Ping your build

My God! Maybe it's just me, but I cannot seem to get anything going with most PUG lately, particularly with my necro. It's been sometime now that we've been able to play and ping builds back and forth, but up until now I've very, very rarely had any issues with a build being "unacceptable" to the group.

Now I'm running into GO RED ENGINE bungholes with their elitest snob attitudes saying your build sucks, kick him, my hero MM is way better...blah, blah, blah. I have Prophecies and just recently got Factions so I'm trying to play through to get Flesh Golem and anything else good in factions, but nooooo, I'm unacceptable to join a group because I don't already have Flesh Golem and Shambling Horrors (of which I can't even get). I guess I'm pathetic because I didn't have death nova on my build either.

So please tell me I have just had a bad streak of PUG lately and that the vast majority of groups don't care what build you use. This is getting ridiculous.

Best start is to post us your build, give us template code.

Some people have impresive ability to come up with terrible snowflake builds and then be suprised why pugs hate them and refuse to take any blame themselves but blame pugs instead.

(btw: Flesh Golem is overrated, but you still should have decent elite in Aura of The Lich or Virulence.)

(btw2: hero MMs are, sadly, usually better than player MMs.)

When people ask me to ping my build I just laugh.
If they ask again I leave.

Could do without the elites trying to nitpick at my build. Can do everything with heroes anyway so I'm not worried about it.

I used to ask W/Mos ping their builds when I was going for Protector/Guardian, because you know how the average PuG W/Mo is.

Of course, Mending and Healing Breeze were usually on their bars...

There's nothing wrong with asking people to ping their skill bars. Some say it's elitist, other just don't want to waste their own time.

Wow.

(12characters.)

I ask everyone to ping their build in HM, and start by pinging my own. There's nothing wrong with trying to coordinate a groups skillsets and help players make more efficient builds.

Usually the people who refuse are selfish pricks who I don't want in my group, or impatient jerks, who I also don't want in my group. Win-Win.

i always ping my builds even if they dont ask me to. i am confident in my builds and they r good builds. i dont get why ppl wont ping wen asked. not like we going to steal it.

i never really care about what build u r using, just want them to at least have the right elite and key skills and the rest r wat ever they want.

some ppl want me to ping builds on my warrior because he is mostly a w/mo. they r happy wen i dont have mending on it. i just use /mo for the hard resz and mending touch

by pinging mine. Yea, sure, some kick you once they see the build, but that's their problem. I would wish it would tell everyone in the group when the leader kicked someone vs when they left willingly.

I hate when people ask me to ping my build - whats so wrong with HH/breeze/mending on my leet W/MO?

My FDS is teh pwnsauce.

I really never had issues before when people requested to ping my build, but it's just lately I've been mocked and scorned for the builds I used. I don't claim to have the best build, but they really never produced negative comments before and certainly didn't keep me out of the vast majority of PUGs.

And again, maybe it's more likely to happen when I play my necro. People really seem to be picky with how a MM or Blood/Curses build is laid out. As far as the other person said about hero MM's being a little better than a real person, I don't necessarily disagree. I've been in groups with someone's hero MM and they are good it seems.

I can understand a person or group wanting to be more picky when it's HM or going for Masters, but for a regular mission/quest....come on people. It's not like PvE is that drastically difficult. A group of monkeys randomnly pressing keys 1-8 should be able to get through a good percentage of the storyline.

Based on the content of the quoted post, the simple fact is that his Hero MM is indeed way better. Can't blame the guy for telling the truth and being honest with you, and not wanting to take a real player that his AI hero can perform much better than.

My advice is don't blame players for wanting a good skillbar on his allies, that's a reasonable request by him.

Usually PUGs don't ask for builds to be pinged ---but that is only because if they have the knowledge & understanding of what a crappy skillbar from another class looks like, they wouldn't be PUGing in the first place. Instead, they'd be using Heroes and Henchmen so as to avoid such crappy skillbars on real players.

Who joins PUGs anymore? The handful of times I have had any suggestions to change my skills....have come from friends...so not quite the same as getting told by someone who doesn't play a necro what skills I should bring.

My thought is you ran into an idiot or two. Don't listen to them. Just so that you don't turn into a terrible MM because you took what those fools said to heart:

1. Hero MM's suck. There's not a damn thing you can do to train them to use BotM properly. They make excellent minion bombers (thanks to their ability to target death nova and jagged bones far better than a human), but they are terrible minion masters. Anyone who thinks their hero is a good MM has never seen a good MM.

