I Don’t Fear PUGs Anymore
Ever since I quit my raiding guild back in late September, I've been in a two man guild consisting of myself and Rynala. And while I have a lot of friends in raiding guilds, they're not always available or interested in running instances. So needless to say, we've been doing a lot of pugging (pick up groups).
I'd say probably 70% or so of the instance runs I've done in Wrath of the Lich King have been with at least 1-2 PUG members. Of all the runs I've done, I can only think of a couple that were bad and only one that was disastrous. Back in the Burning Crusade when I would run in PUGs, I would usually bring up the armory on my second monitor to check on all the members for a hint if it was a disaster waiting to happen. I'm not so afraid anymore.
Last night as soon as I logged in the server, my friend's guild was running 25man Vault of Archavon (the Wintergrasp raid) and then planned to run 25man Obsidian Sanctum (the raid under Wyrmrest Temple) but were short a couple healers and a DPS or two. Rynala and I joined the raid to help out and the rest of the members were grabbed from other raiding guilds. All in all, it wasn't really a PUG as everyone in the raid was familiar with everyone else and the raid went smoothly.
Later in the night Rynala had logged out to work on some college essays and I decided to try my luck at pugging the 10man versions of Obsidian Sanctum and Vault of Archavon. It took a while to get all the members, but we had myself healing, my friend off-tanking as a Death Knight and then eight puggers filling the other rolls. All of the people in the raid were people I have never seen before from guilds I had never heard of (I assume some are leveling guilds).
About six of the people in the raid had never been to Obsidian Sanctum before and other than myself and my death knight friend, maybe only one other person in the raid ever had raid experience past Karazhan. Even though I knew the two raids were easy, I feared for the worse. In Obsidian Sanctum, we pulled the first trash pack and wiped in about 15 seconds. Old dread started coming back. We all went back into the instance again and pulled the same trash pack. Only the hunter died because his trap broke early and the tank wasn't fast enough to pick it up.
From there on the group really flowed. Everyone worked on their part and did it to the best of their abilities. Some of the DPS were obviously better skilled than some of the rest, but to their credit, they all did a fantastic job on the trash and three drakes on Obsidian Sanctum. My only fear with the drakes was Tenebron.
When fighting each drake, the drake will open up a portal to the shadow world that the raid members enter. Once inside, they have to DPS something down and then they'll pop out of the shadow world and fight the boss. For the other two drakes it is a single dragonkin, but for Tenebron it is six eggs. In the 25man, the DPS usually isn't high enough to kill the eggs so time runs out in the shadow world and whelplings spawn that need to be offtanked. I feared us getting overwhelmed with adds in the 10man if people weren't on par. In the first time in the shadow world on Tenebron, they killed all but one egg. They quickly killed the whelp and went back to the boss. The following times, they actually were able to kill all six eggs. I was really shocked.
When it got to the boss himself, we two shot him. It was the tank's first time ever tanking the boss but he read up, prepared himself and flawlessed it both attempts. We wiped on the first attempt just because even though I explained it, it's easier to know what you need to do once you have seen actual encounter. We effortlessly killed the boss on the second attempt.
Wintergrasp turned at that point so we went to the Vault of Archavon. One DPS who was already locked to the raid left and one healer left due to connection difficulties. Even though it took a while to replace the healer, we did and had zero problems on that boss, killing him first try.
Even though it is a much larger undertaking, I think that tonight or tomorrow night I might try to organize a PUG 10man Naxxramas. My hope from this all is that I can find a dedicated group of people who have never raided seriously before and bring them all into my guild and forge a competent raiding guild out of them.
As for now, I don't fear PUGs anymore. All the hardcore are constantly complaining that the game is being made easier and Blizzard is pandering to the casuals. For the hard core, it is easier. It isn't hard when you take five to ten people with Sunwell experience and run through the five man or ten man content. It isn't hard at all for players with that level of skill and dedication. But for the vast majority of people, this game is becoming a lot more fun. From now on, when I see "LF1M Heroic Nexus Need 1 Healer", chances are I'll probably take them up on the offer.