Ulduar 10 completed in all blues group

mavfin wrote:My best example of 'link achievement' stupidity was the Sarth raid that I got into w/o achievement because they needed a healer. 15 of the achievement linking 'pros' ate the first firewall. 12 of them ate the second one. I didn't eat a single one, kept the tanks up, and finished it. Sure, it's Sarth, and you're going to say it's not hard, but, if it's not hard, then why check achievements? And if checking achievements is so good, then why did 15 bads get in with it? I mean, I'm talking *lolnaxx* raids here, not brain surgery.

Clearly this anecdote completely invalidates the very concept of gear/achievement checking.

mavfin wrote: And without using Underachiever, I still don't get in, because every raid leader like you wants to be carried.

I'm sorry but this is the biggest joke of a statement that I've seen on these forums lately. So let me see if I understand this correctly.. you don't have X achievement on your alt who you want to take in over perspective mains who could fill that slot and make better use of the gear so you use a slimeball addon to fake the achievements and you accuse the people putting the raid together of wanting a free ride? Thats ignorant borderlining on idiotic.

Yes prerequisite gear scores and achievements and all that is complete shit but sadly its the only measuring stick raid leaders can even use anymore with T8 equivilant falling from the sky for anyone who can be bothered to run heroics a few times a week. I for one use gear score and achievements as a GUIDE not as the de facto standard for who gets into my raids and I'd like to not think everyone is stooping to using some addon to spoof something when they can't just say "hey i dont have this achieve but I've read up on the fights and I know what to do".

Belloc wrote:If you're not willing to politely and adequately sell yourself, you probably aren't all that interested in joining the group in the first place, are you?

Goreon is saying that it doesn't matter how much I want to sell myself. He's not listening. If they're willing to talk about it, I can get in about every time.

Personally, I get in enough raids, so I don't really have an issue, but the absurdity of it all makes me post, really. Absurdities like the 'achievement-checked' Sarth anecdote, or the two times in the last week I was told that my 219/226 tank that can do Northrend Beasts "isn't good enough" for Emalon-10, and the group ended up breaking up before they found a tank. In fact, I got in another run, tanked the adds, got my badges, and one of the groups was still looking for a tank. I guess, true, it is the RL's prerogative, but, I'm not sure that they're getting any better raid when they're done. Not that I've seen yet.

when they can't just say "hey i dont have this achieve but I've read up on the fights and I know what to do".

I can even tell them that my main, <name> has the achievement, and I've done the fight X times, and have this loot from it on my main, if you just look. You and I would be fine. I'm not bringing my main, because this is Naxx, and my main outgrew it months ago. Better?

I only use that addon for people who don't want to talk about it. If they want to talk about it, then it's no big deal. I use the addon on the really absurd ones, and I usually do it to make a point. By the time the achievement I don't have goes off, I'm already doing better than half the raid, so they don't kick me. You can be unhappy about it, but, it works to get past those that think achievements are better than asking questions.

'Free ride'? No, I contribute. Look at the achievement-checked DK in the corner dead, after doing 800 DPS till he blew up in the middle of the raid on Grobbulus, who I healed up the damage from that's getting a free ride. I'm cleaning up after him.

I also should clarify: I'm talking about people who do this for Naxx and heroics. I'm not really talking about Ulduar so much for pugs. I bring my main to Ulduar, every time, and gear/achievements aren't an issue. It's the absurdity of what people want for Naxx and heroics that makes me post on threads about this subject. It's all such a waste of time, but, people don't see it. I get in these raids, whether I talk to the raidleader and he's cool and lets me in, or he doesn't want to talk, and I decide to make a point, fix an achievement, get in, and then outperform his 'pros', and laugh when I get the real achievement. I never take free rides. That's all those other idiots that I and the other 'scrubs' pick up the slack for.

But now you're using yourself as the example to justify the rule mavfin, which isn't the case.

