pugs or hench. what do u prefer?

since i dont have access to a polling feature, something a little more informal will have to do.
with the introduction of heroes, henching missions, quests, and the like has become a lot more efficient then in the past.
my poll question to yall is simple.
pugs or hench? if possible, id also like a reason behind everyones preference.

i prefer to pug for the most part. regardless of how many times a pug fails a mission, theres no feeling as gratifying as when u find a perfect pug that breezes through a tough mission with little to no problems whatsoever.

doing missions with guildies/friends is fun but i dont get a sense of accomplishment with them because i already know that the miss or w/e it is were going to do will be relatively painless. but complete strangers coming together and pwning a mission? thats something special, imo

so what do yall prefer?

The most fun I've had in PvE is with a team that is completely constructed out of friends lists, so we have enough coherency and capability to screw around and still easily complete the mission.

Aside from that, I typically pug with a small group (2-3) of people I know, just to ensure that the group will work. Pugs, as you said, have the potential for much more enjoyment, but also the downside of incapability, and the inability to take things at your own pace (like with heroes/hench).

Overall, henching for me. In the occasions I need a group for something, I don't want to spend extra time grabbing people and sorting out setups.

I do that with hero/hench, which do you think I prefer?

It depends.

If I use heroes/henchies, I can take my time, look around, etc. There's no rush, and I like to explore. Alternately, I can also use heroes/henchies if I'm in a hurry, as PUGS can be unreliable to the point that you'll have to repeat a given mission several times before you actually get through it.

For certain classes it can be very hard to find a PUG that will accept you, and there are places where it can just take ages to form a PUG (let alone a good one).

If I remember correctly, there were only three, possibly four missions I PUGged to successful completion in Nightfall on my first time through. I PUGged some others, failed, then completed easily with h/h. The rest I just h/hed straight out.

I like PUGing. But usually, unless there's friends or guildies involved, or unless I'm having serious problems winning a mission on my own, I'll opt for h/h.

For me it is Hero and pug. However, ideally it would be pug. It is just that finding a good pug is so hard. Heck I spent the last week trying to find a good enough pug so I could finish a quest... and it was just one part of this quest. Though the people I got were extremely good, even when 2 of the monks err=10 out we still managed to beat the map with some good tactics, some supurb healing from our one remaining monk, a good bit of trust in the plan (at one point our tank was debating leaving cause he thought it was useless. Convinced him to stick around for 20 more seconds.. which was long enough for him to say change his mind as the plan worked flawlessly), and a whole bunch of ressing.

I love when a good pug pulls together even when things go wrong. Makes me wish I had a longer friends list.

So in the end a good pug group is what I prefer (which by the end of the quest mission or whatever turns into a friend group).

However, if I just want to get it done and done quickly I will just hench it (unless it cant be henched). As henchmen are vastly superiour to the average pug and a balanced pug takes a while to set up. However, they are lacking when compared to those rare instances when you get a good one.

To this I answer with two:
In theroy a pug (the case when they work well and I do not have to try again and again to get the job done when I know it can be so easy)

In practice hero/henchies (I know what they can do, they wait for me so I can go afk without annoying anyone, easier to form, better then the average pug. And a good pug is so hard to find.... so I take lower quality with reliability over higher quality with extreamly low reliability of getting it)

I prefer real people above an AI anyday. AIs haven't evolved a real sense of humor as of yet.

I do pretty much all side quests with henchies. Missions, I generally look for a group for the first 1-2 runs through, then get depressed and irritated, give up, and call in the hero/hench squad to steamroll the mission.

I greatly prefer playing with other people, but something about watching a warrior use flare, shard storm, and power attack makes me die a little bit inside.

I only hench the short stuff, but I try to find a pug for everything else.

Henches are quiet and boring, but a PUG has the human interaction, even if it's mostly arguing :P.

i love puging.

i have a long friends list and an awesome guild, but i wouldnt have those if i would never PUG!

yes PUGs can be frustrating, but as OP said, finding a good one is a great feeling. you also get to laugh at the bad ones and collect funny storys

of curse when i have no time or when i dont feel like sicialising ill hench

I'm not concerned with efficency issues with either PuGs or Hero/Hench. I'm not even bothered by immature goof-offs that spam what they're wielding or drawing on the compass. What bothers me about a PuG is more or less the pace at which gameplay is set at while trying to form a PuG, and trying to actually play while in a PuG. It can range anywhere from annoyingly slow to stressfully fast - which sucks the fun right out of the game.

