No idea wtf.....

Did one last Friday.. on R3 I think. Nothing dropped, but it wasn't a mess. Only a couple deaths and things seemed to go smoothly.

Pugged one last night (Tuesday)... on Hard....

just....

fucking....

hard....

It was a godamn slaughter. 'Grip' was popping up like an incurable case of Clap @ a Marine Review...

Poison over time almost constant, as soon as it hit would get frozen, and be dead by 3 count.

Shadows of Hate running around almost MANIC looking for something to kill. It was like everything got turned up to a '12'. With almost 4k hp, 150ac, 240prr, and 165mrr. I was getting killed in 2 shots.

And lag... able to move, but not switch weapons, ready scrolls to raise people, cast spells...

Something got SERIOUSLY tweaked/fucked

So we wiped, hard.. twice.... recalled out and tried again...

ON FUCKING NORMAL

Only a slight improvement. I spent most of the raid in someones pocket. The second I got raised... grip and dead...


WTF? 

Also.. I've noticed over the last week/10 days the DDO client crashes when lots of light effects are active. Anyone else noticing ANY of this?

Agree with Bigjunk.   Pugs can be brutal.  There are very few raids where people can just run around like idiots attacking whatever they want whenever they want.   That works in 6 man content but those are bad habits to bring into most raids.

The new raids, especially, have a lot of trash mobs that can hurt and start wiping out party members quickly without some moderate level of group coordination.

Pugs in Strahd and Baba can also suffer from poor team makeup.  In a guild raid it is more likely that everybody knows what role they are filling and what role everybody else is filling and what their job is in each phase of the raid.   Don't have a decent tank?  Messy.  Healer is not quick with the icon and/or the heal rotations to keep tank alive?  Messy.   Don't have decent crowd control and instakills?  Messy.   Don't have a leader keeping people together on the stairs or doesn't have a plan for handling the cards/torches (or the wisps/crows/mounds in Baba)?  Messy.   

PUGS are brutal with poor leadership. If the "leader" isn't even willing to give instructions in voice chat, I leave.

ZooperDooper wrote on Jun 27^th, 2018 at 11:03am:

I raid on Ghallanda and Khyber. The raid groups I run with on both (especially on Ghallanda) have very good group leaders who have good reputations for leading successful raids so, for the most part, people listen and follow directions.

On one of the servers, I won't say which, the group hasn't had its regular leader for awhile and the current one has taken to inviting a guy from one of the Elite raiding guilds who, truth be told, doesn't even raid with his own guild. This guy is a good player and his builds always have very high DPS. The problem is this guy buys into his own hype. He does what HE wants to do and, on more than one occasion, has come close to ruining a raid because he doesn't think he "needs" to listen to the directions. He listens to music on headphones instead of the raid leader and is NOT a team player. I have stopped running with this group because I will not run with a guy who thinks that what he wants to do is more important than what the raid leader wants him to do. I don't have time for people like that who either ruin raids or who come close to ruining them.

Edited:

I guess what bothered me was I haven't had an issue with dying or Grip in ANY of the runs I've done.. but over this last weekend I just got hammered repeatedly like an ex-girlfriend was after her lb of flesh....

PUG raid is determined to be difficult. In other surprising news.... Today the Pope announced he's Catholic

Bigjunk wrote on Jun 27^th, 2018 at 8:47am:


Half a group with no DPS, what do you expect?  Be glad you got a group

The pug scene has gotten horrible though, especially with raids.  Fucking triple completionist pussies ranking up their epic lives through dailies and when you talk a group into running EE or R1, you end up basically soloing it with a backpack full of soul stones  

I'm running a 7th life toon with 8 reaper points and I don't die a fraction as often as the people I've been grouping with (who's bios brag about their 20+ past lives).  And that's when I can even get a group.  Been soloing most of the epic quests.