I have been in situations where I have asked for an achievement when I need one or two pugs for a guild ToC raid (fairly casual guild, with people in odd timeszones). I don’t think its necessarily a bad thing to do – Its just something you don’t want to rely totally on. They link the achievement, I go to be.imba (Wow-heros runs really slow for me for some reason) have a look at their gear, and if it is a class I am rather familiar with I might check out their talents to make sure they have certain core abilities.

I have in the past taken quite a few people without the achievement, even when advertising that I want it. As have some other raid leaders when I am on my alt. But these are the people that whisper me and say ‘Hey, I don’t have the Achievement, but I have researched it on wowwiki and am fairly confident I can do ok’.

I use the achievement as a way to say ‘I want you to be kind of serious, and know vaguely what to do’. If you don’t convey that message, you are liable to hunters who do 900dps despite using 232s, or healers who don’t understand that when a leader asks you to heal the people with incinerating flesh for the third time, you have to heal that target. Yes, I know – their people too. But there are a fair few players who haven’t quite grasped how raiding works out there. And while its more than fine to help these people gear up in your guild, when your doing a pug there is no certainty they will listen or learn.

Also I don’t think your sweeping comment you make about pug raid leaders is fair; ‘sitting back and getting a free ride’ is not something that regularly happens for me. Sure some pugs undoubtedly do it, but I have found that most pugs that require achievements on my server will have a leader who organises things and makes sure everyone knows what they are doing.

In the end it boils down to the fact that some people aren’t so good at raiding, and since most wont care to admit this (Theres a shaman in my guild who I wont take to harder raids anymore, because after his 10th onyxia run he still asks how to work out where the deep breaths are coming from, despite being told repeatedly), you have to try and vet people so that they don’t slip through and your raid can succeed.

Nasty people will always be nasty, lazy people will always be lazy. Have to strike a balance between being to serious and to laid back. Yeah its a game, and yeah its about having fun, but wiping over and over because someone isn’t doing their job isn’t fun, it just annoys everyone else.

Ciaran of Caelestrasz

PS. To add an interesting anecdote, last weekend I did a ToC pug on my Gnome Death Knight (Different server to my main, I go there to hide when guild drama happens). A DPS death knight showed up weilding a red sword of courage, no offhand and blue pvp gear – as blood spec. If you don’t play a deathknight heres an overview of the specs;
-Blood Two handed mainly physical damage.
-Frost; Two handed or Dual weild depending on your setup.
-Unholy; Disease damage, most people say two handed here.

When I pointed out that Death knights really didn’t want to be using single handed weapons, and that if they did, they wanted to dual weild. I was ignored.

Ten minutes later he caused a wipe on Icehowl. Not by dying to the enrage, he had died to fire on Gormok. But because the yeti got enraged and I died before our hunter could dispell the enrage. OK thought I, the other tank picked him up and we were going along ok. The next thing I know, the Warrior who was tanking Icehowl has left the group. I didn’t think he was the type to ragequit as he had been very civil when we were working out the tanking assignments, and especially when the boss was nearly down. It turned out that the Deathknight (Who had been demanding assist earlier, and had been given it because the raid leader was in the same guild as him) had removed the warrior while playing around with the options. Needless to say, the warrior was no longer on the confused healers bars, and it was a wipe.

As expected the raid leader got kind of annoyed and kicked the death knight out of the raid. In this particular instance, a gearcheck/vetting process of some kind would have been in order.

Wow that turned into a long comment o.O

The other pet hate of mine is the raid leader who has a specific healer preferance without understanding the mechanics of the classes, on one occasion I heard a player asking for a priest healer, as they were the only class that was competent enought to keep the raid topped up. I took great offence to this being a resto shaman. I currently play a resto shaman and often keep an eye on the entire raid and top up the tank when the tank healers need support.

I am on of the lucky few who doesnt need to pug I am in a guild that runs regular raids and can really on improve my gear with progress runs which we do on a regular basis. While I will help friends with thier own progress I prefer not to pug due the the arrogance bullying and rudeness of some players who spoil the game for others and putting off players who given time could prove to be epic players.

You don’t need 35k HP or 2k DPS to do Heroic Utgarde. Someone pulling 3k in Ulduar isn’t failing, they’re at the point where it’s progression content for them.

I don’t think anyone’s saying that PUGs should take a 1200 DPSer to Koralon, but simultaneously, you’re leaving out a lot of good players by only inviting people who have the place on farm.

My Druid is nearing 80 and I’ve been thinking about this problem, too. I’m on a fresh start, a fresh server, and only recently got invited to a guild. Although the reason for the invite was someone found my healing acceptable in the dungeons, I don’t think I’m anywhere near the core of the guild, that is, I’ll have to gear up on my own outside of the guild.

It is times like this that achievements really hurt.

