Guild Wars 2

David Sage’s Guide on Pug Commanding:

About me: I am a guild less commander on Dragon Brand. I don’t intend to be in a guild, most the guild on my server don’t deal with pugs they are more organized. I been doing this for fair amount time and decided to write a guide about it.

Are you trying to rally up the troops and have small or no group with you?

Are you a lonely commander to get pugs to follow you?

Are you trying to get some pts for your server?

This guide may help you:

1. Dress well.

Seriously, people follow you when you have a good weapon and good looking gears. I can’t emphasize this enough, there are so many pugs doing their own thing then saw me and came to ask about my weapons, gears and etc. Then they stayed around helped me capture points.

Invest in some good dyes. Try to match your weapon and gears. Even though most WvWers may have lowest quality character model setting. However you can still impress some new pugs

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2. Commander Build:

As a commander you should not be downed nor should die first. Enemy will target you and try to down you. When you are down most time the pugs would come and rez you, however enemy can just AOE on you and wipe the group. Therefore, try not to die. In order not to die, you want a build have high survivability. Damage should be the second thing you want to worry about. Your goal is to tank all the damage and the pugs would take less damage which help to attack the enemy.

As a commander you also want to use weapons and utility that supports the pugs. You have to assume they don’t know what they are doing so use condition remover, invisibility, stability skills to help your group fight.

3. Understand what everyone wants.

Pugs can be categorized below:

Achievement Hunter:

All they really care about are achievements. It’s hard to get them following you however if you call out what you are going to do next they may be interested. Someone of them may even whisper you nicely to ask if you could take this objective so they can get the vista. Try your best to take the objective or tell them why you wouldn’t take your objective.

Player Killers:

These are your typical squirrel chasers, spawn campers, roamers. They are usually experienced in fights and are very useful if you can have them following you. However squirrel chasing will eventually lead them away from you. So I usually whisper or in map chat tell them when big fights are coming up and there are plenty bags here if they want to come and join the fight. This has been working out very well.

WvWers:

These are your experienced WvWers, they enjoy WvW and they usually follows you without asking. Think of them as your helpers. As a pug commander most time of you will be suppressed on map chat so ask them to help you relay the messages.

4. Know your objective.

As a pug commander, you want to adapt to situations. Prioritize organized group over your group. Focus on being distractions oh be meat shields for your organize group. Sometimes organize group will want to be distractions and fight for you and that’s when you go take stuff.

Karma train when you don’t have the numbers to fight or defend. Prioritize on defending higher tier objective rather than taking other objectives.

Utilize Siege crushers and Siege razers.

Provide support on open field zerg fights. Focus on having the pugs rezing the dead allies from organize group. Utilize sieges at open fields, you are fighting to win not to be fair.

*Don’t pull people away from organized group and keep up the moral of the troops.

5. Communication.

Communications is probably the most important thing about being a pug commander. Always use map chat to tell your troop where you are going and when to way point. Even the little things such as take supply from the camp. Many pugs have no idea about supplies. Always assume the pugs don’t know what they are doing. Just try to be nice and tell them what to do. They will listen.

Communicate with other commanders, let them know what you are doing and ask if they need help. Share intels about enemy to other commanders.

Teach pugs how to stack and what skills to use to buff up. Call out when you are stacking.

Tip: Auto-run is your best friend remember to use it.

6. Rally Troops.

This is probably the most important part about being a pug commander. Everyone most likely to do their own thing but you want them to follow you. All you have to do be genuine to them. Let them know you are tagging up and what you are trying to accomplish. Let them know where to meet. BRING FOOD with you always drop for them to use. Let them know there are food for them. Whisper people if they are not following and ask them NICELY if they want to tag along. Always remember to stay close, use sentry and camp as waiting station for your tail to catch up.

7. Morale.

Pugs will only follow you if you are winning. If you are losing you will lose a lot of people. This is why you don’t want fight fights you can’t win. However if you know you won’t win a fight but you are doing it as distraction, let them know.

Do not blame on the pugs, as a commander it is your responsibility for your troop and if you guys get wiped or being fed false information blame yourself for not being better prepared. Many commanders don’t like to admit what they did wrong.

Listen to your pugs, sometimes they may just have a better idea then you. Therefore listen to them and give them credits. People usually like to be put in spot lights.

Excuse my grammars and spelling, I wrote this quickly for the hopes on helping others.

