Seren Gibson
When I see someone suggesting that all PUGs are shit, I immediately assume that that person was actually the weak link. Maybe they've spent too long in PvP or ruthlessly-efficient guild teams to understand that PUG'ing requires a different attitude and play style that doesn't suit everyone. Some people don't enjoy it, and admittedly it can be frustrating when you encounter the occasional, inevitable leechers and losers.
But it can also be immensely satisfying. It's like adding an element of organic, human randomness to what is otherwise a massively-predictable and quantifiable affair. If you can't handle the added difficulty that a PUG can provide, perhaps you really aren't quite as good as you think you are. If none of the PUGs you joined were successful, remember that YOU were the common factor.
Getting worked up and claiming your group-mates are noobs because they're not running builds that you're familiar with or personally endorse just makes you the idiot. Build-fascism increased dramatically after A-Net added code to let players ping their skill bars to the group chat. For me, people running unconventional builds that I'm not familiar with but which they're probably quite comfortable with, is half the fun. Oh, you beat a mission using tried-and-tested builds and tactics listed on some website? Good for you.
Making the decision that you're not going to PUG is fine, everyone has their own preference and there's no doubt that a static group of friends, or a guild group or similar that is experienced as a team will always be more efficient and probably more successful in a statistical sense than some random group of waifs and strays that has never played together before, and might never again. Just don't confuse bad PUGs with you being bad at PUG'ing.
I remember one particular occasion in Hell's Precipice, the final mission in GW: Prophecies. At the time I was working through that chapter on my Assassin after I got sick of all the 'sin hate in Factions. I happened to get in a well-balanced group with a couple of human monks, and I think just a single henchman to make up the numbers and off we went on a mission + bonus run. Fast-forward to Rurik, and after capping him both monks and our tank quit out, because it turned out that's all they were there for.
Instead of crying like little bitches, the rest of us forged on to the Lich and miraculously managed to complete the mission. With no monks, me as main tank on an assassin of all things, and a team of only 4 real, random people.
Another time, on an Aurora Glade bonus run, I think it was 4 real people including a real monk, and a hench tank for luck, when the monk decided we were obviously noobs for going in without a real tank and quit out just as we were entering the mission. Needless to say we were successful, with just 2 eles and me on my necro running the crystals.
Similarly I've ended up tanking on all sorts of characters as necessary, or running a group with my necro because our designated runner couldn't manage it. Those sorts of situations are far more satisfying than simply beating an encounter by the book. For me, it adds a lot to the immersion when you go into a situation "as is", without going out of your way to spec the team. Of course Guild Wars isn't especially immersive as these games go but the concept of optimising your build for a mission implies that you know what you're up against. Of course that's usually true because you're unlikely to be the first to attempt it even if it's your first time, but even the first groups to be successful will probably experience failures and wipes the first time(s) through which just brings us back to the idea of "learning" an encounter rather than beating it through the application of genuine skill.
The fact is you need to be adaptable to be successful in a PUG. It's a whole different discipline than running a highly-trained team who has done the encounter any number of times before. You can't complain that there are people with different levels of experience, you have to take it for granted. I would like to see that being important in all situations, but sadly everything is just too stripped-down and formulaic in current games.
The forum thread turned into a back-and-forth over whether monks should take a rez. In my personal (and therefore correct) opinion the monk should always be the last to die in any encounter, because a dead monk can't heal anyone. And the last person alive should always have a rez because otherwise you might as well just quit.
In a PUG, with the essentially random collection of builds and experience on hand, being ready for anything means being ready to rez. I think a monk should always have a hard rez in a PUG. And there's not really any excuse for anyone in the team not having at the very least a signet for heat-of-battle situations where the monk should be spending their time and energy keeping the remaining players alive. It's not about maximising your damage output or running some build you saw on GuildWiki, it's about being able to cope with and ultimately survive as many awkward situations as possible. You might be a caster who is used to going balls-out for damage output but in a PUG you have some responsibility not to overburden the rest of the team, especially if it's not comprised of the ideal configuration of healers/nukers/tanks.
It's something that really puts me off raiding, because that really does come down to learning how to beat the encounter using some optimised group build. Because everything's so predictable. "At 40% health this boss will use such-and-such a skill". Then if you fail, it's off to the damage logs to see who wasn't pulling their weight. There's no room for "oh shit, where did they come from?". Or "He wasn't there last time!". And yet players continue to delude themselves that learning an encounter somehow passes for some sort of "skill".
What you do in a guild group, or in some well-documented high-end encounter, is up to you. But don't assume that your low regard for PUGs will be interpreted as you having some sort of exceptional ability, because I for one have greater respect for players who are willing and able to succeed in any situation, not just the ones where they've stacked the odds in their own favour.
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