Guild Wars 2

Now, that my (kind of casual and relaxed) guild-group and I have killed Vale Guardian a few times I have to say that raids themselves are really fun (for me), but some things, that can be part of raiding, are not fun.

So I am thinking about my best and worst raid experiences of the last months/year.

Worst:

• personal animosities
  In the beginning (when most of us never killed a raid boss) we partnered with another guild (that has, according to themselves, killed VG a lot of times) and week-after-week we wiped without succeeding. They were “pros” and we were “noobs”. The tone became more and more agressive over time because the “pros” could not understand, why the “noobs” were so “bad” in playing. At the end we separated with a “big bang” and never played together again.
• LFG/finding PUGs
  After the split from the other guild we were only 5-7 people from our guild who wanted to raid and so we tried to fill the spots with PUGs/LFG. To get some classes sometimes we had to wait 30-60 minutes or more. Some evenings we never could fill all spots. Often, before we could fill all slots, some other PUGs already left and the search started again. And after only one try/wipe often people left and we could LFG and wait again. And some people do not read the LFG-description.
  This “waiting game” was totally not fun.

Best:

• killing VG the first time.
• with LFG we found some really nice people that raided more than once with us and that are now on our friends list.

So, my conclusion: raids by themselves are fun, but the best and worst experiences are related to the people you play with.

What are your best and worst experiences with raids and raiding?

My worst experience is that it can take an hour to organize a group, and most pugs take this hour. So I stopped after about a dozen boss kills because I can finish T4 fractals in less time than organizing a single raid.

Which is a shame, because some of the bosses are fun.

Zok.4956:

So, my conclusion: raids by themselves are fun, but the best and worst experiences are related to the people you play with.

Sounds like an MMO to me for sure.

I don’t pug a lot, but I guess my worst experiences are that there is so much waiting for ppl to ready up and that no one seems to bother about rotations. It’s not uncommon to be top dps on cps, and not uncommon to be 3-6k(on arc) ahead of the other dps on target. I just don’t get it

My best experience of pugs are gatherings of understanding people who are (somewhat) experience with the bosses and their roles. They would quietly and attentively adapt to the group’s need. They are chill to joke with and giving informative but unintrusive callouts. Their pleasant presence improves the raid experience.

My worst experiences are always related to narcissistic individuals. They have an endless need to express themselves and always find their ways to the center of senseless chatterings with hours of mundane topics regardless timings because “raid is too easy to do with a full attention”. They are pushovers who drivels the group to do their wills without any proper communication or direction then acting condescending and superiority when picking out others’ shortcomings. Bonus cringe when these individuals try to find external excuses for whatever errors they made then proceed to ragequit in the middle of the pulls without words. It doesn’t need the whole group to make a bad raid experience this way: only 1-2 bad apples and an hypertolerant raid leader. In the end, what’s left to consider is when to excuse yourself out of the group: bearing it until the boss is killed? Giving it a few pulls until the person acts out? Leaving on sight or even refusing to join in the first place?

First off, let me congratulate you on your first VG kill and good luck on future raid boss kills. Honestly once you have the coordination down for VG, most other bosses fall into place.

Zok.4956:

So, my conclusion: raids by themselves are fun, but the best and worst experiences are related to the people you play with.

True and a sentiment most raiders have been repeating on the forums.

That’s also one of the reasons a major recommendation is and always has been:

if you want to raid, find a group of likeminded individuals (aka a guild) and run with them.

Now to the best and worst experiences:

- can’t recall to many worst since I in general enjoy raiding (even those 2 hour wipe evenings without killing a single boss, which I too have had in the beginning)

- the best has to be those chilled nights where everything goes smooth and everybody is in a good mood. When I started raiding wing 1 had just been released and after a couple of days of tries we managed to kill VG as a guild group. That was epic. Every other raid boss after was always cool, but the first one remains the best.

good and worst experience?
I don’t have a raid team. good exp is, getting all raids done and all achievements done.
worst exp is having someone from France in ts whom i pugged in the first week of w4 came out. this guy told me to uninstall the game and don’t play the game because i have perma 400 ping. but I got all my CM done 3 days after. with high ping like me, I need time to adjust to the mechanic .. need that six sense to adjust to reflex reaction to counter mechanic.
I hvnt complained about being miss treated in the game but I do see a lot of people cry so much in forum which is very funny. being oceanic player, we play at very awkward time.. so pug is our answer. and we play with permenant average 400-600 ping

It’s tough to choose a best experience because there have been a lot, but I think it would have to be when they changed Glyph of Elemental Power to have a shared internal cooldown with other elementalists. It was bugged so that if you had a bunch of eles, there was virtually no internal cooldown. A group of friends transferred condi gear over from our necros to quickly make poorly optimized condi eles and then took on Gors. It was a hilarious and fun night, and I think we ended up killing it at the last moment with 8 eles and 2 druids. The burn stacks were ridiculous.

My worst experience was with 5 or 6 member of a large, well known raiding guild. They were constantly talking about how they had to carry the pugs while us pugs were in voice chat with them. One of their friends came in and they kept joking about how these pugs they were in a raid with sucked (while we were all in voice chat). This was before dps meters were a thing, so they couldn’t see dps, and some of their guildies were the ones going down the most, so it wasn’t even justified. I stayed longer than I should have because I had been invited by one of my friends (who didn’t know these people). This was the only raid I’ve been in where I was the recipient of genuine insults.

What I’ve learned from this is when you find people you enjoy playing with, hold on to them. If you keep playing with them you’ll keep having good experiences. Meanwhile, if you’re playing with people you don’t know you should be open to the possibility that they aren’t people you’ll enjoy, and that removing yourself from the situation is better than spending a few hours being miserable.

Well fluffy.. those are very common exp .. I pug so I seen it all hear it all. Brush it off and move on. It’s how I manage to cumulated over 600li with pug