How to Avoid a Bad PUG in World of Warcraft

Pick UP Groups or PUGS are a necessity for most of us in World of Warcraft. I PUG almost every day to finish daily dungeon quests and sometimes raid with PUGS. PUGS are so random that one day you can have an incredibly easy run through the toughest raid and the next day fail on an entry level heroic dungeon.

Aside from annoyance, wasting time and repair bills, bad pugs will also lock you into a doomed instance and deprive you of a valuable opportunity to advance your character. With patch 3.3 coming, avoiding bad pugs will become even more important as we are matched up with random people from other servers. I've heard it suggested that you form up as much of your party as possible with people you know before you use looking for group.

A player's gear is very important in World of Warcraft because it shows you how much potential the player has to perform in a given dungeon. A player that doesn't have gear will have to be carried by the rest of the team through the instance and will have marginal performance. Looking at the gear your party has is a good indication of their experience, skill and how they will perform in the dungeon.

Some players can through skill perform well without gear but most of the time if a player doesn't have gear it is because they haven't run enough instances to get the gear or invested time, money or badges in upgrading their gear. It is important to help new level 80 characters get their gear and give people a chance. Having someone along who is under geared won't ruin your run as long as the rest of the group is strong enough to carry them.

There is an add on called Gear Score that will scan the gear of players around you and put it on their portrait in the form of a score. At a glance you can tell how prepared your party is for the challenge you are about to tackle. Any level 80 character worth taking along should have a gear score total of 2,700 minimum. No one should run heroics wearing greens when there are blue items available from quests, good craft items and regular dungeon runs.

Most DPS or damage per second characters are expected to push at least 3,000 dps for entry level raids and heroics. If DPS is too slow, bosses will have too much time to use their special abilities, enrage and you can be certain your healer will run out of mana.

The tank's gear is the most important; nothing will doom a group faster than having a tank who the healer can't keep alive. While gear isn't everything and a player's skill and attentiveness count for more, gear is an important benchmark that will show you the relative experience and performance that you can expect from any given party member.