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Disorganized PUGS
dummyname
Member Posts: 99 Arc User
This week seems to be a trying time for PvP, the queues are sparse and I've seen alot of new faces and a very annoying habit: Groups of highly disorganized players who will not call targets and will not follow your target calling. Even worse, I had a group of 3 tacs last night all trying to call at once!
If you are a loner in the queues it behooves you to do a few very simple things:
Everyone should make an attempt to communicate prior to moving toward the center of the ring. The group should establish a target caller and be prepared and willing to follow his commands!
I always check with my team at the beginning of a match and ask who will be or target caller. As a healer, I'd rather not, but by the time we make contact with the enemy if I haven't heard a peep from my team I will start calling targets. I'm not the best person to do this (not because I'm the healer but because I'm still a rookie at target calling), but having a crappy or somewhat distracted target caller is better than winging it in most cases. Unless you just have awesome dps and the opponent has weak healing, you aren't getting kills without some form of focus-fire.
Tacs should always have a target keybind. You are the best target callers by default! If you're feeling frisky, make a debuff target keybind as well. I love it when tacs ask for my debuff rather than me using it on my own intuition, alot of times we are killing a target and I see RSP or TT go up and I move to nuke it and our caller will switch targets....wasted effort!
Science captains should make keybinds that announce when a target has been nuked. You may also want to make a keybind that announces when your nuke is up if you have a caller that asks for his debuffs. If you see several science captains on your team you may want to establish a nuke order so whether a target caller calls for it or intuition is used, you're hopefully not duplicating efforts.
You may also want to make binds that announce that you need engineering, science or tac teams to clear a debuff or balance shields. Good healers usually have you covered but those little debuff bars are hard to see and can easily be missed.
This large grouping of words basically says that just because you are in a pug doesn't mean you have to be disorganized cannon fodder. With a few simple keybinds you can turn a group of strangers into a formidable fighting force. Seeing a full premade uber-team on the other side shouldn't be a free pass to roll over and die!
A few more things:
If you are on voice comms with a partial-made, but can't be arsed to tell me that you guys are calling targets and can't be arsed to announce your calls in team chat, seriously....tell me. At least the poor saps that can't hear you can pin you and go off your target and/or announce it for everyone else who is in the dark.
If you are having trouble staying on target, tell us. I've had a few successful matches where I found out a tac was shooting the wrong targets because he just couldn't get his nose on the right target, so we went of his targeting. Not optimal, but that's making coffee with lemons.
Lastly, whomever is selected as a target caller, if his calling sucks, so what? Stick with him, because if everyone is focusing on one target, and the target is not dying, something is learned. He may realize his target is too tanky, is being well healed and extended, or is too fast to hit. He will know next time to chose a better target. He may even start to realize he needs to rapidly switch targets to outwit healers. Or he may not...the point is, if everyone is shooting their own targets, everyone dies....and nothing worth knowing was learned.
If you are a loner in the queues it behooves you to do a few very simple things:
Everyone should make an attempt to communicate prior to moving toward the center of the ring. The group should establish a target caller and be prepared and willing to follow his commands!
I always check with my team at the beginning of a match and ask who will be or target caller. As a healer, I'd rather not, but by the time we make contact with the enemy if I haven't heard a peep from my team I will start calling targets. I'm not the best person to do this (not because I'm the healer but because I'm still a rookie at target calling), but having a crappy or somewhat distracted target caller is better than winging it in most cases. Unless you just have awesome dps and the opponent has weak healing, you aren't getting kills without some form of focus-fire.
Tacs should always have a target keybind. You are the best target callers by default! If you're feeling frisky, make a debuff target keybind as well. I love it when tacs ask for my debuff rather than me using it on my own intuition, alot of times we are killing a target and I see RSP or TT go up and I move to nuke it and our caller will switch targets....wasted effort!
Science captains should make keybinds that announce when a target has been nuked. You may also want to make a keybind that announces when your nuke is up if you have a caller that asks for his debuffs. If you see several science captains on your team you may want to establish a nuke order so whether a target caller calls for it or intuition is used, you're hopefully not duplicating efforts.
You may also want to make binds that announce that you need engineering, science or tac teams to clear a debuff or balance shields. Good healers usually have you covered but those little debuff bars are hard to see and can easily be missed.
This large grouping of words basically says that just because you are in a pug doesn't mean you have to be disorganized cannon fodder. With a few simple keybinds you can turn a group of strangers into a formidable fighting force. Seeing a full premade uber-team on the other side shouldn't be a free pass to roll over and die!
A few more things:
If you are on voice comms with a partial-made, but can't be arsed to tell me that you guys are calling targets and can't be arsed to announce your calls in team chat, seriously....tell me. At least the poor saps that can't hear you can pin you and go off your target and/or announce it for everyone else who is in the dark.
