Nightfall PuG Experiences (SPOILERS)

Yes, my experience with NF PUG's is also positive, though only tried it once.

My first attempt of Gates of Madness was with henchies. A bit wrong tatctic but I got him down to 5%. Next time I joined a PUG. Very nice group, went smooth up to Shiro. Then we had some problems deciding to do bonus or not. But he went down without much problems anyway.

Regards,
Cloudbunny

A few people are still a little to bossie and are confused when they agro the entire compass with the monks in there control.

PuGs less then 3 humans are great.
PuGs at 5 people are streatching my luck
PuGs of 8 people i've not been in since heros are so much quicker then waiting the last people.

I use pugs for almost everything. In Factions and Prophecies I completed all missions and most quests with PUGS, don't see what's so bad about them O_O

Wait a sec ? whats bad in War with mending, really makes healing signet less used. Or... Do they have great enchantie removal ? I did not get to teh gates of madness yet. But i'm playing with a mending/hh war in NF, trying to get the primeval armour.


Yes well.. I've had like 3 PUG groups thoughout NF. But almost all of factions/prophecies was completed with PUG... I must say that THK was always very stressing because you'd see all sorts of NOOB ppl - Mo/W's using a sword ("I'm testing out my swordsmanship skills ") Or monks who only use healing breeze and heal other ("I'd like to get WoH" - even tho they completed the desert missions.) And so much more. With all of my 5 prophecies characters, i've had to try THK like 10 times before completing it, because.. simply put: HENCHIES SUCK, PUG'S SUCK EVEN WORSE. So what to use ? If i had heroes at that point i'd have gladly used them but that was before NF.

Heroes are a blessing, even tho i'm really annoyed seeing my Zhed using Glyph of Renewal and then Arcane echo or Fire Attunement... I've changed his skill bar a bit to make him more effective, but still he's dumb as hell..
Monk heroes also suck.. Or maybe my personal 1337 monk build is not good enough for them ... Altough any simpler build would be less effective.

However, Koss seems to use his build very well, so does Master of Whisper

Nightfall has done everything possible to discourage PuGging.

...Seriously. To the point that a paranoid man (and I am nothing if not that) would think it was intentional on ANet's part.

(a) Invite spamming (even of the most discerning sort) is obviously dead - you can't pick a willing group in the crowd of hero-carriers. I blame the fact that you don't drop your heroes like you would your henchmen when you hit the "Leave Party" button.

(b) Group leaders vs heroes: Who's genius idea was it to allow everyone to pop their heroes into the group list with nobody being given executive control over 'em but their "owners"? The ability to call out builds is a start, but it doesn't change the fact (exacerbates it, actually) that group assembly time has now been enormously lengthened by the tedious negotiations where we compare monks' relative build merits. Oh, and feelings are likely to be hurt, which is not a good thing when you're starting a group.

(c) Individual-specific Hero control. What's worse than an idiot in a PuG? An idiot who also exclusively controls the emergency monk!

(d) The looping-back-on-itself storyline adds a lot of confusion to group building in some areas. I've seen people call "lfg" in Kamadan, even. Never mind areas like Poghan Passage that only become co-op missions after certain conditions are met - it's really hard to put a group together when 2/3 of the players in the district aren't up to the mission bit yet!

...Basically, the half the game is like trying to put together Defend North Kryta groups.

(e) Mandatory heroes (Part I). Never mind that you're taking up a slot - that's functionally equivalent to giving us seven-player missions, which I suppose is fine. The problem is that you're forcing somebody in the group to have that specific hero levelled and/or geared up. The diplomatic problems inherent in point (b) just got that much worse...

(f) The increased difficulty in Nightfall is often of the "pile on more patrols" variety. A single mob is beatable, a second bumbling into the melee is risky-to-lethal, and a third is invariably fatal no matter how elite you are. In that context, build is irrelevant - it's your ability to tightly bunch up and move out of the way that matters, and needless to say flagged henchies do that better than humans do.

(g) Mandatory Heroes (Part II). Wait, two mandatory heroes in some missions? Please tell me you're kidding.

How's my PuGging experience been? Reasonable, but there simply haven't been enough of them! Forming groups has become a lot less convenient... And when you make something inconvenient and provide a more powerful option at the same time, guess what happens?

