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The weird people you meet in Group Finder.


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Got trapped in queue about three times with an assassin who only knew how to click two things: whirling blow and basic attack. It was the buttcrack of dawn queue and I was just trying to take advantage of some double XP and I was stuck with the guy. Listen, when I'm the best DPS in the group (I'm a bad DPS), you know things are gonna be very VERY slow.
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@BobFredJohn

 

Thank you for reminding me why I'm not using group finder anymore. :) I don't know what's wrong with people these days, it didn't use to be that bad, but your description is pretty accurate from what I've seen.

 

Today we made a group of three guildies, and pugged one dps from fleet for "random MM FP". Level 73 sentinel in 208 gear joins and tells us to queue Hammer Station. :rolleyes: We informed him that the idea of looking for someone for a random MM FP is to avoid getting grouped with HS farmers. He isn't happy I guess, but doesn't leave. Luckily it wasn't any of the new flashpoints, and we had no problem running through it. Except at some point the sentinel starts to run in first, as lowest level player and with lowest gear, but only dies when he leaps to a mob someone else was just pushing off the ledge. :D

 

(Where do you even get 208 gear these days??)

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This adventure happened a few days ago. Got a MM assault on tython with my overpowered, soon to be nerfed (probably), full 306 & aug'ed merc healer. I zoned into an argument that was starting between a jugg "tank" and one of the dps, an assassin. The jugg was a dps who apparently queued as tank, probably on purpose. The assassin was quite upset at the "tank" and was scolding him for queuing for tank as a dps.

 

The "tank" countered that he had done this fp before without a tank. I didn't really believe him, but I was extremely bored and getting pretty burnt out with the game (again). So, I suggested that we try the fp anyway with 3 dps. The assassin was very skeptical, so I told everyone that as long as no one stood in any circles on the ground, it would be easy. That was probably way too optimistic, but I felt the need to put on a brave front...

 

...Which was almost immediately exposed. The "tank" pulled trash while the assassin was stealthing the towers. We died. That enraged the assassin. Insults were hurled. I braced for a vote kick or rage quit but, incredibly, everyone stayed. Hilariously and ironically, the assassin pulled while trying to stealth the final tower, which prompted some retaliatory snark from the "tank". That seemed to quiet everyone down at least.

 

First boss was pretty ugly. The assassin died, twice, due to being inside of giant red circles on the ground, and then accepting my rez at a bad time. The "tank" died. I was even caught standing in a circle, though in my defense I was preoccupied trying to keep everyone up and had to just eat one. Mercs have 3 health bars anyway, no big deal. Despite the mess, the remaining dps was absolutely great at staying out of stuff and we managed to 2 man it.

 

After somehow pulling all the trash up to the 2nd boss, even though it's all skipable, we began the 2nd boss pull. He's really easy, the circles are much smaller. The "tank" died anyway. I rezzed. We clear.

 

For the last boss, I again implored the group to make an effort to stay out of ground circles. We pull. I kept pulling and holding boss aggro. Merc heals are so OP, I was somehow getting more threat than any of the dps and "tank". This was unexpected, and unfortunately, I could not tank and heal at the same time due to the number of knockbacks I was getting. So annoying!

 

We made it pretty far, but in the end it was a wipe. The usual suspects expressed their frustrations. The "tank" assured us that he most definitely was not standing in any circles when he died. I braced again for a rage quit/vote kick but none came. I explained to the "tank" how I was pulling aggro, and that he should guard me and taunt the boss. These instructions were followed, at least until the "tank" died due to excessive circle eating. However, it was late enough in the pull, and we lost no one else, so it was a clear.

 

The fp was over, but not the drama. The assassin told the "tank" how lucky he was that I agreed to doing the fp without a tank. He continued berating the "tank" as we watched the final scene. I just said my "gg"s and dropped group. They were still arguing with each other when I left.

 

It was an unconventional, absolutely dysfunctional group. Your classic nightmare GF pug scenario. We had no tank, certainly no group synergy, and we didn't like each other. We should not have succeeded. Yet, we did succeed and with only one wipe to boot. It was a challenging change of pace from the typical GF experience. Was it more fun than Hammer Station spam? Yes, I think it was. Would I do it again? Probably not.

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Coming back from a long time away, I think over a year and a half. Things seem to have changed a lot.

Oh that they did.

 

The vast majority of damage players not following kill order, the times I brought it up I never got a response. Most of them just tunnel visioning elites the entire mission. Also it seems ignoring adds in boss fights is common now.

