User:Quizzical/PUG

There's a common refrain in many games that pick-up groups (henceforth, PUGs) are garbage, whereas groups of guildies are far superior. To that I say: hogwash.

To be sure, those who have grouped with many PUGs will surely have stories about how spectacularly awful they can be. But the problem isn't that the people aren't all in the same guild: guild groups can be just as bad. Nearly everyone you could group with is someone's guildie, and whether or not the players are in the same guild does not affect their skill. Indeed, do you personally play far worse when grouped with people of other guilds than with people in your own guild? If not, why would you expect others to do so?

To the contrary, it's fairly predictable which PUGs will complete a mission and which are headed for an inevitable wipe. If you want the PUGs you join to be good groups, the solution is to reject those that are going to wipe, and stay with those that will be good groups.

One common approach is to just take whoever will join, and once the group is full, start the mission with whatever people have. That this can often be disastrous for PUGs is a statement about a flawed approach to grouping, and it says nothing about PUGs. If you were to grab henchmen and heroes at random without considering whether you have a reasonably balanced group or have all the critical roles filled, that would quite often lead to mission failure, as well.

There are two main questions to consider. The first is whether the individual players in your group can be useful. To this end, it is useful to require everyone in the group to link their build and their max health. Some players have the idea that all they need to do is a lot of damage, and someone else can worry about keeping the group alive. The problem is that in most hard mode missions, damage really doesn't matter, so such players are dead weights. Checking builds and max HP can catch such players, and you can require them to either change to a better build or gear or kick them from the group (or leave the group yourself if you're not the leader).

It's generally best to give players some leeway in picking their own builds, provided that the build is reasonable. Players tend to be better at using skills that they're familiar and comfortable with than whatever skills you might personally use. The problem is that some players come up with unreasonable builds that could easily be dramatically and unambiguously improved.

So what constitutes a reasonable build? The first thing to look at is the skills used. Very few players have trouble coming up skills that will do adequate damage. Many don't bring adequate defensive skills, instead implicitly expecting someone else to do all the work. Check to make sure everyone in the group has some sort of defensive skill appropriate to the class, whether blocking, weakening, +armor, self-heal, or whatever. Also check to make sure everyone in the group has a resurrection skill (which can be a signet).

Next, check the attribute point allocations. One thing to check is whether the player is using most of his attribute points--and in particular, has done the attribute quests. The common attribute point allocations are 12/12, 12/12/3, 12/11/6, 12/10/8, 12/9/9, 11/11/8, and 11/10/10; if a player can't get to any of these, not having attribute quests done is generally a bad sign, unless in easy mode of a mission early in a campaign. Putting points in more than three attributes often means that a player will be mediocre at a lot of things and good at nothing. Using four attributes is occasionally justified, but five or more virtually never is.

Also check to see if the player's attributes match the skills he is using. Note that the primary attribute should usually get points, too, even if the player doesn't use any skills linked to it. If the player uses a martial weapon, that attrbute should generally get at least 12 points counting runes, and hence at least 10 points not counting runes. Even competent players sometimes switch builds and forget to reallocate the points.

One popular build to look out for is fire nukers. The build is designed to either complete the content fast or wipe fast--and usually the latter if you're doing something hard. In hard mode especially, mobs very quickly move out of the nukes, so you sometimes end up with a build designed purely for damage (which is useless to begin with) that ends up not even doing much damage.

Another popular build to beware of is a minion master. Know the content you're going to do: sometimes a minion master is highly useful, especially in point defense missions. But minions have a tendency to run off and grab extra groups, which can be disastrous in some areas. Also be ready to reject minion masters in places where they don't apply for other reasons, such as a lack of exploitable corpses, mobs stealing minions, mobs having skills that almost instantly kill minions, etc. Some people like to bring a minion master everywhere, without regard to whether it fits the content at hand. If a necromancer player originally plans on being a minion master, he can usually switch to a different build and still be useful.

I also said above to check max HP. The problem is that some players get ideas about loading up on superior attribute runes to create a suicide build. Once dead, it doesn't matter what a player's attributes are. Some players do this to their heroes, too. Anything over 500 HP is usually good, and 480 HP is often acceptable, though it means that the player hasn't equipped his heroes. How much less than 480 HP you're willing to take can depend some on the mission, but be prepared to insist that players change to pve-useable gear or leave the group.