2. Death nova is a minion bomber skill. It has no place on a minion master's bar. A minion master is supposed to be maintaining those expensive minions with BotM to milk them for all the damage and tanking their worth, not blowing them up. As a MM, if you've got the resources to be casting a 5e, 1c spell, it should be BotM.

3. The same is true for shambling horrors - minion bomber skill, not minion master skill. Once they convert to jagged horrors, they've got lower life, armor, and damage than bone and vampiric horrors. (No, the bleeding does NOT make up for the lost damage, since the horrors usually mob up on one or two targets so the bleeding effect is wasted on all but 1 or 2 horrors.) That makes them wasted space. Your army doesn't have any room for second rate minions.
Additionally, the interaction with the minion cap tends to lead to wasteful chain reactions, which are even more unpleasant thanks to the most recent SR nerf.

4. Flesh Golem is nice. It's a solid tank. And it provides a 2x damage boost over a fiend, or a 3x damage boost over a horror, for 1 spot in your army. That said, it's not the best elite out there. Order of Undeath can produce a lot more damage. While it's highly overrated, AotL is very useful too. And there's a number of other decent elites out there for minion masters. You shouldn't feel that you need to use flesh golem, or that having flesh golem magically makes someone a good MM.

About 50% of all PUGers think they're too good to bring rez.

"Mommy mommy some nasty people upset me on the internets!"

"I don't care son, go post it on Guru and see if they care!"

Pinging your skill bar really is a win-win deal, when looked at from a certian point of view.

If the someone suggests trying something different, you may find a nice complimentary skill that you missed. (Always be open to suggestions. Just know the difference between good ideas and bad ones.)

If the people in the party start bashing you for being a "n00b" and all that garbage, you can leave and not have to worry about spending the next 30+ minutes dealing with the little twits. Besides, if you do have a good skill bar and they think it sucks, you won't have to waste the 10 minutes or so it'll take those idiots to fail the mission/quest.

/agree

You win the thread. Topic over.

Anyone that complains about having to ping their build seriously has team play issues, and are the reason why I hate playing with people in this game.

A few thoughts.

When someone asks me to ping my build, I generally comply. If they request a change, I consider it, reflect, and then proceed to tell them exactly why their suggestion is idiotic (of course if it's not idiotic, then I'll certainly change). An example of a good suggestion would be "Spirit Bond generally works better than Prot Spirit for this mission due to X". However, I cannot count the number of times I've had dumb skill requests, including:
-Drop Glowing Gaze for Rodgort's Invocation
-Order of the Undeath? wtf? MOAR FLESH GOLEM PLZ
And, my personal favorite:
-Drop Mending Touch for Mending.
I almost fell out of my chair laughing before quitting said PUG.

Personally, I like to see people's skill bars before entering a mission/whatever if I'm party leader. Not necessarily because I'll be able to make them change (many PUG people won't have many skills unlocked and will have nothing better to bring anyway), but to prepare for the worse, and if need be, to remove them from said party. And no, I do not simply kick everyone who isn't running a perfect GvG bar. If a warrior feels the need to bring Hundred Blades as his elite, that's fine. However, if a warrior has more points in healing prayers than his weapon mastery and has half a bar full of monk skills, that's where I generally draw the line. Lack of an elite skill is also usually a turnoff unless their build has enough synergy that there really wasn't room to pack that last skill in. Most people who don't bother to cap an elite for use tend to be inexperienced.

Honestly, assuming your build was decent, your party leader was probably an elitist prick and you wouldn't want to play with him anyway. If your build wasn't decent... you can't really expect people to WANT to group with you for a half hour mission. A team is only as strong as its weakest link, after all.

Didn't we do this last week? As I said before, there's nothing wrong with being asked to ping your build. They just want to make sure you aren't running something like this:

Personally, if I started a PuG, I'd ask for build pings. Not because i'm an elitist twat (most of the time, anyways ) but just so I could weed out the terrible players, and maybe suggest a few skills more suited to the area.
In the same fashion, I don't mind having my build asked for - it's hardly 'rude', it's just good sense.

Otherwise you'd get stuck with a MM at Hell's Precipice or a mending wammo everywhere...