But after lurking in guild chat and another independent chat channel, I’ve found there’s also a lot of groups that silently go for heroics and raids without much of a gear check or achievement check. Perhaps the situation isn’t really that bad, perhaps there’s till hope for us, laying deep in the hearts of the people that really play this game for the fun of doing PUGs?
.-= Maaya´s last blog ..Ditching TellMeWhen for SexyCooldown =-.

Person A: LFM VoA 25, link achiev
Person B: Better off asking for GS. People can be carried to achievs
Person A: People can get carried to gear
Me: “People can get carried”
Me: There is a pattern here.

Got a couple of proverbial pats on the back in chat and tells after that, heh.

Secondly, yes, this article is far from neutral. It’s meant to be. I wanted to share my opinion on something that I, as a player, really dislike in the game and get others to do the same – so thanks for entering into the debate..

I’m not saying that a raid leader is blinded by the empirical data of an achievement and gear score. In fact, I say that those are useful. But the crux of my argument is that those may not be representations of the truth. As people have said in comments here – what happens if someone has bought their achievement runs?

Or their guild ran them through things?

Or they died in VoA and still haven’t got the idea that fire is bad?

Well, in all those cases they still have the achievement but don’t necessarily have the assumed skillset,. Meanwhile, someone on an ‘unachieved’ alt might know the tactics inside out. Or that guy in your group who’s in blues? Well, he might have completed Ulduar along with the rest of his guild, all in similar kit.

Also, personally, my main reason for joining a PUG is not to get a smooth and easy run. I don’t just want loot or badges. My main goal is to have fun, hopefully with friendly people. If we smash through the instance, great. If we wipe – nevermind, so long as we have fun (and learn!) while doing it. Don’t know if I’m in the minority on this – I seem to know a fair few people of the same mindset, but how do you guys feel on this?

In my opnion it’s important to remember that assumptions, such as those based on certain empirical data such as gear score and achievements – that is, things that may be flawed – are not safe measures. Just maybe there are no safe recruitment measures, what do you think guys?
.-= Mimetir´s last blog ..Juddr: So Herding Cats made progress in ToGC on Sunday. Tough times but by gods we had fun doing it. =-.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/underachiever.aspx
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/allenes-fake-achievements.aspx

As for the basic premise, the article supposes a whole host of maladies as a direct result of the raid leader restricting the raid to those who have completed the event and have the appropriate gear. On to the specific points addressed in the article.

The one thing I agree with the article on, is that the restrictions certainly do make the eligible player pool smaller. This is not necessarily a bad thing, I’ve been in many pugs without even a modicum of quality control that fill quickly with people in blues and greens and then face plant on the first boss.

If I’m not mistaken most people join a pug hoping for a smooth and easy run, or as you put it, a fast almost mechanical run. Certainly I’ve never gone into a pug thinking “I hope we just down the first boss and then wipe alot”. A raid leader wanting to make a run fast and painless is an attribute I’d like to see more often. I’ve been in lots of pugs where the raid leaders just try to fill the raid in a hurry and try to push through encounters most of the players don’t know or are not geared enough for. Todate this has almost never ended well.

As for the comment about boosting which of these players sound like they are expecting boosting more, The raid leader who is trying to make sure everyone can pull their weight, or the player whose never done this encounter on his alt and is inadequately geared for it?

As for judging someone by their gear score and achievements, what other empirical data is there to judge them by? You see this has been an argument on my server and in my raiding alliance for quite some time, and is ultimately what drew me to comment on this article. This article and many others of it’s ilk say raid leaders are blinded by these metrics and are turning away good players right and left. This argument falls apart upon closer examination.

First most players are going to be of approximately average skill level, second most players are better at their mains than their alts, third if you don’t have gear you will need to work much harder/play better to be as effective as someone who does.

So what are you Losing by not letting an under geared alt that has never finished the encounter into your raid? Most likely an average skilled player who is on a character that for one reason or another he doesn’t normally raid with, and will very likely not be able to keep up with the better geared players.

What do you gain by taking someone who has the appropriate gear score and achievement? Someone who knows at least the basics of the encounter on the character they are taking, and given average skill won’t do terrible in the role they are performing.

Sure there are exceptions, someone could have been dragged through an encounter by their guild, and/or had a lucky spree of VoA runs, but those are far less likely occurrences than a player who got the gear by working for it and made it through the encounter on their own merits.

Judging players by their characters gear score and achievements isn’t fool proof, but its a damn sight better than just believing that they are good players.

Regarding the whole debate of qualifying players for PuG content, it seems to me that many leaders are looking for the easy way out, shirking responsibility and accountability for what they believe is a formulaic path to success. This is never more apparent to me than when I hop on one of my baby alts (who aren’t guilded in my main’s guild) and try to PuG. I’m every manner of titled on my main, but I have to resort to sales pitches to even get an invite if I want to bring my semi-geared DK to a heroic. (Oh yeah, I’ve been turned down for heroic because my Ulduar gear didn’t measure up.)