PuGs: The Ugly & The Good

A PuG, or pick-up group, is a group formed on-the-fly with members you don't necessarily know or run with regularly. PuGs are popular for 3- and 6-person instances. However, running a raid with a pick-up group can be a risky proposition; many raids require a coordination that far exceeds what you get from most PuGs, and the strengths or weaknesses of your fellows can only be learned through repeatedly running with them.

Pugs are perfectly okay for some raids, such as the Turtle or the Watcher, which simply require a knowledge of your class role and the mechanics of the MoBs. For other raids, including the Rift and Dar Narbugud, group coordination becomes much more important. Instances such as Barad Guldur and Ost Dunhoth require even greater coordination.

Anyway, Monday night (June 16), while I was finishing up the final slayer deed in Mirkwood, someone asked for a group to run Barad Guldur (BG). I wanted to run it, but was somewhat reluctant. I've run BG a few times with a regular group, but we've never gotten passed Durchest, the first boss. Trying it with a group of people I don't know gave me pause.

In the end, I decided to join, if only for more experience. Unfortunately, the group was every bit as uncoordinated as I feared. during The Gauntlet (a running fight to the first boss), individual members repeatedly died, and we finally wiped. The second time, we successful reached the Durchest.

The fight against Durchest was a disaster: the tanks couldn't maintain aggro and allowed Durchest to run all over the room. As a result, his attacks were all over the place based on who was attacking him at the moment. One of the tanks repeatedly died, which is a bad, bad thing, since Durchest earns a healing buff each time someone dies; he can stack the buffs and use them when he's low on health. Obviously, the more buffs he stacks, the longer the fight will last. Also, our healer wasn't doing a very good job with healing. She was doing big heals and eating through power so fast I couldn't keep her charged. I finally had to stop trying and leave her to her own devices (earning some choice words).

After two attempts, the instance reset itself, and we left.

Then, Tuesday night, I joined a group to run Halls of Crafting, an instance in Moria that is part of the Lothlorien cluster. After the first fight against a group of trash MoBs, I was questioning the wisdom of this decision. It seemed like it would be a repeat of the Barad Guldur run: Tanks who can't hold aggro, a healer who doesn't heal adequately, and group members who run around aggroing willy-nilly. Because of this seeming lack of coordination, I died several times.

Luckily, by the third trash fight, things got much better, with everyone falling into step. We started dealing with the trash MoBs easily and reached the first boss quite quickly. Unfortunately, one of the group members went link dead at this moment. We waited, but after 15 minutes, it was obvious that he was coming back, and the group leader recruited another person to take his place.

At that point, things truly fell into place. We took down the first boss quickly and easily, then moved on to the second boss, who seemed to die even before the doors closed. The final boss didn't die that quickly, but he went down easily.

The group leader also wanted to pick up some items from Sammath Gûl, one of the instances in the Dol Guldur cluster. We went into the dungeon, and successfully fought our way through the first boss, who went down without issue. At the second boss, our group leader went link dead. We waited around for awhile, but it became obvious that he wasn't coming back. At that point, we recruited a Guardian to take his place.

We took down the remaining bosses fairly easily - even completing hard mode for extra medallions.

After completing this instance, we decided to take on the Grand Stairs, mostly because the Guardian needed a few medallions in order to complete his Moria armour set.

Now, I have learned to despise GS: the instance is farmed for medallions, so it gets run all the time. With the wrong group, it can be a nightmare, and I seem to always be a part of the wrong group: GS has rarely gone easily.

Luckily, we had fallen into sync, and this run became perhaps the best I've ever participated in. We were burning everything down quickly and easily - even Igash fell within 3 minutes. It was quite amazing (we also went back and took out a troll because our Mini needed one for a deed).

I hope that this particular group can join up more often. I'd love to do some other instances with them.