Throughout the history of WoW, most people have hated pugs, it’s true. Back in vanilla days they were considered a necessary evil for making the UBRS and Strat runs you needed for your tier 0 set. In BC they were just the devil and to be avoided at all costs. In Wrath they’ve been making a bit of a comeback, with super easy entry-level raids in the form of Naxx.
Yesterday I was invited into a pug that was going to be raiding the horde – doing the achievement thingy to kill the horde leaders. While I have no interest in achievements, killing the horde leaders and raiding their cities sounded like fun so I signed on, along with two of my guild’s healers (and both members of my 10-man team).
I won’t bother with a blow-by-blow of the failure. It was a pug, so you know what’s coming. Horrible, humiliating defeat. Anytime I’m in a 40-man raid and the damage meter looks like this, you know I’m not going to be happy with the group:
I know damage is generally lower in pvp, dealing with target switching and resilience, but that’s just plain sad. Only once person could (barely) do more than half my damage?
Oh, and the healers were #1 and #2 on the healing charts as well, and those charts looked a lot like this one. At least we made a good showing for ourselves anyway.
I hate pugs.
I’m with you, Frost. 10 man Naxx pug and it took 12 minutes (12 minutes!!!) to kill Heigan. The last ones standing were me, the healer and the tank. and the damage meter looked almost identical. It was then that I knew we were in trouble. Fast forward to Loatheb and people didn’t run to the spores! I was the only one that moved and needless to say, i was 2k dps above everyone else.
It just astounds me that people pay money every month to fail constantly and still feel good about it. /sigh
Perhaps it was less about the weakness of your PuG and more about the strength of the HORDE!
Seriously though, I know exactly what you mean. I seem to remember a 25 Naxx one week where I missed the guild run and pugged a group with only Saph & KT up. We get all ready to go, pull Saph, and literally 12 people died on the first freezy-breath. I ended up doing 30% of the total damage. In a 25 Man.
/sigh
Yup, pugs are a real gamble. Even knowing this going in doesn’t help much. They suck when they go horribly wrong and as a guild officer they can be a nightmare when they go horribly right.
We’ve had members who couldn’t make our raids have great success in pugs. It’s hard to enforce a loot system when members can pug and enjoy the freedom of open roll on everything.
Darkbrew what we do in my guild is just set a rule, no pugs untill saturday. And pretty much if someone pugs everyday, even when officers tell them not to, they are kicked. A pug every now and then, like for VoA or OS, is fine.
It was very … unsatisfying i agree..
The pug looked great, we all managed to meet in the same spot and only had a few jerks saying….” We charge when i say so!” (i think they have a leader-itis) and some dk put PoF before we jumped into the water.. nearly killing all of us before we even started:(
Then there was that jerk who started yelling as soon as we got into Org:( I really think that he was the reason we failed:(
Anyway, i had fun with my four guildmates:D and that is what it is all about:D
That is sad – even in full pvp gear that DK should be much higher hahaha.
First off Frost I want to thank you for the WHU I was a long time reader of BRK so when he decided to stable hobbes for the last time it was a bit off a stunner and i’ve spent the time since then looking for a new home myself
As far as the posted meter dont forget that in heavy pvp combat many times you will be at the top of your own meter since open world pvp can get quite crazy and you may get far enough away from the raid or even parts of the raid to have them not register on your meter. Plus you are a Raid Hunter lol…what did you expect? Thanks again for the WHU buddy.
This is different from a bg where you’re spread across a huge zone. We were all in one relatively small room, so recount will be fairly accurate – and dead on for anyone else who was running recount. And I was wearing my pvp gear… well, the five pieces I have anyway
I’ve watched a friend of mine do a lot of raids and I’ve seen one great pug and several horrible pugs. I think the best thing to do when entering a pug where it seems no one knows what they are doing (including the person who set up the raid) is to take up a leadership role. True, the person who organized the pug may not be pleased with it, but then again, he/she may appreciate the help. My friend was pug-ing (I believe) VoA just the other day and when he got to the boss that spawns the horrible adds that make everything go wrong, he stepped up and said “Hey, do we have someone who’s going to macro a raid warning when the adds spawn?” When it became clear that there was no such person, he did the job himself, and they one-shot it. (And my friend ended up getting a nice piece of gear!)
Darkbrew, I don’t know what kind of looting system you use and I’m not going to pretend that I know the perfect one or anything, I’ve just picked up a few things by watching my friends raid in their respective guilds. I’ve seen a loot system based on points, i.e. how much damage was done and such and you bid your points for loot (which it seems everyone hates), and I’ve seen a system that was essentially free roll only that main specs got priority over off-specs, but the best one I’ve seen (at least the one that seems most fair and seems to please most everyone) is the “Me” system that my guild uses (even though I haven’t been a part of their raids yet [level 74- almost there!], I’ve watched my friend).
The “Me” system that they use almost guarantees everyone at least one upgrade per run, which helps to avoid situations where there are 4 locks and somehow only one of them is rolling above 40 and the rest are ticked and drop. In the “Me” system, everyone starts at “Me0,” and it increases to “Me1,” “Me2,” etc, as loot is won. Every time you roll on loot, you first write your “Me” number, and then roll. If you win, your “Me” number increases by 1. A “Me0″ will always have priority over a “Me1,” because the “Me1″ has already won something, whereas a “Me0″ has not. Naturally, this must be monitored, so my friend is often the one with a piece of paper next to the computer writing down everyone’s “Me” numbers to make sure it checks out when they roll.
