Why do PUG groups have to be l33t in none-elite areas?

This is more just a general question.

I appreciate that in elite areas such as FOW, UW, SF and DOA you need elite groups to handle the mobs and the particular creatures and situations. So this question focuses around none-elite areas which can be done using heroes and hences.

In which case...

....for 95% of the game you dont need a l33t PUG group to accomplish the mission or quest, or task at hand.

So why is it that, when your faced with a relatively easy task, do PUG creatures put more priority on creating a PUG with the "perfect build" and the "exact skill useage" then they do just having fun.

I think the fun aspect of PUGs have been pushed to one side to give more priority on creating the best, and most elite PUG in the game. It doesnt matter whether your doing a really easy mission or an elite instance, the PUG has to be the best of the best.

In threads where you debate the use of Heroes and Henches, alot of anti-AI protesters will argue...

...The good players resort to using henches instead of joining PUGs because they can accomplish what they want better, leaving only the noobs behind asking to join. So no one PUGs.

So what?

So many people complain the PUG numbers are falling, but also complain that inexperienced players want to join PUGs. You cant have it both ways.

To the PUG creatures out there, who always aim for the "best of the best" regardless of the task, explain to me why its more important to have a top-notch group as apose to just getting a group of people together to have fun?

Do you not think that if we stopped pushing noob players to one side and allowed them to join in, we would be using a valuable resource to keep PUGs going?

It is just a game afterall, and its about having fun.

[edit]

For those who are a tad confused. I have nothing against someone joining a PUG, and the leader making a polite question of "are you a healing monk, if not, can you be?". There are times even in non-elite areas that you need healers or MMs.

What I object to is that leader then demanding they be a healer or a MM or a nuker. It may be they have never used that build and dont have the experience. It may be their current build is perfectly fine and would do the job.

I also dont have anything against someone seeing a monk in their party using fire spells and thinking "yikes", and then making a polite comment to them suggesting they use a different build as thats obviously not effective.

How-ever that build (which we think is weird) might work fine for them, but we can still offer suggestions and perhaps educate them. But we DONT chuck them just because we dont like what we see, especially if its a none-elite area that any party combination could finish.

It is simply to reduce the risk of failure...taking the "experimental" side out of a PuG helps compensate for the uncertainty of playing with those you don't know. There's nothing about experience to do with it - it is simply that people get comfortable with how certain roles should perform.

I personally disagree with that approach - PuGing is supposed to be fun and for encountering the unexpected, which is why I normally refuse to call out my skillbar other than in the very end game missions.

That is why i'm picking my partymembers carefully. I want to have fun. I don't mind newbies but I can't stand noobs and thus i'm picking my partymembers as if I were going for an elite area.

Playing with guildies > PUGs, you can play whatever you want, generally speaking, and be accepted. Sure there are areas/missions where it is good to have a MM and perhaps 2 monks, but otherwise any combo works.

When we do take on some PUG players to fill out an otherwise all-guild team there generally is not any discrimination - mesmer, assassin, whatever are welcome. I'd say now though the odds are higher that we'd add heroes before inviting PUGs, it is simply safer.

Because my idea of fun is not watching a monk using mending and spamming healing breeze, a Warrior aggroing every single mob in the area and a Elementalist spamming flare, if that's your idea of fun, then good for you, but I'm sure 80% of people that post here won't find that fun.

For the same reason people get to a new outpost and immediately spam "LFG masters no noobs"... because they're retarded.

I think you missed the OP's point. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a monk spamming Healing Breeze and mending or an Elementalist spamming Flare in the non-elite sections of the game. (The warrior aggro'ing everything is still unacceptable though).

When your Monk or Elementalist starts the game he has very few skills. Flare and Healing Breeze are included in the "starter skills" package and they are meant to be used in the starter areas. My monk has travelled as far as the Gates of Kryta mission and, yes, she has Healing Breeze on her skill bar. It works very well in these early missions. I'm sure that by the time I'm ready to take her into the fow or Thunderhead Keep, I will have replaced these skills with others, but for now I don't have any Elites and Healing Breeze is one of the best healing skills I own. BTW, my monk's second profession is Ele and flare also works very well against those Ice Golems.

The OP isn't arguing that these skills should be accepted in a FOW PUG, but really who cares what's on your skill bar at Fort Ranik?? Unless you're taking along some incompetent 8 year olds, you should be able to finish the mission with just about any build.

well i dont find it fun having every single pug think a monk HAS TO HEAL! i only pug as a smiting monk now, and rarley show build and only accept blind invites. fear me.

So everyone who picks his team rather than selecting it is retarded? Way to go.

If i see a monk using flare I would instaragequit, sorry but I don't want to put up with noobs using terrible skills.

Unless its a "farming" type area (UW,FOW) we take heros......at least my guild does...which is funny because we are called pug...

