The weird people you meet in Group Finder.

[Tharandil]

Last week a DF run with a guy who’s new to the game and wanted it for story progression. We got a group, and entered the the portal (no gf) as soon as we jumped in it turns out there wasn’t a tank in our group. He was convinced we would prevail anyway and was surprised we all wiped at the first boss

[AlrikFassbauer]

Guild run via GF, 3 guildies, one additional DD ... In one FP I've forgot, only that feeling of surprised that near to the end of that *super-smooth* Vet FP I noticed that one of our DD was only level 17 ... All of us 70 ... He didn't even die once, I think (although I saw he got a few serious damage its. Hm ... I think it was the Rakata Fp ... Edited March 22, 2018 by AlrikFassbauer

[AlrikFassbauer]

Not exactly Group-Finder related, but ...

 

Our guild did a Karagga run last nicht. we had at least 3 Newbies to OPs ( ! ) in it.

Of course it didn't run smooth, and we were all equally surprised how easy it is to pull aggro ... And how easy it is to fall prey to those droids in the corridors ... Because some Newbies were rather pressing forward. Well, that's a learning lesson now.

 

Things also weren't that smooth because we were 14 in a 16 run. With, as I said abvove, at least 3 Newbies to OPs in general with us.

 

Our worst fail was thar RESET of Karagga himself with LESS than "0 %" health ! I didn't look at it, but it must've been less than 50.000 health, very likely even something around 20.00 or 10.000 - with Karagga on Enrage.

We beat him on the third try, if I remember correctly.

 

But it was fun nevertheless.

 

it showed, by the way, that there is a very noticeable disconnection between those using voice chat and those who don't have it.

No, no, don't tell me "everybody needs to have that these days", because we have at least 2 in our guild with serious hering handicaps. So, typing is still a thing for us. Plus, everything can still be explained via chat, it merely takes longer. Bad if people are impatient, but no-one in our guild is like that - apart from some Newbies, maybe.

 

The disconnection consists of people saying and explaining things happily on voice chat meanwhile FORGETTING that that some people don't have it. In one case, someone offered stims and then wondered why no-one came to him. Because he used voice chat. after he had written that into the OP's chat, people came to him.

Another guold member pointed out that there is a similar disconnect in PvP groups. People in the same group with voice chat are able to react so much faster than those without. This is a serious thing. And still, people mock and tease those who don't want or can't ( deaf people ! ) use voice chat. (My "inner cynic" adds : "You are deaf ? Then SWTOR isn't for you.")

 

But all in all, we had a great learning experience.

 

I do miss, however, the times when things felt easier for me ... a lot of patches ago ... But on the other hand, we were only 14 in 16-man Op ...

[NSaynKnutt]

it showed, by the way, that there is a very noticeable disconnection between those using voice chat and those who don't have it.

No, no, don't tell me "everybody needs to have that these days", because we have at least 2 in our guild with serious hering handicaps. So, typing is still a thing for us. Plus, everything can still be explained via chat, it merely takes longer. Bad if people are impatient, but no-one in our guild is like that - apart from some Newbies, maybe.

 

The disconnection consists of people saying and explaining things happily on voice chat meanwhile FORGETTING that that some people don't have it. In one case, someone offered stims and then wondered why no-one came to him. Because he used voice chat. after he had written that into the OP's chat, people came to him.

Another guold member pointed out that there is a similar disconnect in PvP groups. People in the same group with voice chat are able to react so much faster than those without. This is a serious thing. And still, people mock and tease those who don't want or can't ( deaf people ! ) use voice chat. (My "inner cynic" adds : "You are deaf ? Then SWTOR isn't for you.")

This. This bugs me. I'm a casual player. I have a very small guild. We don't do guild runs of ops, and when we run flashpoints or PvP, we don't bother with voice. But people love to assume when you pug an op that a) you have whatever voice service their guild uses, and b) you want to use it. An old guild of mine used vent. I would pug ops and people would say, "Mumble adfgjhsirtuynk". I don't have mumble. So they tell me to download it. My PC at the time was slow. I say so. They say they'll wait. So I download it. Then I have to set the whole thing up. Create an account, set up the mic / speakers (which can take forever), and then figure out where to type in said address and how to join this server. It takes a while. And I don't know these people, and I'd just as soon not have them all talking in my ears where I either can't hear the game, or the game is too loud and I can't hear them. It's annoying, and it bugs me. I'd much rather type.

 

I'm not stupid. If you tell me a brief explanation of the mechanics in chat, I should be able to figure it out, provided you have some patience. Let me provide two recent experiences I've had with pugged ops and voice chat:

 

 

1. Someone advertising on fleet for DP "fun run". I've never run DP before, but the way it's worded makes it sound like this is some guild making a quick run, willing to carry a couple newbies. So I message the op leader asking if they mind having a first timer. He says no problem and invites me. We're all outside the instance and someone asks if everyone knows the fights. I say I'm new. Some of the other group members seem annoyed at this. I point out that I mentioned this up front and was told it was okay. They ask me to join their discord. I don't have discord. They proceed to tell me conflicting information as to whether or not they want me to download it. One guy says, "Are you smart?" I reply, "I know not to stand in stupid." He says, "Works for me." Another says, "It doesn't take long to download." Their back-and-forth is getting so annoying that I finally decide to download the stupid thing just to shut them up. I say, "Fine, I'll go download discord," but about 0.5 seconds after I type this, they all start zoning in. So I just forget it and follow them.
    