The other major thing to check for in forming a group is whether the various individual builds can combine to properly balanced group. Know what the critical roles for the mission at hand are, and be sure to reserve spots for those roles. Depending on the classes of players who join, they may have to be filled by heroes. If you have all but one spot in a group filled and no healers, for example, no matter what you put in that last spot, it's not going to be a good group. The vital roles to fill usually include three healers (or two in areas where you don't get a full party of eight), and may include a character that can daze, weaken, blind, or slow mobs, remove enchantments, hexes, or stances, interrupt, use wards, or whatever the mission at hand calls for.

The vital roles for a mission generally won't fill all of the party spots, so you'll have a few party openings left over. You can freely add players with reasonable builds who can't fill a vital role, though it's best to encourage players of a class that can fill a needed role to do so. You can assign heroes to bring whatever you need that the players don't have, and thus, in the words of Donald Rumsfeld, "go to war with the army you have, not the army you want".

A critical thing to check in how builds mesh is resurrection skills. Ideally, they won't be necessary, but in practice, they often are. You want to complete the mission even if some things go wrong, not just only succeed if you have a flawless run. Most resurrecting is done in combat, and resurrection signets (or for players, sunspear rebirth signets) are by far the best resurrection skill for this. As such, a group should have several resurrection signets.

A group also wants a few permanent rez skills, to save signets when out of combat, or to use once the group runs out of rez signets. Bringing more than about three of these is a waste. It is generally better for players who have a lot of points in the linked attribute of such resurrection skills to bring the permanent rezzes, so that when the rez is used, it will have points in it. Healing monks (restore life, renew life, resurrection chant), restoration or communing ritualists (flesh of my flesh, lively was naomei, restoration), and paragons (signet of return) all get such skills; characters of other classes should usually bring a rez signet instead. Note that heroes do not use lively was naomei or restoration effectively.

I've also left rebirth off the list of rez skills. While popular, it's not a terribly useful rez skill, as it seems to be relied upon mainly to cure player stupidity, which is something that no skill can do. The players most insistent on bringing rebirth tend to be the ones dead and waiting to be resurrected in the event of a partial wipe.

One word of warning: players who try to avoid bringing a rez skill tend to be used to not using it, and likely won't use it when they ought to. That henchmen and heroes will resurrect on their own so much leads some players to get lazy like that. While I would insist on everyone bringing a rez skill anyway, this is something to note when evaluating the skill of the players in your group.

Another thing to watch for is duplication of skills. For example, one player bringing recuperation is often helpful, but two players bringing it is redundant. Multiple party members casting the same hexes or enchantments may end up overwriting each other's casts a lot, and the second one may not add much value over the first.

If players change builds, ask them to link their build again. Some players will say that they've made changes, but not do so. Some will make changes that you didn't request, and while not necessarily a bad thing, it does make it important to check again for skill duplication and making sure the vital roles are still filled.

Checking builds for reasonableness does take time. Some players are unwilling to work out strategy ahead of time, and just want to charge in and hope for the best. If this is likely to work, then a proper group of henchmen and heroes should be nearly guaranteed success with even a sloppy run, and there's little point in organizing a PUG in the first place. This is how you get the spectacular failure stories of PUGs.

To state the same point more forcefully, if group members pressure you to hurry up and start the mission, the proper response is to slow down. Something about the group is almost certainly amiss, and it will help for you to find it before it causes a wipe in the mission. Players who want to just charge in and hope the group gets lucky tend not to have useful builds or gear, and not be the best players once in the mission, either. While I wouldn't advocate the immediate booting of players who join the group and immediately say "1" (meaning they're ready to start), I would certainly condone it.

It is also important to communicate strategies with the group. It's not enough to just tell someone to bring a skill that causes dazed; they have to know which particular mobs they're supposed to daze, or else they probably won't. Discuss mob targetting priority if it matters. It can sometimes help to talk about whether the group should focus fire on particular mobs, or just let everyone pick a convenient target. The group should certainly discuss who will be responsible for pulling mobs and to where, as two different players pulling different groups of mobs at the same time can cause a wipe.

A group needs someone to coordinate strategy, and in most PUGs, if you don't, no one else will, either. That means that the role of group leader often falls to you, though if someone else competent wants to fill the role, it's usually best to just let him. Eight characters trying to independently solo a mission at the same time are unlikely to be successful.

Indeed, such group communication is something that players implicitly do with henchmen and heroes. It doesn't suddenly become irrelevant when there are other players in the group.