(Point (f) also means that you're more or less forced to resort to heroes if you want to do anything esoteric (i.e. Masters in most cases).)
Nemesishk, before everyone jumps on you I should probably mention that Mending is generally looked down on. The reasoning is that the most dangerous damage in Guild Wars is "spiked" (that is, lots of damage in a very short time period), and that Mending does very little to save you from that. It's also generally felt that with the energy could be used more efficiently either to deal more damage (i.e. letting you use attack skills or +attack speed stances more often), or to prevent it (the Tactics stances are generally more effective than Mending).

...I might also add that Heal Other is quite a good skill, and that I personally would take an energy management elite over Word of Healing, but that one's more debatable. Your snobbier types avoid Healing Prayers spells in general, actually.

lol @ you being kicked out for not being b/p at Abaddon. When I done it, noone was there to group with, so it was just me and my trusty skill Frenzy. Mastered it too.

You're in my alliance! :O Scary stuff... anyway...

I've PUGed Consulate Docks because I didn't want to level my Dunkoro... that's it.

I agree with Paperfly... I hate when the worst/most annoying person in the group decides to bring *their* hero (actually this was worse, it was a guildy XD). -_-

-consulate docks. There were only 3 people there at the time (10 minutes after servers went live ) Had lvl 2 heroes, worthless. Easy pie, nice pug.

-The one where you have to kill --, the last one before the realm of torment.
Awesome pug, friendly, easily finished the mission. We even did the next primary quest and mission after it.

Honestly, the only time my Paragon(my only character to go far through Nightfall yet) has group with anyone other than Heros/Hench is when I had the Nightfallen Garden and needed Song of Restoration. (He hasn't beaten the game yet) I went to the outpost nearest the garden and spammed for someone that had the garden in it's normal state to zone me in.
Finally an ele that was going skill capping anyway joined my group of heros/hench and helped me into the garden. While exploring the garden I found him to be a great guy and a very experienced player. The only time I've grouped with another player in Nightfall turned out to be a very enjoyable experience.

the last two missions were the only PUG's i used, the heroes and good enough for me

After lots and lots of bad experiences with PUGs from Prophecies and especially Factions (by which the playerbase got even more rude and even more disgusting) i was a bit careful about PUGs in Nightfall.
Lo and behold, out of my 5 PUG Attempts in Nightfall, 4 were a total and utter desaster. Egowars everywhere, dumb people insisting they know the way, running straight into instant kill areas and then cussing out the monks for not healing them, general low amount of skill in partys (might be from another point of view because i got used to very good guildmates and friends which however by now have almost all quit GuildWars due to the bugged AI).
Add in the AI Joke ("See you later, gotta do a Droks run!" - an anonymous AI Mob in Nightfall) and you've got a list of reasons to rather take Heroes.

Singleplayer Game it became. And for that it doesn't have enough content.

Well here are the 5 PUG experiences:

1 - Barely worked for the Grand Court.

2 - Jennurs Horde. A pug Dervish insisted on telling the team to "skip the too hard bonus, we can't do with it lOl!". Everytime we (rest of the team) to go up the stairs to kill one of the Harbingers that stupid Dervish ran straight into mobs and started luring them to the NPC you must protect. Annoying to the maximum.
In the end he got what he wanted but the mission took 50 fricking minutes.

3 - Blacktide Den
Can you believe it that someone actually managed to screw this mission so hard you actually lost it? I thought that was impossible until i saw that Assassin. I thought, well... he is from another chapter, he should know a bit. And it's a tutorial mission, he can't do wrong. I was wrong. He could do. He used his teleports to aggro insanely huge mobs and constantly flamed, cussed and insulted us with nonsense. Why? Well he stated it: "Tis is teh revenge for Cantha PUGs you ****ers"

4 - Docks
Hoooo, what's that fire over there, it's shiny. Me gonna touch it.
Oooh, look who died in that fire over there, He's shiny. Me gonna touch res it.
LOOL, look those two dead in the fire over there. They're shiny. I'll ressurection chant them.
Oops, died again. Lol, me try again!
LoL. Mustz0r be bug in game, me can't res u!
Sigh, morons. Fire instant kills them
Lol noob it doesn't.
It does
It doesn't you ***ktard
Well i'll just run in and prove it to you
LOL; You teh dumb lol, now you dead too.
What's that fire over there, it's great. Nevermind it! Idiot Pyre.