   They type brief mechanics explanations in chat before each boss, and we clear the first two with no issues. For Calphayus, the mechanics explanation tells me that for the second past/future thing, I'm supposed to go in the left portal and "just follow <tank's name>". I'm a little confused as to what this means when we get there, so when he plunges into a group of crystals, I accidentally target the wrong one, and it times out. A couple of minutes of discussion, I realize what went wrong, we pull him again and beat him just fine.
    
   We finish the next boss and the council with no problems. A brief mechanics explanation before the fight, and anything they don't mention is pretty self-explanatory. It was fun and fast.
    
    
   
2. A fleet pug for group finder DF. I had just done this run the week before, so I had read dulfy's guide and played most of the bosses recently. We all zone in, and they ask if everyone knows the fights. Now, when I hear someone ask this, my assumption is that saying yes implies that I know all the fights by heart. I don't feel confident enough to say that, because I may have forgotten something, and I know it's annoying if you assume someone knows exactly what to do every time and they don't. So I answer, "Pretty much, I ran it last week and we cleared everyone but Brontes." There's one other guy who's completely new to the op. The group starts discussing discord. The group leader seems uncertain about letting strangers join their guild voice chat, but they end up posting the server, and the new guy joins. I say I don't have it, and I'm pretty familiar with the fights since I just ran them, so I'd prefer to just type. The leader proceeds to tell me (very nicely) that he doesn't want me to die, and he doesn't want to wipe on the last boss. I say I should be okay, and I don't want to spend time downloading the software when we can just go ahead and run it.
    
   So we start. And before the first boss, the op leader proceeds to type a very detailed rundown of everything in the fight, while at the same time, I assume, saying all of this to the newbie in discord. I'm somewhat annoyed because I just told him that I ran this op last week, but whatever, I've apparently worried him. We must have cleared Nefra with no problems, because I don't really remember that fight at all. On to Draxus. Leader says he's going to mark one add with a shield and not to kill it. I already knew to leave one alive to prevent them from endlessly spawning (figured that out last time), but whatever, I'll leave the shield guy alone.
    
   We pull. As I'm killing adds, I notice the op leader type, "Let's not use knockbacks in sm, please." I'm a mm sniper, and I took the utility that gives penetrating blasts a knockback because I find it very useful in the content that I normally run. If a melee add decides to target me, it's getting knocked back, unless I decide to completely give up any concept of a rotation. But I grit my teeth and figure maybe he was talking to someone else. I can't mention it in chat while I'm fighting, anyway. Then we get the group at the top of the stairs with the conveniently marked shield "do not kill" guy. We're burning them down fast, so I'm tabbing my fingers off switching to new targets. At one point, I'm halfway through a penetrating blasts when I realize that I accidentally targeted the marked one. Whoops. I switch targets and keep going. Two seconds later in chat: "Don't shoot the shields." I know! It was an accident, and I've already corrected it.
    
   At this point I keep getting the hard-hitting dot. Nobody's cleansing me, so I pop a dcd and hope the healers are paying attention. The op leader types "cleanse" as an announcement. I get the dot a couple more times, nobody's cleansing me. The leader keeps typing, more and more emphatically, "CLEANSE!" Still nothing. I'm wondering why none of the healers are doing anything, since this is mostly a guild run with just a few pugs. They should all be familiar with the fight, right? At one point my dcd's aren't enough and I die. I'm annoyed, and as I'm about to explain in chat that no one would cleanse me, I get a rez. So I quit typing and start fighting. And during the last five seconds, I die again. I later figured out that during this fight I was the only person not in discord. So who was the op leader yelling at? Me? I'm a sniper. I don't have a cleanse!
    
   At this point I'm annoyed at the micromanaging op leader, and I figure the rest of the group is annoyed at me. So I say I'll download discord. So I have to tab out of the game and set the whole thing up. It's a lot more intuitive than some voice servers, but it still takes me several minutes to figure everything out. I get back into the game and realize that my mic's not working. The op leader says that's fine, as long as I can hear, we'll be good. Except that now that everyone's in discord, nobody is reading the chat. Somebody asks about loot rules (we already looted two bosses, and you're asking this now?), and he says that once you get a token or a deco or anything, you have to greed on anything else. I ask if that includes DMC. Nobody answers because, of course, no one is reading the chat. So, since at this point I just want to finish the stupid op, I decide to greed on them just in case.
    
