no wild horses in my group please.

[rysingsun1]

grouped in ldon with bard mage mage wizard cleric and warrior (me).

if that bard ever slowed anything in the entire adventure i couldnt tell. needless to say i needed a lot of heals.

but he didnt annoy me as much as one of the mages did. here is how our adventure progressed:

2 mages dont know how to stay behind the MA (me). they would follow the bard a few steps away from his pulling spot. the bard would pull without an inc message so that it was actually difficult to tag before the mages drew agro. nevertheless i usually did tag on time. but the bard would stop as soon as he reached the first group member so on half the pulls the bard would get hit before i reached the mob to draw agro (that arrow doesnt help much when the puller stops in front of the MA). so the bard with no defensive aa took a huge number of heals and also died 2-3 times. he trained the cleric at least once and by not slowing or mezzing on time the cleric died. i died once trying to tank 3 unslowed mobs. not one was mezzed or slowed and the entire pull was only 3. i need to learn not to trust pullers who never slowed the entire fight.

anyway we are pressed for time the way its going so our favorite mage decides the only way we will win on time is to pull mobs without warning so that the group will hurry up and get some kills in. she trains the group with an oom cleric but no matter we are in a hurry right? she trains the group (not just herself she trains the whole GROUP) when ive just been rezzed and havent looted my corpse yet. do you think im going to incite the mob chasing the wizard when i have no armor on? no sir!

we still managed to win the adventure.

the bard was certainly the poorest player in the group but the mage is the one who i will never group with again. its because she struck a nerve. she did the one thing i really really hate. she was a free spirit who did as she pleased by pulling without warning without asking without healer manna without permission and she pulled into the whole group. she did it without waiting for rezzes. she forced the cleric to pacify without allowing her to dispell my "slow" first so that i was useless for the next few adds that she trained.

now i see why people get kicked out of guilds for being loose cannons. there is no room in any group for a wild horse. much less on a raid.

[Glatius2]

One of the classic groups I remember is with a Monk pulling. I would stand at the door way, waiting for him to drag mobs down the hall and FD at my feet or just in front of me, or something. What does he do? He runs past me, dragging the mobs past me, and FDs right in the middle of the casters sitting and medding behind me in the room. Needless to say the casters get aggro, and I'm running around trying to get the mobs off.

Idiots are not biased, they'll play any class.

[Phantron]

It is said that certain managers believe if they assign tighter deadlines people will work harder and stop slacking off. The same can be said about the way some people approach EQ. Of course, neither of those tactics work really well in practice...

[Rylaa]

This is why I 3 box most of the time. I generally never group with people I don't know anymore. Even in LdoN I can finish an easy adventure with just my 3, with generally at least 30 minutes to spare.

Only reason I really bothered was to get guk points, but I ended up kind of liking it after a while. Got good at pulling with some assistance from my enchanter.

Haven't tried high risk yet with just my 3 but have 3 boxed in them a lot with others.

Fun stuff!

[Brabble]

Heh.
I very frequently get in pick up groups for LDoNs, especially with my alts. It's seldom the case that I'm in a group entirely made up of people I don't know, however. When I play my main, I'm much more likely to want to know the players I'm with are good, just because for me the stakes are higher.
But when I get on an alt I don't hesitate at all to get in pick-up groups. It's fairly rare now that I get in a group where I know nobody. Either I invite someone I know to fill out the group, or someone I know has invited me into the group.
I've found that there are basically three advantages to joining LDoN pick-up groups:
1. One of the people you don't know in the group might be damn good--it happens, and when it does I actually feel like I've made progress in the game. Most of my non-guild friends were met through pick-up groups. It's always handy to know good players in other guilds, I think.
2. Less time sitting around lfg. Over time, the more people you meet, the less downtime you have. I'm in a fairly small casual guild now (mostly because of real life demands). When I get to play, I check to see if guild needs me. If so, I go. If not, I'm usually already fielding queries from folks I've met about doing this or that. I just keep track of good players I meet in pick-up groups and they seem to keep track of me. Over time, it gets easier and easier to put groups together that have at least three good players, and usually that will do. Higher level hard LDoNs are an exception, but we're good to go on anything else.
3. You never know what's going to happen. It's interesting to watch the group. Especially when I'm the tank or the puller, I feel like my actions are critical to the group's learning curve and its ability to quickly become an efficient party.

The disadvantages, of course, are many and in some cases spectacular. I have a toddler in real life and if I wanted to babysit someone, I'd let him stay up late. At three years of age, he's cooler, smarter and more mature than some people I've grouped with in game.
Usually pick-up groups, even ones that come together pretty well, are not as efficient as guild groups. So, the adventure takes longer, and people are more apt to come and go after one is done, etc. As tank, I'm about 10 times more likely to die in a pick-up group than with good players I know well. I don't worry too much about dying, but it's very irritating to die more than once because someone else keeps making the same basic mistakes.
It does seem to me that in LDoN pick-up groups the puller is the critical player. Nothing gets a group dead faster than consistantly bad pulls, and the worst pullers always look like rysingsun's mage, lol.

[Payn]

I have 2 personalities when I play.

When i'm on my warrior I'm KILL KILL KILL. I usually pull and let cc do their thing. Best if I get wailed on while they get it under control instead of trying to peel 3 mobs off them. Not like I can't take the hits. If I get in trouble I hit one of my discs.

When I play my cleric I tend to bitch a lot about tanks not holding agro or rogues/monks stealing it on purpose because they want to show that they can. I find LDON's MUCH more fun as a non-vital class (I say non vital because once slowed anyone can tank an adventure), but as a cleric I have to keep the entire group up and if I'm having to continually patch heal instead of CH the tank it's no fun.

[Ejryu]

I wouldn't really consider myself a loose cannon in groups, but...I wouldn't like to think of it was pushing, but more prodding. Gently, though, when it's people I don't know. You can't be sure how they'll react. In groups where I know everyone, though, it's a blast. Like last night we were doing sewers trial 3 and our priest (druid) and bard got lost. The timer was running out, so I ran ahead and pulled a mob that needed to die with my warrior buddy at my side. Mezzed it, debuffed it, and I yelled for him to get a healer with us. Druid still nowhere to be found (a friend of mine, but we haven't grouped a lot as of late) but here comes the paladin, a guildie. Hi, you're on heals have fun. Kill kill kill kill push it hard. Druid finally gets to us. Hi guys, I have 3 mobs back there snared and rooted. We going to be okay? NO, we're not. Get your ass away from us and camp out. In the end, the timer expired and the mob we were killing was at 30%. Ironically, it was the mob that had the tool "drop" emote. So hooray for losing the trial by like 30 seconds. Anyone else think it's cruel and unusual to have part of the "quest" text continue after the timer has expired? = )

I can't stand pickup groups. As an enchanter, I'd rather sit and do nothing whatsoever than group with a bunch of random morons. However, it IS fun to remind yourself every once in awhile how lucky you are to have good friends by torturing yourself~

[Kiya]

Heh, I feel your pain. I've gotten to the point on my warrior that if I don't know at least one person in the group, I'm not going. And, no, the cleric bot of mine does not count. =p

On the rare occasion that I'm just playing the cleric alone, I find I don't care so much about who's in the group. Easy enough to keep people alive. If they are being dumbasses, let them die a time or three. /cackle

[Plumppoopsie]

moral of the story: any idiot group can pass a normal LDoN :-P