World of Jumpcraft indeed ;)

Howdy guys, this post was written in response to a whisper i got taunting me that i cannot jump as well as the guys on the world of jumpcraft . Now don't take this the wrong way, I'm not saying I'm BETTER than those guys, they are excellent at what they do, but i would like to think i can do everything they can, pretty much as good as they can.

Jumpcrafting is all about patience and practise, nothing more, there are no special skills, no sneaky hidden tricks to it - so here is a collection of some of my more favourite screenshots (bundled with a few descriptions)

Lets start with some of the older, and more obvious ones, places you have probably either seen first hand, or in some commonly seen screenshots.


This is the very top of Ironforge mountain, surprisingly enough there is an alliance patrol that goes all the way up here, but still, its a nice place to sight see once in a while. (Sexy Tier 1 :D )



This is the top of the valley of honor, i love sitting up here when i just feel like /gchatting, or just chilling out, plus its an easy one to get to.


Again, pretty bog-standard, Top of Orgrimmar wall. /yawn, i know, better ones are coming.


i actually don't see this one very much, but refuse to believe that people haven't done it before, top of Northshire Abbey.


The Greymane Wall, from the TOP of Graymane wall i may add. for those of you who don't know, open your maps, go to Silverpine forest, look in the very south, that landmass that you can't get to? thats Greymane, you cant get to it thanks to this rather big wall :P


this isn't actually one of my favourite screenshots, but this is quel'thalas, pre-tbc, I'm not sure if this dock Evan still exists.


Feralas, more specifically DM, outside, underneath, nothing more to explain really.

OKAY OKAY

i know these are the fairly bog standard jump screenshots. but here is something a little bit more special. I was saving these screenshots for a rainy day, as they are the ones i was more than a little bit proud of.


I give you, Nefarion's window. from outside the instance.

This one took me a LONG time to get, and i do mean a LONG time, much time, frustration, falling and death. But once i was here, i figured, why stop ? so i logged for that day at the top of Nefarion's window, and started again the next morning.

More than a little time later, we had....

BLACKROCK MOUNTAIN

Past the clouds, past what anyone on my server had ever done, past my draw distance to the ground (pretty facking far) This is the highest point in Azeroth, there is no way to get higher without flying, and for that you need to be a GM.

Don't believe me? This could be any old mountain? lets look down shall we?


Look carefully, can you see the start of the flow of larva? the one you see falling all the way down BRM, that's right, i was there, i has the screenshots, it did happen :)

So, can nobody else log on Eonar just to wind me up? im not a fake. I CAN do this shit.

(This post was in no way meant to embarrass, show up or put down the guys from the world of Jumpcraft videos, they are awesome, they have done stuff i haven't dreamed off, truly epic guys, and i one day i hope to do a jump video with them)

Jumping on the bandwagon

Hurray!!!

Finnally the new design is working, and i have to say, im rather proud of how it has turned out- it will probably need a new header, one that fits the top of the page properly but i want your comments / feedback, what do you like or dislike?, is there anything that doesnt work in your browser? Any comments are greatly apprechiated either by email or by comments.

So! onto the real point of the post. Jumping onboard the Patch 2.4 bandwagon that so many bloggers have.

For those azerothians who have been living under a rock for the past month and a bit Patch 2.4 is nearly upon us, The PTR is up and bosses are already being killed at an alarming rate.

Now the patch notes have changed about 7 or 8 times since they were released with bits being added and taken away, so i figure ill show you the bigger points (in my opninion), the ones that matter to me the most, and maybe give some opinions here and there.

the full patch notes can be found Here

Lets start off with a biggie

The Sunwell Isle

• The Sunwell Isle is now available for play. This area includes a new quest hub and 5-player and 25-player instances. Join the Shattered Sun Offensive in shutting down Kael’thas’ nefarious operations. This new force is comprised by both the Aldor and Scryers and is led by the Naaru. Players will take part in claiming Sun’s Reach and setting up a larger base of operation to stop Kael’thas and the Legion.

Hurray! commonly known as the last major instance of the burning crusade exspantion pack, with 2.4 i imagine we will start to see a torrent of information being to flow about Wrath of the lich king, and the big guilds get something new to brag about, since Illidan is getting a little old now :)

• Resilience: Now reduces the magnitude of mana draining effects by the same amount that it reduces critical strike damage. The Tooltip has been revised to reflect this.