   Next boss. We're all in voice chat. Explanation should be much faster this time, right? Wrong. There's probably a good 30 seconds of silence before he says a word. It sounds as if the ops leader is looking up a guide for the boss and reading through it until he comes across information he thinks is relevant, at which point he explains that point. More silence. He explains another point. More silence, another point, etc. It is no faster than the written explanations I got before. He finally finishes and we pull.
    
   The first thing I notice is that the game during combat (they killed all the trash while I was setting up discord) is louder than the leader in voice chat. So I have to pause my fighting to lower the game volume (which was already down to 50% from past voice experiences) down to 30% or so. And even that isn't great. So we fight, with the leader announcing to anyone whenever they're the target of the mining droid.
    
   Move on to Corrupter Zero. More silence, explanation, silence, etc. Except he tells everyone that standing by the red wall avoids the beam, no matter which cross section you're in. Which it does not. It may not hit for very much, but if you're telling people to avoid the beam, tell them how to actually avoid it, or tell them that it doesn't matter. But I listen patiently, we start the fight, we beat it, and we keep going.
    
   Then we hit Brontes. And the leader gives a very slow explanation of what to do. He mentions the phase when everyone needs to stand on a finger and burn them down fast. I ask in chat if we're burning the one we're standing on, or something else. No response. So we start the fight. We get to the reach phase, one spawns right next to me and the leader oh-so-helpfully points out that I should stay away from it. I take some damage but manage to roll away. We get through to the final phase, everyone groups up in one corner, and I find myself wondering why. I'm ranged, so I'm expecting we're all here because there's some aoe of doom if we leave a certain range. But I don't see one. And Brontes is throwing out a lot of damage in her immediate vicinity, not to mention all the purple circles from everyone standing so close together. It's a nightmare having to keep moving, so I decide to try moving away from the corner and standing farther away. Some other person evidently had the same idea, and we both attack from range. It was much easier, and I was taking a lot less damage.
    
   We kill her, I dutifully roll greed on everything (since I got a token at some point), and I leave the op wanting to bang my head on the table.

 

I know it can be a lot easier when you're pugging to just micromanage in voice chat and tell people every little thing that they have to do. But that's like driving with a GPS. And if I drive with a GPS, I will never know how to actually get where I'm going without one. Give me directions and a map, and after a couple trips I should know my way there just fine. When I play my healer, I want to learn to notice when something needs to be cleansed, not have somebody else just tell me whenever it happens. When I get targeted by the mining droid and get lava feet, there's a great big red message telling me so in the middle of my screen. If I need someone to also point it out to me in chat, I'm going to have to be carried every time I run through.

 

And on top of all that, I just don't want to talk to you people. I don't know you, I don't want to join your guild, and I'd much rather just go through and get this over with.

 

/endrant

Edited March 26, 2018 by NSaynKnutt

[Euphrosyne]

Had a weird MM Manaan group just now.

 

Ran as dps Assassin. Ended up in a group with another Assassin dps, an Assassin tank, and an Operative healer. It's kind of funny, getting an all-stealth group in an fp where there's a bunch of stealth detection. Whatever.

 

Healer comments when we zone in and thanks the powers that be for getting a good group. Apparently he's just going off of everybody's health and gear numbers; everybody's 240+.

 

Tank immediately pulls the first group out of failing to notice the stealth detection. Fortunately, I'm right behind and heals isn't that far away either. The rest of the early trash goes without incident. Same with the first boss, after we divvy up the adds so that they ideally go down at about the same time (we didn't get it exactly right, but whatever).

 

Keep going through the rest of the trash (with the tank still failing at stealth detection) until we get to the second boss, the pug-killer. That's where things went wrong quickly. The tank wasn't moving out of puddles very quickly, so kept getting hit with cleave and stuns, making the healer's job much, much harder. He also failed to keep aggro early in any given pull (and refused to guard; I don't ask for one, because I'm not a jerk, but it would've solved his problem, along with a three-taunt opener), so I usually got a faceful of damage early, which also increased the healer's problems. For the healer's part, though, he stood way too far away from the rest of the group, so that when Mass Project dropped most of the floor was covered.

 

The first time everybody died, it was because of the tank taking way too much damage due to standing in puddles, making the healer's job much harder; the healer didn't have enough juice to heal himself, and died almost instantly when adds showed up, even though dps were on them pretty quickly. Healer quickly blames the dps for failing to kill the adds instantly. I pointed out that the group should be fine if the tank would do a slightly better job of staying out of damage on the next pull, so that there isn't so much damage going out and so that the healer comes out of a puddle phase with more than 5% health, and the healer quickly agrees. Next pull, the healer is still doing his thing about keeping Mass Project too far away (about which I hadn't said anything, because it's not why we wiped the first time), and drops the puddle such that almost the entire floor is covered. He also waits too long to move. Everybody gets caught in the puddle except me; I stealth out and put a "c'mon guys" in chat, along with a comment about healer needing to move closer to keep from getting stuck in Mass Project. At that point, the tank abruptly leaves, the healer leaves, and the group breaks up.

