I think my last bit of faith in the WoW "pug" community has been killed today.

[Utinil]

I decided to try and run Flex 2 in a pug today. I outgear the raid (572 ret / 558 prot), but want some stuff for my prot OS. On three different occasions I enter flex raids. First one, few of the dps are even at 70k, half the tower team gets knocked off, and only 2 of us did any interrupting. After 3 wipes with no progress and people ignoring everything being said, I leave.

Second Flex group, I run this one and only invite one person who is below 550 ilvl (alt of a guild member whom I know knows the fight). Nobody interrupts the fractures except my friend, one pug, and me. Gala gets shot down with almost a full group of adds up but we manage to kill them, and the ranged dps spread out as far as possible from each other. Needless to say this wipes us. I explain how ranged need to stack on my friend, and if anyone gets the debuff they need to run behind the ranged. Some mage starts to go off on how I am doing it wrong and we need to pull the boss all the way onto the dock, because that is "how most people do it." I have never done it that way, and stacking in two places should be easy for people by the time they get that ilvl, so I say no, just do it like I said. Next try, fracture kills one of the NPCs. The mage starts insulting me and being quite rude, before I could kick 2 others including our best healer and the other tank leave. I kick him and to many people leave so we just call it.

I am sitting in the raid listing, with my comment stating my gear / specs and fresh flex 2 only. I get a tell asking me to a fresh flex 1. I respond simply "no". The person responds, "Fine, we don't need your cuntiness anyways." I should have just ignored it, but I didn't and responded "me saying no makes me a cunt?" The person responds back, yes when you are rude about it. I normally do respond to things with "no thanks" or whatever, but how is saying no considered rude?

Third group, the other tank continually taunts every mob off of me, but whatever the heals are doing just fine and he outgears the place (something like 564 ilvl). He volunteers for the tower group. When that snake mob comes, right before the demolisher, I make sure to grab it as he is going up the tower and it will outlive the demo. He deathgrips it, I taunt it back. We end up taunting it back and forth while the demolisher is destroyed. He finally says in raid to quit playing ****ing taunt games. I respond that I am not, I am taunting so he can go up in the tower. No response we end up killing the boss without to many more problems. Afterwards, I sent him a tell politely saying how I was taunting because with our dps it would still be alive when it was time for him to go up. His response, "then you should have killed it first". I am at a complete loss on how to respond to this, so I just ignore it and we go on. One of the DPS leaves and the RL asks if anyone knows a replacement. I tell them that my friend would like to come, 535 elemental shaman. Three different people then pipe up that they need a dps not a carry, and that it is "way to low" for flex. They were actually serious.

At this point I just logged, what the heck is going on with the community? I know it has been bad ever since dungeon finder came out and people couldn't be easily blacklisted, but this just seems to go to a whole new level.

[Emek]

Yeah the pug community is uh... getting really... to be something nowadays. I don't even play alts anymore because I just cannot put up with them. Things go wrong, you try to help, they rage, no matter how polite or nice you are it just doesn't help. I wont be doing any pug stuff in wod either. The community has really degraded to a point where I don't want anything to do with them

[Deleted]

I don't really know what you're talking about. Never had any bad experiences with Flex PUGs...

[Deleted]

I don't really know what you're talking about. Never had any bad experiences with Flex PUGs...

You ain't fooling anyone. ;P

[Forgettable]

I'm sorry OP, but your entire post screams of you being the problem, not the other way around. There are so many issues I can't even begin to list them.

[ComputerNerd]

I decided to try and run Flex 2 in a pug today. I outgear the raid (572 ret / 558 prot), but want some stuff for my prot OS. On three different occasions I enter flex raids. First one, few of the dps are even at 70k, half the tower team gets knocked off, and only 2 of us did any interrupting. After 3 wipes with no progress and people ignoring everything being said, I leave.

Second Flex group, I run this one and only invite one person who is below 550 ilvl (alt of a guild member whom I know knows the fight). Nobody interrupts the fractures except my friend, one pug, and me. Gala gets shot down with almost a full group of adds up but we manage to kill them, and the ranged dps spread out as far as possible from each other. Needless to say this wipes us. I explain how ranged need to stack on my friend, and if anyone gets the debuff they need to run behind the ranged. Some mage starts to go off on how I am doing it wrong and we need to pull the boss all the way onto the dock, because that is "how most people do it." I have never done it that way, and stacking in two places should be easy for people by the time they get that ilvl, so I say no, just do it like I said. Next try, fracture kills one of the NPCs. The mage starts insulting me and being quite rude, before I could kick 2 others including our best healer and the other tank leave. I kick him and to many people leave so we just call it.

