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I have no problems with PUGs. Do people just like to exaggerate about them?


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Maybe 1 in 20 PUGs will I come across someone I don't want to group with again, and it's always because they had an attitude problem or did something like queue up as tank when they are DPS spec/geared. Most runs are smooth, and disbanding because we can't beat a boss is exceptionally rare.

 

Yet I frequently hear people say they've sworn off PUGs or they hate them or whatever.

 

I see a number of possible explanations:

 

People like to complain/act superior

Bad players who do not know they are bad complain that groups are bad (unlikely that this is a main factor, I think)

People get upset really easily/I'm really easygoing

 

Or it could be that I'm an awesome healer who makes up for bads. Of course this is my favorite theory, but I am biased, so I want to find out what other people have experienced and think.

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Maybe 1 in 20 PUGs will I come across someone I don't want to group with again, and it's always because they had an attitude problem or did something like queue up as tank when they are DPS spec/geared. Most runs are smooth, and disbanding because we can't beat a boss is exceptionally rare.

 

Yet I frequently hear people say they've sworn off PUGs or they hate them or whatever.

 

I see a number of possible explanations:

 

People like to complain/act superior

Bad players who do not know they are bad complain that groups are bad (unlikely that this is a main factor, I think)

People get upset really easily/I'm really easygoing

 

Or it could be that I'm an awesome healer who makes up for bads. Of course this is my favorite theory, but I am biased, so I want to find out what other people have experienced and think.

i can carry undergeared group ok healing in my dps gear, but most of the time i end up with bad pugs becuase they just don't follow instrutions, ie tank pulls multiple mobs and is in a dps stance, dps stands in aoes or dragged them into healer/tank, healer doesn't heal and thinks its ok if he doesn't heal ever. about 1 out of 10 i get one of those groups and place them into my ignore and move on but with that said i want/need a bigger ignore list. mine on all my imp toons is full and been full for a while due to that fact i don't want to get groupped with those about pugs.

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I have to agree with the OP here, 19 out of 20 flashpoints go off without a hitch, and the one that doesn't is usually a ninja. I'm not talking about doing it overgeared, my vanguard reached 50 on the first, I put him in full recruit and started running HMs, finished Kaon earlier with 3 other people who were at all not overgeared, yes, we wiped once, but that was my fault so we'll let that one slide... :)
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Its mostly going to come from players who come from raiding guilds. For example, I can run HM LI in 15-20 minutes with my guild, never wipe etc, but when I pug it; it usually is an hour ordeal spent explaining mechanics and trying to teach someone how to play their class. It's not even elitism, its just that people from higher end guilds/groups end up expecting better and for the most part, pugs aren't close to the same quality as a good raiding guild.
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it depends... sometimes it goes without problem, but other times you just run into annoying people... like yesterday, EC weekly, we make our way to the tanks. Everyone ready, go... I dance around the tank, healing the people, and already see our tank does not know the DD mechanic. Ok, we survive that, then he runs with us under the shield. Wipe. Ok, next try, I explain every phase and what/where to do. Shield phase, the guy stays on the tank, we wipe. I ask to switch tanks, since the other is easier to manage. The other tank doesn't have a clue how to tank the other tank. I was facepalming hard :rolleyes: But none of them would come out before the fight saying don't know what to do.
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Its the lack of some players not taking the time to review the fights before they actually go into the instance. Some of the flashpoints you can get away with because there's just 1 mechanic that you really have to look for. Others though you kind of need to see at least a video which explains the fight in detail before you actually step inside to do it. Yes, I realize that there is a difference from watching a video explaining the fights and actually doing them but if you have seen the videos, you can get the general idea on what to do.

 

It's the main reason why i have put up all the fights for all the Ops and harder flashpoints on our guild website. That way our guildies don't need to search for any of the fights.

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Maybe I am wrong here but the complaining about pugging is usually referring to ops not fps. Almost all fps can be two manned. Ops is a different story. In an op on person not knowing what they are supposed to do and not asking can cause a wipe. In a FP normally no one dies even if someone doesn't know what to do because its easier to cover just cause fps are really easy with very little mechanics involved. Edited by TheMarmalade
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I haven't had any problems with FPs so far, but yesterday I spent four hours in a PUG that tried to do TfB and couldn't get past the second boss. The apparent cause was inferior gear and resulting lack of DPS. The day before another group took two hours to get through EV, wiped three times at Soa and gave up. That time the reason was not knowing how to descend between phases and/or healers not healing during the descent.