 

Normally, this wouldn't be worthy of comment. Just another failed MM Manaan pug that dies at Ortuno. But, hilariously, shortly after the flashpoint ends, the healer whispers me and sarcastically apologizes for letting me down, because I'm clearly amazing and the best and blah blah blah. And then immediately ignores me. Like...okay? I never trashed the healer's skills (or those of anybody else), never pumped up myself as some amazing king dps, never even called for guard. I just pointed out mechanics after people showed that they didn't know them, and advised solutions to fix it for next time so we could clear the thing instead of flailing around wasting credits. And if anyone was "the" problem, it was the tank, not the healer.

 

I genuinely have no idea why the dude threw a fit. But, hey, if you're that much of a jerk, thanks for putting me on ignore so I don't have to deal with you again. What a weirdo.

I know it can be a lot easier when you're pugging to just micromanage in voice chat and tell people every little thing that they have to do. But that's like driving with a GPS. And if I drive with a GPS, I will never know how to actually get where I'm going without one. Give me directions and a map, and after a couple trips I should know my way there just fine. When I play my healer, I want to learn to notice when something needs to be cleansed, not have somebody else just tell me whenever it happens. When I get targeted by the mining droid and get lava feet, there's a great big red message telling me so in the middle of my screen. If I need someone to also point it out to me in chat, I'm going to have to be carried every time I run through.

Yeah, I get that. I'm sympathetic to that. I've been that person many, many times. I especially like when you know how to do the op better than the person talking about it in voice chat and "leading" the raid. But even if you don't, it does seem like not being in voice chat lets the people who are in voice chat magnify your every flaw. They'll pay attention to the slightly inefficient things you do, while not calling out the genuinely brainless stuff somebody who's actually in voice does, because that person might argue with them. It can get dumb and toxic and cause people to lose any chill.

 

I've also been on the other side of things. I get how frustrating it can be to normally do a run in perfect synchronization, but one person who's just slightly out of the loop and doesn't know how things normally happen throws things just slightly out of whack. I understand how that can trigger people, even if the errors are relatively minor ones like "things don't die as quickly as they might because you pushed something out of an aoe" or "broke a cc so the healers have to work ever-so-slightly harder". And, of course, they have no idea how competent you are. You're a pug. They've never seen you before. They have no idea if you're actually going to pay attention to instructions or if you're going to do something brainless. For every competent pug who doesn't need anything more than written instructions and a little experience, there's five or ten idiots who ignore what you say, or aren't good enough to know what to look for and need extra guidance.

 

But micromanagement on that level is only useful if the people doing the micromanagement are, y'know, good at it. Apparently that was not the case. Sorry to see you had such a bad experience.

 

As far as the mechanics you had questions about:

 

If the op leader was talking to you about cleanses on Draxus, he was an idiot. Whenever the dot goes out, it is a dps's fault for not interrupting and/or killing. (Doesn't mean it was yours, of course. Might've been the other side.) Once the dot goes out, though, as a sniper, you have basically no recourse. You have no cleanse and no self-heal worth a crap. If you die, you die. If you don't, thank a healer.

 

The best way to deal with the Reaches is for the entire group to stack and move as a group when a Reach spawns. That way, the Reaches don't cover the entire map and nobody gets taken by surprise. Obviously, you don't have to do it that way, but it makes things simpler and reduces variance. If the ops leader expected you to follow along with that, but neglected to tell you, the ops leader was a turd.

 

In the Brontes six-Finger phase, a lot of raids prefer for each side's Fingers to be burned one at a time; ranged cooperates with melee in killing individual Fingers quickly, to reduce the amount of damage going out. However, if they don't make that clear, they don't think it matters. So long as dps isn't super low, and so long as healers aren't bad, and so long as people don't stand in purple circles, and so long as dps kill all of the Fingers before switching to the Hands, it doesn't really matter. Like a lot of currently accepted tactics, it's done to reduce variance. If the ops leader didn't tell you, though, yolo.

 

In the final Brontes phase, tanks usually take Brontes to a corner or to the red door so that when they get hit by the knockback, their backs are to a wall or door and they don't move very far. This reduces the problems for the healers (who don't have to deal with tanks being out of range) and dps (who don't have to move around as much, so their dps remains high). If any dps is liable to pull off of a tank due to a combination of high threat and bad tank taunt management, that dps should also stay close. However, if you get easily annoyed by having to move out of purple circles, and if you don't consider yourself likely to pull threat, and if you aren't worried about low heals (which would have to be maximized by aoes), then by all means, go ahead and back away. Shouldn't be a big deal.

Edited March 27, 2018 by Euphrosyne

[viernedeuxieme]

I don't have an issue if an ops group isn't in voice and everyone knows what they're doing. Sometimes I get in voice with friends and it's purely for the social aspect. But I do take issue when someone doesn't know the fights, doesn't have discord/TS, doesn't want to download discord/TS, and therefore has to be spoon-fed mechanics in ops chat. (Grats if they read a guide, however.) I'm not about to type novellas in chat for them, but if someone else is willing to do it I don't mind. Otherwise they're going to get carried which, actually, I don't mind either as long as they don't do something silly and cause a wipe.