In the latest FPs it's literally easier to burn the boss sometimes, also doesn't help that in umbara, chiss, and meridian there are major burn phases where you are not supposed to even kill these adds first. Plus rescaling of a bunch of other FPs changed things.

 

Damage players pulling before the tank in order to do pointless LOS pulls, including my jugg tank being told off by a sniper for not LOSing the second pull in hammer station (I have noticed everybody seems to do that for no reason), then vote kicked for not LOSing the third pull.

If done right mobs are going down much faster indeed. In VM I'm pulling these packs to LoS on a dps over 90% of the time, tank or not. I remember when people used to CC those, especially when slice droid was still a thing, now given how much people run HS the more efficient ways have surfaced. It really is much, much faster to LoS this 3rd pull and be able to aoe spam it down; sniper quite easily can tank it alone on VM with just diversion and a few more cooldowns provided people are pressing buttons. With how the pack is spread, juggs typically struggle with aggro otherwise and it's a hot mess where it doesn't have to be. So no, I'm totally with the dps there, although kicking is surely too extreme.

 

When I tell the dps to interrupt flame attacks I get told to stop complaining and just tank.

Yeah that's a good way to do it. Since the slow way apparently bugs out these days more often than not, you only get 1 missile reset per fight, so it's expected for the healer to make up for it. Interrupting flame sweep is a good advice not that many people seem to be aware of, but again, with everyone 306 healer typically easily heals through before damage gets actually harsh for long enough.

 

I tell him "you can either trust I know about tanking or I can waste ages explaining game mechanics to you" to which he tells me that healer needs guard. I give up.

Now I'm curious about what you wanted to tell them. Healer doesn't need the guard but in a typical scenario, including the one you've described, there are no better targets for it anyway.

 

I cant control comp to do beam mechanics properly so we wipe, on run back to third attempt we get a new merc healer in 306.

That's more odd since comps are typically good with cleanses but it might be they cleanse too early and the stacks ramp up. A decent sin should still be able to negate nearly all of them ofc.

 

Despite healers best effort the tank dies in the 6-second period that he has aggro from his taunt, doesn't follow cleanse mechanic and we wipe. The tank-dps quits group and we requeue, get a proper tank and complete fp easily.

 

Mando raiders (snip)

dps: "lol it doesn't matter who we kill first"

That's right, you basically aoe them down anyway now. Non-LoSing takes about twice as much time so it's rarely done like intended in groups knowing their stuff.

 

Tython circles get meme-y but jokes aside, this boss is overtuned. Even ignoring desync bs and such, there's a huuuge difference between the regular MMFP boss where the healer uses cleanse once in a blue moon and can snooze for the rest of the fight and ~30%+ hp unavoidable raidwides with the need to move. DPS using cooldowns help immensely of course, but anyway the group breezing through say rakata may very well struggle with this one. While personally I think it's a more desirable level of difficulty for MMFP than what we have now, most of the rest bosses are tuned way lower than that.

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... snip

 

Your post highlights the very issue. A lot of FPs and bosses can be brute forced and just burned down at this point, both in VM (a lot of experienced players can run them alone with a comp so it doesn't really matter if half the group is more or less decoration so to speak or lies around dead) and sadly also in MM.

It works in most FPs, the problem there is, a lot of very bad habits are spreading (like attacking before the tank, kill order and other basic group/role dynamics, not explaining key points) and newer players that have come to play SWTOR over the last few months or the last year do not learn how to properly deal with that kind of stuff for the times when it is not possible to just burn through, either when for example there isn't an experienced player in the group that can just carry the rest or because it's one of the few FPs where that still doesn't work.

That's why Crisis of Umbara is that much of a problem via GF, or Rishi, Copero or Nathema. People are so much used to ignore all there is to the usual boss encounters that they don't remember or never actually learned how to recognise and deal with basic boss mechanics. After all, pretty much all of the difficult FP bosses can be broken down into a combination of several mechanics that already have been used elsewhere in the game.

 

Just as mechanics are ignored, roles are often too, a healer there that would be well able to heal the group if they don't park in damaging effects, yet the kolto stations are clicked immediately after getting a mere scratch, tank losing a boss to a DPS, doesn't matter, pop a CD and ignore it. It works, yes, but only with competent and experienced players (and usually also vastly overgeared since you really don't need full augmented 306 anywhere in the MM FPs, not even Meridian, and really not in any of the VMs). The rest who really would need some kind of learning experience just follow that, but without the underlying understanding and experience and then wonder why it doesn't work when they are on their own. Most likely causing toxic behaviour and blaming the rest of the group too then.

