The ups and downs of PUGs and Randoms
I didn’t do the daily heroic much. I guess I did when T9 first came out and I wanted badges, but as my ability to generate badges outgrew my need to spend them, I just stopped. I assume that will be the case with the daily random as well. Once we get a bit more of Icecrown Citadel opened up, the need for the two badges a day will decline. But for now, I am doing them every day on both my druid and my resto shamen.
I do like the general concept better than the daily heroic. After all… if things go wrong with your random, you just random again. If things went wrong with the old daily, you were probably locked to a half finished heroic and left badgeless for the day.
And (although its not necessary to PuG) it seems natural to at least fill a slot or two this way, to keep working towards the little PUG pet. Which brings me to my second topic PUGging.
Pugging brings you an achievement for the first 10 people you PUG with, a second achievement when you reach 50 people (along with the title “the patient”) and a third achievement at 100 that scores you the PUG pet pictured here.
There has been a lot of chatter in guild about wether or not the PUG groups are random, or if they purposely pair really high gear score people with really low gear score people. I’d love to hear your take on this, so please leave some comments! I can tell you that the quickest way to a group…. a tank! When I join with my friend Devin’s tank, we have a group in literally seconds. When I join with his lock… well sometimes we are waiting quite some time.
I do like that you can vote to kick a member! *evil laugh* I have no problem with someone with sucky gear doing less damage, but when people start going AFK for long periods of the heroic, its good we can purge them!
I’m defiantly NOT digging the loot system. Now, as an end game resto druid, I’m not going into heroics looking for gear. But I know some people are, and are getting screwed. And I defiantly am looking for gear on my lowbie cow’s PUG games. What am I talking about? I’m talking about us not being able to need on cloth!!!
Having recently just leveled up a second druid, I can tell you that almost all of my gear from level 1-55ish was cloth. There was just a huge shortage of good caster leather. Sure I’d have the occasional piece here and there, but the majority of it was cloth. So now, if I use their dungeon finding tool, I wont be able to get any of that? /StartRant Thats… um… BS. Even on my TOC 25 Heroic geared main, I had cloth boots for several months that I only replaced a week ago when the leather ones finally dropped. I understand that you don’t want a warrior need rolling on cloth caster gear… BUT there has to be a better way to do it than to disallow people (resto druids for example) from rolling on clear upgrades that aren’t their highest armor class. /EndRant
I also kind of feel sorry for enchanters. We basically all get to freely abuse their skill in a PUG. I’m not an enchanter, and clearly being able to roll for shards benefits me… but still. As if enchanting wasn’t enough of a money sink, let’s give away part of their skill without asking them. Poor enchanters 
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I was very sad the first time I ran the new ICC 5 mans on my alt druid and watched an upgrade get turned into an abyss crystal before my very eyes. People suggest just telling your party not to DE cloth, but people hit that button so fast that it’s impossible not to have the occasional oops…even in a guild run. There’s a suggestion thread on the NA WoW forums (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=21730683102&sid=1&pageNo=1) that has some really good ideas. I hope Blizz listens and tweaks the system.
Also, I’ve found that I get groups instantly as a solo healer or as a healer with a tank, but my wait time sky rockets as soon as I queue with any number of just dps.
The gear score thing seems to be fairly accurate. My warlock (with high lvl raiding gear) gets mostly similarly geared pugs with a few lower ones sprinkled in. My alt druid is a couple of tiers behind with a few blues from just turning 80 a couple of weeks ago, and she generally gets people around her gear score. Of course, the system sometimes has to pick people that aren’t quite near your score because there’s only so much to choose from, perhaps. It’s been working fairly well though!
As far as enchanting, I like the suggestion to give them an opt-in ability so that they don’t feel as if their profession is being taken advantage of. I think most people would still opt-in as it keeps them from having to keep track of all the extra loot, etc. while still giving the ability to opt out to servers/guilds/people that use DE’ing in a different way.
I really do think they need to change that if you can benefit from wearing the item, than you should be able to Need it. Perhaps not have the same priority as someone whom it’s designed for, but you should still have priority over those who are just going to DE or vendor the item.
Yo cannot get the achievements until you are 80. You have to run heroics for that. I think they should open it up so if you do the random dungeon you can get the title/pet too. I have a lot of 80’s. However, recently I’ve been playing with my Restoration Druid. She’s 76 atm.
Overall I do like the Random Dungeon finder, since it encourages more people to PUG. I’ve always enjoyed PUGs so never needed an incentive to do so. The only difference is I’m not the one organizing them now (which can take some time) I let the dungeon finder do that for me.
Yeah, Blizzard’s head need to be checked, but they do have a long history of sadism. They are a sadistic company and enjoy their user’s misery.