Guild Wars 2

Fellow dungeon runners, it Is time for us to gather the current status of pugging here in Tyria, as it has come to my attention that things have become either worse or have stayed stagnant for the past few months since I shifted to casual status.

Last night, a rare event occurred and I was able to run 3 whole dungeons. After the first, I received a whisper from a person with about 1.7K AP saying that someone told him to contact me so that I could teach him pro speed runner dungeons (because I’m so pro right?) So I journeyed with him and a misfit group of fun players (Me, Sam, Dramen from ARES and our good friend Bright who is no longer with us here on the forums) into TA. We did up and forward with minimal effort. We had hiccups, we weren’t all that speedy, but it was smooth and things went well. The noob could not believe how fast it went (he said something about his cof p1 taking longer) and thought we were all optimized and a “static” group.

Has pugging really gotten this bad? Is cof p1 actually taking longer than it did a month after the cof p1 farm was killed? Have pugs forgotten how to run it? What is happening?

This threads purpose is to catalog and journal the status of pugging. Which dungeons have the highest pug success rate? Have you found that it is harder to find pugs who know what to do, will communicate, etc?

This Is important to me because we have something resembling a dungeon team again. So what exactly is happening here?

Lilith Ajit.6173:

This Is important to me because we have something resembling a dungeon team again.

Eh, what? … From which dark corner of impossible did this come from? Unless you think stealth changes = dungeon team…. lol

EDIT DUE TO FC: When I see a CDI in this here dungeon forum, I’ll believe it. When I see a developer, someone other than Danicia (who definitely is NOT a dev), post in this sub-forum, I’ll believe it. When I see a red name say there is a dungeon team, unambiguously (rather than “that’s doable” then not do anything), I’ll believe it. Until then, there is no dungeon team. There are simply LS personnel who occasionally stealth-change dungeons.

Anierna.6918:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

This Is important to me because we have something resembling a dungeon team again.

Eh, what? … From which dark corner of impossible did this come from? Unless you think stealth changes = dungeon team…. lol

I believe 2 patches in a row with dungeon changes implies at least 1 person doing dungeon related work. Probably more like 3 or 5 people. Because that’s how It works.

CoF p1 no zerker has indeed lost a lot. CoF p1 zerker is the same as before. Occasionally with one or two deaths in the acolytes room.

It’s actually quite general: if you’re in zerker (gearchecked), it’s going better and better, but if you join random groups, it stays the same. Yet a tendency in zerker groups I see is to accept guards that are non-zerker because they need more a guard than a fifth zerker. So technically, they’re ready to carry someone, but it has to be a guard (and mostly, that guard doesn’t give anything to the group, not even walls or condi cleanses).

Interesting. I’d love to see some data. Some experimentation. Like AC will be weird for a week or so pug wise, but the rest should be normal. What I’d like to see Is how pug tactics are evolving, or devolving, depending on the dungeon or path.

Well, personally, I was bringing more often guard/warrior for CoE. I’ll now switch back to guardian/mesmer just for that pull of the golem in the right corner for it to be dps’d as it should be.

@Ani’s edit:

2 patches in a row there have been LISTED changes and significant improvements to dungeons and fractals. Based on the length of time each one of these changes take in the computer industry (I work in a similar field) it is apparent that they have at least 1 person entirely dedicated to dungeons or more likely 3-5 working mostly on this while also moonlighting on other content. So you can think what you want. There has been a shift in the past 2 months that says otherwise.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Fellow dungeon runners, it Is time for us to gather the current status of pugging here in Tyria, as it has come to my attention that things have become either worse or have stayed stagnant for the past few months since I shifted to casual status.

Last night, a rare event occurred and I was able to run 3 whole dungeons. After the first, I received a whisper from a person with about 1.7K AP saying that someone told him to contact me so that I could teach him pro speed runner dungeons (because I’m so pro right?) So I journeyed with him and a misfit group of fun players (Me, Sam, Dramen from ARES and our good friend Bright who is no longer with us here on the forums) into TA. We did up and forward with minimal effort. We had hiccups, we weren’t all that speedy, but it was smooth and things went well. The noob could not believe how fast it went (he said something about his cof p1 taking longer) and thought we were all optimized and a “static” group.

Has pugging really gotten this bad? Is cof p1 actually taking longer than it did a month after the cof p1 farm was killed? Have pugs forgotten how to run it? What is happening?

This threads purpose is to catalog and journal the status of pugging. Which dungeons have the highest pug success rate? Have you found that it is harder to find pugs who know what to do, will communicate, etc?

This Is important to me because we have something resembling a dungeon team again. So what exactly is happening here?

