PUGS... CAN Still be FUN! :)

So tonight, I went to ToA right before America took favor. I searched and searched for groups, and I kept getting rejected because I was a dervish, and that isn't one of the cookie cutter classes for FoW. So, I decided to make my own group. After some kicking of 55 monks, etc, I assembled a rag tag group of fellows and one of my friends. We had 2 nukers (E/Me and E/N), an SS necro, an active prot/bonder (Mo/N) and a healing monk (Mo/Me), me ( a D/Mo), a JO ranger (R/Mo) and a Wammo (W/Mo.. :P )

So, we started off. ZOMG, we cleared first group with no one dropping below 85% HP. This continued until we finished first 5000exp quest. 2 Shards.... boom.

Then, about 20 mins in, one of our nukers DCes. Uh oh... so we press on. 2 mins later, our warrior kicks the bucket. 5 Mins later, our ranger. 5 man... and we had just gotten to the entrace to the Forge/Temple.

So I put up Faithful Intervention, VItal Boon, Avatar of Balth, and Conviction and start to tank. Dervish make GREAT TANKS btw.. We cleared ALL forgemaster quests and did it flawlessly, no deaths, nothing. Matter of fact, no one ever dropped below 50% HP. Was a TON of fun.

This was the most fun I have had in Guild Wars in a longtime! Battling with all you've got, on the edge every second, monks strained for energy (5-10 left), me trying to keep enchants and conviction up with abyssals smacking my face, our nuker down to 19 energy from exhaustion (97 normal). It was great fun, and we all had a GREAT TIME. We got 19 shards total on the trip, 3 for me, 4 for our nuker, 2 for each monk, and 2 for our necro. The other 6 were on the other DCed peeps. It was awesome. Any of you have fun PUG stories like this to tell?


Oh, here is pic after we finished. GOOD FUN!

It's soo nice to see threds like your one just make me happy. So nice to read a good story, withour some1 whinning about something

LOL, I know what you mean. It was really fun, I still have a big smile on my face right now typing this. I mean seriously, I got that Little Boy before Christmas happy thing going on.

The thing that I believe made it so much fun compared to a planned 3-5 man FoW was that it wasn't planned, it was spontanteous, unexpected. It made us change our mythodical farming keyboarding to be fast paced, on the ball Korean style play, HAHA.

You almost get an adrenaline rush from it. It wakes up brain cells when you play with twists! Shake up Guild Wars a lil!

Anyone else have fun PUG stories? Or are you all living in bubbles with your "heroes". More like ZEROS.

Realm or Torment, for sure. Completely PWNing Shiro + Lich + Bonus second try. I felt completely on fire, the other monk used Life Barrier all the time on all of us so damage was sufficiently
reduced. I just healed/protted my arse off. We has a warrior that ripped everything to shreds and a ranger that shutted down nearly everything. There was this lag spike that lasted 30 mins and when i could finally log in again I found the same group waiting for me to finish (they wanted the same group and didn't even bother to get other ppl). We PWNed Abbadon too first try ))

Nice! I want to get the end of Nightfall and beat Abbadon. He sounds challenging. But nothing is more challenging then doing Sorrow's Furnace and facing the Iron Forgeman. The Flame Djinn OWN. :P

Rahja I've been to FoW a lot. A lot more than I should have with crappy groups, but I've also been with many many good groups and everyone of them was a great great time. You felt good accomplishing something and having everyone else note it, and compliment you on your monking skills.

Good groups are rare now n days it seems so it's great you found one and bad that you made me want Dervish FoW more. ;_;.

LOL,I only tried SF when i was a noobie healing breeze monk. Needless to say i got PWNed. I should try it again one these days, since I learned how to play in the meantime...

Yeh, if you have never completed the Iron Forgeman in FoW, you haven't played Guild Wars! Very very few people have actually faced the Forgeman. You think Glint is tough? HA! Iron Forgeman > All other Bosses.

hehe, i helped two dervishes get their FoW in the past Day, the one team was epic and loads of fun to heal. Dervish FoW looks ace.

Man this thread makes me so want to play today...

After beating Nightfall I've aquired the taste for harder missions. They create a sort of excitement that when your in a group that works like a team it just adds to the rush.

After Nightfall all I can say is level 24's, 28's, and 30's....BRING IT ON!!

yes i have found similar situations having recently mastered the tomb of primeval king runs as a necro. have been in some very good barrage groups with good teamwork and being complimentary to each other which i have found most rewarding. Even better when things sometimes go a bit wrong and a lot of the team gets wiped only for one or two members to save the team and carrying on til the end. makes it most worthwhile and really gives a sense of achievement, long may it continue

This past Saturday night, had a GREAT PuG. I like PuGs anyway, in general, but this one was above-n-beyond. Was at Hell's Precipice, the last mission I needed for the PoT title, and the place was sparsely-populated, as it's been since Nightfall came out. But, found a Pug forming up - no one was accepting join requests, so a lonely Mesmer started one of her own, and I jumped in. Quickly we had a diverse but ballanced crew, a couple monks, a couple nukers, an SS necro, a couple tanks (both of us W/N, as it turns out) and our Mesmer leader. Then we entered the mission and a monk Err-7'd on us. We tried anyway, and got pwn by a bad spawn of Sparks. OK, /resign, and try again... Couldn't find our monk (offline), and another PuG seduced away one of our nukers. OK, replace with a R/Me, and add a healer Hero (rigged as an ersatz Retso Rit)... Off we go.