Awesome! an exellent and welcome change to fixing arena that doesnt affect pve, Good Job Blizz /pat, lets continue...

Ooooooh Shiiiiit

We interupt this news broadcast to give some BREAKING NEWS
England just felt an EARTHQUAKE, i felt it as i was sat here writing this, That was ace :D, ive never felt one before, but yeah that was great :D

anyways...errr. yes, ive lost my train of thought now, this post might have to wait till the morning folks

Quincey - signing off to see if there is any damage

Something funny :)

This thread has sprung up on my Guild's forums, thought i would share

Before and after screenshots

here's my contribution

BEFORE AFTER

Damage meters are killing my guild.

First off, Shhhhhh, I'm posting this post from my college computer, I’m bored and bogging is a good distraction from work, but I've had this planned for sometime, something that is annoying me greatly.

Damage meters, I used to love them, in fact I still do, they are an excellent source of information for a dps class to know if he is getting the most out of his character, and since I’m usually in the top 3 you might think that I would absolutely love them. However. (This has been building up for a while, can you feel the tension?)People and aggro, more specifically their aggro control, people seem to see the damage meters as a race rather than a meter and seem to pay more attention to them rather than omen and KTM or whatever threat meter your guild happens to prefer. (If anyone mentions the Morogrim video, ill kill ya, how’s that for dps :P). But I don’t blame this purely on the damage meters, oh no, as the horde I have noticed a distinct lack of regard for aggro since we gained the blessing of salvation. We now seem to be dependent on this buff, without it we have about as much control as an enraged cleft hoof, myself included (see Morogrim video), This is something we as the horde need to sort out, we used to be so good at controlling our aggro pre-tbc, how much can possibly have changed?

That’s not the end though.

This again is something I'm guilty of, but marking raid skill, or personal progression on the damage meters alone is possibly the most stupid thing I have ever heard, and yet I often catch myself doing it, this is the main reason that spamming the damage meters has been banned in PL raids. it causes too much in house competition, witch again leads to aggro ( I'm not mentioning any names here *coughobliviocough* and why once I have written this post I'm going to suggest to our raid leader that we ban having them showing mid boss fights at all.

The positives, Lets face it, damage and raid meters were not made for us, the general raiding public, they were created for guild leaders to gauge how each member is progressing and to help weed out and help anybody who is slacking in a particular role, and in this aspect they do their job amazingly, wow web stats gives comprehensive reports that allows raid leaders to know exactly what everyone was doing the whole raid, helping spot those undeserving, unworthy or in need of help members.

*****EDIT******

The following is a rather excellent post, by one of my guildies (<3 you adagar :D), its relevant, so i figure ill post it up :D

"Since i've noticed this weird trend lately on raids, where people pull aggro and wear it like a badge of badass, i thought i'd put in a note about aggro. If you're perfectly aware of how aggro works, and how to manage yours, read this post anyways, if nothing else just to agree / disagree with something i write.

Kenco did extensive research on threat, and although the research is old, it is still very much valid:

http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Kencos_Research

If you can't be bothered to read it, i'll sum up the most important stuff.

When someone (a tank, preferably) has aggro, it takes more than just passing him on the amount of threat to actually get aggro yourself. You must pass him by a certain amount.
- For melee distance, you must pass 110% of the tank's aggro
- For out-of-melee distance, you must pass 130% of the tank's aggro

A common misconception is that if you use ranged attacks, the 130% applies to you no matter what. It doesn't. What matters is your distance relative to the the mob you're attacking. The important thing to note here is:

If the mob moves, so does the melee range of the mob.

This can cause horrible problems if people are pushing the dps, which in some
cases are necessary to get a mob down.

Let's say that all the ranged are around 120%, and then suddenly Mr. Badass the ranged dpser gains aggro. Now, if Mr. Badass is not very fast at responding with whatever aggro reducing abilities he has available or very very quickly move towards the tank, the mob is coming for him... and it's taking it's melee range with it. If the mob has a large hitbox, it also has a large melee range, and if the casters stand together, you now have Mr. Badass standing in a group where everyone has 120% aggro, and they're all within melee range... so they're above 110% and they are going to die. Fast. Sure the tank can taunt, and the other dpsers can use their aggro reducing abilities if they have any, but still.

