aaisoaho wrote: »

I still firmly believe group finder has some great players doing vDLCs.

The vDLCs are what I PUG the most often. I tend to find that the players are on average better and in most cases friendlier. Friendly to the extent that people do talk to each.

When you PUG that content, at least in my experience, I tend to see 2 types of people; those who were confident enough in their role to PUG them in the first place, and those who are completely oblivious to what they've just gotten themselves into, or they just dont care and want the helm.

My experiences in that content have been overwhelmingly positive. Even the bad groups ended amicably.

One of the more recent PUG runs, which wasnt at all a great run, still ended well none-the-less. A healer friend and I did a random vet and got vMHK.

We zone in, healer says "hello" because she always does. At first boss I asked if everyone knew the fight. One of the answered that they had done it on normal, but not vet. The other didnt answer at all. One of them had the crown, which meant they were also a group. I took their silence to mean that they had never done it.

First boss, explain the fights, no problem. Second boss, I explained what i was going to do with the bears, some confusion, but we got through it. Mylene, not as bad as I thought it was gonna be. 2nd try. Behemoths, yeah, dont stand there.

Smooth sailing until the archivist. Took 2 tries. The DDs had some issues with the sigils, but we cleared it.

Vykosa. We no sooner get through the door and healer clicks the scroll. Other DD says that they've never done the dungeon before at all. No big deal, I explain the fights and we give it a few tries. Surprisingly we made it to execute, but we didnt clear it. It was getting late and I had to the work the next morning, so we agreed that we could go another few minutes then we would have to clear it non-HM. It was a random anyway, so the reward is the same.

After getting her to 14% I called it, I had to go, so we cleared it non-HM. One of the DDs said thats its not uncommon for them to be told "why are you even here" and things of that nature. At the end we all friended each other and I went to bed.

Its noteworthy not because a PUG accomplished something crazy, because really, we didnt, it was just a clear. In fact, it was a rather poor group when looking at total group damage. It was one of the worst that Ive seen (that actually stayed together until completion), but it was still pretty fun. What was noteworthy about it was that it never got toxic, at all, despite the odds not being in our favor. Thats been my experience with these dungeons the majority of the time. Even the bad ones arent that bad. Those that are, we just go our seprate ways.

Some time ago I jumped in the game to run the pledges with a friend, but the other people we usually run with weren't able to join us that day. For some reason that I can't remember I didn't have time to grab the pledges before we were taken to the first dungeon.

After greeting the other dd and the healer, I managed to say I didn't have the pledge, but also told my friend to not worry about it. The healer said they too didn't get pledges, but like me they were willing to run the dungeon. It was a very fast run and at the end of it we decided to stick together for the other 2 pledges.

What I didn't know, because I seldom check that kind of thing, was that the healer wasn't level 45 yet at that point. After the first dungeon, the other dd told me to go grab the pledges. I did and we queued up for a normal dungeon, where the healer hit 45. The healer then went to grab pledges and we all went back to the first dungeon so the healer and I could get the keys for that dungeon.

Unfortunately I had to stop before the last dungeon (DLC one) because it was getting too late for me, but it was one of the most memorable pledges I've ever ran. Not only did I get the honor of seeing a healer "coming of age" (I need all the healers and tanks this game can produce), but to meet complete strangers who were willing to take time to run the same dungeon twice was amazing.

Queued for a random normal and got Unhallowed Grave.

I had never done UG before, nor had anyone else in the group. None of us had any clue about any of the mechanics.

I braced for a PUG nightmare.

We wiped several times -- particularly in the Kiln and then on the next-to-last boss (Ondagor the Mad?). But each time we wiped, we all talked about what happened, trying to figure out the mechanics, suggesting alternatives to try the next time.

It took a while, but we eventually figured it all out and completed the dungeon. It was a really positive and fun experience -- with everyone working together to solve the puzzle (mechanics), everyone helping each other instead of someone blaming someone else or rage quitting.

I could use more PUGS like that one!