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Ah ok. I took the comment "And when I say Dominate, I mean punch through the new content starting day one, like only guilds have in the past" to mean that you were saying PUGs would be running through the instances easily starting day 1. I guess it was the phrase "punch through". I agree that PUGs will be running, or at least trying to run, the instances on day 1.

If you pretend you got kingslayer with a random PUG raid made of random people you never played with before, I mean, you were just like "let's make a PUG today, get totally random people, some of which don't even know the tactics of most ICC bosses, and kill the Lich King", then I'm gonna be forced to call you a liar.

Now if you pretend you geared up several chars by facerolling easy 5 man dungeons with PUGs, then I believe you.

 

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You see Korrigan?

You simply cannot accept that any pug can defeat content, even though you say the game is dumbed down, is easy mode, and that right now everyone over gears the content.


If you honestly believe that no pug has ever defeated ICC, then you really are out of touch with the current game. It happens all the time.

 

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Korrigan, do you have blacksmithing trained on all your characters? I mean, you have to make your own stuff right? I have a hard time believing there are standard helmets in this game that fit your giant head. It's a frickin' video game, get over yourself already.

 

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I pugged everything up to LK and killed LK in a half pug. The only bosses I haven't killed is Halion and a few of the Ulduar bosses (I did not care for Ulduar). I used to pug ICC 10 and 25 every single week and pugged ToC 25 every week until I got a DV, which took a long time. No I was not pugging Heroic content, although I did pug a few Heroic bosses outside of the given lootship (Lady Deathwhisper and Rotface).

Call me a liar if you wish, but that is what I did and I stand by my statement about the quality of the players that I come across day in and day out in pugs.

 

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There are more and more ICC PUGs coming out. Right now there are a lot of raiding guilds who have just stopped raiding with Cata so close. Those raiders are Pugging with other players. So I mean it isn't a PuG in the sense that the first 25 people that send a tell go on the raid, but they put the PuG together just as if they were putting it together in their guild.


It is still more challenging because you don't know these players or their play styles, you may wipe a few more times then usual but you can get it done.

 

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There have been ICC pugs since it came out, on my server at least. Sure many of them didn't go past 4/12, but many also got to at least 6/12 and a few went farther. I got into almost all of those pugs using the raid finder which the leader simply went by gear score to determine if you could join or not.

 

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For no other reason than boredom let me see if I can state this again in a way that people can understand.

1. WoW PvE is not objectively hard. It has never been hard. It will never be hard. I've been here since release and the hardest thing about vanilla was enduring the mind numbing boredom of the time it took to form a group or raid. The content was not hard. Ever. It's DESIGNED to be beaten.

2. The discussion is not (or should not be) about difficulty in an objective sense.

3. There is a very large portion of the huge player base of WoW that for whatever reason is simply unwilling to, or incapable of, playing above a whack a mole level. This means CC, kill orders, don't stand in the stuff that's KILLING you, use your abilities beyond smashy one key - are for whatever reason difficult concepts for them. I see them 95% of the time I PuG. It's so rare to have all 4 other members not be mouth breathers that I actually notice when it happens.

4. In WoTLK number 3 was never an issue because it was never needed. I did Heroics in quest blues and greens from the very beginning of Wrath and even then - there was no CC, and people died, just as they still do, to slow killing ground effects (as few as there are). The instances were able to be finished anyway because that's how they were tuned.

5. As far as I can tell from all anecdotal evidence, Cataclysm dungeons will require CC, kill orders, and have ground (and possibly other) effects that will kill you faster. Basically they will be tuned for a higher level of play (NOTE: I did not say high level). The instances will not be able to be finished without playing above the foam helmet level.

6. This will not magically result in bad players becoming good players and crushing or dominating content.

7. It is very likely that what will in fact happen is frustration, and less people doing PvE content than in WoTLK. It's what happened in BC heroics. There is no reason to believe it won't happen here. When it's not fun it's not going to be done.

8. This is bad. It is better to have a game that is fun and accessible to many and too easy for a few than to have it annoying / inaccessible to many and "fun" for a few.

9. Killing the ability for PuGs to faceroll PvE will reduce the ability for people to solo queue up random dungeons and get them done. This is what sucks.

I do not remember Vanilla with fond longing because I literally don't care that others have access to gear, nor do I define my worth by how many pixels I have that someone else doesn't have. I remember it as frustrating because nothing could be done without a group, it took forever to form one, and the content caused issues for foam helmet players which then meant it wasn't fun for me because they couldn't complete it.

I have no problem doing any PvE content. If I had 5 of myself I wouldn't even know the average WoW Pugger existed. However, I'm required to rely on others, and as such I'd rather it be easy enough for those others to complete than for it to be "challenging" for them to the point that I can't reliably complete a PuG heroic run until the content is outgeared significantly, because I can't do it unless THEY (random average players) can do it.

I hope I'm wrong - I really do - because if I am WRONG I will enjoy Cata, but if I am right it's going to suck for many months.

--Sly

 

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In fairytales, when you kiss a frog, it becomes a beautiful princess/prince.
But only in fairytales.

 

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