Guild Wars 2

I’ve found that there are actually a fair few decent players, more than enough to quickly fill out a pug, but the problem is that your group tends to fill up with bads more quickly than the goods can join. Not everything has to be uber speedclear minmax mode, but seriously, some pugs are just terrible it makes even the easiest dungeons a massive pain in the kitten , and once we’re in the dungeon it becomes much more of a hassle to kick and replace them midway. I propose we make gear and traitchecks a regular thing whenever we pug. Start requiring everyone to meet thresholds on:

1) Achievement points
2) Gear (probably just the weapon is good enough, if a ranger joins and pings a bow you know to kick)
3) Traits (tell them to list their trait spread, it’s usually pretty easy to tell if they’re screwy just from the point distribution)
4) Utilities

Not only does this filter out the bads right from the get-go, it’ll also prevent them from complaining when they inevitably get kicked for not using banners/spirits/reflects/whatever. Seems like a win/win for everyone involved.

Or you could just accept that you’re trying to set up a group from random people and they are often bound to not meet your expectations. Someone running right setups might know nothing about using it, just like someone running a deviation build might be knowledgeable about dungeon mechanics.

On the other hand, from personal experience, it’s good to check if people are willing to change their setups if asked to with a reason. Those usually listen and learn well if needed. Since you’re not expecting a speedclear from a random group, it can be quite worth it to briefly explain stuff to people willing to learn.

I’m not a huge fan of achievement points filtering, that guardian using spirit weapons and tome of wrath at the first CoF1 pull i posted a while ago had 6.1 or 6.8k AP if i’m not mistaken, which is more than i do right now, on the other hand, i’ve met quite a few skilled fellas with 2000~ishAP.

Forget that noise about AP. I sit at around 1930 AP as well as my friend who is around that amount. We can duo melee lupi just fine. Our fractals are lacking, only because we just don’t do it much atm. But for dungeons I would not filter by AP. Especially because I have notice some of the worst players have over 6k AP. I played with this one dude in arah toady with 9k+ AP, and he was duel wielding swords as a warrior, lying on his back most the time.

Having said that…. Not many under 2k AP are efficient at arah(well most pugs aren’t efficient at arah)

I pug Arah 123 (well half of Arah p1) on a daily basis and point 1-3 dont even come into play much. Think pugging on a consistent basis gave me quite a bit of tolerance… or maybe I just have low standards. Utilites/Skills-wise, I have given up on suggesting pugs. Most of the time the “I play how I want” is extremely strong and I only sound out when a ranger is doing knockback excessively or that a warrior is using 5signets and having a hard time skipping trash. However, if I encountered really bad players, there is always a block list.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

1) Achievement points

bad. achievement points dont matter. i know players with 2k AP who can solo lupi and play better than 10k AP staff guardians.

NoTrigger.8396:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

1) Achievement points

bad. achievement points dont matter. i know players with 2k AP who can solo lupi and play better than 10k AP staff guardians.

It’s all about probability.

Gear check and trait check is enough.

Maybe I only feel that way though because I have a measly 4k AP and play better than most pugs.

Utilities … might work, but tbh you should always be swapping them out.

Guang only wants 10k+ AP achievement whores and open/living world farmers as party members.

Agree on AP. They’re meaningless in terms of skill, because they’re tied to consistency in log everyday and do a) daily b) LS c) everything else.

Surely number of AP can be tied to how much you’ve played – if you see somebody with 1k AP high chances he’s still learning and not playing by long time. But it’s all matter of probability.
Anyway, AP are useless to filter imo – just take a closer look if you see somebody with way too little points. Or way too much. With 14k AP you’ve probably spent more time farming mindless stuff for LS achievements than refining your DG skill.

Then:
-build/weapons used.
-gear – but write in the post you’re checking it. Also, imo shouldn’t be “I kick if not zerk” but a “I kick if using useless stuff” (like Cleric/Dire/Ptv). I can accept War/Guard with Knight pieces here and there, or Necs with Rampager/Zerk mixes. Given that they have proper build/weaponsets.

