Good pugs a thing of the past?

[nightfalls]

I believe that. Most of the people I get from Ragnaros in a dungeon or in LFR are clueless.

He posted from EU Ragnaros. That said I had a decent run with 4/5 guildmates from US Ragnaros today in an LFD despite lack of communication. Were they world class players? No, but they weren't your typical "bads" and the next random group (from US) had significantly worse DPS for instance.

[Raxxed]

I've got 7 alts that i'm desperately trying to gear up. Luckily 2 of them do alt runs with the guild but the other 5 are left free for all pugging with people from trade chat.
I have not encountered a single group that has even remotely impressed me, back in DS I could pug 8-9 DS's a week and full clear it without any issues on my alts, but now it just feels like the pug playerbase has taken a HUGE drop in both skill and communication.

It's gotten to the point where I just don't pug on my alts and they sit there doing nothing, pugs just aren't an option for me any more, they can't clear anything.

[Tziva]

LFR didn't show up until the final tier of cata, that list is talking about the first tier of cata...

Ah sorry, I misread that has first tier of Mists.

[Hypasonic]

Not sure why a lot of people are saying it's because alts are harder to gear up/maintain now. I'm currently raiding hard modes at 9/16 and I have 10 90's, only about 4 of them are geared for raiding and I do pug msv/hof/toes a lot of those rather easily, although it helps if you get a near enough guild run.

Also depends a lot on your realm, I'm on Kazzak and it's quite easy finding pug groups, there's even heroic pug groups as the server is quite far in terms of progression so there's plenty of people willing to go on alts and stuff, so just depends on your server. There's plenty of bad pugs too, that can't grasp what "taunt cobalt" means or "avoid balls" but hey ho, take the rough with the smooth.

[Tiberria]

I think that how time consuming gearing alts are this tier is a huge factor in the lack of pug activity. During Firelands and DS, I was running with up to 4 alts a week in addition to my main raid. This tier, I haven't had the time to even get a single alt to raid ready status. Between raiding 20 hours a week, farming 300 food, doing dailies to max out reps (for the first ~2 months until everything was maxed), and having to do subsequent LFR/5 man/scenarios to make sure I VP cap for gear upgrades each week, there just isn't that much play time available. On top of that, redoing the daily grind is the last thing I feel like doing on a second toon (even with the 50% rep and 50% VP bonuses). Only now, with progression being done a few weeks ago am I even looking at doing much with alts.

It's going to get a little better next tier, with T14 VP items reduced in cost, JP drops being increased, new reps added, etc, but it's not going to be that much easier. There will still be no real way around needing to gear through either VP/rep grinds or waiting forever for LFR RNG.

On top of that, the T14 fights are just flat out more difficult than the DS fights and the nerfed Firelands fights were. You could pretty much completely faceroll normal mode DS, but T14 is just less pug friendly and involves a lot more personal responsibility.

[Yuri]

Pugs aren't usually successful until raids are heavily nerfed like ICC and DS were. Plus, it's a lot harder to gear and maintain alts atm.

[Kalmah]

I have 3 alts that I'm pugging with, all between 480 and 495 ilvl. My experience is that MsV is easy to pug, especially since the elegon nerf. HoF runs aren't worth joining unless it's a guild run. Terrace runs are hard to find, and generally only manage 3 bosses, because the way the fight is designed makes it so that you need 6 good enough dps. Platforms make it very hard to carry even one bad dps.

[Saegno]

I've got 7 alts that i'm desperately trying to gear up. Luckily 2 of them do alt runs with the guild but the other 5 are left free for all pugging with people from trade chat.
I have not encountered a single group that has even remotely impressed me, back in DS I could pug 8-9 DS's a week and full clear it without any issues on my alts, but now it just feels like the pug playerbase has taken a HUGE drop in both skill and communication.

It's gotten to the point where I just don't pug on my alts and they sit there doing nothing, pugs just aren't an option for me any more, they can't clear anything.

So much of this. I only have 2 alts and trying to not only find the time to get them into a pug but find a pug that wont spend all night wiping on normal MSV fights is harder to find than any previous xpac. Occasionally I can find a pug/guild run that will full clear MSV and/or HoF but that's usually just because a main raider has taken the night off or something. Most of the time I don't even bother, hell I hardly find the time to run through LFR anymore.

On the topic of PuGs, GDKPs WTF happened??!

[Deleted]

its mostly because of the alt gearing takes some effort and then ofcurse there is a huge jump in personal responsability in most encunders, like amber shaper.
where in ds the only fight you could really fuck your pug over was on spine which happend pretty regulary.

[Lagwin]

Pugs have been bad for ever...true you could get good ones and vanilla and tbc you could choose who you wanted to group with but there were still bad ones then.
You only nottice it more now becuase of the dungeon finder and the comparitive ease of the game which like to reward everyone...you can still get good pugs but that's usually when theirs new gear added or new dungeons...and then only for a month or so

[Justanoob]

It's simple - LFR has killed a lot of the desire to pug, especially on lower pop realms.

[Glaziola]

There are several issues with pug raiding right now:
1) The laid back casuals just do LFR. If I'm not going to do progression raiding in guild all I want is purple pixels and tier set. I don't really care about the ilvl on them, and besides, the LFR color combination usually looks the best anyway.
2) The alts of players from the middle of the pack guilds (cutting edge guilds are probably keeping their alts for themselves) just aren't there for reasons others have stated.
3) A lot of the bosses have some kind of mechanic that will wipe whole raid because of single individual's failure. Basically only Terrace is 'retard proof' to some extent. But then that is difficult for different reasons...

Number 1 pretty much sums it up for me

[dragconus]

I play on a well populated server. In Cata it was super easy to find solid pugs. My thoughts are this is a problem with the way mist of grindaria has eliminated the amount of Alts people have. I don't have any facts backing that up other than see'n what is going on in our guild. But regardless of my guild, getting pugs is a nightmare. It's to the point that I'm about to cancel our alt run. Which leads me to think that it's a matter of time before we lose a couple more people and find a different game.

Anyone else feeling the pug frustration?

Honestly i find the problem is a little grindy but once you cap valor on mains capping alts is easy ..the MAIN problem with pug's actually started in cata ...the answer in cata was to get an alt going and it was nice for that X-pac..but when they cut of 10/25 seperate lockouts is when mains became locked down , and i'd say tyhe reason most people have the mains they do is because they enjoy that particular charecter. The 10/25 shared lockout IMO is also a reason of great decline in knowing your own community...it's not easy anymore to get to know all the guilds without guild hopping these days and i for one am not willing to do so. Bring back seperated lock outs please I don't have to do them..but it's nice to have the option when my guilds 10 man is done for the week