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  1. #21
    Pandaren Monk Demsi's Avatar
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    If you're prepared for the headaches that comes with PuG raiding it's no different from what it usually is, maybe except that dps is more of a concern but normal is very forgiving usually

  2. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by ID811717 View Post
    Do not expect to clear a HC raid on the first 2 days of the first week in a pug. Unless it's a particularly easy tier (like Antorus).

    From my anecdotal experience, world rank 300-900 guilds playing 3 days times 3-4 hours per week (for a total of 9h or 12h raiding time per week) - generally need all of this time to clear the HC raid on the first week of a new tier. Moreover, they often run into the choice of either having to bench underperformers, or risk having to extend raid times to actually finish off the last 1-2 bosses before the weekly reset. (In my experience, world 100 guilds handle the HC clear on the first week substantially better). If you are pugging HC on the first week, you can generally count on finding people of the same caliber as in world world rank 300 guilds, but you incur a substantial time penalty for being less organized (finding and replacing people, dealing with underperformers, having weaker raid leading)... so clearing the entire place in pugs will likely take you 2-3x times longer than in the aforementioned guilds. But what you gain in return - is having no strings attached; no one will expect you to show up for more raiding the next week and the weeks after...



    Being a strict raid leader sounds easier than it actually is. You need to be mechanically excellent yourself before people will give you an opportunity to fine-tune your raid setup at the expense of their time (waiting for replacements). I have seen pug leaders who don't understand what's going on and have no control of the raid; the moment they start misplacing blame on random raid members, the better players decide to bail out instead of waiting for yet another replacement guy to spend 10 min finding the entrance to the raid.

    True... blizzard really needs to give us better tools to make PUG raids much easier. Like not to depend on warlock for summon. Just create tool to summon everyone whos in raid.
    And auto-queue maybe. Raidskip quests. Just more tools to make PUG more easier to organise.

  3. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by ryjkur View Post
    Normal and HC is doable in pugs first week. Clearing full mythic with pugs is probably possible after week or two of tier release, I haven't stepped to mythics tho.
    no way this gonna happen

  4. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by ID811717 View Post
    Across Legion and BfA, I have cleared many HC raids in pugs on the first week of the raid release. The first raid of BfA was by far the most annoying experience to date. I expect the same from the first raid of Shadowlands. There are multiple related reasons for this:
    I agree with your reasoning, I would just add one positive thing about the first raid: there is a lot of people around. From my experience the first tier includes a lot of wiping, but replacements are easy to find. While the middle one, like eternal palace, was super easy with most bosses being one shot, but then waiting for replacements took ages.

  5. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by ryjkur View Post
    Normal and HC is doable in pugs first week. Clearing full mythic with pugs is probably possible after week or two of tier release, I haven't stepped to mythics tho.
    Jokes here.

    Clearning Heroic in pugs first week is not common at all, maybe few groups do it but 99.9% of the pugs don't (im talking real pug, not 12 ppl from same guild and 5 pugs).

    Mythic, hell naw.

  6. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by Thzz View Post
    I've never raided with a guild because as I like to keep a more flexible schedule and not be tied down for 2-4 hours on any given night. I love M+ because I control my schedule.

    Thinking about dabbling in raids via pugs at the beginning of SL and see if I like it.

    What are PUG Raids like at the very beginning of expansion? Doable or a waste if time. More toxic, less, same?

    My hope is since all are learning they would be more of cooperative atmosphere vs bitching and whining and blaming. False hope?
    Perfectly doable - you just need to be patient as most of the groups that are pugging will have zero experience in there. Try to find a group that is mostly a guild group, and tag along. These days my group are all old farts with busy careers and children etc, so we often have to pug spots at various times. Our runs are Usually quite successful, and many of the pugs make the cut and are added to my list for future runs.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by ShaanuJaanu View Post
    Jokes here.

    Clearning Heroic in pugs first week is not common at all, maybe few groups do it but 99.9% of the pugs don't (im talking real pug, not 12 ppl from same guild and 5 pugs).

    Mythic, hell naw.
    Yeah, most of the players capable of fully clearing heroic on week one are in dedicated guild groups and are mythic raiders with mythic experience. Ignoring extreme outliers - it is not common at all. We did it years ago as a dedicated mythic raid team who brought along a handful of pugs - BUT those "pugs" where known to us and we knew they had the skill and everyone was on discord etc - it was really a friends and family run, not a "true" pug.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Demsi View Post
    If you're prepared for the headaches that comes with PuG raiding it's no different from what it usually is, maybe except that dps is more of a concern but normal is very forgiving usually
    This - the main difference is players wont over gear the content. Later in a raids life you get much higher geared groups clearing it in pugs, and that certainly makes things easier in general. Still, if the players dont know the mechanics, even normal can EASILY devolve into a complete clusterfuck.

