The top folks you meet in group finder.

[Tachenko_Yuri]

Because imo if a guy walks in this section of the forum and sees a thread of 1.5k posts of episodes of groupfinder people varying from the clueless, to the ninjalooter, to the stuck-up and elitist, it might be a little demotivating for them to join groupfinder after all.

 

An initiative to talk about the top blokes that people meet into the very same gf!

 

Suppose I should also put in my own episode

 

Hammer station 55 hm, dinged 55 with operative heal couple of hours before let's give it a go.

 

Everyone says hi, juggernaut tank asks for bonus, entire group agrees, so we start our killing spree.

 

Big mob? back droid gets cc'd by me and remains cc'd until all the rest of the mob is dead.

 

We get the odd auto-target pull but we get a " sorry " for everything that's odd.

 

Deal with bosses but one of the dps did have to drop in a couple of off-heals @ lobel bonus boss, yes

 

All legit loot rolls.

 

Overall all group were members were really happy with one another, like if having a proper group was something they never experienced before.

 

Also, after dealing with kreshan and leave instance I get whispered if I wanted the cunning earpiece that kreshan dropped, to which i greeded upon, so said he could keep it

 

so yeah, puggies of 22:30 Italian time on TRE doing hammer station 55HM, Thanks for the run!

Edited December 12, 2013 by Tachenko_Yuri

[slafko]

I sincerely envy you on such a smooth run on TRE. Can't remember the last time I had a flashpoint without incidents.

[rantboi]

I sincerely envy you on such a smooth run on TRE. Can't remember the last time I had a flashpoint without incidents.

 

try switching to imperial side. it's much better in red eclipse.

[AAAAzrael]

I'm currently levelling an imp on TRE and FP experience has been like any on repside, from absolutely aweful and even failed FP runs to awesome runs with people who had clearly raiding experience.

[DarthTHC]

A Tale of Two Group Finders

 

Last night I ran two Group Finder groups, one on my high-20's Vanguard and one on my mid-30's Operative. I queued both as DPS (I had some other things to get done while waiting, so why not?) but they're tank and heal specced, respectively.

 

Republic - Mandalorian Raiders

 

Zoned in, right out of the gate the Guardian tank looks new. He's slow to start fights. He didn't know to grab the one running droid at the beginning solo. Seems very timid and slow. Can't hold aggro.

 

We work our way to the first boss - the guy with the two dogs. I mark one of the dogs and ask in party if the tank knows the fight or needs a run-down. He types nothing. After a few second he leaps at the boss. Well, that's a good sign at least.

 

Except partway through the fight he abandons the boss and starts in on the marked dog. I type instructions into chat a few times to no avail. The healer is getting destroyed. I flip on Ion Cell and announce that I'm tanking the boss. The healer lets the tank die and we win.

 

Immediately after the fight, I initiate a kick with "Not a tank, didn't know fight, didn't speak up, I'll tank". It passed immediately. I apologized for having no patience for not-a-tanks. Commando DPS chimes in and says he doesn't either. It's at this point I check him out. Over-leveled, high-end gear, top notch mods, expensive dye. Yeah. I like this guy already.

 

We re-q and get a Shadow DPS since I switched my role to tank.

 

We proceed without idiocy until the next boss - the four-man boarding party. I mark targets while the commando goes over the strategy, which is get in the corner, LOS pull, AOE. The shadow stands there in the middle of the ramp. I type into chat that we will kick him and he has 3 seconds to get in the corner. I count it down for him... 3... 2... the commando types 1 and I initiate the vote kick. As soon as he sees the vote kick start, he charges the group.

 

The healer let him die. I love this healer. As soon as he dies, the vote kick passes and he's gone. Yay. We three-man the group without a problem.

 

I ask if we want to risk getting yet another idiot. The commando pulls out 4X in response. Works for me. The rest of the flash point went without incident.

 

Empire - Boarding Party

 

I never look at anyone when we zone in. I simply can't be bothered doing an inspect until and unless something goes wrong.

 

I'm in as an Operative DPS. Tank is an Assassin. Other DPS and healer are Sages. We proceed to shred everything we fight. We use stealth / stun to bypass trash, me and the Assassin working together to stun 2 if that's what it takes. Nobody breaks crowd control. Everyone stays together. Everything dies super fast.

 

That. Was. Awesome.

 

Why can't they all be like that?