EDIT: zomg Loki... Th4t heelar iz t3h best! way 2 pak ur skillbar with t3h greetest heelin skillz ev4r... Kudos to the monk who thought that skillbar up

Seriously, a prime example of why builds should be pinged... Unless you want that healing you...

I usually don't mind pinging my skills.
Sometimes people offer suggestions on a setup I had not looked at before.
Others suggest crap builds that I ignore or I use it as a sign that I need to find another group.
If the other player/players wish is to be "elitist" in their influence of your skill bar/build..let them be..

Nothing wrong with pinging builds and discussing skill bars. However, party leaders who immediately kick you after pinging builds are typically idiots who fail to realize that you can, like, change skills to better suit the team.

Ran into this yesterday ... -_-;

I usually don't have a problem pinging my build. Sometimes I get criticized for not having a certain skill on a new build I'm trying out, other times I get praised for the uber leetness of my battery necro build. You just have to take good with the bad I guess.

You pretty much just described me.
I'll be honest - I'm the kind of person where, unless I've used all 3 hero slots, you have to prove to me why I should pick you over my hero, or in some cases, a henchman.

Over the last 2 days I was trying to finish up my Protector of Elona title. I was trying to finish Jennur's Horde on Masters (which, mind you, is difficult for the ordinary PUG). Whenever I ran into a PUG, I always asked them to ping their builds, to make sure they weren't running absolutely retarded skills. Most of the time, the people who didn't ping ended up using skills like Divine Healing, Blessed Signet with no maintained enchantments, a Healing/Smiter with absolutely no synergy, or a minion master with 5 into Death Magic. Or, I'd run into the occasional warrior with Meteor Shower and Rodgort's Invocation, or the Flare-spamming Paragon with Deep Freeze, Earthquake and Invoke Lightning. Even better were the monks who used no energy management, and spammed Heal Party.

The point is, a random person I don't know has to prove to me why I should pick their skillset that'll provide me with absolutely no healing, over my Healer's Boon Dunkoro, and the fire elementalist with DPS worse than a wand has to prove to me why I should pick them over my Zhed Shadowhoof with Savannah Heat.

I don't like doing things more times than I need to. I'm sure 99% of the sane public would think the same way.

I love the ability ping builds, and templates in general. There are those few elitists who have crappy builds themselves, and say everyones builds suck, but those usually just get the boot. As for people like myself, I ask everyone to ping their builds, and I ping my build myself. Why? Constructive Criticism; Learn to recieve and give it, or else you will never succeed in a game where teamwork is key. If I don't like a skill on your skill bar, I'll suggest another skill to take, and i'll give you the reason why. As for myself, I'm open to suggestions; I usually think my builds are efficient in what they are made to do, otherwise I would not run them..But of course, There is always room for improvement.

If you can't take the heat, Stay out of the kitchen. Ergo, If you can't take criticism, Take henches.

If you pug... you deserve anything you get if you refuse to ping your build or if you don't ask others to ping theres.

I've seen some truly ridiculous hero builds on pugs ranging from the Monk hero loaded up with completely random skills to the Ele hero with 8 high energy skills and not a single e-management.

I find it funny how many people have posted that they take offence to people asking to ping builds. If you refuse to show others your build then i can only assume its because your build is bollocks and you don't anyone to see it.

There is nothing wrong with being asked to ping your build. this game is old enough that by now most players should know what constitutes good skill bars. I don't mean cookie cutter builds necessarily but I do mean 8 skills with synergy instead of some random assortment of skills that some goober thought would be cool to use. That is the purpose of the build ping, to let everyone in the group know whether or not the group stands a chance. As for the OP's MMing woes I have this to say. Player MM's will never be as good as AI MMs. AI MM's are faster, more efficient with minion maintenanace and, contrary to what another poster said, they can use BotM correctly and do so often. I never have to worry about my hero MM dropping below 10 minions ever. Player necro's should confine themselves to curses or blood magic in all honesty. The only death magic worth using is the minion skills and AI does it better.

Anyone who is insulted by being asked to ping their build probably uses a substandard build and they know it. In fact they probably use that substandard build because they are on some high horse kick about not using cookie cutter builds and yet lack the skill to find skill synergy. It's not rude. It is simply smart playing on the part of the party members.

Something interesting about pinging is that it really reveals how sucky the average pugger's build is.

When I see someone with a build like that, they generally aren't worth wasting time trying to "discuss" a build with. I'd rather just find a replacement. Not to mention they probably dont even have max gear/armor, or any of the elites/skills for a more suitable build.