10 minutes for the Eternal Flame in CoF p2. Nuff said.
This is of course the worst case scenario, but pugging indeed got worse. People blindly run to stacking spots, do nothing and wonder why they get killed, tend to flame or suddenly quit. AC already was a pain to do pre-patch, I don’t even want to know how annoying it is now with pugs.
Actual communication is often non-existant, it seems like people rather kick those who happen to kitten up, even if it’s a simple thing.
For example, someone in my FL did CoF p2, wanted to solo the lava pool, ran over, a few people followed, they died, Magg died, everything went south fast, randoms flamed each other, they ran again, my friend who was the opener died for the first time, got kicked; the randoms then actually went on to go all “wtf the opener left, what the kitten”.
Also, kicking people at the end of a dungeon becomes more and more of a habit.
Went into a 19 frac one or two months ago, I joined a guild team. We were 3 wars and 2 guard (I was one of the wars). Everything went okay until dredge, where they died over and over again and didn’t bother to listen when I kindly asked them why they don’t use reflects and they should use wall of reflection as it is extremely useful here. We got through and got Mai Trin… Well, the two guards died at the champ and at Mai Trin, I finally got to see a reflect wall… They died within the first minute, I tried to give them some tips, we went in again, they died again and I got kicked for being a noob.

It seems like people get more and more unfriendly overall while thinking they could pug everything in WR-time. That in combination with very bad setups (more and more staff camping guards, bearbow-rangers etc.) and the fact they don’t know what their skills actually do results in a lot of flaming, which results in slower times which results in flaming etc…
However I did notice that teams where everyone speaks the same language (I know that his applies to german groups most of the time, don’t know about other languages) tend to communicate much better and once they grasp that you can speak their language, they suddenly become much, much more kind and open to suggestions.

Best things to pug are imo 40+ fracs, with 30+ being okay too. Everything below has a high chance to run…. not well at all. SE and TA are quite okay if pugged too. AC, CM, HotW and Arah are equally worse. Furthermore, CM seems to attract a lot of new players for some reason, probably because humans are often picked and it’s a dungeon in the first map they get into. CoE is kind of a mixed bag, 50% of the pugs are good, 50% are bad, you usually end up with a group like this too.

Good information. So I guess the question is, what is the cause of the decline in quality and attitude in pugs? When I used to pug daily everyone was friendly (back in the gw2lfg days). People were helpful. Most of my best friends in game are met that way. Now the only people I form new relationships with are on the forum or in divinty’s reach while showing off shinies. It’s weird what has happened. Have the players changed? Or are they not the same players now? When did it start to decline?

Did both CoF1 and 2 last night with pugs and it was about the same. We weren’t going zerk, although I was kitted in 95% zerk and we tore through it at about the same pace as I would have expected. Even P2 when Magg is blowing the door didn’t take much longer than usual.

Keep in mind this a statistically insignificant sample of 1.

On the flipside of it, I did SE p2 with some guildies and 2 pugs and that took a while because the pug decided to kill one of the golems before the other one was down enough so the first one full regened. That took a little longer than usual but otherwise wasn’t too bad. We wiped once because of the pugs pulled all the elites in the smasher room onto us.

I think some of it may be to do with the nerfing of the various trains necessitating train passengers to do dungeons to get gold. This has led to the decline, on average, of the overall skill level in pugs.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Good information. So I guess the question is, what is the cause of the decline in quality and attitude in pugs? When I used to pug daily everyone was friendly (back in the gw2lfg days). People were helpful. Most of my best friends in game are met that way. Now the only people I form new relationships with are on the forum or in divinty’s reach while showing off shinies. It’s weird what has happened. Have the players changed? Or are they not the same players now? When did it start to decline?

My guess it the decline started when stacking and bursting everything down became meta. Pugs are not used to playing efficient in any way, yet they usually make it through because stacking and bursting makes it easy. Even more so when reflects can be used. If they fail now (most likely due to their lack of skill, because they’re only used to stacking and spamming auto) they tend to blame the group instead of themselves, because that’s what humans like to do.
That would also explain why you find good pugs in high-level fracs; you can’t easily stack and burst there with a few exceptions, so it actually comes down to knowing how it works and using your skills/dodges wisely. “Get hit, get rekt” basically. This keeps the bad pugs from progressing too far into fractals and only those who get it make it into higher fracs where they get grouped up with other good players.

Stories of bad pugs being more common are grossly exaggerated. I pug AC and CoF most days because I run them after my guild has, and honestly to see what whacky things pugs will do. It’s been the same quality for months. You’ll get kitten s sometimes, you’ll get great people sometimes.

