Originally posted by Z3R01

 

Yeah, I actually liked how CC heavy TBC was.

Heroics were a freaking nightmare to shitty players.

To bad WotLK took away the challenge in 5 mans.

Yeah me too. In TBC, the whole group needs to know how to deal with CC. Pull order, kill order, what to CC, how to CC ... all are important.

In WoTLK 5 man, all trash pull can be done by AOE. To be fair, some boss in WOTLK can be tough to kill (Loken is one) but there is certainly little challenge in trash fights. It also seem faster. They want to reduce teh time you send on trash so you get to the boss faster.

Do you really need to be taught how to pull?

Originally posted by Mahlo

Do you really need to be taught how to pull?

I did, I messed up so many pulls in EQ, you can't always see every mob around each and every corner, it takes some time getting used to the spawn spots. In vanguard I messed up pulls too with my bard. You can't just run in and tag mobs if you want to survive.

WoW was great until they put Battlegrounds in.

The current crop of MMO's is what happened to mezz control.

Penalties for running recklessly into camp of mobs today is little to nothing. Sure there's mezzing in today's titles but your life rarely depends on it the way it used to. Breaking a storm Giant's mezz and watching him obliterate your entire team is quite diffrent than some pansy swashbuckler cutting you a couple of times.

Pulling classes today are more a luxury than must have. It's a shame actually, Ranger & Rouge's pulling is a lost art form. An Enchanrter who truely mastered his/her spells was a site to behold.

Originally posted by Waterlily

Originally posted by Dr.Rock

Never played EQ can you describe exactly how the pulling mechanism worked, how those classes had specific roles and how the rest of a group of mobs AI reacted to some of their numbers suddenly wandering off?

 

Sure, EQ has a monk and bard class (druids / rangers / clerics can pull too though if needed).

Both either use a combination of mezzing + splitting, or pacifying.

 

 -Pacifying is making the reaction radius smaller, but you still have assistance of other mobs if they come close enough. 

-If pacify doesn't work you can mezz pull with a bard for example, which is mezzing one target, letting the other assist aggro and dropping mezz aggro with an ability.

-Another solution is pulling by dropping aggro when a mob paths back. Pull a mob, let them all come and drop aggro (bard fade or monk feign death), there will be a difference in the way they path back, if one mob stays behind you or the tank snags it.

-Point blank mezz is just bringing all mobs and stationary mezzing or charming them. That's more CC instead of pulling.

 

There's tons of combinations of these tactics thoush. Vanguard uses similar techniques. I'm not saying other games don't have similar techniques, but either no one seems to use them in the groups I have done or it's not needed and people just rush, which kind of bothers me because pulling classes are so fun to play. I really believe it's because the mobs aren't dangerous enough and because camps aren't stationary enough. When people can rush, they will. EQ has stationary camps though, so you camp and the puller just brings the mobs. In most MMO people go to the mobs as a group now.

 

Cheers, that is what I understood as pulling. Different methods of splitting one or more mobs off from a larger group.

I use a lot of pulling in DDO when soloing, because the dungeons don't scale down and the chances of taking the whole group is often non-existent. To do so I will try and position myself so that I can see the scenery around the group, but they can not see me. I will then fire in to the scenery to make some of them investigate the noise, then make myself visible briefly to those that don't. Doesn't always work because sometimes the AI will chase, sometimes it will just alert the whole group. 

In groups pulling does indeed tend to be the whole group pulled in to a prepared kill zone, where they are hit by mez, slow, stuns and aoe effect damages, before the melee starts. This is normally in a pinch point like a door so high AC people can block and reduce the number that can attack at once. Devils are the only thing that this tactic will not work on as they can teleport behind an ambush.

It isn't exactly mob group splitting, but isn't rush everything either.

Should probably add that ranged and caster mobs would normally hang back from a pinch point effectively giving two lines of ranged attacks going on. That is where certain classes like Rangers, Rogues and Monks come in as they can get through the line before it forms, or in the case of Rangers have enough precision to fire through the line, and take out the ranged attackers.

Originally posted by Waterlily

What happened to the monk and the bard class most will know from EQ?

What happened to CC and mezzing?

The only game I remember that came out post EQ that has some form of crowd control is Vanguard. Every other game I played has completely abandoned pulling for rushing and charging and dumb pulls. Dumb pulls is just letting mobs path or splitting them by backing up. There's no challenge there, it's boring. What happened to dungeon crawls where splitting mobs would be a class speciality.

 What happened that MMO feel this isn't needed anymore?

The CC mechanic certainly hasn't been removed; what's happened is that the various forms of CC and mezz abilities have been split up and divided between more conventional classes as additional support/utility skills. Instead of having a couple of class that can CC a lot, we have a lot of classes with a couple of CCs.

Something I've noticed from the games I play is that all of the highly specialised classes are being diluted somewhat and becoming hybrids; I imagine the CC'er was a casualty of this trend.