I am sitting in the raid listing, with my comment stating my gear / specs and fresh flex 2 only. I get a tell asking me to a fresh flex 1. I respond simply "no". The person responds, "Fine, we don't need your cuntiness anyways." I should have just ignored it, but I didn't and responded "me saying no makes me a cunt?" The person responds back, yes when you are rude about it. I normally do respond to things with "no thanks" or whatever, but how is saying no considered rude?

Third group, the other tank continually taunts every mob off of me, but whatever the heals are doing just fine and he outgears the place (something like 564 ilvl). He volunteers for the tower group. When that snake mob comes, right before the demolisher, I make sure to grab it as he is going up the tower and it will outlive the demo. He deathgrips it, I taunt it back. We end up taunting it back and forth while the demolisher is destroyed. He finally says in raid to quit playing ****ing taunt games. I respond that I am not, I am taunting so he can go up in the tower. No response we end up killing the boss without to many more problems. Afterwards, I sent him a tell politely saying how I was taunting because with our dps it would still be alive when it was time for him to go up. His response, "then you should have killed it first". I am at a complete loss on how to respond to this, so I just ignore it and we go on. One of the DPS leaves and the RL asks if anyone knows a replacement. I tell them that my friend would like to come, 535 elemental shaman. Three different people then pipe up that they need a dps not a carry, and that it is "way to low" for flex. They were actually serious.

At this point I just logged, what the heck is going on with the community? I know it has been bad ever since dungeon finder came out and people couldn't be easily blacklisted, but this just seems to go to a whole new level.

This sort of behaviour is what prompted the creation of the dungeon and raid finder tools.
The game did not make people like that.

[Tyrgannus]

Gearscore, and later ilvl, killed the community more than anything. Even in your arguments you are often stating people's ilvl and others in your raid won't take people based on ilvl. Ilvl ilvl ilvl.

Well, the funny thin about ilvl is people want you to be literally higher than what drops from the raid. I wish this was an exaggeration, but it's not. It comes from an assumption that everyone massively sucks and that gear will fix it. Not only is this lazy, it is poisonously destructive. Raids are tuned to be cleared (admittedly with a degree of real challenge) with the gear of the previous tier. A 525 ilvl whatever is technically geared for SoO normal. Yes. Yes. That is how the design works. If they are underperforming it is because they are underperforming.

Sorry for the rant, but I've had elitists rage about gearscore and ilvl since Wrath and it has always been so stupid to me from the beginning.

[Lubricious]

It's the end of the expansion, with a tier which is running way too long. This means most skilled players have long since stopped raiding anything below normal (if they are still raiding at all), unless they are on an alt that is undergeared (which will presumably move to normal before long). Also, the extra time for the casuals to catch up has given them now the opportunity to reach gear levels that suggest they are ready for flex. Unfortunately these people didn't even pay attention to the mechanics in LFR, let alone flex. So now they are expecting the same bad play they see in LFR to work for flex, and that almost always leads to blaming a tank that knows what they are doing.

I have two toons that tank. When you are doing LFR or flex, there is a roughly 50% chance that the other tank will either be bad at tanking, or just not know any of the fight mechanics. It makes tanking incredibly difficult. It's doubly frustrating when you have tanked normals on that toon, and people talk to you like you don't know the fights.

There's not much you can do except what you tried to do with that second group which you ran. Tell people before you queue it up that you know what you're doing, and that if anyone tries to give you a crap strat or whines in general, you'll just remove them from the group. Then it won't be a surprise when someone like that mage is immediately shown the door. You're still going to have to deal with morons showing up, because at this point flex is LFR 1.5. The addition of the extra upgrade slots really encouraged more people to start running flex that have no idea what to do in there.

[zorkuus]

So you did flex on a tuesday...

[clevin]

So you did flex on a tuesday...

Which, if he's in the US it the best time to do it since it's a fresh reset. In the EU... yeah.

[middling]

I guess I don't know what the point is you are trying to make? That flex raiding with random strangers is sometimes good and sometimes bad, then umm yeah, that's exactly what it is.

I can tell you a similar story.

I went to a restaurant today and the waitress was rude the food was terrible and I saw a mouse run across the floor.

You know what I did? I left and didn't go back.

You do have that option, I think the game would survive without your l33t mad skillz

[MetroStratics]

Not an issue for me, never has been. You either don't do this often enough to realize its not the norm, or are unskilled yourself, causing the problem to worsen.
Its irrelevant which is correct, just realize that posting here wont fix the issue, or help you get flex done.
Some times you just need to man up, start your own group, and get it done. If you do actually outgear the place that badly, you should be able to easily carry a team of DPS. Bring as few as possible, to make sure to maximize your over-preparation.