 

To a degree the same goes for trash, everything is skipped (sometimes even where killing stuff would be as fast or even faster), but where that isn't possible there is chaos most of the time because everyone just attacks what they find as a first target, without any sense of tactic or the awareness of what the different kind of enemies do, or what to do if that enemy doesn't just falls dead in an instant and actually dares to strike back.

From the FPs that drags on into PUG operations, the number of players I've seen using aoe on single bosses lately, either running around like headless chicken or parking in damaging effects until they die without moving at all and so on, no attention to any kind of mechanic, buff, de-buff and the like. And yes, it works there too, but usually only as long there are a few old school players, experienced PvPers, HC or NIM raiders present that carry the group through.

 

Seeing how most FPs are played these days this unfortunate development is not really a surprise, but it isn't really healthy for the long term quality of the player base either.

So maybe even if it is possible to brute force through bosses, if part of the group is inexperienced it might be better to teach them how to do it properly first before teaching them to ignore everything. Then the so called PUG killer bosses and FPs will become more doable with the average GF PUG, because they know better how to deal with mechanics in general.

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After all, pretty much all of the difficult FP bosses can be broken down into a combination of several mechanics that already have been used elsewhere in the game.

Most of the time, it's not the mechanic itself, it's the delivery. There is nothing cognitively complex about the umbara last boss, but I'd argue it is out of line because the cheese way of doing it is pretty much the only thing players are universally equipped with for dealing with that. 70-80% hp damage at random group members not coordinated with adds spawn which happens on a separate, hp percentage-related timeline feels overtuned if you don't LOS adds hard. Same-ish with Copero, add waves are interesting but there's not a clear and telegraphed way to deal with them which would scream "hey here's how we designed this" - unlike fire puddles on Stivastin and such. Same with Tython last boss where I constantly seeing groups struggling even if on the surface they get the mechanics right - it's a mix of the mechanical skill, lag issues and healing requirements which are VASTLY different from the bulk of MMFPs and... It's just punishing. If one mistake like standing in bad kills people, on average there will be problems. I wish more people got exposed to Tyrans HM+ so they'd know the importance of positioning, baiting circles and such, that's one severely lacking skill these days.

 

Just as mechanics are ignored, roles are often too, a healer there that would be well able to heal the group if they don't park in damaging effects, yet the kolto stations are clicked immediately after getting a mere scratch, tank losing a boss to a DPS, doesn't matter, pop a CD and ignore it.

Oh there's a lot to unpack here. In VM, kolto stations are so good it's massively more beneficial for the group if the healer was just dpsing or, better, came on a dps spec in the first place. Largely the same goes for the tank, actually.

Then there are gear issues - sure thing, most of the time you can keep aggro as a tank but there's just no way you can do it vs a lvl75 person with set bonus, tactical, 30 VE stacks and whatnot with 100% uptime while leveling (why do these geared people run VMs in the first place?.. Beats me).

 

The rest who really would need some kind of learning experience just follow that, but without the underlying understanding and experience and then wonder why it doesn't work when they are on their own. Most likely causing toxic behaviour and blaming the rest of the group too then. (snip)

 

And yes, it works there too, but usually only as long there are a few old school players, experienced PvPers, HC or NIM raiders present that carry the group through.

First off, you don't need experienced people to "carry" anyone in a regular SM operation. I mean, we do it as a gig with friends where 2 actually experienced players "carry" 1-2 less experienced ones in 3-4-manning SM ops, but with 8 players you really don't need to go out of your way trying to beat enrage with a DwT and a healer while also filling the mechanics requirements somehow. Many of the relevant mechanics got removed from SM over the years, notably Kephess in TfB, the tower of Hanoi in KP (why BW?..), gate puzzle in DF and so on.

 

Next, toxic behavior isn't really caused by "doesn't work when they are on their own" as much as it's a trigger. The lack of education and motivation to put some effort in the group content are sure factors.

Worst of all, some of the nicest people I knew from years ago got weathered down in some 5 years of not quitting the game and are now complaining about "the average PUG" as much as the next person. They've lost the will to teach because at this point it feels more futile than ever and is met with (sometimes aggressive) negligence.

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This was too funny not to share.

 

Kaon MM.

