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Viability of 'Solo Pugging'?

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Akalukz
Posts: 1587

Re: Viability of 'Solo Pugging'?

Post#11 » Mon Mar 30, 2020 1:20 pm

My game time is almost 100% solo (rarely rarely join wb, and only play destro) I have found that mara and w/e are very easy to play solo. With W/E probably winning that because of escape tools. As mentioned above patience is key. Sometimes I lack it (LOL) But you can get good renown/rewards (medallions) fairly quick. Definitely not premade 6 man quick, but quicker than 100% pug wbs. Both those classes also excel in duo / trio groups. Tank / DPS shamman / and you.
-= Agony =-

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thefarthestland
Posts: 50

Re: Viability of 'Solo Pugging'?

Post#12 » Mon Mar 30, 2020 1:39 pm

No, the mechanics / system of the game was made to play in groups

ToXoS
Posts: 671

Re: Viability of 'Solo Pugging'?

Post#13 » Mon Mar 30, 2020 1:47 pm

Yes it's doable on certain classes and yes it is effective if you know what you are doing.
But you need a good amount of game knowledge and, let's be honest, skill (again, that last one varies amongst classes).
I do it on my havoc Magus pretty much all the time, playing as a solo "sniper".
I do that because I played too much with pug wb in the past, and now I just can't stand them because most of them are either clueless or a burden to my playstyle.
I saw some Engies doing the same, and they seem as good as Magus from my experience.
However I would not advise you to try that as any other RDPS. As a MDPS you need either a guard if you want to go into the fray, or build your character as a solo roamer (WH/WE/WL/Monstro Mara/Defensive Magus for exemple). Tanks are also good at 1v1 in general, especially the ones with good self-heal.
As a healer I don't see the point to not join a group to heal them better, but some DPS spec are really good when playing solo (DPS AM being probably the best imo).

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StrongUn
Posts: 294

Re: Viability of 'Solo Pugging'?

Post#14 » Mon Mar 30, 2020 1:56 pm

solo roaming it is viable and fun, just need to avoid zergs
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SaintRon
Posts: 44

Re: Viability of 'Solo Pugging'?

Post#15 » Mon Mar 30, 2020 2:09 pm

Solo pugging is definitely planning the game on hard mode.


There's also playing "solo" and truly just running around alone. You could act as a scout for your guild's warband. Back in the day we had 5-6 witch hunters who scouted and harassed incoming reinforcements.

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Aethilmar
Posts: 636

Re: Viability of 'Solo Pugging'?

Post#16 » Mon Mar 30, 2020 11:02 pm

I usually run solo with my various classes: SM, AM, SW, WL, Engie, WH, Chosen, Mara, Zealot and Magus.

Generally speaking it is actually relatively easy to get good contribution (and bags) as a shield tank. I have also found it harder to get contribution as a mdps while rdps (and heals) is a mixed bag.

I don't know what the magic formulas are but that is the practical outcome.

As for fun, I love all those classes for different reasons and running solo both gives you freedom and increases the stress (in a good way).

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kmark101
Posts: 482

Re: Viability of 'Solo Pugging'?

Post#17 » Tue Mar 31, 2020 1:18 am

It's pertfectly viable, I'm doing it a lot. Solo pug SC/wb/even fort. I join to organized wb mostly for city sieges or for guild events.

Just don't play slayer/choppa else you will go mad quickly.
Gryyw - Ironbreaker

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Omegus
Posts: 1373

Re: Viability of 'Solo Pugging'?

Post#18 » Tue Mar 31, 2020 1:58 am

RabbitEmperor wrote: Mon Mar 30, 2020 6:05 am So I see a lot of questions asking a simple question - can I solo?

The responses I see in general tend to be "No, not really this game isn't built for 1v1."

I think this is a miscommunication. When someone asks "Can I solo?" what they tend to mean is "Can I not join a guild, or a voice chat, or even type in chat and still effectively play this game?".

So, let's raise that question instead; can you effectively 'solo pug'; IE never chat in any capacity, not joining parties, etc but still working toward the objective as part of the zerg, or in the SC?

If you can, what classes would excel in this in each of the brackets of Tank, Mdps, healer and Rdps?

