LISTEN to your team

Ok, I now think I hate PuGs. I have been resorting to running missions with henchmen, and while it can be difficult with some builds it is actually easier than dealing with the idiots that compose a pug. Here are the list of things I wish they understood.

1) Focus fire. Drop them by combining your offense, not each selecting a target.
2) Aggro circles and pulling. When I say I'll pull, and I attack, don't rush to meet them. The reason we pull is to prevent aggroing the other hordes out there.
3) Using the area of effect spells. Your team pops up a Well of Blood; why are you continuing to stand 3 feet outside of it to fight. Step back 3 feet. A firestorm starts falling, don't run out of it dragging all the enemies with you - and if you are being chased by a big pack, lead them INTO the AoE, as it will at least be hurtng them.
4) Corollary to 3) - if you have AoE specialists on your team, take this into account - you can help with grouping the enemy by your movements - if you get them well grouped my Enfeebling Blood and Shadow of fear will help keep you alive, the huge AoE damage spells will hit them, and you'll be in the right spot for blood wells etc.
5) If people go to the trouble of communicating something you might want to pay attention - when the monk ctrl-clicks his energy bar to say "My energy is 4 of 42" it is a bad time to charge into that pack of (insert your Wa/Mos favorite suicide mob here). Likewise, I am fairly certain that they aren't broadcasting "I have Backfire on me" as an amusing story - do something about it if you can.
6) If you are performing an action that might affect others in the group, ensure that you communicate it - there is no point in 2 players performing a res, trying to use a corpse etc, removing the Backfire mentioned above; if possible discuss the prioritising of resources like corpses (e.g.; first corpse to drop gets the well of Power, the second one is for you to animate etc...). Ctrl-click is your freind - it lets them know you are doing something - the enemy is just out of reach and your ranger stops and says "I am using Favourable Winds" - should you immediately attack? No, wait till he's done, he is buffing. He may well next say "I am using Apply Poison" for example, after which it is likely time to move in.

I agree with you fully. Put this on as many forums as you can in my opinion. Someone might pay attention.

Excellent job, but in all honestly, the moronic players who need to read these posts are never the ones that do read it. Great post, but again, the ones who need to read it won't.

bad players read forums?

Yeah, I've had mixed results with pick up groups.

Every once in a very rare while, I find a team that's absolutely fabulous.

Sheer bliss when that happens.

But, no, most of the time it sucks.

Most insulting to me, as a monk, is when after I tell them my energy levels, they return with their health levels. Like I don't *know* they're full health.

Nothing feels more like a middle fingers extended for my benefit than when someone does that to me.

Well, it's partly just venting. And the truly bad ones won't read it, but maybe someone who is trying to learn will say "Oh, I never thought about ctrl-clicking the backfire symbol to quickly communicate that I am under Backfire!", or that they should announce their AoE so that the team can take advantage of it. You never know, right?

It's not only that, but the way in which some players never say aword the whole time...why don't they just play with henchmen? If they're going to go to the effort of joining a human group they could at least say hi.

Easier to simply play with people I know I figure, sometimes there's some really good people about though. Kudos to those who repeat missions to help out others with the bonuses and stuff.

I tend to now do all missions with people, simply because it's more enjoyable. I don't mind that much if players aren't that good - I wasn't that good at a time, mistakes help us learn. What drives me absolutely mad is when people are annoying and rude. I have had people driving everyone mad because she was filling the screen with 'rape me's'. I've had people who start shouting at people that they will be doing the mission and we can all just bow down and call him 'our master'. But the worst part is when people start swearing at people, calling them Nazi's, insulting them, and other things simply because they are rude, disgusting people. There's no need to verbally murder someone if he makes a mistake. It's a GAME. And when you protest, they start swearing at you.

Please, everyone, try to remember that this is a game. It's meant to be enjoyed, it's not overly important and it is NOT a chance to tear people to pieces.

Thank you.