 

The healer (sage) was obviously new to the game, kept pushing trash with force wave. I then pointed out not to use it as they will die slower that way, still kept doing it. So I jokingly said he should be using force quake as it looks way cooler, unfortunately to no avail. After the "turret boss" tank (shadow) said he hopes the healer will heal more and dps less for next bosses. The Behemoth was really close, luckily we had really good dps. Now the funny part! Bonus boss. Healer couldn't keep up, he was obviously still clueless. We wiped. Healer was told only to heal. We pull, get him to like 30 %. Suddenly I notice the boss is on me and I see the tank using lampost regen. When he had enough hp, taunted it off of me and we killed the damn robot. Funniest thing I've seen in a while :D. We finished the last boss with just the healer dead, he released and pulled all he could on the way. We all agreed but the healer that it was really unusual run.

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This was too funny not to share.

 

Kaon MM.

 

The healer (sage) was obviously new to the game, kept pushing trash with force wave. I then pointed out not to use it as they will die slower that way, still kept doing it. So I jokingly said he should be using force quake as it looks way cooler, unfortunately to no avail. After the "turret boss" tank (shadow) said he hopes the healer will heal more and dps less for next bosses. The Behemoth was really close, luckily we had really good dps. Now the funny part! Bonus boss. Healer couldn't keep up, he was obviously still clueless. We wiped. Healer was told only to heal. We pull, get him to like 30 %. Suddenly I notice the boss is on me and I see the tank using lampost regen. When he had enough hp, taunted it off of me and we killed the damn robot. Funniest thing I've seen in a while :D. We finished the last boss with just the healer dead, he released and pulled all he could on the way. We all agreed but the healer that it was really unusual run.

 

Aw shucks, that sounds... not super fun! I feel like Sage is tricky to heal as even if you're an experienced player (compared to the other 2 healers). It's so weird how many people just... don't listen to advice, though.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Last night, a Dread Palace group finder PuG. It took nearly an hour to assemble the group, which consisted of my commando, two guildies (one of who was a vanguard tank), another commando and sage (both dps), and some other randoms.

 

Early on, there were already some signs of tension while the group was forming - the other commando and another sage dps apparently got into a fight in their whispers. I didn't catch the whole argument, of course, but I glimpsed a few misplaced messages. On the other hand, the tank I recruited didn't know a lick of Dread Palace and was undergeared, but since it was SM, we decided to roll anyway.

 

The first three bosses went down fine, with the sage and commando continuing to argue mid-fight, this time out in the ops chat about someone's mother. Then at Raptus, the chaos started. The tank failed the first challenge and didn't even go through the challenge portal (our shadow DwT was the one who Raptus chased around and who did most of the "tanking." Raptus proceeds to Force Execute one of our healers out of the arena, while simultaneously wiping the floor with both the tank and two other DPS. Fortunately, we were able to push through and down the boss before a wipe occurred.

 

Sage then proceeded to complain that nobody rezzed them while we were regrouping. Well, I tried, but ended up falling off the map myself while trying to get line of sight. It was at this point that the tank dropped group without another word and went to do something on fleet. Simultaneously, the sage then starts complaining about not having had a chance to get the loot, to which someone else points out that they can just go back in the portal to get it. After a while of clearing trash to the Dread Council, we get a guardian tank who we finish the op with. Of course, somebody complains about the low frequency of ops-exclusive set bonuses at the end... a position that I could actually agree with, for once.

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Speaks of toxic players. Vet HS (of course it's HS):

 

It was a lv75, me (lv75), and two low level players.

 

The lv75 rushed ahead before we even logged in the map. No greeting, not even dropping a "we run to the tunnel" in the chat. I logged in seeing chains of mobs followed the lv75, already almost to the resetting point.

 

I thought "oh ****" and ran to the tunnel before the mobs reset. One other player managed it too. But the other wasn't that lucky and died. Forgot if the lv75 waited for him to get to the droid boss or pulled and forced us to 3-man it. Anyway, the lv75 rushed again without waiting for anyone after the droid boss.

 

I was very unhappy at that point so I stayed with the other two players and thought "if you are so good, try solo it on your own".

 

The lv75 pulled mobs while the three of us was just about sneaking through the two guards in the corridor right after the droid boss. The sudden entering battle must have surprised one of the players tagging behind me and he triggered the mobs on both ends of the corridor. Now, if we were 3 lv75 players, we could pull it off. But we're not and I'm bad at surprises (took me 3 solid seconds to fully comprehend what had happened), so we died when it's down to two mobs left.

 

Oh the lv75 died too because she apparently can't deal with the mobs she pulled on her own.

 

We respawned. The lv75 dropped the first and only line before she dropped group.

