PUG Checker
As some of you may already know, I’ve been working off and on over the last week or so on a new WoW-related site I’m calling PUG Checker.
With PUG Checker, you can type in the name of a player and the server they are on and get a quick “scorecard” style display of their boss kills in all of the instances in Wrath of the Lich King. This is a quick and simple way to get some kind of an idea about the experience level of the player you’re about to group up with.
I’ve been personally using PUG Checker before every PUG I’ve ran over the last week and it’s been pretty useful for me so far. I’ve seen some stuff, when scanning players before a PUG, that made me a leery of going forward from the start that were proven correct. One particular Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle run looked like trouble according to PUG Checker and after about an hour later and several wipes it was proven to be correct.
Of course, everyone’s mileage with the site will vary and it’s by no means advertised or intended to be a ruling body on PUG worth. If you find it useful though, please bookmark it and visit often. If you don’t think it’s fair or a valid representation of your character I understand completely but the data I’m using is freely available from the WoW Armory already. I’m just displaying it in a more useful and accessible manner.
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11 Comments
Nance on April 7th, 2009
Exactly. You explained it much better than I did. Haha. Thanks for commenting.
logtar on April 7th, 2009
Mine enhances my post today for sure!
Elgar on April 7th, 2009
The trouble I have with things like this and even armory is that while theorycrafting and numbers are good that doesn’t really tell the whole story.
As a healer, I would get asked, over and over and over…what’s your spell power? I’d tell them, if they didn’t think it was high enough, I’d never hear from them again. I remember a Mag PUG once, I was near the bottom of the pool for spell power of all the healers. I didn’t get a healing assignment but was assigned to raid healing since my spell power was “low”. As it turned out most of the other healers went OOM before the fight was over, I was one of two healers left at the end of the fight with mana. I remember being frustrated about it because they didn’t check my MP5 which was highest of the group or my total mana pool which also was highest. It made me upset because I was being judged on one factor, total spell power, without other healing factors being counted. If you go OOM is your spell power going to do anything for you then? Now I wasn’t asking to be main tank healer, but based on my spell power they judged me incapable.
Unfortunately, as a healer, this has not been the only time. I had run roic Botanica a million times, but would get declined invite by some groups based on my spell power. Even the other night as I was in queue for either roic Nexus or UK, which I have done successfully on several occasions, I was asked about my spell power and was not asked to join the group because that person decided it was too low, nevermind that I’ve done it before without trouble.
Now I certainly understand that people generally dislike PUGs and so I should expect such evaluation, but at the same time, I get frustrated when they look at just one factor in healing (for example) when so much more goes into healing.
So I too will agree with Korixys, the numbers can only tell so much, but at least yes, you’ll be able to see if someone has completed the instance before which could be helpful.
Elgar on April 7th, 2009
Ack, sorry for the long ranting post. :P
Nance on April 7th, 2009
Don’t worry about the long comment. That’s no problem at all.
I’m definitely not going to argue that people aren’t fair about PUGs though. Anytime someone makes a LFG request and demands to know Class/Spec/DPS I immediately disregard asking to join their group.
I would argue that PUG Checker could be used to prove to anyone who questioned you that you’re more than capable of finishing an instance because you have visual proof at how many times you’ve finished it before.
Elgar on April 7th, 2009
Yes I will agree with you there, unfortunately hastey emotions (after several accounts of being dismissed for things I knew I was capable of) started my response prior to checking out PUG Checker website, which I do enjoy actually. If nothing more than just to see how many times each of my characters have done all dungeons.
It’s also a very clean a quick website, so bravo on that!
Korixys on April 7th, 2009
People who base inviting a healer to a pug by spellpower have obviously never played a high level healer. I never understood this either, and never base my decision on this. Hell, healers are so hard to come by now a days. Can’t imagine why anyone would turn down ANY healer if they are offering.
This, imho, is an awesome site simply because it shows experience with each individual instance, and that to me is the only thing someones decision to invite someone or not.
If you have a healer asking to run something, and you pull him up on armory, he has low spellpower, then you go to this site, and he’s ran the heroic 10 times then he must know what the heck he is doing? Maybe people should be asking others, “How many times have you healed this heroic?” instead of “Whats your spellpower at?”
Elgar on April 7th, 2009
I <3 Korixys.
Xel on April 8th, 2009
This site is neat, And Korixys is right about looking at number of runs instead of spellpower for judging. I’m not sure what server you guys are from but on my server, healers are easy to find. But at the same time, you can also bump into a lot of bad ones. I raid lead a lot of pugs, this tool looks very promising. After all, even though I play a healer myself, there is only so many bads I can carry at one time in a raid ^^”. Thanks for your hard work Nance.
Korixys on April 7th, 2009
Wow, pretty interesting. While it may not be good to judge someones competence, its a good indication of an individuals experience in a certain instance. So, if ur not in the mood to take a chance with an inexperienced pug. You could use this site to see how many times people have ran the certain instance.