Guild Wars 2

A large number of posters in this forum are members of respected and talented Guilds (imo). But how many people regularly solo Pug? And if so how bad is it out there really?

Well my guild are not usually into dungeons much so I end up pugging quite a lot of them. It is bad and you notice a dramatic loss in skill when you pug as well as it being a lot less efficient. Pugs are generally less reactive as well as not understanding game mechanics. Saying that though you can carry pugs as an ele pretty effectively with conjures and high dps, but with upcoming fgs nerf phalanx war won’t be a bad idea at all

I pug fractals a lot and find that it’s about 50/50 terribad/fabulous. Level 38 is about 50/50 exactly, and my 50s are about 25/75. Below 38 it’s so random it’s hard to say.

I did until a few days ago and it was horrible most of the time with a few really nice exceptions.

I PUG dungeons and Fractals ALL the time. (Sadly, my guild tends to do those at times that aren’t convenient for me. )

My results have been 70% average, 25% awesome, and 5% horror stories.

All the time. I pretty much only Pug, except for a few situations. It’s getting better actually. People melee Lupi 9 times out of 10. They make the runs. They seem to be receptive to feedback. They seem to genuinely want to learn.

That’s Arah though.

AC, not so much. The QQ about the SQ is still immense, but hey, they got what they wanted, right?

I tend to find weekends horrible for pugging. A lot of players who play infrequently and don’t have the experience or knowledge or gear for optimal pug runs come out and play on those days. And they either don’t understand what I mean, don’t care, or whatever and end up just cruising along.

Dungeons are easy, so its usually fine, and we succeed but you’ll get people who wont stack correctly, or wont stack tight enough, or are clerics etc. Its annoying, but bearable.

But there are also 3 levels of players.

1) are the weekend casuals, who I mentioned above. They may learn how to dungeon by going occasionally, but they only stack because they are told to and don’t actually know what they are doing. They may or may not be zerker/optimal.
2) are the “meta” crowd. These are people who know the strategies, kind of know why they are done, and are running mostly optimal gear/traits. These are about 85% of pugs
3) are the “speed clear” crowd. By this I don’t mean they only run with full perfect groups or whatever, but they are running optimal setups for themselves. They understand concepts like line of sighting, moving in case of bad boss positioning, blasting correct fields, not placing light fields at start of fight, prestacking/mid fight mightstacking, optimizing vulnerability etc.

Most pugs will be 1 ‘casual’ 3 ‘meta’ + yourself, whichever category here you fall into is obviosuly dependant on you. If you luck into a group of 4/5 of the “speed clear” category you will have an amazing run. In fact, most groups containing even 2 or the ’speed clear" category will have an amazing run.

3+ of the meta crowd is usually enough to hammer out a good, decent speed run.

The problem with pugs is everyone either expects everyone to know exactly what to do, and why, or expects someone to tell them. They don’t often ask for “what should I do” if a little inexperienced. And they don’t often explain if someone is clearly a little on the unsure side.

Plus you get the occasional random AFK without warning which is annoying.

I rarely do anything besides Arah because everything else feels arduous to the point of it feeling like slavework instead of having any sort of fun, that includes FotM. I rarely do FotM and if I do it’s because I’m done with all Arah dailies and was asked by a friend/friends.

The only pugging I bother with is Arah, which is awesome because I get to do jumping puzzles while I wait for them to stop repeatedly failing on trash skips. I try to get superbad pugs if at all possible, because it means moar goating for me.

I always do PUG runs. They’re generally ok and the EU language thing isn’t even a problem. The worst groups are actually the ones with three people in a guild, not English speakers, running with unique (poor) tactics. If you try to tell them what’s going wrong you get kicked. I tend to avoid the zerk/speed clears, not because I’m slow but because the people are impatient and kick for stupid reasons, like not knowing this week’s exploit.

Even though I used to like Arah and have a full armor set I stay clear of there now. I want to learn stuff through play rather than from the web but I can’t imagine Arah PUGs ever being kind to me while I learn to melee Lupi.

Fractals are fine but players are less confident so some people must have bad PUG runs. If you can get groups with the people doing dailies the quality is much better than with the people who are leveling up. High level fractals with good players are much easier than mid levels with poor players.

