PUGs 2.0: Zaishen questing.

It seems that Zaishen quests were quite successful in putting critical mass together. And for some reason, people do not just load x-way but ... gasp ... play together!

First, I was quite surprised by competence. Yes, there was wammo with ursan, healbreeze monk, healer ritualist with WvK as elite, etc ... but generally it seems that people who zquest don't mess around and do their best to succeed (withing their own mindframe), and some even understand importance of party wide protection or benefit of prot spirit in hm. And if someone takes over leadership of group and sounds confident, people fall in line and follow him (maybe that were just german districts?).

One issue is that sometimes people give up too fast (perdition rock is unforgiving, but when group manages to defeat nearly all patrols at start before dying, attempting to redo all patrols without dying seems foolish.), but they at least try to stick with group. And I have yet to see some drama.

Then, there is lack of profession discrimination. Understandable. People hope to do this on all their chars and won't risk tit-for-tat. After all, "lol, loose useless x" is kinda stupid if you have your own x in queue on which you hope to earn some zoins too.

"Me, My necroes and PuG". That is quite interesting trend. I saw this several times: Party leader runs sabway and just takes 4 random people instead H/H. Looks like some people are just too attached to their trusted heroes. Hmmm.

Your random thoughts?

You must be very lucky tried 5 times with PUGs for HM THK and failed every time. Switched back to heroes and passed the first time. Similarly for HM Raisu although it wasn't as bad, since I passed with PUGs after 3rd or 4th try. The rest of the characters use heroes and they will passed smoothly on the first try.

Reminded me why I stopped PUGing in the first place. If you want some fun, go with pugs, if you are serious about clearing use H/H.

agreed, could this be a renaissance of PUGing. . .(?)

I really love the co-operation that there is with zaishen quests atm. GJ Anet making the exit point for the first quest be the entry point for the second (Thunderhead Keep -> Ember Light Camp -> Perdition Rock) so you can continue immediately with the same group.

I was the second person in a group that did Thunderhead Keep, after most people wanted to go on to get Maxine Coldstone, but a couple left - including the leader, and that made me the party leader (cripes). I'm still relatively new to GW and I only recently completed prophecies (I have lots of characters partway through all the campaigns you see) to make hard mode accessable, and have not played much hard mode at all. I was quite worried because a lot of peoples can be not very patient. I was pretty certain I knew the right way to go, but partway there some people wanted to go a different way. I suggested that my way was right and people went that way but I began to doubt it even myself. Luckly it was the right way and we succeded, it was a good team. I was so relieved I didn't screw up.

PUGing ftw. Really enjoying this, doing a HM mission with a PUG is pretty much a cakewalk. We got down to the final group in THK with 7 players and only one monk, it was great.


I say kudos to Anet for encouraging us to interact. We'll just have to wait and see if this interest sticks.

All I saw was "Cryer LFG" or QQs looking for HB monks.

I have PUG'd all of the Zaishen Quests so far and amazingly only one of them has defeated a PUG group I was in (Rragar's HM unsurprisingly)! They rest went really well. seeing 4-5 districts for the zones each day is just wonderful.

I completed killing Kanaxai and Thunderhead Keep with PUG's on my Monk.

THK was easy as pie, we just formed a party with 2 monks, rest didn't matter. I suppose because of all those Ebon Assassins and Ice Imps and other PvE skills it doesn't matter what build or profession you run. You'll be a killing machine nonetheless. However, it was a nice surprise getting hit by Spectral Agony again, without having Infused Armor ^^.

Now the Deep was an entirely different story. I still had the quest in my log, and only attempted to finish it 2 days afterwards, so there weren't many people grouping anymore. First two groups had a leader randomly adding people, and I was number 12 to get added. As soon as we were complete, the Party Leader enters the mission. Only then I noticed there were only 2 monks, and the rest was a ragtag crew. You don't enter the Deep on HM with only 2 monks and a ragtag crew. PUG's at it's worst here.

Second group had a fairly competent leader, who at least attempted to make a balanced party. However no one was able to get beyond the first rooms, so after a few failed attempts, the party broke up.

The third group (one hour later since starting this stuff) had a party leader and someone else with some experience on the Deep. Asked us to show our bars, gave some suggestion, explained the order of the portals, organized the party members... had a good feeling about this.

Only 2 of the 4 groups were able to get past the first chamber, but we got out of it eventually. The next few easier chambers were completed without much trouble. Yet, soon the difference between an organized guild/alliance party showed. Our main puller and tanks only had minor Deep experience, and never before completed it. We got a Monk, only using RoJ and Rebirth, who refused to take of her Staff when needed to swap to melee weapon. A warrior kept rushing into chambers, not aware of possible popups, getting him killed over and over in the process. People killing Irukandji's next to the Leviathan, although they've been warned over and over not to. Tanks not tanking at the right spots and leading a bunch of Oni's right into our backline (just keep healing...). People rushing into the Scorpion room, forcing the monks to enter it too to rez them, and nearly causing a wipe at the same time...

