Q: How can I tell where the mobs are in the next room?
A:
Ideally, get some Holgresh Elder beads. Barring that (cause they dont' drop anymore and are REAL hard to get), try and at least get some stalking probes. In LDoN especially looking around corners is vital for knowing what you are pulling.
If you do not have access to Eye of Zomm items, then set up some F9 key views for looking. By shifting the view out a long ways and rotating you can see around some corners. But this does take time.
Q: I know where the mobs are now, what good did that do me?
A:
You have to pay close attention to pathing, many times you will see
what seems to be an easy single on the side of a room, but rather than run straight at you, it will normally path out to the middle of the room, then take a straight line to the door. In general, pulling mobs on the side of a room isn't safe until those in the center are moved.
Aggro ranges vary pretty heavily from zone to zone, and the mobs will assist from larger ranges than they will passively aggro from in general (ie, if you don't think you could stand where the mob you want to pull is without aggro from those near it.. then they will jump in on the pull).
Q: Ok, so I know that I will just get the one mob. What should I pull with?
A:
Well, if you KNOW that resists are pretty high in the zone on slow, pull it with malo(s) and back up to where the group is. Send your pet in just before it gets to the group and it will easily outaggro you. Now you have time to slow it, then you can heal the pet afterward.
If you generally land slows in the zone on your first attempt, just pull with a slow and head back to where the group is. If they are still fighting a mob, try to root the pull by the tank so that it won't aggro onto the healer.
Q: Oh dear... I won't be getting a single... not a chance.
A:
No real problem here. Unless your group is doing some insane DPS you should pull by rooting one of the mobs.
Try for one on the side with very few near it. If you are lucky, those near will aggro, but those they path through WON'T aggro (since you didn't directly affect the mobs passing them). If you do get lucky like this, make CERTAIN that root doesn't break till you have all the mobs in camp under control, otherwise you'll get the rest of the room in your lap :\
If you rooted from what would have been a double pull, then slow the one that comes to camp, and when able to get the other back into Line of Sight, slow it as well. Do not refresh the root though, it is best if it breaks and you can bring it into camp for killing.
Q: Well, I was unlucky and got 3+ mobs... Are we lost?
A:
Not at all. This is why you have your pet up You hopefully have Focus on him for a small margin of error on the hp scale. Root the mob you plan to root for pulling, then when you see more than 2 heading your way, retarget quickly (F8, or U key) and send that pet in
The pet will take the aggro of the entire pull onto itself, and you can slow the mobs to pull them off. If your group is not capable of tanking or mezzing as many as you pulled, use this free time to start rooting a couple. Make sure the group knows you will be rooting them there as CC so that they don't run to the pet and start tanking.
Once you get all of the pulls slowed, heal your pet if it survived, and go slow the one you rooted. Remember to refresh the root too.
If the pet died, just summon up a new one during the fight and remember to give it focus in hopes that it lives next time
Q: Ok, so the group is fighting and I am freaking bored.. Shammies just aren't good at DPS, and our healer is doin fine on mana
A:
Perfect scenario for a pulling shaman. Position yourself behind the mob so that you are able to hit it and turn on auto-attack (may as well do SOME dps while you are busy. Now cast your eye of zomm and use it to check the positioning of the next pulls.
When the last mob in camp is down to about 30 percent, do your next pull (this will not only get it into camp about when the other mob starts to run on snare, but will also keep the melee so busy they don't try to pull in addition to what you are doing).
The ideal situation is that mobs run and your group is snaring, so the DPS melee will stay on the OLD target while the MA comes over to the new pull and builds up the taunt he needs. This will make for a seemless transition from mob to mob and thrill the group with rapid exp and a VERY fun exp session (no dowtime = no time to realize you are bored).
Q: Ok, I have this pulling thing going well now. We are into the swing of things and the group likes that I am chain pulling. My only problem is that I have TONS of spare mana!
A:
A couple ways that this can go. First off you can start pulling in a couple more at a time if your group has 2 tanks and a wizzie/mage. The caster will do much better damage with his mana if he can use rain spells which are hitting 2 targets (or so they tell me). By increasing the number in camp there will be a larger call for healing and you may have to back up the main healer with some patches.
Another way would be to load up a poison nuke and start helping to get the mob down that last bit before you pull (if it is at 50 and you plan to pull at 30, plenty of time for a nuke). You can also use this nuke to break the roots that you are using while you pull.
And a final option (plenty more, but I will only go into these 3 common ones) is to load up a nice DoT (poison or magic resist) and start rotting the mobs that you root on pull (of course, this isn't very practical if they summon
) If you are really skillful at this, you can keep a mob rooted on the side which is ONLY for you to use DoTs on, then at random intervals your group gets exp messages without any idea you just solo'd a kill
Q: Are there any other pointers worth listing?