When I see someone with a build like that, they generally aren't worth wasting time trying to "discuss" a build with. I'd rather just find a replacement. Not to mention they probably dont even have max gear/armor, or any of the elites/skills for a more suitable build.

I always open a PUG by saying hi and then pinging my build. People then feel obliged to ping their own build and everyone's happy.

I generally run one of the following builds:
[skill]Animate Flesh Golem[/skill][skill]Animate Bone Fiend[/skill][skill]Animate Bone Horror[/skill][skill]Blood of the Master[/skill][skill]Dark Bond[/skill][skill]Healing Breeze[/skill][skill]Heal Area[/skill][skill]Rebirth[/skill]

or

[skill]Awaken The Blood[/skill][skill]Arcane Echo[/skill][skill]Spiteful Spirit[/skill][skill]Reckless Haste[/skill][skill]Price of Failure[/skill][skill]Shivers of Dread[/skill][skill]Necrosis[/skill][skill]Resurrection Signet[/skill]

When I am asked to ping my build I cringe and wait for the 'OMG, that build is awesome. You are super god!' and they make me leader of the group.

Here are awesome build ideas
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/User:Go...r/bad_henchmen

There is nothing wrong with a leader asking someone to ping their build. There is nothing wrong with not taking someone because they won't run a build that the leader finds appropriate for their group. No one should have to take anyone. If someone gets rejected from a group, they can form a group on their own or take heroes hench. A group shouldn't have to risk failure just because someone wants to join.

HOWEVER

Common courtesy should play a part of any forming group. People shouldn't be kicked just because their current build isn't a good one for the group. If someone refuses to change their build, then not taking them is understandable, but not giving them a chance to adapt just isn't fair. Just because someone is new to something doesn't mean they will be bad at it. There are some tell tale signs that do suggest that a member will cause a group to fail and since a leader can't take an hour to do a personal interview to understand each members capabilities and efficiency, there are some general rules that must be followed in order to give success, even if there may be rare exceptions. People that are impatient, refuse to change their build, or simply won't communicate generally become liabilities to a group. While all people should be given a chance, they shouldn't get carried along if they aren't willing to do their part as well.

I don't run the FotW builds. I know my builds work, I've beaten all campaigns with them and vanquished some. So that leaves me a few choices...

A.) Refuse to ping
B.) Leave the group, and just use H+H
C.) Change to the FotW build.

I'm not insisting to run an MM in a place with no bodies, a build with 6 different attributes, or a build with no synergy. I hate just blending into the crowd, and just being another SS necro, or another one of the FotW builds, so I don't.

I am also aware that some people just want to make sure that I don't have echo mending, but I am always aware that most people will only play with a certain team setup and will kick anything else. So that leaves me the choice of leaving, or causing a fuss and being kicked anyway.

nothing wrong with pinging, never had a problem with it, don't really pug that much anymore. sometimes i'd just join a 100% nub pug for laughs though.

i agree its not really fair to just plain kick someone that has no idea what they are doing IF they can communicate. If you run into someone who is silent, pings, and won't respond to any ideas at all, kick them. Its not worth the aggravation to get someone to listen when they clearly aren't in a caring mood.

just remember you started as a noob too (old ass saying), while true not many seem to remember. if someone is willing to be a team player, will try to understand your comments on a better build, and is not stupid when it comes to concepts then they just need leadership. i've helped someone who was willing to learn and succeed and they are the best players in a pug to get to know, its fun when you know all the answers and they want to ask questions to become a better player!!

so try to be a little more accepting to a noob who wants to learn if you normally arn't.

Yes yes, you are correct. And you also stole the words from my mouth.
When i find myself beein the leader of a group i act like one. I ask for everyones build and i allways say "just to see what we have here". If their builds are decent, i wont say a thing, if they are awful, i will give them other suggestions.

I remember doing that mission where you fight Kuunavang, we had a warrior with Spear of Light, Watchyourself, Signet of Rejuvenation, Signet of Judment and some random sword skills.
I asked him to change, and he asked "why" and he convinced me of every skill he had (some to attack kuunavang, self heal, knockdown... well, some convincing arguments)
At the end he said "well, got me this far."
We did it, got all bonus. He was right, i was wrong.

Some people are really narrow-minded.
Its easier to see a "noob" with a "leet" build then seeing one with a versatile/decent one.