 

The failures themselves don't faze me; I'm very patient and willing to try again. The waste of time for no gain is mildly irritating, but I can cope. What really annoys me is that having partial lockdowns for an operation makes it hard to find a different PUG to complete it with, so in practice I've been denied the BH comms from those two operations this week.

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I haven't had any problems with FPs so far, but yesterday I spent four hours in a PUG that tried to do TfB and couldn't get past the second boss. The apparent cause was inferior gear and resulting lack of DPS. The day before another group took two hours to get through EV, wiped three times at Soa and gave up. That time the reason was not knowing how to descend between phases and/or healers not healing during the descent.

 

The failures themselves don't faze me; I'm very patient and willing to try again. The waste of time for no gain is mildly irritating, but I can cope. What really annoys me is that having partial lockdowns for an operation makes it hard to find a different PUG to complete it with, so in practice I've been denied the BH comms from those two operations this week.

 

Beaver are you on the shadowlands? I might of been in that EV run. If not I had the same thing happen to me. I even offered to put a target over my head and jump up and down when it was time to heal. The healers got upset and said they know what to do even though the one was trying to put a salvation circle down on every platform. Needless to say he kept having the platform fall out under him. We even made it to the bottom once with a commando dps off healing but it was his me the tank and one other dps that made it. Unfortunately we did not have the dps or heals to kill him with only three guys since they got pulled into mindtraps and I as a tank don't have enough dps to kill em fast.

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They're generally fine and you'll rarely have issues.

 

But when they're bad... they're really bad.

 

In a nutshell this.

 

Furthermore, most individuals remember bad experiences more readily than we do the good experiences. I am reminded of my days as a sale rep for a retail chain. In any customer service environment the following holds true...

 

Give a customer a positive experience and you have retained one customer. Give a customer a negative experience and you've lost ten potential customers. Basically, a customer who leaves with a negative feeling is going to report that to his friends who will repeat it to their friends.

 

The same thing can be said of MMO random grouping. If you have a positive experience you say thank you to those random players and move on. On the other hand, when you have a negative experience chances are you leave and start chatting with your guildmates and/or friends about how and why the FP went badly.

 

This is the way we are wired, there is nothing you can really do about it...except take what you hear 'third hand" with a grain of salt.

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Its mostly going to come from players who come from raiding guilds. For example, I can run HM LI in 15-20 minutes with my guild, never wipe etc, but when I pug it; it usually is an hour ordeal spent explaining mechanics and trying to teach someone how to play their class. It's not even elitism, its just that people from higher end guilds/groups end up expecting better and for the most part, pugs aren't close to the same quality as a good raiding guild.

 

There is a degree of bullying that happens in groups with 3 guildies plus one PUG member. I often find that it brings out the worst in people. I'm always cautious about a PUG with that group make-up. Sometimes it goes really well and we clear it really fast, but other times you had better watch out because you will become the scapegoat if something goes wrong regardless of whose fault it is.

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I normally don't have a problem with pugs because I'm usually the healer and my husband's usally the tank. We only have problems when one of us decide to dps.

 

Our problems usually stem from someone in a hurry to finish the instance and we didn't skip a trash pull or accidently pulled trash mobs trying to skip. I usally put that person on ignore so I don't have to deal with the unnecessary pressure of catering to someone else's time restraint. If you don't have time to enjoy the game, don't queue in a pug. The rest of us are trying to enjoy the experience.

 

If you are new to the instance, please say so. I have no problem helping someone that is new if they say they've never been in the instance before.

 

On the flip side of that, to those who fail to read chat. If someone says they are new the instance and you don't read that, and then later complain that they are "acting like a noob" it's your fault for not paying attention.

Edited by Fayme
grammar
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I agree 99.99999% of my pugs have been great. It is just that .000001% that ruins the experience. I do most of mine with a healer, wipes are not really a issue because she is so overgeared, my bad PUGs have been with ninjas taking others gear and with people just being rude and abusive towards others. I have no problem with it being towards me, but if someone is rude and abusive towards another group member, I will not tolerate it. These stand out in my memory even though they are so few and far between. Most HMFP are just good fast fun, but that is quickly forgotten when you get a bad group.

 

I will admit, HMLI I only do with guild members. I can't heal people through falling off the platform, so I gave up on PUGs there. It happened far too often.

Edited by mikebevo
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They're generally fine and you'll rarely have issues.

 

But when they're bad... they're really bad.

I agree with this 100%.

