I must've sinned really badly to have deserved the 2 pickup groups I had today... Whatever it was I did to deserve this punishment, I hope I enjoyed it.

I've been fairly lucky with pickup groups, thinking to myself, what could go wrong?

Well, today I found out.

One group, was killing super slow. Level 64 enchanter constantly oom for some reason all he was doing was tash and slow and an occassional mez. Wanted to pacify every room before each pull, but I told them "no, it's too slow". WTF do you have an enchanter for if they can't handle a few adds?

Took at least a minute per kill because the DPS was so bad. I'm used to 30-40 second kills in an average group. 50 seconds in a slow group (yes, I have something that times it).

So anyway, after plodding along v e r y slowly the boss finally spawns. We follow the little clues for a bit, I have a map. The warrior keeps wanting to head down dead ends that I know are dead ends, I keep getting him to stop it.... Then we come to a room and the environmental clues are saying "noises ahead" but I scouted ahead and found the boss elsewhere, there were twists and turns in the dungeon so the clues were misleading.

I tell everyone but the warrior refuses to believe me. I tell him, "I'm a rogue. Remember that time I disappeared for 5 minutes saying, "I'm looking for the boss? And then I found him and hailed him so everyone knew I had found him? I have a map too, the way you're trying to go is a dead end". I found the boss and it's this way." We were killing so slowly though we'd have to IVU through a few rooms to get closer for any chance to win.

Well, he wouldn't believe me, he kept trying to go the wrong way. Everyone is yelling at him now. Finally, we get him to rejoin the group and IVU up. I'm being very patient, explaining my plan to try to make it past a room or two with IVU. Though inside I'm beginning that slow burn I shall name the "Can people truly be this stupid and live?" EQ Burgeoning Anger Syndrome.

Most of the group follows me and we find a nice corner past a room or two and wait there... No warrior, no enchanter. The warrior went "his" way and the enchanter followed him. They got spotted by a live mob and died.

I was livid! At this point, I'm ready to just leave even though we've got 20 minutes left, I know with this band of maroons we'll never make it through the next 5 very large rooms. I ask for consent for 5 minutes -- I'm well past the early Stage 1 & 2 of the EQ BAS and approaching Stage 3 where I'm typing in all capitals now -- and pull their corpses and get them ressed.

I talked to the wizard who seemed to have something on the ball and we just agreed to give up rather than go for the lesser reward. I figured with the idiot warrior we'd probably wipe a time or two more and lose that too. Better to just cut your losses and get out.

=====

Then there was my first group of the day. The warrior was using Rampage instead of defensive on pulls of 5 which got the cleric killed. Yes, he did it intentionally. Then, he bails on us leaving his 16 year old kid at the keyboard who plays almost as good as his dad but doesn't know how to play a warrior. They were both pretty much in the dark about what all those disciplines are for... so I call it a draw.

So, we're down to the wire, about to do the boss room. Fighting 2 mobs (no mezzer onboard) not a problem! They're slowed, we're winning. When the ranger says... "Here's the boss!" he pulls the boss and 4 other mobs. I'm yelling "Switch to the boss" over and over, and "go defensive!" ... well, the tank goes defensive at about 5% hit points, my cleric was DA'd because of heal aggro... he dies, but we're still cooking! Got the boss down to 30% before we all died.

Anyway, I ain't doing no more pickup groups unless I know the people!

I feel like Inspector Cluesseau's boss.... lock me up in the booby hatch for awhile before i hurt someone.

9 out of 10 pickup groups I've been with are bad.

There's lots of reasons people are LFG for a pickup group. None of them are good ones however..

Well, this decides it. Nothing but slaughter missions for pick up groups. I can't trust a pick up group to do anything but kill a few mobs in 90 minutes. No more assassinate missions.

I'm surprised you've had a lot of trouble with assassinate missions. All the missions except collection ones have given me roughly the same amount of exp, meaning we had to kill the same number of mobs. I guess I've had better luck with pickup groups, maybe because they had at least one or two guildmates or friends, so I knew at least part of the group would know what they were doing?

With people I know and trust, the assassinate missions have been fine. But with people pulling crap like that, they just don't work. These people can be pointed at a mob and kill it, but having to follow directions and follow a plan like "Ivu and move through the next room" is a little beyond the abilities of some of these people I think.

I had that very same experience last night in a group I made. I've now decided I am not going to make groups unless an hour has passed and still no sign of hope for a group.

Group wasn't too bad a make up, all 65 - Druid (me) , Beastlord, Ranger, Warrior, Enchanter and Wizard. DPS looked fine, slow was good + CC included, healing although only me should have been OK had done 6 dungeons with me as healer and survived so I thought things would be good. Well they weren't.