 

Even with newbies not in voice who have been given an explanation of mechanics, they often end up not reading whatever's being typed specifically for them in ops chat. Resulted in a wipe on SM Izax yesterday when I ran out of tethers to use on the conductor droids, and the last person holding on to one was tunnelling the boss. Grudgingly or otherwise, the last stragglers got in voice (I did offer the non-voice alternative of avoiding tethers) and we were awesome enough to clear it.

Edited March 27, 2018 by viernedeuxieme

[AlrikFassbauer]

And on top of all that, I just don't want to talk to you people. I don't know you, I don't want to join your guild, and I'd much rather just go through and get this over with.

 

From my point of view, that's totally okay and understandable. I don't want to talk as well. I don't even want to listen. I'm a word-man. The written word is my world. Spoken sentences are for extroverts, cynically put.

 

But still, among people you really know and trust, there can be a lot of fun had with voice chat - yes, even with the *combination* of typing & voice chat !

 

But it's totally okay for me to rather rely on the written-down word.

Edited March 27, 2018 by AlrikFassbauer

[Euphrosyne]

People who insist on doing a line of sight pull for the Commander Rand fight in Legacy of the Rakata - MM or VM - are a plague upon this earth. It is a complete and total waste of time. It negates no mechanics and takes slightly longer. The only possible reason I can think of is that it's a power trip for the tank.

[NSaynKnutt]

Not really a group finder story, but I ran a flashpoint recently with my sister, her husband, and a guildie. We had all come pubside to help her with the final macrobinoculars quest, and then decided to queue for a random flashpoint for fun. My guildie and I were both on our sage healers, my sister was a dps commando, and her husband was a shadow tank.

 

We end up getting Cademimu. All of us (except maybe my sister) are on toons that we haven't played in quite a while, so there is much bumbling of buttons. I've got my notes from back when I was first trying to learn my sage open next to me on the desk, glancing at them occasionally to try and remember how to heal properly. The tank accidentally pulls two groups at once and apologizes. My sister says, "Don't worry, with two healers, we're invincible!" So at the next set of trash, he chain pulls the entire room, obviously to see if we are really invincible. We all lived!

 

I /flexed my muscles and felt very proud of myself all the way to Ortol. Except that I haven't played Cademimu all that much, and I didn't realize that you couldn't walk between two fire quadrants without getting burned. And my heal skills are rusty, so I'm literally pausing for seconds at a time trying to decide which ability to use. So we're at the point where three of the four quadrants are burning, I try to walk between them, and I'm still taking damage. So where do I run? Over to the clear quadrant? No, why would I do that? The wall is much closer! Surely if I stand between the quadrants on the little metal strip by the wall, I'll be outside the aoe! Oops, I'm still burning. Force barrier, what's that? No, I'll just use healing trance and try to walk back through the fire to the clear quadrant. Yeah, I died.

 

But my guidlie rezzes me. Huzzah, I'm back in the fight! Except now the tank's down. Apparently he ended up in the fire, too. Ortol is practically dead, so the fight finishes pretty fast, but we had to admit that not even two healers make you invincible to fire.

 

And if you insist on me posting an actual group finder story, here's one from a while back, during the event for Darth Hexid. My husband was relatively new to the game, having played through a couple class stories, but never running any group content. So we teamed up together, me on my op healer and him on his jugg tank.

 

Not being a very experienced tank myself, I had told him the basics. What threat is, what a taunt does, etc. I had advised him to look through his discipline tree and see which abilities gave him high threat, see what gave boosts to other abilities, etc. I warned him about tanking because I, personally, don't enjoy it very much. But he loved it.

 

We queue for a random vet flashpoint and get False Emperor. We end up getting two dps. He guards me, and remembering all the lovely anecdotes from this very thread, I tell him to guard one of the dps instead to keep their threat lower. He obliges. This is his very first flashpoint ever (he's never even done any in solo mode because he was so interested in finishing the class story), and thankfully we get a group that doesn't say "spacebar" at every cutscene. I tell him to pull first so the enemies all attack him, and then my advice is pretty generic because, as I said, I don't have much tanking experience.

 

I may be a bit biased, but I thought he did a fantastic job. As we would be fighting the trash, I'd hear him on the other side of the room saying, "No, attack me! Shoot me!" as he plunged in with lightsaber blazing. The bosses seemed to go pretty well, and when we got to Malgus I warned him about the knockback and told him to tank him at the top of the stairs.

 

We did two more flashpoints for Darth Hexid, getting False Emperor a second time and one more, maybe Directive 7. I was so proud of him!

Edited March 28, 2018 by NSaynKnutt

[KristoKal]

People who insist on doing a line of sight pull for the Commander Rand fight in Legacy of the Rakata - MM or VM - are a plague upon this earth. It is a complete and total waste of time. It negates no mechanics and takes slightly longer. The only possible reason I can think of is that it's a power trip for the tank.