Wow, I've seen that kind of thing in towns but not in missions...why do they bother? Well, I know why...false sense of self worth and all that but yeah...so pointless.

good post.

As for the "my energy is 4 of 42" followed by "my health is 375 of 375" I think a lot of people still haven't learned what the ctrl click is for and how to use it effectively...

I escorted a chap to Lion's Arch once from Yak's Bend and he didn't even know what afk meant... calling people noobs and cursing them is as bad as a noob cursing you for not being a super-nurse-kill-all-infinite-everything-machine.

I think everyone can say that they have had bad and good PUG groups. Granted you don't usually get an awesome one where everyone clicks and works together, I've only had a few that I can think of. However, seeing that I'm guildless (partially by choice, partially b/c haven't found a good one), I've been with all PUG's. It's safe to say I've had much better PUG's with the first job I took to 20 W/Mo than with my Monk. With my W/Mo even when we had no one who knew what to do, we messed up a few times but stuck through it, listened to each other, and attacked the same mob. Just the other day I was fighting through Thirsty River. We had a level 20 W/Mo (said he's ascended, infused, etc.) who said he just needed to get a skill at the last Boss guy. So we are part way through the first time and everytime this moron ran right in to kill priest leaving us out fighting other monsters. First group did fine b/c you're only fighting 2 small groups of 3 plus boss and priest. Second he did the same thing and this time we had 2 small groups of 3, boss and priest, and another group of 3 add in. Actually to my surprise we were doing well even with all those but because I was busy healing my party members that were close fighting off the mobs while the warrior was up trying to kill priest alone the Ghost died. Needless to say who gets blamed? The monk (me). For not healing the bastard when the warrior was the one who took him up with him to fight priest and boss, while I'm stuck keeping rest of party alive not in range to heal ghost. Hmm... have to say for a warrior who didn't have a clue, was ascended/infused/etc., he was stupid. He was actually decent enough to stick with us after failing and redo (because he wanted his skill) but he still almost got us killed by running to try and kill priest leaving us to fend of other mobs. Mind you at least this time I got someone else to take ghost so ghost wasn't in the midst of all mobs taking damage. I have to say some PUG's are good some are just lame. I could have left that PUG instantly but I'm not like that. PUG's are always tough, but when good ones come and things work out great, definitely feels good.

I've had similiar experiences with my second character. My first had some unbelievable PUG's beating just about all of the missions pre-ascension on the first try and beating the ascension trials with little difficulty so I'm very thankful for a good group. With my monk, however, it's a different story altogether. I wish the bad players could be collected somewhere and forced to read a thread like this before playing again. I had a N/E at Kryta act like a tank last night and he died 3 times in the first 10 minutes...mind you I'm the only monk and still getting used to quick healing but he was tanking 4 Skeleton Rangers and 3 Skeleton Mesmers. His response to my request to stop tanking was, "I do the most damage so why not tank?" I'm serious too....i've never just shook my head so many times during a mission in my entire life.

We had a monk come into our group going to Lornar's last night. He seemed ok 'til we got into the zone then he kept spamming, maybe 20 lines in a row "Shut Up" over and over again.

Nobody thought it was funny but who knows, some people have odd ways of breaking the ice so we didn't just boot him. Then He runs right into the monsters and only because I was paying attention along with the El/Mo we were able to save him. I ask him to let the warriors take the damage and then there goes the "Shut Up" spam all over again and then he leaves.

Not one person ever said a nasty thing to him or anything. I'll never understand what satisfaction someone like that gets from actions like that.

It's probably the first intentional bad person I've met in a PuG. I usually get friendly players some of who know how to play and some who don't. It's all the same to me as long as they're friendly. It's not like EQ where when you died your armor and weapons laid right there until you could fight back to get them.

We replaced him with a cool Necro and everyone in the group got added to my friends list.

This could very well be.

I try not to show frustration whenever anyone does that, for reasons along these lines, but it does make me seeth inside.