I solo pug all dungeons daily. Players generally know what do to and are competent in playing their class. Just don’t expect speedruns (even if their lfg states “speedruns”)

I pug daily. Best advice:
1. Never pug on weekends.
2. Never pug when in bad mood.

The pug groups i usually get are decent. I like to join groups with new players and help then learn the dungeon, which is fun for me and new players tend to have a better attitude and are more willing to listen to advice. Its nice how one player can make a dungeon run much more easier just by having the right class and bring the right utilities for each path, i always bring my guardian for TA and SE, my ele for AC, my thief for CM, and arah i only run it solo and sometimes i give the free slots on lfg or for friends and guildies.

What makes me angry when i’m in a newbie group is that sometimes i get a veteran that is so bad that it makes me believe he is sabotaging the run on purpose, usually this kind of veteran has like 14k+ AP and wear the dungeon master title, but he refuses to help the group with any utility that his class can bring, like mesmers that refuse to use reflects in CM, guardians that never stop using staff and run wvw meditation build and so on. And i feel bad because i can’t ask to kick these kind of players, because since its an inexperienced and low lvl group we cant be too picky, but these kinds of “veterans” really infuriate me.

And these same experienced players are the ones who complain how dungeons are so broken because everyone just skip everything and stack just to get the rewards, and claim that the dungeon community is full of “wannabe zerkers” that wipe in one hit if the group is not full zerk. I’m starting to believe that they really do try to sabotage the run to make their point about how stacking is just an exploit and not a valid dungeon tactic.

as long as you stated the dungeon to be speed run, and kick out low level players. Most of them are pretty good actually.

I pug daily
Fractal 50-30 and many dungeons.

Pug are reasonably good.
And the best part is, unless you are an elitist bound to the youtube run video, you discover interesting stuff, that makes run even faster than the meta.

Another interesting thing is that having to adapt to non meta parties and different experiences level it makes you a better player.

You learn to use everything your professions can offer, but more important, playing dungeons becomes less boring

I had once a friend Group and running dungeon was Always the same.

P.S: expecially in fractal i suggest to pug a lot. Its fun.
But avoid pugging on the weekend…too many beginners that act elitistd
Also requiring minimum AP is not that wrong.
Ensure you are playing the game since at least some months, with higher chance you know basics.

I pug Fractals and Arah on an almost daily basis as well. From time to time I get terrible/meh people, but every now and then I have the privilege to meet amazing people that make the whole experience worth it, despite the terrible RNG.

Even though I used to like Arah and have a full armor set I stay clear of there now. I want to learn stuff through play rather than from the web but I can’t imagine Arah PUGs ever being kind to me while I learn to melee Lupi.

And why should they?

I’ve sat at Lupicus with students for like two whole hours, and even then I start to get burned out at that point. Now you’re expecting four random pugs to just restart the fight over and over for you to practice when they just want their dailies?

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh………..

I prefer pugging dungeons usually. It’s fun with a guild group once in a while but there tends to be issues with those too. With a more hardcore guild, the idea of fun isn’t there pretty much and it feels like a job. With a casual guild, players then to be a lot worse than PUGs because “hey it’s a guildie he won’t kick me if I’m bad!”… which is fine but it gets tedious quickly. It’s hard to get a proper inbetween experience (good fast runs but easy going, no need to always use a perfect composition, etc).

PUGs are always a mixed bag but 99% of the time you can tell if a run will go well or not before the dungeon even starts (AP, classes, names (yes, stupid names like xxx superkillerstar xxx usually indicate what’s coming your way). I find most PUGs groups are pretty decent in SE/CoF (usually just have to go in first to make them follow to correct stack spots), just don’t expect speedrun tactics. In TA, I always go on my thief and I’d say it’s 50/50 if people understand stealth runs but it’s an easy enough dungeon to carry people in. CM is a lot less forgiving for bad PUGs so I stopped doing it except in guild groups. AC is godawful with PUGs in my experience (and since AC blows, I just don’t run it at all anymore)… all the people with no dungeon experience take it as their starting zone, which is fine except I always put “experienced players only” but obviously that doesn’t mean much to PUGs. CoE usually goes well with PUGs although the slow DPS usually makes it a lot longer (ex : destroyer boss, 2-3 burns instead of 1). HotW I have stopped pugging because people don’t understand how to fight the troll. Arah I rarely do because I don’t enjoy it but also because it’s a mixed bags (some PUGs want “elitist” runs, others are just bad and you usually get both types of people in 1 run).