It's up for debate what to do in the situation where mob gets to the ranged group and starts oneshotting people. However, it should never come to this, not even on trash mobs.

To sum it up:
- Be mindful of your threat (this should be a given) - Be mindful of your distance to the mob (this apparently is not a given) - Remember that the size of the hitbox, and subsequently the melee range, can be different from mob to mob
- If you take aggro from the tank on a straightforward mob (like VR for example, or the bog thingies in SSC), you might have high dps, but you're still a very poor raid member"
Adagar - on the Phoenix Legion forums

Morogrim Downed

To continue on this nice little streak we seem to have got going, Pheonix Legion down Morogrim Tidewalker, bringing our totals to

5/6 SSC
3/4 TK

thats right, vashj and Kael await us, this is going to be one hell of a fight :D

So this week i decided to test just how good my new spanking computer was and recorded all the attempts on the new boss morogrim, i recorded attempts ALL night, it was sods law that made the attempt that we kill him on the ONLY attempt that i pulled agro and died.

Ah well, enjoy

A Multi-Headed Post, A Hydra

Hey guys, first off apologies for not posting in damn near a week, but as i shall explain there has been shit happening thathas barely given me enough time to play, never mind think about(yeah right-ed) Plan and produce a blog post.

However rest assured that we are back into the swing of things, I have a weeks worth of thoughts i am anxious to get written down so let me kick off this new spree of posts with some good news!

My SPANKING computer is back with me 19 days without it, forced to survive on a crummy laptop, and boom here it is, Sparkling in its glory as good as it ever was, but not only that, its BETTER.

I'll Explain. THe graphics card that was in my computer previously was, to put a fine word to it, buggered. SO we have replaced it with a Geforce 8800 GtX, or for the computer illiterate, a BIG SHINY ONE. WoW looks good again, Crysis looks amasing. all in all, VERY pleased, the graphics on crysis alone were (almost) worth the 19 days without machine.

So with a Sparkling new computer i turned my attentions to getting myself sorted and back into the internet routine, so i checked my emails for the blog to find myself inundated with litterally 2 emails asking who i was, what my character looked like and what realm i play on. Now this disturbed me slightly for 2 reasons.

1, it might mean i have stalkers leveling on the alliance with the sole purpose of killing me.

2. becuase i have told everyone who and what i play several times in the last 2 months of blogging, wich makes me wonder what kind of retard i am actually attracting to my articles.

But for the retards among you, i play a character called QUINCEY , on the realm EONAR (eu), feel free to come and talk to me, i am always pleasantly suprised, and usually more than willing to talk to anyone with constructive critism for my blog, i take it well honestly. Just please be considerate with it, for example spamming me in the middle of arena, or Serpent Shrine will probably not yield the best results and may in extreme cases lead to me ignoring you completely!

One of the conversations i have had becuase of my blog came from a young rogue, he was rolled on Magtheridon EU (can't remeber your name, sorry dude whisper me again i'lll credit you honest) he was asking what kind of stats a rogue should be aiming for to move out of karazhan and into big boy raiding. Now i have never pretended to be an expert on all that is rogue, i dont do theory crafting and for damn sure number aint my strong point (thats numbers, AND spelling do i have a strong point?) so all i can do for you mr-ye-who-cannot-be-named is show you the stats that I currently have as a fairly average SSC rogue.

Now this is fully raid buffed but here are the stats i had in SSC last night

Hmmmmm Heartless.

(quite proud of my rogue, so hurtfull comments down to a minimum PLEASE)

Now probably the 2 most important factors to bare in mind are you Attack power, and your hit rating, since the rogue in question is just comming out of Karazhan haste really isnt an issue since there isnt that much knocking around.

a good ammount of hit to aim for comming out of karazhan would be around 220 - 230 ish, the more the better of course, dont ever stop collecting hit untill you hit 304, but be sure to balance it out with your other stats too, particully Attack power

Now attack power can vary, not just on gear, but on your specc too, never underestimate the 10% extra attack power granted by 5/5 deadliness in the subtely tree, but as a rough, and i do mean a rough guide a rogue shoul look at a minimum of around 1300-1400 attack power to head into serpent shrine (unbuffed) this should warrent at LEAST 2k attack power buffed, again the more the better, but in a delecate balance with your HIT rating, they should scale up together as best as you can possibably manage. This leaves us with the wonder stat....

