Your positive experience about LFG and PUGs

We often read about problems and trouble related to the LFG and inviting PUGs to groups, but those situations are only a small fraction of what really goes on. The majority of these runs work out pretty well. There are even some cheering situations, where the player or the entire group end up with a better experience. I bet everyone of you has a couple of nice anecdotes of runs that turned out better than expected. It would be a helpful contrast to all that negativity that exists for this topic in general. Show us how well runs can be if the rng strikes in your favor. How you have met new players who may have joined your static groups or guilds, just after having a nice time in an instance.

I have three of these examples on my own:

The first was a boring TA Explorable run on a boring sunday afternoon, a couple of weeks ago. We formed a guild-group with 3 people and one of our team decided to run the LFG. I was not really into that idea, due to the bad experiences I had in the past and all the prejudices I gathered from the forums over the years. But I agreed to try it. We got two players who appeared to be both quite attached to instanced content, meta builds, roations and also skips. We did not specify anything in the LFG, but started to run the path as usual = killing all enemies. At first, the PUGs just ignored the trash mobs, then they decided to join us. They helped us killing them faster and even showed us a couple of hidden mob groups, we never really noticed. It was a fun experience without any single word in chat.

The second situation was Vale Guardian raid training we ran recently. It was in the late evening, two of our members (guild-run) had to go, so we decided to try the LFG once again. Two nice Guardians joined. We quickly explained the situation, told them we might fail a few more times and quit. They were fine with it. We failed three times at rather suprising situations, mostly the colored detonations where we messed up the coordination. Once our healer got knocked out of the ring. We were almost giving up. Then we gave it one more try and made it, with only one person getting defeated right after the first phase. The PUGs were happy about the easy clear, and we parted. Our members were finally able to unlock their raid-masteries. Not a single toxic chat, the PUGs were all calm and nice. (Most of our members did not run on meta-builds at all.)

The third situation happened to me when doing HotW with a guildmember. We created a party of 4 and invited a PUG who also appeared to be quite professional compared to us. He also died a couple of times, but he obviously out-damaged us with ease. Almost at the end, one of us had to leave his computer shortly. So we sat down and waited. The PUG asked about our guild and what we focus on. We told him that we are not a hardcore guild and rather focus on RL > everything, calm environment, social guild, play as you want - there are many of these guilds nowadays. Although he seemed not to be of our kind at all at first, he was quite interested in joining our guild. I gave him an invite and he instantly joined after the run. He did not stay for long, but we enjoyed his company for the time being. Calm and patient.

Those were three of my recent experiences with the LFG, situations that turned out better than expected. Countering the prejudices. We have jerks in all game-modes, but I begin to doubt there is a higher chance to run into them in the LFG. Looking forward to the next try.

Thank u for starting this thread :PIm a pug player. I join pugs every day to clear raid wings normally. Today i joined a pug group and we started W4. We cleared each boss with 1 try and it was pretty fun and smooth... some ppl even finished their legendary armor achivment with usAfter that we decided to go to do other wings too... we ended up clearing 3 wings very smoothly and nearly 1 try for all of them. Alon g the way ppl told jokes and we overall had a great time being in a pug group with no frustration.

Another time i realised i had an invite to do strikes with some ppl. I told them how they know me and they said that i was joining their squad for a week and a half and Ive done pretty well when i was with them and they wanted me for their daily strikes run so i happily joined them as a dps. We had a nice time and they seemed very cheered up and friendly. They even let us use random build for the fun at ez strikes so it even got better for me so i could play my condi D/D daredevil (what? I love it xD). At the end i got invited to their guild and they let me to come and play with them for fractals CMs and T4s and do various raids with them and they even teached me fractal 100cm so i finally could do it and join cm groups!They also teached me some raid bosses that is hard to find any training for them like largos and qadim1 so i finally knew the mechs and have bunch of kp for Q1 and can join groups for clearing it :PSo my tryharding for top dps at strikes finally resulted in learning some hard encounters that i barely could learn them alone by pugging. And im thankful for finding such great ppl in community and im happy i got rewarded for my little hardwork for actually learning my classCurrently i am trying to learn more and more of classes and roles and do some dungeons daily for monk runes so i can setup my druid and make training runs with the help of my new guild for new players that actually want to LEARN and EXPERIENCE the pve endgame and have fun while doing it like i did and help grow the raiding community and show that there is ALOT of positive aspects in raids and they are far more than the toxic and negative aspects of the raids communityThese are my 2 cents.Lets all help try to see the positive stuff in raids :P

Good day ,

I don't hear much about the lfg being a bad place tbh. I've been playing since launch and the lfg and at the time outside websites were the only way I cleared dungeons and then raids. I have pugged every end game raid and fractals with full clears on the weekly at this point.