[Vegabond]

TRE seems like a nice place.. and yes top moments for LFG thread I will probably write up a few stories shortly

[Nuald]

I guess the opinions about pugged gf could be opposite for the same run. For example, when my guild members or me tanking, we keep very high pace. We stop only if someone's health is less than 70% or sage healer is completely out of mana. Surely many like it - very fast, we take all shortcuts and mostly FP run takes 20-30 mins top. But some folks are really stressed by that (especially healers). Or by the mess we have (high defense stats, aggro management and defensive CD in time allow us to chainpull enemies group by group non-stop). Not everybody like challenges and prefer smooth slow pace, pew-pew and so on.

[wishingwell]

A while back, before Makeb was implemented, I finally had pieced together a decent tanking set for my Guardian. Since I was still pretty inexperienced with tanking flashpoints and had never attempted to tank in hard mode, I was pretty uncomfortable. I was worried my first tank run would be awful, especially when I saw it was Kaon.

 

My guildie and general leveling partner was with me on his DPS, so that was nice, but we noticed right off that we were replacements. More worry. We said our hellos and I explained that this was my first time tanking a HM, but I knew the FP well, etc. etc. The healer then said that their tank had bailed without a word after the first big fight and the other DPS didn't want to wait, but they were both fine with taking it slow.

 

It ended up being a pretty solid run. There was an accidental death when the other DPS stepped a little too close to some mobs we had bypassed, but we recovered quickly. Everyone was patient and polite. I received compliments on my tanking and it was probably the confidence boost I needed to keep on tanking -- I still carry a DPS set, but it's now my secondary role and I only use it when groups don't need a tank.

 

Was it the smoothest, fastest run? Absolutely not. Were the two players we joined up with the most experienced people ever? Nope. Did people make minor mistakes? Yep. But I still regard it as one of the best runs I've ever been on simply because everyone there wanted to have a good time and nobody, not even once, was impolite. Nobody took gear they didn't need and nobody acted superior or suddenly rushed ahead despite agreeing to take it slow. I also learned a LOT about keeping everyone safe and being aware of everything going on when those little mistakes happen. I owe many successfully tanked HM FPs and SM Ops (not a big Ops person, honestly) to that group.

[Nuald]

I have another good story, about 8 men SM DF. It was my guild run, and they are very decent and skilled folks. Don't have much time to play though, but occasionally we do guild ops. This time the most problematic player in the ops was me - I was undergeared sentinel (66+, even not full basic, so like 26k hp, but buffed near 1200 dmg bonus, 109% accuracy, and near 30% crits, so it's definitely doable).

 

First we stuck at Draxus. mdps alts like mine have a lot of problem with that fight + it was first run for some players. After few wipes one player left due to personal reasons, so we pugged and got rdps. We spent like 20 minutes trying to connect him to our TS server (he never used TS before). In the guild chat we already decided that he will be a burden. Also it was his 1st run too. But surprisingly he did a good job, and after couple attempts more we did this.

 

Other bosses were pretty easy, and we stuck again at Brontes. Another player had to leave, and we pugged another dps. It was a nightmare - when he arrived, he begin to rage about me being undergeared. Like there is no possible way to do this without decent gear. Lolwut, dps should do damage, if his damage skills are good and he knows how to drop aggro and use defensive skills (like Saber Ward etc), it's perfectly doable.

 

Still we had few wipes, but not because of me - our healers had few problems mostly because of the few staged fight. Finally we decided to switch roles and put better geared healz to heal us through. While we are doing it, the enraged dps left swearing to us about time he wasted and repair bills. Luckly another player from our guild (also combat sentinel) came in, and we continued. Surely we did it, it was not easy, and it was extremely challenging, but we did it.

 

I enjoyed it a lot and other players too, because mostly SM ops don't have any challenge, but those fights require good team work, the mechanics is interesting and you really feel like accomplishing something if you win. Team works and knowing your classes (should I mentioned that double Transcendence from 2 sents is extremy useful?) mean much more than uber gear but inability to play correctly especially in a team.

Edited December 13, 2013 by Nuald

[Whojoo]

Gotta give some praise to TRE

 

Went into a 55hm with my slinger. Group has another slinger. Tank is a shadow and healer is a sage.

Mando raiders pops up

So we get to through the first pull (not counting the 3 from the elevator) and the tank mentioned something like that he hasn't played for a loooong time and asked us about the changes. At this moment in my mind I was like....... Yay we've got a rusty tank... (have had some bad experiences with that).