I will say, lots of stoned/drunk people pugging CoF2. That’s made for some amusing runs.

actually my last 2 weeks i have been lucky. Went for AC P1 and got quick and smooth runs with zerky (8k+ AP) people.
I guess its just pug roullete, as always, fashion goddess.

I actually find that PUGs have gotten better. Or maybe I’ve gotten better and am actually kind of carrying and/or teaching them.

Most people in the easier paths are either mute or friendly – AC, TA, SE and CoF. There’s a few phases that challenge unfocused and inexperienced players but most have a solid understanding of the basic mechanics, so we’re able to breeze through ’em.

In CoE there’s always a 50/50 chance of a full wipe or ragequit though. The good groups are really good, and the bad ones suck horribly. There’s not really a middle ground. CM does seem to attract a higher rate of newbies. Arah is absolutely dreadful. Even when you’re lucky enough to find a legitimate group (most listings are sellers), there’s always one or two totally inexperienced players who are too embarrassed to admit this, screw up, and get kicked immediately. This sometimes changes the mood of the party for the worse afterward, lots of bickering and misplaced blame.

I think PUGs are a stage a lot of the dungeon community views as necessary for learning, but you have to ‘graduate’ from it eventually when you’ve built up a friends list of competent players, or organize guild runs.

From what i noticed from new players that i met on dungeon runs is that they have really no idea of the existence of different kinds of stats for armor sets. If you see the list of armors avaliable from the dungeon vendors you will see that they all have the same name, like AC is protector gear, TA is nightmare gear, there is no “heavy nightmare court helm of rampager”, it doesnt matter the stats, all gear has the same name. So i met quite a lot of new players that didnt know that there are different stats of gear, and each stats is much better that others, and some stats are almost useless to some professions, for example i met one guardian that farmed the full TA gear, so he had cond damage on all pieces of armor, he had less than 900 ap i think.

Another problem is that some newer players are very impatient, lots of then get to lvl 80 in less than 2 weeks and want to experience all the dungeons, but they dont know how to play their class because they rushed to lvl 80, and they kind of demand that experienced players carry then through dungeons, those types of players usually come from another mmo that is heavily focused on end game, so they want to play gw2 like it was that previous mmo, they dont really want to get better at playing gw2, they want just to “have fun” without making much effort in learning the game, they usually stop playing after getting a full set of exotic gear complaining that there is nothing to do at end game here.

So that is the problem i think, people that started to play in less than 2 weeks and are already pugging dungeons, and when they fail at those first mini spiders in AC story they already demand a nerf, without even caring about learning the game. Its that these players want to play mmo like it was a console game, they lack team play skills, they dont bother to comunicate and just want rewards, and they dont like to fail.

@RS maybe you’re right, but I guess I’m just wondering how a cof p1 could ever fail at this stage in the game.

@Jahroots I like and agree with a lot of your post. I’m also wondering if there has been an increase of new players plus a decrease in old players dungeon pugging. Probably, is my guess, since I have encountered several newbies of late and they’re all at that stage where they want to learn but are scared of being newbs in dungeons. Luckily [Noob] is continually getting the stream of these players whenever I find them, but there are probably far more trying to pug their way and having bad experiences because they don’t know the tactics or what the descriptions mean.

RSLongK.8961:

(8k+ AP)

Why do you throw random data in your message? A month ago or so I did a AC p3 where I was the lowest AP with my 11k something. One was above 20k, another above 18k, the two others around 13k.

Worst run ever.

Fror.2163:

RSLongK.8961:

(8k+ AP)

Why do you throw random data in your message? A month ago or so I did a AC p3 where I was the lowest AP with my 11k something. One was above 20k, another above 18k, the two others around 13k.

Worst run ever.

This.

While there are indeed now players who don’t know the dungeons, some of the worst groups I had were groups where everyone played for some time, at least judging from the AP. AP do not say anything about skill though, they simply accumulate over time.

“Bads” dont like seeing people be better. Just got kicked after I solo’d spiderqueen for not healing the group when the aoe’s were out.

Furthermore people dont build to play with other people. Its screw you phiw. I dont recall it always being like that atleast I dont recall people using it as an excuse to screw over groups and not change. may be forgetting

We as humans do have a tendency to romanticize the now changed past. But I’m pretty sure it was different.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Fror.2163:

RSLongK.8961:

(8k+ AP)

Why do you throw random data in your message? A month ago or so I did a AC p3 where I was the lowest AP with my 11k something. One was above 20k, another above 18k, the two others around 13k.

Worst run ever.

This.

While there are indeed now players who don’t know the dungeons, some of the worst groups I had were groups where everyone played for some time, at least judging from the AP. AP do not say anything about skill though, they simply accumulate over time.

yes, ap does not determine skill, determines time played. I also had my fair share of 11k staff guards and 9k bearbows.
So this was for the argument sake that pugs gotten better with time.