Finally, fractals 40+ are usually fine with PUGs (45m to 1h average runs, rarely get an awesome <35m run if we get good rolls). I WOULD prefer to do fractal with guilds because a lot of the tactics in fractals that you can’t do with average PUGs seem like a lot of fun to pull off… but there’s no real alternative to KING in NA for a fractal guild, and dungeon guilds tend to stay away from fractals.

Me. Not part of a guild (extra storage one notwithstanding), so it’s either that or grinding reward tracks in PvP’s solo queue…

Sometimes I get good ones, sometimes I get bad ones.

I solo pugged daily for about 6 months and still do so on occasion. A few observations:

• Fear of kicking/group abuse is way overblown. The only time I’ve been kicked was due to d/c and I’ve only observed a handful of unjust kicks in all this time.
• AC is by far the worst. Everything else is either so easy that it doesn’t matter or only done regularly by experienced people. Most pugs refuse to stack spider even if I explicitly state it in the LFG.
• 49/50 FOTM were pretty good when I used to pug them. I used to run into the same players frequently, which suggests to me that the pool of high level fractal pugs is very small.
• Almost nobody uses food or potions and I don’t know why.
• Playing an ele helps a lot, but it’s a real struggle when the group dps isn’t up to par. Also ele gets all the aggro for some reason (COE golem is the worst offender).

Overall I’d say pugging isn’t as bad as most people make it out to be. I did the organized group thing for about a month and honestly it got stale. Pug groups may be imperfect, but they keep you on your toes, and certainly make dungeons more interesting for me. It’s also a great way to build your friends list. ~90% of my list is people I met in pug groups.

Pug most of the time. I don’t do Arah, Fractals, or Aetherpath so my experience might not be accurate for those. Pug groups are good far more often than not. The people you get off the lfg tool are people who run dungeons often and know what they are doing. You will get bad/inexperienced players from time to time that can make a run frustrating. If you specify that you want experienced people in the lfg, it will weed out most of those. For less popular dungeons, you may not have the luxury of putting “exp” in the lfg description and still getting a group quickly, but I haven’t really had problems with pugs there even without asking for experience.

Interestingly, it takes a bit longer to do dungeons with my guild. That’s mostly because I have to explain the dungeon people who are new to it and they often do not have the right gear/skills/traits. But the most recent time I’ve ran with them, our completion time has gotten near to where it would be if I just pugged the dungeon instead. It’s nice to help guild members and see them improve.

I pug for fun a fair bit, the trick is to read the lfg carefully and pick out the ones that seem the least ‘special’. Once in you can tell fairly quickly if they are worth running with or is just to leave and find another. Good days and bad days lol.

I pug alone most of the time on my Ele fgexploitsword. I’ve come to dread pugging dungeons like AC/TA/Fractals, but overall it’s not too bad if you don’t expect a speedrun.

I pug a lot, all dungeons except for Arah (EU).

Usually there are two different situations. When I’m alone I stalk the lfgs until a nice post appears and just join. I’m actually quite lucky with that, most runs are decent and a few are really great. The ones that turn out bad were most of the time suspicious from the beginning.
In the last 8 months I’ve only been kicked once. I usually keep my mouth shut, though.

But when I play with some friends and we have to fill the last 1-3 spots without any requirements, especially on weekends, things can and will go horribly wrong xD

I pug/join “Px, 80 exp zerg ping gear” and likes.
But still i get surprised to see pugs killing SQ in the open and stacking the rest Oo … and other weird stuff

I usually do dungeons with my guild, we occasionally have a pug when we can’t get a full group.

But when my husband/guild group don’t want to dungeon, I solo pug. I did a full clear of HoTW last night and overall it went well. I see all these complaints about pugs here in the forums, and haven’t ever really seen it myself (and hope I never do).