He proves me wrong really quickly

 

We rush through to the first boss and murder it within a few min. Everyone did exactly what they had to do. After that fight the slinger notied that im a guildy of one of his alts, that was unexpected

 

Smooth run

 

Later on imp side on my marauder. PT dps, jugg tank and sorc euh... dps on Boarding Party? We had a sorc who forgot to heal bla bla bla... wrong threat anyway..

The PT dps had legaxy lv 50 and the jugg had good armor and guarded me (which isnt commen by lv 30 tanks xD).

The PT and I were doing all we could to kill things before our jugg tank died. We failed a few times

Were with just the 3 of us during bonus boss and fooling around a bit Eventually made it and got an awesome healer.

Had some good laughs with the PT and jugg

 

TRE has some good players on both sides

[fire-breath]

@darth THC: You really have missed the point of this thread I think.

 

I will only say that you could have had more patience with the tank and shadow.

Firstly. If the tank was new he would have other priorities than to read chat midfight. He acted exactly like a tank should behave. He first got aggro off the biggest enemy and than took control over the smaller adds.

 

Secondly. In light off this thread I will write down a small story what could have happend if you had more patience and explained the tactics instead of using the radical kicking.

 

a few weeks ago I queued with my 69/72-geared merc healer and got a pop for Cad HM in progress. When I arrived the rest was waiting at the boss with the arresting droid. I soon found out why the healer left because they were just screwing it up royally (a bit like what your tank did).

After the 1st wipe I explained what to do. The folks were to impatient and started before I was finished, another wipe. In total we had 3-4 wipes before they got their act together and started to listen to my advice.

 

After this all went like a charm. We even went to do the bonusboss. Since it were 3 fresh level 50's in blue gear I didnt expect us to clear the boss. However we got it down with ease. After clearing they were full of praise and made me blush behind my pc.

Any thats not what I was trying to say. My point here is that its amazing what people can actually achieve if someone guides them a little and has faith in them. Overall it was a very nice experience which you also could have gotten if you had more patience with the tank.

 

A 2nd story of what happend today. Since I'm mostly republicminded I have little real experience with the specific imperial flashpoints. I had done some on my sniper and merc but that involved very little effort and lots of rushing pew pew. Today however I went into the foundry HM with my Assassintank and sorc dps brother. Since most lv50 HM's are a rushjob I wanted to inform the other dps and healer that we were new at this. As a tank you really need to know what you should do to prevend wipes.

Only the sniper had previous experience and he was nice enough to patiently explain each bossfight in a nuttshell. He even stayed with us after we had 2-3 wipes on HK-47. Its nice to see that people will still take the effort and time to teach people the ropes.

[Mystry]

I tend to get undergeared or fresh 55s whenever I que on my guardian. Makes the run easy for them I guess, since I'm pretty decently geared.

 

But whenever I'm on my shadow, I either have to wait for over 3 hours for a DPS que to pop or try and tank with a measly 32k HP. Its enraging.

[JattaGin]

I don't have a particular story in mind now, but I would like to add that my groupfinder experiences have been very positive. I use it frequently on all my various chars and most of the time, the group is very friendly and competent. I recall only 2 or 3 bad times, but that's surely like a 1% chance only.

[TheSupaCoopa]

I don't have a particular story in mind now, but I would like to add that my groupfinder experiences have been very positive. I use it frequently on all my various chars and most of the time, the group is very friendly and competent. I recall only 2 or 3 bad times, but that's surely like a 1% chance only.

Duran'del here:

 

That's the exact opposite of what my experiences with Group Finder are

[JouerTue]

it usually runs smoothly for me..being tank or healer always..some bad experience costs only credits and i'm happy to teach. i play on TRE aswell..worst thing seems pvp..btw when you get competent groups it's always awesome

[Kacynski]

Well, I do not run the GF excessively but a few runs a week spread around 4 - 5 characters is what I do normally. And I have to say I only once encountered a real problematic group (you can find that story in the other thread, if you care )

Usually my runs are smooth, or at least ok. So, the "strange people in GF" - thread is a funny read for me, but it is in no way the norm of my experience. This is just to give another heads up to people to let them try the GF - it is not as bad as it may seem

[dancezwithnubz]

i had two AWESOME Mando Raiders PUG runs and a SCHWEET Battle Of Ilum pug yesterday.

 

both MR runs were with my derps'mando and I was grouped with the same healer in both of them. now, said healer was pretty poorly geared but he was upfront about it at the beginning of the run. as a derps'mando, i have no issues throwing some kolto bombs around if it helps the party out. a couple times on each run I had to start making with the med-probes as well.

net result: 2x clean runs, no deaths, no upset tanks.

