If you don't like taking risks, then I suggest you stay away from PUGs. Problem solved.

Or you just kick ass...and out dps Mages better geared than you...

...and watch the invites keep rolling in. :)

That doesn't solve anybody's problem. All that does is prevent me from raiding, and means there is one less good healer/dps.

Does that stop me from joining wipe groups? Yes. In the same way avoiding going outdoors prevents me from being hit by a car.

Stop pugging if it bothers you so much. I only gear my alts via pugs, and even that is kinda rare since we have plenty of active alts and (skilled) guests in our guild.

If you're actually having these problems on your guild runs, leave the guild asap.

If blizzard is giving out free progression gear, they need to provide us with a way to distinguish between skilled players, and skill-less players.

Achievements are not the answer. Anybody can be carried through a raid and earn the achievement if the rest of a group is good enough. This has not changed.

Handing out welfare epics is not bad. But the side effects are horrible. More good raiders in raid gear is a good thing, but bad raiders in raid gear is disastrous.

"If blizzard is giving out free progression gear, they need to provide us with a way to distinguish between skilled players, and skill-less players.

Achievements are not the answer. Anybody can be carried through a raid and earn the achievement if the rest of a group is good enough."

I'm sorry, but this doesn't make much sense.

Yes, bad players can be carried through a raid and earn the achievement, but that has always been the case. In the past they got carried and earned epics, nothing has changed.

People look at the past through rose-colored glasses, you can be sure those old 40-mans had a lot more bad players than modern raid groups. And they had epics.

I have to agree with him somewhat. It's perfectly fine when people can get epics regardless of the amount of time they have (back in Burning Crusade before 3.0 you could do Karazhan in a good 3-4 hours). The problem is that ToC is such a joke that the 2000 DPS rogue can be in was the equivalent of a Hyjal guild when BT was the end-game.

Though I have to agree 60 wasn't exactly so great. There was a guy in my guild who auto-attacked bosses his way all the way to T3 and AFKed during trash. Then again you can go to a 40 man with 30-35 people and get the same results.

"Epics used to be a sign that the person was at least good enough not to be KICKED from the raid. Now they mean nothing."

Would you please think before you post? They mean NOTHING now?

I'm looking forward to your videos of taking down Arthas in quest blues and greens then, since epics mean nothing.

The only, ONLY downside to this is that guilds will have to spend a bit more time screening and testing their applicants. That's it. PUGs were always a crapshoot, and gear-checking is a joke that needs to finally die.

Why do you make me do this?...

http://www.wow.com/2009/09/02/yogg-saron-in-blues/

"Epics used to be a sign that the person was at least good enough not to be KICKED from the raid."

"Anybody can be carried through a raid and earn the achievement if the rest of a group is good enough."

Make your mind up. If having the achievement from doing the raid means nothing then so does having the gear. They both say exactly the same thing - I did that raid, and neither say anything else at all, about skill, or whether people were carried, or whatever.

If you run pugs you're going to get horrible players sometimes. That's always been the case and always will be. Deal with it (/kick) or don't run pugs.

You know, we have a few people with DPS on par with tanks in my raids.

She never dies to fire unless someone was missing an assignment and she was in a hot pocket with no heals for the 2nd time in a row.
She also happens to know the fights, doesn't wipe us and is a body when we have to PUG 3 spots thanks to schedules being out of whack.

Is she a bad raider? Not really. Is she in full epics, yep. Would you hate her? Yep.

Some folks aren't incredible in every aspect but can produce results. And while some great raiders can take Yog down in all blues, some folks like their epics and the cushion it gives.


Besides, I have alts that need gear and this lets me do it. My tank is geared enough and did it the old fashioned way, I don't need to go through that for a shaman that ends up healing 80% of the time anyway.

i really dont get this... if you actually know what youre looking at, you can tell almost immediately whether someone who is trying to pug with you has actually raided, or has just grabbed a suit full of epics from toc and heroics. 2-piece t8.5 and no other tier gear is pretty much a dead give away. And if youre as experienced as you seem to be suggesting, i'm sure that you can recognise the other gear someone is wearing as emblem gear or h toc loot. I know i can.

Raiders are still completely simple to spot, and gear from progression content is still impressive. When i see someone walking around in t9, i know they're doing hard content, and i think thats great. But i also really like that i can get good epic gear from running 5 mans.