Theres a difrence between looking for competent team memebers and looking for a 'no noobs' party. I know plenty of 'noobs' that are competent and could help in a pug greatly.

Maybe you should have read the entire post before flaming it. I think you are exactly the type of arrogant player that the OP is complaining about. You're saying that a Monk/Ele who uses fire spells against Ice monsters in a low level mission is a Noob?

Or did you expect all your team members to have gotten runs to the elite areas in order to pick up all the best skills before even attempting these low level missions?

Oh please, ragequit then. I think the team would be better off without you. These missions are easy to finish with 1 less person on the team.

I actually wasnt trying to suggest that we dont comment on other team members builds at all. Its ok to ask someone what build they are, (i.e healer, or MM or nuker) and to then ask politely if they could be something else.

Aslong as we're polite and we dont kick someone simply because they cant, or wouldnt want to change. Especially in an area that isnt dependant on having the perfect team.

The game is about education and learning, it doesnt hurt to offer advice to a monk who might be shooting fire and saying "you might want to avoid high energy spells".

Aslong as you not rude about it and start spamming someone with "noob" and kick them.

That was part of my point.

That was at TheRaven too!

You're not very bright, he was talking about in the start of Proph. At that point, as a monk, you hardly have any skills needed to fill up your bar with say a full healing lineup. Furthermore, at that point in the game having a completely dedicated healer is probably overkill. By Speccing a little into fire and taking flare he can probably kill an ice golem in 4 hits by himself. Now, early in the game, flare spaming is actually fairly effective since you can't use the arguement that conjure flame does more damage :P

Really, you're part of the problem. Normally we allow monks to take a utility skill, so why not have flare as the utility? If by killing that ice golem in 4 flares, preventing it from using deep freeze on your party, you think that monk is being horrible, then you *really* have a lot to learn.

Of course, if I saw a monk say...past the shiverpeaks...using flare, I'd probably wonder what they were doing. Of course, I wouldn't ragequit, because that's completely rude to the rest of your party. I'd rather have him taking flare and spamming it when healing isn't needed than say...using bane signet....

IMO in certain area or mission you do need people that know how to play the game, and know how to play the right build in order to get pass it or get the master/bonus reward.

Raven is right, nobody care if monk cast firestorm & spam HB in fort ranik but when that happen in somewhere like thunderhead keep you know, you're in troble.

2 Hits actually.

This was my point precisely. I agree with Fish to an extent when he says that a monk should not be spamming high energy fire spells, but in these low-level missions, I almost never have to heal anyone. So I either stand back and twiddle my thumbs, spam healing breeze on someone who dipped to "GASP" 75% health, or do a little fire damage myself.

I can see where this is becoming an issue. I've been in groups for simple missions where everyone is being asked to list all their skills and all the skills of their heroes (if taking them). That's time consuming enough, but then you can get into the debate as to how to "fix" someone's build. I've even seen it extend to getting everyone to list their weps.


I tend to drop out of a group like that for several reasons:

Pre-mission bickering usually leads to in-mission bickering

This time-consuming process often leads to others dropping out and a whole new slew of build listing/debating as others join

In the time it takes to figure out if everyone's skills are set OK, you could have run the mission or at least got off to a good start

I'm just as happy to roll the dice with a group because even if everyone has that "perfect build" it doesn't mean that they know how to use it.

I'm a grumpy old man who doesn't want to hear a 15 year old lecture on how important the skill "inspired hex" is to the mission

Just my 2¢

"Using PuGs means I might fail."

What is wrong with the occasional failure? People don't want to fail at anything. If you don't fail now and then and ALWAYS WIN, you are not being challenged enough. No challenges lead to boredom.

Very true!

Lots of these people are so accustomed to failure that they want to do everything they can to prevent it. Many of them are elitist snobs with a "my way or the highway" mentality.

I think you're right, to a large degree. But there are still plenty of people who know that going the PUG route can provide more fun than doing things any other way. (aside from guild groups, of course)

Yeah, that's the arguement. It's a poor one, but there it is. It's ridiculous to assume that someone is labeling themselves "n00b" every time they type "LFG." Many of us actually like the challenge of doing missions with PUGs

QFT

This is where the cookie-cutter mentality kicks in. In most cases, there are any number of ways to rip through a mission, and too many people don't realize that. However, there are some instances where having a particular skill makes things much easier to do. Winter in the Fire Island area is a godsend. Spoil Victor when facing Shiro in Nightfall is another example.

"N00b" players or "Newbie" players? Either way, it can be hard to tell beforehand what kind of player you'll be dealing with beforehand. It doesn't bother me in the least to play with newbies who want to learn and get better at their profession. I do not enjoy playing with n00bs. These are the people who have no clue what they're doing, won't listen, and run off and do their own thing. If I get someone in my group who acts the n00b before starting the mission, they get one chance to straighten up or they're gone. It's not fair to the party members who do want to work as a team to have to deal with that stuff.