If you can't, why not?
Getting from 1-40 using what you described is fine, but there is progression past 40. 1-40 is the tutorial.

PvE dungeons: require 6 man parties, impossible to complete solo. This cuts off a huge amount of gear.
PvE chapter 22: requires a warband to complete. As it's open world PvE you can technically wait until you see a warband is recruiting for people in the LFG channel and then go along solo and leech but this is really crappy behaviour and on some stages that require coordination you could end up sabotaging the run.

Scenarios: perfectly possible to pug it but unless you want to face premades and have a horrible experience getting stomped each scenario then you will be better off queueing for the weekly pug scenario which means doing the same scenario over and over again (it changes each week).

RvR - taking zones (objectives): this generally consists of 2 stages if everything goes well: ranking up your keep and then sieging the enemy keep. Ranking up the keep involves taking battlefield objectives, waiting for the supplies to spawn and the objective and then transporting these supplies to the keep. Doing this solo in an active zone where the enemy is fighting is close to throwing as a solo player running supplies will be intercepted and killed (thus losing the supplies) by the numerous solo, 6-man, 12-man and 24-roam roaming enemy groups looking to kill supply runners and take the zone for their own faction. If you're not looking at chat then you won't even know which routes are currently safe, which BOs have allies providing escorts to the keep, etc.

RvR - taking zonies (sieging): first issue: without heals you're dead. without being in a group or warband or chat nobody will know this and you're relying on someone spotting your corpse. So you respawn back at the warcamp or friendly keep and then die again. Over and over and over and over and over. You might be able to survive taking an empty zone but the population is high enough that this won't happen now. In addition, you need to earn contribution (healing ,damage, etc) and you can't do this when dead, which means little-to-no-rewards for you. So you'll be stuck in crap gear (which gets you killed) with no way of getting better gear). And you won't be reading chat so you won't know when to push in, when to retreat, where the enemy is flanking from, etc. There is a huge amount of information being passed around in this game and it happens either via global pvp chat, party/warband chat or discord.

RvR - fortresses: keep siege x1000000. You will be dead as damage is so high. You will be useless as your gear is low. You will be taking up a limited spot (fortress sieges have a population cap) and acheiving nothing which actively helps the opponent. Fortresses also have a mechanic where defenders who die in stage 3 and don't get ressed end up in "jail" and are generally out of the fight for the rest of the siege.

City sieges: it's 24v24 highly coordinated action. You can queue solo but you'll either be used as back-fill or you might not even get to take part in the siege at all. Not reading chat or joining discord to know what your allies are doing is again considered throwing the siege as you don't win by running around without paying attention.
I think this is a miscommunication. When someone asks "Can I solo?" what they tend to mean is "Can I not join a guild, or a voice chat, or even type in chat and still effectively play this game?".
Not joining a guild is fine. Not joining voice chat is fine for a lot of things but if you join a warband that says discord required then you had better get on discord. Note that most of the time they want you to join to LISTEN and not to speak so muting yourself is perfectly acceptable. Not typing in chat is difficult for small scale stuff or to even indicate that you're afk for a moment. Go healer for this kind of role.
So, let's raise that question instead; can you effectively 'solo pug'; IE never chat in any capacity, not joining parties, etc but still working toward the objective as part of the zerg, or in the SC?
Join a zerg warband (they're a set up from completely useless) and you can mindlessly do RvR with the zerg and provide strength in numbers. Any role will be fine for this but reading chat it the bare minimum.

If you want to ignore everything then roll an MDPS and spend your days trying to gank soloers and stragglers in RvR. You will struggle without access to good gear though.
Zomega: RR8x Zealot

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Toonman
Posts: 213

Re: Viability of 'Solo Pugging'?

Post#19 » Tue Mar 31, 2020 2:28 am

Been solo roaming since T3 was the cap. Not as solo friendly as live, but completely doable. I mostly play healers with a few rdps in the mix. Much more solo friendly than tanks/mdps imo.

RabbitEmperor
Posts: 2

Re: Viability of 'Solo Pugging'?

Post#20 » Tue Mar 31, 2020 8:47 am

Good conversation, thanks for everybody's input.

It allowed me to make an informed decision and unistall before I dumped many hours trying to get to end game.

I appreciate everyone's candor.

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