  7. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by RoKPaNda View Post
    Where? My main is in a Mythic guild, but I've tried to find these casual guilds that are out there for alts on other servers for when I just feel like dicking around in Heroic or whatever and I've never had any luck. Of course that could just be because guild recruitment tools suck in WoW.
    In my experience, these casual guilds are found in group finder runs. One of my best friends' guilds does this: They have a core of 8 to 10 players and they fill in a few extra spots via group finder. They recruit new players from the people that join their runs. They start off by clearing Normal and then switch to Heroic, which they clear before the end of the patch. They never touch Mythic as a guild.

    They still tend to follow a schedule, but they don't freak out if someone misses. If too many people miss, they just cancel and try again later in the week or take the week off.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by ryjkur View Post
    Normal and HC is doable in pugs first week. Clearing full mythic with pugs is probably possible after week or two of tier release, I haven't stepped to mythics tho.
    Normal and HC is unlikely in pugs first week. Full mythic with pugs is not doable, at all, for probably a couple of months and, even then, incredibly unlikely. The groups clearing Mythic are not really pugs, but rather raids full of Mythic-raid alts that come together to gear up their alts, and they occasionally pick up a pug here and there.
    Grand Crusader Belloc <-- 6608 Endless Tank Proving Grounds score! (
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  8. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by Belloc View Post
    In my experience, these casual guilds are found in group finder runs. One of my best friends' guilds does this: They have a core of 8 to 10 players and they fill in a few extra spots via group finder. They recruit new players from the people that join their runs. They start off by clearing Normal and then switch to Heroic, which they clear before the end of the patch. They never touch Mythic as a guild.

    They still tend to follow a schedule, but they don't freak out if someone misses. If too many people miss, they just cancel and try again later in the week or take the week off.
    This is us now - we have stepped out of mythic due to the roster voting on it and deciding we dont have the dedication required to commit to it, and mythic raiding no longer holds the same appeal it once did. We all agree, so there is no drama at all - it just doesnt fit with our lives anymore, so rather than drag ourselves through the mud, we just stepped down, and have been much happier since then.

  9. #29
    pugging is doable but pugs that clear it in week 1-2 will ask for proper credentials and you will have to perform.

    i'd personally recommend joining a casual guild or raiding discord/community though, so you can get a little bit of both without the worst of both.

  10. #30
    My advice for OP would be trying to join a (mythic) guild anytime between right now and shortly after SL release.

    Then they should be exploiting the upsides of being in a guild as much as possible before the raid launches (doing m0 world tours and m+ once those open up) so they're likely to bring them to the raid the first week. Being in a "key position" (tank/healer) increases the chances. Also it makes gearing up easier.

    Then for the first week only, they'd have to commit to the guild's schedule (most likely 2-4 nights). Clear the raid with them, and because they were a trial member they could find an excuse to leave afterwards.

    Now they have AOTC and can pug whenever they want.



    HOWEVER: this would be the scumbag way. You would need to be a real douche to do that, but it's the "easiest" way. I would not recommend this approach.

    Me, as a mythic raider myself, all i worry about is that my guild doesn't clear heroic week 1 cause we only raid 2 nights à 3 hours cause it's my guild's first content we start from scratch.
    We started progressing nyalotha 3 months late (because it was founded in like march) in the end of april.

  11. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by arkanon View Post
    Try to find a group that is mostly a guild group, and tag along. These days my group are all old farts with busy careers and children etc, so we often have to pug spots at various times. Our runs are Usually quite successful, and many of the pugs make the cut and are added to my list for future runs.
    It is great if your guild makes it work, but in most cases I would advise staying away from guild-based raid progress pugs. If you do happen join a pug like that, try your best to join their voice comms (but sometimes it's impossible due to language barriers). I personally just treat any "guild run" as a red flag and never apply for one.

    All the guild-based M+ pugs (when 4 people pug the 5th player) and raid pugs (when X people pug 1-2 extra slots) suffer from the same problem: they make the pug players into scapegoats, and treat them horribly. I addressed it in a random topic 10 months ago in relation to M+, but exactly the same happens in raids:

    Quote Originally Posted by ID811717 View Post
    Wait... Isn't this just basic group dynamics? It's very common, except it is not exactly "trolling" on purpose.

    It's a typical story of a premade 4-man group (guildies or just friends) who need to pug a random player for last spot (same goes for 3-mans that pug 2 spots). The 4 players are used to play together (so they are on the same page about tactics and skips), and they are also sitting on discord voice for banter. But they don't invite the pug player to join them, and they don't bother explaining things in chat. Every time the pug player fails at some little thing (that was often not communicated clearly), someone on voice comms facepalms. Dissing the pug player behind the player's back becomes the group bonding exercise. It's fun. It's a nice scapegoat. You work yourself up in your little closed circle of friends, and learn to hate the pug player. (Sometimes the pug player actually is horrible.) If things are indeed going bad, then by the middle of the run someone might suggest to kick the pug player and do the key at one key lower. By the end of the run, someone might suggest to kick the pug player from the group when last boss is at 50%, just for the lulz ("I hate him!").