Things started out okish, was a little slow but we were on time, with the map I had we could head towards the boss and by the time we go to the last crossroads he would appear. Well the Warrior needed a big helping hand with heals, and resulted in the BST dying while I was preoccupied with the War. Well in the end we ended up failing 3 rooms from the boss, we had planned to pacify the way there (we were running behind schedule by now) but the War just kept on pulling. Well we get to the boss with 3 minutes to go, was going to be 2 adds with the boss, so the plan was to mezz adds and concentrate on boss, I'm not sure what communication problem we had but the tanks all kept on the adds and we wiped.
Going for low points we went back and finally killed the boss with a death to the warrior on the boss. As we were entering the boss' lair I find out that the Ranger had greater HP and AC than the Warrior. In the brief periods where the Warrior was running back to the dungeon we actually moved faster through the dungeon.

I apologised to the whole group for the failure, being the leader and the one who set it up I felt responsible (also the healing issue compounded it). I realise now you can't just pick someone for their class, you need to go a little deeper than that. Only problem being the irony of - you don't know what people are like until you group with them, but you shouldn't group with them until you know what they are like.

I too had a terrible time on friday. I (druid) was grouped with a warrior, ranger, monk, enchanter and cleric, all level 65. By all accounts thats a pretty good mix of dps, crowd control and healing power.

However the monk constantly pulled 3-4 mobs at a time, causing both me and cleric to be healing and the enchanter mezzing nearly full time. Whats worse, we were only a quarter of the way thru the dungeon and enchanter was at 10m, cleric 15m and me 25m. Guess what did the monk do? Pull 4 more mobs in. I immediately evaced the group and he questioned why we had to evac like it was my fault.

Needless we failed that assasination mission. I had 2 other failed adventures that day, but those were more because the people I grouped with didn't have good gear.

<strong>Nothing but slaughter missions for pick up groups.</strong>

Ain't dat da troot'!

I'd rather have an enchanter that's fast on the mezzing and running oom than one who doesn't mez on a 3 or 4 pull until the MT's chosen mob is dead (or nearly so). I had a chanter in a group recently (partial pickup group) like that. I knew we were in trouble when we get into the adventure and he announces that he needs buffs (and this after we spent several minutes at the camp getting buffs and several checks before going in that we were all ready to go). I swear that he must have hit himself with slow at the beginning. I would hit the MT with a heal after a few rounds, and all the unmezzed adds would come jump on me.

Anyway, after 30 minutes, we had 3 of 23 items collected. A miserable rate. Good thing the MT was a paladin guildmate with whom I had worked in several LDON runs with (I was the primary healer). I just kept him healed and spiked, and he started rooting multiples on the pull. Our kill rate picked up and we managed to push on and get all 23 with about 10 minutes to spare, thanks to a really lucky drop rate near the end.

*shudders*

You know, I used to think playing a warrior was so easy a child could do it. Either they're making extremely stupid children (and adults) these days or else it's harder than it seems.

Playing a warrior is actually slightly more difficult than playing a rogue, Panamah ;) . Well... most of the time it is pretty cake, the easiest class to play. But if -anything- is out of the ordinary (more than one mob lined up, etc) they actually have to put a tiny bit of effort into it. Rogues are pretty much /assist /autoattack /evade.

;)

Easy my foot! I have to concentrate hard to get those big backstabs! Boy, one slip in my concentration and my DPS is shot to hell.

/comfort Panamah

I don't have LDON and when I do grouping in LDON ( playing on friend's characters ) I always in guildie group. kinda neat group =)

The best groups I've had so far are guild groups and groups where almost all the players are from another guild. It's funny, there's a couple of guilds though where the players are definitely sub-par and I'm having not very good luck with unguilded players (with some exceptions).

I actually find the pick up grouping refreshing.

Yes, I know going in with a guild group that the DPS will be solid, the skills there, and I know the individual strengths, weaknesses, and play styles of the people I am with.

But really, not all the good players are in your own guild, or happen to be people you know. And the game isn't that hard that there are many truly bad players.

We all get high standards by knowing the styles of those we know well. But I find it a breath of fresh air to be interacting with strangers more again, and mostly it has worked out ok for me.

Most groups I am in have some mix of guild members, but I really have had only one bad exp so far, and that was really do to grouping with too weak a class mix considering the lower gear of the guilds those I grouped with were in.