On weaponsets and utils, idk. As colesy said, you should swap them as needed anyway.

swiftpaw.6397:

NoTrigger.8396:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

1) Achievement points

bad. achievement points dont matter. i know players with 2k AP who can solo lupi and play better than 10k AP staff guardians.

It’s all about probability.

But still, you could probably just toss a coin and have the same predictive value that APs have.

Once I pugged arah p4 with a clerics guard and a condition-FT-engineer. Those guys had no idea what to do, but we used Teamspeak and it was fun.

Same dungeon, same path, other group, teamspeak. ~1 month after game release. I think I laughted 2 hours from the start to the end. It was awesome. At one point someone pinged a green lvl 80 pistol, and the mesmer asked if she could have it, because it was better than her current weapon. Best group I ever had the honor to play with. Took us 2 hours to get to lupicus, then we wiped three times and gave up. (It was 3 am)

Once I pugged the new TA path. 2x Longbow/bear ranger and a guard who doesn’t knew what wall of reflection is. Was awesome, 10/10, would pug again.

Once I had a full berserker axe/mace + GS (6k+ AP) warrior in arah who kicked me at Lupicus, because we wanted to melee him and I refused to use a staff. And you can’t kill Lupicus in melee range without the op 2k heal from a guardians staff. True story.

Moral of the story:

1. Beeing bad has nothing to do with gear, AP or traits.

1. If you find efficiency fun, thats okay. But if you cannot have fun without efficiency, you have a problem and probably shouldn’t pug.

Molch.2078:

1. Beeing bad has nothing to do with gear, AP or traits.

1. If you find efficiency fun, thats okay. But if you cannot have fun without efficiency, you have a problem and probably shouldn’t pug.

1. It sorta does. Because if you’re good, you will use good gear and good traits. If you’re bad, you might get lucky and use good gear and traits, but its impossible for a good player to use bad gear and bad traits. If you feel youre good and you use bad gear bad traits I have some bad news.

2. I recognize this. I pugged for the first time in about 8 months on Tuesday. It was a simple AC p3 pug and we were filling 2 spots. We went through 10 people before we found people who knew what to do or could listen to direction. It was abominable and I was breaking down mentally. I am not cut out for pugging. How people pug Arah I will never understand.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Molch.2078:

1. Beeing bad has nothing to do with gear, AP or traits.

1. It sorta does. Because if you’re good, you will use good gear and good traits. If you’re bad, you might get lucky and use good gear and traits, but its impossible for a good player to use bad gear and bad traits. If you feel youre good and you use bad gear bad traits I have some bad news.

Take a trip on guardian subforum.

That place always delivers.

“Love arrows” are highly efficient against spreadsheets.

swiftpaw.6397:

NoTrigger.8396:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

1) Achievement points

bad. achievement points dont matter. i know players with 2k AP who can solo lupi and play better than 10k AP staff guardians.

It’s all about probability.

Then that distribution has a HUGE standard deviation. While I don’t find any ONE of those particularly good metric for a ‘good’ player, having a few of them simultaneously will be fairly indicative. I dislike the utilities suggestion … you can pretty much swap those on the fly if you know your dungeon run well enough.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Molch.2078:

1. Beeing bad has nothing to do with gear, AP or traits.

1. If you find efficiency fun, thats okay. But if you cannot have fun without efficiency, you have a problem and probably shouldn’t pug.

1. It sorta does. Because if you’re good, you will use good gear and good traits. If you’re bad, you might get lucky and use good gear and traits, but its impossible for a good player to use bad gear and bad traits. If you feel youre good and you use bad gear bad traits I have some bad news.

2. I recognize this. I pugged for the first time in about 8 months on Tuesday. It was a simple AC p3 pug and we were filling 2 spots. We went through 10 people before we found people who knew what to do or could listen to direction. It was abominable and I was breaking down mentally. I am not cut out for pugging. How people pug Arah I will never understand.

Beeing good has something to do with gear etc. Beeing bad however, has not. You can play bad in zerker gear.

