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

[FishtheFish]

I remember my friend and I were doing heroic Slabs back in the day. Good lord some of those pugs in there were brutally...special haha

[cabyio]

Only if you like raids with less than eight bosses... because Faillands was the pinnacle of raiding during Cataclysm. >_>

The bolded section is false, if you didn't catch my drift.

Firelands was awesome. You just don't like it because you had no friends to raid with.

[Taygete]

I really don't like gearscore/ilvl... I have never liked it. It's a poor yardstick to measure someone's potential by, besides trying to make sure that your group outgears the content so much that you can just flub your way through it and still win. How is that even remotely satisfying gameplay?

The other day I joined a flex garrosh kill. I brought a 576 dps and a 565ish tank with. Now this tank is very skilled, but has had terrible loot luck since he started tanking heroics for us. So he has a mix of heroic, normal, flex, and RF gear. Someone saw the one or two pieces of Flex/RF gear and had a fit about how they weren't geared enough... for FLEX Garrosh. I was like are you kidding me, he tanks heroics for us with no trouble.... People in general are just way too caught up on ilvl. I also recently got turned down for a flex pug because my ilvl on my ele shaman was 558 and two ilvls under what they wanted. Sheesh.

Granted they aren't all bad, I've had a few very smooth pugs over the last few months. But a pug is a crapshoot, and always has been. /shrug

[Tastyfish]

When you come on MMO champion, which is a public forum, for people to act only one way, or do you expect to see a lot of drama, confusion, trolling and other bullshit between folks, and some discussion on topic?
Pugs are the same way. It's a public forum. You will get a bit of everything, and it's not always quality nor what you expect or demand. It's the risk of using public things.

[cabyio]

assumption that everyone massively sucks

Most people do massively suck. The only easy way to mitigate some of that is ask for a nice high ilvl.

[Nobleshield]

If you ask me the issue is twofold:

1) The perception that Flex is as easy as LFR when it's actually a bit harder (it's easy to those of us who typically raid Normal/Heroic). This brings the attitude from LFG/LFR to Flex whereby any wipe is immediately "fail group", anyone underperforming by a bit is a scrub, etc. and all the toxic mentality that goes along with expecting faceroll content. This is nothing new, as you saw this mentality during the days of the ICC trade pugs, especially with the 30% buff people expected it to be easy when it really wasn't easy.

2) Pugs asking for iLevel higher than normal for a "smooth run". As before this is just the evolution of the old "LFM ICC10 5.5k GS" mindset. People want things to be easy (see above) so the fastest way to do that (although incorrect) is to use gear/iLevel as the determining factor. Hence you see pugs demanding higher gear than what drops, because they want a smooth run without putting in the time and effort required (i.e. by being patient and explaining fights and being helpful). Whenever I'd do a Flex run or even a pug in the old days before Flex, I never had an issue with instructing people in the fights or being patient if somebody was a new or inexperienced player. That's how you build a community, except most puggers don't care about building a community.

[Sansnom]

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.

No surprise there. I do not understand why people think it would be better. PUGGING has always had this problem. Even with a guild hosted run, partially filled with random people can be a problem.

[Alroxas]

<snip>

Flex is not designed well for PuGs. Also voice comms are essential for faster/better communication. Just my .02

[cabyio]

Definition breaker

Any non-anecdotal evidence against bell-curve distribution of skill in WoW?

Bad does not have to be the people at the tail end of the bell curve. Whether someone is bad or good at something is just comparing their skill against a framework of what is bad and what is good. For example. If I were to use normal (current normal/future heroic) raiding as a bench mark of acceptable skill, then yes 90%+ of people would be bad. He would only have been wrong if he said 90% of people are below average. It all depends on what your framework of bad and good is.

[El_Diabl0]

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.

You get mad when you don't get invited because of your item level but you're ok with it if you're already in?

[Nobleshield]

You get mad when you don't get invited because of your item level but you're ok with it if you're already in?

I'm assuming the difference there is that he's not a PUG. The rules are usually relaxed for guildmates/friends because you know their skill; for a random PUG (i.e. a stranger) you have no idea if they're good.

[Mefistophelis]

All I can say is I feel you OP. I am an altoholic and I get really sad when no one takes my 540 mage or 538 warrior for flex, while i can do great dps everyone just sticks with those freaking numbers. The other day I was trying to go garrosh normal and someone was asking for 580 ilvl + ... where has this world gone to ?

[Kuntantee]

I've seen "LFM Heroic SC, 580+ ilvl" today. Same type of dumb players I guess.

[El_Diabl0]

I'm assuming the difference there is that he's not a PUG. The rules are usually relaxed for guildmates/friends because you know their skill; for a random PUG (i.e. a stranger) you have no idea if they're good.

My point is, he should understand why pugs don't invite his 520 druid.

[Wildtree]

Sadly... the OP is nowadays rather the rule and not the exception.
The game's community became utterly toxic and disgusting. What the real bad part is, how it's coloring off into guilds as well.

[Barnabas]

You get mad when you don't get invited because of your item level but you're ok with it if you're already in?

Yet he claims he still does more dps on his 520 druid than the pugs with 545+ gear his friend invites. It was mean't to be a figure of speech. Gear helps but if you don't understand mechanics you will still fail.

- - - Updated - - -

Sadly... the OP is nowadays rather the rule and not the exception.
The game's community became utterly toxic and disgusting. What the real bad part is, how it's coloring off into guilds as well.

You had bad players in pubs in vanilla. I don't see how much has changed from then to OP's story except dungeon to complain about. That and nobody was able to pub naxx in vanilla like you can with SoO

[Wildtree]

You had bad players in pugs in vanilla. I don't see how much has changed from then to OP's story except dungeon to complain about.

One term....
CROSS REALM

People are no more accountable for acting like a cunt..
Up until the cross realm feature came along, everyone knew how they can and will in fact be blacklisted on the realm.

[roahn the warlock]

Basically, everyone who is good has already gotten their ahead of the curve achievement and has stopped raiding. I see not point in continuing once you have the wolf. Unless you're achievement running

[Vynestra]

Haven't really pugged much of anything since wrath.

[Barnabas]

One term....
CROSS REALM

People are no more accountable for acting like a cunt..
Up until the cross realm feature came along, everyone knew how they can and will in fact be blacklisted on the realm.

Still the same attitudes my friend. Lists still work but it takes more effort than people are wanting to put forth to merge them across realm.