Still need to get over my fear of Arah Pugs and give it a go. I haven’t managed to get back to complete Arah since I did the tour with Ivan. (I did take my warrior in to play and got the first boss to half health before I gave up and went to do other things)

RSLongK.8961:

I pug/join “Px, 80 exp zerg ping gear” and likes.
But still i get surprised to see pugs killing SQ in the open and stacking the rest Oo … and other weird stuff

I guess I’m fine with not stacking queen in pugs, but at least stacking makes them melee. The thing that’s strange is while killing Spider Queen in the open warriors start taking out their rifles and guardian switch to staff, this happens in exp zerkers only speed lfgs.

rojak.1894:

RSLongK.8961:

I pug/join “Px, 80 exp zerg ping gear” and likes.
But still i get surprised to see pugs killing SQ in the open and stacking the rest Oo … and other weird stuff

I guess I’m fine with not stacking queen in pugs, but at least stacking makes them melee. The thing that’s strange is while killing Spider Queen in the open warriors start taking out their rifles and guardian switch to staff, this happens in exp zerkers only speed lfgs.

Yep.
And there i stand, as ele, fgs on the ground, looking behind the bars as the other 2 eles, ice tunned, try to kill spider, guard on staff and war on rifle…

Just ask for no warriors and it’s fine.

I pug everyday and can concur with alot of the statements above.

Some hints when pugging and looking for a group to join.
It is often better to join a group doing multiple paths. Often “p1 80s” results in a better run then p1 zerker 80s speed clear..

I run cm 1,2,3 with my thief most days and can carry a group through that dungeon. I don’t see why people are so afraid of it.
As a party leader actually asking at the beginning if people don’t know the path and saying that you will explain, can increase the chances of a good run as it opens communication from the beginning.

It is amazing how a run can change by explaining one or two little things to other players or asking if they can use a certain skill in other situations.

But as always, it is the way you communicate that can make or break a party.

I have also pugged with Ivan and other members of leading Dungeon guilds. And when I run into them, it is often through more of a joke lfg topic.

AC is probably worst for pugs though. I would much rather carry a group in cm with thief or TA with guard then run AC with some groups.

I haven’t pugged dungeons in a very, very long time, but I do pug Fractals if I’m online at 1am and not enough guildies are awake or interested. My experience is that pugging 38+ is actually not that bad. Most players know what to do and every know and then I even have pugs who help blast my fire fields. Yes, occassionally you have the rifle warrior or staff camping guardian, but they’re not as common as they used to be. Just last night on a 38, I had the entire pug team fully melee almost every encounter, and it was a good run. In the 49/50 range, it’s more uncommon for me to come across totally bad players, than it is to just have a decent group of pugs. Yes, you’ll still have to adjust to pug tactics, but I wouldn’t expect otherwise.

However, if you have limited patience or tolerance for stupid, then I strongly recommend that you don’t pug anything below FOTM 30. That’s where you find most of the rifle warriors, staff guards, bearbows, minion masters, flamethrower engies, and every sort of I-play-how-I-want person you can imagine.

Forgot to mention that I refuse to join groups that have AP requirements on them. To me, that is a clear indicator of ineptitude because they think that AP == skill in dungeons.

Our old wow guild got bored and moved on, so its just lonely old me in the guild. So I have been pugging almost everyday for 2 years, and I count on one hand the bad experience’s (GW2=good community if nothing else). Although it seems to be getting worse as of late.

Darthaemos.6370:

at 1am and not enough guildies are awake or interested.

Birgitte / Graendhal / Aveandha
Death and Taxes [DnT]

0.o
makes me very sad.

I’ve been pugging since I started this game about 6~7 months ago and it really helped me improve in some weird ways. I’ve been just watching and reading many pve speed tactics and occasionally there are some PUGS who have the same mindset as me, but it just doesn’t work out. With pugging I’ve able to solo Lupi out of necessity, be a zerker warrior/guardian even in 50 FoTM, and occasionally duo and sell arah p2 with randoms.

The good thing is that I’ve gained some patience when running dungeons (An hour and half Arah path 2) and also adaptability to unexpected situations.
The bad thing is that it is giving me a hard time to actually do simple things with organized groups (meleeing the clown car in se 3, running cm, etc).

Ropechef.6192:

Darthaemos.6370:

at 1am and not enough guildies are awake or interested.

Birgitte / Graendhal / Aveandha
Death and Taxes [DnT]

0.o
makes me very sad.

We’re a smaller guild and the majority of members live in the EST, so it’s like 4am for them. I wouldn’t expect my guildies to be in the mood for fractals 24/7.