I am suprised nobody said it.Good CC and mezzing leads to people crying pvp.The rogue class in wow has done more damage to mmorpg than any other class.It combination of stealth and cc has made legion of players think that cc(and stealth) is the devil. I have played Aoc and War and while in the beta it is very clear people where either applying their cc fears from wow or assuming that cc or stealth can't work because of wow even when the game makers where clearing stating how  cc would in their game

It seems that game makers are not creative enough to put  good cc and mezzing with out messing up pvp so they normally avoid it in games today.Plus alot players( and game makers) are to rigid to old standards they will play only healer,dps and tank.The some most fun i have playing mmo was in Cox where you would get crazy teams 3 blaster,3 scrappers,1 controller or 6 controllers,1 blaster,tanker or 8 blasters just these crazy teams that lack a member of  mmo trinity but if the players knew what they are doing the teams work.Few games are design good enough to where other class can pick the slack and you don't have to have a certain class in group to be successful.It makes no sense designing class to pull and have role when people are just going send in the tank have the healer close by and  have everybody else kill the trash mobs.

Originally posted by Mahlo

Do you really need to be taught how to pull?

Oh sorry lord of the pulls.

Sheesh

Originally posted by Dr.Rock

Cheers, that is what I understood as pulling. Different methods of splitting one or more mobs off from a larger group.

I use a lot of pulling in DDO when soloing, because the dungeons don't scale down and the chances of taking the whole group is often non-existent. To do so I will try and position myself so that I can see the scenery around the group, but they can not see me. I will then fire in to the scenery to make some of them investigate the noise, then make myself visible briefly to those that don't. Doesn't always work because sometimes the AI will chase, sometimes it will just alert the whole group.

That's pretty cool and sounds like fun splitting. Methods to gauge the room and mobs up ahead are a fun part of pulling for me too. I will pan the camera around in EQ, or use my rogue or an eye. An eye is just really the ball of an eye and you can let it run in like a pet to scout.

Anyway, I never played DDO, I should give it a try when I have time.

Remember dungeon camping?  Not dungeon crawling, but camping.  Finding a good spot between spawns with a group, and just sitting there all day?  Group mechanics worked around that premise, but people decided moving through the dungeon was more fun, which would make pulling more complicated, and groups would always be getting confused and running ahead at different rates, not knowing when to wait for CC or pulls, and wiping out.  So instead, they dumbed down the mechanics, so that groups can just zerg through everything.

As a side note, DAOC pre-Catacombs, was another game that used lots of pulling and CC, having some classes that were specialized for it (Might have turned out to have its uses in RvR, too :p)

Originally posted by altairzq

Originally posted by Mahlo

Do you really need to be taught how to pull?

Oh sorry lord of the pulls.

Sheesh

shouldn't that be wooosh? as in, right over your head?

Originally posted by Waterlily

Originally posted by Dr.Rock

Cheers, that is what I understood as pulling. Different methods of splitting one or more mobs off from a larger group.

I use a lot of pulling in DDO when soloing, because the dungeons don't scale down and the chances of taking the whole group is often non-existent. To do so I will try and position myself so that I can see the scenery around the group, but they can not see me. I will then fire in to the scenery to make some of them investigate the noise, then make myself visible briefly to those that don't. Doesn't always work because sometimes the AI will chase, sometimes it will just alert the whole group.

 

That's pretty cool and sounds like fun splitting. Methods to gauge the room and mobs up ahead are a fun part of pulling for me too. I will pan the camera around in EQ, or use my rogue or an eye. An eye is just really the ball of an eye and you can let it run in like a pet to scout.

Anyway, I never played DDO, I should give it a try when I have time.

I enjoyed pulling with my shaman in EQ
 

Root + VP to split mobs, creeping vision to scout ahead.

Bards in EQ just have so many pulling and CC tools that it is just insane. Mezzes, roots, charms, fade, pacify, snares. Until they nerfed it a truely skilled bard could single pull a mob across an entire zone with no adds.
They can still pull half a zone, mezz one mob next to the group, and fade everything else off.

People also seem to be forgetting Shadow Knights and Necromancers as pullers. Both could snare a mob then feign death, leaving the snared mob standing still while everything else pathed back.

---

Originally posted by Waterlily
What happened to the monk and the bard class most will know from EQ?
What happened to CC and mezzing?
The only game I remember that came out post EQ that has some form of crowd control is Vanguard. Every other game I played has completely abandoned pulling for rushing and charging and dumb pulls. Dumb pulls is just letting mobs path or splitting them by backing up. There's no challenge there, it's boring. What happened to dungeon crawls where splitting mobs would be a class speciality.
 What happened that MMO feel this isn't needed anymore?

---

Death of group play. Every one insists that everything has to be soloable nowadays, so everything gets soloed. Pullers, mezzers and crowd control lose their point if you're not playing in a group. Even when people play in a group, they do it so seldom that they don't understand how to run a good one, as you've noticed.

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Originally posted by Varking
FFXI made good use of certain classes to be the pullers. Had I not been in such a rush back then to play something than a FF game I likely would still be playing that game to this date.

---

Proof of my point. FFXI makes you do stuff as a group (one of the reasons I love it so much), and FFXI has well-defined pullers.