Oddly enough I have met some other people through a guild or discord who had either never pugged or disliked pugs l. My overall experience over the years is raider pugs are usually very experienced and usually have a ton of classes at their disposal. However with continued failures many pugs will leave. This is expected as they have no commitment long term anyways.

Fractal pugs are a mixed bag at t4. It's such a toss up that we actually take the hb and alac roles for ourselves and pug dps since we can carry groups from our end. T4 pugs will also leave on continued failures and frankly it's for the best anyways. Fracs are daily runs and getting them done fast means we can all move onto something else.

Back in the day I didn't have a dps meter or any idea of builds or team comp so I can only thank all the pugs that worked with me to clear those dungeons. Good experience overall at the time. Recently my opinion has changed in that experienced player rarely ever run this content. The result is inexperienced players even with new builds getting blasted by admittedly old and poorly designed content. I would pug some dps and find an experienced dungeon runner if you want to do this content.

I tried strikes and of course and lead pugs there as well. Very mixed bag on this side mostly due to the very low difficulty. Once I knew certain strikes were memes I either low manned the strikes with some buddies or lfged for whatever garbage team came in. Overall an absolute funny time with some real meme teams.

After using a static for a few months to clear raids I can say the only real difference is the known quality of certain rolls and the lack of down time. I wouldn't bother forming statics to run anything else. The population of good players makes it meaningless. I have no idea what hotw is but on our end pugs are 99 percent of my time in the game. The only time we had people issues were when individuals over estimated their own performance or when the performance was low enough to cause problems. Either scenario results in me or my party withdrawing or people are kicked.

In summary pugs are life for most of us

Cheers

My favourite LFG moment was when I completed Dhuum CM with a full group of pugs. I had been pugging it for weeks with little success and just happened to join this group at about 1am. They were all french, but had forgotten to put that in LFG for the last spot. It started as badly as most other pugged CMs go, but surprisingly noone quit. About an hour of fails later, and the group realized we might have a chance at this. Brand new discord was created so we could communicate properly and every single one of them kindly spoke English just so I could understand. It took us 4 hours in total and everyone was exhausted but after many many wipes, many screams of RUN IM DOWN WITH BOMB or HELP KEVIN HAS CAUGHT ME, we killed it. They were all awesome people and not a single one of them flamed, even when really really stupid mistakes were made.

I also have loved first day of new raid wings where everyone is excited, noone has a clue what they are doing and you get some really weird strats while people try and figure out how to deal with new mechanics.

Last week, one of my static groups moved our usual clear to a different time slot and so I had to change one of my guild raid training schedule. As a result, only four guuldies showed up for the training and we barely made half of the squad with enough support roles. I made a bold move to pug the rest along with the druid and off chrono roles. We started out at Xera, my LFG simply states "Xera training: LF Chrono, druid, DPS. Leyline gliding required". Some DPS joined without realizing the needs for the mastery. We gently explained to them and they left without any issues. After 15 minutes, we had an exp raider as chrono, a friend and also experienced as druid, a semi experienced DPS and two new DPS (fairly low AP, too). So we reached about a perfect comp for training: 5 never killed the bosses, 3 with speedclear and training experience and 2 can perform their role adequately. At first, we didn't even hit the DPS check for the orb phase (pre-event). I thought it was foreshadowing a bizarre occurrence ahead, but after we gave tips on a more bursty rotation, our new DPS adapted and we cleared the pre-event smoothly. To my surprise, the group has enough DPS to phase Xera without moving (which I honestly didn't expect from 5 new and non-optimal DPS). We wiped 2-3 times when people died to gliding and so not enough players to cover the mechanics. As soon as we smooth out the issues, we cleanly killed Xera without any struggle.