If you are having trouble staying on target, tell us. I've had a few successful matches where I found out a tac was shooting the wrong targets because he just couldn't get his nose on the right target, so we went of his targeting. Not optimal, but that's making coffee with lemons.
Lastly, whomever is selected as a target caller, if his calling sucks, so what? Stick with him, because if everyone is focusing on one target, and the target is not dying, something is learned. He may realize his target is too tanky, is being well healed and extended, or is too fast to hit. He will know next time to chose a better target. He may even start to realize he needs to rapidly switch targets to outwit healers. Or he may not...the point is, if everyone is shooting their own targets, everyone dies....and nothing worth knowing was learned.
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Post edited by dummyname on
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Comments
One general thought I'd like to add: it is not that easy to be a good target caller or a good healer. I experienced some flaming in some matches if one/several team mates believed that the target caller failed in calling the adequate targets or that the healer didn't heal sufficiently (maybe it is not always the healer's fault but just a matter of a player's weakness).
My suggestion: better to give the target caller/healer (or any other team mate) some advices how to improve than just telling him "hey man, you were aweful". Btw sending some compliments on good targeting, nice teamwork and even good healing does not harm at all - you can mix that with some criticism as well if you like
That all should be needless to mention, but unfortunately experience shows it is not.
I use target calling and subnuke announcements for keybinds, but that's pretty much the extent of my keybind calls (although I could probably stand to add a few more). A lot of times target calling requires switching targets fairly fast depending on what healing/resists they are getting or if they're running or just in order to get the healer(s) to use up their heals. If you do this in a pug, most of them will think you're some kind of tweaker that can't make up his mind and start ignoring your target calls or stick on your first target call.
I guess my point is there is only so much you can expect from a pug. If you want to do all of what you mentioned in your OP, then you need to form a team and get on teamspeak.
@DevolvedOne
I don't think it's unrealistic to establish this before the match starts, and to be honest, I wouldn't expect a pug team to be disciplined enough to follow it the entire match without voice communications but the simple act of establishing order will go a long way to improving your teams performance.
All I carry on my healer is a target keybind, heal keybind, my nuke is ready, I just nuked $, $ needs a TT, $ needs a ST & $ needs a ET. To be honest I rarely use the last 3 because I handle TT & ST myself and heal through anything else.
I'm not expecting uber performances out of pugs, but the last few nights I've been in groups I felt were better than their performance showed and alot of it is because there was zero attempt to communicate. I may be overreaching with the level of communication I am proposing but I've been in groups that do this and they perform phenomenally and have beaten very good premade teams with ease!
EDIT: On the note of constructive criticism during matches, I do try to dispense it, the best time is after action review, but often times people warp out before you can give it or you get kicked out.
People really shouldn't be slamming others without fully understanding what happens in a match anyway. Low dps and healing numbers can be caused by the other team having extremely high burst damage, as you can't heal something that dies a split second after their health drops, and you can't dps much while dead. If the other team is controlling your dps with debuffs or if they are putting so much pressure on the healer that he can't heal the guy they switch off to and kill someone else there's not much you can do there. Alot of times pug team composition is so poor there is no conceivable way to reach victory regardless.
entered the map with my wells sci healer and say "please stay close for heals".2 tacs in escorts fly away and pop ...before I had time to say that thing again.....they did that few times and at one point a guy says "why you dont heal me" :rolleyes:
Hey, I know some teams have very powerful PSW and TBR that are designed to split the group. It happens. What you do is while you're being pushed start turning back, get ready to EM and engi battery and if you are being TBR'd, try to angle away and back in like going around a bubble, staying just out of range of the guy TBR'ing you. Get back to your healers ASAP and for god sake....don't be that guy who thinks he can take someone 1 on 1 or can tank 4 people solo. It's not that you can;t, its just the other team can chose to go gang up on you or take the team left by themselves 5v4.
>i call target
>ppl stay at respawn
>tacs on 1 target per ship
>chat communication: 0
>other team wins
Fortunately, sometimes i pick good pugs or some old names and i enjoy pvping, otherwise is a pain in th..... without my premade
...what would folks think about there being some sort of marking system that could breach such gaps?
A target caller would be a target marker instead. If certain marks were then established within the community to mean certain things, then one could mark targets as such. Standard kill marker to target, another marker to call for a debuff, etc, etc, etc.
No, it wouldn't help with calling for cleanses, etc - but it might help with regard to target calling.
edit: As an aside, there was one PUG match where we had a target caller - doing a great job of calling targets - course, he was doing it in Zone. We still killed the targets, even though the other side potentially knew what we were doing (again, that language barrier could have played a part). But yeah, even in a goofy scenario like that - communication can go a long way.
When someone does call, and we're not up against one of the dreaded pre-mades, it's like magic.