 

the Battle for Ilum run was playing my ophealz.

the tank stated right at the start he was poorly geared and a bit squishy. well, he wasn't lying, his kit was about ~8-10 level out of date.

ok, no worries, just means I need to be a little more careful and try and start every fight from stealth for the extra TA stacks and start banging kolto probes onto the tank right from the get-go and put my Countermeasures threat dump into my rotations.

now, my healz is pretty decently geared for his level (<3 having a CyberTech on staff) and I was doing more damage than the BH dps (who was also rather woefully undergeared).

we had one marauder DPS who really, REALLY knew his stuff (finally, a Marauder who doesn't think he's a tank! that's healer nirvana right there) and a DPS bounty hunter who was at least smart enough not to try and be a tank.

net result: the only deaths were our BH who got a little lost and kept blundering into the exhaustion zone.

 

three super sweet PUG runs in one day. I will now go and purchase a lotto ticket.

[slafko]

TRE seems like a nice place.. and yes top moments for LFG thread I will probably write up a few stories shortly

 

It is for the most part.

 

Until you get a tank that guards the healer, a healer that demands the guard be placed on them and a derps that doesn't grasp the concept of not breaking cc's on the same team. That's when things go from bad to worse.

 

Now I just look at the guild names and don't care what they do if I recognize them as being the bad ones. XD

Edited December 16, 2013 by slafko

[Fidelicatessen]

Smooth runs make for good experiences, but crappy stories.

 

"We zoned in and the tank pulled, with DPS hanging behind. Healer healed. Then we did the boss and it was really smooth. Then there was some more trash and the DPS didn't pull! The tank kept agro off the healer and the DPS killed weak to strong! There were another couple of bosses in there, but they went so smooth I forgot the details. Then we finished the FP. It was really fast and smooth!"

 

See what I mean? That's why "The Weird People You Meet In Groupfinder" is 160+ pages long, while this one will likely never take off (or it will devolve into "Weird People Pt. 2"). People would rather read (and write!) about weird/tragic experiences than fun/happy ones.

 

To be honest, most of my groupfinder experiences are not horrible, and some are actually good, but I know better than to try and make a story out of the good ones. There's just no story there.

[Wrzaskun]

Smooth runs make for good experiences, but crappy stories.

 

"We zoned in and the tank pulled, with DPS hanging behind. Healer healed. Then we did the boss and it was really smooth. Then there was some more trash and the DPS didn't pull! The tank kept agro off the healer and the DPS killed weak to strong! There were another couple of bosses in there, but they went so smooth I forgot the details. Then we finished the FP. It was really fast and smooth!"

 

See what I mean? That's why "The Weird People You Meet In Groupfinder" is 160+ pages long, while this one will likely never take off (or it will devolve into "Weird People Pt. 2"). People would rather read (and write!) about weird/tragic experiences than fun/happy ones.

 

To be honest, most of my groupfinder experiences are not horrible, and some are actually good, but I know better than to try and make a story out of the good ones. There's just no story there.

 

This. I was wondering when someone will state the obvious - there are only a few ways things can be done right in this game, and there are uncountable ways of messing things up or making them weird. And somehow the latter is much more interesting to a wider public.

[DarthTHC]

@darth THC: You really have missed the point of this thread I think.

 

I also told you a happy story. The happy stories are boring though.

 

I will only say that you could have had more patience with the tank and shadow.

 

I asked if anyone needed a run-down when we got to the boss. The tank did not say, "Yes, please". He leapt at the boss. Then he screwed the pooch.

 

I'm sorry. I have no patience for bad and stupid behavior. Had the tank said, "Yes, please, I've never tanked this flash point." I would have patiently explained the encounter to him.

 

We told the Shadow what the strat was. We warned him to get into position. We counted him down. He chose to ignore us and charge the mobs. A death and vote-kick was exactly what he deserved.

 

Firstly. If the tank was new he would have other priorities than to read chat midfight. He acted exactly like a tank should behave. He first got aggro off the biggest enemy and than took control over the smaller adds.

 

He was clearly new.

 

But I asked if he needed information before the fight started, when we were standing there staring stupidly at a Mando and his two dogs.

 

The tank cannot take control over those smaller adds in that fight because they have no aggro table. If you try to control those dogs, you wind up dragging the boss into them. The boss has an AOE effect that makes the dogs hit a lot harder. You must keep the boss away from the dogs, which is why the strat there is important and the tank has to do the right thing.