Mayhap the player who commented about how fast your group was is one of those players whose accounts have “bad RNG” — except his extends to PuG groups, not just loot drops. :O

IndigoSundown.5419:

Mayhap the player who commented about how fast your group was is one of those players whose accounts have “bad RNG” — except his extends to PuG groups, not just loot drops. :O

Mmm. Maybe. I was also suspicious of him. He said he had been playing for only a few weeks but had 1.7k AP and a guard + warrior at 80. The whole conversation at first seemed fishy. I don’t know.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Good information. So I guess the question is, what is the cause of the decline in quality and attitude in pugs? When I used to pug daily everyone was friendly (back in the gw2lfg days). People were helpful. Most of my best friends in game are met that way. Now the only people I form new relationships with are on the forum or in divinty’s reach while showing off shinies. It’s weird what has happened. Have the players changed? Or are they not the same players now? When did it start to decline?

It’s simple. Success. Success is what causes all the hate. Once you do a dungeon in 10 mins you don’t want to take 15. Once you do it in 5, you don’t want to do it in 10.

Many people have gotten use to quick daily successful dungeon runs. So they develop a standard, and anything that deviates them from that standard becomes an annoyance.

I hate to say it but I know I get that way sometimes. “GDI just come to the right spot… we asked for experienced!” now I very rarely say anything like that but I think it, and I don’t like that I do but I can’t really help it. It’s just my natural reaction. I have expectations and when they’re shattered it’s annoying.

After Days/Months of mostly fast completions you just expect things to run smoothly, when they don’t it’s quite jarring.

Add to that a lot of the tactics in dungeons require working together (stacking etc) one person can really screw things up. So people are quick to just kick bad elements instead of taking the 10s it is to teach them. I’d say that the “play how you want” attitude makes this even more prevalent because people don’t want to get into arguments about whether stackng is an exploit or not within a dungeon.

One thing that usually works for me in bad pugs is trying to be funny. That’s why I always do AC with my yellow charr elementalist named “My Doge”. I say “wow. such FGS. very stack here.” and imediatelly they start following, saying “all listen to king doge”, etc.

IMO in pugs:
CoF, SE, CoE are usually fine.
AC 1/3 are hit or miss.
AC 2 is usually terrible unless you find an OK group in the other 2 paths for running it.
TA, CM are a nightmare, specially without a thief (that knows how to stealth).
HotW 1 used to be fine, now it’s bad.
[jedi]You didn’t see Arah in the LFG tool.[/jedi]

Lilith Ajit.6173:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Mayhap the player who commented about how fast your group was is one of those players whose accounts have “bad RNG” — except his extends to PuG groups, not just loot drops. :O

Mmm. Maybe. I was also suspicious of him. He said he had been playing for only a few weeks but had 1.7k AP and a guard + warrior at 80. The whole conversation at first seemed fishy. I don’t know.

Sounds about like what I had. Within a month I had a 80 guard and 80 mesmer and probably around that much AP. I played A LOT the first month, now I don’t have as much time.

Charname.2364:

I have been pugging dungeons since i started playing this game with a 6 month break that ended about 2 months ago. Comparing my experiences now versus what I had before the break I would say I am having smoother runs now 4 out of 5 times. What I am seeing is unorganized people stacking in the right places pretty much all the time. The problem however is many people don’t know WHY they stack there. It’s all autopilot and when the stack fails it usually leads to a full wipe.
As an example I’ll use SE p1. Pretty much everytime my group will stack the corner on the 3 golems. Unfortunately sometimes the group will lack enough dps/reflections to pull this of and people will basically stay in there till the last man goes down. Again we know where to go, just not why we go there and I think that’s a large part of why some pugs fail so miserably.
As for the the degradation of pug mentality…I blame megaservers and Obama. When you know that the chances of ever encountering that one guy you’re about to kick are nil… well…

Jerus.4350:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Mayhap the player who commented about how fast your group was is one of those players whose accounts have “bad RNG” — except his extends to PuG groups, not just loot drops. :O

Mmm. Maybe. I was also suspicious of him. He said he had been playing for only a few weeks but had 1.7k AP and a guard + warrior at 80. The whole conversation at first seemed fishy. I don’t know.

Sounds about like what I had. Within a month I had a 80 guard and 80 mesmer and probably around that much AP. I played A LOT the first month, now I don’t have as much time.