I'm not discussing you personally. I don't know you from a bar of soap. My assumptions were not based on 'Mavfin can't come into my raids' because I am generalising the point - not talking about specifics. You are focusing your counter view on your OWN personal position, which isn't what I'm discussing here. Hell, most idiot scrubs woudln't even find their way onto a site like this, yet alone feel confident enough to contribute. This isn't about YOU mate, it's about the rest of the random rabble out there that plagues the servers.

I assure you that for every one of player like you who are undergeared, but experienced - there's 50 idiots who just rocked up claiming the same thing who prove they are scrub idiots after the first pull. I've seen it time and time again since WoW hit the shelves. You're beating a dead horse trying to convince any experienced tank otherwise.

Fact is, you only know if someone is worth their spot once you hit your first boss (and even sometimes on the first trash pull!).

But there is NO measuring stick for your ability present in the game before I say 'welcome aboard' - we are working with what Blue have given us and whilst it's very fair to debate the value of those tools, the reality is that is all we have.

Sure I might miss out on one or two great players with such an attitude, but I assure you I'll also miss 50 retards as well and ultimately, I consider THAT the lesser of two evils.

Bottom line is, when there's 20 other people ahead of you with proper gear checks and EPIC and Achieve - why would I even waste my time searching for a possible nugget of gold when I have 20 ounces of the pure stuff already sitting on the table in front of me to choose from? Sure one or two of those might be fools gold, but rest assured all of them won't be.

If I want to work with people gearing up, I'll join a guild. If I want to just get a daily badge run over with, throw me the best you have to make it quick and clean so I can get on with other things.

That's just how it is.

Goreon wrote:You need to stop taking offence at Raid leaders not believing you and start learning that this is just how the game is. From a random wanting raid entry, your 'word' isn't worth shit. You either put up, or leave. It's as simple as that. It's nothing personal, it's just pure experience in the game.

Bottom line is, when there's 20 other people ahead of you with proper gear checks and EPIC and Achieve - why would I even waste my time searching for a possible nugget of gold when I have 20 ounces of pure stuff already sitting on the table in front of me to choose from?

Actually, those remarks about talking to the raid leader were for the people who are telling me "Oh, just talk to the raid leader and tell him how good you are!" and I pointed them to you. Hell, I understand your point on that one. I can make up stuff easily. That's why I just get in if I can with the truth, do the achievement thing if I still want in and want to laugh at them, do better than a lot of the 'approved/achieved' people, take my badges/loot and go on. I'm not the one taking a 'free ride' from anyone. After this thread I won't feel guilty about deceiving anyone with an achievement my alt doesn't have, either. Hell, I earned the achievement on another toon, so it's mine, I figure. I wouldn't do that on a fight I hadn't done. Sure, I *could*, but that wouldn't be right. Like you said, if I'm lying that i can't do it, I'd be kicked after the first boss, but, that doesn't happen.

As far as the pure stuff: There's a lot of pyrite mixed in there. Lots of that gold is just paint, too.

About experiences, some ppl out there live in an environment where you can't learn by experience.
For example, your exams are once a semester. You may have one 2nd chance to pass but you won't major stuff. Exams are one shot: 2-4 hours of your life determine the remaining of you existence. If you keep failing you'll stay at the same level one year again. People used to this kind of trial don't need 5 years of experience to achieve a simple task.

It's true for many profession. If you have to repair my TV I won't like you learning TVs during 6 months before coming back and repairing mine. You will appear as incompetent. Anyway this is a large public game and 80% of players are incompetent, in a field or another. You have to start somewhere and learning stuff.
But also need to one shot things. Content and class keep changing you have to address new encounters and behave. Going through a farmed encounter and say "I cleared it naked" just don't add any value to anything. It's quite different from stepping in for the first time without much spoilers.