I rarely go in alone, often I grab one or two friends and we start groups and fill it with 3 other randoms. My buddies like to put the full “80 zerk experienced 3k ap no necro/ranger” stuff, I’m not convinced it even really matters, but they won’t let me put the LFG up anymore. First and last time I was allowed I just put “alcoholics only”, got one cool guy and one guy who apparently had a bit too much to drink that night who we had to replace because he couldn’t press a button. I had fun, but they won’t let me put the LFG up anymore.

I pug dungeons and fractals anytime I do them (my speedrun group doesn’t really run Mesmer anymore and I have weird hours now). The runs are typically fine as long as I’m not in a tired/grouchy mood where I get mad at everything.

When I duo P1 or P2 of Arah, I sell the runs which takes time. No difference compared to running with 5 people and taking 1-2 hours to finish. The money is insignificant, since I don’t spend my money unless I really want something (which barely scratches my gold since I can always liquidate things). I usually hoard materials as opposed to sell them which is why I’m not worried about gold.

When I was playing often (6 months ago or so), I got to the point where pugs were more fun. DnT runs were great of course, and I ran with other forum regulars fairly often. But those runs were so fast and mechanical, they had no feeling of danger, there was no chance of death. Pugging in Arah is more dangerous than solo. It’s fun trying to keep them all alive on skips. They also act as adds for lupi, giving him grubs and making him do undesirable things and the like.

I pug 99% of my runs. Been doing so for 2 years. Dungeons are generally not a problem at all. They aren’t necessarily fast, but very few regular dungeon runs fail outright. Everyone has done them all so many times and they are so easy even the worst pug groups can complete them without any wipes.

As for fractals… things are worse. The problem is it is now very easy to get 45 AR so pugs are full of people going straight from 12 to 38 (god kitten lvl 38…). Some fractals are definitely worse than others though. snowblind, the fire one, and mai are the worst and i’ve had many many parties completely fall apart doing these.

It’s amazing how many people are doing a lvl 38 fractal and have not a kitten clue how to fight mai trin. The shaman boss is a real kitten without any reflects or squishy classes that die the second the eles spawn and the amount of knockdowns in snowblind is just out of control.

I’ve had some really horrible pugs, but generally most are successful. They are not fast, and they are not easy with pugs but they can be done. i will say that pugging will turn you into a way better player really kitten quickly, and you’ll laugh those few times you end up being the only pug in a guild group that knows what they’re doing.

Darthaemos.6370:

Ropechef.6192:

Darthaemos.6370:

at 1am and not enough guildies are awake or interested.

Birgitte / Graendhal / Aveandha
Death and Taxes [DnT]

0.o
makes me very sad.

We’re a smaller guild and the majority of members live in the EST, so it’s like 4am for them. I wouldn’t expect my guildies to be in the mood for fractals 24/7.

I think you’re misunderstanding what about that makes Ropechef so sad.

It’s okay Chef. Someday I’ll learn the secret to not having to sleep and be up when you are to traverse the mists.

vespers.1759:

As for fractals… things are worse. The problem is it is now very easy to get 45 AR so pugs are full of people going straight from 12 to 38 (god kitten lvl 38…). Some fractals are definitely worse than others though. snowblind, the fire one, and mai are the worst and i’ve had many many parties completely fall apart doing these.

It’s amazing how many people are doing a lvl 38 fractal and have not a kitten clue how to fight mai trin. The shaman boss is a real kitten without any reflects or squishy classes that die the second the eles spawn and the amount of knockdowns in snowblind is just out of control.

I’d agree with all that. Even at 49 people just don’t know how to dodge/strafe the arrows from the fire shaman and that’s as basic as you can get.

Stooperdale.3560:

vespers.1759:

As for fractals… things are worse. The problem is it is now very easy to get 45 AR so pugs are full of people going straight from 12 to 38 (god kitten lvl 38…). Some fractals are definitely worse than others though. snowblind, the fire one, and mai are the worst and i’ve had many many parties completely fall apart doing these.

It’s amazing how many people are doing a lvl 38 fractal and have not a kitten clue how to fight mai trin. The shaman boss is a real kitten without any reflects or squishy classes that die the second the eles spawn and the amount of knockdowns in snowblind is just out of control.

