PUGs: Love em or hate em?

Well, I'd like to go ahead and say that this in no way is a QQ/rage thread about PUGs (save that for in game and vent ).

In this thread, please give a good example of a good or bad experience you've had with a PUG, or both. Please explain what area you were doing, what happened, how you felt, or just give an overall summary of the pugs you play with (like "they all are horrible" no offense to any pugs ). Also finish with the for love em or for hate em. (also it doesn't have to be as long as mine)

I'll go first. I was doing UW Dayway with a pug group (which is a bad idea to anyone who wants to do it, only go pug with a 50%+ guild group, in which case, don't fail or most will rage at you). We get to Dhuum, and the ele and his 2-3 friends decide that they were going to do their "AWESOME" 3-3 split strategy and EVERYONE spams 1 and ele will call in vale sins 1 at a time. Then, when the first text trigger came up, I see our emo in vale. Ok, not too bad, rest is 3/4 full. I get in. Dhuum has full HP. You can go ahead and imagine what I said on vent. So I have to pop a new cons because they only brought 2, and I we spend the next 20 minutes killing him, which wasn't too bad, except for a few people KEPT dying and I kept dropping res scrolls. Finally when we get the chest, I really look at my res scrolls. I went from 32 to 10. 22 scrolls used + a cons. Total value about 30k. Just to finish Dhuum. I get trash from chest of course, then they refuse to pay me ANYTHING for the cons except 1-2 nice guys who dropped 1k for me, but then some noob ran and took it. Overall, (I know right? can't even answer my own question), I'm kind of split, seeing as we did finish with the PUG having 8 spirits (thought all 8 were on vent, we did have a slight advantage). However, the fact that they refused to compensate me for spending all that money to ensure they got a chest really got my blood boiling. I'm going to have to lean towards though seeing as how many PUGs have failed to understand that all they have to do is press T123456C*SPACE*.

An alliance mate and I spent yesterday working on getting two of our chars through EotN and both of us wanted to practice our healing.

Well, we get to the Norn areas with those BS mandatory Ursan/Raven/Lupine blessings and decide that we might as well pick up a hopeless case to call targets for the heroes and to be the blessing bitch so we can keep healing.

Well, the kids build sucked, which was to be expected, but he also had:

1)15ar armor.
2)His heroes were set to "fight" and would aggro everything in sight. No amount of typing got him to change it.
3)He wouldn't use the e*fing Ursan Blessing to destroy the walls in BwB, my homeboy had to bend and take it.

My breakpoint came long before that, and if it wasn't for the fact that both of us really wanted to heal we wouldn't have even bothered, but this is pretty much the renewing reason for why I hadn't pugged in well over a year.

This will seem like a mere annoyance, but it still ticked me off. This was a while ago, and I havent been able to play in some time, so I dont remember all the details. I was on my D/Mo, level 13 I think. I was kinda bored so I offered to take a PUG thru the Fort Ranik mission--free, of course--which I can easily solo without using the treuchets. So I'm using Eternal Aura to keep Avatar of Balthazar up and tearing thru the Charr. We're like 2 minutes away from finishing the mission. IIRC, one person was dead. I'm clearing out the group past the second trebuchet--not the one you repair--with a party member saying "You're a beast!" and next thing I know, BOOM! The trebuchet fires right on top of me killing me. My killer beat a hasty retreat from the game when they saw what happened, and the survivor didnt have a charged res signet. So we had to head back to town and reform the group. And I made sure that nobody fired the bleeping trebuchets on that run.

I have a love/hate relationship with pugs. Sometimes I come across an awesome group of people and we completely blow through a mission without a hitch. Other times I end up with people who don't even know the main attribute of their profession. -_-

Love/Hate, mainly hate.. therefore I H/H

I don't PuG, haven't for years, for most obvious reasons. H/H or Guild/Alliance only.

i used to pug for old uwsc. it was a social way to kill time (12-15 mins) and meet new people and have some fun.

dhuum killed pugging for me. and im fairly certain any more nerfs will kill pugs completely. why? if pugs fail at pressing 1,2 then how the hell are they gonna play a balanced build that requires thought? sure you can still pug zmissions, etc (but screen the builds first ! ) but for elite areas lulz good luck

Good experience today: there was a dervish in the group with Avatar of Balthazar and that sunspear dervish skill on an otherwise decent bar. I told him to replace AoB with Wounding Strike or Reaper's Sweep, and he did so, also replaced the sunspear skill. After the mission I thanked him for listening to me. He said Reaper's Sweep turned out way better than AoB, and he was off to capture Wounding Strike as well. So I was able to help a player become better at Guild Wars.

Bad experience today: same group, a Warrior refused to change his horrible defy/endure pain + healing breeze build into something useful. I completely avoided healing or protting him. Since he had all the extra health and warrior armour, though, he barely got attacked anyways, and basically leeched off the group.

lol those are some sweet stories. if your ele dies in a pug dayway and you're not very close to killing dhuum, i strongly recommend just raging the group. the ele was put in place so you don't have to spend 20+ rez scrolls to see the chest.

most good players gravitate towards guilds that have other good players that enjoy doing the same activities. so when you pug, you often end up with hopeless basket cases.

for example, my brother beat all of prophecies a few years ago, and i don't think he knew how to do any of the missions. he just spammed warrior lfg until someone carried him through the missions lol.