Thankfully, our party leader kept a cool head, didn't resort to flaming people when something went wrong, and was able to carry us al the way too Kanaxai. She started to explain what's gonna happen en what all of our jobs were to be. Then, people noticed Kanaxai and knew the mission to be over soon, so....rush him! Rez and repeat.

After explaining what all needed to do, we still had major trouble getting his hp down. We ended up ganging up all on Kanaxai, throwing at him anything we had. And we killed him! I couldn't beleive it. After two hours with nearly 10 party wipes, we completed this Elite Area on HM. It was 2 hours of the most intense Monking I've had, knowing one minor slip up of any of us could get us all killed.

At that point, I was pleasantly surprised at how very much possible it is for any PUG to complete any task, as long as some people now what to do, and can lead the party properly.

PUG's FTW!

I've only done one quest and one mission so far and that was with a guild team. Your notions are interesting and I'll be sure to try them out in the worst districts there are. American ones. <3

I got kinda lucky with yesterdays quests. My first group took it to the palace in HM in 16 mins.
That dungeon though, i never want to see it again.
After 2 hours of various failing pugs i finally got into a group with balls. Fought our way to lvl 2 easy, then had some problems with the "rayway" groups. but managed to finish it in something like 3 hours as a team.

I got crap from the chest.
I got the team MVP because I brought 200 clovers and used 30 of them along the way...

All I'ved one with a PuG so far was THK ang have to say I was damn lucky because I had a fantastic pug. I was the party leader running SY spam, had 2 very competent monks nontheless and in general everyone knew what they were doing and didn't get in anyone's way. Absolutely no insult calling when it came to builds, I let everyone run whatever they wanted and some actually helped and gave tips to each other on where to improve, and the others actually listened.

I'm interested see how that story will go for Rrgar's dungeon, in HM dungeons aren't as easy as prophecies missions. I hopped by the outpost yesterday just to see what was going on, saw a few Q10 CRYERS LFG!!1 that just felt like slapping those people. The wonderful thing I see coming out of the zquests is the ability for most people to use the chars they want with little restrictions, if in time it just becomes treated like every elite area where practicly only sins and roj cryers get a place I'll just go back to my heroes and leave the mindless sheep amongst themselves. Never liked class and build descriminiation whatsoever in GW and hope this won't become like that.

i think its awesome it makes the game bearable again i can go to an outpost and be in a group and i dont have to have my monk or sin i can have just a plain old warrior or even a paragon and find a group that is accepting its awesome say its a bright future for guild wars

I went to THK to see what was going on, just out of curiosty, was amazed to see so many teams forming, almost felt like the orginal game again with PUGS forming in a mission outpost!

I joined 2 teams first I was a warrior, no-one was checking/asking for builds to be pinged. The 2 monks in the team did talk to each other, and one went heal, other prot.
Mission was pretty much a breeze (one partial wipe due to over aggro), everyone had reasonable builds, and was a lot of fun.

2nd pug I joined with my monk, again no build checking, pretty much join and go, they did at least ask if I was ready thou! Again no real problems everyone had half decent builds, and people stayed together, both missions done in HM with bonus.

Was a lot of fun, no-one complained, everyone was polite, and I think a good time was had by all!

PUGs were a nice break from h/h, but then quickly reminded me why I stick to playing with the ai.

interesting... deep pugging was sure easier a 1-2 yrs ago
________
ZX14 VS HAYABUSA

I completely agree. Skeptical at first, I tried PUGing Raisu HM, and suprisingly we completed it with time to spare. Competence amongst players has greatly increased from Zaishen- now if I want to fight with a group, I'm not forced to pick up the one X/W there who doesnt have an elite skill.

Kudos Anet on a brilliant update!

I always said they should do this (yeah, ou can search for it in Sardelac if you want) so I'm really glad with the feature itself.

Now more people is willing to pug, and those that relied in others must really learn how to play now to join those pugs, or still rely in leeching Guildies and Friends.

I go PUG when some separate single-character tactics are needed. Like against Shiro and the Lich. When something can be made with H/H faster that waiting to form a party, I still go H/H, tho.

Indeed it's pretty awesome, but I don't think it's safe to say "PUGging lives again". Or at least not just yet. It may be "revived" for just a short while.

I have only had good experiences so far. I did Deep NM with pugs, that went ok, although I was pretty sure all along the way that we wont make it since few players had weird builds (including ursan warrior) etc., but we did manage it. One of the monks took over the leadership, everyone followed him, the team was working together, so all in all I had a great time.

