Fun PUGS (I know you have them)

HegemonIQ · November 2016

There are a lot of posts on the forums about terrible, bad, horrible PUG experiences, but I'm curious about those mythical fun or interesting runs. The ones that everyone in the bad PUG posts mentions...you know, a friend of my friends cousin once met a great group of randoms...or had a good experience.

I'll start...husband and I are a healer tank duo and occasionally we'll do a random normal or vet. Read too many stories about atrociously long group finder wait times for DPS, so we're happy to help out and fully expect to get newer players or low CP/DPS. On time we loaded into norm Fungal Grotto with a CP98 and a level 15. Immediately, first thing we hear on chat is the CP98 saying "Please don't kick my friend!" We both broke out laughing. Told the guy not to worry, we would be happy to get his friend through the dungeon. After a couple of mobs, I noticed that the 15 was only light attacking...so we stopped for a minute and I asked if he wanted to discus his skills and rotations...we gave him some tips then finished the rest of the run. It was a lot of fun and I hope we were able to help them.

Another time, I queued as a solo healer and the DPS had created twin characters, both in the same class, same skills, gear and looks. It was eerie how well they coordinated their skills and on chat they even sounded the same and finished each other's sentences...asked if they were twins, but they were just best friends.

Over to you, any good stories? Or does "fun" just mean that we finished it without any issues

...I would like to think that there are some gut busting stories out there (even though my examples may be on the low guffa end of the scale).

Jimbullbee85 · November 2016

Im a templar healer/dps hybrid and to be honest I've met most of my favourite online friends in group finder. Some just starting out and others towards end game. It seems like it's human nature to forget about the positive experiences but go all out "drama queen" with the bad ones. I've had my fair share of nightmare runs with group finder but most of these are caused by rude players not from players with low CP.

My favourite run through was probs my 10th attempt at White gold tower early cp. I landed in a group of guildies who were very supportive. They helped me with my skills and gave lots of advice. They got me through to the end, I took that monster helm and they gave me a guild invite. It was social gaming at its best

HegemonIQ · November 2016

@Jimbullbee85 So happy to hear that. Reading the forums starts to make you hate PUG life (and wonder why the heck you put yourself through it), but I've met some great players through group finder, some that are still guildies to this day. Think you're right, the pain seems to stick with us, but the fun memories fade...

SolarCat02 · November 2016

We have recruited a lot of good people through group finder, pulling in a fourth to finish out the group, or sometimes just from running a random by myself. There are some really great people who are either just getting back into the game, or never really joined a guild before.

One of the most amusing stories is when group finder gave us three healers and one DPS for veteran White Gold Tower. (I queued solo as healer). One of the healers was offline, so we kicked him after waiting five minutes, then ran the dungeon with two dps and two healers. Other healer was the only other one in chat, but we had a blast chattering away the whole way through the dungeon. The two of us traded pinion back and forth for the Inhibitor fight (held as long as we could then called for the other to grab her), and I ended up holding most of the aggro from Molag Kena at the end. That was a lot of fun.

The other night three of us signed on for a random veteran dungeon, ended up with a rather friendly dps who had re-geared as a tank to grind for gear. We finished that dungeon, ran all three dailies (just normal for CoS, since he had never done the DLC dungeons and needed to learn mechanics, but veteran Hardmode for the other two), then took him on his first successful run of veteran City of Ash II. We spent three hours running five dungeons, it was an awesome night.

HegemonIQ · November 2016

@SolarCat02 I love those nights...when you queue for one random and the group works so well that you start rolling run after run.

SolarCat02 · November 2016

HegemonIQ wrote: »

@SolarCat02 I love those nights...when you queue for one random and the group works so well that you start rolling run after run.

Me, too!
We intend to have another run like that with the harder veterans (DLC, plus CoA2 hm) once the other dps gets his CP160 gear. (Since he's got good damage already, he has decided to just grind for his ideal sets and skip the crafting of CP160 gear).

Reminded me of another. Queued my lvl 26 tank for a random, ended up in normal ICP with two CP561 dps. They were waiting at the first boss, but had killed the trash. The replacement healer that popped right after me (CP400 or so) dropped group almost immediately, next healer was lvl 14. Once the healer caught up the dps started to self buff, so I jumped in and grabbed aggro.