    It's actually enough that there's one player in premade who gets easily tilted and needs to rant about pugs, and then 2-3 friends who will just passively nod and try to redirect it into a lighthearted humor.

    It's group psychology 101. It happens even when none of the problems were exactly the pug player's fault.
    I have seen this happen many times. I saw it happen when I was the part of a premade group. And I had it happen to me when I was the one getting pugged. I saw it happen in M+, and I saw it happen in raids. It does not matter if most members of the premade group are not really any better than the pugs... People are generally happy to ignore the shortcomings of their friends, and prefer to assign all blame to the strangers instead, even when none of that is objectively deserved.


    And also... If two raid groups are looking for a pug player at the same progress level (e.g. both are 6/12 HC in the middle of raid tier's week 2), then I look at it this way:
    - the full pug group is at 6/12HC in spite of being somewhat unorganized and random;
    - the guild-based group is at 6/12HC in spite of being organized (e.g. not having to replace quitters after each pull).
    Based on the above, it's likely that the guild-based consists of worse-caliber players, compared to the pug group of the same progress.
    Last edited by ID811717; 2020-09-30 at 06:55 AM.

  12. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by ID811717 View Post
    It is great if your guild makes it work, but in most cases I would advise staying away from guild-based raid progress pugs. If you do happen join a pug like that, try your best to join their voice comms (but sometimes it's impossible due to language barriers). I personally just treat any "guild run" as a red flag and never apply for one.

    All the guild-based M+ pugs (when 4 people pug the 5th player) and raid pugs (when X people pug 1-2 extra slots) suffer from the same problem: they make the pug players into scapegoats, and treat them horribly. I addressed it in a random topic 10 months ago in relation to M+, but exactly the same happens in raids:
    That's your personal experience, and since you say you avoid them, your experience in these situations is extremely limited. The fact you use rediculous hyperbole like the bold parts shows you just have a bias and refuse to accept that it may very well have been your fault. To be honest, it just sounds like you are not a very good pug, and probably got booted a few times for poor performance.

  13. #33
    I am Murloc! Chonar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Greyvax View Post
    Just speaking for BfA, but Uldir, even heroic, was very puggable. In fact, i've done most of my progression thru pugs, since late MoP (with some random guilding mixed in), but i hate committing to schedules.
    Pugging heroic G'huun when he was current content sounds like a fun time for all and definitely not something that would make me throw my monitor across the room at the 700th orb throw failure.
    Looking marvelous in velvet.

  14. #34
    Quote Originally Posted by arkanon View Post
    That's your personal experience, and since you say you avoid them, your experience in these situations is extremely limited. The fact you use rediculous hyperbole like the bold parts shows you just have a bias and refuse to accept that it may very well have been your fault. To be honest, it just sounds like you are not a very good pug, and probably got booted a few times for poor performance.
    For some reason, your response started by assuming that my experience is extremely limited. That led you to a bunch of wrong conclusions. I have added many people from M+ pugs into my friend list over the years. And whenever we form an M+ premade on this basis (and go for a lower key that does not require to invite the pug player into the voice comms) - I'm usually the one trying to de-escalate the more elitist-minded people from randomly flaming or even kicking our pug players. It's not just me being unfortunate to be friends with one person who tilts easily; as I stated in my quote, it very much seems to be a human psychology 101 that you have to deal with on a regular basis.

    I was only a part of a HC guild for 1 tier in recent years, just to play with my friends (for me HC guilds are useless outside of a purely social aspect; if the goal is to raid HC-only then the most efficient solution is to clear it in pugs on week 1). But when it came to having to pug extra people, I saw exactly the same problems in there as well. It does not always have to be true hostility, either. I have no idea whether you have the trait to perceive all the situations from the point of view of people your group has as pugs... But in case you do not invite the pug players on voice comms (do you?): if you go for a slow semi-AFK wipe recovery when someone goes on bio break and someone is discussing tactics in voice comms - do you bother to tell your pug player that they can relax for just a moment, or are you happy to keep them always ready and waiting on the next pull?... And when they finally get tired of waiting for seemingly nothing and randomly think they can go for 1 min AFK as well, making your entire group wait on a couple of ready checks - does that make you unhappy? For some reason, most people lack the capacity to be mindful of such situations.

    All stated experience is obviously anecdotal, and I did not question your group's pugging success, so I'm not sure why you are so interested to provide a blanket denial. The part you bolded is an exaggeration, but my claim still stands; just add "... tend to ..." in there if you want to read it in a literal way.

    EDIT: Just to be clear, the reason I can make the claim I did is because I see exactly where the problem comes from (it basically starts from the lack of communication between an individual and a group), and I saw many times how it escalates. If you have a different fundamental view on this phenomenon, I'm happy to hear you out. But if you are just trying to put words in my mouth, and assume all the problems are because I cannot behave or cannot perform - than you are bound to lose your argument right away.
    Last edited by ID811717; 2020-09-30 at 11:07 AM.

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