 

"lol you are so bad".

 

Our little group was quiet before, but now I was pissed. I typed a series of ************** in the chat. The other two players also typed a series of ************** to release their frustration.

 

I pulled out my lv30 Khem and said "I bet Khem is better than that *****" and resume playing.

 

Turned out the three of us actually worked pretty good together when no one was being a toxic *****.

 

We finished the rest of the FP smoothly without anyone died or even dying.

 

I typed "**** that ***** who dropped we did good" after the reward window pop out because I still felt salty.

 

The other two agreed. We thanked each other and parted way.

 

Lesson of the story? Even low level companions are better than lv75 fully geared selfish, toxic players.

Edited by eabevella
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In my case, it's probably me that's the evil guy/noob, but whatever:

 

Yesterday on the 10000th Taral V run (I have no idea why this always pops in GF), one guy told us at the beginning of the run, that it's his first run and he apologizes if he screws anything up. I am not too experienced myself but I respond with it's not a problem at all just have fun. Now unfortunately we picked one elitist that wanted to break a world record on how fast we can finish, skipped a boss entirely and 99% of mobs. Now of course this is alright, everyone is a speed runner now, but the new player could hardly keep up and pulled some groups occasionally. Every time he did, the other party member responded with ("omg..." , "...........", "???", "AGAIN???").

 

This made me angry and on the last long cutscene conversation I made sure to watch all of it and let my response time out.

 

Be more friendly to new players guys!!!!!

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In my case, it's probably me that's the evil guy/noob, but whatever:

 

Yesterday on the 10000th Taral V run (I have no idea why this always pops in GF), one guy told us at the beginning of the run, that it's his first run and he apologizes if he screws anything up. I am not too experienced myself but I respond with it's not a problem at all just have fun. Now unfortunately we picked one elitist that wanted to break a world record on how fast we can finish, skipped a boss entirely and 99% of mobs. Now of course this is alright, everyone is a speed runner now, but the new player could hardly keep up and pulled some groups occasionally. Every time he did, the other party member responded with ("omg..." , "...........", "???", "AGAIN???").

 

This made me angry and on the last long cutscene conversation I made sure to watch all of it and let my response time out.

 

Be more friendly to new players guys!!!!!

 

Those "elite" players are the bad apples here. I'll learn your trick the next time I meet someone like that lol

 

I've only met good and patient elite players who were patient and helpful when I was greener than a Mirialan so I do the same now that I'm more familiar with the FP. I hate elitist players who ignore or even being hostile to new players. Being rude aside, they actually make the FP run slower because of their elitism and selfishness.

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Speaking of elitists ....

I was in a MM Blood Hunt last night. As soon as we zoned in, the Tank left. So we re-queued and proceeded to clear the trash to the first boss.

After an amazingly short wait we got a new Tank. Things were going well enough. BH is always tough but we did OK, killing the first boss with no wipes. But the tank said in chat something about how we wouldn't have enough DPS for the 3rd boss. OK - ignore a move on. The other DPS suggested it might be because he was only in 290s.

During the part where you do the 3 "challenges" the tank went off by himself at one point, but still no deaths, no wipes.

 

At Joss and Valk, the first time, the Healer got tossed over the edge and we wiped. (I didn't see it, so no details.)

During the second attempt, at a point where Valk joined the fight, (after the beasts, when it's Joss and Valk together) she caught both of us DPS off guard and knocked us both off before we could react.

The tank started to mouth off again and the 290 DPS decided it was his fault and he should leave, even though getting knocked off had nothing to do with his gear level.

The Tank started to say something about how things should go better now, but I said, "no, because I don't like to group with ******es" and then I left too.

 

Bottom line - yes, maybe the other dps wasn't the best, but the Healer was doing fine and we were progressing quite well and every indication was that we would complete the FP just fine. But, I guess we just weren't 'leet' enough for the tank. 🙄

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Speaking of elitists ....

I was in a MM Blood Hunt last night. As soon as we zoned in, the Tank left. So we re-queued and proceeded to clear the trash to the first boss.

After an amazingly short wait we got a new Tank. Things were going well enough. BH is always tough but we did OK, killing the first boss with no wipes. But the tank said in chat something about how we wouldn't have enough DPS for the 3rd boss. OK - ignore a move on. The other DPS suggested it might be because he was only in 290s.

During the part where you do the 3 "challenges" the tank went off by himself at one point, but still no deaths, no wipes.

 

At Joss and Valk, the first time, the Healer got tossed over the edge and we wiped. (I didn't see it, so no details.)