Haste- haste is a wonder stat, but only in large quantities, small amounts will fruit you not enough in the way of returns while large amounts are the single best stats for your dps. However comming out of karazhan there really isnt that much available to you. You should, however, by this time be running heroics fairly regularly (preferably with your guildies, a good guild willl never make you PuG), combine this with karazhan and you have yourself a reasonable amount of Badges of Justice comming in,giving us Badge gear and the gear from ZA DOES have HASTE, our lovely wonder stat, and in reasonable amounts too, but you have to watch your self with this gear, make sure the rest of your gear is well gemmed and enchanted since this gear lacks a lot on the hit rating front. Not much good being able to hit fast if your hitting thin air. Makes sense. I guess.

I hope that answers your query Mystery Rogue, and gives you some food for thought, make sure to contact me, or any of you, if you have a question for me, im contactable through my email address, Phoenixquincey@gmail.com, or in game of course.

Right, what else did i want to talk about, Oh yes, THAT

We have had some new arrivals into the hell pit stop, Phoenix Legion, Zenzeurad Avantis and Gnawed, all melee, and therefore under my durisdiction Muwhahahaa *cough* ahahaah. but in all seriousness, all 3 have demonstrated fairly good skills as raiders and all 3 have excellent attitudes, unless something drastic happens i can't see why all 3 of won't pass thier trials with flying colours and with a little guidance and gear become top notch Phoenix Legion members.

In other news..
As some of the readers will be able to tell you, my brother has been away for the better part of a year, but i am pleased to annouce that my brother has landed back in the UK saftley, a whole 3 days before my parent expected. yes he gave them quite a shock ;). im glad to see him back safe and sound, but ye gods he hasnt stopped talking since he got back, i can hardly get a word in edgeways!, im joking, Glad to see you back Ben.

and finnally
Entrecard. as some of the more observant of my readers may have noticed we ahve a new widget on the site, the infamous Entrecard Widget.
For those of you who don't understand, or have never heard about entrecard let me explain, entrecard is a form of free advertising for blogs. people exhange adverts on other blog for entrecard credits, allowing us to carefully select who we want to advertise with, and who gets to advertise on our blog. for all of you who dont have a blog then this will probably not make much differnce, i have tried to place it out of the way, while making it easy to see at the same time, not an easy feat. if you want to learn more about this i suggest you head on over to entrecard.com and check it out.

Phew, glad to get all that off my chest :D
See you later for more mad, badly spelled ramblings at a later date

-Quin.

Another day another kill.

Fathom Lord Karathress, destroyed by the might of the legion.....not the burning legion but...




Downed Leo last night, Karathress tonight, we are on a roll, its a shame it resets tonight to be honest, we might have had a shot at morogrim with another night.

Leo Down

My guild Phoenix Legion killed Leo in SSC tonight

Woooooooooo

this high will carry me through till tomorrow I'm sure :)


In other news - No computer yet. Quincey be getting mad.

Horde attack the middle east

One of the many, many blogs that i read, LagOrama , has shown me one of the funniest stories i have read in a long time, so i urge you all to check out his post HERE

For the lazy among you i'll just give you the jist of the article.

Basicly last week a chinese television network, CCTV 7 broadcast images to explain what was happening with the war on iraq.

They showed this map, to help the people in china understand EXACTLY what is going on



Now as many of you have probably noticed, this isn't exactly how the middle east looks, but there is something familiar about it.

Let me explain



this is a post of Arathi basin. yup, you got it, the Chinese seem to believe that the HORDE are attacking the middle east :P

Who you calling "Elder" fool

Yaaaaaaay

Thats right you probably have guessed it! Quincey has been promoted to the grand spanking new rank of ELDER, this new rank comes with a bunch of new responsibility, and a bunch of privileges.

I received a letter from Creamcheese via the in game, outlining the new stuff that is now available to us, including access to the new board on the forums (check out Phoenix Legion's website HERE ).

After reading the new board i learned that the most important role of the elders seems to be the "mentoring" program, this mostly involves the (i want to say taking care of, but that sounds a bit condescending) look after the new members, making sure they understand the guild's rules and regulations, the standards that we expect and basics of any instance we happen to be raiding.