I also figure I'm probably older than a lot of the people playing this game, so I have to try to be more patient with them; I think there's a serious generation gap at work for me.

Heh.. I should somehow drop hints about old age and treatury beating youth and vigor.

I KNOW!!!! It is like people are hell-bent on doing the mission as fast as possible and they don't want to take ten seconds to actually speak to other human beings, plan strategy, or do anything. They just wanna rush through, do the deed, move on.

By golly...it is like really BAD sex.

--Nokomis

And I'm willing to bet it was a Warrior saying that crap

Sadly, you really do need to answer questions like that, because he seriously just doesn't know. While he may not be that bright and possibly even a bit stubborn, if you say it's because you can't really heal him effectively and warriors will take a lot less damage etc. etc., it MIGHT make a difference.

And if it doesn't, at least you know he's just being stubborn, and should feel free to make sure your healing is working on other players, not just him.

I'm actually a very quiet person irl and online, but I've surprised myself by being very vocal on GW to tell my team what I'm doing and ask what they're doing. I mean, it's easy to go in as a E/W who can deal out so much damage they look like a tank because they kill off enemies before they can effect them. But I recently chose a N/Me which is probably the exact opposite without being a monk. It has definately been a challenge getting used to this entirely new set up and seemingly world crumbling change but I still try to keep in contact with the rest of the group to ask who has the higher bone horrors so I can either focus on raising an army on them or keeping the corpses around the team exploited to benifit them (well of blood ftw) and trying to stick close to the warriors in urgent times to throw out some sacraficing heals while exploiting corpses around me to heal myself if I start getting targeted. Not sure about this being the best way of going about things, but it seems to work rather well.

Back on topic though, I find it annoying while I be quite vocal about what I'm doing, asking what everyone else is doing or trying to lead if I have a PUG of newbies who are actually quite clueless on what's going on in the mission (which I wont hold against them and definately refuse to spoil for them) when the rest of the group stays extremely quiet, as if they're expecting me to jump down their throat if they step out of line or something. Which if they did, I'd very calmly tell them what they done wrong (obviously curse the monitor, which noone but people around me can hear about them being a ****ing idiot but that's usually said with a slight smirk in jest) and tell them very nicely to step back and not repeat that.

I think a lot of those quiet ones really are afraid of their throats being jumped down. From all these assholes who like to grieve in general and shout at them for random things making them think that they truely did do something wrong when in reality they're just getting blamed for the asshole's downfalls of which they can't accept the truth and have to jump down someone's throat to justify that they are the better player.

Either that, or they're very young. I've got an 8 year old about to start (getting the game for his birthday) and I've seen him playing when we done the WPE. He did do quite well, especially for someone who knows bugger all about gaming (sadly his father has brought him up with games that there will always be someone better to play the hard part of the game for him, which I've gotta try and get rid of that mentality, I had a father who would tell me I suck if I couldn't play a certain hard part which of course was the best thing he done for me in regards to gaming) so he pretty much just followed his team around and attacked whatever they were attacking without saying a word due to him completely not used to a game which had a chat client to use. On top of that not having too much to do with IM's either so chatting was also a completely new concept.

So there's my ranting. I wonder if I'm still slighty on topic.

I only use the "show health" thing when I'm fighting and my life is dropping fast. I only do it when we have a not-so-great healer on our team. Anyway, something equally as annoying happened to me once. If any of the casters displayed their energy levels, there was one guy that immediately displayed his morale boost, health, and energy. He was quite annoying but I would credit him to helping the group beat the mission. Sometimes when you've done the mission over and over and can't beat it, you gotta live with something like that for a few minutes.

Yeah, I was actually going to post a rant about that. I keep getting on PUGs that ignore me, don't consider my energy level, don't listen to me.

For a prime example. I have an nine month old son. Part way through a mission last night, he wakes up, so I have to go and see to him. I tell my team in chat, "BRB, baby awake, please take a quick break" What do I come back to? Half the team dead, because they just ignored me and carried on. Then of course, I get the blame, even though I TOLD them I had to take a quick afk.