During the second attempt, at a point where Valk joined the fight, (after the beasts, when it's Joss and Valk together) she caught both of us DPS off guard and knocked us both off before we could react.

The tank started to mouth off again and the 290 DPS decided it was his fault and he should leave, even though getting knocked off had nothing to do with his gear level.

The Tank started to say something about how things should go better now, but I said, "no, because I don't like to group with ******es" and then I left too.

 

Bottom line - yes, maybe the other dps wasn't the best, but the Healer was doing fine and we were progressing quite well and every indication was that we would complete the FP just fine. But, I guess we just weren't 'leet' enough for the tank. 🙄

 

This is why I am hesitant to try MM. I am in a small guild and I am the only person online when I play because of the time zone so there's no way to practice. I don't want to be yelled at in MM because it's more difficult to form a group.

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Speaking of elitists ....

I was in a MM Blood Hunt last night. As soon as we zoned in, the Tank left. So we re-queued and proceeded to clear the trash to the first boss.

After an amazingly short wait we got a new Tank. Things were going well enough. BH is always tough but we did OK, killing the first boss with no wipes. But the tank said in chat something about how we wouldn't have enough DPS for the 3rd boss. OK - ignore a move on. The other DPS suggested it might be because he was only in 290s.

During the part where you do the 3 "challenges" the tank went off by himself at one point, but still no deaths, no wipes.

 

At Joss and Valk, the first time, the Healer got tossed over the edge and we wiped. (I didn't see it, so no details.)

During the second attempt, at a point where Valk joined the fight, (after the beasts, when it's Joss and Valk together) she caught both of us DPS off guard and knocked us both off before we could react.

The tank started to mouth off again and the 290 DPS decided it was his fault and he should leave, even though getting knocked off had nothing to do with his gear level.

The Tank started to say something about how things should go better now, but I said, "no, because I don't like to group with ******es" and then I left too.

 

Bottom line - yes, maybe the other dps wasn't the best, but the Healer was doing fine and we were progressing quite well and every indication was that we would complete the FP just fine. But, I guess we just weren't 'leet' enough for the tank. 🙄

It's worth pointing out here that the third boss of Blood Hunt MM has no enrage timer, as far as I'm aware - at least, I've never in my life seen a group hit it, and I have healed for some very low-dps BH MM groups. I believe that only the first boss has an enrage timer, and it is very forgiving at this point in the game's life cycle.

 

High damage does help on the second boss because of how difficult it is for some tanks to handle both bosses at the same time in the final phase. If dps burn Jos before the tank and heals get overwhelmed, the fight becomes very easy. But a good tank and healer can handle that fight regardless of dps level. In reality, that fight is about positioning, as you found out.

 

Bad positioning is, in theory, the easiest thing to fix in an FP. You're not micromanaging someone else's rotation, and you're not magically raising their item rating, you're just telling them where to stand and move. But bad positioning, in my experience, is also one of the things that weaker players are most resistant to changing. No matter how polite and nonconfrontational your advice is, a large portion of players with bad positioning just will not improve. Perhaps they lack situational awareness, or they get too overwhelmed by their rotation to think about moving when they need to, or maybe they simply don't really care. This is why Jos/Valk and Project Sav-Rak are such pug killers: they are fights that require specific movements at specific times.

 

Don't get me wrong: that tank sounds like a jerk and leaving the group sounds like the healthy response. But, having suffered through players who could not stand in the right spots to save their lives, I am at least a little sympathetic for the annoyance the tank must have felt. Then again, if so many people were getting KBed off the edge, maybe the tank was fighting in the wrong spot.

This is why I am hesitant to try MM. I am in a small guild and I am the only person online when I play because of the time zone so there's no way to practice. I don't want to be yelled at in MM because it's more difficult to form a group.

MM groups are typically more forgiving than vet groups, because vet gf has far more people who are just in it to speedrun for tech frags, but it's important to let people know that you're new at the start of the FP, so they know that they need to walk you through things. I say "more" forgiving because there are plenty of people who get aggro about speeding through MMs, too - there are just fewer of them than there are in vets.

Edited by Euphrosyne
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\No matter how polite and nonconfrontational your advice is, a large portion of players with bad positioning just will not improve. Perhaps they lack situational awareness, or they get too overwhelmed by their rotation to think about moving when they need to, or maybe they simply don't really care. This is why Jos/Valk and Project Sav-Rak are such pug killers: they are fights that require specific movements at specific times.