Right up to completing the bonus portion, everything went incredibly smoothly... There were a few tense moments, but nothing terrible... Then I screwed up, and got on the wrong side of a Titan whilst the rest of the crew was beating on an Ashen Hulk. Oooops..! I die, then half the party goes down, too. This could have been it... But no, the survivors bugged out down teh path we'd just cleared, and finally managed to break aggro whilst I appologised profusely. I'm not usually the one to screwup like that, and felt lower than whale poop... But the survivors came back, and slowly rez'd/snuck out the dead, one by one. They even forgave me my screwup...

Reassembled, we went back and cleared the gates, and seriously pwn'd poor Rurick as we passed-by; He went down like a poll-axed steer, only faster. The Liche, however, was a righteous pain - he targeted indivivual players for multiple visits to the lava in rapid sequence, usually resulting in a kill. We were all dersiously DP'd, or dead, and the sole survivor of the party had to retreat fast... OK, this again looked like we were done... But again, the survivor snuck in and rescued us, one by one. And again, once reassembled, the party went on to kick tail - Liche tail. I finally got my PoT!

Good crew, none of us knew any of the others, but we formed a disciplined and coordinated team, and this without Vent or TS, just text (and not too much of that, either), and aside from my screwup, no errors were made. I LOVE it when a team of expericened players form up like that - everyone knew what to do, and where & when to do it.

This is a great thread! I applaud you for sharing your positive PUG experiences, as I think we've all heard more than enough about how badly PUGs suck, and how Heroes are the salvation we've all prayed for...yawn!

The poster above used Heroes in the best way possible, as a supplement to a group that was unable to find quite what they needed for their PUG!

Heroes should mean that no more PUGs have to stand around yelling about how their group needs a monk...no more arguments in the team channel prior to launch about how without a second monk they are doomed...need a second monk? Pull in your monk Hero!

The SF Djinn aren't too hard, "Consuming Flames" is the only real attack they use and, as a melee attack, can be easily countered.

You can also lure them onto those Stompy Thingies

IMO: Glint > SF Djinn

Yeah right, but... the Iron Forgeman is not a boss, nor even something you can target (looking for the D'OH! smillie).

^
Yeah the Djins are not that bad: what makes it hard is right before when you gotta kill the binders and have the ironman using his 2 skills (flail and erm.. something) causing mass damage. Better run when you see that coming :P

Yeh, lol. Get hit my Liquid Iron and it BURNZ..... but his flail.... yeh I got hit by it... LOL, died instantly. It is a death trigger, not dmg. Prot spirit wont save you! MUHAHAHA. The Flame Djinn are nasty fellows if you don't know exactly how Consuming flames works, which at the time, I didn't. :P

Glad you had a good time in your pug!

As a regular uw/fow pug monk, I've had vastly more outcomes like yours than negative ones. I tend to forget the negative ones just because they're so short-lived. You can generally tell right off the capability and intelligence of the pug you're with. Although the best are the ones that surprised you.. full of a bunch of first-timers and seemly bad players, they can really pull together sometimes.

Many times I've take a group of people who have never been thru UW before and finished unwanted guests with only 4-5 people left and no tank. Those can be some of the best groups.. really fighting with everything you've got.

Same w/ FOW, often in pugs you end up with only 4-5 people 30 minutes into it, but it can make it a bit easier (especially if you're the only monk left), and better teamwork.

Usually fun pugs consisting of good players last 2-4+ hours compared bad ones which are lucky to last 10-30 minutes so I never understand all the people who complain and whine about them. I mean if they really cared they would make their own team, but I know most people are too lazy to do that and would rather let someone else do that job, often hoping they don't have to pay as well. I often just tag along any old team, because a pug will never fail to provide entertainment, whether it's rocking thru FOW or watching 5 warriors in UW scream in terror while you try to heal all their silly asses.

Glad to see you had fun with that PuG =D I really love joining PuGs and stuff...but now everyone is too busy having fun with heroes such that PuGs are almost never around anymore =(

i said in the other thread, and i cannot help me saying again... i sorta miss the old days PuG's... though sometimes it can be so frustratingly wanting to kill something in real life, (thinking back on my monk's first 3 attempts at hell's precipice) but majorly, they are all overwhelmingly fun...

Nice pic...btw can you actually bring Heros into UW/FoW...no Hencies...NO then.

Q^Q ANET DO SOMETHING.


lol JKing.
PuGs fortunately/unfortunately still and will continue to exist for one thing or another.

