PUGs - the good, the bad, the not so pretty

Well I usualy have good luck with PuG's, even though most of the time it's with people that other groups don't want. I can't really recall all of them because when I quest I take heros/henchies, and when I do missions/elite stuff, I PuG. Keep in mind though sometimes I will up and decide to pug a quest to remind myself i'm playing a multiplayer game.

Hmmmm, best pug? As much as I want to say one or two of the ones I had in Slavers' Exile, I gotta say my best PuG was in factions. We were all rangers in an area where the groups at the time didn't want any. We burned through that mission with no deaths, no heros, and no monk. We all self healed. It was awesome. That was a long time ago though and i've had some amazing groups since then that beat the odds stacked against us. Like the NF mission with Shiro. Our group was garunteed not to win it seemed like. But some how, even though it took about 30 minutes on shiro alone, we beat him. It was out of desperation, but only 2 people quit before we took him out.

Worst group? That's kind of tough. Ok, ok I think I got it. If you don't count quitters, afkers, and so on. My worst full fledged group was in Frostmaw Barrows. Well all the PuG's I joined for that area. Every single group I was in wiped in the first area by the entrance, and then either ragequit, or screwed around. I went back with my heros and some henchies and knocked that dungeon out. I'm not going to say I found it easy, but I beat it, and never even reached 60dp. I would of rather been in a group of real players though. It get's a bit lonely sometimes lol. Ingame that is.

Came back to gw few months ago, was bored, so decided to try hells precipace.
6 W/Mos, 2 Monks (I was a monk). All pug.

Made it with no deaths, got bonus, beat it in 45 minutes. My respect for wammos came back.

Worst:Tooo many to name. It would probably involve a wammo trash talking, mass aggroing, and eventually rage quitting.

I think there's a strict distinction between an all PuG group and a partial PuG group.

All PuG groups means 8 humans players. These groups will almost always include one person who is a bad player. And when I say a bad player, I do not include, new players who are willing to learn. 6/7 decent players are usually good enough to make up for the one bad player, unless he happens to be a critical profession, like the tank or the monk.

Weirdest experience (I tend to just laugh at horrible PuG situations I get into) with an All PuG was when I was doing Boreas Seabed mission. 2 monks and a bunch of others. And one of the monks, as well as the rest of us, were wondering why we were wiping so much. We kept asking the other monk to tell us his build but no response. A little observation later, I saw that the other monk only ever cast Flare and Fireball.

Our mistake for not making everyone ping their builds. Now to find the other Two Stooges.

For new players out there, it is relatively (to other games) easy to max level a new character. So if you started a Monk and end up wanting to be an Ele, PLEASE do make a new Ele character.

I quite enjoy Partial-PuGs. That is Me + Heroes + Stranger + Heroes/Henchmen. Up to 2-3 Strangers. Any more than that and it starts to take the shape of an All-PuG group with its inevitable griefer.

I am more than happy to play with 1-2 strangers, and more than happy to spend the entire mission/instance teaching new players about the game. Generally, the Heroes and Henchmen pick up the slack of 1-2 new players who are willing to learn.

Its all about attitude. Its ok to be new. Tell people you're new and you're willing to learn. Don't be a quiet idiot.

I'm awfully new myself, and I am always willing to learn. And where I am able to, I don't mind teaching. If you don't ever Partial PuG and don't ever teach new players, you're just another part of the lousy PuG problem.

Frostmaw's is actually easier with hench then with real players, you constantly hvve to kite from the wurm popups, and with real people that can be a little bit hard to organise properly (make them all kite the same way lulz).

I've had numerous good and bad experiences in THK, but given that I must have done it over 100 times, that's not surprising

However, one recent PUG experience stands out as a real positive. I was hanging about in Raisu when I was invited to join a mostly single Guild group. We smoked the mission and then on the team chat the Guildies were discussing doing the Eternal Grove. This is definately not a mission I either enjoy or would normally look to a PUG to do..........however the whole PUG decided to do it and we smoked it as well IIRC they were going off to do another mission, but I had to leave for some RL stuff.

A real pleasure all round.

It's always nice to get in a guild-mainly PuG... They usually know eachother either in RL or another MMORPG. But in either case they anticipate eachother well and probably could do it without your help at all. But they don't want to spend sooo much time on it... lol... It's one of my favorite things to do when we do a guild-mission.

All of the PUG's I've taken part in have been amazing. I can especially, and most fondly, recall two warriors I was fighting with. One was using suffering and the other conjure phantasm. Truly, a build worth entering into a prestige art museum.

And I can never forget the character with 7 skills in an AB outpost. Absolutely stunning. Who needs 8 skills anyway, right?