I don't have too many issues with pugs crapping my missions b/c I filter them out even before we start.

- When a pug doesn't understand how his bar can synergize with the rest of the team, he is kicked.
- If 2 or more pugs think they can topple my decision making and jeopardize the team, both are kicked.
- I can smell a bad pug, and I can make him suffer. Like this dervish who kept *disconnecting* during a HM mission on purpose so that he could leech of my work (I was doing with my heroes, and 3 henchies). I reported him and told him I won't complete the mission, to which he said he had all the time in the world. So, I was like, ok fine - I went to bed. Before going to bed, his mysterious disconnects stopped as well. In the morning, i found him logged off, and I took 10 more min to beat the mission. I know it's a small deal, but leeachers are 100x worst imo than a fail pug who tries his best.

Pugs for sc, i dont go there..

Random pugs for random stuff, like goin to thk and shouting out if anyone needs a monk :P funtimes! Wether they are good of bad or terrible, its usually only for fun anyway...

For serious stuff id take friends, guildies, or bots before a pug, as i know the chance of messing up is WAY WAY higher in a pug.

But hey, some of the best players and friends in gw came from pugs, so the whole pug scene aint all that bad :P....at times :P

Henchies > Stubborn PUGs anyday.

But i still don't like both .

I prefer humans who knows how to listen .

Sometimes they're funny, sometimes annoying.

Funny = Necro during Ice Caves mission, all had been going well. When the big group of Mursaat floated past, he shouted "I'm 55" ran into the group and died after a few seconds

Annoying = Was running my Monk through Proph. and decided to join a group in Thirsty River, this one moronic warrior kept running and aggro'ing everything in sight and would moan at me saying "I'm a tank, you suck as a monk!" etc. eveytime he died. Needless to say he was the only one that died during that mission, thinking back I should have stopped ressing him

This is really a two edge sword.

I when on one of my other accounts will take a few newer guys along on a mission or whatever.

Reason is, how will they ever learn...They will get some guidence along the way during and point out if there crossing the line ect.

Why do I do this? Lets look at it this way.

How good were You when you started ?? Oh yea you could clear everything.... bull***.

You are a long term player who knows what to do and what build to play.

So next time your out there give a thought and think a little /

What did I do wrong when I was a new player and add a litttle help if you think they need it.

Yes Some think they are a Ninja or rush to agro what they can see they only do that cause they have not been given a little help along the way

Love/hate. Really.

A decent PUG is actually pretty fun to play with, although I admit I never PUG if it's something I really want to complete. I like seeing the group filled with actual players instead of h/h once in a while (barring required heroes, of course.)

On the other hand, the bad ones are really bad.

To be fair, I have met nice people in PUGs. Just... you know, not that often these days.

love/hate

hate: UW/FoW, seems like half the people in no matter what pug you go in, it's their first time there. You have to yell at them don't take the reaper's quest yet 30 times yet they still end up taking it.

love: got lucky with a pug last night actually O_o we BLEW through UW, we even lost 1 person and 1 person had an incomplete build (free slot) and we still managed to beat dhuum without too much trouble. and it wasn't some SC team either, just balanced

If I'm somewhat bored and want to do something challenging without the usual suspects in my guild, I go looking for a PUG with a reasonable success chance, for example for the current Zaishen mission. If I go with my guild, all runs succeed (usually) and nothing unexpected will happen, so I'm sometimes bored with that.

I make sure I do not "need" the mission, so I can entirely enjoy my stay in the PUG, even if the group fails. If I want a mission failsafe, I go alone with H/H. Usually, the PUG succeeds. If we fail and it was beyond repair, the group dissolves immediately. If we failed and it was bad luck or only small adjustments are needed, the group usually stays together and tries again. I like build discussions when the group gathers, so i see how other people like to play.

I have only few memorable encounters. I was once playing monk in a hard mode mission and the second monk kept complaining how bad my playstyle and my build was. He wanted to detract from the fact that his build (pure healing with UA) was not able to sustain a longer fight due to his energy, since it was our damage output that was in fact horrible.
And he did not see that there were enchantment removers that render protective spirit and all of the other protection enchantments almost useless (because of that I went hybrid healer/protection). The only other reasonable person was a warrior who found good positions to block the enemies and had a somewhat decent damage output. We succeeded in the end, and nobody said "wow, where do you got all that energy to hold the warrior in that 5 minute fight against two enemy mobs?", but I knew that we finally did the mission with 3 relevant persons - the warrior, a ranger, and myself. The others either left, were inactive or dead. I will always remember the whisper from the warrior about the many comments of the other monk: "Don't listen to him, he's a jackass"
But even he were a jackass, he didn't leave. He cared. And this makes him a honorable player in contrast to the one or two other persons who left.

(Just to make sure it really weren't my playstyle as monk, I immediately re-did that mission alone with H/H and my same build. It went perfectly)

I'm with Saph on this. Some pugs are great fun and some make you want to cry. But Jade Quarry has gotten me used to doing my best with a less than optimum team.

I always enjoy the ZM with horribly pugs, but yea if its anything who will take more then 1-2 hour then don't pug.

Or be very very assholish on the requirement.

Hate. I have a great dislike of playing with incompetent scrubs.