Let me put it this way - Life Happens. In GW, there are many missions that can take 45 minutes to an hour, sometimes longer. Forming a group can take about as long at times, too. That's a huge chunk of my free time, and everyone else's too. In that time span, things can happen as well. Between bathroom breaks and various other real life things that can interrupt gameplay, that 45min-1hour mission can become agonizingly long.

What's worse, is when I realize that I might be the worst time offender, being the casual player that I am, taking breaks often. I get into different moods, so one time, I might wish to take it slow, goofing off, while another time I'm just wanting to rush through and get it over with.

You know who doesn't complain about either playstyle, no matter what? Heroes and Henchies, that's who. They are always there when I'm ready to play, and always patient when I'm ready to take a break smack in the middle of a mission or quest.

"Well, arcane, why do you even play a multiplayer game if that's how you feel about playing with others?", someone will surely ask.

Simple. I bought Guild Wars for many reasons, but one of the main ones was how closely it seemed to play like Diablo 2, which I loved. I love a game that I can play on my own, with my wife, or at any point in time get together with friends and play. I also like to chat with others, meet new people, and if the moment struck me, yes, actually team up and play. Guild Wars allows all of this very easily.

So I'm not completely against PuGs, I would just rather use Heroes and Henchies most of the time, for convienence reasons.

If I've got the time to spare, I'll PUG something even if it's my first time. Otherwise, Hero/Hench since I'll probably have to abandon.

sampling is a good thing and that's how you make new friends (or new people to put in your friends list).

If I want intelligent conversation the last place I am going to look for it is in your average pug; this is what Guild chat (and Alliance chat, to a degree) is for.
IMO Heroes are so much better to play with than humans it's just crazy.

Playing with friends is of course a different story, as you know they're competent, not going to leave 10 minutes in, and won't ping their Green'd-out weapon sets every 30 seconds.

I prefer hench over PUGs because I like going at my own steady pace and not wait, plus henchmen are much more reliable for me. But overall it's Guild/friends/heroes/hench over PUGs.

I do a mix of heroes and pugs, although since the introduction of heroes I've actively tried to avoid taking pug monks.
If they're not self-important primadonnas, they're usually completely half-arsed; most of the time they're both.
Dunk & Tahl don't backchat, don't think Healing Breeze and Heal Party are the be-all, end-all of heal spells and don't ditch on the party if things get rough.
Let alone which, with a good enough set-up they remove hexes and conditions in the blink of an eye.

It's the one thing I hate about GW the most: the complete and utter reliance on one class. No matter what you do in GW, it seems that you MUST take a monk.
Now I know that with good enough players this isn't strictly true, but the vast majority of people won't do anything without a monk, and they do make life easier.

Creating a balanced game and then inserting a class so powerful that people feel obliged to take it utterly destroys that balance.

Monk. GW's crutch class.

I normally take heroes/henchies for side quests, skill capping, exploring, etc. It's not easy to find people that are looking to do those things and forming a PUG to do them would take too much time. So I just grab the AIs and go.

For Primary quests and Missions, I prefer PUGs. It's not hard to find groups for those things, as there are lots of people with the goal of completing the storyline. I've had more success with PUGs than failures, and have had a lot more fun with real people, even in failure, than with the AI's (Tahlkora's a hoot, tho)

Guild/Alliance PuG > > > Heros/Hench > > > > > > > > > > PuG Helping a New Player > > > > > > > > > > Random Human PuG > > > PuG with a Wammo in it.

With my W/x, D/x and A/x I'll most often take heroes and henchies as finding a PuG with those classes can take far too long. On the odd occasion that I have tried to find a group for a mission - it's taken so long to get started I could have finished with henchies and got masters.

I would always prefer to grab 2 or 3 friends and then pad out with heroes though.

for missions
------------
Prefer friends / guild

otherwise like small PUGs with 2-4 people and rest henchies/heroes

quests
-------
hero/hench

Hench: I frequently have to go offline for unknown periods of time without warning, and there's no way I'd expect humans to put up with that. (It's just disrespectful.) And when I don't, I still like to go slowly, explore every nook and cranny and marvel at the beauty of the environment. Again, no way I'd expect humans to put up with that.

PUG: for the 1% of the times that I know in advance I'll have the time, for those few missions that I can't manage to get Master's on by myself.