Simple facts of raid leading:

Gear tells you nothing
Normal achievements tell you nothing
Hard achievements tell you nothing

I have put together groups with full [Epic] checked, and whatever instance achievement you want, yet the players can still fail easily. When pugging Sartharion +2 from the time my guild stopped doing it I can honestly tell you that (and I have never bothered to do +3 since the pug issue exists) my normal theory is even with epic and the achievement, 13 people will die, however if they die and the 2nd drake is close to dead it no longer matters (and they get the achievement if they didn't have it).

Hard mode achievements and gear are also a negative indicator, often the best geared people will go "omg a wipe", and leave simply because they expect a pug to perform as well as their guild does without the preparation time and effort. In a similar light badly geared people or those with no experience are more likely to cause these issues making it hard to train up people as you go because people are impatient.

Simply there is no guide to forming a good pug other than if you can get a majority guild group in which case you get the benefits they have of working together and they will adapt to the pug elements or compensate.

Pugs therefore have 3 options:

Go all out on checks: anything pre-now is irrelevant because it can be boosted
Semi-check: reasonable gear and spec and they have at least died on the instance before successfully
Meh: Grab people with the reasonable gear level and go with it.

Surprisingly in my experience Meh tends to be the best solution to pugging anything short of cutting edge.

Goreon wrote:The reason you were able to do it was because the two most important components in the group (the tank and healer) were not only geared, but were also able to communicate well.

Oversimplifications imo. Geared and competent DPS can carry a bad tank and healer through heroics too, at afaik no slower a speed (ie. with good tank+healers and bad DPS you can pull multiple packs and forgo CC, but the DPS still take a long time to kill everything; with bad tanks and healers you pull only one pack and spend a lot of time CC'ing and kiting, but the DPS kills each mob in 2-4 seconds). I've been at both ends of these runs, as DPS coordinating freezing traps, saps and sheeps on vent every pull so that that pug tank and healer just have 1 mob to deal with, then likely as not pulling aggro and kiting each mob as we kill it. Have also tanked 80 heroics in mostly level 70 gear with a blue/green geared alt healing me while the geared DPS do most of the actual work for every pull (it's nice having 3 of the 4 mobs in a pull dead before the stun from shockwave wears off).

So to fix your point, the requrement is just that some component of the group be geared and communicative, not necessarily the healer and tank.

mavfin wrote:That's the thing. My alts don't have trash gear. They have good-enough gear, but they don't have achievements. I can pass gear checks. Well, I wouldn't feel guilty at all using underachiever to get in raids with some of you, then, if your answer to 'find a better raider' is to accept anyone who's been carried to achievements.

I usually got my alt into pug raids by giving the leader a bit of a spiel in my initial whisper, "here's my spec and stats, no achievements and a bit undergeared but i've cleared the instance dozens of times on my main [name] and know all the fights". This usually got me into the raid, and I'd usually find a few more guildies on alts or mains to help out if the group was short something, so the runs worked well enough.

Maybe eredar pugs are just less picky like that though, while I know a lot of them checked armories and stuff, I haven't seen them talking about this wowhero rating until very recently.

Well it's clear that the "experiment" managed to get some equally long ramblings that sounded just as intelligent...

I think everyone is proving that everyone's situation is different and at the end of the day raid/group leader makes the rules for pugs, you don't like them, deal with it. No amount of experiments, whinings, rantings or analysis will change that.

As soon as you step outside the comfort of guild and friends, that's it, there are no rules, that's the way it is and the way it will always be, you can either use your superior linguistic skills to coax the leader round if you don't have his required credentials, or you can make your own group with your own rules, or you can not play, not sure why this is a difficult fact to handle for people who have been playing the game as long as alot of us to be honest.

In reference to "raid leaders who want a free ride".


I'm happy to join raids, but if the RL is insisting on achievements, I insist he links his to me first. About 50% of the time, the RL doesn't have the achievement, and also makes up crap excuses about why, instead of just saying "I have it on my main", I get rubbish about how he got it a month ago and he's waiting on a GM to fix it, that kind of crap.

If you're worried you're giving your RL a "free ride", vet him in return for him vetting you. About half of them don't pass their own criteria.