A:
Tons. Hopefully a few are listed in the replies below. A couple that I remembered on my own are as follows.
Quiessence Cast it, love it, live it. If you are pulling more than 2 make sure you put this up in advance.
Virulent Paralysis Another lovable. If the mobs are close enough that they will assist each others, the VP knockback and help single them. Face toward where you want to pull and VP the nearest mob. It flies in the direction you are facing and WILL AGGRO OTHERS BASED ON WHERE IT LANDS, not based on where it was when VP hit it. So it can split the unsplittable if you work it just right.
Suspend Minion Remember that dogdog is only there to die so you have time to slow. Burn extra mana to store one of him for emergencies.
EDIT: forgot about VP, thought I covered it earlier
(wrote half of post, did Bert raid, wrote last of it... things got forgotten).
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Juujuu
Lots of us learned how to pull and handle CC work ages ago before Kunark was even out, and further honed skills in the dungeons of Kunark.
Here's some tips:
-Mem tirgir's insects and use it on pulls of 3+ mobs
-Turgur has huge aggro. Make use of this knowledge. If you slow a mob, it'll do a b-line to get to you. Back off out of melee range of the group, and root the mob there. Repeat for each mob that's unslowed.
-Pay attention to the names and graphical appearance of the mobs you are slowing. If you see 2 mobs of the same appearance and 1 of another, slow the 2 mobs first. That way when you change targets you won't have to think hard about which of the 2 twins you've just slowed
-Pay attention to the health level of mobs and how fast they are swinging (ie how fast their flashing name bobs up and down when they attack) when you are figuring out which mobs have been slowed and which haven't. There's no need to slow mobs that are already slowed. It should take you about 5 seconds to figure out if a mob is slowed or not. Compare it's attack rate to other mobs standing around to see who's name tags are bobbing faster.
-Turgur has a huge refresh time. Keep this in mind for the spells you are casting. If you bounce a turgur, only cast malos/malosinia afterwards while waiting for turgur to refresh. Cast other spells while you are waiting for the refresh time to expire. It might make your next slow land about 2-4 seconds later than it would have, but you end up casting a lot more spells this way, which IMO helps more than just standing around waiting doing nothing.
-get Virulent Paralysis. It's very useful for CC work. You can push mobs out of melee range and root them at the same time.
-leave lots of room between the place you are pulling from and the camp. Use this space to root a mob as the pull, and you still have time to slow one of the mobs incoming to camp.
-scout out your pulls as best you can given the time you have. Some times you have more time to do this (like with Vision spell or stalking probes). Some times you can use f9 to move the camera around a bit to peek around a corner to see what kind of adds you'll get. Some times you can quickly step out from a corner and move back really quickly (like 0.5 seconds quickly) and mobs won't aggro you if you hide behind cover fast enough.
-know how much aggro you have on mobs and how they'll react as you cast spells on them or on their buds. Heals pull aggro on everything if you heal enough. Low health pulls aggro. Turgur pulls aggro. Aggroing mobs next to other mobs pulls aggro. But each of these pulls aggro different. Keep in mind how much a mob is going to hate you BEFORE you even cast a spell. If you do this, you'll already know what your next action/spell is going to be because you know what the mob is going to do before it does it. Like, I know if I cast slow on the add without it being taunted, it'll run straight to me. Knowing this, I'm going to be pulling it off to the side and rootparking it off to the side. Knowing that mob is parked off to whatever side I just planted it, I don't want to park any other adds nearby so that when the main mob is dead, my group members won't be in melee range of the parked mobs when they go for next target, so I'll park the next add on the opposite side of the room. I've got this all planned out before Turgur is even done casting on the first mob. Think ahead...
How to use this in practice? Here's an example: Suppose you have a 4 pull you know you are going to pull. Target one mob, then target another. Tell the group 4 mobs inc. Root one mob as your pull. Hit your alternate target key to target the other one as you are running back to camp. Slow the 2nd mob before it hits camp. If you run through your party, the slowed mob will continue running through them, but since you only have social aggro on the other 2, they will stop and hit the party and leave you along to deal with the lone slowed mob. Root the slowed mob out of melee range of anyone. Try to target the mob that's not the main target and VP his butt out of combat with knockback. Now it's rooted and out of melee range. Slow the main mob in camp. Slow the mob you VPed. Now run back and slow the mob that was rooted on the pull, assuming root hasn't dropped already. Dot with your single best dot the mob that's rooted since you have plenty of time for your dot to go full duration. Run back to the combat (assuming root didn't break yet). Target another mob that's not being meleed yet and dot him too. Now's your chance to start wincing back mana. As root spells start breaking, if you dotted and slowed the mob, it'll go straight for you, so you can root it where you want. If not, it's hard to tell if it'll go for you, or a healer, or a melee if one happened to try taunting it a bit. Also keep in mind that you ARE a healing class, so instead of dotting, you might need to help throw some Qs and heals around. Also keep in mind that melees can CC adds helping ease your CC worries, especially if you have something like 5+ mobs in camp. Stick a melee on each mob, root what you can out of melee range, and throw Qs around until you get the number of mobs in camp down to an easily managable level.