And I am not sure if I understand the purpouse of this thread. You want to filter pugs based on certain criterias? Yeah, ofc, why not. glhf. But if I’m not mistaken, you suggest that everyone does this. And thats what my second point reffers to. I have fun with pugs, even if they suck. So why should I filter them? If I want a good run, I can ask my guild. [rT] is always there for you!

The purpose of this thread is to create a psudo standard for forming a group with pugs based on several attributes.

Most bad players I found pugging were using zerk gear. A bad player with other kind of gear can go unnoticed and actually contribute with a little extra support and little damage. A bad zerk is good for nothing.

Depends on the dungeon. I only PUG Arah, and a bad player is just useless regardless of gear.

Most bad players i found pugging weren’t using zerk gear. A bad player with other kind of gear doesn’t go unnoticed and doesn’t contribute anything at all. Even the worst berserker player ever at least does some damage before dying. A PVT/rabid/dire/cleric etc. geared bad build using double bow/double rifle player is good for nothing and does negative damage before dying.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Depends on the dungeon. I only PUG Arah, and a bad player is just useless regardless of gear.

I agree, and I also add that in the end of all, zerk or no zerk doesnt even matter if in the sum of the group skills you dont have some balance between group offensive and defensive buffs (its funny and sad at the same time seeing players die out of poison/bleedings because no one, not even themselves have skills to clean them).

Emanuel.9781:

Most bad players i found pugging weren’t using zerk gear. A bad player with other kind of gear doesn’t go unnoticed and doesn’t contribute anything at all. Even the worst berserker player ever at least does some damage before dying. A PVT/rabid/dire/cleric etc. geared bad build using double bow/double rifle player is good for nothing and does negative damage before dying.

That made no sense. I prefer a cleric guardian cleaning conditions at melee than a zerk warrior that after dying 3 times he pulls out his bow. If talking about bad, I prefer the realistic bad that doesn’t die because he is bad.

I used to feel this way when i still really sucked and kept having, failled runs in arah but now i can pull through almost any group. i think of myself as a skilled player and i do give instructions if i need to. sometimes i try to just say nothing and see what happens and sometimes i say things like its my 1st time just for lol and then getting kick which i find even funnier ( i know, im wierd) all things aside PUGing is like christmas you never know what you will get. i like it like that.

Everytime I pug expectations have to be thrown out the window, it’s rng you never know what you’re gonna get, I guess thats what makes pugging interesting. And you could only check so much, like they can have all the correct gear you want and traits but dont communicate with the team, is rude or rage whenever someone makes a mistake.

However if someone joins a game with speedrun/experienced description and camps 1200 range or guardian staff or is not meleeing for most fights etc, I would point that out, most (I guess) would switch if other members sound out as well. As for zerkers or not, personally I would always run zerkers in groups that advertise speedrun, and can only hope the others are too, if not why try to speed run at all?

Mesket.5728:

That made no sense. I prefer a cleric guardian cleaning conditions at melee than a zerk warrior that after dying 3 times he pulls out his bow. If talking about bad, I prefer the realistic bad that doesn’t die because he is bad.

What conditions?

A pug run is never going to be quite as good as an organized guild speedrun where everyone decides in advance what to run, but the difference between a group of competent players in even semi-DPS gear (zerk, assassin, knights, rampagers) and traits (i.e. not AH or healshout) and a bunch of PVT bearbows is pretty big too.

I’m not trying to minmax every second with a pug, I just want it to go reasonably well and not have us wipe after a 10-minute boss fight because I finally missed my dodge. Just asking for “please be experienced” or “DPS only” doesn’t help because most people don’t read or just don’t know what that means, or maybe they think they can fool you; I’ve advertised for COE P3, experienced DPS only, and had the Evolved Destroyer only move, like, 10% in one cycle.

haviz.1340:

Mesket.5728:

That made no sense. I prefer a cleric guardian cleaning conditions at melee than a zerk warrior that after dying 3 times he pulls out his bow. If talking about bad, I prefer the realistic bad that doesn’t die because he is bad.