[Bodom]

I do not raid with a guild or a weekly group anymore which means all I got left is pugging and I can only say that there are good groups and bad groups. I can wipe 10 times in a row on Garrosh in one group, leave and join another one and oneshot him without a single person dying. In earlier parts like part 1 and 2 most groups are able to finish it, even those with 520+ requirements.

But I do agree that it has been getting worse over time. I pugged 8/8 hc on a weekly basis when DS was out (even on LFR geared toons) and 6/7 heroic after the first FL nerfs hit, yet I don't see myself doing even full 14/14 SoO normal clears on oqueue anytime soon because the requirements are through the roof because of the average players performing 20-30 ilvls below their gear level. I don't blame raid leaders for that, I would invite a random 565 dk over a 550 too if I didn't know either of them.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

I'm sorry OP, but your entire post screams of you being the problem, not the other way around. There are so many issues I can't even begin to list them.

Did we read the same post?

[kamuimac]

this is not surprising - people may hate the zone wide nerf overtime in ICC and DS but it served its purpose much better then itlv upgrades which have set req for raids to the roof and people still fail liek idiots on mechanics //shrug - now when most of good players only maybe move their ass for ocasional garosh kill in 575 groups no wonder rest of pugs suck - most cba with legendary quest and itlv upgrading grind so left alts dusting on shelf .

[RoKPaNda]

Eh I've just stopped pugging Flex. Over the last month or so, and maybe I've just been unlucky, but it seems like every group is either run by an elitist dickhead that nobody wants to deal with or people who couldn't cut it in LFR let alone Flex. I still don't have an heirloom, but I'll just wait until 6.0 and if any of my friends are still doing runs I'll weasel my way into one for the heirloom and be out until WoD.

Soooooo...first it was LFR being the cesspit...now it is flex? Too bad with flex you cannot blame it on Blizzard, anonymity, whatever....

So yeah..after all it is still us the players who make and break everything.

Pretty much. The ugliness of the community really shows when the players set the requirements for content.

[Azrile]

eh, if you are forced to pug ( ie.. you don´t have enough friends to do content) then you deserve what you get. When I do have to pug, it is usually just to add a few people to a team of 5-7 that can basically clear it ourselves, so the pug people just need to not doing anything stupid.

Get your friends to run it with you. Even a few people who know what they are doing makes flex mode a joke right now. We are basically 70 ilvls above what we originally did it at.

[Bumkin]

Fucking hate when ppl answer with "no thanks" it sounds so sarcastic and arogant

[caninepawprints]

Gearscore, and later ilvl, killed the community more than anything. Even in your arguments you are often stating people's ilvl and others in your raid won't take people based on ilvl. Ilvl ilvl ilvl.

Well, the funny thin about ilvl is people want you to be literally higher than what drops from the raid. I wish this was an exaggeration, but it's not. It comes from an assumption that everyone massively sucks and that gear will fix it. Not only is this lazy, it is poisonously destructive. Raids are tuned to be cleared (admittedly with a degree of real challenge) with the gear of the previous tier. A 525 ilvl whatever is technically geared for SoO normal. Yes. Yes. That is how the design works. If they are underperforming it is because they are underperforming.

Sorry for the rant, but I've had elitists rage about gearscore and ilvl since Wrath and it has always been so stupid to me from the beginning.

I could not agree with this more. I'm sick of being declined for Flex PUGs because my Druid is 520 item level (mostly because of that one or two shitty items that you can't replace no matter how much you run raids because NOTHING EVER DROPS). So when I want to run a Flex, I ask a friend in the guild to put one together for me. He's a pretty good sport and he'll grab as many people from guild as he possibly can. It doesn't matter what their item level is going to be because we know they're aware of how to play their classes and they're familiar with the fight mechanics. When he has to resort to PUGs to fill the empty slots, he won't take anyone with less than 545 item level. Why? Because if someone has a higher item level, we can safely assume they've at least seen the fights before. But it no way compensates for poor ability. As a 520 item level Feral Druid, I am third on DPS in the entire raid despite having PUGs with 560+ item level in the group. The only two people above me are guildies who raid normal and heroic modes.

Item level doesn't mean shit.

[Deleted]

Fucking hate when ppl answer with "no thanks" it sounds so sarcastic and arogant

I know what you mean, but it DOES get annoying when people keep trying to invite you for raids you aren't even queued for, or even explicitly said you didn't want to do, because you're a tank and they need one. In that case, a simple "no thanks" is more than enough imo.