If you have anything you want to add feel free to comment below.

Sincerely,

David Sage

8. Never rage after a fail/wipe..but instead explain what it is that went wrong and how they can improve it next time.

9.Make sure you have people in your party that you Know,a mesmer for veils,and some guardians for buffing.

10.Have atleast one scout in Every tower,have people running around refreshing siege contantly,you do not want to be ninja hit or coming to a besieged tower where there’s no siege inside to hold it.

11.When you can’t defeat their zerg,outmanouvre them,make a fake attack on a tower ( tag and move ) and get another objective instead, Never be obvious in what it is youre trying to accomplish.

12.Avoid making crosses on the map,Anywhere period. even when sieging a tower Do not let people hit the gate,instead throw up rams and Only let them ram ( Tagging some other towers in the meanwhile is a great way to distract ).

13. Make sure a keep,Waypoint is always contested when youre sieging something.

You can be a successful Pug Commander without using a survivable commander build. I use Glass Staff Ele to command and dish out a good deal of the damage to turn the tide. I even brag to my command that I’m a walking siege and they cheer when they see their commander showing some bravado.

Most importantly don’t forget to thank your team when you capture a keep or tough objective, or when you wipe the enemy. I don’t know about not taking risks… I wipe here and there but I also wipe the enemy, and I don’t lose people.

When in map chat ask for eyes on the towers and other points, and ask for someone to keep an eye in enemy Zergs. Normally there’s a good thief roamer or three around willing to scout for you.

Good point on running to karma train, that’s what most people are there for. If the enemy Zerg is tough, just karma train objectives. Keep your own siege and throw your own siege. Some people will throw for you, ask if you want them to do it for you, otherwise do it yourself. If you run out of siege you can ask and people will usually send you some by mail if you are out in enemy territory and can’t restock from the siege merchant.

Overall I’ve always had good experiences commanding pugs. I don’t have a wvw guild either, I am just there to help when tags are scarce and things need to get done. Remember that if you want your server to win, you need to keep the ppt up so flipping in the karma train is probably your most important task.

Make sure you have everything you need before going for an objectives. Nothing worst that a Commander asking on the chat : ‘’Someone have a Ram??’’. You can sit for a while, doing nothing, people lose faith in you and the ennemy have a huge time to get back to defend the objective.

Manage you supply. If you have the blueprint but can’t build it then your situation is not better. Stack and use supply command to see how much you have and plan with the supply you know you have, all extra are bonus. If you can build that third ram good, but don’t count on it if you don’t know the amount of supply of some of the ppl that follow you.

Its optional but can make the world of difference. Have a small group of friend/guildmates with you. I don’t have a big guild, but i usually play with 1 to 3 friends when I command. They can form the core of your ’’zerg’’ making it stronger, they can show the example, do all the chatting that you can (on the map chat for additional details, on the say chat for some notification like supply up, or whispers for more precise details). They are also some additional pair of eyes on the map to spot sword or on the chat when you focus on the battle. They can fill very specific role that you need in combat, but you can also send them on a specifikittentle mission when you have enough good people in your zerg. As i said this is optional, but can really help.

Make use of everybody on the maps. Notice who give good scout reports and ask him something specific if you need it. Ask things to roamer. Often these guys like to win in WvW, they just don’t really like to be in the zerg. Ask roamer in the map to take a supply camp that you need or to take cares of ruins.

The most important for me its the human factor. These are people playing a game, so make them want to join or help you. Make sure they know what you want to do, congratulate them when you win, point out the positive out of a failure and why you failed, never put a fail on them or rage on any chat. Use their name on a map chat to notice what a specific person did good, everybody like to be notice, by the commander even more.

No ones gonna want to listen to you if you call them pugs, just saying. Try “people”. I know, its so hard.

I don’t know why pug is a term being frowned up on. It shouldn’t have a negative effect. I called my self a pug before I started commanding. I know a lot of pugs are great roamers and help the cause of the server.

Edit: spelling.

I don’t know why people call them PUG’s. In internet gaming, PUG originally meant “Pick Up Game” in team based games. So when someone was “pugging” they were playing matches with random players.

I always thought the correct term for players joining raids were “Pubs” as it references them as a public player and not a collective of a team.

Back on topic: David Sage is a good PUB commander and has a nice guide.