 

Yeah, all you need to do there is stuck up, and AOE them down, no need to go behind pillar. But LOS is still better than sameone running around and kite that last few adds, probably only ranged in group. Then you chace them around, even you tell, stuck up and AOE them...

[aerockyul]

Battle of Ilum MM, on my healer. I've done this more than a dozen times on MM, and two dozen times on Vet, and however many times Solo, and the majority of the runs as healer.

 

Get one of these groups where the other three want to speed run but they're not quite good enough to know where the exact shortcuts are, so there's lots of accidental pulls by the leader and second runner, and lots of back-tracking because of it (it would have taken the exact same amount of time to just kill the mobs than trying to "speed" this way). They also never pause for a second to pick up all the FREE credits left behind on the mobs. I stopped to pick them up twice, realized what was going on, and thought "screw it" to myself and tried to play catch-up.

 

They are also engaging the can't-miss mobs before fully healing up. In the mob fights this is not a problem, I can catch up and get them up enough. But two of the players are in such a hurry that they start leaving the fight before every enemy is killed, leaving mop-up for me (the healer) and the weaker dps.

 

So before the first boss, I'm finishing their mess and then trying to get to them while avoiding the two mobs on either side that can be easily pulled. Do they wait? Do they heal up (they're all below 75% at this point because I was fighting, not healing, due to them running off)? No, they immediately engage and I'm about 60 meters back. They don't attack squid-boy first, they attack Velasu, so the squid jumps to me and I haven't even passed the two mobs yet. This does not end well.

 

Who gets blamed? Me. They think I pulled first because the squid jumped to me ("let the tank pull first!"), even though I was far away from the fight!

 

Second try, I'm fuming and feeling a little pink from the insinuation and lack of self-awareness. But I just need this last miniscule 375 points to hit the conquest personal goal, so I decide to give it one more try. The second run at squid-boy and bone-face is smooth (what do you know, starting the fight properly, with four people, fully-healed up goes super fast and easy!).

 

The rest of the run is pretty much the same--trying to speed run through everything, pulling groups that didn't need to be pulled, but still running on without killing the mob 100%, leaving me behind. Tank never holds threat, it's either on me or the better of the two dps.

 

I'm still pink when we get to Serevin. I know that they are going to mess up the interrupts, and I will not be able to both concentrate on healing their constantly melting health bars while taking the double crystal slam 3 out of 4 times, AND tab to Serevin at the correct moment to interrupt. Even so, we're not doing TOO bad on the first pull until the weaker dps dies. I do a quick revive (more wasted time that could have been used healing) and they never accept the revive. They just lay there. The way the fight was going, if they had hopped up we could have completed the fight.

 

They do finally accept the revive...after the three of us die (it was immediately after the last person hit zero). So now we have another pull where revive is on its long cool down, so we can't mess up here. Second pull everyone dies faster (this time I was getting hit by the crystal each time, it wasn't random at all, and still no one would interrupt). I'm full-on red at this point but I don't usually argue with people when things go south.

 

But after the bad speedrunning and that first slight towards me, I got so fed up I just left. I don't usually leave at the last boss unless a group is truly hopeless, but this time I just didn't want to deal with their attitudes on top of the lack of awareness. I dropped and went to a vet flashpoint and finished up conquest. Probably would have taken the same amount of time as trying to get through Serevin with that group. I put the two bad speedsters on ignore so I don't end up with them again.

 

I don't really mind speed-runs (they often waste more time than just doing things the right way), but if you're going to insist on doing them, you better know what you're doing. Because I do, and blaming the only person that knows what they're doing when you screw up is going to get you on a lot of ignore lists.

[DeannaVoyager]

Yeah, there are so many bad and rude players now, that pugging has become almost impossible.

 

I managed to get into MM Foundry this aftenoon as dps merc and thought I was lucky, until we were actually running it. Tank couldn't keep aggro at ALL, not sure if he was even trying. Healer forgot to heal himself (I guess?) and died 4-5 times. It was obvious tank didn't know the FP very well, if at all, because he almost killed himself at first bosses molten burst hit and pulled all sorts of mobs during that FP that didn't need to be pulled.

 

We finally got to last boss, and tank got knocked off from the platform... When we are about to start again, I told him how to position himself so it won't happen again, and he tells me to S T F U? I mean seriously? Some people... Couldn't help but laugh at that, but I also made sure he's on my ignore list on all my alts.

 

I don't care if someone is new at all, everyone has been new at one point, and I never insult or say anything mean to them, instead I try to advice them in the nicest possible way, so that they'd maybe learn something. I see a lot of vote kicks in that person's future, and it couldn't happen to a more suitable person.