 

There's a large proportion of players in this game who seem to just get tunnel visioned into their rotation and holding the boss, killing the boss, or clickamajiging the group health bars. I blame some of that on the explosion of different abilities you should be including in your rotation every expansion and the resulting quickbar bloat, the rest I blame on the fact that most fights in this category of difficulty or lower do not place much emphasis on moving out of a dangerous spot; normally when they do, it feels more like a "recommendation" that you move because the penalty if you don't is so insignificant, but then you get gems like blood hunt and LI where it goes "stand at this EXACT little x or you will die" and people rarely do them so then so few players learn to appreciate staying out of stupid or other mechanics.

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So, this particular creature has been growing in population steadily over the lifetime of the game, but there's been a recent explosion since 6.0.

 

I speak, of course, of the player who knows all of the skips in flashpoints without knowing any of the boss fight mechanics.

 

I'm used to getting blank looks when I put "anybody new to this fp?" in /group at the beginning of an mm fp, but for a while, if a player knew the skips, that was often a reasonable proxy for knowing the mechanics of the fights. This is definitely not the case right now.

 

I just ran part of an MM LI run in which the tank and dps all seemed to navigate the long trail full of skips before the first miniboss reasonably well (the tank died a few times and pulled one group erroneously, which was a warning light but not a serious one). But the tank and both dps totally ignored the very easy to kill and trivial adds on that first miniboss fight and stood in yellow circles repeatedly. I healed through that, but it sucked. The add pulls before the first boss sucked for similar reasons - lots of unnecessary damage and inefficiencies - but didn't match the actual boss pull for sheer bloody ridiculousness.

 

The most efficient way to handle the boss is to keep it in mid and run all of the circles out. Since our dps were both Sentinels with Blade Blitz, I figured that that would still be okay, and asked/suggested as much. ("We going to keep the boss in mid?") But while the dps started out being fairly conscientious about void placement, the tank just kinda...stood in them anyway. And ate three-stack Incinerates to the face every single time.

 

So, yeah, it was definitely a wipe. We got fairly close, and the dps did a decent job for losing a huge chunk of their uptime to the tank being a derp (although part of that was because at least one of them was tunneling pretty hard), but there was just way too much damage going out.

 

I recommended that the group "take the fight seriously" on the next pull, and started to go over the mechanics again. I, to put it mildly, don't mind explaining fights. But before I was even in the room for the fight, the tank pulled the boss again. So I noped out. Normally, I would've given it more pulls - it's been quite a while since the last time I quit a group in progress - but I didn't have the patience to handle that tank anymore, and definitely not for the rest of that particular FP.

 

In sharp contrast to this, the previous MM FP run I did was on a group whose tank insta-left on MM Nathema, but dps and heals cleared past the second boss by themselves, and then finished the rest of the fp with an inexperienced but enthusiastic tank with no wipes. That's the FP community that I like to see - well, not the absentee tank, but everything else.

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vet hammer station lvl 29 sniper that i am

we process well till the turrets you know those 2 that should be killed but for whatever reason everyone ignores it and runs past it to save ''time'' cause its faster appearantly bollocks in my eyes but whatever

so we run through i die on the brigde due to high damage output from those turrets and wait till the rest kill themselves so that i can rez, only the lvl 68 powertech killed himself and the 2 two didnt, they decided to much hassle and proceded to the final boss kill it then kill themselves then leave, the powertech did say how lame it was from them for what they did and he/she was nice enough to not only walk all the way to the final boss but also tanked those turrets for me so that i still could get the loot.

 

to make things short 2 ******es and 1 good player for HS veteran mode.....

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vet hammer station lvl 29 sniper that i am

we process well till the turrets you know those 2 that should be killed but for whatever reason everyone ignores it and runs past it to save ''time'' cause its faster appearantly bollocks in my eyes but whatever

so we run through i die on the brigde due to high damage output from those turrets and wait till the rest kill themselves so that i can rez, only the lvl 68 powertech killed himself and the 2 two didnt, they decided to much hassle and proceded to the final boss kill it then kill themselves then leave, the powertech did say how lame it was from them for what they did and he/she was nice enough to not only walk all the way to the final boss but also tanked those turrets for me so that i still could get the loot.

 

to make things short 2 ******es and 1 good player for HS veteran mode.....

 

If they suggested skipping the turrets before going through with it then I wouldn't be mad at them. If it is suggested that the group skips then you should let other group members take threat before you start running, and if they do have threat just run and don't attack or do anything to get the turrets attention.