So all in all Quincey is-a-happy rogue at the moment, and ish itching to prove his worth to to his most favorite of guilds :)

Creamcheese on the warpath

First off let me tell you, there is nothing quite like a 7ft tall angry bull on the warpath, i tried to find a suitable picture, but there really isn't anything that Evan remotely pictures it so i went for this instead.

So anyway heres the story. Tonight was going to be our return trip into Tempest Keep, we have had recent success in there and many of us regular raiders were looking forward to Nuking (nuking, the picture, get it?) Down 3 bosses and having another look at the Oh-so-shiny one Kael.

But alas, yet again, too few sign ups, too few people Evan showing up for the raid has meant that we had to cancel, AGAIN. The 4th time in the weeks. Well i thought i was a sad panda about this, but apparently where i was sad Creamcheese is actually starting to get just a fair bit annoyed. I can honestly say in my 2 years in Phoenix Legion I've never once seen him lose his rag with people. ever. There ain't many guild leaders who can have that said about them i assure you.

The Plan
So now everyone in guild has received an in game mail, outlining just HOW pissed he is, what he intends to do about and how long we *ahem* they have to sort their attitudes. Ours is a RAIDING guild, therefore, to be a member you have to...wait for it....RAID,Dun dun duuuuuun.

And no. I'm not going to post the letter here. It's kinda private to PL members.

In other news.

The Elder rank promotions are going to happen this weekend. I crossing my fingers, but secretly i think my hopes have been tarnished by not being able to raid these last 2 weeks. Stupid computer breaking.

The new Elder rank comes with brand spanking new responsibilities ( i tried and failed to spell that about 14 times).

1. -Elders are expected to maintain a high raid attendance. Although this will vary in usual PL style ( ) a ball-park figure of 75% is a good guide. This includes raids that were signed but oversubscribed, of course.
2. -Elders are held to a high standard in general player relations - you are standard bearers for the guild. Do not bring the guild into disrepute.
3. -Elders are assigned to new members as mentors and must ensure new members settle in and learn all they need to know to be productive members, and to not feel lost or confused.
4. -Elders are also to be active with regards to encouraging guild sign-ups and publicising recruitment.
5. -Finally, Elders are encouraged to assist less experienced players in improving their own personal WoW skills and help keep Officers appraised of any issues that need dealing with (social or raid-related).

and of course there are the benefits that the rank gives

1. -Elders have their own board on these forums. Please note that this board is primarily for issues relating to the Elders extra responsibilities.
2. -Elders have higher withdrawal limits for the guild tab (although since people put in more than they take out... )
   
3. -Elders may edit the GMotD (again, part of the extra responsibilities involve this).
   
4. -Elders get a bonus when it comes to looting (see below).
   
5. -Finally, we aim to allow Elders a small daily allowance from the Guild Bank towards repairs. However, don't take that for granted as we need to ensure such fund are sustainable.

2.4 Changes to Alterac Valley.

First off, there is a little bit of homework for you before you read this post.

You must first read This Post
And then you must read This Post

otherwise the full force of this probably wont hit you like it should, if that doesn't bother you then read on good sir.

After reading that and hearing there are changes en-route for AV, as a Hordie my ears pricked up, was this the fix that was so obviously needed? is this the re balance that could mean it was worth spending time in AV again? My hopes were raised, i was expecting something really epic to prove to me that my favorite company Blizz has not let me down.

I'm sure you can see where this is going, I've been wrong before, I'll probably be wrong again, in fact the list of things I've been wrong about is long and distinguished (that computer will run FINE without that fan).

Let me introduce you to the REAL changes to AV coming in content patch 2.4

"Alterac Valley will see a few very significant improvements in the next patch and we wanted to share the details of what we have planned.

The first change will be to move the Horde's starting tunnel back to a more equal distance from the first objectives, which will help evenly distance the starting points for each side across the terrain when the battle commences.

In addition, the General and Warmasters for each faction will receive a stacking buff from each other that boosts their health and damage. The more of them that are still in the battleground, the more dangerous they will all be. This will put a greater focus on destroying (and defending!) the towers that remove the Warmasters as players work toward defeating the appropriate General and conquering the land.