"And the game isn't that hard that there are many truly bad players. "

hahahahah. Sorry, after my pick up group experiences since ldon came out I am again reminded just how many there really are. =)

I agree with you that pick up groups are refreshing though. I've gotten to know quite a few new, interesting and skilled players. And I find it very challenging to try and make the groups I end up in which include the above listed bad players successful regardless.

I got picked up by an incredible group the other day. I was definitely the weakest link, and main healer, but they were so good that we actually beat the "hard" dungeon with some time left over.

It really made me look again at how important Gear (they're in a guild which is pharming VT seriously and pushing into PoP) and AAs (they had LOTS more than I do) are. The shaman, especially, was helping a lot with healing.

The best part? They were also really friendly and nice. Count one lucky lucky time for me!

I've met so many good players since LDON came out that I didn't know before. Now, I'm not really forming pick-up groups, I have my core of folks that I hunt with, but we do have to fill out the group, and I must say I've been having a lot of good luck with the people we pull in. Granted, I am on Firiona Vie, and we have the *best* players of all ;)

It's a nice feeling to keep winning the adventures, whereas the first couple of days it was just failure after failure.

My reason for LFG is that guildies are all grouped by the time I'm on so I have to look elsewhere.

So, how is this a bad reason again?

Panamah,

you sent me a tell the other night and i was afk :-(

would of loved to get the chance to group with you. sorry i missed it.

if you can, look for BH members, they will make your pick-up groups better ;-)

PoP sort of spoiled me for pickup groups. Before the planes got opened up pretty much only the top 10ish guilds and alliances had any sort of plane access so it was rare that there was more than 1 idiot in a group and being an idiot in a decent guild they knew at least to shut up and follow the herd.

I felt the pain though playing my alts where 20+ minutes would often get wasted just trying to get people to the camp spot in PoN or PoD... inevitably followed by someone having to leave 10 minutes later. At least in LDoN people are implicitly saying they'll stick around a reasonable amount of time.

Woot! Glad to hear that. I wondered if that was you, Keyera! I'll look for you online when I'm LFG and maybe you can see if your guildies need a little rogue in their group. :) I love getting guild groups, even if they aren't in MY guild. :)

I run like plague from pick up groups because i have zero toleration to retards, i dont have ldon too, sooo npnp!

Ok, more nightmare stories....

Did another pickup group, I don't learn...

Anyway, I offered to two-box Electrae (my cleric) but NO! lets take this level 65 cleric. Note, there's no baroness or any title in front of her name. Level 65 with 0 aa's is just not a good idea. People should stop at 60 and grind AA's, IMHO and do the level 60 dungeons.

So, we're going. She's constantly oom. Part of the reason is just about everything had a damage shield in MMC. So, rather than using Mark of Karn or Kings to handle that, she would use Word of Restoration, an 1100 mana spell, to heal us all up afterwards. Then pronounce herself oom.

I suggested to her to use MoK to prevent the damage in the first place, she told me she didn't have the spell.... ok. Then later I asked her if she had Etheral Elixir, that it was a cheaper heal than WoR... she didn't have that spell either. It's one you get in ShadowHaven from the clerics guild, probably costs 30 plat or so. She was a nice person, just not very informed about playing clerics.

Then we had a pally that refused to use Wave of Prexus, which would have saved her a lot of mana. He was incredibly arrogant, slow-ass puller with the biggest chip on his shoulder you can imagine. Any time anyone said, "We really need to pull faster", he'd have a tantrum and threaten to leave. He had a Sir in front of his name, yet I don't think he had any Slay undead abilities because we were killing at a snail crawling rate.

It got down to the wire and I finally convinced the enchanter to pull (the pally really didn't want to), and I convinced him to do chain pulls. Which he did fine with once he tried it. We just needed one more drop and the timer expired on us. Rather than wait a couple of minutes for the "lesser reward" the paladin left which was sort of a good-thing really, we were able to finish the adventure and joke and laugh and have a good time.

Save me!

I can not save you. I am on Karana server and you are not.

The only pickup groups I have done are with my mid level bard. But if people are less than stellar at that level, I can just chalk it up to lack of experience!

We did have a funny experience the other day. Me (bard), 2 enchaters, beasty, pally, cleric. The paladin pulls, brings back three and screams "EVAC!", and he proceeds to zone. We weren't too sure who was gonna evac us so mezzed the adds instead :P

I have to say that one of the "worst" things about EQ is the ease of levelling now. Even without powerlevelling, it wouldn't take more than a few months to reach 65. Of course you'd have craptastic gear and wouldn't have a lot of experience with your class, either.

