PUG Checker shows players' boss kills
by Eliah Hecht 
Jun 1st 2009 at 9:00AM
Although most of us, I suspect, prefer guild runs, most of us also have to PuG it up every once in a while. LFG can be a bit of a crap shoot; you can get an Ulduar-geared player doing 3,000 DPS in your heroic, or a fresh 80 who has a thing or two to learn doing 1,000.
Fortunately, we have the Armory to help us separate the good from the bad, or at least the geared from the ungeared. Sites like Be Imba and WoW Heroes have been around for a while to help us more easily check a character's gear level.
Now a new site, PUG Checker, can show you at a glance what bosses a character has killed, and how many times - or rather, what bosses they've been present for a kill of. Above right you can see what it shows for raids on my priest (I don't like Malygos very much). If you click "show bosses," you can see specific raid bosses in raids; otherwise, it just counts kills of the end boss. It uses Armory data, of course, which is pretty accurate, but not always perfect. Like the site says, "don't shoot the messenger" if the numbers aren't quite right.
Like Be Imba and WoW Heroes, this isn't an infallible guide to whether a player is good or not. It does probably correlate to some degree, though. In fact, if PUG Checker just added the average ilvl of the equipped gear of the person I'm checking, it would be my go-to site for checking puggies. It does load data much quicker than either of those equipment sites, which alone is enough that I will probably use it. I also really dig the clean design and the number-circles that look like subway indicators.
[via My Life as a Cartoon]
Filed under: Instances
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Kotathalas Jun 1st 2009 9:09AM
wow... totally awesome.
flawless Jun 1st 2009 11:49AM
Totally awesome - except now it's dead :)
WoW.com crits PuGChecker for over nine thousand damage.
schm0 Jun 1st 2009 11:50AM
Way to kill the site, WoW.com! :D
tatsumasa Jun 1st 2009 11:57AM
wow.com=algalon of the interwebz
Manatank Jun 1st 2009 1:22PM
I don't even see how it is useful.
"you can get an Ulduar-geared player doing 3,000 DPS in your heroic, or a fresh 80 who has a thing or two to learn doing 1,000."
I'm sorry, but heroics are for the fresh 80, not for people doing Ulduar. I understand everyone wants a faceroll, but come on...
Sorro Jun 1st 2009 2:01PM
@manatank: Some people pug 10 and 25-man raids, where checking gear/experience is important.
Verit Jun 1st 2009 2:08PM
@sorro
So if I join a naxx pug and wipe 10 times on anub how is that my fault?
Manatank Jun 1st 2009 5:22PM
"Some people pug 10 and 25-man raids, where checking gear/experience is important."
If you are already going to the trouble of checking their gear on the armory then you can pretty quickly get any of this information from the achievements tab.
Lerend Jun 1st 2009 9:10AM
Still needs a little work. It's telling me that i've killed heroic Algalon 3 times, which I most certainly haven't (Yogg at 23%!)
Ne0nguy Jun 1st 2009 9:36AM
"All information comes directly from the WoW Armory."
If you really don't want credit for the kill you can always open up a ticket.
miguel Jun 1st 2009 10:27AM
Just because they say they're getting it directly from the armory doesn't mean they're reading the information they're getting correctly.
dotorion Jun 1st 2009 9:10AM
Still rules out any alts one may have. Just because I haven't killed a single boss on my druid doesn't mean I haven't done them on my rogue yet.
Apart from looking for people from decent guilds on your server, there's not much you can do to really estimate the value of a player.
If you're not willing to take the plunge with random people without having the FBI run a background check on them, stop PuGing.
Landorf Jun 1st 2009 9:23AM
But just because you know a fight on a rogue does that necessarily mean you know it on your druid?
Retropally Jun 1st 2009 9:36AM
I couldnt agree more...it gets incredibly annoying trying to do VOA with my newly lv80 druid even though ive done it on my paladin.
QQinsider Jun 1st 2009 10:48AM
"But just because you know a fight on a rogue does that necessarily mean you know it on your druid?"
Yeah, right, because the fights are soooo hard. Most bosses in this game have one trick, and once you know that it isn't difficult for any competent player to work out what they should be doing on a different class.
Fuseitana Jun 1st 2009 11:52AM
Since when did the Blizzard Armory start keeping up with alts? How is a site like this supposed to know who your alt is?
QQmore newb.
dotorion Jun 1st 2009 12:45PM
@Fuseitana: L2read
I didn't say armory can or should track alts, I said Eliah and people using this PUG Checker have to stop trying to look for automated ways to determine the "skill" of a player, because you can't, unless you know all their alts, other accounts and what else they may have.
Chris Jun 1st 2009 12:51PM
Yeah...but your druid is horribly undergeared, and you suck at healing compared to melee dps. I can't count how many times a player brings an alt and fails hard.
To the person who said all these background checks are stupid for pugging - WRONG. For pugging Sarth+0, sure. Even most of Naxx. However, I only join pugs IF they ARE doing checks. How many pugs wipe on emalon only to find 1/2 the dps under 2k?
Lab Monkey Jun 1st 2009 1:10PM
You can always ask the raid leader to look at your main too.
dotorion Jun 1st 2009 3:06PM
@Chris: so you look at my gear in-game and it's obvious I'm undergeared so you don't take me - you don't need a site for that. And even if my gear was good, you still wouldn't know I suck at druid healing.
See my point ? You can't judge a persons skill in any way other than first-hand experiencing it.
Checking someone's gear is fair enough - taking undergeared people isn't a recipe for succes. But you can't judge peoples skill unless you take them with you for a test drive after their gear turns out to be sufficient.