I’d agree with all that. Even at 49 people just don’t know how to dodge/strafe the arrows from the fire shaman and that’s as basic as you can get.

I just maintain 100% reflect uptime on him and cry when he kills my Wardens with his swoopity or swoopibomb or swoopitack.

Pugs are getting better(especially arah) but they are always a few months behind the current dungeon meta for tactics. I also don’t join groups that say “123 AP +” because they are often stupid :/

laharl.8435:

When I was playing often (6 months ago or so), I got to the point where pugs were more fun. DnT runs were great of course, and I ran with other forum regulars fairly often. But those runs were so fast and mechanical, they had no feeling of danger, there was no chance of death. Pugging in Arah is more dangerous than solo. It’s fun trying to keep them all alive on skips. They also act as adds for lupi, giving him grubs and making him do undesirable things and the like.

Nobody ever agrees with me when I say pugging is the true test of skill.

Just think, you have an entire dungeon full of four uncontrollable variables, and depending on RNG they can either be helpful or completely detrimental.

Like, soloing is literally easier than pugging because you have control of basically everything.

maha.7902:

Like, soloing is literally easier than pugging because you have control of basically everything.

Very true, for example the Champion Entities in Arah P1. Very, very easy when soloed, but when you have 4 other people running around like headless chicken, you’re going to get hit or end up chasing the mobs down instead of doing a nice easy circle.

However, I only PuG and I would like to say that I’m not very skillful. I am knowledgeable, but I am not the best, nor will I be in the foreseeable future.

Eons ago I would PuG AC, SE, CM, CoE, CoF and very rarely Arah.
I stopped because of all the exploits and ranging (don’t make me wear a freaking scepter with my Guardian).

Then, once a lot of exploits were fixed, I gave it a few more tries. And well I’ve had everything. From good to bad players, nice to kittens, quiet or talkative.
But playing roulette got annoying very quickly. The odds of ending up with drama queens and know-it-all kittens got too high so I wait for guildies to be one.

We can do fine with one or two pugs. But having to deal with a level 80 criticizing two level 37 in AC (all 3 random players) when he wasn’t even bringing anything noteworthy was too annoying.

Subi.8014:

Pugs are getting better(especially arah) but they are always a few months behind the current dungeon meta for tactics. I also don’t join groups that say “123 AP +” because they are often stupid :/

I’m pretty sure 99% of groups that ask for a min. AP or ping gear are run by kittens who need to be carried through the path and don’t have the guts to admit it.

Anyway, I find that most pug runs are successful, though only about half that weren’t CoF 1 or 2 could have been considered “smooth” by any stretch of the word.

I find the dungeon/path that has the greatest chance for headaches is 10-19 fractals: Seems like every other run I do has at that range least one person who doesn’t have a single point of AR on their character, which becomes painfully obvious when the passive agony of the final boss 1-shots them. Once you get into the 20s, people should have (hopefully) figured out that they need substantial Agony Resist to survive.

Esplen.3940:

I pug dungeons and fractals anytime I do them (my speedrun group doesn’t really run Mesmer anymore

IF they fix iwarden this time, it will change.
Nobody wants a profession with good chances to reflect and some chances to cause a party wipe.

I pug on a regular basis. And it isn’t that bad depending on your expectations and patience and well, luck.
Some days you will get decent groups, some days you wonder how something like CoF1 can actually go that badly.
The problem is what you define as decent. Speedy (but nowhere near an actual speedrun) and with little to no hiccups? Then you’ll actually ge quite a lot “good” runs for you.
Albeit I usually only pug the more or less “failsafe” commonly run paths. With less common or trickier paths looks over to Arah or CoE it might be very different.

The main problem pretty often is lack of communication. Did people actually read your lfg and accept your terms? Do they know the instance or are they just winging it? Will they react positively to advice or requests? (Common requests being stability or reflection for certain encounters.)
And for those playing in EU mostly: Will the actually be able to understand what I’m trying to tell them? A surprisingly common example: I tend to be mildly amuses every time someone askes me what EA and/or PS means when on my warrior; sometimes even other warriors.
Edit: Simply because of language barriers.

Also fixing some of the more annoying typos.

forum bug wars 2! Have at thee dragon… bug…