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  1. #1

    Quality of PuGs after 4.0.6

    Has anyone else noticed a sharp decline in player ability since 4.0.6 went live? Prior to the nerfs to the various dungeons, what people considered bad players were typically really mediocre, they knew something about their classes and play style, but they didn't know how to optimize it to be a good player along with having some awareness issues. Since 4.0.6, I've seen absolutely horrid players in heroics, people pulling under 5k DPS with the 15% boost from Luck of the Draw, 0 awareness, absolutely no knowledge of their class (seen a couple Blood DKs that never used Deathstrike once during the run and were typically booted by the group do to health issues/aggro issues).

    It seems like all the really bad players stayed away from heroics until 4.0.6 came out and now they're flooding in and it's generally making heroics worse than they were pre-4.0.6. Anyone else noticed these trends?

  2. #2
    To be honest I try to stay away from pugs 100%...
    I love running heroics with a guild, everyone knows their job and does it right.

  3. #3
    Deleted
    I've noticed no decline since people sucked hardcore before and they suck hardcore now. It's true that before, you generally didn't run into anyone who did less than 5k, but you STILL run into those people even with 15% buff. My guess is they realized they would do better DPS with the buff and are simply trying even LESS than before.

  4. #4
    My PUGs in the last time were good. We completed every heroic with not more then 2 wipes. OK in my eyes.

  5. #5
    I think the reason it seems that way, is due to gear scaling. Everyone (even the bads) were geared in ICC level gear, or welfare equivalents, and doing heroics that were tuned for freshly dinged 80s... by the time 4.0.6 came out, most classes could damn near solo wrath heroics.

    Now, most pugs still need gear from heroics (which are appropriately tuned to their ilvl) and are required to follow mechanics/ learn tactics that they never have before.

    So they are still just as bad, it is now just harder to carry them.

  6. #6
    Since the start of Cataclysm I'm seeing random players reach new lows every few days, they get worse and worse, up to the point so far that they just run in and press random things once in a while, and auto attack besides that and they have absolutely no knowledge of anything in the game.

  7. #7
    I find to be about 50-50. Half of the time I get a good pug and the other half I get my tournament dailies done. Guild runs are at faceroll status now at least.

  8. #8
    You have to remember, that out of aprox 11mil players, only about 10% are half decent at this game, the rest? **shudders**

  9. #9
    The overall dps is dropping becouse less people have good starting gear for 80+ content. Everyone is leveling their favorite (and prolly best geared) chars first, leaving their less favorite's (worse gear) for later. This also apply's for class mechanics.

    I haven't touched alot of my level 80's since patch 4.0 and have to find out how to play them all over again. These characters haven' t seen alot of level 80 end game and therefore no gear.

  10. #10
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by warlocx View Post
    The overall dps is dropping becouse less people have good starting gear for 80+ content. Everyone is leveling their favorite (and prolly best geared) chars first, leaving their less favorite's (worse gear) for later. This also apply's for class mechanics.

    I haven't touched alot of my level 80's since patch 4.0 and have to find out how to play them all over again. These characters haven' t seen alot of level 80 end game and therefore no gear.
    Why would that matter, it's not like you still have any WotLK gear when you ding 85. If you did, there's no way you'd be able to enter a HC regardless.

  11. #11
    Deleted
    This reminds me kindof during the release day. I leveled up very quickly, being in the realm top 20 to get to 85 ( only minutes after the first of my class /sadface ).
    During the first hours of 85, while we were so very few 85's, everyone had cheated gear with probably average item level 320+, the ENTIRE group.

    I successfully completed several Heroics for hours with different random groups. Most people did not know the fights etc, but we rarely wiped. This was due to, every player that dinged 85 that fast, was a serious player the knew their class. Then, after a day or two on the 8th and 9th, random pugs was becoming more and more impossible, due to newer, 'worse', players dinged 85.

  12. #12
    Deleted
    well tbh I've noticed the complete opposite. My hc pugs have been really great. But that could be pure luck. ive done about 2 a day at the most.

  13. #13
    Easy answer, more and more people are just hitting 85 recently. The people who don't really take the game seriously at all. As tobberoth said, it has nothing to do with what gear they had pre-cata.
    About EP:
    Quote Originally Posted by Aldriana
    With the usual caveats about these numbers being based on a specific set of gear which probably isn't what you're using, such that these answers will be approximately right but not exact
    Vanilla: 60 Shaman
    BC: 70 Rogue, 70 Druid
    Wrath: 80 Druid, 80 Paladin, 80 Shaman, 80 Rogue
    Cata: 85 Rogue (Holmés), 85 Priest (Naclwater)

  14. #14
    The Lightbringer Seriss's Avatar
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    The other day, I was playing my warlock and questing while waiting for the LFD to get my group ready.