In high spirit, we moved to Deimos training and some of the pugs decided to stay for fun. At this point, I admit it was my lucky night to have a friend PM me that she wanted to join and she could hand kite. Our druid friend had to go to bed and a Snow Crow member joined us through LFG. In the previous week, we had spent two and a half hours on Deimos to bring him down to 20%. Even though the basic mechanics have been covered (and ingrained), I had no expectation of a swift kill. Well, somehow we made it in the second try, in melee style, no less. In the hindsight, a combination of a confident HK, a flexible and well aware druid (thanks to my SC friend calmly rezzing the tank twice) and the group following the instructions to the tee really helps our progression.

We didn't stop there and went on training CA and Largos. We killed CA without much troubles and had a lot of practice in for Largos.

Even though I got lucky helps from pug and through my friend list, that was a successful training night. I'm glad that people have made their first kills for those more challenging bosses and gain confidence to seek out more groups.

Tl;Dr: This is from NA, the land of pug desert and toxic casuals, in the deadiest hours in west coast. We managed to pull off some kills with a mixed experienced pug. We had such a good time that our impromptu training led to two more kills after the first.

I've ended up commanding the north meta for Drizzlewood a couple of times (comm'd up for south and then stayed for north, taken over after a comm has left after south). I've not had any problems - I do "everyone runs together" squads so that people can get all their achievements. I also ask that we work a "rez as we go" strategy, but I think most people do that anyway. The only "problem" I had was people not separating into three even groups for taking down the citadel wall, but I sorted that last time by creating 3 subgroups (heh!)When I do daily fractals, I just sit at T1s as I like doing them quick. I PUG for those, and haven't had any problems. I'm friendly when people join, and that (I think) sets the scene for the runs. The majority of the time I've had the entire group run for all the dailies plus the recommended. I've run these with quite new players (few mastery points).It seems I have been lucky in PUG strike missions. While I don't do these very often, the PUGs I have been in have been pleasant experiences.My only ::headdesk:: experience has been doing gold Boss Blitz runs. It appears that putting down markers, putting the boss number plus marker into the squad message, and allowing people to move to the subgroup they want 0 - within an overall request of having roughly equal numbers at each boss - means that some bosses (Kuraii, Pyro) get about 3 players. That said, when asked in map chat, players have moved around - they have also read the boss health information in map chat - and they do go back to spawn after their boss is killed.

My favorite LFG moment was probably around W3 was released, when raids were still fresh and not forgoten by anet has we see now.Although i had a static and never used LFG for anything other then getting replacements for members that cant make it, at the time i had loads of free time and went on LFG just for some fun. I entered a squad of players trying to learn and practice VG and since i never had any issue of talking to people on voice i joined their discord, quickly understood they had no idea what they were doing and gave them some advices, but at the same time i never saw a group of people so happy even wiping over and over again. A few days later a german girl from that squad asked me to help them again in getting Vale Guardian, and explained that they are in a very small and casual guild, and their guild leader had a rare and deadly cancer. The guild leader, a sweet 30 year old woman in a wheelchair with very little pleasures left in life other then playing gw2, had a bucket list of things to do and one of them was kiling a raid boss.I put on my drill instructor cap and went for it, after practicing with them for a month, once or twice a week whenever people had time, they got VG, discord was filled with screams of joy, the guild leader had her objective fulfilled.Even though that guild no longuer exists and none of them plays GW2, to this day i still talk to them on a regular basis.

I don't really have that one specific experience to share since I've been raiding and doing fractals ever since they became available and there were simply so many lovely memories made. so entertain the iidea of me just rambling about five wonderful years in raids.

It was my guild at the time who introduced me. I was playing the infamous bearbow ranger at the time and was fairly new to the game when Wing 1 released. I joined my group on the long and tedious journey that became VG as bear bow simply is not a good build and we know it but the group was very laid back and simply enjoying the progression of working out mechanics. The songs I can sing about bearbow and 1.6k toughness minion mancer, it must have been a nightmare to play with me.Little by little we worked out how VG worked, i was sent on green duty (as I wasn't dealing damage anyway. Yes, that talk happened and it was terribly embarassing but all in good spirit). I then worked on my Condi Reaper since that was the next best alternative and started actually hurting the boss beyond a few tickles. My guild leader was playing druid for us and as my comfort on the reaper was fairly minimal I asked him to show me what he was doing.Long story short I learned the basics of druid, picked up the gear and healed with my guild leader for the weeks to come until VG finally laid dead to our feet. The cheers and screenshots taken that day paved a way for me to become not only a druid main but also a raider as we took on Gorseval of course.

