PUGs Hurt

[Snarky]

PUGs hurt, PUGs scars
PUGs wounds and marks
Any heart
Not tough or strong enough
To take a lot of pain, take a lot of pain
PUGs are like a cloud
Holds a lot of rain
PUGs hurt
Ooh, ooh PUGs hurt

 

Joined a TinPex.  It was a rough start. Not real fast. I'm on a Blaster.  We got a Tank.  i immediately put a waypoint on them so I know my safe zone.  They are not really heading deep into the mix very fast though.  I take one death clearing robots.  We get to the tunnels.  Head into the first Pylon room.  Crowd of tentacles.  No Tank.  After a long minute I am like "Where is the Tank?"  "Clearing the mess you left"  Aw shit.  The Tank is running it as a kill all/kill most.  sigh.  okay.  Quite a few deaths racked up before we even clear the first two pylons.  Turns out the organizer (a stalker) did not have their Alpha slotted.  Someone quit.  We ran that as 7, finished.  It was not pretty.  i will give the Tank this, they did a dam fine job with Battle Maiden.  Stubborn that Tank.

We recruited an 8th and finished the seciond half.  It was real similar to the first half.  We got through it.

 

Ooh, ooh PUGs hurt....

Edited June 24, 2021 by Snarky

[Ghost]

I gotta ask - did the Stalker advertise that alpha needs to be slotted?

 

maybe they don’t even know what it means

[Techwright]

Normally I love PUG'ing.  There have been a few frustrating problems of late, every single one of them related to poor communication.

 

1. Not getting informed up front as to how much we clear or what speed we're moving through stuff.

2. A few with speed or stealth whipping through a long maze, getting to the main target, then standing around expecting those who know they're super obvious to all NPCs to somehow run the gauntlet to them without fighting their way through.

3. Changing the difficulty level or announcing a "Master of..." run after recruitment has finished, and without consulting the team.

4. Squishies deciding they're Tank of the Year material and rushing a mob, usually the mob the rest of the team with tanks and brutes is not targeting at the moment, then, if somehow still standing, dragging mob 2 back to the team at mob 1, often passing through mob 3 in the process.   Lerooooy Jenkins!

5.  Very similar to #4, impatient teammates deciding the tank can handle it and deliberately rounding up mob after mob and taking them to the tank, before the team has cleared what the tank can truly control.

 

I might be able to think of another, but outside of those, most PUGs I've been on have been fun.

[Pixie_Knight]

I usually only PUG, if I team up at all. That said, they can be a mixed bag. Sometimes the team just meshes, and you end up running down the streets of Steel Canyon during a Posi TF in the classic flying V formation, completely by accident. Other times you get a team leader who recruits your TA/A defender after you got done explaining to them that you can't heal, and they yell into team chat "YAY! A HEALER! WE ARE GODS NOW!" They then ramp up the difficulty to the absolute max, when the party is level 5 and 6 and doing Hollows missions. Yes, that seriously happened to me back when Trick Arrow was first added.

 

Of all the PUGs though, the ones I absolutely refuse to join is the "blind invite PUG." If you can't be bothered to ask me if I'm even interested in joining your team, I can't be bothered joining your train wreck of a team. You don't want teammates. You want warm bodies to raise the difficulty so you can pretend it's still Issue 3 and there's no aggo cap, Global Defense Nerf, and Enhancement Diversification while soloing the mission.

[Lockpick]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

We recruited an 8th and finished the seciond half.  It was real similar to the first half.  We got through it.

 

Wait, whut!?  You can add people to a TF after it has started?  I didn't think that was possible...

[Pixie_Knight]

Just now, Lockpick said:

 

Wait, whut!?  You can add people to a TF after it has started?  I didn't think that was possible...

 

That was a change made late in Live, I think. About the same time that the Positron TF got split into two smaller TF.

[Techwright]

22 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

 

Wait, whut!?  You can add people to a TF after it has started?  I didn't think that was possible...

 

21 minutes ago, Pixie_Knight said:

 

That was a change made late in Live, I think. About the same time that the Positron TF got split into two smaller TF.

 

😲  Are you kidding me?? (Hmm, it's not April 1.)  I don't think that's common knowledge.  I've participated in a host of TF's where someone (or worse, more) dropped and the team didn't recruit a replacement because it was assumed we could not.

Edited June 25, 2021 by Techwright

[Pixie_Knight]

For most of CoH's life you couldn't recruit more to a TF if someone dropped. And still can't recruit more if doing an ouro flashback for a story arc. Which kind of makes sense, since you're a time traveler in that case.

[TraumaTrain]

What?! You can add people to a TF already in progress?

[oedipus_tex]

You can recruit more during a Sewer trial for sure. I'm unsure about other trials, but I use the Sewer trial trick to get teams moving with 6 members, knowing I can add more if they /tell mid mission.

 

Unless something has changed I don't think you can recruit during a Task Force. Tinpex is two separate TFs with a break in the middle where you can recruit new members. I've had that happen fairly often on these TFs.