The hell, i use Flesh of my Flesh with my Rit at AB. At the end i allways hear "thanks".
But of course, i know how/where/when to use it

Edit: MirageMaster, you sir, are an idiot.

For me it's another "double edged sword" part of the game.

Good things:

1. If you have 2 or more of the same profession they can work together to make sure they serve different purposes. Some examples would be non stackable buffs, hexes, and so on. In my case since I play a Rt/N minion bomber most of the time it would be to make sure I can work well with Necromancers that run MMs. If they don't heal their minions and use up all of the corpses then one of us would obviously have to change our build, or we would hurt the group more then we would help it.

2. Sometimes people try to use one set of skills for the whole game which can hurt your group in different areas depending on the mobs they contain. In my case if an area didn't have many corpses to exploit then it wouldn't make much sense to minion bomb in that area. So people could offer up their suggestions for an alternate. "Usually it's restoration". Which I made my permanent alternate to minion bombing.

3. As others have pointed out it is good if you can catch people running bad builds. I'm not the type to judge everyones builds because I enjoy seeing creative, and sometimes odd builds at work during the task at hand. However other times it is just obvious when somebody brings a build that just makes no sense at all, such as a W/Mo with all monk skills.

Bad things:

1. Some people think they know everything and if it isn't the skills they want you to run then you are void. I will grant that a good number of players have played several proffesions through the campaigns and can offer good advice, but some of them will just flat out kick you rather then trying to help. However other times you get players that will want you to run complete crap such as the healing warrior, and at this point it is best to just leave the group.

2. For me the numbers for damage, or healing, and so on are always lower on the pinged build then they actualy are. If players don't know that then they may think your build isn't very effective. I havn't been in many groups that mentioned the numbers rather then the skills, but it has been an issue off and on.

That's really all I can think of at the moment. I'm sure i'll think of more but this will suit for my stance on this topic.

As a side note though I noticed a few people said hero MMs are better then human ones. I just want to say that is complete and utter nonsense. People have so much faith in their heros it amazes me. From my experience all of the hero MMs i've played with so far are crap. Maybe it was the skills they were using, but seriously, I've only seen one human MM that wasn't better then a hero. Please!

Dont understand why some people are so against showing their builds to teams.

There was a guy playing as a Mo/R with 12 in beast mastery, rest in healing yet all of his skill bars contained 2 pet skills and all Prot! We asked him to change to either healing or prot, not that awkward and he refused and claimed that he had been playing fine with that skill bar. Would you rather just go with him? The rest of the team and I didnt so we kicked him. We didnt asked much, only politely wanted him to make a meaningful skill bar. That's why we even accepted a healing sin (didnt work quite well though)

Ping skills allows us to coordinate so that we could make things more effective, not neccessarily always results "Wow nice skills" or "kick that noob"

So if you want to play as a team (that's why you are puging), show some team work and cooperation.

I don't have any problems with sharing my builds when I find myself in a PUG. The builds I use on my most played characters are rarely FotM/wiki builds, and that normally isn't an issue for the party. But some people seem to think that if its not from wiki, its a crap build. I don't mind changing some skills if it makes sense for the current situation, but I'm not going to nerf my own build just to satisfy someone that has no idea how to play my profession.

I was kicked from a FoW pug because the leader (the tank) insisted that the DoA Spellbreaker/Prot build was the only acceptable build for me to use. I hadn't even pinged my build, the guy just started making demands to me the second I joined. He kicked me the moment I challenged his need for spellbreaker, calling me a "child" and "not a team player". Got a good laugh out of it because the heal monk he was demanding take some less than ideal skills was my guild leader, who left the moment I was kicked.

When I am the party leader (or in a party lead by my guildies), I frequently request that others show their builds (especially in HM). I don't expect to see FotM builds on every bar (I actually prefer some free-thinkers). As long as the build is decent I normally don't even suggest changes unless there are certain skills that would be of particular use in the area. While I might know a better build for a player to run, they will likely do better with a build they are familiar with vs. one that I try to force on them.

Hate to break it to you, but you build, is probably being used by someone else, right now.

There are millions (supposedly) of people who play this game. No-one really cares if one person isn't using a "FotW" build. Did it ever occur to you that maybe that build is better? And if yours is better, did it ever occur to you that when you ping it, people may like it enough to consider using it themselves? Frankly, I think you're just being too self absorbed, but its not my place to tell you how to play a game.