Two separate pops yesterday for Ravagers via GF:

 

Both were for Coratanni / Final boss fight.

 

First group fell apart as raid took massive fire damage / people not debuffing and healers not able to keep up (myself included). Three wipes and people started dropping.

 

Second group, GF bugged out, and only gave us one tank. When asked, no one owned up to having entered GF with tank and dps roles enabled. Did better than the first group, but again people were taking sustained fire damage.

After first wipe a dps left. We still get no second tank, but instead a fifth healer. Even with five healer we still couldn't keep people up due to fire damage, and that bird jumping all over.

 

No wonder there are no PUGS. BioWare have gone insane with all their AOE damages lately, and as with all AOE: people think it's all warm and fuzzy

At least on TofN this seems to be in change.

Guess people are better geared now, and most players have better gear. Did both TOS and Ravager PuG's on several chars over the weekend. Both 16 and 8m. We even brought a massivly under geared player thru Ravagers. He was willing to join TS, so we took him, had a mix of green 168's and blue 178's. Yes, he dies a few times, but that is to be expected.

 

The last 2-3 weeks there seems to be a rise in number of pugs, but we still have people requiering Rdps, achivement etc.

My greatest achievement so far is that I did sm rav with pugs without a single wipe.

I see that most f the players are evolving. When they nerfed ops sometimes We still wiped but nowadays pugs are very capable of doing the new ops. I'm even thinking about pugging first 2 Hm boss (with decent gear+Ts ofc)

I got through dread palace hard mode over the weekend via pug group. It took a long time...like 6 hours...since none of us knew the fights well. But, we had a really dedicated team who wanted to learn and was really motivated to clear it. Pretty rare to find oneself in that kind if f a pug so I was really impressed. The pug ops are there, but they are a little harder to find Id say.

I would say it is because new operations (ToS especially) are pretty difficult on coordination, and achieving that in PuG is pretty damn hard.

I hope you do! I'd join it if I could because I respect players like you who aren't afraid to help others out.

 

ATM my pub side guild is small. So PUGs are a must. And no issue walking first timers thru the op provided they join voice chat. We don't ask for Achievements or anything like that, we just ask if they know the fights. If not we ask them to join voice. If someone is vested in learning and running the op it isn't that big of an ask

No wonder there are no PUGS. BioWare have gone insane with all their AOE damages lately, and as with all AOE: people think it's all warm and fuzzy

 

Coratanni's DOT at 16 does twice the damage than the 8 version. When people don't cleanse, they die: healers can't keep up an avoidable raid wide 3k damage/s.

I see pugs forming all the time for ops on ebon hawk. So unless youre playing on jung ma or a pvp server I dont see how youre no longer seeing pugs. If youre on a server like ebon hawk. yes the number of pugs have dropped and thats for quite a few reasons actually.

 

The new ops require a steeper learning curve then the 55 ops did

 

Since 3.0 16 man was dropping only 8 man loot so there wasnt really a point in doing them since not many people would be getting anything. No the patch notes said it was fixed but ive heard different storys from people in the game since then. Some have said it was fixed and others said it still drops 8 man loot.

 

16 man gf is and always has been broken. If you get the full group and run straight through everything goes fine but if someone leaves the group or gets kicked and you nee to get someone new. GF very seldom works right. If you have someone join progress it rarely pops. If you invite the person to group it breaks the GF so everyone has to leave the phase, quit and reform group. And it takes almost 30-45 minutes just to get everyone on the same page to get the group going again and by the time you get everyone out 3 others have already left as well because their time is being wasted since nothing is happening. And forming up a group when there are lockouts makes matters even worse too. if they'd bring back 8 man gf id consider doing it but as it stands now its not in my best interest to even do 16 man gf

 

Another thing could be why youre not seeing groups forming is that general chat is not the channel people use for pugs. If youre on ebon hawk join the allies channel. it a place to start and it has people forming groups. Though the quality of the allies channel on pub and imp side has hit rock bottom and its no better then fleet general chat.

 

If you re really looking for an ops group there's 2 ways you can do it. one way would be to join a raiding guild and another would be to form a group yourself.

 

But the biggest reason why youre not seeing as many 16 man ops is due to the loot bugs and the broken 16 man gf.

Another thing could be why youre not seeing groups forming is that general chat is not the channel people use for pugs. If youre on ebon hawk join the allies channel. it a place to start and it has people forming groups. Though the quality of the allies channel on pub and imp side has hit rock bottom and its no better then fleet general chat.

"Don't use Gen chat, use the allies channel. The allies channel is no better than Gen chat."

 

This is an obvious question. There are none. Prior to the new expac and the nerf to comms there were many Pug 16 man Ops hollering for players.

 

Now, there are NONE, not one at all. I have at this time cancelled my sub. I will more than likely come back in short order since I do love the game. However I am actively looking for another MMO at this time. I was told to look at Archeage or Guildwars 2. I am an EQ2 fan personally.