Edit: Oh a GW forum been wanting to say for a while now your avatar is funny

I tend to play in PUGs more often than not and I have to say I have mostly good experiences with them. Can't recall what the best one would be, but I can say that one of the better ones was in Hell's Prepice. Failed it 2-3 times in a row and decided to give it one more run (first time getting to that mission, so I wanted to just finish the game). Well, ended up with a random group of people and no ranger with winter...something every other group was actively looking for, we figured to just go for it. Well, the random group did it, and did it quite well. Most people stayed above 50% health all the time, for both the bonus and the mission...oh yeah, and the boss...well, I got him with what I think may have been the first skill I learned on the character...a skill from pre-searing.

Hmm...now that I think about it, the group I did Defend Droknar's Forge with was pretty good too. Felt like an easy ques up until the end when I ran out of energy, and even then it wasn't that bad. We even hung out in the area afterwards to do some mapping and for laughs.

You guys make me want to go to ToA and see if I can get a group together!

Ah well, who says PUGs can't be fun (of cos, they can be frustrating too if you got a spoilsport in your party). Just to keep the spirit going for PUGs, here's a pic of myself with 2 other players (Harbo Dragabus [Dervish], Miss Inscrutable [Elementalist]) in a PUG (for a couple of missions) after completing Nightfall (when nobody wanted Dervishes) with just 3 of us and our heroes. We failed a few times even but none of us gave up until we got Abaddon down.

*P.S. Harbo said "you guys rock!" but it's really more of "WE Rock!!".

Heroes were a good addition, now there's no need for a full PUG, a few good men to enjoy the fun will do.

Why would no one want a Dervish? They are insanely powerful and can tank like none other. :P

I agree with PuGs being fun. I, myself have been playing since launch of Prof and have always gone PuG. I know all too well about ragequitters/ranters and all the infantile players out there...but there are those groups you get into once and a while that just stand out...and you go through multiple missions just because of how well your group meshed. This happened to me today while i was finishing up master's to get the protector title. I had two left to do, bastion and gates of pain, after cake walking bastion with this group, two others needed GoP aswell and we went off and finished that no prob and celebrated dancing afterwards.

With the advent of heros, they are a double edged sword...now you can fill in slots when you dont have appropriate people to fill them, but on the other hand..now there are less people to fill the spots in the first place because they want to use heros.

PUGS can be fun, but as i normally hench missions and quests i thought id make a change and go pugging, but with my monk helping out lower levels in prophecies.
So i form a group and off we go, 5 minutes in, the other monk says
"oh guys i brb, got to walk my dog, ill be back in 5 mins promise"

I was gobsmacked, utterly flabbergasted! (and i never use that word)

I lucked into a group the other night at Moddok in Elona, that made The Three Stooges look like Grandma's Sunday School class. They screwed around, died like gnats, and insulted each other every step of the way. The W/Mo finally quit (this mission is EASY, you NOOBS!!. I've done it with three characters and heroes!!). Somebody cursed the monk, who finally said, "Say that one more time, and I'm out of here"!

One guy is spamming "I'm dead"!, and then, as others go down, he spams "So and So is dead"! It's down to the monk and one other fool, and the Hunger is right on his tail, back and forth over the bridge (and over me), and everyone else but me is yelling at him and the monk. Somehow we finished it (first time).

Geez, that was the most fun I've had in Guild Wars in a long time. The more it lurched on, the funnier it got. At the end of the mission, I scrolled through the team chat, just to see it again. That's one good thing about some of these groups -- if they're not good FTW, they're good for a laugh.

It is possible that PUG party can be a fun experience. Rare but possible. These coincidences will change the game until the end will come...the happy party separates...

I had a great PUG in the first Ring of Fire Mission. Well, let me qualify--half a great group.
We were strolling along in a balanced group--I was SS, then there was a nuker, 2 monks, warrior, ranger, another warrior, and something else...
Well, 1/2 way thru mission, after killing first boss, the nuker DCs...dunno why. So with 7, no problem. We run thru the lava and come to huge mob that we decide to scoot thru using charge, rather than fight.
Unfortunately, someone was not in earhsot. so the mob aggros that person, and a few others. Quickly, it's just 4 of us alive, with a mob of mursaat and elementals. (This was a while ago, so I might not remember all the fact, but I remember the gist...)
We go rez our peeps slowly and work back for bonus. Upon getting bonus, one warrior quits. Now it's 6, no nuker, and one warrior.
Back thru mob and I die. Our ranger rezzes me, but a monk bites it and bails, taking someone else with him. We're 1/2 done and 1/2 team approaching the fortress.
It's 1 ranger, 1 necro, 1 wammo, 1 monk. We take down the seals, pull mursaats and jades slowly, clear the fortress, take the mission and bonus!
It was beautiful. Props all round.

Even better. In random faction PUG in Nahpui, I run into my ranger, who is STILL bragging about her performance to anyone who will listen (and props to her, it was a hella job). Happy reunion, my rit heals that party up to get master's on Nahpui. Awesome time.

In fact, my guild really has not been big enough to avoid PuGs...so all my missions have been such. In general, I find that they're quite good. Not awesome or leet or whatever, but polite, friendly, interested in success. Sure, some are filled with 12-year-olds drawing schmeckels on the radar....

But PuGs rock my socks.