The Magician's Tower

Aye, a good puller or a CCer is a must to be efficient in UF.

I was just under the impression that the Dev's are really trying to get away from folks soloing their way through most group content in UF and even making it NOT feasible to XP for AA's (kill rate vs xp return). Thus far it has been my experience -- so much so that I really don't want to solo much any more, but rather get my old gang back and just chip away at it. The xp is amazing in a good well balanced group -- I mean it has always been in the past but I've noticed some exceptional gains as of late.

I have not bothered trying to solo much if anything, but I will give it a try. Even with all pet aa's maxed and my current EM-VI, I still think it's going to hurt. For aa XP I still mash through old zones I know well and preferably have summoned type creatures.

Shardin wrote:ok fine, i take it back. but there seems to be a theme of being ambushed by like 5 mobs at a time in this expansion.. WTH that can be frustrating.

Hey Shardin, one thing I noticed is that in most cases, (not all) mobs that you need to kill or items you need to loot typically have areas within each zone that can be done with single pulls. There are just a few of them and it can be a time sink to do it solo or without a puller/cc but it appears that the developers built a workaround.

Shardin wrote:ok fine, i take it back. but there seems to be a theme of being ambushed by like 5 mobs at a time in this expansion.. WTH that can be frustrating.

Now you are on the right track.
As stated above, pets with the proper focus and AA's do fine in UF on single mobs, finding areas to camp where a mage can single pull mobs is the real problem IMO.

This is most likely more of a class balance issue, but when you look at Rangers using HA and even Berzerkers gaining the ability to Fade and SoS, it's time for me to dust off the old bottle of Whine and wish for GPP to come back.

Harmonious Arrow = shoot a mob surrounded by 999 adds and all the other mobs ignore the agro allowing your target to come solo. No skill involved.
At least with GPP we had to learn the timing for suspend minion and agro ranges, etc to successfully pull mobs.

I know that GPP is not coming back, but when I see Monks Mez, Blah, Blah, Blah... The old sore spot of the GPP nerf makes me Grrrrrr


/rant off

Sued...

Now you are on the right track.
As stated above, pets with the proper focus and AA's do fine in UF on single mobs, finding areas to camp where a mage can single pull mobs is the real problem IMO.

This is most likely more of a class balance issue, but when you look at Rangers using HA and even Berzerkers gaining the ability to Fade and SoS, it's time for me to dust off the old bottle of Whine and wish for GPP to come back.

Harmonious Arrow = shoot a mob surrounded by 999 adds and all the other mobs ignore the agro allowing your target to come solo. No skill involved.
At least with GPP we had to learn the timing for suspend minion and agro ranges, etc to successfully pull mobs.

I know that GPP is not coming back, but when I see Monks Mez, Blah, Blah, Blah... The old sore spot of the GPP nerf makes me Grrrrrr


/rant off

Sued...

This made me realize maybe we can make a push to use the new free target spell system to create a semi pulling tool for us. I enjoyed the original idea of our spell that we could have had but since it couldn't get fixed, maybe we could have a phantom pet. It'll pull a mob to itself and poof when it takes a hit (1hp?). Just have this pet generate zero agro for the caster. It'll allow us to move mobs around and hope they split enough to pull a single from a group of mob. I think range and recast could be used to differentiate ranks and control this spell from getting out of hand. Puling/CC is of huge importance in UF and having NEAR zero options as a mag really hurts. Sometimes you just don't want to box.

I dunno where you are fighting but I have no problem splitting stuff with Companion...there are plenty of spots to go where that alone suffices.

nahseev wrote:

Now you are on the right track.
As stated above, pets with the proper focus and AA's do fine in UF on single mobs, finding areas to camp where a mage can single pull mobs is the real problem IMO.

This is most likely more of a class balance issue, but when you look at Rangers using HA and even Berzerkers gaining the ability to Fade and SoS, it's time for me to dust off the old bottle of Whine and wish for GPP to come back.

Harmonious Arrow = shoot a mob surrounded by 999 adds and all the other mobs ignore the agro allowing your target to come solo. No skill involved.
At least with GPP we had to learn the timing for suspend minion and agro ranges, etc to successfully pull mobs.

I know that GPP is not coming back, but when I see Monks Mez, Blah, Blah, Blah... The old sore spot of the GPP nerf makes me Grrrrrr


/rant off

Sued...

This made me realize maybe we can make a push to use the new free target spell system to create a semi pulling tool for us. I enjoyed the original idea of our spell that we could have had but since it couldn't get fixed, maybe we could have a phantom pet. It'll pull a mob to itself and poof when it takes a hit (1hp?). Just have this pet generate zero agro for the caster. It'll allow us to move mobs around and hope they split enough to pull a single from a group of mob. I think range and recast could be used to differentiate ranks and control this spell from getting out of hand. Puling/CC is of huge importance in UF and having NEAR zero options as a mag really hurts. Sometimes you just don't want to box.

We aren't a pulling class. We have some utility but we are pretty much a dps class. Monks, rangers, and bards are your primary pullers. UF is NOT meant for soloing but for grouping. Grab one of those 3, a rogue, a necro, or some class that can pax and do it that way. CoN was given as a neck-saving utility and so was the golem spell that got canned. Pulling with CoN is a side effect of how that ability works. Asking for us to have a pull utility will be met with a resounding "no" and, if for some odd reason it wasn't, a yes will result in a drawback given to us for having it and that's bad. There are plenty of pullers out there and we already have enough abilities for that ourselves.

A lot of pulling tools are just side effects.

Green pet pulling was something we developed. Not intended.
CoN pulling is not intended.
FD pulling is not intended. (monks, SKs and necros)
CoH pulling is not intended.
Original HA pulling was not intended.
Evac pulling is not intended.
Invis pulling was not intended.
Summon pulling is not intended.

People just always come up with interesting ways to use the tools given to them. Nothing wrong with that.

UF may have been intended as a grouping expansion, but with a merc and my EM8 pet I can molo in every zones through tier 8 (one task to go before Volska so dunno there)...and can do a lot of tasks alone as well. So the great predicted demise of mages being unable to do anything alone in UF has not come to pass. And while CoN may help me split the odd spawn here or there, there are large tracks of the expansion I don't have to use it at all and can just rely on what assists what (and doesn't) to find a place to xp and/or do a task.

Evac pulling? Ok, I need to know this one, lol. Used to duo with my GF, a wizzy, alot and that could have really come in handy back then!