Another tactic you can use to pull massive pulls is to pull with mass pets. The mobs will mostly or all aggro onto the doggies. You have pretty much a full minute of them CCing the mobs for you. Target individual mobs and slow them and thus peeling them off due to slow aggro and let the tanks CC them or you can root them in place somewhere. Pulling a 5 pull shouldn't be that rough doing this.
This is basicly the same tactics I used back in Lower Guk at level 40-50, and used in Karnor's castle at levels 52-56, and used in Seb at level 57-60, and used in every other dungeon/outdoor zone since then.
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Naghite
Few points i didn't see in there on first quick read through.
Remember that if you know you are gonna take a hit as (hopefully) one mob makes it into camp, try and run into a corner or against a wall so you aren't moved when the mob hits you (avoid interrupts). A similar one that works well if you have successfully parked a few mobs and have one left but didn't have the time space to root/debuff the last mob, is to run him over a non caster in middle of finishing off the previous mob. Even a ranger can live through one round of hits in pop....just make sure if you do this method you slow before debuff so that you get aggro back right away and the mob doesn't clean house on the wimpy rangers or get assisted heal aggro onto your healer/cleric - then park if needed or offtank for 1-5 seconds as previous mob dies, OR, let him follow you around while you debuff/slow your parked adds until the melee are ready for him. This last method is not the preferred way....and if you're grouped with pansies, you might get complaints, but a mob hitting them for one round so you can get postioned and get a solid slow cast off is, imho worth it, given no other options other than casting through yourself getting hit.
To expand on the use aggro to your advantage trick....suppose you are pulling 2 (or more) unrootable/unsnareable, (unmezzable or mezzable but no mezzers in group), and perhaps even unslowable mobs. Add to this possibly only one tank in group...or perhaps only one real tank in group. Very few spells have more aggro than slow...kite one mob through, over, around, hell anywhere you want that doesn't aggro another add while the group finishes off the first one. Make sure the druid/rangers know your plan and don't try and snare the mob you kiting and that your tank picks off (aggros) the non very aggro mob on you. Tis pretty funny kiting said mobs in a very small confined area back and forth over and over your party members while they finish off another mob or two /wink. FYI, assist heal aggro will (to my experience) never outaggro a resisted slow, however, low hp aggro can, so again, make your party aware of what's happening.
Lastly, just because it's so important for pulling...make sure you do a slight turn before your cast when running/casting/running on pulls to tell the server you've stopped and make sure your cast gets off. (I often spin around as i use first person and the spin allows me to often do one full scan of the area while making sure the spell isn't interrupted from sliding to a stop).
Frekkels
A quick Shaman pulling tip.
If you are pulling from one room to another, and you can see (I.E. target) the mob you want to pull near the other room's doorway but are barred from casting w/o entering the room proper due to Line of Sight issues (frequent occurrence in LDoN dungeon hallways/doorways), simply use /pet attack and then spam /pet back off.
This will have an unslowed mob on dogdog briefly, but it is much better than aggroing the whole room because you couldn't get LoS on a mob near the door and stuck your snout too far inside trying to cast Malos, Turgur's, or Root.
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Junkilo
Here's a couple more tips as well.
*If you are in a big pull dungeon such as takish (average pull is 3 mobs), then go ahead and root one in a room and slow the adds.
*In dungeons that dont have visibility challenges (such as the brown haze in tak) you can use your vision spells to scout pulls, approach angles for aggro pulling etc.
*You can also pull from max distance through a open door, and root the mob before it gets to you with a fast casting root.
*Although FD pulling can slow things down in LDoN tag FD pulling can work well. FD class pulls a room runs back to the group and FDs just outside aggro range, group then splits, roots, mezzes or start off-tanking.
*make sure you have clip pane at 100% when you are pulling. (learned that the hard stupid way).
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EeyonRN
I don't really like using root to pull unless I have to, because it just isn't all that consistant. shaman roots don't have a great resist check, and they have a tendency to break very fast at the worst times even if they don't get resisted. If you're wanting to split 3 mobs and you open with a root, if that root gets resisted, you're suddenly looking at 3 unslowed, unaffected mobs in your face, in which case you might as well have just had a warrior do it.
