilo information with non-guildies. Only officers are allowed to share with non-guildie pugs on raid nights. 
• No begging for gold.  Also, if you need anything from the Guild Keep, you simply need to ask an officer for it.  Keep in mind, we take note of how often guildies contribute and withdraw from Guild Keep.
• Alts are not allowed into guild until after being in the guild for a month AND committing to either our primary raid teams or our reserve (backup) raid team.

* For our guild loot rules, please refer to our Loot Rules blog post.

Raiding Rules 

• At all times, strive to preserve our friendly, respectful team-building raid environment. If we find you are dampening our fun raiding environment, then you will be removed from guild.
• In order to be a part of our A, B, or O (reserve) Team, you must be a registered member on our guild community website.
• Absolutely no PvP gear accepted on our raid teams.
• You must be of appropriate ilvl for the raids (460+ for Mogu'shan Vaults, 470+ for Heart of Fear, 485+ for Terrace of Endless Springs and 495+ for first four bosses in Throne of Thunderand 505+ beyond that).
• You must keep your gear properly modified at all times (enchants, gems, reforges, etc.) We will try to help you with these modifications where we can but if we are always having to take from the Guild Keep for you or if a guildie is always offering their mats to you then you must be able to contribute raid appropriate mats of other kinds.  Do not cheat your fellow guildies by paying back in the form of anything lower than raid appropriate crafting mats.
• It is absolutely required that you invest the time to learn the raid encounters we are progressing ahead of time. I always post video and text-based guides of current raids we are progressing onto the guild blog.  Anyone not taking their raid intel seriously will be removed from teams.  It is only fair that everyone pull their own weight.  You are not doing your teammates a favor showing up to raid nights without a proper understanding of raid intel.

Raid Team Attendance

If you are a registered raid team member, we are very strict with attendance.  We expect everyone to sign up for their raid teams by the midnight prior to each raid night.  This gives the officers ample time to pug beforehand if we know we will be missing slots.  If you are not consistent with signups, then you will be removed from a dedicated slot on our team and put on the reserve team (O Team, meaning you can only raid when the team is missing slots on any given raid night).  Also, we adhere to a three-strike policy:  If you fail three times to: a) notify an officer three days in advance (don't wait till last minute or even till after, however, emergencies are exempt) that you will not be able make your raid night, b) sign up for raid night before the midnight deadline, c) or if you do a no-show or leave before scheduled end raid time, then you forfeit your dedicated slot on our team and will be removed from guild.  We understand that real life obligations always come first, and we don't mind you missing raid nights if you give prior notice, but if your absences get to be excessive, then you need to consider being on O Team instead to give other guildies who have the time to be able to have their own designated slot.

A, B, C & O Team Requirements Affidavit

By signing up for any of the above teams, you give consent to the following:

• I have read the Jealous Sky Raiding Requirements blog post and I meet ALL requirements.
• I will register as a member on Jealous Sky's community website.
• I will make an effort to keep my gear updated (proper gems, enchantments and modifications).
• If I am not meeting the requirements on a given raid night (i.e. PvP gear or missing enchants, gems or other modifications) then I will understand when I am asked to opt out of a raid so that someone better prepared for the raid can join.
• I will check the guild community website, guild blog, guild calendar, and read the guild message of the day (GMotD) regularly to keep myself informed and up to date.
• I will inform myself of all boss encounters before raid night and understand that if I don't I may be asked to leave and give my slot to someone that took the time to inform themselves on the fights.
• I will take part in and preserve a friendly, chill, fun and respectful raid environment that fosters camaraderie and encourages team-building.
• I will regularly sign up for my scheduled raid night even if I'm already entitled to a designated slot, otherwise my raid team leader will give my slot to someone from the O Team for that night.
• If I am an O Team member, I will sign up for raid nights that I would like to join on, and even though I sign up as "Accepted",  I am not guaranteed a slot that particular raid night.
• Even if I am assigned to A, B or C Team, my slot for any given raid night may be given temporarily to someone from O Team if I do not meet gear requirements for the raid difficulty attempted that night or if I did not inform myself well on all boss encounters scheduled for that night. 
• In order to be on either A, B or C Teams, I am committing to the raid schedule for the team I choose to be placed in.

Storming Kil'jaeden

For a while now, many of you who frequent our guild ventrilo know by now that I have been considering transferring Perpetual over to Horde side.  The only thing holding me back was our two raid teams and being concerned with letting them down.  However, the consistent absences every raid night and the constant dropping of raid teams and wanting back in has proved a challenge to our progression.  Always having to pug every raid night or having to combine both raid teams has been prevalent for over two months now.  When we got the guild together one night a couple months ago the whole point of weeding out the inconsistent raiders was to prevent these issues and focus on progression.  The two raid progression raid teams we created were supposed to be a solution yet we're facing the same issues again.

I have decided to bring Perpetual over to Horde side on Kil'jaeden server.  It is a Pacific time player versus player server (58 Horde to 42 Alliance ratio) and is ranked 22 in server raid progression according to guildox.com.  I figured a change of scenery and better raiding racials would be a nice move in getting over our raid team slump.  As I mentioned, the only thing holding me back was letting people down in the raid teams, but these last two months I am not convinced that everyone on our raid teams has been honoring their commitments.  By being consistently absent you are forcing your team to spend time pugging with people who's play styles we aren't accustomed to, and this has been happening every raid night for both raid teams this past two months.  I don't know what else to do; I've already told everyone repeatedly what was to be expected.

 Getting Help with Character Tranfers

I understand that having to transfer a character over will be quite expensive ($55 for both server transfer and faction change to Horde), so I and a couple of the officers have volunteered to help fund at least one character transfer per person (primarily through Paypal).  This assistance is available to both officers and non-officers alike, so long as you are someone that has been consistent with raids or with the guild.  You will have to ask yourself if you really have been a consistent raider with us.  Also, if you are one of the guildies who will be needing assistance in transferring your character over, we will keep it strictly private –– we will not tell anyone who we help pay transfers for.  If you think you could pay for half of your transfer but would like a bit of help paying for the other half, we could do that as well through Paypal.  For instance, you could pay for the server transfer and one of us could help by funding the faction change, that works as well.

Should you decide to follow us over to Kil'jaeden, here are some tips to consider:

• The total cost (for a server transfer and a faction change) is $55 per character. 
• If you'd like, it would be cheaper to move a character that you already have as Horde.
• Be sure if to bring everything you want/need such as heirloom gear or trade materials to get your gold earning started on the new server by mailing them to the character you wish to bring to Kil'jaeden.
• Make sure you do the guild transfer option when signed into your Battlenet account that way when you transfer to Kil'jaeden you keep your Exalted status with Perpetual.
• Only 50K gold could be transferred per level 90 character.
• Keep in mind what professions you will be bringing over. So far we don't have any maxed inscriptionists, skinners, leather workers, enchanters or engineers.

We hope to see you there.  Should you have any questions, feel free to ask any of the officers or by contacting me through email, the guild community website or ventrilo.

Offer me your sword and spells, and I shall bring you victory.  Offer your companionship, and I shall give you loyalty.  Offer your service, and together we shall gain honour. We are Perpetual.

Respectfully,
Chris, Mira and Tides


Here is a list of Perpetualeans that have transferred so far:

• Tidesroyale
• Shane
• Mattie
• Murph
• Ken
• Mira 
• Grooves
• JOe 
• Julian