I joined Blazedarkbringer's PUGs a short while ago based on the recommendations in the previous PUG group thread. A couple days later I got 21(!) Steam notifications filled with this:

mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598 mumble-us.cleanvoice.ru port 52598

Aside from this shitty announcement spam, it took probably 20-30 minutes to get the PUG started, and that's only counting after there were 12+ players in mumble and the server. The PUG itself was pretty decent, with most players being around low-mid Open level as expected, although there were definitely some UGC caliber players. I played a couple maps and left, and I haven't been back.

As for PUG groups that I do recommend, there's always Party PUGs, which actually work quickly in a sensible manner and have a solid base of low-mid Open players and the occasional IM+ players. GoodGaming PUGs are practically the same and even share some of the same core players. Note that they both have certain restrictions on off-classing.

(In the middle of writing this post, Blazedarkbringer's PUGs spammed 5 identical announcements:

ANY O YALL WANNA GET DESE DANK PUGS?

173.208.211.220:64738 
173.208.211.220:64738 
173.208.211.220:64738 
173.208.211.220:64738 
173.208.211.220:64738

memes)

Really solid roamer, has great bombs and sharp gamesense. Definitely deserves a high open team.

I was skeptical of lazy when I teamed with him, but he surprised me with his impressive scout DM. He was more than competent playing at a low-open level in his debut 6s season and has only improved since then, plus he has a really great attitude (all laughs, no shittalk, open to criticism, etc). He would not at all be out of place playing on a mid-open team this season.

I think the most crucial feature Alex may be looking for is batch moving, which afaik is not possible in the standard TF2 client.

bump, ty for more tryouts!

http://i.imgur.com/2hHYUlo.png

that alias tho

He's never been anything less than pleasant and friendly from my experience playing with him for the past month or so. Would hate to see him without a team for long!

It worked (even for my integrated Intel GPU, which is kinda suprising)! Thanks guys, you're amazing.

Didn't work, just defaulted to 640x480. Not to mention it wouldn't have been much of a difference anyways. Nice idea though.

Yes I have, although the results of the benchmarks show a pretty insignificant difference (~5 average FPS). I have, however, also noticed overheating when using 1280x720 resolution, whereas I have not had that happen with 800x600 resolution using the same 66 FPS cap in both scenarios.

I use 800x600 fullscreen resolution to help boost my framerate. While I don't mind the scaling, I dislike being limited to a 4:3 aspect ratio. Ideally I would like to play at a 16:9 aspect ratio, which is the aspect ratio of my monitor (native resolution 1600x900).

There are several resolutions for 16:9 aspect ratios within the in-game options, but all of them are too large and cause a noticeable impact on my framerate (the smallest option being 1280x600). I know that I can set virtually any resolution in windowed mode, but it will not fill the screen and would cause lower performance than fullscreen mode.

Is there a way to either A) have a custom fullscreen resolution (e.g. 854x480) or B) stretch windowed mode to fill the screen?

Definitely worth trying out for this mid-Open team. M seems very dedicated to building a team that is committed to improvement inside and out. To top it off, they are also a very nice and chill bunch.

lives off gamer-salt and hackusations, smashes pubs, plays confidently

bump, ty for tryouts

To your point about the group size, you should be wary of the number of total group members. I would assume many members are former newbies who are no longer fit to play in newbie mixes but also aren't able/willing to coach, and have simply neglected to remove the group from their list.

The health doesn't scale based on distance, it is actually drawn on the HUD and not in-game but it does stay more or less directly above the playermodel unlike the rest of the target ID.

It's new target IDs. The cool thing, I guess, is that the health and the rest of the target ID move independently, with the health sticking above the player model and the rest being static on the HUD. One unfortunate aspect is that the health and the rest of the target ID cannot overlap.