PUGs, Enchants, and Gearing question to you all

[Mankirks Daughter]

I'll be upfront. I haven't ran with a full pug that often lately (usually run with a guild hosting the majority of the players or something along those lines). Therefore, I'm looking for input from you, the mmo-champion community, on this subject.

I was doing ICC 25 last night. It took about 90 minutes for us to get to Lady Deathwhisper. Before the pull, we were waiting for some people to fly from Dalaran to ICC since we didn't have any Warlocks to summon them. While we were waiting, I started inspecting various people in the raid and noticed something. Probably about 60%-75% of the people in our raid were missing multiple enchants and gems. Some were just missing something small and immaterial like a shoulder enchant or boot enchant. However, there were quite a few that were missing major things like weapon enchants, leg enchants, multiple gem slots (5+ gem slots - including meta), etc. Obviously this isn't going to have a HUGE overall impact on their DPS, but considering how slow things went up until that point DPS wise, the collective missing enchants and gems had to add up to something (or maybe not).

What I ask you folks is - Is this normal? Or was this just a more than usual fail pug?

Yes, it could have been alts
Yes, ICC is "easy" these days and full gems/enchants may not be required (in their case, it certainly wouldn't hurt)
Yes, some of it was Heroic 5 man loot from FoS, HoR, and PoS. Some of it was Triumph badge gear. However, some of it was ICC loot.

Even if the above is true, gold is so easy to come by these days that I don't see a reason for all the missing enchants/gems. It's possible that they were waiting for better gear to drop, but it obviously took them at least a little while to get all that badge gear and they weren't in any kind of raiding guild. I would think one would take the time and enchant the gear they might keep for at least a little while since gold is so easy to get.

Don't people want their character to do the best DPS/healing possible in their current gear?

[mookashookah]

blizzard has caused this by adding the "free loot" expansion pack

[soygalol]

blizzard has caused this by adding the "free loot" expansion pack

This.
I guess the leader should have done that before you did, unless he had no gems/enchants.Anyways I try to inpect people before I go to the raid in a pug even when it aint mine and then leave if many people have no enchs/gems

---------- Post added 2010-07-21 at 05:53 AM ----------

btw how many bossese did you kill/?

[Zka]

Missing several enchants and gems does greatly impact DPS. Why? Because anyone who shows up to a raid with unfinished gear is either dumb or lazy. I've never seen dumb or lazy people do great dps.
Being an alt is not an excuse, gems and enchants are not that expensive. All my alts are completely and correctly gemmed. I'm using blue gems in low quality epics and blues, but epics in all the rest.

[Zerutan]

Sadly people base everything off a single digit now. Gemming and enchanting correctly does not affect this single digit which means that players could care less about correctly doing it. People that cannot do these simple tasks correctly should not be invited to a raid. It does impact the overall DPS because each of those incorrect gems and enchants count as a certain amount of DPS. That adds up over twenty-five different people.

And like the Zka said, being an alt is not an excuse to be stupid about your gems and enchants. It literally takes five minutes or so to look up how to gem and enchant your gear correctly.

[Hellgrazr]

when i form icc grps i use /gs to tell all their stats like hit, which gems/chants theyre missing or def. rating and so on and so forth. anyways, people jus say to me when i reject due to effort put into their gear "lol cmon its a 30% buff who cares?". people have just become lazy cuz they think 30% buff means it doesnt matter. i usually tell em if you dont put effort into your gear it just tells me your not going to put any effort into my raid....

[Deleted]

Pretty normal, I see a lot of people applying for guilds who don't have full enchants, even things like melee DPS not having a weapon enchant at all which surely is going to make a difference. I saw a paladin in full TBC gems in ICC25 last month! If you can't afford 100% epics I might understand but putting TBC gems into 264 gear makes no sense to me when you can buy blue cata gems from 10g a piece and hell even an epic is only 75g - about 15 mins of argent tourny dailies. If it's heroic gear then alright, you're waiting for a replacement.... but if it's ICC10/25 gear in my opinion it should be enchanted and gemmed no question about it.

If people will apply for raiding guilds without bothering to gem/enchant, then I'm guessing they surely will pug like it. These days with GS I guess a lot of raid leaders don't actually check for gems and enchants.

[Daemonis]

It's stupid and lazy, I see this all the time on my server, people going doing end game content without enchanting/gemming their gear really pisses me off.

[Maniac2]

I agree with all posters, people need to be fully enchanted and gemmed even with 30% buff, at least from respect to other players who have it.
But, succesfull ICC25 run comes only 20% from gear, and other 80% from knowing and executing tactics. no gearscore or achiv can rate that.
Lets take example of Freya+3 encounter last week - my guilds members are all 251/264/277 geared, but we failed horribly on Freya - no gear can help if ppl dont execute tactics - and yes, my guild killed LK but cant kill freya+3, thats sad really

[Twoflower]

The raid leader sucked. I inspect everyone when I make a pug, and ppl without gems or enchants ( yes, even a single one ) will not get into my ICC raid.

[Cyphran]

It's sadly a little more common than you'd hope.

Too often you see players applying to these raids just woefully unprepared. Perhaps its cause they feel that the gear they have will be replaced too quickly to spend money on, but its still very poor play.

Enchants and gems make a huge impact though... my bear gets 522 stamina from gems and I have 210 stamina from enchants... that's before bear form buff and kings... now I have 2900 stamina unbuffed. ... with 732 stamina bought and paid for - almost a Quarter of my total stamina is from gems and chants. That's *not* small. Hard for a tank to get away with being poorly gemmed.