    After some 30 minutes, I get into Grim Batol heroic. I can mount the dragon immediately. Meh... I would have liked a fresh instance and not a half-finished one, but whatever. Dragon lands, I check out where to go. Trash dead... I run along. Hmm. Draga/Valiona were skipped. Fine, whatever. The group seems to have cleared more trash. I follow the way through the dungeon...

    And there they are, waiting right at Erudax, the final boss of that dungeon.

    I was sort of expecting what happened next.

    The adds just wouldn't die. I just barely managed to kill one add all by myself with a bit of lucky crits. My warlock is an alt, and I had only just respecced to destro and am still practising my rotations and priorities and everything, so I was by far not pulling the highest possible numbers there. The second add lived for lengthy amounts of time. I helped as much as I could.

    At that point, I already knew practically everything that must have happened before my arrival. I'll leave it to the reader to imagine the entirety of it, just as I have imagined what probably happened.

    Fact is that, in this one single try that this group did with me on Erudax, the wipe occurred after 4 waves of adds, at which point the boss himself still had 50% hp left, with me having pulled 13,5k dps on my badly played alt (seriously, I always forget to keep an eye on improved soul fire, get the timing for reapplying dots slightly wrong, etc. you name it, I mess it up ^^), followed by a DK who pulled some 8k which I found very much okay. Next in line, the feral tank with 4k... then the fury warrior with less than the tank.

    Understandable that the healer would be OOM after 4 bloody waves of adds that barely went down before hatching eggs and did in fact hatch quite nicely.

    After the wipe, I told them really nicely and honestly (seriously, I was being polite and everything. I'm not a rude 'lol, you suck' person, no matter how horrible they are) that there was absolutely no way that this group would ever kill this boss with only 2 of the DPS putting out halfway decent numbers that, despite being alright, would never ever be able to compensate for the third one if he didn't put in more effort.

    So 2 people leave - I don't even remember which. And the rest of the group disbands as well.

    So... back into a 30 minute queue for my little noobish warlock alt. She needs to farm gear and reputation to get herself some new pretty clothes, poor thing.

  15. #15
    Haven't played in a pug since December.

  16. #16
    The Patient SweetLou570's Avatar
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    I've noticed it as well and have scaled back on the number of pugs I group with.

    My theories, which I see some others agree with:
    -The people that reach max level in each expansion first tend to be a group of the more talented players (see Hardcore & Semi-Hardcore guilds)
    -People that level slower are more casual and will not take a game nearly as seriously, they reach heroics at a later time
    -There was a sense that heroics were very hard in the beginning and people may have avoided it, nerfs bring more in
    -With some people having mains geared out as much as possible and boredom setting in, people work on alternate characters - generally speaking, people are more talented with a main as opposed to with an alt character.

  17. #17
    Bloodsail Admiral Nume's Avatar
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    Heh I have seen some fail dps, but what I try to do is just queue with 1 tank and myself (dps). This way I know the tank is solid, queue time will be short, and I can carry any crap dps with the 15 percent boost, plus a crappy healer wont matter much with a geared tank who has 15 percent hp bonus and a healer with 15 percent extra healing. Those groups almost never fail :P. If I cant find a tank, even just queing by myself I rarely have too many issues, though the other night I did have a group who went through 2 purely pvp geared tanks (like bloodied pyrium stuff/a few honor pieces, not even epic) in a row.... fortunately both quit after wiping on ozruk a few times and we finally got a good one :P.

  18. #18
    Herald of the Titans Agallochh's Avatar
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    Nothing beats queueing with 4 guildies on my warlock and out-dpsing the guy with 15% buff.

    On my healer (who I pug with more frequently than my warlock) I have noticed the same amount of bad players as before. People standing in fire, not knowing how to interrupt, and basically not playing their class to its full ability. Then again, I have had some runs that were extremely smooth with the tank and all the DPS pulling 10k+. These groups generally have no problems whatsoever.
    Lained - 60 Shaman | Lainedtv - 60 Druid | Lainedz - 60 Paladin

  19. #19
    I haven't, but I think that's because I've only been pugging with my Prot Paladin, with which I consider myself amazing enough that I can make up for poor DPS and heals. Proper CD usage can also make up for people being idiots: standing in fire, face pulling, and other buffoonery.

    On the other hand, however, the few times I've pugged on my Shaman were absolute nightmares. Having a tank who doesn't even use his disposable cooldowns and refuses to let us CC is pretty much the worse.

  20. #20
    I think it is because of the Luck of the draw buff we now got and the nerfs they have made to the encounters. It makes them put in alot less effort in the dungeons.
    Last edited by narendal94; 2011-03-02 at 11:49 PM.

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