I have sworn off healing PuG dungeons, particularly Mythic+. In my extensive time pushing keys across the past three expansions, one thing is consistently true - that I have to heal WAY more in PuG groups than premade guild or Bnet groups. Now, you might go “well duh” but I think the surprising thing is the extent.
In a Heroic Dawnbreaker guild group I did, my Disc priest averaged 156,000 overall healing for the dungeon. I was downright bored. I did the same dungeon later that night in a PuG and averaged 336,000 healing - with some pulls up around 700-800k HPS. That’s insane - literally doing 200-300% of the healing in a PuG group versus a guild group. It’s not some minor thing. It’s not a 30% difference. So, I refuse to do it for Mythic+, a sentiment echoed by several of my guildmates as well.
Here comes the introspection. I started asking myself if I’m part of the problem when I DPS as a PuG in groups. Do I interrupt less frequently, do I hold on to defensive cooldowns, do I deal significant less damage when I’m PuGing? And the answer, surprisingly, is yes. There’s something about being in a complete PuG group that just makes me lazily play. I often have something on my other monitor that I’m watching (Forged in the Fire, or Scrubs) and I am barely paying attention to the dungeons. In some comparison tests I’ve run, I interrupt about 70% less frequently and deal about 40% less damage in a PuG than I do a guild premade group. I average 3 dispersions per guild run and in SEVEN PuG dungeons I didn’t press dispersion a single time.
When I’m playing with friends, I am somehow more invested in my performance and I lock in and play significantly better. Maybe we all do this, to some extent? I’ve sworn off healing PuG content because it seems like so many players just don’t care at all in a random group, but I am also that player.
Congrats you have done the first and hardest step. Admitting the problem. So you are already way ahead of most of the world and started down the road to recovery
Oh I have no intention of changing my behavior. I just had a moment of introspection. For a long time I felt like random players are just 10x worse than my guildmates and friends. What I am beginning to believe is that random players are not necessarily bad, they might be fantastic in another context, but rather that people “phone it in” for PuG content with no one to impress, no reputation to protect, no parses and nothing on the line.
I think this is true yes. It’s just kind of how… societies work. Most people (not everyone) apply more care when it affects the people they personally know about versus a faceless stranger.
I do think it’s worth bringing up because while it is an obvious truth in retrospect, it’s one of those things a lot of us don’t always think about.
Heroics are boring to heal in guild groups, but +12 dungeons aren’t. I think more what I’m saying is that I’m happy to heal a guild +13 but I would never, in 1000 years, apply to heal a PuG +10. I do 200%-300% more healing in the same dungeon in a guild vs. a PuG group and at a certain Mythic+ level it’s just anxious, draining and frustrating.
