Heroic PuG Stories

Everyone loves pug stories, right? (Un?)fortunately I don't have any bad ones to tell so far because everyone I've met has been quite friendly and considerate, but it's still interesting to see how each group turns out differently.

[Heroic 4] Crushing the Jedi Freedom Fighters

Doing this heroic quest on Nar Shaddaa Imperial side has been my favourite pug experience so far. Our team consisted of two operatives, a Sith Assassin and a tank companion, which meant that we were a full stealth team! We darted around the area unseen, picking and choosing our targets carefully, and everyone used their crowd control effectively without needing any marks or other prompting. It felt great. Incidentally, the other operative and I seemed to be very much on the same wavelength, as we kept typing out the same suggestions at the same time; it was almost freaky.

Eventually I couldn't resist making a comment about what an awesome stealth team we were, which promptly resulted in someone walking around a corner unstealthed, pulling a whole group at once and wiping us. We laughed about it.

The last boss of the quest chain was kind of amusing as well because he kept spamming an AoE effect around himself that appeared to be undispellable and uninterruptable, so since we were all specced melee, we spent a lot of time standing at range and attacking with our worst abilities. I'm not a fan of overdoing it with the acronyms, but I did think the Sith Assassin summed it up very aptly when he said "FML lol".

After we were done, the other operative and I still had a nice chat, and she invited me to join her guild. I only declined since I mainly play Republic side and I don't want to be dead weight that never logs on.

[Heroic 4] Fall of the Locust

I ended up putting a group for this quest together on my Jedi Consular after I had just completed a Heroic 2 mission with a random Jedi Sentinel and since it had gone very well I was willing to try something more difficult. When I asked for more people in chat, another consular and a smuggler (forget which type) joined us as well.

Our group makeup was interesting since we had no dedicated tank (though the sentinel sort of took point) but two healers. I also seemed to be the only one who knew how to use her crowd control, and the smuggler kept breaking it by throwing grenades. Sounds bad? Well, somehow it wasn't. Sure, every pull involved a lot of flailing around as me and the other consular expended all our force barely keeping people alive as everyone got shot at by something, but except for one wipe, we always came through.

The group also seemed very... spirited, for lack of a better word. I actually cheered when the other consular felt inspired by my example to also try using his crowd control and we ended up with two mobs force lifted at once. And when I asked the smuggler to please stop throwing grenades that break the crowd control, he actually did so. I wonder whether I taught these players something new that day.

On a side note, I mentioned in my last post that the heroic quests are mostly very light on story, but this one is actually an exception that has a fair bit of story progression and multiple bits of dialogue. I liked it.

[Heroic 4] A Pound of Flesh

Another Imperial group quest on Nar Shaddaa, this one made for an interesting experience as we had several rather awkward moments but in the end everyone always came through.

It started after we had just got everyone to the heroic area, and one of the two Sith needed to go AFK to look after his baby (which gave me funny mental images I have to admit). The rest of us tried to keep ourselves entertained by dancing with each other and trying out our racial social abilities. I had completely forgot that emotes could actually serve a purpose (i.e. passing some time and building group cohesion even as you're not progressing). I have to give people a lot of credit for never moaning about the wait, and nobody said a bad word either when the Sith returned after about ten minutes and said that he had to go because the baby needed some more attention than he had expected. We just wished him well and decided to try with the three of us, and the bounty hunter pulled out his Mako for heals.

We did quite well with me and the bounty hunter using our crowd control, and him also off-healing a bit when things got hairy and it looked like Mako couldn't quite keep up. As it happened, we finished the main quest at the same time as stage one of the bonus series, but as someone immediately said "thanks for the group", I took that as them not wanting to bother with the rest of the bonus. Since it just consisted of clicking on some items in the area, I decided to do it on my own anyway.

As it turned out, there was a stage three which once again consisted of simply clicking on another set of items, and as I did so I noticed that the other two players were actually still around, in different corners of the area. "Oh, so you're doing the bonus too then!" "Yeah, I only just noticed..." I thought it was funny that we were all doing our own thing, thinking that the others weren't interested. We got back together as a group and finished killing the champion level mob that was the last stage of the chain.

On our way out, Mako managed to run into a big group of mobs and aggroed them on everyone else. I have to admit, I was tempted to stay in stealth, but in the end I decided I'd rather risk dying with my fellow party members than leave them to their fates. With a lot of frantic off-healing we made it through with no deaths.

[Heroic 4] Friends of Old

This mission on Dromund Kaas was probably my "worst" grouping experience simply because it was kind of bizarre. When I looked for other interested players in chat, I only got one reply from a Sith Inquisitor. I suggested to give it a go with just the two of us and he agreed. As it turned out, we managed to complete it just fine, though we died a few times towards the end, due to getting sloppy mostly.

The thing that made the whole thing weird was that the Sith Inquisitor didn't actually have the quest. I could see from his quest log that he was on the stage just before the heroic quest, which simply required looting a couple of items from some nearby droids. I told him as much, repeatedly to make sure that he hadn't just overlooked my comment, but he didn't reply. He could clearly see chat though, as he did respond to a couple of other things. At the same time he was already running ahead towards the heroic area. What's a girl to do?

I was glad to get my quest completed, but I did feel kind of guilty afterwards. In hindsight, maybe I should have been more insistent and should have pestered him some more to make sure that he got onto the same step of the quest as me. But where do you draw the line? As I said, I had already tried repeatedly and he had simply ignored my objections. I just don't understand why someone would ask to join for a group quest they didn't actually have.