 

Most ALL of my pugs go well. But the few that were bad were SO BAD that it's painful. I've actually had a player find a way to "push my buttons" so thoroughly that I stopped playing for a few days. Later I calmed down and everything was fine.

 

It's like going to the park with my family. Most of the time it's awesomely fun. One day some )^%$# jerk keyed my car all along the right side. I told my wife, "I'm never going to that park again!" (I'm about half glad I didn't catch him doing it or I probably would have gone to jail for assault with a deadly sidewalk.)

 

Some people are terrible awful horrible people. It's just a fact of life. When they play online games nothing suits them better than to try and ruin someone else's day.

Edited by Khevar
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9 out of 10 PUGS are bad for me. That said, I just attribute it to Murphy's law :p

 

Before F2P it was not bad really. Now, I only op or flashpoint with my guild. Just not worth it.

 

 

I play a healer most of the time and love to grind flashpoints,totally support this statement!

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For me it comes down to 1 thing in bad PUGs: Some players simply make things harder than just not having them.

 

I usually tank but lately I've been healing too and the pattern is usually the same. Most are fine but you sometimes get a DPS that:

- Pulls before the tank

- Breaks CC

- Ignore mechanics

- LOS the healer

- Ignore the kill order and get Gold Fever

Almost universally those players also say nothing in chat or get defensive when you try and explain what happened and how to prevent it next time. Amusingly, almost all of those DPS I come across have been Sentinels or Marauders. Now rarely does this cause a wipe but it really annoys me. A bad tank or a bad healer though, that can just wipe a group repeatedly.

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I've found, to my own disappointment, that I'm getting less and less tolerant of PUGs. Instead of explaining carefully and patiently how dps blowing explosive barrels is a bad thing because of the threat generated, I just don't heal them and let them pick up a repair bill instead.

 

If I see Kaon come up and I don't need it for the Rakghoul weekly, I'm highly likely to bail if I see dps in less than full columi.

 

If I'm tanking and the dps face pull, I'm more likely to let them die and find a spot to wait for the adds than charge back and taunt.

 

And seriously, what's with all the 14k scrappers?

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Its mostly going to come from players who come from raiding guilds. For example, I can run HM LI in 15-20 minutes with my guild, never wipe etc, but when I pug it; it usually is an hour ordeal spent explaining mechanics and trying to teach someone how to play their class. It's not even elitism, its just that people from higher end guilds/groups end up expecting better and for the most part, pugs aren't close to the same quality as a good raiding guild.

I agree completely being in a top guild. The main other reason is pugs don't have Vent/Mumble/TS3, and if they do people refuse to use them. They don't have to transmit but it helps a lot just to hear. My guild was running with a pug a few days ago and he was new so we asked him to get on Vent. He said "You mean like calm mind?" LOL. That's pugs for you.

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For me it comes down to 1 thing in bad PUGs: Some players simply make things harder than just not having them.

 

I usually tank but lately I've been healing too and the pattern is usually the same. Most are fine but you sometimes get a DPS that:

- Pulls before the tank

- Breaks CC

- Ignore mechanics

- LOS the healer

- Ignore the kill order and get Gold Fever

Almost universally those players also say nothing in chat or get defensive when you try and explain what happened and how to prevent it next time. Amusingly, almost all of those DPS I come across have been Sentinels or Marauders. Now rarely does this cause a wipe but it really annoys me. A bad tank or a bad healer though, that can just wipe a group repeatedly.

You know something funny about this. I have 6 level 50s, but I only recently got around to leveling a Sentinel -- I've oddly enough had no interest until a year into the game.

 

And despite knowing what to do as a dps, and having 2 end-game healers and 1 end-game tank, I found bad habits creeping in, just due to the Sentinel combat experience.

 

Get on speeder, drive close to mobs, get <30m range, Force Leap off the speeder kill everything. Once I unlocked doc I'm a faceroll killing machine and I don't have to pay attention to ANYTHING. Kill order, rotation, priorities, defensive cooldowns, enemy debuffs, etc. are completely unnecessary.

 

Get back on speeder, drive near next mob, Force Leeeeeeeeeeap!

 

I know similar things could be said about other classes while leveling, but the seems exacerbated with the Sentinel playstyle.

 

After 50 levels of Force Leap/Faceroll playing, I think I'll be surprised at any Sentinel that knows the definition of the word "restraint"

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You know something funny about this. I have 6 level 50s, but I only recently got around to leveling a Sentinel -- I've oddly enough had no interest until a year into the game.

 

And despite knowing what to do as a dps, and having 2 end-game healers and 1 end-game tank, I found bad habits creeping in, just due to the Sentinel combat experience.