Interesting. I didn’t play much at first but I didn’t hit 80 until right before the first wintersday. And I started at launch. Lol

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Jerus.4350:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Mayhap the player who commented about how fast your group was is one of those players whose accounts have “bad RNG” — except his extends to PuG groups, not just loot drops. :O

Mmm. Maybe. I was also suspicious of him. He said he had been playing for only a few weeks but had 1.7k AP and a guard + warrior at 80. The whole conversation at first seemed fishy. I don’t know.

Sounds about like what I had. Within a month I had a 80 guard and 80 mesmer and probably around that much AP. I played A LOT the first month, now I don’t have as much time.

Interesting. I didn’t play much at first but I didn’t hit 80 until right before the first wintersday. And I started at launch. Lol

Yeah I came from a dying game (dcuo) so I was excited for something new and at the time had plenty of time on my hands (slow time of year at work).

But to get back to the topic.

How many people go into a dungeon expecting it to take 20 mins? 15 mins? 10 mins? What about way back when you started and first were pugging? what was it then?

Personally I expect most to take 10-15 at this point. When I first started a 30 min dungeon seemed fine by me though. Now I’d be tearing my hair out at the 20 min mark.

Jerus.4350:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Jerus.4350:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Mayhap the player who commented about how fast your group was is one of those players whose accounts have “bad RNG” — except his extends to PuG groups, not just loot drops. :O

Mmm. Maybe. I was also suspicious of him. He said he had been playing for only a few weeks but had 1.7k AP and a guard + warrior at 80. The whole conversation at first seemed fishy. I don’t know.

Sounds about like what I had. Within a month I had a 80 guard and 80 mesmer and probably around that much AP. I played A LOT the first month, now I don’t have as much time.

Interesting. I didn’t play much at first but I didn’t hit 80 until right before the first wintersday. And I started at launch. Lol

Yeah I came from a dying game (dcuo) so I was excited for something new and at the time had plenty of time on my hands (slow time of year at work).

But to get back to the topic.

How many people go into a dungeon expecting it to take 20 mins? 15 mins? 10 mins? What about way back when you started and first were pugging? what was it then?

Personally I expect most to take 10-15 at this point. When I first started a 30 min dungeon seemed fine by me though. Now I’d be tearing my hair out at the 20 min mark.

Yep. I remember when TA up took 30 minutes on a good run. And felt like the guy telling me it could take 20 minutes was an elitist. (Lol me when I was a bhb)

I was in a similar position. Played early access and for a month or so after launch. Stopped at around lvl 50 and went to LoL to play with my cod4 buddies(competative cod4 died around when gw2 came out). Got fed up with LoL and came back just before wintersday and then havent stopped since. When i quit people were already saying theres no endgame. And seeing as i had started to find the lvl grind, personal story and map completion boring by that stage, I wasnt really that interested in sticking around.

When i came back things were a bit different and I could actually start to set myself goals and find a guild. I only pugged story modes so i was relatively sheltered from the pug community back then. We had a core group within my casual guild that started to follow the meta. So i think i missed out on some of those glorious early day runs.

I’m surprised no one has brought up a cycling of players. Fact is, a lot of older players get bored of the game and leave, and then new people buy the game and join up.

For the majority of dungeons, this has no noticeable affect, since the rate at which players enter and exit the dungeon maintains a steadily growing level of skill overall. But, for a select few dungeons, this has noticeable problems.

Cof1 is an example. Cof1 was run constantly for farms, causing players to get very good at the game. A series of nerfs later, and given enough time, all of the players who ran Cof1 frequently have left the game. New players coming in don’t have that rote memorization of the dungeon, so the overall skill declines.

That said, since I have been exclusively pugging since a few months after launch, there has been a noticeable increase in dungeon running skill in the majority of dungeons. This is because that, even though the old players leave, their discoveries and tactics live on. Newbs have more material to work off of, so they get better faster, and can innovate sooner.

As for dungeon success, the answer is that nearly every dungeon is run successfully the vast majority of the time. There are only a few exceptions:

TA Aether Path
COF2… or was it COF3? Whichever one has the area defense.
Arah, any path.

Note: My presence in the dungeon is probably directly affecting the outcome in a favorable manner.

Why? These dungeons don’t get a lot of press. Because no one runs these dungeons, no one is really experienced in these dungeons. Without this experience, all you get are undergeared newbs running face first into concepts they’ve never encountered before. That, or you get premade groups who are experienced with the dungeon, but don’t want to put up with newbs.

So, the newbs congeal into a pool and run the dungeon, have a horrible and failing experience, and then vow to never run it again. This means that the “experienced crowd” is a mere fraction of what it would normally be for these paths.