From that point on I joined more and more groups, cleared Wing 1 and 2 and later on even Wing 3 (which had me pick up Arc DPS since my experimental Staff Weaver gameplay was a sight to behold as I was told. Somehow I did better on the minionmancer). By the time Wing 4 came around I started experimenting with statics and later on started my own trainings guild. Which, frankly, was teaching me more than any of my trainees. I learned how to break down and teach the bosses I was familiar with by then, polished my druid gameplay to a level I would scoff at and grin in amusement at thse days and made some wonderful memories with people who thought they'd never get into the content and had gotten their first VG clear under much the same cheers and loads of pictures taken as I had back in the day.All self congratulating aside, it was leading trainings that taught me how to not only be a commander that knows what's going on but also a player that knows how to handle groups at their worst. You don't get more stressful healing experiences than in a trainingsgroup on VG.

I have fond memories of my static clearing Gorseval with a metric ton of Power Tempests that didn't quiete know how to coordinate spirit weapons yet and thus the discord was filled with outrage, groans and overwhelming laughs from the support players. All of my statics started out as a bunch of pugss just giving it a shot together. None of them remain but there were months of fun had, experienced gained and simply wonderful times spent there.

Remind me not, however of the time when Wing 5 was released and, after days of blind progression, we tried teaching pugs how to do Dhuum. I swear, my pugs still aren't aware that the pattern isn't some eldritch summoning ritual but merely a circle. And the pugs I find over LFG tend to be less than optimal. Bearbows, a complete lack of reading comprehension and complete brain lags were pretty much my bread and butter. I made it through about a thousand or so LI worth of Pug clears and countless more simply because I enjoyed raiding. We did the math, I had 24 cleared Samarogs one week. Someone talk about not finding groups.

To everyone looking to get into raids - Yes, the common advice is to find a group. Yes, it is good advice. But LFG can be a good place too. I have led trainings over LFG, usually with at least two experienced people, simply to show off the bosses and their mechanics to people because either they approached me about it or just mentioned in passing that they have never seen Sloth in person. I am fairly laid back in those runs. Bring a class you are comfortable with, show me that you know your role or are willing to let me alter your build and show you how to press your buttons, listen or read what I'm explaining and be okay with adapting your playstyle if you make a mistake.This seems to have been a low requirement to some people, the occasional toxicity of Lfg makes it into the run and, since the comm tag is on my head, the people demanding meta builds and instant clears in first time trainings get kicked. New players are new players and can learn in peace in my groups. I had a lot of fun leading these groups and got first kills with a few hundred players.I distinctly remember the release of W6 and eight hours of bashing my head against the brick wall that is Largos with people who very much did not have the DPS to do it but were all more or less flawless by the end of it. All of the people who stuck around are fine on the boss nowadays, talk about dedication!

Aside form the anecdotes about statics and trainings I have been a very avid pug all throughout my career in the game and all memes aside, all the moments where I wanted to bash my head into a wall because reading is very difficult on both EU and NA aside - I have had nothing but positive memories while pugging, all the stresss and all the times it was difficult are outnumbered tenfold by ten random people trying to work their way through an encounter. I admit, a lot of these times ended up with me beeing given the commander tag because its seemingly the result of making suggestions in pugs but people are willing do do much more than we give each other credit for. Screaming doesn't help, but a gentle "would you try this for me, please" goes a long way.

My favorite memories, probably were made when I made the switch from EU to NA. The nature of statics beeing much more prevalent and welcoming than EU was something I had to get accustomed to, surely but I found a wonderful group, entirely by accident who invited me on an alt with nothing than a heal scourge and an exotic Dragon Hunter and went on to make many more memories than any other static I founded or joined before they disbanded for time reasons.

Join LFG. See if you find people you can tag or get along with and make your own statics if you are aiming for better performance or more structured play. I hear Siax iand Cairn are still looking for people to dip their toes into speedrunning and lowmanning. If you want a laid back, casual experience in raids and high end fractals though, LGF is a perfectly welcoming place as long as you are willing to do your homework and work with the nice other idiots, not against them because frankly, as long as we don't get the 10% DPS guild buff from SC and other elitist guilds, we are all idiots in this game.

I hope to ffind LFG just as chaotic as it is now in Cantha,a veteran who won't be around for a while