I refuse to do pick up groups - I stopped doing them around level 40 close to 4 years ago. Occasionally we'll let a stranger join our group if we have an open spot, but it usually causes more harm than good. (I had a paladin join our group who kept casting Divine Favor - the 150 point rune - on me in PoV; he gave up a spell gem for one of our most worthless spells and kept filling my HoT buff spot with the stupid thing every 6 minutes.)

I'm shocked when I see the equipment that some 65th level people are wearing. Take that in the light of a casual player who has gotten the majority of his equipment from the bazaar. The lack of loot in the planes + the fast experience = undergeared people. My gear is NOWHERE near VT, probably about equal to Halls of Testing, maybe a little better in some spots, but it's about the best you can get without raiding. Then I look at the 65 warrior who is using a weighty pole arm. Or the 65 paladin who things a 40 AC breastplate would be a nice upgrade for him.

So we now have people who flew through levels, have poor equipment and no experience in dungeons. I nearly wet myself laughing when a 61st level player in Butcherblock /ooced "Hey, there's a big chessboard here!" He might be a great player (or not), but it really strikes you how many zones that player probably never saw, experiences they never had. How many people learned to deal with adds, trains, etc. in Unrest by the time they were 20th level? How many people never have such an experience by the time they are 65? After all, there's no need to go through that when there are so many "easy" zones.

My group is interested in playing at the peak of our abilities. We deconstruct our playing after we're done, thinking of what we could have done better, new tactics to try, etc. If I had to do pick up groups, I don't think I could keep playing the game, but I understand the sentiment that some have that pick up groups are fun (I guess it's the "pick up groups are like a box of chocolates" idea).

Pickup groups are fine if you are discriminating in your choices. I look at guild tags and if they are in a guild that is progressing along a similar line as my guild is or possibly slightly higher or lower, then they probably are ok. My first Ldon raid was not so good, mainly because our MT went LD 5 times during the attempt as well as our cleric one time. Since then I really do prefer to have a group that is mostly made up of guildies, with a few outside the guild thrown in to fill it out.

TIP OF THE DAY : Would recommend ALWAYS asking people LFG from high end guilds if they're interested before settling for anything else. Hell, getting a PoTime guilded necro, shaman, or cleric for a normal mission is an automatic win due to their mana pools and insane HP. Chances are low that they wouldn't have skills to match their equipment since on my server, high end guilds boot the crackmonkeys quickly.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>TIP OF THE DAY : Would recommend ALWAYS asking people LFG from high end guilds if they're interested before settling for anything else. Hell, getting a PoTime guilded necro, shaman, or cleric for a normal mission is an automatic win due to their mana pools and insane HP. Chances are low that they wouldn't have skills to match their equipment since on my server, high end guilds boot the crackmonkeys quickly. [/quote]

LOL!
I'm hearing absolute horror stories about my server's top guild, sorry Trevize, in LDoN. Yes, they're in PoTime. I've heard two cases now where people from my guild went with some generic uber guild folks and LOST the normal mode mission. Some of them were, I guess, just running around with happy feet aggro things they weren't prepared to deal with. It's not all of them, of course, some of the old-timers are great players, but well, you know... after a lot of recruitment god only knows what you got in the guild. There's probably a reason they're looking for a pickup group, because none of their guildmates even wants to group with them!

You can dress them up in Time gear, but you just can't take 'em out...

Yeah, early on in LDoN, I was playing my druid in a 2 druid group. I was main healer because the other druid seemed to have the attention span of a gnat. Someone in the group inspected him, and he had mostly elemental planes gear, but he didn't know the way from butcherblock to Lfay, and after explanation, still got lost (both missions) on the way there.

He would cast a quick heal on the tank that would fairly often last 2 secs after my IC heal, would pick a mob now and then to nuke like 6 times, but often do nothing at all on several mobs in a row. I hope it was just someone's kid playing an account, heh.

did adventure last night (pick-up group) had me (cleric) a druid and a shaman,rest was pally, ench and wizard!! was a great group! that druid was putting out some damage!

<3 a well played druid!

Lull you idiots.

You have a cleric.

There is no reason to have any adds on the boss pull.

Sigh.

I won't dispute that being in Time doesn't automatically make you competent, but in some fairness to *some* of those people, they are probably used to a different set of people -- one where a 5 pull is still a yawn for example, and one where every wizzie and or druid has 6500 buffed or even over 7k buffed hp.

That doesn't excuse them for not thinking and not changing their playstyle to suit the circumstances, certainly, but I do think it is the cause of the some of the dumb things that some of them do. Note I said some, not all. :)

- Xylem, E'ci

More than likely they're used to putting a guildie on autofollow and coming back to the keyboard every 15 minutes to see if it's time to nuke yet. :p