I successfully cleared argos p1 in a matchmaking pug. Originally just queued in to check out the fight and then someone in party said that this would be only only chance to que as it counts as our weekly try, even if we don’t get past p1.
I still don’t know if that’s true or not but we cleared it a few tries after 
I will admit though. I think t2 abyss is MUCH harder to get a good pug for than T3. T3 normal modes are almost always a grab n go. T2 can literally take hours to finish (legit spent 6 hours in 4 diff groups trying to find just one that could do mechanics, always got to last boss and people just couldnt stay alive/stagger/go to assigned safe spots)
But that was mostly in party finder. Like you said matching with a group is better in my experience even in the t2 abyss
Honestly party finder has been the most positive thing for me in this game.
I expected I’ll need to find a guild for harder content etc, but it’s been nothing but great so far. Obviously there were some failures and learning experiences, but raids are almost always really enjoyable and everyone stays positive even after a wipe.
Coming from FPS games where everyone tells you to uninstall after one mistake, LA has been nothing short of amazing experience when it comes to group content.
I got blamed for that once…weird thing is i told them to ping if frozen as we cannot pay attention to the whole field or see off screen and im a slow gunlancer and they were half a screen away but singled me out for not saving them people will do anything to deflect blame. At least no one has blamed lag (yet) in any party so far
I started out soloing guardians since I get crippling anxiety playing with people I don’t know. Upon meeting Vertus, I decided it was time to face my anxiety and try pugging. The entry screen came up, my muscle memory went on vacation, I started getting physically sick, and the panic set in. A few minutes in, I start to relax and things came together - Vertus cleared, no deaths, well within the time. As I was getting ready to harvest the souls, what I thought, overall, went well turned into some juvenile name calling and ranting about my rough start. So I left - forgot to harvest everything in my rush to leave. The person wasn’t done, continued in messages after I’d left the instance. I ended up logging out and contemplating if I really wanted to continue playing since my normal group of friends aren’t interest in Lost Ark and to truly enjoy the game, I’m going to have to play in groups, and likely pug unless I can find a guild for the extremely introverted and casual player. I decided it was just a one off, so a few days later, I decided to try Chromanium in a pug - it was repeat of the previous experience but targeted at another player. I haven’t done a guardian since (or abyss). Fast forward to Feiton, and I decide to be a big girl and try a pug again to find out that I have to go back and do all the t1/t2 guardians that I didn’t clear.
I am dog water at mechanics in games (ok… probably actually just mediocre, but still) so after I managed to claw my way up the ranks in a MOBA and then quit because of the timesink, I realized PUGs stress me out so I have avoided them like the plague
I’ve been very tempted to try again it in Lost Ark, and honestly this thread makes me more excited to give it a shot 
Glad to hear about the (mostly) positive experiences
oh for sure t2 seems more mech heavy than normal mode in t3 abyss dungeons , but once everyone know what to do is smooth , in the end when u pressing matchmaking button u playing roulette basically some ppl dont even watch guides u know 
I’ve never really noticed any issues with pugs. One raid one person (of the 8) didn’t grasp the white/yellow mechanic for probably a bit too long (like 3 tries to get it right the first time when it rotated each step, and then 2 more when the rotation skips a step), but other than that I’ve cleared every content I’m able to try 100% with pugs. I’m at 1100, so T3 content will be, at best, 2 days away (love me some more pointless timegating), but everything up to 1100 pug’d with no real issues.
On the last boss fight for Road of Lament, I chose SE as my position. One of the zerker keep telling me that East is left side. Every time, when that catch orb phase start, he always on the right side first then rushed to his left side.
Muscle brain in reality.
PUGs are like the forums. Some people are insightful and respectful, some are mean and annoying and some are just trolls i wish you luck in your LA pug roulette should you decide to give it a shot
For Abyss dungeons … Even though this is my first play through of the game, I still write notes for each fight from the guide videos I watch (old habit from WoW raiding days)… just quick and simple notes (using Notepad) that very briefly explain how to handle certain fight mechanics … When, I enter abyss dungeons, I will copy/paste those notes in chat if someone says “first time here”, or if we wipe and it’s obvious people don’t know what they are doing.
This has helped tremendously and people appreciated it.
For Guardian Raids. That’s a different story, I find the pug experience very whatever. Either people don’t talk and we kill the boss … Or people don’t talk and we wipe and the groups disband. That said, I’m still only in T2, so maybe it’s different in T3.
I had someone tell me that i was not standing at 6 oclock when i was literally center south. I think people need to learn clock positions, cardinal directions and most importantly left and right
T2 is the hardest to pug followed by T1 and then T3 (so far and in my subjective opinion) i am dreading going home and logging on to do my t2 abyss matchmaking on a 1370 character.
In the party finder if you use titles that are anti-troll and descriptive to what you are doing/what you want you will see a lot better results. The “carry me”, “need carry”, “subscribe or goldx for carry” make me sick. You can also have a pretty good party if you check engravings. I put this in the title and it frightens off most of those who have no idea what they are doing and attracts the ones who do know what they are doing.
Honestly, matchmaking has been one of the worst experiences for me regarding abyssal dungeons, t2 gate of paradise being the biggest offender. I had two different runs where upon starting and being asked if we knew mechanics, the instant i put no in chat, they had already put up a disband raid request. Not even an attempt to ask if we had watched videos, were willing to be taught, or anything moderately helpful. Straight insta disband. It got so bad i had to use party finder to create a lobby for people who were new and willing to be patient and learn with other new players. That on the other hand, went swimmingly as we all took our time learning mechanics, going over mistakes made, and were all incredibly patient and respectful to each other. So matchmaking: not for me. But making my own parties and doing learning runs: very successful
Actually really good for the most part, you get the odd jackass spamming quit after they die or a wipe or two but beyond that I’ve only had to quit like 3 abyss dungeons and 2 times it was Hildebrandt because the group couldn’t get around the stagger and laser mechanics but still very amicable.
Actually there was one guy in a Sea of Indolence raid berating people for being bad or missing mechanics but the raid was successful and it didn’t devolve into a shouting match just a few “oh shut up and play” type comments from other group members.
Most of my experience comes down to people not communicating and randomly quitting the groups or voting to end the raid. Even when I ask everyone for a re-run, promising to provide guidance, they don’t care. I’ve soloed most of the content so far because of that. Even my guild is quite silent and I can’t get them to play together.
I have seen people run lvl 1 Grudge, I’ve seen people run random engravings that make absolutely no sense, I’ve even seen people without parts of the armor, but I haven’t had a single interesting or funny situation yet. 
I play on Kazeros and pugs are pretty hit or miss.
I found amazing people and made some friends on pugs. I’ve also met a few language barriers and people who are unwilling to communicate. Also met trolls/ragequitters. All kinds of people.
It’s been mostly decent. Getting into T2 and having people get mad because bards can’t just instantly heal them has been a thing. they have all ground effects for allies turned off as well which makes it even harder to play support
i’d say 30% of my total abyssal groups were ruined by a single person every time via matchmaking, either by refusing to learn the mech or not bringing any consumable or having broken gear after 3 wipes. another 50% were cleared by people who knew the mechs but were like 500 ilvls above the gear score requirement so we just killed the boss in 1 minute or less. remaining 20% of raid groups spent time teaching people mechs
shoutouts to the one time in sanctuary-1 where the guy who claimed to know the mechs killed all the black orbs, got the gold orb, and proceeded to run around and wipe the other 7 people