What the PuG!?

In the last couple weeks, I've been in PuGs for just about every raid, except Sunwell. Some have been successful, some haven't. But it's still amazing to me that they exist. On a server where the top Alliance guild was selling chances at tier pieces mere weeks after first downing the bosses themselves, and most of the inhabitants are just looking to get "epicced out" - regardless of the stats on the gear, it's somewhat refreshing to see people have complete PuG runs where rolls are simply mainspec first, then offspec.

All this freely available gear has set rumblings in the foundations of some guilds. I've seen a few 25-mans break into 10-mans, 10-man guilds split into arena teams, and arena teams disintegrate into individual battlegrounders. Of course, this might just be the result of pre-expansion restlessness spreading wanderlust that makes people test the waters of what they can accomplish on their own.

I have some very mixed feelings about these PuGs. On one hand, they get the bosses down (sometimes), and that's where the phat lootz come from. On the other hand, they're terrible players who are so sub-optimal at their roles that even after the patch boss nerfs, wipes are vastly more common than boss kills. So while I enjoy reaping the benefits of killing bosses in Black Temple, it helps to have a movie to watch during downtime, and maybe a game of solitaire going to keep my clicking finger from locking up.

On the whole, I think that more PuGs can only be good. They stimulate the interest in raids and heroics, and keep the game from becoming stale. But I'd like to see a return of attunements with the increase in PuGs. As easy as this game is, some people just aren't good enough at it to perform at the level required to do high-level content. To me, this is the challenge of game design: invent a natural content progression that cultivates building skills that will help you later in the game. Of course, this would effectively "lock out" some people from the end of progression, but I'm conceited enough to believe that I can perform well enough to make it to the "end."

This ties in to how I think that progression should depend on skill intead of raid size, but that's a whole different post. Perhaps later this week.

In the mean time, enjoy the free PHAT EPIXX L00TZ0RZ flowing out of PuGs.

Just Say "No" to PuGs?

I've taken to PuGing Kara with my warrior lately. He still needs 40-odd badges, and can get a few offspec upgrades in there as well. What I'd really like to do is see him in ZA, but he's nowhere near as geared as my druid and with the new content coming soon, it'd be a waste to have a "geared enough" tank in there in place of an "awesomely geared" tank.

With that said, are PuGs getting better now, or just more geared? I haven't had a Kara run not make it to Shade (even though that's about when everyone just gives up because it requires more than button-mashing) in a few weeks, and we've even gotten Illhoof down a couple times. I'd like to think that my hotness that is tanking makes a huge difference in that, but it's more likely that the gear level of the group is going up on average.

The thing about that being true that I don't understand is how I still manage to get in a group with at least the other tank in nothing but quest greens. And how Kara senses that this person needs gear so drops nothing but that person's spec/class loot.

I ended up running the show Sunday night, since I was apparently the only one who had been inside Kara before. We started with 4 (Count them! FOUR!) Ret pallies, so when we hit Maiden we only had a small issue with Holy Fire almost killing our healers. All our dps could cleanse it from themselves.

By the time we got to Curator though, we had lost all of the paladins, and the dps were having a hard time coping without Blessing of Salvation. I think we degenerated into name-calling and POM-pyroing around the 3rd flare from Curator, and called it after struggling with Illhoof, but killing him finally.

As frustrating as this was, in a normal PuG, or just a few months ago, I wouldn't have expected to get farther than Moroes. And this was all done with an offtank who effectively doubled his tanking gear value by picking up 3 pieces. Oh, and he thought that this [Good Luck Charm] was for rogues. I just about left the group after that comment.

The bottom line is that PuGs are geared enough now to accommodate just about any heroic or Kara. PuGing ZA probably would get a boss or two down. As long as you're willing to put up with a few wipes and don't expect anything spectacular, you can probably get a group for anything now that nobody's raiding.