The same team, well this is common as mentioned above, just runs from battle to battle, even when I ctrl click on my energy bar, this has caused deaths because I simply do not have the energy to heal. Then of course, they blame me.

Same "not listening" thread, but not relating to monks, earlier today I was on an infusion run, I was the leader, explained to the party about don't fight, just run, don't worry if you die just wait as you will be rezzed when we get to the cutscene, etc. What happens the first time someone dies? They say "F**k u c**t* in team chat and
leave party. Nice.

ctrl clicking is a great way to communicate, I usually click my life and energy after a fight, not to ask for help but to let them know to hold up a minute before rushing on. seldom works though...

I'm thankful I've got a fun guild where everyone knows each other.

As I have already said earlier on, it's rudeness that drives me mad, not inexperience. I understand people get frustrated, but there's a way to say things. I once did a bonus 8 times because groups kept on failing, even after I told them what to do. Yet I still Managed to be polite. It's fine to tell people things, but if you're going to be rude about it, don't say anything at all. I have a suggestion to stop rudeness.

Perhaps it would help if people would make a unified stand that rude people aren't tolerated and are thrown out of party's. Hopefull that may teach them some manners. Using a reasonable approach is not an option it seems.

What do people think about my idea?

Well, since there is no button to kick them out of party it can't happen, and since they can draw swastikas and cuss on the minimap anonymously you don't even know who is being a pain

Sort of on topic, but it would be very helpful if someone ctrl-clicks thier health bar, and the bar in the party window flashes. Its hard to focus when its late at night and all colorful hell is breaking loose on the screen which results in a harder to see hud.

What I meant is that once you know if someone's a menace, don't allow them in again.

This happened to me just last night, actually. I've remade my characters so often that, quite honestly, I've not gotten very far, but I have run one particular mission quite a few times. I made sure the entire party wanted to do the bonus (follow the Ember Bearers to the Flame Corridor and then kill them), then outlined an extremely simple plan. Each time, with different party members, some dumbA ran right up to them and attacked. After the smoke cleared (pardon the pun), another member of the party said, "Um, did we get the bonus?" /cry In the first group, the guy who aggroed the Ember Bearers also started a fight with the monumental gang o' Charr right at the end, and led Rurik right into the middle. He realized he'd FUBARed the mission and quit the party. When I mapped to the mission city again, he was right there, begging for a party again. ARGH!

Someone suggested a rating system of sorts, and while I understand it has potential for severe misuse (kind of like the eBay rating system, I think) I wish there were a way to implement it. It would be quite helpful.

Are you kidding about the health bar?

Clicking on your health bar when you have a monk in your group is either obnoxious or a sure sign that you need a new group. It's up to you, but from my perspective it's obnoxious.

Player health bars are our bread and butter. I know everyone's health and will do my best to heal everyone in the order I decide is important to group survival. Someone constantly clicking their health bar to let me know would be like me telling a warrior which end of his sword is pointy.

I guess this is part of the problem, what one person thinks is helpful might not appear so from the other end.

I've never left a group and never will but someone clicking a bar at me would be the first and only person on my ignore list.

Lol

I was only mentioning the energy bar, as a monk needs to communicate low energy to the players - and clicking on health AFTER a fight to say "whoa, slow down, we still have injuries" isn't a message for the monks so much as for the guy charging for the next group because he's still at full. CLicking on it during a fight would just be annoying.

So far I've had a good experience with random parties while doing missions. However, last night I had a E/N (I think) run off and do her own thing. This made it incredibly hard for me to heal my entire party since she was running around. After awhile I just got tired of it and let her run off and die. Once the party caught up to where she died I ressurected her and she didnt do it again ^^,

Also later in the party I was able to tank due to a fluke of me getting stuck in a mob of elementals. The only reason I survived is because of the constant healing and protection spells I was casting... It got pretty intense, but still it was a decent party considering our warrior left =\

I'm asking this here because people read this often. How do you quote?