But this system helps everyone feel like it’s worth raiding, because even if they have horrible rolls, eventually, they will be the only lock with a “Me0″ and they’ll win. This system also makes it less likely that people will roll on items they don’t really need or items that aren’t upgrades, because they’ll be sacrificing their priority.
So yeah, I realize this is a little off-topic, but it’s a system that my friend has really benefited from and one he enjoys doing, so I thought maybe it couldn’t help to throw it out there. =)
Yeah, most of the PUGs going for that achievement fail. There are typically jerks that jump ahead, are impatient, or just not helpful; not to mention, people recruiting level 60-70′s to join (WTF??). I was always on top of the damage meters for all of these; even with my (at the time) sucky gear.
I finally got in a group of 40 that seemed to have their heads on straight and we slaughtered all 4 cities and leaders. I was not at the top this time and was about where I thought I should be.
As for PUGing for raids; I have yet to do one. I got WoW well into the BC, and I hit 70 the week before WotLK came out. I have hit plenty of 5 man’s, but never an actual raid.
My issue would simply be what Selisia mentioned above. I would be that noob not running to the spores. I don’t know the fights. 5 man’s are OK to handle because you can learn the fights even if people are not willing to teach them to you. For 10 (and especially 25) man raids, more and more groups expect you to already know the fights. You can read all you want, but until you get in there to do it, you won’t “know” the fights. Simply put, I hate being the noob.
I guess that is why I have been sticking with PVP. I am in the top 3 of BG’s 90% of the time, and when I am not, it is simply because my job in the BG didn’t get me all too many HK’s (I played defense, focused on tanks, etc). That said. I would love to do some raids!
The one good thing about pugs is that they remind you of how great your guild is
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I only do 25M VoA and have no 226 gear, so I usually don’t expect to top the charts in 25M pugs. Too much of a gear difference sometimes. But yeah, if I’m rocking the #1 slot on Recount, there’s probably issues with the Pug. Not that I mind the ego boost, mind you, but I’d rather see the raid succeed.
Haven’t tried For the Horde yet. Sounds like it could be a fun way to waste a lazy evening sometime.
All I have to say is ‘LoL’
We should really go and hit those guys again one of these nights after the saturday raid. We did that back in the day and I have everyone dead except the bastard in MooTown. Also, everyone make sure you have finished wrathgate quest line or you will be sad when you get to UC 
I agree with you frost… i too hate pugs and avoid them at all costs
Yori: Wrathgate? Um…. what’s that? Quests, let alone quest chains, don’t usually make my radar.
lol, i know how you feel about pugs, i got invited along to naxx10 last week, i need nothing from there not even badges, i have all the BoA gear but was sat around so thought what the hell. along went me, tank and 2 healers from guild rest were all pugs. dancing boss…. LOL FAIL isnt even cutting close. within atleast 20 seconds there was only me, tank and 2 healers left. so it was down to us to down the boss. needless to say in the gear we have it wasnt that hard, but.. if we knew it was possible to 4 man him so easily we wouldnt of even bothered with the damn pugs. i cant understand how some people can fail on so many accounts. i mean.. how hard is it to stand in a spot where no green crap is being sprayed up :S
None the less, id rather stick to my hardmode group from now on, even if it sometimes does cost a small fortune in silly bugs, mistakes etc causing wipes.
It’s the one where you watch the cutscene
And then you stomp around UC with qq king. If you haven’t done it, you should 
I started having major lag issues and my raid performance sucked. Finally bit the bullet and bought a new ‘puter. First two PUGs were successes (and I had zero lag). My guild is only five locals, so PUGs are the only way we get to play
Thought about joining larger guilds in the past, but instead we stay in touch with the larger ones. I have had very bad PUGs and very good ones. Other than DPS issues, a-holes are the other problem.
Agh I’ve heard so many stories like this from friends, of For The Alliance failures..
I didn’t realize how lucky I was when I found one, we chain smoked all the cities, perfect timing on portals and summons.
The best part was in orgrimar (Eh not a hordie I forget how to spell), at the height of DK popularity, the deathgrips pulling us 1 by one out of the room, and trying to burn down the boss…
Funnest I’ve ever had in wow :3
Anywho, it is seriously fun with a good group (repetition ftw), I guess it’s just a bit dependent on luck for finding one. I was just a plain old dps who was PUG’d so I can only assume major planning was put into it, because portals were up right away and summons as well. It can’t just be a crap pug like that, I’d hope to have atleast 20 members from a guild
Byebye.
never remember finishing the wrathgate questline with the ingame cinematic on my hunter but i have killed the dark lady in UC+other horde leaders and got him the bear mount.
The alternatives for Wrathgate if you want to raid Horde cities are finish it or don’t start it at all.
Are you sure about that in regards to Undercity? I know people who have finished it no longer have Varithramas in the UC Throne Room for them. Those who have not done the quest could likely still be in a different phase that still has the dreadlord. Or was this proven incorrect?