I don’t know why some people view Pug as a pejorative term. I’m a pug most of the time that i’m not commanding. Pug is not about being good or not its only about the communication between everybody, usually its only mark the difference between people in a Voip and people that are not in any. Its a disadvantage sure, but pug make most of the Zerg (at least in my Tier, don’t know about higher tier).

Edit : For the reason why people call them pugs in WvW? If not the perfect term its true, but Pugs are either random people joining together to do a dungeon or people joining a guild to fill the last place needed for the dungeon. These two definition fit perfectly for what we call pugs in a WvW settings.

Usually a zerg is either a Commander who tag up and regroup a group of random people in the map for completing objectives or a Commander and his guild for a zerg and random people join them to give more numbers to the zerg. So even if the term Pug it technically is false, it still fit perfectly the situation.

David.6491:

I don’t know why pug is a term being frowned up on. It shouldn’t have a negative effect. I called my self a pug before I started commanding. I know a lot of pugs are great roamers and help the cause of the server.

Edit: spelling.

the term itself is pretty neutral. what happens, though, is that people use it in a negative way. “stupid pugs”, “worthless pugs”, and so on. so the term itself has gained a negative connotation and becomes an insult in itself. the irony, though, is that (at least in my observation) the ones that use it as an insult are usually the people that flat out need to be carried the most. they have a good commander that leads them to a lot of success, but when that commander isn’t around, they’re absolutely clueless. it certainly isn’t just limited to WvW. the same happens in dungeons. they run with a guild group, and the group succeeds. they run with pugs, and spend most of the time dead and complaining about what everyone who’s still alive was doing. it happens in all MMOs. on TOR, there was a PvP guild on the server i was on that would always be like “we’re the biggest PvP guild, you have to listen to us”. then when you’d get into a match, they’d be sitting in the acid pits to get their healing medals, or otherwise abusing the mechanics, or off in the middle of nowhere getting killed. they weren’t a PvP guild, they were a farming guild that used PvP. they had one guy in the beginning that did a good job, and a bunch of people trying to leech of the name he built. they were detriments, to be honest. and when they would lose matches, they’d blame everyone else. eventually some actual PvP guilds started forming, and those guys were awesome. when you got into a match and saw them on your side, you knew you were going in with a strong team.

it really boils down to this. when good players fail, they look for ways that they can improve for next time. when bad players fail, they look for someone to blame and if there’s anyone around that isn’t in their guild (a pug) that’s who they’re going to lay the blame on. if they blame their guild, they’ll get put in their place or booted. if they blame a pug, there’s no accountability there.

don’t get me wrong, i’d run into pugs that were clueless too. it honestly doesn’t matter what the tag over someone’s head says. good players are good players. bad players are bad players. that applies to both guilds and pugs. pugs are just easier to blame, so that’s what happens. which gradually causes more and more people to equate pugs and bad players. perception tends to be more important to people than reality.

David.6491:

I don’t know why pug is a term being frowned up on. It shouldn’t have a negative effect. I called my self a pug before I started commanding. I know a lot of pugs are great roamers and help the cause of the server.

Edit: spelling.

this is true.. David is the best thing on our server, acts as pug/militia commander and peacekeeper in server wvw meetings.

I know the organized guilds that are on his map will work with him to obtain objectives..

and he’s also a nice guy

Pugs are fine, as long as they are on the same page as the commander. By my experience, pugs won us season 1 of leagues. They continue to win the match ups week after week. BG tries to harness the vast number of pugs we have and form them into a fairly formidable group. Guilds are encouraged to tag up for the pugs to follow on. We spam our teamspeak details in map/team chat to encourage them to join the WvW community. It worked and it continues to work.

Basically, our “off” hours during OCE and EU is comprised by nearly 90% pugs or small guild groups of 10 or less.

Because of all this, we are fairly harsh on people demeaning pugs. We may joke about it, but we welcome them.

Pugmanding is tough as hell though. Been there, done that, will not do again unless there’s no other alternative.

@Orswich, thank you for praising me lol.

@Reverence, pug commanding is frustrating at times. Especially if no one is following you. However I find it fun to pug command, here is why:

You always get to find and meet new people. (I have met many amazing pugs)
You can help new players of your server. I usually recommend them to a good guild.
Help with server morale.

It’s one of those things that you have to put a lot of effort in but you get high rewards in the end.

David Sage