Also Balinda Stonehearth has been studying her spellbooks to become a more challenging opponent to the Horde and will do more damage with her spells. The additional health we recently added to Balinda and General Vanndar Stormpike will no longer be needed with these improvements and will be changed back to their previous amounts with the patch.

With these improvements teamwork and strategy will be more important than ever from beginning to end as the Alliance and Horde battle for victory in Alterac Valley. We'll see you on the battlefield."

This hit me like a ton of bricks.



Well, they certainly wont see me on THAT battlefield, i can assure you.

Lets follow logic here,

first AV- long not great for honor, but despite everything. good fun with a roughly equal win loss ratio. Changed.

AV Mark II- Shorter, Awesome for honor win or lose, still the same win ratio-ish. They introduce the weapons to be bought with honor points instead of ranks, suddenly awesome pvp gear is about the grind, QQ starts and the term "honor per hour" is invented. Due to a build up of alliance QQ, this is also CHANGED

AV, patch 2.3 - The alliance are buffed without valid reason in AV, this changes the win loss ratio by a significant amount in the alliances favor, i write my blog post about Arathi Basin and vow not to re enter AV until it is fixed. Horde are in desperate need of a CHANGE and so it was CHANGED

In the alliances favor again, this time they didn't even bother really giving excuses, they might as well have said "owned horde" on the forums and laughed about it, because somebody at Blizz HQ is having a real good giggle over this.

So now we come to AV Patch 2.4 - Non existant. i can only hope. I can only hope that my fellow hordes join me in Arathi Basin, leave pit of human error and stupidity well behind, join a balanced / mirrored map that favors nobody at all. Where we can win simply for being better.

-Quin

How to Waste Time in raids - Part 3

This is a collaborative post with my friend, guildy and fellow blogger Cryon check out his blog Here, Here and Here .

so far our list includes
The Poker Mod
Awesome Guild Chat

and tonight we have for you

How to waste time in raids - number 8

AFK

Now we had to put this one kinda high up the rankings since it has to be done with expertise and flash in order to perform it right.

All raiders know that a misplaced or mistimed AFK can cost a raid valuable minutes BUT i go afk on my raids all the time and they don't even know about it :P What can i say, after raiding for 2 years with the same people i can predict with reasonable success how long they take from say, a wipe, or Boss tatics or Sorting loot. I often take my leave of a raid for several minutes at a time. Grabbing drinks, watching a little TV hell evan doing a quick boss on the Playstation . All without the raid ever knowing i was missing, its a dying art form :)

My Brothers birthday

On a quick side note, its my brothers birthday toda...oh wait crap its after midnight damn missed it >.<

My brother is in Austrailia i can blame missing it on the time difference or something, no big deal, in related news, he comes back in 13 ish days. WIN i cant wait :)

Leo the blind

4% so close, arrrrgh.

Let me start from the beginning

Hi! before you ask no, I haven’t yet got my computer back, I decided to log onto wow on my laptop, just to have a chat with my guild and found my self ninja invited to join a SSC raid, apparently they needed a devilishly handsome undead rotting corpse like myself for some extra Dee Pee Ess.

Now I so wasn’t prepared for this raid. First off my good soon-to-be-dead friend Tikita decided to spend all spare gold on repseccing me an exact copy of Ming’s build. Since Ming is one of the best arena rogues you can imagine he isn’t exactly specked for pve raiding, and I lacked to funds to correct this. (Also on a side note Tikita has used all my flash powder too, I so need a mod that reminds me to buy some every time I log on).

The trash didn't go smooth, by any stretch of the imagination, multiple wipes due to bad pulls, falling in the water and afks meant slow clearing to Leo himself however...

LEO WENT AWESOME

14% first tries, 9% the second, 7% 3rd try and 4% on the fourth. On our first night HOW FREAKIN' AWESOME IS THAT.

Nerf phoenix legion just of recent, don’t know what has been holding you back all this time but i'm so glad your back living up to old standards again. The Gold standard of boss nuking.

Computer update

QQ levels dissapating, Alert status dropping
*yellow alert*

Quincey is a little bit happier, took my computer to the shop today, the guy there came up with the same guessed problem as some of my friends did.

It looks like I'm computer-less for at least 4 or more days while he does all his little tests, but despite this I'm happy that an end is now in sight.
,