[Euphrosyne]

Ran MM Foundry that went basically fine until the last boss, when one of the dps - a Mara, because of course it was - gets KBed off the platform. So we finish off the boss and head back up to do all the relevant kills/stealth ccs on groups we skipped. The Mara, however, is apparently not very bright, and after rezzing himself inside the flashpoint, decides to Exit Area even though we still have to do the final holo conversation, despite being told exactly what to do by myself and the healer. Then the Mara claims they can't get back in again due to "bugs" and "BioWare". I suppose it's possible that the gf quick travel bugged out because Revan was dead, but it's still his own fault for leaving. Then he demands a kick because otherwise, he claims, he'd be stuck with a 15 minute lockout, even though that's not how it works (we'd already been in the fp for more than 15 minutes, so he'd have no lockout), which makes me think he doesn't know how the gf works in other ways, either.

 

Eventually we were like "screw it", kicked him as requested, and did the last conversation. Ding, conquest. Still. Weird freaking run.

Yeah, all you need to do there is stuck up, and AOE them down, no need to go behind pillar. But LOS is still better than sameone running around and kite that last few adds, probably only ranged in group. Then you chace them around, even you tell, stuck up and AOE them...

The funniest version is getting tanks who demand an LoS even when everybody in the group is melee, and when the melee decide to fight out in the open anyway, the tank insistently tries to pull as much as they can behind the pillar, causing tremendous waste of time.

 

At that point, pretty much everybody's to blame; if the tank insists on being an idiot in that way, it's easier to just humor them, but the tank still is being an idiot.

 

Everybody makes all these jokes about how healers have the power of life and death in their hands, but frankly, when healing, I don't want to have to go through the rigmarole of a fight that's even longer than it might otherwise be purely to teach an idiot dps or tank a lesson. If the person's incompetent, I already hate them. Why would I want to force myself to spend more time with them?

[Euphrosyne]

Yeah, there are so many bad and rude players now, that pugging has become almost impossible.

 

I managed to get into MM Foundry this aftenoon as dps merc and thought I was lucky, until we were actually running it. Tank couldn't keep aggro at ALL, not sure if he was even trying. Healer forgot to heal himself (I guess?) and died 4-5 times. It was obvious tank didn't know the FP very well, if at all, because he almost killed himself at first bosses molten burst hit and pulled all sorts of mobs during that FP that didn't need to be pulled.

 

We finally got to last boss, and tank got knocked off from the platform... When we are about to start again, I told him how to position himself so it won't happen again, and he tells me to S T F U? I mean seriously? Some people... Couldn't help but laugh at that, but I also made sure he's on my ignore list on all my alts.

 

I don't care if someone is new at all, everyone has been new at one point, and I never insult or say anything mean to them, instead I try to advice them in the nicest possible way, so that they'd maybe learn something. I see a lot of vote kicks in that person's future, and it couldn't happen to a more suitable person.

I'm glad my MM Foundry run this afternoon didn't go like that!

[happysister]

A friend got me and a couple other guildies to join them in a pug run SM Izax lockout. The pug who was "leading" asked everyone to get in Discord for voice chat, so everyone did. After that, though, they started typing out the instructions into ops chat.

 

One of my guildies asked, "Why are we typing everything if we're all in Discord?"

The pug replied (in ops chat), "I don't have a mic."

The rest of us: "Then why did you ask everyone to get in Discord if you don't have a mic???"

The pug: "For voice chat."

Us: ".........."

 

Pugsy continues typing out Izax instructions. One of my guildies inspected his achievements and noted that he had never cleared Izax yet. And he was insisting for people who joined to know the fight. He was also one of the people who died the most in our hour long wipefest. Derpy kids, I tell ya. At least he finally got his cheevo that night.

[AlrikFassbauer]

Tank couldn't keep aggro at ALL, not sure if he was even trying.

 

Was he poerhaps there with a low-level char ? I'm just wondering, I still couldn't practise tanking at all (which is why I don't want my tank to go into PUGs).

[DeannaVoyager]

Was he poerhaps there with a low-level char ? I'm just wondering, I still couldn't practise tanking at all (which is why I don't want my tank to go into PUGs).

 

No, we were all lvl 70, it was MM. I get that tank can easily lose aggro to high dps, but what I don't get it that they aren't taking it back and maybe put a guard on that aggro thief.

 

You can practise tanking with anything with a taunt in veteran mode. I even end up tanking with classes without taunt, when I'm with a bunch of lowbies because I'm so used to it, know the mechanics and manage to pull a lot of aggro. As long as you know which bosses to turn away and so on, you'll be fine even with pugs.

[DeannaVoyager]

A friend got me and a couple other guildies to join them in a pug run SM Izax lockout. The pug who was "leading" asked everyone to get in Discord for voice chat, so everyone did. After that, though, they started typing out the instructions into ops chat.

 

One of my guildies asked, "Why are we typing everything if we're all in Discord?"

The pug replied (in ops chat), "I don't have a mic."

The rest of us: "Then why did you ask everyone to get in Discord if you don't have a mic???"

The pug: "For voice chat."

Us: ".........."

 

Pugsy continues typing out Izax instructions. One of my guildies inspected his achievements and noted that he had never cleared Izax yet. And he was insisting for people who joined to know the fight. He was also one of the people who died the most in our hour long wipefest. Derpy kids, I tell ya. At least he finally got his cheevo that night.