I think the key to pulling for a shaman (other than just letting someone else do it) is the same as playing a shaman in general, and that is not trying to be a cowboy. 3 or 4 normal level ldon type mobs are pretty easy to handle as long as you have some seperation and take advantage of the 5 other people in your group instead of trying to impress them by doing it all yourself.
When I pull, all i'm basically trying to do is to avoid the sudden impact of a bunch of stuff hitting the group all at once, because usually when groups get killed, its because they get destroyed in the first few seconds of a fight. After that, its usually pretty easy nomatter what the makeup of your group is.
I think its probably best just to go with a sure thing as often as possible, as opposed to opening with roots, or even slows. If you have line of sight, the two sure things you have are malo and malicious decay. If you use malo, one of your mobs is almost guaranteed to be neutralized quickly as you come in, either via a root or a slow. If you use malicious decay, one is almost guaranteed to be neutralized quickly by virulent paralysis. If you do not have line of sight, using a pet is your only sure bet to neutrlize, but there's a few ways to improve on that method that haven't been mentioned.
When I use a pet to pull, I do my best to ensure that it doesn't die in the few seconds its needed to create seperation. Some tools that help with this are sprit of the shrew, summoned girdle of magi koi, pet discipline, and quiessence. Shrew allows your pet to run back to you when you are ready without it being hit along the way. Girdles are easily picked up in the bazaar for a few platinum and add 500 hit points to your pet in addition to your buffs. Pet discipline allows you to yo-yo mobs without stopping to gain agro over your pet first, and it also removes your pet from rooted mobs. Quiessence obviously helps in keep your pet alive, and since you are heading towards your group and have your own ways to neutralize mobs, it will need it more than you, not that you can't cast it on both of you if you're that paranoid.
Basically there are really only a handful of scenarios, and these are my peronal preferences for each.
#1. 2 mobs - Just pull them. Nobody likes super caution boys that hold up a group by insisting on striving toward some sort of idiotic crowd control gem for the ages.
#2. 3 mobs with los - Cast quiessence on your pet (which has shrew). Open with malo (range 4 helps), and immediately attack a seperate target with your pet AFTER. Head to your camp with 2 mobs, one of them malod. Call assist on the malod mob and use this sequence as they come into the camp. Malicioius decay on the unmalod mob, followed by virulent paralysis on the same mob, followed by turgur's on the malod mob, which your tank is on. Using that sequence, you will avoid waiting on any gem refreshes, and you're also very unlikely to get resisted. Then, use /pet hold, and an /assist jibekerorwhatever macro to get a targetting jump on the 3rd mob as it follows your pet back to the camp.
#3. 3 mobs without los- Get a target with whatever your preferred vision method may be and send your pet with q and shrew at that target as you head back toward the camp. As soon as you see your pets life go down, hit /pet hold sending all the mobs back at your group. The only advantage you have is seperation, so you need to make the most of it. One way or another (depending on how dumb your group is) you need to make sure that your tank is on a different target than you are. As the mobs come in, you can use md/vp to neutralize the one you have targetted fast enough that it will most likely not even hit you. At that point, you'll have 2 unslowed, unaffected mobs in the camp, one on you and one on the tank, but the one on you only has assist agro, so it'll fly off towards the first thing that generates agro. If you hit /pet attack, it will go to the mob on you nomatter which you have targetted, and the mob will peel off onto your pet, buying you a few seconds. You'll want to get the off mob first, because if you get resisted casting slow on the main target, the off mob will agro the healer as soon as they heal the tank, which they will most likely have to do. The last thing you cast was vp though, so your gems are up and you should be fine. If your tank+healer cant handle one mob for a few seconds, you're going to die anyway, and if you can't neutralize one mob before it kills both your pet and yourself, you're gonna die anyway.
#4. 4 or more mobs with los - Spirit Call/peel
#5. 4 or more mobs without los - Let someone else pull.
Just a couple of random notes here at the end.
-md/vp combo is very good if your main objective is controlling mobs. md is fast and unresistable, and it usually makes vp last a very long time.
-nomatter what your preferences are with regards to being cautious, its good to plan out spell sequences around your items and alt skills that can be used while spell gems are down. i already mentioned vp, but there are other things such as the immobilize ring from vt and other special items that allow you to roll off 3 effects instantly after each other, with the non-standard cast in the middle.
-your corpse is not very useful to a group. if you try to do everything yourself instead of letting other classes do their jobs, you're in for a lot of failure, and that pretty much applies to every class in every situation.