Originally posted by Vhaln

Remember dungeon camping?  Not dungeon crawling, but camping.  Finding a good spot between spawns with a group, and just sitting there all day?  Group mechanics worked around that premise, but people decided moving through the dungeon was more fun, which would make pulling more complicated, and groups would always be getting confused and running ahead at different rates, not knowing when to wait for CC or pulls, and wiping out.  So instead, they dumbed down the mechanics, so that groups can just zerg through everything.

As a side note, DAOC pre-Catacombs, was another game that used lots of pulling and CC, having some classes that were specialized for it (Might have turned out to have its uses in RvR, too :p)

 

 

'Camping' is an obsolete game mechanic now.  Sitting in one spot for hours just grinding mobs for XP is not much fun so it has been replaced by more goal oriented tasks wher accomplishing a task gives more reward and progression then just mindless grinding.

Originally posted by ChrisMattern

 

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Originally posted by Varking
FFXI made good use of certain classes to be the pullers. Had I not been in such a rush back then to play something than a FF game I likely would still be playing that game to this date.

---

 

Proof of my point. FFXI makes you do stuff as a group (one of the reasons I love it so much), and FFXI has well-defined pullers.

Cheers to these guys.

Waterlily: It sounds like Final Fantasy XI has got what you're looking for.

FFXI has very well defined pullers (ranger, bard, thief, corsair ftw). If you'll looking for the bard class, they are one of the best pullers in the game at higher levels and are always, always in high demand.

If I understood you right, you were looking for stationary camps that rely on a well trained pullers to bring the mob back to them? That's FFXI all the way. If you're in a party trying to gain some exp, rushing a group of mobs around your level will get you eaten alive.

Now, I will say CC is probably on the lower side. You've got sleep, gravity (slows mob down), paralysis, maybe a few others I'm forgetting. Personally, I like having less CC's because that means the puller and party need to know what their doing if they want to be successful. You don't have the option to turn the mob into a sheep...I mean...really...

Mobs aggro to sight, sent, or sound, or a mixture of these, which means if a puller wants to pull successfully, they can't just run up to a group and pull one away or they'll get the whole lot. So it definitely takes some skill there.

FFXI forces people to work together in well defined rolls and having to work together causes you to meet a lot of great people. At least, it's been that way for me.

I wouldn't say stationary camping is obsolete, but rather, a less popular group option.  Seems like most people these days just want to rush in and blow something up and rush out.  No tactics, other than don't die.  In stationary camping everyone has a roll, and if you don't do it right, everyone fails.  Or at least, that's the way it's been in FFXI for the past 3'ish years I've been playing.  Maybe I'm just bias lol! Love the game!

The difference is EQ mobs were scaled for groups.  They were never ment for solo players even though some classes could solo.  The mobs were so tuff that you couldn't afford to be careless and pull a whole group or to try and kill everything at once.  Killing everything at once generally wasn't possible because the mobs did more damage then the players and could take more as well. 

EQ was kinda of lucky in that it was one of the first MMOs.  Developers hadn't thought of possible flaws with the defferent systems and what abilities could be used for.  I doubt the Devs thought people would use Feign Death for pulling mobs when they created the ability.  The holy trinity and different group roles were actually formed by the playerbase over time as they learned what was most effective.  They came up with ideas that the devs never thought of like kiting a tuff creature from one side of a zone to another. 

Now devs now what exploits there are and try to limit that.  It seems to make the games a lot more bland though in many ways.  It really limits what the player is able to do in a game.

I was schooled with FFXI and these posts remind me of the first time I grouped in WoW.

The first couple of mobs we met I stopped to work out what tactics we needed to consider and who would undertake certain roles - but  no - everyone just ran in head first.

I was like whoops, I'd better keep up 'cos this is something different. But everyone was already rushing on ahead. No one even noticed I wasn't helping, or wondered where I was.

Then I realised that this wasn't group play at all. Sure people were fighting together but there was absolutely no team work. There were no roles, there were no tactics.

After trying all these 'next-generation' eye-candy games with pretty UIs and everything on easy mode I returned to FFXI.

The OP asked what happened to pulling classes and CC. Well it's still out there if you play the right MMO. Newer does not always mean better.

Originally posted by Miner-2049er

I was schooled with FFXI and these posts remind me of the first time I grouped in WoW.

 

The first couple of mobs we met I stopped to work out what tactics we needed to consider and who would undertake certain roles - but  no - everyone just ran in head first.

I was like whoops, I'd better keep up 'cos this is something different. But everyone was already rushing on ahead. No one even noticed I wasn't helping, or wondered where I was.

Then I realised that this wasn't group play at all. Sure people were fighting together but there was absolutely no team work. There were no roles, there were no tactics.

Nod, that's how I feel most of the time. With my new bard in Vanguard I tried to mezz the adds, and bring in a single mob. Oh no..everyone was just breaking my mezz and just hitting 3 mobs at the time. When I pointed out to my group they should stay off my mob so there's less chance of a wipe they told me it's a waste of time.