 

The nerve some people have never cease to amaze me.

[Tharandil]

Got teamed with a merc who qued as a healer for Master FP Legacy of the rakata. as Soon as we came to the Rancor we started wiping. Turns out the Merc was in DPS spec but (according to him still able to heal us through)

 

Fortunately we managed to find a replacement that did get us through the FP

[tuulem]

Had a FP pop, Hammer Station, thank god, first pull in I realised I was in Lethality spec and gear (I'd queued as a healer).

 

Me: Need 20 secs, I'm in the wrong spec.

 

I abandon my DPS spec. Tank pulls next group, without healing up from the first pack. I am currently in no spec at all and do my best with the three healing abilities I have.

 

Me: Need 5 seconds before you pull the next ones, please?

 

Manage to at least get into Medicine, sort out my skills, but before I can press accept, the tank is off again. Aaaannnnnd I'm in combat. The third pack that people usually LoS? He barrels straight into them, still without self healing.

 

/facepalm

 

I pop my stealth overload and press accept for my skills. He's melting, I'm trying to keep him up, droids are shooting at everyone, I'm still trying to move my abilities (which, of course, are not on my usual hotkeys) and not let anyone die.

 

Somehow, we kill that pack and with everyone still alive, tank finds his out of combat heal and I get a few precious seconds to change my gear. Then I see this gem in chat:

 

Tank: Don't queue as heals if you're not going to heal.

 

I has half way through typing out a not so polite reply when this popped into chat.

 

DPS: Scroll up, a**hole.

 

That DPS got extra healing love for the rest of the FP.

[josephinec]

Got MM Red Reaper on my Shadow on Star Forge. She's a tank. Zone in, turns out the other Shadow in the group is also a tank, but queued as dps...and also pulled that mob that's right outside the shuttle. We didn't even get to the first boss before wiping. The healer and I both left.

 

Last night, same character got MM Red Reaper. Decent group...except no one communicated. I'd type something in chat and get nothing in response.

[Aeneas_Falco]

A friend got me and a couple other guildies to join them in a pug run SM Izax lockout. The pug who was "leading" asked everyone to get in Discord for voice chat, so everyone did. After that, though, they started typing out the instructions into ops chat.

 

One of my guildies asked, "Why are we typing everything if we're all in Discord?"

The pug replied (in ops chat), "I don't have a mic."

The rest of us: "Then why did you ask everyone to get in Discord if you don't have a mic???"

The pug: "For voice chat."

Us: ".........."

 

Pugsy continues typing out Izax instructions. One of my guildies inspected his achievements and noted that he had never cleared Izax yet.And he was insisting for people who joined to know the fight. He was also one of the people who died the most in our hour long wipefest. Derpy kids, I tell ya. At least he finally got his cheevo that night.

 

Hadn't done it himself but insisted everyone know the fight?

 

He wanted a carry.

Edited March 30, 2018 by Aeneas_Falco

[juliushorst]

Was he poerhaps there with a low-level char ? I'm just wondering, I still couldn't practise tanking at all (which is why I don't want my tank to go into PUGs).

 

Did a Vet Manaan yesterday, with 20-something tank and two other DPS in their 30s. Ended up sorc-tanking all the bosses (when I used my aggro drop during Ortuno to heal myself a bit it usually ended in one person dying...) but we got it to the end, people were good with adds and kolto and nobody rage-quit... so it was rather fun.

[AlrikFassbauer]

Okay, thanks, maybe I could try out my tank ... I'll try solo mode first, though (with FPs where this is posible).

 

 

 

Besides, we did the Eternal Chamber ( I still call it like that ) yesterday evening - almost no wipes ! Only twice, the second jumping phase at the last boss. 8 people.

 

I was soooo glad that the riddle wasn't that difficult in SM - because I had never really understood it. Until yesterday.

 

However, it also turned out that it is still dificult to have a mix of voice chat people and non-voice-chat people. It's almost like 2 classes of people living door to door, but never notiticing / speaking to one another ... But yesterday our discord voice chat was totally buggy, too.

Edited March 31, 2018 by AlrikFassbauer

[Screaming_Ziva]

Was working on my conquest this week and Czerka Core Meltdown popped. I was on my 70 DPS Sage and the queue popped with two thirty something snipers and a level 70 healing Sage.

 

Everything started out fine until we got to the first boss. About a minute into the fight (I ended up Sage Tanking) I all of a sudden got Rescued by the healer. Ok, I figured, she didn't realize we don't have a tank and someone has to tank the boss. Continued the fight and, of course, immediately got aggro from the boss. A minute later, yanked away again by the healer.

 

This happened the entire fight (almost caused a wipe when I was pulling Duneclaw over to a generator) so I asked the healer to kindly stop pulling me. Of course, no response. I checked their achievements and this looked to be their very first character. I asked her to take Rescue out of her rotation and then went on to the second boss. No luck. Every minute I was yanked away by the healer. This went on for the rest of the FP even asking many times to stop pulling me.