My Story in Azeroth
I created my first character back in late 2008 during Wrath of the Lich King. Like most people who ended up sticking around for more than a decade, I didn’t plan on making World of Warcraft a core hobby. I started out as a clueless DPS running through low-level dungeons, getting lost in Blackrock Depths, and wiping on basic dungeon mechanics.
Everything changed the moment I picked up a shield and started tanking. I realized that what I enjoyed most wasn’t topping the damage meter, but controlling the pacing of an instance, setting up pulls, and keeping the group moving forward cleanly. Over the years, I’ve played through nearly every phase of the game: coordinating messy forty-player raids, grinding challenge modes in Mists of Pandaria, pushing into cutting-edge Mythic raiding, and spending thousands of hours in the Mythic+ keystone system.
These days, I primarily focus on tanking high keystones with a consistent group of friends and clearing Heroic and early Mythic raid bosses every season. I enjoy the puzzle of modern PvE: how five individual players can take a chaotic trash pack with three deadly casters, position them around a corner, chain their kicks, and turn a near-wipe into a clean timed pull.
Why I Built Natural Selection
The idea for natural-selection.org came out of pure frustration with the state of modern gaming guides. Whenever a new season or patch launched, I found myself looking for simple, actionable information: what is a safe route for this dungeon, what do we actually need to kick on this pull, and what talents make sense for live play rather than a static five-minute Patchwerk simulation.
Instead, I usually found two extremes:
- Forty-minute YouTube videos where thirty minutes were spent reading tooltips and asking for subscriptions.
- Huge database sites plastered with autoplaying video ads, bloated filler paragraphs, and route strings copied directly from tournament players that fall apart the second an average group tries them.
I wanted a clean, uncluttered place where I could write down notes that actually work on live servers. Natural Selection is my personal notebook and strategy hub. If I post an MDT pull route, it is because my group has run it multiple times, timed it, and made sure the percentages hit one hundred percent without awkward backtracking. If I review a talent build or balance hotfix, it comes directly from testing on live characters or the PTR, not from theoretical spreadsheets.
How I Approach Content and Guides
I don’t claim to be a world-first raider or an esports champion, and I don’t write for that level of play. The guides and notes on this blog are aimed at dedicated players who want to clear their weekly vaults, earn Keystone Master or Hero titles, and push their characters as far as possible without burning out.
Whenever I write a breakdown for this site, I follow a few personal rules:
Respect your time: I keep the explanations short and structured. You should be able to glance at a guide during a bio break, understand what to do on the next boss, and get right back to playing.
The tank perspective matters: A route that looks great on paper is useless if the tank has no room to kite or if casters refuse to group up. I prioritize clean line-of-sight spots and manageable pull sizes.
Interrupts over raw DPS: Most depleted keys aren’t caused by low damage numbers; they happen because a single cast went off and one-shot the healer. My notes always highlight which specific casts need a hard kick versus which ones can be ignored.
