Guild Wars 2

This has been something that’s bothering me since I formed a group early 2016. I don’t actually consider myself the raid leader as I’m not knowledgeable enough on all the classes to be able to pinpoint what needs to happen, our squad is more like a nobody-wants-to-tag-up-so-I-did sorta thing. So it’s mostly just me trusting that people on the squad know their rotations (and I generally don’t mind if someone is using a non-meta or previously meta rotation, especially right after patch because different people have different pace when learning, as long as mechanics is solid, does enough dps to get the job done, and have at least the correct stats on the armor and trinkets (even if it’s exotics). So when I advertise for “pls be exp”, I really do mean “play on a class that you are familiar with, especially taking into account mechanics and have comfortably completed the encounter on”.

So back to the issue of kicking. My 9-man squad was down an additional 2 person last night at reset due to Christmas and travels. But all 7 of us have stuck to this same class for all our previous reset clears. We had a friend of a friend join us and had to LFG 2 person. On our 9-core, 1-pug squad, we normally finish 9/9 clears in an average of 2.5hrs and always 1-pull wings 1-3, up till Xera. But last night was exceptionally difficult because I suspect two of our pugs were not as effective and experienced as they claim to be. One was constantly going down at every hadoken and vault while the other could not make his own judgment call to swap to water to buy time and stay alive while spreading out with timed bomb.

I was not 100% sure of this, as I had disabled player names so I can see myself better, especially at Xera, but it was just too much hassle to switch that option on and off. And perhaps rare, but stuff like getting picked for poison, corruption and sacrifice 4-5 times in a row happens and I did not want to instantly kick in case it was because of this. Even though I do feel it’s better to run 1 heal tempest for the OP condi clears and more consistent albeit smaller heals, but we’ve never had an issue running mirror comp with 2 druids. But yesterday we made a decision to swap out 1 of our regular druids to heal tempest. Sustain was better, but again, I suspect because of the two pugs, we were forced to move out a lot more than usual and we were not benefiting from the heal tempest AA heals and overloads.

At Wing 3 these two pugs left and we had 2 others join in from LFG. They were a different set of problems. And I got frustrated with people just being situationally unaware all the time, bringing in spirits to merge, etc. At that time, I contemplated to instantly kick, simply because I was getting fed up with wiping at an encounter that we usually 1-pull every week. But I didn’t, with the understanding that it was our 4th or 5th wipe, but this guy just joined, and to him we only wiped once (so maybe it’s unfair he got kicked for 1 mistake?). We ended up carrying these two up till Xera, where one had 70-odd stacks of madness, and the other one actually maxed out and got feared off the platform and died.

Personally, I insta-kick for a few people whom my squad and I have really bad experiences with, some due to language barrier, and some who refuse to cooperate when we ask for a certain class or role to be done – we have these few on a ‘do-not-invite’ list. So my question is, what would be a good indication or etiquette on kicking someone recruited on LFG? (Bearing in mind that I am not very good at multitasking, and when I’m focused on doing my rotations and looking out for mechanics, I tend to miss others’ mistakes, same as when I focus too much on looking for others’ mistakes, I miss mechanics myself.) Thanks in advance for advice.

I think the most important thing to remember is: you’re the squad leader (regardless of how/why you came to the role). Decide what’s important for your group and then act in its best interests. As long as your gracious and polite, you don’t have to feel responsible for the PUGs.

My usual fractal group almost never invites PUGs. We look for friends or friends of friends or guildies. We try to choose people around our level who are fun and can communicate, as we’re not any sort of speed-clearing team. Since it’s all people we know, we do feel responsible for them and we’ll cancel the run rather than /kick.

That doesn’t apply at all to your situation: you have a core group and anons — your obligation is to your core. They are there to stay; the PUGs will come & go.

Here’s some examples:
You could decide that you only want gap-fillers that are as good or better than your squad — harder to find, but less trouble to work together, which leads to less frustration and more fun. In which case, you’d probably and nearly-immediately /kick everyone you mentioned above.

You could also decide that your group is going to help people as much as y’all are able, training folks to be at least as comfortable with the mechanics as you guys are. Easier to find such folks, but requires more effort on your part to work together. In which case, you probably would have /kicked the first pair anyhow, but might have worked more closely with the second pair.

Or, you could decide that your main goal is to ‘audition’ folks, in an effort to expand your pool of regulars (so you aren’t looking for PUGs every week). You’d look for people that get on well with your group, that communicate well with y’all, … regardless of how good they are at raiding to start with. For that, you probably wouldn’t have kept either pair for that long.

tl;dr Decide what your core group needs and act in its best interests. That will sometimes include the painful duty of asking PUGs to leave.