But to digress, sometimes you get a group of people that know what they are doing. Honorable mention goes to the PUG I went with to get my final pieces of obsidian armor. We took that Forge down like pros.

I do not consider myself uber, I rather consider myself an average player that still has a lot to learn. I am not a hardcore, rather a casual player. That being said I do study skills and builds, and read up on those here on these forums. I do want to be a good player after all.

However, I despise PUGs. I will not join a PUG by my own free will. I only do Guild or Fiend groups. I did some PUGs when I started playing GW in the first missions of Propecies campaign. This caused me to think the game is very hard, the missions very difficult, and I do not want to say here what I thought of the players in general. Anyway after a couple of weeks I stopped playing GW. After a couple of months I met a GW player in another MMO, who begged me back to GW, and together we henched through most of the campaign. We did up to the last 3 missions within a week. The last 3 missions we did with the guild we both joined at the time. I have since finished all 3 campaigns (some more than once) and now almost GWEN with only H&H.

So IMO the worst PUG is all of them. I have never had the luck of a good PUG, every mission I have ever done with a PUG was beyond sad.

Meh PvE people whining about bad pugs apparently never PUG'ed in HA :P

Best line so far. 1996, huh? So, how'd you manage to pull that one off? (Sorry, couldn't resist)


Anyways, about the pugs. Don't be afraid to pug. They aren't nearly as bad as the forums make them out to be. It's just that bad pugs are so much more memorable and make for better forum stories than the good ones.

The easiest way to ensure that you get a good pug is to be the pug leader. That way you can ask for skill bars weed out the troublemakers before setting off.

ROFL, I tried that once. Scary, very scary!

For the past month I haven't Pug much through GW:EN.Due to the new guild I join have an active alliance.

Worst Pug I got was the one that going for Rrgar Manegeries.A Full Pug that have a guy going on phone for most of the time,that just say "damn..." and go AFK.And the rest got uneasy and rush ahead.When we reach the dungeon there's people thinking of going for a break just to wait the phone called guy.But the Opinion wasn't agreed by all.Rush up ,got a wipe then QQ and quit.

Most memorable: Ring of Fire with 8 warriors! I'd just failed RoF twice with ragequiting PUGs, and in desperation the remaining players in town pulled together anything they could get. We were scared so we planned our skill bars very carefully, everyone bringing a res and 3-4 heals and defense. The W/Mo's had their Healing Hands, Balth's Spirit and so forth, and my W/R had Melandru's Resilience, Troll Ungent, and Dolyak Sig. Surprisingly, our highly-armored entourage steamrolled RoF like nothing! We communicated constantly, nobody charged ahead, we rotated out the wounded and ressed quickly. The lesson learned: unusual circumstances make people use their heads, usually people just throw together the classic Mo/W/E/MM combo and sleepwalk through missions and that's how they end up getting themselves killed.

Well, I've posted in this topic twice, I guess I should put info about my best and worst pugs.

Best PUG

Although some would say it's not really a pug, it was for me at the time. I was on my ranger, and a guild group just happened to be looking for a ranger to do Thunderhead Keep while I was grabbing henchmen to go do the mission.

They sent me an invite, asked me to trap, we went in and did mission and bonus with no deaths. This was like 2 months after GW was initially released so the dists were swamped with people trying to do it and failing non stop.

Worst PUG

Not really sure which one could be the worst, there have been a number of bad ones. So bad that I don't pug. I use heroes and hench, if I'm with a real person I'm usually with someone I know, guild mate or friend.

I do remember trying to do various missions very early in the game and finding people running the stupidest builds. Monks with mending on themselves spamming healing breeze and heal party. Warrior/Elementalist with Meteor Shower. Necromancers using pets and beast master skills along with low level minions.

There have been so many bad pugs, typically people who have no clue what they are doing or people who have no clue how to NOT screw over a group, that I just stopped pugging almost completely.

It's so much easier to do stuff with a group of peopel who know what they are doing or you can control personally (heroes/hench).

Best PUG - Sanctum Cay, in the very earliest days of the game. We had no monks and everyone was either a necro or a ranger. No trappers or MMs. We still decided to give it a try and still managed to make it to the end. Sweet victory.

Worst PUG - You name it, seen it all as have probably most of you. No one stands out in my mind, but plenty of the following in two+ years:

1. Immaturity
2. Abusiveness
3. Stubbornness
4. Aggroing
5. Ulterior motives
6. Lack of teamplay

The worst has to be when someone deliberately blows it for the whole party near the end of a long, exhausting mission. Those are so demoralizing.

This comes fro an earlier post of mine.

There is very little fun in this game anymore.