We sailed through that dungeon. The two dps were not in chat, but the healer popped in after dying to the boss with the hoarvers and announced he had never done this dungeon before, so I called out the mechanics for him as we went from that point onward. DPS had clearly run it many times, as I tanked it using the methods I had learned from an awesome tank on a veteran run, and their reactions to my positioning followed suit perfectly.

The silent pair of DPS must have been happy with both of us, because the crown queued us for two more normal randoms after that. And then just like that, after the third run, they dropped group in unison and were gone.

raglau · November 2016

95% of the PUGs I run are great. The reason I remember so well the bad ones, is really because they are so rare.

I have a great guild but I do like PUGging because I get to meet new people. I most enjoy running with new players who seem more polite, and have a willingness to learn and talk about the game, tactics etc. I think a lot of higher CP players are jaded. My personal opinion of course.

My fave PUG of late was this weekend when running normal randoms with my friend, to level his DPS char. We got two lvl 12 people in the group who were spamming bow light attack, and one had all points in health despite being STA DPS, but it was clear they were essentially good players, with good awareness and always located well etc. So we gave them a few tips on skills, paid for some respecs for them and did 5 dungeons as a team. By the end they'd gone up a few levels and mastered new skills and were contributing well to the dungeons. I actually missed those guys when they had to go, so added them to the friends list for future runs.

People whine about the lowbies but IMO they are far more open to advice and team work than higher level players.

Fodore · November 2016

Me and this guy spent the whole dungeon talking about my pet ep wardog lucky and pissing about whilst still easily completing the dungeon... Now it takes like 15mins to get into a pug so rip

Delimber · November 2016

I'd say any pug run that results in friend invites is a good run. Has happened many times to me.

When I learned how fast vet EH could be done back in spring was one of my favorite pug runs, my tank and 3 dps, was like a 7 minute run lol. (but not a no death run lol)

Sinolai · November 2016

I have been doing daily randoms with my tank and today was 8th day in row my daily normal random was a DLC dungeon with a team of newbies. (We have managed to finsih all but 1 of these runs. I left becouse the team was completely incapable of taking orders and one of them didn't even speak english.)
Todays daily was nWGT with lvl 14 healer, 14 DD and 27 DD. None of them had done the dungeon before (To be honest, I have started to like running the normal dungeons with noobs) and today was a big success. We managed to kill the first boss on 3rd try, the trio went down on first try and to my surprise, Planar Inhibitor WAS DEFEATED ON FIRST TRY!? That has NEVER happened before with random group!
Molag Kena also went down easily on 2nd try.

On the other hand, my worst experience was doing vWGT as dialy pledge with a team I collected in Stormhaven. All of them were 300+ when we started, but they just couldn't understand what "Close the F***ing Pinion" means. After something like 10 tries first person left and I used group finder to find a new one. I had to explain the mechanism over and over agian as people kept giving up and new ones joined the group. Never did they understand what "Close the F***ing Pinion" means. I spend 2,5 hours explaining to different people why to close the pinion and who destroys the portals. Someone always didn't get it and one of those who did, left before they break their whole armor.
I finally gave up after we got a cp71 replacement tank who insisted that he tanks the planar inhibitor alone and nobody toucehs the pinion during the whole fight. He blamed healer for not being able to keep him alive and acted like a "rooster" if someone closed the pinion and took the aggro.

disintegr8 · November 2016

The 'fun' PUG's tend to be fewer and far between these days with people not usually getting into chat until they are unhappy with something. I usually have to settle for an 'acceptable' PUG experience, which fortunately still happen more often than not.

PUG'd into nWGT with my DPS and a group was stuck on the inhibitor. We cleared it first run and a text chat message came up that said "thanks for not sucking" - that was funny.

The first time I ran normal CoS was good, a couple of people talking me through the mechanics, we cleared it easily and they complimented me on my ability to follow instructions. Good to see there are people out there who are happy to take the time.

Had others where the group leader just kept queueing us for random after random, obviously happy with the groups abilities. Then there are some where I just listen to the chit chat some people come out with and chuckle to myself.

Got more and more into two manning normal dungeons with a friend as we have found it can often be over quicker than a group of four, which is really saying something.