 

Get on speeder, drive close to mobs, get <30m range, Force Leap off the speeder kill everything. Once I unlocked doc I'm a faceroll killing machine and I don't have to pay attention to ANYTHING. Kill order, rotation, priorities, defensive cooldowns, enemy debuffs, etc. are completely unnecessary.

 

Get back on speeder, drive near next mob, Force Leeeeeeeeeeap!

 

I know similar things could be said about other classes while leveling, but the seems exacerbated with the Sentinel playstyle.

 

After 50 levels of Force Leap/Faceroll playing, I think I'll be surprised at any Sentinel that knows the definition of the word "restraint"

 

Yeah I had the exact same experience when I started a Marauder. He's level 13 but he's a wrecking ball at the moment. It's very tempting to just leap in and kill when grouped. Doesn't mean I'm going to start cutting them slack though :p

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Its mostly going to come from players who come from raiding guilds. For example, I can run HM LI in 15-20 minutes with my guild, never wipe etc, but when I pug it; it usually is an hour ordeal spent explaining mechanics and trying to teach someone how to play their class. It's not even elitism, its just that people from higher end guilds/groups end up expecting better and for the most part, pugs aren't close to the same quality as a good raiding guild.

 

On the same server as Opfotm and I completely agree. Our server, and I'm sure I'm generalizing here, has an incredible amount of amazingly awful healers. To elaborate: My brother and I are both raiders in our top raid group ( I'm a dps and he's a tank). Both of us are optimized 63 geared. I'm missing the Hazmat earpiece and he's missing the belt and bracers. Yet on multiple occasions, we've run with healers who can't seem to keep him alive, complain that he's too squishy to tank, and then quit on us when we just call them ****** at their job. Now, granted we might be very spoiled with the guildies we usually run with when it's 4 dps clearing LI HM (sorc off heals FTW), but we make sure to slow down some for pugs. There is no reason that a tank with 28k health should die on Malgus or Revan...or god forbid the trash at the start of boarding party. Last night he got accused of taking all the damage during some pull on Kaon and the healer was mad because he was used to " The damage being spread around more".

 

Since I can solo dps every single FP boss in this game; we don't have to worry about dps ruining runs for us. Far and away the most common thing we run into is crappy *** healers who have zero clue what to do.

 

As for the people complaining about dps pulling before your tank: all I have to say is that you have a crappy tank. Now, before you respond by trashing me; listen to my reasoning. I will be the first to admit that I pull quickly. I don't wait for the tank. If the tank has to keep up with me; I vote to kick him. The tank should be jumping to a group, agroing, and moving on. It's not your job to stay and try to kill the adds. That's why you have 2 dps...they kill stuff you don't. By the time you get to the second group of adds, your dps should be done and ready to come kill your group. They get to your group, you move on. Only time I will wait is when the healer is low on energy and force or high on heat. But again, If trash is causing your healer to go low on reasources, I'd probably vote to kick him as well. Flashpoints are meant to be fast. If you're in a flashpoint for the story; stop wasting the other 3 people's time and go solo it in SM.

 

EDIT: Also, just for full disclosure I am Mara. Rage spec for Flashpoints and Carnage for Ops. I can kill almost every single trash pull with one smash. Yet, I do the exact same thing one my Sorc, Powertech, Sniper, and Merc. My job is to kill stuff. I love dps and use flashpoints to refine gear and simple rotations. If tanks can't keep up; their fault not mine. Every single one of my toons has at minimum 61 BiS and I can kill most pulls with an AoE. Tanks literally have nothing to do except keep up

Edited by USCG_Davis
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Since I can solo dps every single FP boss in this game; we don't have to worry about dps ruining runs for us. Far and away the most common thing we run into is crappy *** healers who have zero clue what to do.
Really? If you have the gear you say you do and are as great as you are implying you are, then you should be able to do these HM FP without a healer. I have done 5 hm fp with 4 dps and no tank or healer when one guild member wanted his speeder achievement for a alt.

 

My main is one of these crappy *** healers, I have healed HM TfB and into NiM EC with no problems, but if the tank and dps don't know how to use defensive cooldown, get out of AOEs, interupt or dps knowing kill order or aggro dumps, then let them die. I have healed many HM FP with 13K HP tanks and I would rather do that with someone that is willing to listen and learn than a overgeared tank or dps that really has no clue how to play in groups. I would rather have a 800 dps, than a 2000 dps that has no clue of how to use cooldowns or any game awareness.

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