General guide to PuGing success in Scenarios.

[Rum]

Hello guys,

I wanted to try and create a guide for everyone joining pickup scenarios. Hopefully, I hope this post will give some tips and guidance on what you can do to help your pickup group succeed.

Disclaimer

This post and guide is not intended to be biased towards Order or Destruction, neither is it meant to come across as complaining or whining. If you feel offended or personally affronted by my opinion in this post, please try and understand I do not mean any suggestion here in a negative fashion, I am trying to be constructive and helpful in general.

Things you should do.

1.1) Helpful communication. Relay strategic instruction to your team. Examples include "Fight at X or Y, because Z", or something like "[insert name here] please run the flag I will cover you". Staying quiet in a pickup scenario group may seem tempting but helpful communication can make or break a scenario.

1.2) Buffs. Make sure you keep your group's buffs running at all times, check and reapply if you need too.

1.3) Stay positive. Belief in winning never hurts anyone, and more than often has a positive effect on self belief within a group, especially within a group of people that do not know each other.

1.4) Lead, or follow. If you are knowledgeable and want to lead, please do it. Leadership is an extremely helpful skillset for an individual to have alongside good charisma in a pickup group; if you can do it, please step up. On the other hand, if you don't like leading then please follow the person who steps up as a leader. Leading is pointless unless people follow.

1.5) Be aware of and use your environment. Using the environment to your advantage, noticing a player sneaking around the frontline and attacking your healers in the back, understanding where the shortcuts are and blocking off enemy dps with collision are all constructive examples of using and being aware of your environment. Use it to your advantage.

1.6) Know your distance from your supports. Shared damage from guards and area of effect heals have a maximum range, stay within that range. Know where your healers and tanks are and learn to know how far you can stray from them; Enemy add-on helps a lot with this with it's distance finder.

1.7) Use potions. Using potions really make a difference, not just buff potions (armor pots are fantastic) but also health potions. Help ease the pressure on your healers somewhat, pickup a craft and make yourself some potions! Or buy them if you can afford them.

1.8) Use CC wisely, not proactively. Using your area of effect roots and knockbacks gives your enemies CC immunity for a set period. Therefore, use it only when necessary or the situation demands it, don't lead with CC whenever you can. However, detaunts and taunts are NOT cc so these you should use proactively.

1.9) Use the best equipment and talismans you can afford. Many people put too much faith into the bolstering system or do not fully understand how it works. If you have purple talismans and gear for your current level, for example, your bolster will be a lot stronger as well. Exploit that to your advantage when venturing into scenarios. If you stick at it you will get all the gear you like from tokens earned in the scenarios themselves, however, talismans will cost you money. Even green talismans are better than none, they also get bolstered up.

1.10) Ask questions, learn and share your knowledge. Have you learnt something new? Know a top tactic for a certain scenario? Know a good spot for healers to stand while healing objective A or B? Share what you have learnt proactively with others through /Advice chat, and never stop asking questions, no matter the negative reactions you may sometimes get. An inquisitive mind is still learning, which is a good thing.

1.11) Balance the groups. Sometimes the game get's group balance wrong in pickup scenarios, please do talk to your scenario teammates and form balanced groups, there are a variety of options: (I) Two healers, two tanks, two dps; (II) One healer, three dps, two tanks; (III) One tank, four dps, one healer; and many more. Just use your common sense and build up an understanding of what combination will produce the best buff spread as well as cohesion.

1.12) Know your enemy, exploit his/her weakness. If you are struggling against certain classes, go and play the class for a while. This does not mean you should xrealm (log onto the opposing realm if things are not going your way in Orvr), but rather go and play with then casually. The goal is to learn the classes' strengths and weaknesses; exploit the weaknesses with your main, and water down their strengths (debuffs).

Things you should not do.

2.1) Make personal attacks towards teammates. Your frustration might be boiling over and you really feel you need to tell [insert name] why he is spoiling the scenario for you but don't do it. Usually, when you make attacks like this it just makes the situation worse, instead try and educate the player (without being arrogant or pushy) to help them perform better. If you cannot find it within you to help the player then try and stay calm, finish your scenario and take a break.

2.2) Queueing angry. If you lost the last few scenarios you might not have the right mind-set anymore to try again yet. Ask yourself honestly if you are positive before you click the queue button. If not, go and do something relaxing and come back later when you are positive and competitive once more.

2.3) Overreaching and Trading. You may really want to kill that enemy healer or dps, but if you do not pay close attention to your environment (1.5) or are out of range of your healers or tanks (1.6) you are simply trading your life for theirs. That rock between you and your healer is stopping direct heals; you have that dps to 20% health, one more hit....but then a knockdown on you and the healer is 200 feet away, you are dead and probably won't get ressed either; if you were within range you would have been on your feet again in seconds.