 

However, if they ran without warning your complaint would be 100% justified. But as a rule of thumb, when I'm que'ing as a low level I'm always playing cautiously. I never initiate combat on the next group of mobs or be the first to run past turrets. When que'ing as a low level I understand that I'm there to be carried for the most part so I let higher levels do that.

 

There is one instance where we had a spazzy player in our group that always started combat before the group caught up to them. They finally died when they ran past the turrets and couldn't kill the big droid on the other side, and they left our pt behind who also died by the turrets. It was just me and a level 15 healer then, who I carried to the boss. Didn't go back for either of those guys because the spazzy antics I get tired of myself. Smoothness almost always >>>>> speed.

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snip.

 

thats what im always doing, letting the higher lvls go in combat first then i follow up, but with those turrets when the first people are acrossthe bridge the turrets target someone else and no-one said anything about skipping it, they just ran past it without a warning or a heads up but thats been a few days now and i have been lvling my assasin with the unstable peacemaker dualsaber and tulak hord armor set so i have been feeling awesome :)

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thats what im always doing, letting the higher lvls go in combat first then i follow up, but with those turrets when the first people are acrossthe bridge the turrets target someone else and no-one said anything about skipping it, they just ran past it without a warning or a heads up but thats been a few days now and i have been lvling my assasin with the unstable peacemaker dualsaber and tulak hord armor set so i have been feeling awesome :)

 

Skipping the turrets is a common strategy among 75 level players, a.k.a people who came there for boss drops, not exp. If you have more then one 75 level in your group its highly possible they would do that (and wont tell you beforehand since they dont care about you)

Edited by Gelious
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Skipping the turrets is a common strategy among 75 level players, a.k.a people who came there for boss drops, not exp. If you have more then one 75 level in your group its highly possible they would do that (and wont tell you beforehand since they dont care about you)

 

Common among really bad players maybe.

 

It is a foolish strategy since the turrets DO NOT deaggro, meaning players have to die before they can leave the fp.

 

It takes no time at all to kill the turrets, especially in vet fp, as long as even one of the level 75's is a half-decent dps.

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Common among really bad players maybe.

 

It is a foolish strategy since the turrets DO NOT deaggro, meaning players have to die before they can leave the fp.

 

It takes no time at all to kill the turrets, especially in vet fp, as long as even one of the level 75's is a half-decent dps.

 

Yeah, I agree. We used to kill turrets every time before HS farming became an issue. Skipping turrets became a "thing" people do with 6.0, because most of the HS farmers are really bad, and think they save time lol. While the turrets "can" be skipped with full 75 group, it's a bit too risky in vet mode, if there's no self healing classes in the group. Someone will die and they have to run all the way back. Would be faster to just kill them and let everyone heal up before the last trash and last boss. But yeah, bad players want to make it more difficult and waste time on dying and respawning instead... Then they can start the name calling and so on, and maybe kick the person who died just because they can.

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I had a HS yesterday with my level 75 Lethality IA. Two of my teammates managed to die on every mob group, becauee they always did go into the fight nearly dead. I pointed that out, but nothing changed. A merc and me were carrying most of the fp, because the other two (a marauder and a sin) were dead most of the time. I never had so much trouble in HS, one of the easiest fps around (which is probably, why that cursed thing is popping up so often). Why people can't simply heal up between fights is beyond me. I mean, I if I do fps for objectives (like conquest or getting gear or xp), I like to be done quickly too, but I never go halfdead into a fight. I ended up healing those two idiots most of the fp with my two small heals, so that we might reach the end :rolleyes:

 

Today, I was in a very strange Battle of Ilum. The group was normal enough, a Sage, a sentinel, a guardian and me, a shadow. But the whole run was cursed. First, the guardian had trouble with his UI and didn't get it to work properly. After about 5-6 minutes, he finally was able to play again. After the first boss, he disconnected. We waited a few minutes, but he didn't came back. We did the second boss with three people while waiting for replacement. The replacement came a bit later, another sentinel from the same guild than the sage. We proceeded with no problems and made it to the final boss. During the fight, the first sentinel disconnected too. We waited for him to reconnect, so that he could get his reward (and he needed the achievment too), but he didn't came back. Poor guy. That was really strange. The fp could have been perfect, everyone knew what to do and no weird people, but two disconnects. I guess, it wasn't too bad for the guardian, because his dc was 5 minutes into the fp, but I reall feel sorry for the sentinel. Ilum isn't the most enjoyable fp imo.

Edited by Fylimar
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