What conditions?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition

I’ve met exactly ONE cleric guardian that played at melee range. Every other camped staff at range, most of’em pop’ed empowering might from so far away that nobody else was getting the stacks.

NoTrigger.8396:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

1) Achievement points

bad. achievement points dont matter. i know players with 2k AP who can solo lupi and play better than 10k AP staff guardians.

And I know 7 year olds who can beat grandmasters in chess. There’s always an outlier.

Its hilarious that instead of learning how to play well in PUG groups of varying skill and gear levels, so much energy gets spent attempting to devise schemes to achieve the perfect dungeon run from random players. Its “play how I want to” at its finest. Thanks for the chuckles.

Cheezement points only show how much time a player has spent doing tasks which grant the points. It is sort of a gauge that can show you how much time the player has spent playing the game, unfortunately most of these points are granted through open world PVE which we all know is care bear mode for the most part. But maybe they learned how to dodge, maybe.

In general I’m more optimistic about a pug if they have a higher amount of AP though. i think this system isn’t in place to rate players it’s there to keep people playing for skins and boxes instead.

I get what OP is saying though its just one factor. If you can see everything else you start to get a picture of what you’re working with. Though I don’t think I’d ask for traits or utility skills it seems a bit to intrusive more my tastes. I have most of the armors memorized at this point, unless you transmute i know if you’re a squishy zerker or a wet noodle tank.

Molch.2078:

Moral of the story:

1. Beeing bad has nothing to do with gear, AP or traits.

1. If you find efficiency fun, thats okay. But if you cannot have fun without efficiency, you have a problem and probably shouldn’t pug.

This. A thousand times. If I could give you the harpies right now, I would.

And the the others scheming in this thread, if you are gonna pug with this attitude, put it in the description and teach people to read the description, one /kick at a time.

What’s wrong with his attitude? All he wants is a smooth run without bearbows.

I’m a good bearbow.

Oxxy.7068:

What’s wrong with his attitude? All he wants is a smooth run without bearbows.

If you have to ask…

kitten I never knew how much better my one guilde was that I am, he has over 14k achievement points, I shall leave now no longer to bask in the light of his almighty power…
:’(

lunyboy.8672:

Oxxy.7068:

What’s wrong with his attitude? All he wants is a smooth run without bearbows.

If you have to ask…

Of course i do, no one has 24/7 guildies avaiable to run stuff with, same applies to friend list, pugging is inevitable and he’s trying to get the most of it.

Of that list, I think I’d only filter on gear and only if its kittentastic greens or yellows in a hard dungeon. I think teamwork and knowing your class are more important.

I’m sure we’ve all been in groups where everyone was geared to the hilt but for one reason or another, it just didn’t work. The individual players may have been great but they all had different ideas about how things should be done.

After I read that the first rule was achievement points I stopped reading. Honestly gaunglai, you never run low on idiotic things to say do you? Unless it’s like 500 AP+ then you’re really just putting meaningless limitations on your runs.

For the record, I just did an AC run after checking just weapon and traits and it was amazing. Booted a bearbow, GS mesmer, and Dire axe warrior (yeah) and ended up with a GS/Spotter ranger, two GS 30/0/0/10/30 warriors, and a 30/30/10/0/0 D/D thief with me on staff ele.

That’s not even close to a minmax composition and it was pretty much the best AC pug run I’ve ever done. Considering I could have ended up with the guys I booted, I’d say the checks worked.

1. Have seen several times guys that know what to do better than me, but had 1k AP. My friend plays for guardian, just tell him where to stay and he will save u like a god.
2. I can link Zerker weapon so that you wont see everything else, hehe.
3. Find a build
4. Find a build

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

For the record, I just did an AC run … with me on staff ele.

You took an ele into AC and had a smooth run. Wow! Your system is amazing.

Berner.7289:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

For the record, I just did an AC run … with me on staff ele.

You took an ele into AC and had a smooth run. Wow! Your system is amazing.