Yesterday evening I decided to pug Raisu and Rragar, both HM, as I didnt feel like to do them h/h at all. Being an ele, found a team pretty fast. First attempt on Raisu HM was successful, finished it under 13 minutes, which is pretty impressive I think. After that I went to Doomlore and found a team there for Rragars. We had a perma sin who did a nice job in tanking and bunching up charrs, so it went well.

Looking forward to do more quests with pugs.

Got pugs for THK HM with Bonus we did like a charm.
Got pugs for Raisu Palace HM and did it within 12min like a charm.

So far so good

With PvE skills, cookies and summon stones THK is not what it used to be , but hey it was fun

Ahh this update is the biggest relieve! Pugging like in the old times.

At thunderheadkeep (HM + bonus) we had an suprisely good balanced party ^^.
1 warrior, 1 dervish, 1 rit healer, 1 monk, 1 necro/rit minion support, 1 paragon, 1 ranger and 1 ele. You could almost swear that this was an rainbow team. it had almost all classes (except mesmer + assasin i think). When defending the king we decided it was to boring and made a 4-4 split to fight our way to the spawn point!

Half way we noticed 1 warrior didnt had infused armor. Afther the regrouping at the spawn point it wasnt much of a problem tho .

Funny I found it nigh impossible to get a group on my War for a few of these missions and no problem on my Necro at all. I'd say that profession discrimination is alive and well in GW as it's always been.

I was very happy to PUG the Z-missions just for fun and to remember the old days...

Until... Rragar's!

Failed at least 5 times last night, including 2 groups that broke up well into level 2 when someone would complain that the dungeon was taking too long and that it wasn't worth it for some Z coins! This is after an hour-plus each time (pugs are slow).

Typical conversation went like this:

Player 1: Are we almost done? I gotta go soon
Player 2: How soon?
Player 3: We're about halfway.
Player 1: That's BS just to kill a guy
Player 3: First time in a dungeon?
Player 1: No, 175th time, but I only do Slaver's
Player 1: Forget this, not worth it
<Player 1 has left the game>
Player 2: We can still do this
<Player 3 has left the game>
<Player 4 has left the game>
<Player 5 has left the game>
<Player 6 has left the game>
<Player 7 has left the game>
<Player 8 has left the game>

Pugged Raisu and THK yesterday in HM and managed both succesfully without any real problems.

Was surprised by Raisu actually since we had no primary healers at all and relied on one of the 3 Human Necros to go /Rt and keep us alive. 17mins iirc was the time at the end.

Heres hoping for a little pug revival

"Only do slavers"

Im' shure there are people out there who buy a MMO, check wiki for the current hot drop and overpowered broken skill bar, install the game and get themselves rushed straight to the farming grounds.

I think you guys are using the wrong metrics to judge competence. With consumables and PvE skills, there are many ways for players to hide incompetence. I PuG'd a few missions and we steamrolled them despite upwards of half the team clearly not knowing what they were doing.

Go check out the PvP areas when their respective Zaishen quests go live - the level of skill drops dramatically (although, the proportionate level of leeching naturally goes down). This is particularly noticeable in organized areas like TA.

meh I have yet to seriously try to pug any zquest. A dumb guildie of mine invited me to a group of like 4-5 pugs then we went out to do some quest. I forget which one but I had already done it and so I just ran around aggroing tons of crap for him not telling me what we were doing...

I was the lone warrior in an all monk group in Raisu Palace, we blitzed it in HM in 15 mins.

I was astounded.

Lol, its succeeded in getting our guild to play togeather more, but if we cant get 8 peeps, we use necro sabs for the rest

had mostly good experiences so far (though I did the palace with my nukers and my yes healing breeze monks..I usually h/h and healing breeze is not a problem with them ) cant wait to see if my mezzies and rits get the usually hate or accepted.
THK was another matter---group had no idea about the bonus and let me (nuker with no speed bonuses) try to get the beacons lite---nope, got giant stomped a few times thus not getting them in time......so did it with my mesmer and her h/h---got bonus no problems.
Think it all matters on where you go and which missions you are doing.
Didnt even try kanaxi and will do the dungeon when I get enough time....eg not this week.
I cant wait for the rest of the cantha missions to pop up in the zquest so I can get guardian of cantha on my monks and nukers

I've had some mixed results as to how easy it is to get a group. My Paragon has had the least trouble with that. Overall people seem to be doing pretty good coming together for the quests. Though there is generally alot of people loking for a group...they could join one of the others that are looking for a group and start one. Only problem being no one takes paragons into the deep so I couldnt complete that one on the first day. And Rragnars Menagrie....sad so many fails and leavers I finally paid an outragous price for a runner to finish and got crap out of chest. Meh, what are you going to do with money anyways...25k let the scalpers come forth lol. But generally its nice to see people PuGing again. Would have made my getting Leg Guardian easier if it was done earlier. Should be great till they ask people to do Slavers Exile in HM PuG LOL. or DoA PuG for Zquest......

