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What happened to pulling classes?
Waterlily
Member UncommonPosts: 3,105
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?
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WoW had various forms of crowd control, such as turning mobs into sheep. Anarchy Online had a bit of crowd control, too, and that's an old game, but still post-EQ.
As for pulling, if you charge ahead recklessly in a number of hard mode missions in Guild Wars, that's pretty much a guaranteed way to wipe. In hard mode, mobs run faster than you do, so trying to flee will often result in a few deaths, if not a full wipe. That varies quite a bit by mobs, though; some have the AI to chase very long distances, while others will stop short pretty quickly.
Yeah Wow has quite a bit of crowd control, sleeps, sap, stuns, roots, fear etc.
CoX has tons of crowd control abilities as well, I mean the Controller archetype has tons of them not counting the other power sets.
And those are just the first two I thought of you also have EQ2, LOTOR, FFXI and so all have crowd control and the need for pulling.
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Yeh WoW has mind control too which is hella fun in PvP to chuck people off cliffs. I remember EQ2 having a class that was really devoted for crowd control and it could put mobs to sleep and that. However it wasn't good for solo so never became popular as you always needed a group to play, which wouldn't be a problem if you could ever find a group on that game.
WAR had basically no crowd control because in PVP everyone had a basic crowd control spell and a basic counter........ which just made it all useless. So that games combat was just no fun because all it was about was the zerg and no tactics.
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.
Groups still pull stuff but its an antiquated mechanic these days, I am actually glad its gone. EQ back then was great because we had only 3 or 4 choices of MMOs to play but with all the years that have passed and all the games that have introduced new ways to play people found other styles of play beyond the trinity that EQ used. With CoH the motto quickly became "Damage is king" and its fairly accurate, even EQ adopted this style of "Why mez it, if you can just kill it or off tank it?". Enchanters these days have a tough sell when looking for groups, there is little reason to have one beyond the mind buffs and the occasional add that is usually off tanked by someone or their bot. Although with the Mercenary's now anyone is their own group so its not as bad as it once was for Enchanters. Some raids and events still make full use of Enchanters but they really struggle when groups aren't available.
I guess the simple answer would be that we evolved beyond the need to have specialized classes for single tasks like Pulling single mobs or mezzing multiple mobs when a puller wasn't around, at least outside of EQ . Sure CoH has controllers/dominators but they also gave them a secondary with tough pets for damage so it balances out, my controller was actualy one of my greatest solo archetypes to play, hold everything with an AE, lock down any missed with single mez and let the pet/s go wild.
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?
I think more and more games are adding some sort of PvP feature. CoX, WAR, etc.
It's hard to balance the PvP side of the game with mez, root, stun, etc. The game can come down to first to mez wins. Plus players don't like combat where they just stand there frozen unable to do anything.
Lord of the Rings utilizes mezzes, roots and traps.
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44 pac healer... 65 sec aoe mez. Awesome in pvp, rvr, pve what ever. Are there other games , made after 2004 , with a cc like that?
Lord of the Rings Online has tank classes, mezzes, roots and stuns for crowd control.
The specialised classes for single pulling mobs are gone from most games. If this was required for most encounters, no class except classes that specialise in pulling could solo and no groups would survive without crowd control.
CC is still there as an option for players but I think developers have catered to the lowest common denominator. Right now DPS is king in a lot of the games I've played recently and the consequences of a bad pull low. As such newer players don't know about proper pulling, CCing, and main assiting and instead aim for high dps to blow everything up before the party dies. Chaotically kill all mobs, res those perished and go at it again.
In that regard Lord of the Rings Online is not too bad. Proper group mechanics allow for low repair bills and smooth sailing. Dark Delving is one instance you can't go guns blazing. However, LOTRO is suffering from a few bugs (exploits) here and there that allow players to avoid having to group properly. The instance design on paper are built for team play but the developers simply didn't realize just how crafty their player base can be.
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Currently Playing: Lord of the Rings Online since original Open Beta, Atlantica Online
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Played: World of Warcraft (3 years), Ultima Online (2 years), EvE Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Lineage, Perfect World
LOL Clearly you havent played AoC OR DAoC. Id mention more but it seems alot of them have been mentioned suprised no one mentioned DAoC and Im not positive but Im pretty sure Shadowbane has CC. But all of those have the features you say havent been in any games since EQ.
Any good PVE focused mmo with classes needs some form of Crowd control.
Without crowd control content is nothing but a tank and spank 24/7.
WoW has great crowd control, before blizzard decided to make every instance AOE tankable DPS classes had to actually be good with CC, you could easily tell between the shitty and awesome players in a five man back then.
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I remember at launch, Dark Age of Camelot had to deal with alot of PVP balancing
- due to the mezzing abilities of a few classes
EQ2 fan sites
Agreed. WoW had great group mechanics early on and lost quite a bit with each additional expansion. The game has just become too easy at least at the group level. I don't mind there being abundant easy content (as hardcore players are a minority) but there has to be truly difficult areas within the game that require true group mechanics. Otherwise what is the point of having CC, tanking, healing, support classes.
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Currently Playing: Lord of the Rings Online since original Open Beta, Atlantica Online
Waiting On: Knights of the Old Republic, Aion
Played: World of Warcraft (3 years), Ultima Online (2 years), EvE Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Lineage, Perfect World
Agreed. WoW had great group mechanics early on and lost quite a bit with each additional expansion. The game has just become too easy at least at the group level. I don't mind there being abundant easy content (as hardcore players are a minority) but there has to be truly difficult areas within the game that require true group mechanics. Otherwise what is the point of having CC, tanking, healing, support classes.
CC was important in BC and content patches before WOTLK. For example, you can get thru Magistrar Terrace without good CC. That instance is a mage heaven.
Things changed in WOTLK. Most pulls can be done by tank & AOE. I haven't really used sheep much in running H or raid in WOTLK .
Agreed. WoW had great group mechanics early on and lost quite a bit with each additional expansion. The game has just become too easy at least at the group level. I don't mind there being abundant easy content (as hardcore players are a minority) but there has to be truly difficult areas within the game that require true group mechanics. Otherwise what is the point of having CC, tanking, healing, support classes.
CC was important in BC and content patches before WOTLK. For example, you can get thru Magistrar Terrace without good CC. That instance is a mage heaven.
Things changed in WOTLK. Most pulls can be done by tank & AOE. I haven't really used sheep much in running H or raid in WOTLK .
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.
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I can still remember when I first started playing WoW, and seeing CC's such as Fear and thinking "Wow, this could be the dumbest thing I have ever seen."
CC is ok for PvE, but CC in PvP? No thanks.
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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.
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?
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.
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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.