I find The Shadowlands to be quite good for frequency of PUGs. The quality can be hit or miss, as with any PUG, but there are plenty of options advertised in Fleet throughout the entire week.

I even managed to down The Dreadful Entity secret boss in TFB in a PUG, so the options are there.

Pick Up Groups are always hit-or-miss because you get a random grouping of personalities from people wanting to see the story of a flash point for the first time (so they PUG rather than forcing guildies to wait) to people who are interested in rushing through the flash-point and skipping every possible trash pull and yelling "spacebar!" because they've still got 6 more characters they are planning to run flash-points on today.

I can't speak for many servers, but from having played a few, I would say PVP servers have the worst community. Everyone thinks they are an "expert" and are quick to "help" you by pointing out when you "backpeddle" in a flashpoint... as if that matters at all. RP servers tend to have a slightly more mature community. Teenagers are much less likely to click "roleplay" for server choice.

I think the community was probably nicest on the european RP server. At the hours I played, the community was smaller so you would run into the same people leveling and it was easy to make friends. But there were far more language barriers and smack-talk about anyone who doesn't speak your language.

That's my thoughts at least.

Thanks for the replies. I do my full-time raiding in WoW (and by full time, I mean only two days, that's all I have time for), but I just resubbed to mostly tool around here and there since I always did like this game even though it has so many shortcomings.

I'd probably have to find a guild at some point, but pugging is probably my best option for now. As a healer I'm not concerned about finding groups, and my progression raider OCD for gear, minmaxing, etc., never went away from back when I was raiding more often, so I'm sure I will perform just fine in groups. I just want to know where teh best chance of me finding groups (successful ones, preferably) would be - server and faction.

My other question involves catching up gearwise. I logged in yesterday to find my Sage healer in what seems to be Partisan PvP gear mostly. I unsubbed back in May. What would be appropriate for me to do now, 5 months later, in order to catch up in gear so that I can be invited to groups, and what groups should I be looking to be invited to at my level in order to gear up further. Since I mostly did PvP before, I really never followed the PvE gear progression paths a whole lot.

Your help is appreciated.

I can only really speak to Jedi Covenant where I play now, but for PvE endgame raiding at least the overall quality is relatively low. As of this writing there are only 4 or 5 guilds that have cleared HM DF/DP and only 2 guilds that have totally cleared NiM TFB/S&V.

The Imp side is the worst, with <No Name Guild> being 10/10 HM and 11/12 NiM and being the furthest progressed in the faction. <Ascension> and <Republic Gentleman> on the pub side both have the content cleared I believe.

I don't expect you to be pugging nightmare content much, but the upper bounds of the talent ought to indicate what you can expect at mid levels. Most flashpoint pugs are fine, 55 group finder ops are usually not successful in my experience. There are lots of pug runs (80% guildies) that farm SM TFB/S&V pretty regularly without trouble.

It boils down to what tier of content you're wanting to do. As always with pugs, your mileage will vary.

My other question involves catching up gearwise. I logged in yesterday to find my Sage healer in what seems to be Partisan PvP gear mostly. I unsubbed back in May. What would be appropriate for me to do now, 5 months later, in order to catch up in gear so that I can be invited to groups, and what groups should I be looking to be invited to at my level in order to gear up further. Since I mostly did PvP before, I really never followed the PvE gear progression paths a whole lot.

Skill is always > gear, but many HM ops pug groups especially may not be comfortable with PvP gear in PvE. I would recommend blasting through SM ops pugs and rolling need on all the Arkanian gear. Or if you find a cool casual guild with HM TFB/S&V on farm, you may be able to run with them for Underworld gear. In the mean time, save up your ultimate comms for Oriconian and replace as you can. Once you're in a pretty good mix of Underworld+, you should be ready for HM dread ops.

Don't waste your time with the dailies for basic comms, I wouldn't replace Partisan with anything less than Arkanian. If you do the PvE one-time quests for TFB, S&V, etc. you can get mats that will allow you to get pieces crafted. I would probably recommend getting relics crafted.

tl;dr: SM TFB / S&V / DF / DP - then HM TFB / S&V - then HM DF / DP

The Harbinger hands down.

People run 16-man pugs ONLY. Good luck trying to set an 8-man PUG. Everyone wants to do 16-man for the comms. (Story mode)

For hard mode i dont see that many 16-man pug groups. When i do want to pug a HM op, i ask for their full clear achievement and invite them if they've done a full clear. So far i'd say my pugs clear to the end of the boss 90% of the time which is nice. I mostly PUG/play in Harbinger Pub side. Imp side has more players and from experience, setting up 16-man story mode pugs there is a lot faster.