The dungeon difficulty had been fairly static for awhile, but with the recent ferocity change the earlier dungeons seem easier than ever. Note, this may again be personal influence, since zerker wrecks things so hard now that I’m considering soloing these dungeons out of convenience, but I am assuming that difficulty as a whole for anything sub CoF has dropped.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

I guess I’m just wondering how a cof p1 could ever fail at this stage in the game.

I don’t pug a lot, but I did a CoF p1 recently that would probably fit your description of “fail” on all levels. It actually started out as an lfg for story mode, but someone then went ahead and opened explorable instead, and since I was in no hurry that day I went along with it. It was a totally non-communication group, and it was painfully obvious that at least one player had never set foot in that dungeon before. There were actually a couple of wipes along the way, but at least nobody started to tell people off or throw around blame.

Fortunately, pugs this bad have been in the minority for me. Most pugs I join in fact go really smooth (but then I never join anything requiring zerker gear or experience, even though I could probably fit their requirements by now). The few I have encountered to stick out though among the many smooth runs, like my very first AC pug (path 3) with a bunch of low levels that insisted on stacking (I had no knowledge of the usual stacking and skipping strategies back then … in fact, that run was among the reasons that made me take a closer look at the dungeon forum in the first place ).

I can even say that most pug runs I join are smoother than many dungeon adventures I’ve had with my (former) guildies . But to be honest, that doesn’t say much about the quality of pugs …

I haven’t pugged anything in at least a week and it has done wonders for my sanity; however I’ve been pvping instead so that previous statement may be insane ramblings.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

New players coming in don’t have that rote memorization of the dungeon, so the overall skill declines.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

discoveries and tactics live on. Newbs have more material to work off of, so they get better faster, and can innovate sooner.

Rote memorization =/= skill.

I’ve also been running PUGs exclusively since launch, and I’ve noticed the opposite trend. I’m not sure players are leaving, but they are certainly moving on to other content if they’re not leaving, and I suspect that the reason they move on or leave is because these people tended to do multiple runs in the same day, a method of acquiring rewards that has been nerfed.

Experienced players now know that the few hours it takes to make 10-20G flat PUGing dungeons can be made from flipping the TP or farming, with none of the headaches of having to deal with a group of strangers who may or may not throw a wrench in your pacing. So if they do dungeon, it’s with guildies who can run all of the quick paths in two hours or less.

Meanwhile, there’s a growing pool of noobs who only get by posting LFGs that encourage the experienced players (LV80 EXPERIENCED ONLY) to join and act as the mule of the group, carrying them through while they remain blissfully unaware of any of the tactics or strategies used, and only memorize how experienced players do things. If they were really acquiring skills, then new changes would not so dramatically affect their performance and ragequititude because they’d know how to adapt.

Cof1 is an example. Cof1 was run constantly for farms, causing players to get very good at the game. A series of nerfs later, and given enough time, all of the players who ran Cof1 frequently have left the game. New players coming in don’t have that rote memorization of the dungeon, so the overall skill declines.

lol. GS mesmers, whirling axe warriors.

Most COF p1 farmers sucked.

Well, I can only speak for EU, but I try to do CoF p1+2, SE p1+3 and AC all path every day (Haven’t played since the stealth buff for AC, so that’s gonna be fun). CoE all path are also one of my favorites. I usually PuG, sometimes with one guildy. I always look for “experienced zerker only”, “speedrun, zerker only” groups with warrs/eles/mes/guards and I have to say that, for the most part, it went pretty smooth. The only thing I really can’t get over with are the staff guards, who are spreading their useless might while I, as ele, try to stack trustworthy might.

A CoF p1 run usually lasts for 10-15 minutes (more 10 than 15).

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Good information. So I guess the question is, what is the cause of the decline in quality and attitude in pugs? When I used to pug daily everyone was friendly (back in the gw2lfg days). People were helpful. Most of my best friends in game are met that way. Now the only people I form new relationships with are on the forum or in divinty’s reach while showing off shinies. It’s weird what has happened. Have the players changed? Or are they not the same players now? When did it start to decline?

Gw2lfg was fairly unknown. I always had the feeling that all the people looking for a group on gw2lfg were somewhat experienced. The LFG Tool changed that. Often enough are ppl with ~100 AP joining my “experenced zerker only” runs, not knowing what is going on.

maha.7902:

Cof1 is an example. Cof1 was run constantly for farms, causing players to get very good at the game. A series of nerfs later, and given enough time, all of the players who ran Cof1 frequently have left the game. New players coming in don’t have that rote memorization of the dungeon, so the overall skill declines.

lol. GS mesmers, whirling axe warriors.