 

Secondly. In light off this thread I will write down a small story what could have happend if you had more patience and explained the tactics instead of using the radical kicking.

 

a few weeks ago I queued with my 69/72-geared merc healer and got a pop for Cad HM in progress. When I arrived the rest was waiting at the boss with the arresting droid. I soon found out why the healer left because they were just screwing it up royally (a bit like what your tank did).

After the 1st wipe I explained what to do. The folks were to impatient and started before I was finished, another wipe. In total we had 3-4 wipes before they got their act together and started to listen to my advice.

 

After this all went like a charm. We even went to do the bonusboss. Since it were 3 fresh level 50's in blue gear I didnt expect us to clear the boss. However we got it down with ease. After clearing they were full of praise and made me blush behind my pc.

Any thats not what I was trying to say. My point here is that its amazing what people can actually achieve if someone guides them a little and has faith in them. Overall it was a very nice experience which you also could have gotten if you had more patience with the tank.

 

You, sir, are a pillar of patience.

 

However, my gaming time is for my entertainment. I will also help other people have fun during that time, but not at the expense of my temper or dealing with idiots. If someone is new but willing to listen and give a reasonable attempt / effort, I have a lot of patience. But if someone is unwilling to listen or even type into the chat window, I am done with them very quickly.

 

A 2nd story of what happend today. Since I'm mostly republicminded I have little real experience with the specific imperial flashpoints. I had done some on my sniper and merc but that involved very little effort and lots of rushing pew pew. Today however I went into the foundry HM with my Assassintank and sorc dps brother. Since most lv50 HM's are a rushjob I wanted to inform the other dps and healer that we were new at this. As a tank you really need to know what you should do to prevend wipes.

Only the sniper had previous experience and he was nice enough to patiently explain each bossfight in a nuttshell. He even stayed with us after we had 2-3 wipes on HK-47. Its nice to see that people will still take the effort and time to teach people the ropes.

 

Like I said, if someone is new and they speak up, listen to the strategies, and make a wholehearted attempt to get it right, I will wipe with them a few times to learn it.

 

This behavior is vastly different from someone not listening, not typing, and just charging ahead like an angry, intellectually challenged bull on a speedball.

Edited December 16, 2013 by DarthTHC

[TheSupaCoopa]

Duran'del here:

 

I was playing as my WUH(Woefully Undergeared Healer) Commando and qued for 55 HM FP.

When I get in, I warn the group that I was undergeared(I had campaign gear, blue 66s for Assault Cannon and Generator, and Black Market Belt and Bracers.

 

The FP did go smoothly, but I died on the droid and security chief, so I guess I screwed up s few times.

After we killed Rams us, I bid my group mates farewell with a short and concise "Hope I didn't suck."

 

Thanks to whoever it was for having to deal with me.

In the previous one I had ran, my guildmate "Healer qued as DPS" had carried me.

[slafko]

Like I said, if someone is new and they speak up, listen to the strategies, and make a wholehearted attempt to get it right, I will wipe with them a few times to learn it.

 

This is the best way to go about it indeed.

[Sorei]

I just had a nice Hammer Station SM run. Operative healer level 15/16 who never ran out of energy (okay, I was a properly geared Powertech level 17 so that may have helped), a Sorcerer DPS who CC'd, a Marauder DPS who only jumped ahead once and never broke CC.

The only thing to critizise was that the healer needed on a Blaster, I guess he wanted it for Kaliyo, but the only thing I could have used from it anyway was the mod, so it wasn't that bad.

Still, it was a very smooth run.

[Prototypemind]

Smooth runs make for good experiences, but crappy stories.

 

"We zoned in and the tank pulled, with DPS hanging behind. Healer healed. Then we did the boss and it was really smooth. Then there was some more trash and the DPS didn't pull! The tank kept agro off the healer and the DPS killed weak to strong! There were another couple of bosses in there, but they went so smooth I forgot the details. Then we finished the FP. It was really fast and smooth!"

 

See what I mean? That's why "The Weird People You Meet In Groupfinder" is 160+ pages long, while this one will likely never take off (or it will devolve into "Weird People Pt. 2"). People would rather read (and write!) about weird/tragic experiences than fun/happy ones.

 

To be honest, most of my groupfinder experiences are not horrible, and some are actually good, but I know better than to try and make a story out of the good ones. There's just no story there.

 

Exactly. This is why most nightly news shows end with a good story; end with, almost never begin.