You can't tell me I'm not good enough.

[protokon]

Well that would have been a significant over-reaction. It wasn't that I publicly called him personally out. I think it was along the lines of "What kind of idiot only has barbarians, fighters, and paladins as DPS for the shroud?"

unfortunately quite a few of them. like mrwizard pointed out, people like this are probably those same folks who put up the following LFMs:

chronoscope normal: lvl range 20-20 "loot run need healer"
<insert raid name here>: "no noobs, need guide"
waterworks: "need tank" <--my personal favorite, tank those ankle-biters!

the general population is ignorant, sees the raid completed a specific way and refuses to derive from that method. There is also a lot of misconceptions out there, like "don't move in hound or youll start beholder timers". must have X hitpoints or you cannot do epic content, period. must be lvl 18+ to do this and this raid.

It sucks, but this is why we are in good guilds with like-minded players. Pugging simply serves to remind us how blessed we are to be sheltered by fellow competent players.

[Meetch1972]

Well, last night I joined a really really shady looking shroud group. The only reason we didn't run with an 8/8/2 rogue/sorc/pally was that the group was forming really really slowly (late night in Australia, ~noon server time) and the owner of that experimental build switched to a healer in order to satisfy the universally accepted minimum 2 divine configuration. I didn't recognise any of the other toons in the group (though one player's voice came through - he normally plays casters, but this time was on a fighter). But 25 minutes or so after I hit the LFM (first to join) we were off...

Part 1: Meh. Portal kills seemed sluggish. Keepers did indeed spawn, though they died quick enough. I said to myself: Part 4 will most certainly be a 2 rounder. No biggie.
Part 2: We worked as a team. There were jokes (pull all the trash to NW corner, right?) Probably 3 seconds after the first lieutenant dropped, they were all down, and a few seconds later so was the crystal.
Part 3: Somehow forgot I had an earth pet summoned in part 1 trailing me, went in and knowing the pet's willingness to attack crystals was delighted to get the 4x4 puzzle which required 2 steps to solve and got my butt to the middle chop chop before he could do too much damage. Waited out the pet's timer in the middle (~30 seconds left when I got there) and had time to run 1 water. I was the biggest potential cause of grief in the run.
Part 4: I was right in part 1. Just. But had I hit the last attack boost one more time instead of conserving it for round 2, it would have been 1 round. (Harry didn't even hit the ground in round 2 before he was finished.)
Part 5: the fighter who was used to running with a caster died taunting Kasquik due to lack of deathblock and a failed save. Whoops! Chuckles, rez, and completion.

Shroud ain't hard, and everyone except the newbies know what to do before they get there. Even most newbies figure it out, just by tagging along. I'll still take anyone for normal - but yet to run elite because there are too many chickens out there to get a group together in my prime time...

L20 elitist shroud on normal -> boring, often slow to form, but fast completion.. Otherwise -> Entertaining and surprises, and still usually quick enough compared to waiting for the perfect group to form.

[yawumpus]

I read the OP with a backpacker beat playing in my head, in the voice of Eyedea.

We just completed our second permadeath shroud, with thrift store gear and half our dps didnt even have DR breakers. This raid is seriously a joke for anyone in PUGs who has run it a few times. The stuff you can buy on the brokers nowdays is overkill to run this raid we used to do at level 14.

The OP is right. The fact that people still screen for this is pathetic, tossing up LFMs for 18-20 and checking gear, lol - because you basically have to TRY to fail it.

Glad it was Sunday and not Monday. Finally got an alt flagged for shroud, and rushed into a shroud group. My first time as a caster, and all ready to do duty on part one.

In addition to the trogs and other mobs, little did we expect the mighty lag monster to come through the portals. I think I was able to target and slay (no wail on my 17 sorc) 3 whole mobs in part 1. Part 2 was equally interesting (though due to play clueless/unlistening seems more likely than lag). After that things smoothed out.