5 - Monk with Mending. You know why? Because he STILL had the disease quest from Cantha. Can you believe this? He had the Protector of Cantha Title and was still running around with that certain Quest Disease. Sigh -.-

Ah, the beauty that is a PuG.

Ok, so I've gone on a few PuGs since NF....though not many to be honest. I used to love PuGs to find new guild members but given the experiences so far...

Grand Court: Pugged 5 times, 4 successful, 1 Master's. It took us a lot of tries to get Master's but then again, half the group kept leaving on each pass. Next time, I do it with heroway.

Gate of Madness: Ouch...worst PuG experiences in my three continent life. I think I've tried this mission 7 times now. First, with heroway, I got Mr. Knives down to 7% but henchies didn't spread out enough for his 3rd onslaught of IO. Decided that a PuG would be the answer. Well, between the 6 PuGs, we only got to the portals twice and died instantly because half the team stood underneath the portals as they spawned, against directions to the contrary. The other four typically found aggro using the 'eyes too big for the stomach' type of logic...sure we can take on three groups of mixed torments, margonites, and titans. :/ I guess I'll try again with heroes tonight. I just wish I could control seven heroes to get a more decent spread.

Consulate Docks: Best PuG yet. I took a heavy MM through and pretty much mopped the floor for Masters. Very little was said but the team was decent and the only one that tended to die was the leeroying Gehraz when she locked on to something while the lead was choosing targets.

Heroes increase the skill gap significantly.

Players you pick up will be bad players with bad skill bars
Your heroes have skill bars on par with your play level and decent AI.
Henchmen have sub-par AI and mostly have sub-par skillbars (with some exceptions.)

Henchmen were already better than most players. Good players would already beat the mission with henchmen. Now with nightfall they can bring some proper DPS and tear through missions even fast or bring some proper monks and have a rock solid group.

Bad players were essentially playing 7/8 (they were dead weight and their henchmen had to carry them through the mission.) Now they are playing 4/8 because they ruined all their heroes too.

I PUGed the whole campaign because being a Tyrian, means having to level heros like Melonni and Koss from their extremely low levels...which is something I consider a chore.

Chore? Hardly, just put the 3 lowest in when you finish quests, they get exp from quests. That, and they level up rather fast, they seemed to for me anyway.

As for PUG experiences, um, I didn't pug much in NF, the one time I tried during consulate docks was horrid, so I stuck with my new heroes.

I had an...interesting conversation today.

Welcome to Sidra/Jayge's PuG Story-Hour!

Recant #1:
Consulate Docks:
Group up. 3 Monks. Not a good idea. The people say they want bonus. I direct them in the direction (lol) of the last 2 people needed for it. They ignore me and finish the mission. Dammit.

Consulate Docks (again): Same story. 4 people in group instead of 6 last time. PHAIL.

Recant #2:
Venta Cemetary:
Complete faliure. I got kicked from several groups only to find from people in the PuG who I messaged to find out why that I was replaced w/ wammos. Go to hell, nightfall players.

Recant's #'s 3 and 4:
R. Refuge (kill the steroid-pumping Crag): First group randomly charges the Crag. Total faliure. 3 warriors, a monk, me, and a paragon. Too many people >.<

R. Refuge- the retry: The paragon BRINGS NO SHOUTS! The player monk (who took out my Tahlkora for his sucky dunkoro) fails, and doesnt even consider attacking the target. Using AoMelandru and several attack skills (and ignoring the midget-droughts) got him down to roughly 30 hp. Because the rest of the party couldn't care less, we lose. Argh. This was AFTER the stupid monk pulled the lever after we said no.


In short, I will never be actively seeking a PuG without being forced to again. In prophecies, at least people had their bearings by the middle/early-middle of the game due to its length. Nightfall? GG.

HAHAHA, thats the funniest thing ive read today


as for my nf pug experiences, i saw someone in sunspear spamming for a capping group so i decided to join them [wiki was lagging bad and i had no idea where any derv elites were]. our group consisted of a monk, 3 dervs, and 4 heroes [my dunkoro, 2 eles, & olias]. we were able to cap all 5 derv forms in about 35-40 minutes without much trouble.

I have to laugh.

Paragon Nightfall completion : 0 pugs
Dervish Nightfall completion : 0 pugs

Now that I've played with my heroes its back to pugs.