I've seen healers with poor gems and chants too... but mostly it's the dps scrubs who fail. How much spellpower/crit/haste would one get from a full set of gems and chants as a dps? I haven't run a dps class in a long time. If the DPSers are sitting at 1/4ish of their "power" from chants and gems, and 4 players turn up without them... you're effectively 24manning a raid, but having to heal 25.

[Deleted]

Sadly people base everything off a single digit now. Gemming and enchanting correctly does not affect this single digit which means that players could care less about correctly doing it. People that cannot do these simple tasks correctly should not be invited to a raid. It does impact the overall DPS because each of those incorrect gems and enchants count as a certain amount of DPS. That adds up over twenty-five different people.

And like the Zka said, being an alt is not an excuse to be stupid about your gems and enchants. It literally takes five minutes or so to look up how to gem and enchant your gear correctly.

This. /thread

[andvari]

I say kill Marrowgar, don't hand out any loot to these players, explain to them why they are getting kicked, then kick them.

IMO, it's OK to have ungemmed/unenchanted gear for heroics and maybe things like VoA ( after about 1 month AFTER a new boss ) but if they are raiding they should read up on their spec, rotations, gems and enchants. If they are too lazy or "don't have the time" then they shouldn't be raiding.

I don't think you'd have a too terribly hard time replacing the bads if you say in trade when you are advertising, "LFxM for ICC25, Marrowgar is down, LFM b/c we kicked the bads with no/missing enchants/gems"

[Smoopie]

"But if I get an upgrade tonight it's wasted gold, idiot" (guy who had not gemmed/enchanted his tier10)

/sigh

[DocQuantum]

Even my (level 80 DK) banker alt has his "real" gear (free epics T9 gear from badges) properly enchanted/gemmed. Even epic gems are very cheap if you have a JC and either badges or honor.

If someone has any intention of being even remotely good at WoW, there's really no excuse NOT to gem/enchant gear (unless you know for a fact that you'll be upgrading it in the next day or two).

[Chronicle]

Who cares, expansion is just around the corner.

[Smoopie]

Who cares, expansion is just around the corner.

quick, everybody stop playing for the next 14-19 weeks...durrrr

[DocQuantum]

Who cares, expansion is just around the corner.

I'm OK with someone not caring about their gear (because it will be replaced leveling in Cata) and therefore not gemming/enchanting... as long as they don't expect to particpate in a raid that way.

If you're going to join a raid, at least have the common courtesy to TRY to perform, rather than just be carried. Gemming/enchanting (and having whatever you need to do your class, e.g. poisons, reagents, etc.) is sort of a minimum effort level. Otherwise you're just leeching - and my arms are getting tired.

[tibben]

I've been with a raiding guild since early BC so I've never had to PuG raids, but we recently switched servers and until we restock our guild we're just messing around with 25 man PuGs and running 10 heroic ICC and RS. I decided to do a GDKP run of ToC 25 normal the other night and holy crap I haven't seen that much fail in years. I didn't realize how horrible some people are at this game until that night. I've had some fail players in the LFD, but nothing this horrible. They couldn't even get past Beasts in normal 25 ToC. I started out tanking, but apparently the healers had no ability to heal and the other tank had no idea what he was doing so I ended up being frozen from Paralytic Toxin thus causing a wipe. Mind you I'm a mostly 277 geared bear/tree with around 70k health fully raid buffed without the ICC buff.

Then I went Heals and healing was no longer an issue (I was outhealing the best healer there by 2k HPS). We get through the worms and moved on to Icehowl where every single time he charged someone either they just stood there or literally ran directly toward the spot he was targeting. This is still normal ToC so you get the speed boost after you get un-stunned. I managed to keep the tank up the first time but the second time I was knocked out of healing range so when he enraged I couldn't get to him in time. The second tank picked him up (also keep in mind we had 3 hunters and apparently none of them knew what Tranq shot was). I got the second tank through 2 more enrages, but the DPS was so horrible that Icehowl was still at 25% health after 4 charges.

I realize it was ToC 25 so most people were trying to get 245 level gear, but my Shadow Priest with not a single piece of raid loot is capable of 4k DPS in a 25 man with just 226-245 level badge/crafted gear and a blue helm that doesn't even have a meta socket. He would have been #3 on the DPS meters behind the two partial ICC geared players with most people sitting around or under 2k.

TL;DR - There are some absolutely horrible players out there PuGing. Avoid it at all costs unless it's a "planned PuG" via Realm forums with someone actually checking gear and having minimum requirements.

[Newspaper]

I keep hearing all these dreaded EPIC FAIL pugs and while i pug a lot on alts i haven't encountered something like this before.... up until today. Peoplpe doing 3.2-4.2k dps in icc10 with the 30% buff. People failing to understand there are 2 adds at saurfang, so the pala healer ends up healing 2-3 marks and tanking one( one of my friends, i think he frapsed it). People packpedalling all the time when something is coming for them, yes like that will save you(especially if you're a hunter and you can d i s e n g a g e). Also hunters and other rangeds standing still at rotface like they have some sort of brain lag and ofc either in some slime or with the debuff(or mini-slime) VERY far away from the big ooze or even both sometimes. Tank playing around with his other sets of gear and charging into fester with dps gear.... thank god he was one of those terribad os fury warrs in full pvp gear so we managed to keep him up.



On a completely unrelated note: Yay 30% buff, now people might actually do decent dps by spamming one button. :S