Monk Pulling Techniques

So, I started playing my monk again (just a little bit) and I thought this might be useful:

There's lots of stuff to consider, which you'll get a feel for with experience aka trial and error. I'm going to assume you have either a range weapon or some clicky of sorts to pull with.

The simplest pull is where a mob is alone, or with no other mobs in assist range. Next there's 2 mobs next to each other, within each other's assist range, but not touching, and all that is required is to lull one and tag the other.

When dealing with more than 2 mobs in assist range without Echo of Misdirection line (echo), one course of action would be to lull 1, tag another, and use feign splitting to get a single. Alternatively, you can lull 1, tag another and drag all the extras away while somebody else goes in and tags the one you lulled, as it is now single. With Imitate Death AA (ID), you can ID and then go tag the lulled mob yourself.

Feign splitting involves dragging 2 or more mobs away from their home point, then FD and wait for, ideally, all but 1 to start pathing home, then when all but 1 are home, stand and tag the 1 that was left. Usually mobs aren't this cooperative, and either start going home at the same time, or soon after. At this point you have several more options available.

You can use pathing to your advantage if you find that when you stand, 1 or more mobs run away from you while the other mob(s) run toward you. With the distance between mobs much larger, you can let the farther group reset by returning home, and then stand and deal with the closer group. Ideally the closer group will consist of a single mob, but regardless, the purpose is to reduce the amount of mobs on you to 1, or at least to spread the distance between a single mob and 1 or more mobs out such that a group member can come and tag the single and bring it back to the group alone.

Another option if the mobs pathing home won't split as detailed above, would be to wait until the mob closest to its home gets in assist range of the formerly lulled mob, then stand. This seemingly does the opposite of a puller's intent of reducing mobs, but when the group of mobs is far enough away from home (out of assist range of home point), then FD again. All of the original mobs that were heading home will immediately turn and continue heading home, while the formerly lulled mob will stand around for a bit. Then you can either wait for the big group to all reset, stand and tag the single, or have a group member come and tag the single, formerly lulled mob and bring to camp while you wait for the others to reset. It's possible to use a combination of this and pathing waypoints (pathing waypoints are what mobs use to determine the 'shortest' distance to you, and is what makes some mobs run away and some run towards you as described above) for the desired result.

A third option for a group of mobs away from home, usually when others aren't working very well, is to FD, stand, and FD again, and continue doing that until all or some of the mobs forget about you, or mem wipe. The check for whether a mob will remember you after a successful FD occurs when you stand up. The point of this process is to have the mob closest to you remember you and come towards you, while other mobs forget you and continue walking home. This is ineffective without pathing waypoints to increase the distance between mobs unless there are corners or other objects to block line of sight (los), since assist is dependent on los. Due to this ineffectiveness, it is usually used as a last resort in the later stages of the pull.

Now, on to pulling 2 or more WITH echo. Echo is freaking awesome as a pulling tool. It is designed to allow clusters of mobs to be broken up easily. It can mez up to 5 mobs, which can include other 'things' like eggs in AG east wing and it can mez you. The ae range is 30 based off of your target and you must have los with each target for it to be mezzed. Both of these points are important and will be explained later.

Basic echo use is mezzing a group of mobs, then breaking mez (with range or melee, or some other low range ability like grappling strike AA) on one and bringing it to group.

Another way for echo use is echoing a mob or mob group with the intent to have a different mob assist the mob you echo'd and then bring that single. This is superior for a couple reasons, first it's faster because you don't have to break mez, and second because mobs that aggro from assisting other mobs don't then call for help from other mobs unless they get direct aggro on you. Direct aggro is from hitting you, casting on you, or you casting on it or hitting it. Assist aggro will allow you to drag a mob through other mobs, or allow the mob to path through other mobs, usually in preparing to warp, while maintaining a single mob on the pull.

You can also use echo to take a mob or group of mobs out of commission while you pull the mob you want, like a named, through the group of mezzed mobs. If you're quick you can use lull techniques to ensure a single through a group of mobs (if you would otherwise get an add from tagging the named). You can also use lull with the echo technique above to lull 1 mob, echo 1 to mez a group which would aggro 2 (without lull) but with lull only 1 mob comes.

Going back to mob assisting and los, you can use the knowledge that you must have los with your target for it to be mezzed to stand with a corner or other object blocking los with your intended target and then echo nearby mobs so that your intended mob will assist and come single without the danger of getting extra aggro as it paths around the corner to you. This is most effective in tight quarters with, obviously, corners or walls to block los like in Mech Guardian. Oh, ID will allow you to drop aggro and echo another group of mobs, and rather than spell it out (because it's late and I'm being lazy) I'll let you figure out how that can help with pulls, with and without echo.

That covers a fair amount of pulling technique, on paper, sorta. :P This is a guide to give ideas on how to tackle pulls, but first hand experience will help to perfect, of course. So, to continue with survival of dangerous pulls. This is fairly straight-forward. We have a few tools to aid our survival. One is Earthwalk/Impenetrable discipline, which you use if you get smacked and know you'll get hit a fair amount before you make it back to the group or if you know before you get hit that you're going to get hit.

A second survival tool is 1.5/2.0 being able to heal for more hp that it increases your max hp, but if you have it already then you should know that. It doesn't help a lot mid pull if you don't have space to stop and cast it without getting hit, but it's there. Then you've got HoT potions to help heal when you're away from the group working on a split, along with Mend (or crit mend with AA) for on demand health, for a top off or in conjunction with Impen and/or other tools. Finally, and more recently, there's Delay Death discipline to help... delay... death (because we all know we're gonna get stomped sometime). A HoT discipline that only works if we're low on hp. Most regard it useless, but sometimes it helps.

As to the timing and how to best survive hard pulls... that's easy. Timing: anything to stay alive, used before you die. How to survive: don't get hit (run faster or suck it up and deal with it).