2.4) Generalising losses. It may seem that [insert realm name] is always losing but I guarantee you that is not the case. It is an illusion your mind casts over you after facing a few losses in a row, and when that illusion seeps out into scenario chat or, even worse, advice or off-topic, it infects others. Both sides generally win equally without that much significant difference, and to generalise that [insert realm name] always loses is just infectious negative propaganda. If you feel this way I challenge you to actually record your wins/losses over 2 weeks, if you have won 0 times come talk to me.

2.5) Partial group segregation. If you join a scenario as a full premade group of six, it's great, no problem. However , this is advice for pugs and if you and a buddy join as only two in a group, you are still a pug in my eyes. Often I have noticed 2 or three people joining group 6 in a war band or so as only three people. Leaving party one with three people as well, making the scenario group 6,3,3. Do not do this, join up with group one in this example for 6,6. By partially segregating you are (i) limiting the heals and guards that can be used on you. AoE heals are group wide and guard is within the same party/group only. Furthermore you are (ii) limiting the buffs that can be shared across the two groups of three. Whether there is two of you, three of you, four of you...anything except a full group, try and get the other puggies to join your group or join them. It has a tremendous impact on success in the scenario if you partially segregate.

2.6) Negative Communication. Some may think this is the same as point 2.1. Even though 2.1 can fall under this point it does not include the entirety of what negative communication is. For example, someone in a scenario may say "Why does [insert realm name] always lose?", this kind of loaded rhetorical question is extremely damaging negative propaganda towards large groups of people and should be avoided at all costs. It can not only drag your entire scenario group down into your pool of negative melancholy but can affect them for a long time afterwards; they may indeed, in turn, spread it themselves. Please avoid making these kinds of comments, no matter how much you believe it to be true. Keep negativity to yourself in scenarios, and preferably, afterwards also.

2.7) Unrealistic expectations. If you are in a pickup scenario warband, and you face a full pre-made group of enemies, don't expect to wipe the floor with them. In most cases, the harsh reality is you will lose in this situation. Unfortunately, for many people this is enough for them to leave the keyboard, or start blaming their teammates with toxicity to make themselves feel better about the situation. Do not do this. Instead, try and (I) put up the best fight you can, (II) learn what you can from your enemy premade team, (III) check the combat log, what is their combos? Go look it up, find out if you can do such combos too. These are but three examples of turning this negative into a positive; learn from your loss, don't walk away empty handed.

2.8) Overlap resurrections. There is a reason why you see people using the addon that automatically shouts "[Insert player name] get up! Fight again!", or along those lines. The speech macros is trigger at the start of the ress cast, not the end. The reason for this is that not more than one healer tries to ress a dead target, ultimately dropping the entire scenario's healers' healing output dramatically. Get the addon if you are a healer, and if you see another healer ressing the same target as you (but ahead of you in the chat log), cancel your res and keep healing.

[Nameless]

Using pots is quite important also esp for mdps classes the problem is that solotard life is too expensive

[Rum]

Using pots is quite important also esp for mdps classes the problem is that solotard life is too expensive

Great advice, let me add that.

[Bozzax]

My best sc pug advice is to make friends pugging and q with them for scs

[peterthepan3]

Good tips.

Would also add that being open to constructive criticism is vital in order to better oneself. Don't dismiss or /ignore people for simply calling you out on mistakes, or offering guidance on how to rectify said mistakes, lest you continue to play in the same manner (often to the detriment of your team).

I've lost count of the number of times people have offered pugs advice (akin to what you've written), only to laugh it off - proceeding to die in the same manner ad nauseam.

[Melekith]

Very nice guide! I would add:
-assist each other
-use cc wisely cause of immunity timers
-use best equip and talisman
-talk with other people about the game and share knowledge
-talk with other people about the class you're playing
I know, these are details, but in my opinion they are important

[Rum]

Good tips.

Would also add that being open to constructive criticism is vital in order to better oneself. Don't dismiss or /ignore people for simply calling you out on mistakes, or offering guidance on how to rectify said mistakes, lest you continue to play in the same manner (often to the detriment of your team).

I've lost count of the number of times people have offered pugs advice (akin to what you've written), only to laugh it off - proceeding to die in the same manner ad nauseam.

I agree wholeheartedly, although I think it's covered in point 2.1 don't you think? Or shall I add more?

[Rum]

Very nice guide! I would add:
-assist each other
-use cc wisely cause of immunity timers
-use best equip and talisman
-talk with other people about the game and share knowledge
-talk with other people about the class you're playing
I know, these are details, but in my opinion they are important

Thank you, I will work these in =)

[Darosh]

Melekith's points, all but the gearing part - you can do well even if you neglect gear a tad, provided you follow the communications/teamplay part -, deserve big shiny letters and bright colours. They do, too, incorporate Peter's input.

Kudos for the effort, much appreciated, Rum.

[Rum]

Melekith's points, all but the gearing part - you can do well even if you neglect gear a tad, provided you follow the communications/teamplay part -, deserve big shiny letters and bright colours. They do, too, incorporate Peter's input.

Kudos for the effort, much appreciated, Rum.

It's a pleasure, trying to build people up not break them down.