[Snarky]

the add was for the second TF of the tin pex

[siolfir]

1 hour ago, Pixie_Knight said:

Of all the PUGs though, the ones I absolutely refuse to join is the "blind invite PUG." If you can't be bothered to ask me if I'm even interested in joining your team, I can't be bothered joining your train wreck of a team.

I've only had 3 blind invites on Homecoming, ever. All three were for my character Worst Healer Ever... a level 50 Psi/Bio Stalker.

[Pixie_Knight]

I remember making a DM/Regen scrapper named Ultra Healer back on live. I'd get blind invites by people who saw the name, and assumed I was one of those crappy "empathy/doesn't matter" healer builds that only ever uses the direct heals from Empathy, the rez, and the direct heals/rez from the Medicine pool. Got yelled at a few times for falsely advertising myself as a healer. So I'd point out "But I do heal... myself. Check my badges, I have a whole bunch of the healing badges."

[Ghost]

99% of the time I am either joining, or starting a PUG TF.

Every so often, they turn into a disaster.  Most are very enjoyable.
 

Guess I’m lucky 🙂
 

or I’m the cause of everyone else’s bad experience 😶😶😢

Edited June 25, 2021 by Ghost

[Pixie_Knight]

When I do PUG, they tend to be a mixed bag. Some are great, some are horrible, most are average. It really depends on if you have a collection of 8 people soloing who just happen to be near each other, or actual team members who communicate goals, intentions, and are willing to work together.

 

It's blind invite PUGs that I find are the true bane. I've rarely encountered one that was worth being part of.

[Carnifax]

I love PuGs. Always have, always will. The chaos is fun. PuG TFs can be amazing. 

 

My worst PuG experience was a random live one at level 49 on my Plant/Emp where the tank leader was a control freak and kept yelling at me for controlling rather than healing him. So the next spawn I did as he asked, which meant he took the full uncontrolled alpha and melted. Everything had to be herded by them and as far as they were concerned I was there to make them awesome, nothing more. 

 

What made it really memorable was that I actually dinged 50 mid-mission (only my 2nd 50 ever) and it totally soured the joy. So much so that when it came to remaking them on Homcoming I made them Plant/Storm to get as far away from "u're a healor" as possible (plus Plant/Storm is MUCH more enjoyable).

[TheOtherTed]

To butcher the Chuck Yeager quote, if a PUG can finish a TF, it's a good PUG.  If you get a story or two out of it, it's an outstanding PUG.

 

On Live I was picked up by a SG team who didn't have enough people online to do a thing.  The difficulty was set at full max, and though we weren't doing a TF, it was some mission that I remember as being pretty darn tough.  On the one hand, I was absolutely amazed at how efficient the team was - they steamrolled everything in their path, and the final Arch-Villain went down almost before I got to see him.  On the other hand, I was completely bored out of my mind.  No emergency situations, no tactical adjustments, no "oops" moments, no pauses, no banter.

 

At the end, we parted on friendly terms, but I swore I'd never run with them again.  Gimme a free-wheeling, barely competent PUG any day.

[Gulbasaur]

10 hours ago, Lockpick said:

Wait, whut!?  You can add people to a TF after it has started?  I didn't think that was possible...

Apex/Tin Mage II is two separate task forces that are typically run as a pair. I think that's what they mean.

[Snarky]

39 minutes ago, Gulbasaur said:

Apex/Tin Mage II is two separate task forces that are typically run as a pair. I think that's what they mean.

yes, i stayed through the 2nd TF.  I really try not to leave crap I join.  Plus, one part of me had already decided to write about this lol.  I was honestly amazed the two AVs and the two giant bots at the end of the second dropped pretty fast.  Only 2 deaths there I think.  One was me.  Sigh.  It was a rough night.  

[TraumaTrain]

42 minutes ago, Snarky said:

Only 2 deaths there I think.  One was me.  Sigh.  It was a rough night.  

 

Blaster gonna blast.

 

[ZemX]

PuGs are the only reason I play this game.   Endless variety.  I'd get bored of a competent, regular, team I think.

 

And truth be told most PuGs work.  It's that they end up working differently often enough that it's interesting.

[Yomo Kimyata]

I've PUGged against Recluse.

And I've PUGged against Mynx.

I've PUGged against them alllllllllll.

PUGs stink.

[subbacultchas]

PUG Life! I love it, actively prefer pugs for the chaos and not knowing what the hell you're going to get any time you join one. I PUG pretty exclusively, which may be partly impacted by most of my RL friends having moved on from COH for now too. Embrace the chaos.

[Shred Monkey]

I don't think I've ever seen a Tin-pex that cleared the sewer before.  I wouldn't be opposed to it of the leader advertised as a clear all, but I think it's normal assume objectives only for Tin-pex.

 

   

Edited June 25, 2021 by Shred Monkey

[Snarky]