Actually, as an ele myself there’s a clear difference between what PuGs perceives as a ‘smooth’ run and my own perception of a smooth run. And that goes for every dungeon.

Paths like CoE p1 are incredibly fast if you full zerker, but if you’re caught as the only zerker in group you end up faceplanting while the presence of pvt/cleric guardians does nothing to keep you up.

If they are supporting so well why am I getting downed? People want to gear check to prevent situations like these where they themselves have to ragequit or themselves switch to tankier gear themselves and be forced to endure a long run.

Zerkers in PuGs = either everyone has to do it, or none.

There is no direct correlation between AP and skill, obviously. But as was said above its a decent indicator of how long someone has played. And so yes, there will be people who have played for 2 weeks who are already very competent in dungeons, and there will be people who have played since beta who are awful. But in general, people who have been playing for a while will be better then people who are totally new. You have to think of pugging as rolling the dice – if someone joins your group with <1k ap, the chance that they will be good is very small, whereas someone with 2 or 3k AP is much more likely to be good. I’d rather bet on rolling a seven (metaphorically speaking) then trying for snake eyes. It’s nothing personal, it’s just risk management.

zencow.3651:

Actually, as an ele myself there’s a clear difference between what PuGs perceives as a ‘smooth’ run and my own perception of a smooth run. And that goes for every dungeon.

Paths like CoE p1 are incredibly fast if you full zerker, but if you’re caught as the only zerker in group you end up faceplanting while the presence of pvt/cleric guardians does nothing to keep you up.

If they are supporting so well why am I getting downed? People want to gear check to prevent situations like these where they themselves have to ragequit or themselves switch to tankier gear themselves and be forced to endure a long run.

Zerkers in PuGs = either everyone has to do it, or none.

Havent done much CoE but Is this specific to CoE? i generally don’t expect PuGs to do tasks like help clear conditions or apply buff at appropriate situations. If they do is a bonus but I will always prefer to depend on myself.

How about a filter that uses the number of times that player has run the dungeon you advertised your party?
I mean, of course you can still find bad players, people that were carried by guild mates or ones who payed to finish it; but it reduces the chance of getting inexperienced players, if that’s what you want to avoid

AP is a bad idea either it means someone plays alot which is good or it means they play alot of ls which is bad….the only groups ive been in with people above 3500 – 4000 AP have usually been bad….

mosspit.8936:

Havent done much CoE but Is this specific to CoE?

Pretty much specific stack on top of boss and dps it down situations where everyone downs except the pvt/clerics so they feel good about themselves.

SE p1 golems is also another good example. CoE 2 and 3 Alphas are where you ain’t need nobody’s help unless you’re not a thief and the PuG’s DPS is just so atrocious that they can’t break you out of crystal.

zencow.3651:

mosspit.8936:

Havent done much CoE but Is this specific to CoE?

Pretty much specific stack on top of boss and dps it down situations where everyone downs except the pvt/clerics so they feel good about themselves.

SE p1 golems is also another good example. CoE 2 and 3 Alphas are where you ain’t need nobody’s help unless you’re not a thief and the PuG’s DPS is just so atrocious that they can’t break you out of crystal.

coe is the place where these cleric, pvt support guys die way faster then zerkers as they have no idea how to dodge the aoe lol

zencow.3651:

Berner.7289:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

For the record, I just did an AC run … with me on staff ele.

You took an ele into AC and had a smooth run. Wow! Your system is amazing.

Actually, as an ele myself there’s a clear difference between what PuGs perceives as a ‘smooth’ run and my own perception of a smooth run. And that goes for every dungeon.

Zerkers in PuGs = either everyone has to do it, or none.

Duo’ing AC Path 1 as elementalist and warrior takes what? 8 min? 7 min? Maybe 6?
I’d consider that smooth runs, although i’ve already had 5 min runs.

And no, it does only matter what gear other people use when you are in berserker gear. It loses in efficiency but it’s still better than 5 PVT’ers. Staying alive has almost nothing to do with your gear choice, seen over time. It’s just about your ability to play.