Most COF p1 farmers sucked.

axe 5’s at colesy just to make him cringe

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Good information. So I guess the question is, what is the cause of the decline in quality and attitude in pugs? When I used to pug daily everyone was friendly (back in the gw2lfg days). People were helpful. Most of my best friends in game are met that way. Now the only people I form new relationships with are on the forum or in divinty’s reach while showing off shinies. It’s weird what has happened. Have the players changed? Or are they not the same players now? When did it start to decline?

It started to decline when anet kicked away all the veteran players, halted any kind of decent update to dungeons and made everything more annoying to them, making them bitter and disillusioned.
Personally I’m fed up with idiots. I’m almost fed up with running the same, static dungeons over and over if I’m not on ts with my usual team. I will never pug again; if my friends had to stop playing for whatever reason, I’d stop playing too. My time is better spent elsewhere than to watch these idiotic PHIWS smashing their thick skulls against bosses, over and over.

Soa Cirri.6012:

Meanwhile, there’s a growing pool of noobs who only get by posting LFGs that encourage the experienced players (LV80 EXPERIENCED ONLY) to join and act as the mule of the group, carrying them through while they remain blissfully unaware of any of the tactics or strategies used, and only memorize how experienced players do things.

And this. They’re looking to be carried all the time.

I’ve been pugging Arah a lot. Nothing’s changed. Pugs still kinda stink most of the time, BUT, since I started mentoring people and teaching pugs, I seem to enjoy it more.

I think the problem all started when people started AP checking. Some groups won’t run with people who have <5000AP – therefore those people aren’t given the opportunity to learn how to have a smooth run.

As far as runs go, my guildies and I run various dungeons and usually have to pick up a pug (sometimes two). We don’t care what their AP is, nor do they have to be 80 – they just have to be the minimum level for exp mode of the particular dungeon we’re running.

If we get someone with a lot of AP – they ask nothing, say nothing, we smash everything, they leave.

If we get someone with low AP – they usually ask a bunch of questions, die a bunch, apologize for dying a bunch, we have a laugh, we explain what we are doing and why, they catch on quick and we smash everything. Then, we all exchange pleasantries and go our separate ways. This is pretty enjoyable TBH and adds literally 5mins extra to the run. Few things to note: we ALWAYS run with a support guardian (he runs around and never die it seems) who we assign the pug to (“if you run past the guard, you have gone too far” & “guard will rez you”); the 3-4 of us can easily carry someone through the dungeon; we do not pug Arah.

I would say maybe 5% of the time we get some jerk with no AP, no gear and no personality telling us what to do and pulls the entire room on us. We back off, let him die, stay in combat so he can’t WP and then kill whatever it is we’re killing. They’ll only do it twice before they learn lol!

I just renember myself going into a Dungeon for the first time, with my lvl 80 Magi/Dire/Rabid Staff Elementalist xD
That was CoE, i never did any Dungeon in any MMO before and i didnt know what to do… nobody cared to explain…

Now im the one that organizes Teaching-CoE-fullruns in my guild, and at the end theres always somebody that is grateful how well explained the run was… even when everybody is on TS these runs take longer because no matter how closely i explain things, at some point there will be someone that is confused…

When i pug, im normally not in the mood of explaining what to do, because thats exhausting.
My favorite farm Dungeon is still CoE p1, because its a Dungeon with 3 equally hard paths that tend to be very similar, therefore you can look for a fullrun group and if the first path goes smooth you will know that the second path will be a breeze aswell…
+ the first Champion Wolf is a great Bad-Pug detector, because almost nobody seems to know that pulling that Wolf will normally result in a wipe.
This is an easy way to detect pugs after 2 minutes , which will save you a lot of frustration.

I’ve been pugging nearly every day for over a year now. Here’s my perspective -

Pug runners themselves haven’t gotten any better or worse, you get good and bad and everything in between. I have seen people become more accepting of the zerk meta (despite what forum warriors say), especially since WP started preaching it in his videos. I see a lot more rangers rocking cats/drakes and usually a greatsword, which is a step up from the bows.

When you pug there will always be horror stories. There will always be terribad runs, and those will be the ones you remember and tell to your friends. You can’t extrapolate anything from a single anecdote – the weird and random and “impossibly” bad will happen, but that doesn’t mean anything for the overall state of pugs.

Most people who I see complaining about the declining state of pugs don’t realize that they are just getting more familiar with the game. It’s like when you go back to your kindergarten classroom and everything is smaller. There are mechanics and techniques that people start to take for granted, and forget that it’s not so obvious for an inexperienced dungeon runner.