Figured that much, but how do you quote select sentences?

Thanks for reply, by the way.

Right, when you quote using that button it shows a passage beginning with [ QUOTE=Aalric] and ending with [ /QUOTE] (I had to put spaces there to prevent it thinking it was a quotation.)

The text between those is the quoted text - it can be edited and abridged as I have done with yours to illustrate.

Should you desire breaking the text into parts you can simply enclose sections with the opening and closing quote tags. Like so:

Using the quote tags above;

You're welcome.

Sometimes for me, when i join a Party for a mission I just say Hi once, and stay quiet the whole time were doing mission. But i always pay attention to what their saying and always co-operate with them. Im the type of person that doesnt say much lol.

actually i have to say after ascending 2 characters and another close to it the most peopel to have left the PUG groups i have been in are monks. I do not now what is wrong with a lot of them but they seem to be the ones who leave most often.either they have a "God" complex and think they can shout orders and be obeyed. if a monk leaves in a more difficult mission you are well and truly screwed. I try and aviod PUG missions now whenever possible. It is a shamde because PUGs are a great way to meet new people and make new friends, but i am not sure it is worth the anguish of having to restart a mission over and over cause people leave.

thank god im not the only monk that thins this is crazy.... why do they think just becuase they have full life they are going to live through the 8 guys pounding on them fromm the last giant group they aggroed when it took all my energy just to keep them alive?

I have played several different characters and I still know no matter what character i play i am throwing the dice on whether or not i get a good group sometimes henchies are just easier as you can predict what they will do

One important rule as a monk: Don't heal people at the end of battle (either when it's obviously winding down and no one's in danger, or when enemies are actually all dead) if you are low on energy. They will heal automatically if they are sane, and they can SEE their own health while they can't see your energy (and might be slightly more cautious about running into battle with their own personal health low!)

In particular, I have a pretty hard and fast rule to never heal someone who has more health (as percent, i.e. bar length) than I have mana. We can both regenerate together. (Obviously, this rule doesn't apply in the thick of combat when someone is getting thrashed for half their health each second.)

This is a kind of strange healer "tactic", but it communicates things to your party much more clearly than pinging your energy bar seems to.

I agree. The people who understand and want to excel in games are the people who take an interest in such things as forums.

If someone can't understand "FOR GODS SAKE LEAVE THE F****** HERO THERE!! NO!!! STOP!!!! .... SH*T!!!!" ..then I doubt they can string a simple sentence together.. *_*

Thank you very much, Ephinerine. You've been a big help.

Eyahl, perhaps they don't understand because you decided to swear at them, instead of telling them politely.

I am not trying to shout at evryone, but I do feel that rude and disgusting people are far worse than inexperienced ones.

Okay, let me fill in the conversation:

"Okay whoever, do you know what happens when you click the hero?"
"No"
"Well he follows you. You have to click him again to make him stay. He's currently following you"
-No answer- *Starts to run*
"No wait, you need to click him to make him stop. We've going to blast the mobs before opening the door"
*stops.. then starts running again*
-Cue other group members yelling stop, even trying to block his route-
"No WAIT! STOP! Come back and leave the hero here"
*still running.. almost there now*
"FOR F*CKS SAKE STOP!!! LEAVE THE DAMN HERO HERE!!!"

Or.. another senario which... omg I still can't comprehend.

"Okay whoever, do you know what happens when you click the hero?"
"No"
"Well he follows you. You have to click him again to make him stay. He's currently following you"
-No answer-
*Follows us down*
*Blasts a few mobs*
*Collects the Hero and takes him to the gate.. twice*

As you can probably guess this was Thirsty River. Asking politely.. yes. asking forcefully.. yes. Blatently yelling.. okay they still aint got the picture.

I swear to god some people balls those missions up for fun.

And yes he could speak english.