I've really enjoyed pugs lately. It's so nice to see people in outposts doing stuff together - full party of real people! I've had good luck with them lately too. Only a few difficulties, but otherwise a piece of cake with everyone cooperating nicely to get things done. I didn't have a problem getting into groups with any of my chars really, and of course the monk was eatten up fast.

I loaded in for Blood Washes Blood the first night with my ranger. All I saw was parties advertising for Ursan this-or-that. He!!, I don't even run Ursan on my warrioress!

Maybe I'll give it another go. I prefer a good PuG over H/H though lately we've been going out with Alliance members only. At least we know they know their skills!

That's just german mentality. Even even PvP, most germans play lame-ass builds with as most bitch bars as possible, so they don't have to think for themselves, but rather have someone think FOR them. Frenchies act in a similar way, with the difference that they are a bit more self-supportive. (Note, this is in general, there is exceptions, starcraft, people from BdV, etc...)


But yeah, you got a point. I was holding my heart (As a really experienced PvP, and someone who has legendary vanq, so experienced in PvE aswell) for the actual completion of these zquests.

Turns out most people have realized that when I (I usually takes charge when it comes to builds) tell them mending is bad, it actually IS bad, and they go with another, better skill. (Heal seed, etc)

I wish I had more map experience tough, as I, myself, am still relying on other people to do the "calling" part in missions such as DoA, Deep or Urgoz. (I've NEVER done this before, apart from Deep, which I did 4 days ago for the zquest)
Tbh, the zquest possibly is the best part of the latest update.

Zaishen manegerie is only IWAY-food, These way over-priced Pay-To-Play items are too expensive for me to buy in times where my parents are struggling to pay the bills. (Really, does the crisis not affect ANYONE here at guru? Or does everyone have a rich mommy and daddy who can pay for everything? o.0)

Back on topic now:

Yes, I do believe pugs have become smarter now, and a vast majority now actually goes to read the wiki BEFORE entering an elite area.

Finished THK on 4th try - first three teams broke up, but fourth team went off flawlessly - no deaths, fast killing, etc.

Finished Raisu on the first try. Not the fastest ever, but definitely better than I remember PUGs being.

(Yes, both on HM with all bonuses from zquest completed.)

I have to admit I liked monking for a THK pug again. There's something very nostalgic about going into THK and seeing all the "GLF monk". I was surprised, because people were generally polite, tried to sync as best as they could. Every. Last. Team. made sure someone was going to run the beacons. Regardless of whether they leeroyed, or didn't camp at king after saying they would... there was more cooperation there than I ever saw during the Ursan heyday, which is when I last pugged.

The teams that worked out both had people who made sure we all had bars that worked together: the necros double-checked to make sure they weren't overlapping, that their bars worked - one of them noted that we were mostly a caster party and told us he was bringing BR; people called targets and others listened. My monk partner for that 4th THK team was awesome, too. (So was the rit!) Everyone had a good time, and there was a lot of 'I like this team' going around.

Even the teams that didn't work out left politely, without any fuss.

They'll just do it old school, the way they did it before Ursan came around.

This is true. Things are of course easier with consumables and PvE skills, but sufficient competence with a PUG = getting quest done. I don't expect anything astoundingly good - the fact that a PUG team sat down, worked out ways to complement each other, etc. is good enough for me. The fact that in all my six PUGs everyone was polite and friendly is amazing in itself, considering my last experience with PUGs was Ursan, in which you could expect insults to fly in under 10 minutes.

I haven't done much pugging with the Zaishen quests but after hearing all of this, I'm hoping it stays like this for good long while. Nice to hear some people are having good experiences with pugs again

I used to prefer taking H/H over real people (regardless of if they are guildies or allies or pugs) because I get frustrated by people running stupid builds easily and I'm very controlling when it comes to my party members.

However, I loaded up the traditional [WoH] [Protective Spirit] monk build and monked for an 8 human guildie team in Raisu Palace (we got a 11:15 time in HM) and I can honestly say I've never had this much fun monking for a PvE mission. So to summarise, gj Anet. You have gotten me to PvE with other human players (even if I will never ever pug under any circumstances).

Some things are alright. I don't know what's wrong with people and THK though... easy mission made to take forever because people make stupid mistakes over and over.

To me, critical mass is going to bring all the bad builders to those areas too. I'll stay away from pugging unless we're dealing with jokes of missions, like Blacktide Den, or Boreas Seabed, or the like.

yeah i agree! i hope that this continues and we see the rebirth of true pugs
Lindsey is a genius for thinking of this although i wish they either decrease the requirement for the trades like equipment packs or increase the rewards like...maybe 200 points for the Raisu palace mission would have been nice?