So no, the sky is not falling, pugs are not regressing. People run CoF more casually then they use to, but in general pugging is the same as ever – player skill / build is random and the pug meta lags a few months behind the community meta.

rfdarko.4639:

I’ve been pugging nearly every day for over a year now. Here’s my perspective -

Pug runners themselves haven’t gotten any better or worse, you get good and bad and everything in between. I have seen people become more accepting of the zerk meta (despite what forum warriors say), especially since WP started preaching it in his videos. I see a lot more rangers rocking cats/drakes and usually a greatsword, which is a step up from the bows.

When you pug there will always be horror stories. There will always be terribad runs, and those will be the ones you remember and tell to your friends. You can’t extrapolate anything from a single anecdote – the weird and random and “impossibly” bad will happen, but that doesn’t mean anything for the overall state of pugs.

Most people who I see complaining about the declining state of pugs don’t realize that they are just getting more familiar with the game. It’s like when you go back to your kindergarten classroom and everything is smaller. There are mechanics and techniques that people start to take for granted, and forget that it’s not so obvious for an inexperienced dungeon runner.

So no, the sky is not falling, pugs are not regressing. People run CoF more casually then they use to, but in general pugging is the same as ever – player skill / build is random and the pug meta lags a few months behind the community meta.

I like your perspective. ^^ ty for sharing

Good summary from Darko.

Pugs are inherently a RNG experience. However, if you’ve pugged enough in this game, you will usually know when a run will end badly just when you have at least 2 of these in your parties:

-Sub-1kAP players.
-Players that obviously don’t even have level 80 gears (just from knowing how bland their armor/weapons are).
-And a personal gripe – seeing 2 necros or 2 rangers in any party (I always auto-leave when I see this just because I know it will reaaaaaaaally slow, unless it’s CoFp1).

When I follow my arbitrary criteria above, I have on average smooth dungeon runs for the really easy dungeons (AC/SE/CoFp1/CM). Some issues arise in TA with randoms that die while running, in CoE where people don’t know how to time dodges, and CoFp2 final boss where there’s often a guy that don’t listen and kills every acolyte one at a time.

I believe with this stealth ninja update though there will be at least some horror stories of AC Spider Queen where two types of people collide – the ones that forces us to stack even though the pug party clearly has horrid DPS, ie the pseudo-elitist unable to adapt to a bad pug party and – the ones that clearly has bad DPS yet remain stacked even though others told them to move, ie the casual players that don’t care if they wipe or want a remotely effective run for their time.

That’s what you get for continuous whining. I hope they like the taste of their own tears.

I PUG 99% of my dungeon runs (the last 1% are guild runs, but since my guild is US-based, and I live in Australia, I rarely get to play with them), and my experience is largely the same as rfdarko’s. You get some awesome PUGs, you get some horrid PUGs, and you get ones in between. I almost always start my own runs, and I teach newbies what to do in encounters if needed. They never end up being speed runs, but it’s fast enough for my tastes and you get to meet some interesting people (or end up with some interesting stories) by the end. (Sometimes they even end up teaching me new tricks or methods I hadn’t previously known about!)

Unless the starter ragequits the instance (an event which I can count on one hand the number of times it’s happened), I always end up finishing a dungeon/Fractal I started. Sometimes it takes WAY longer than I expected (and I’ll freely admit that this does make me grumpy), but since I only tend to do dungeons infrequently, I guess this doesn’t really “wear me down”. I can see how it might frustrate players who do dungeons every single day, but I think this is not too dissimilar from, say, a customer service rep who’s jaded from years of helping stupid people over and over. (In which case, maybe it’s time for a sea change? Try another game mode, or even another game. Aside from the Living Story, GW2 is a game you can come back to at any time.)

Soa Cirri.6012:

Rote memorization =/= skill.

If you want to split hairs… yeah, memorization isn’t skill. But then again, rote memorization of a path means greater performance overall.

Nearly all content in this game can be considered a puzzle. Once you know the trick to a boss, they become quite easy to deal with. If you know all the tricks to all the bosses, you become a “good player”.

AC 1/3 are pretty much guaranteed; spider shouldn’t make a difference once people get used to it. P2 — no. Not then, not now. Don’t PUG. The end requires coordination, tactics and cooperation. In other words, it’s a PUG’s worst nightmare. There are way too many different stacking points (no one can agree on them or they don’t know how to LoS), and a lot of people need ego checks thinking our average group can take the boss in one trap (or we do two and wipe within seconds on the first pull).

Overall I haven’t noticed a difference but I don’t run every dungeon. Since I don’t have a group there are some places I won’t go unless I really want something. Then there are places like TA and Arah which I’ve never run for the very reason I have to PUG.

I’d say more than anything the success ratio of a PUG depends on the path, but personally learned don’t count out yourself. I switched to zerk heavies recently after over a year doing the opposite; it’s a world of difference. I’m not great, but I’ve definitely carried a share of groups.