 

If I had 'any' advice my personal one is for the current 16 Man weekly ops, (Temple of Sacrifice and Ravagers) to be really nerfed and have the rewards boosted. It would be nice to have droves of players yelling in Allies LFG DPS or Heals or whatever for 16m TOS. But currently on Ebon Hawk that is simply not going to happen.

 

Rewards are crap on all Hard Modes and there is actually zero reason to cue up for the lvl 60 ones at this time. I have sent all my cash to friends and will still log in and may sub if the Devs change the current 16m Ops. There should be no reason that 16m Story mode Ops should be as difficult as they are.

 

The bottom line. Its not fun and the rewards (for me) do not feel like I am moving forward.

 

I see on the horizon a craptacular expac that gives us a costume designer that should have been in release. There is NO new content planned or even hinted at till next year, all of which really make me sad.

 

Adios folks!

start your own groups?

 

i dont recall people pugging with much success with dp first came out.

 

i suspect SM/hm will be nerfed once nim comes out. that way they keep people on the hook.

I mostly agree with the OP here - the comms nerf killed the fun. Yes, of course, there are TOS and Ravagers - but running just two glitchy ops a week is incredibly boring.

I'm tanking for my guild's progression team and we do both new ops every week. Each week, two ops. That's not even remotely as fun as it was when we could run TFB/S&V/DP/DF + EV/EC/KP, sometimes all in one night, next day switch to alts and do it again... Also I could join fleet SM pugs with my lower geared alts and spend some nice time there... Now it's all gone, old ops NIMs bugged to hell, and I only log in twice a week for guild raids.

Is this really the way it should be?

Is this really the way it should be?

Apparently it's good enough for you or you wouldn't still be playing.

How many lvl 55 OPs were there when 2.0 dropped? 3 months after 2.0?

Apparently it's good enough for you or you wouldn't still be playing.

As I said, I log in twice a week for guild raids. If not for my guildmates, I wouldn't be playing.

 

Also - I think that many people here (those who are dissatisfied with the turn the game has taken) do not just unsub and leave mainly for two reasons: 1) friends who are still playing and 2) hoping BW will fix the situation somehow.

 

That absolutely does not mean the game is "good enough" at the moment.

Gone...just like the rewards for doing old Ops are.

Still trying to figure out what's so hard about not standing in and/or being stuck on stupid.

 

It is simple, there exist some very casual players who don't want to know all the ins and outs, they see light sabers and say, "oh cool, that looks like fun, I'll try it" and they don't want to go any further.

 

Sooner or later, if the stick with it, they end up in HM FP or OPs and they stand in stupid, because it never mattered up until that point. The leveling in this game does not prepare you at all for end game, and thanks to taticals, normal flash points don't anymore either.

 

There is a huge jump in challenge between the leveling part of the game (and tatical FP) and the end game HM and OP content.

It is simple, there exist some very casual players who don't want to know all the ins and outs, they see light sabers and say, "oh cool, that looks like fun, I'll try it" and they don't want to go any further.

 

Sooner or later, if the stick with it, they end up in HM FP or OPs and they stand in stupid, because it never mattered up until that point. The leveling in this game does not prepare you at all for end game, and thanks to taticals, normal flash points don't anymore either.

 

There is a huge jump in challenge between the leveling part of the game (and tatical FP) and the end game HM and OP content.

 

I would agree with this, especially with the new lvl 60 content. The endgame progression in 1.X was better in this regard. HM FPs prepared you for SM OPS which prepared you for HM OPS. Even 2.X was pretty close to that design. Now there really is very little margin for error in the lvl 60 HM FPs. And in some cases, they are harder than lvl 60 SM OPS. That seems a little wrong IMO.

 

I think casuals for the most part will never go beyond SM OPs. And as such everything at that level and below (I include lvl 60 HM FPs as lower content) should be relatively easy for casuals and PUGS which I don't believe they are at the moment. From an OPS perspective, I think the HM and NiM versions should be targeted towards the raiders with NiM modes only being able to be cleared by the top 1 - 2%.

 

Now I also advocate for NiM level FPs that are very unforgiving in terms of DPS / Heal checks and mechanics.

 

Overall, I just don't think there is a very good or logical way to progress through end-game content. We have super easy and then difficult with varying levels of bugginess and / or annoyance.

If you do go, I would NOT recommend Archage. While it had great potential, the sheer amount of bots and hackers and gold spammers have completely ruined the game.

 

Also, since you seem to be focusing on pve, Archeage has little, and it's a gankfest out there. Your enemies, Allies, and even guildmates can kill you and take tradepacks (main way to make gold) If you enjoy pvp it was fun until the botters and Hackers ran rampant while Trion can't (or won't) do anything to stop them. as to GW2, can't say, haven't played it since it launched, it under performed for me. Still, wish you the best