I just created a heroic 85 paladin recently. My highest paladin in the past was 60. I have been trying pacify to pull singles but almost everything resists. Is there still an effective way to pull singles as heroic paladin?
New heroic paladins do not have a functional pacify. The original is capped to level 55 mobs; the higher level paci series starts at lv86. Once you ding, the spell "Propitiate" will work on [most] mobs up to level 90. Be forewarned: the higher level series just keeps mobs from assisting each other, it doesn't prevent them from agroing on their own. (You can see the difference in spell data here) So you can't use it like the old one to walk through dangerous areas – it's just for splitting crowds to fight mobs individually. If you need to crowd control meantime? Plan A is Get A Friend With Better Tools. Plan B is use your roots, and it's pretty solid as far as Plans B go. Shackle of Tunare is the name of the good root spell, and the good root AA. You can alternate the spell & AA when you need to, as you swap targets, to CC quite a lot of mobs when you have room to do it. Balefire Burst AA, when you get it at 86, opens up a whole new realm of splitting possibilities. It's the paladin Fade ability like bards get. The paladin version only works 90% of the time, with 3 min cooldown, so it's not absolutely reliable, but when you have the resources on hand to handle the rare slip -- but would rather just, you know, not -- then it's fabulous. Root one, AA root another, maybe stun one if they're immune to root, and as the last mob runs to you just Balefire to drop the adds out of the fight until you're ready for them.
One other trick you can do is to pacify all of the mobs in a cluster and then use a knockback stun to push one on the edge out of the aggro range of the others. If it works it will come single. If it doesn't work then it's stunned (assuming it can be stunned) and you can immediately root it in place and deal with the other(s) that come after you or you can fade them off like Brohg mentioned. If you fade them all off, then once the other mobs have gone back to their original positions you can reaggro the one that's rooted off to the side.
Thinking back to this issue as a 80'ish paladin, my recollection was that single pulling pretty much was not going to happen. So I explored and experimented with different zones and different camps. Tried different tactics and so on. Realistically at 85 that is not going to happen. I remember finding patterns in zones that would not aggro. Or at the very most, not create a situation that was not managable. Veksar was a classic for me at level 65, pacify no longer worked, BUT, pulling in a certain order or pattern was possible. I would focus along thise lines at the heroic level. Once level 95 is hit so much more opens up for a paladin. 3 stuns on seperate timers; for example. A kick AA called, quicken stuns, bale fire AA and much more. If i were you i would focus more on getting out of that 'era" before paladins actually developed.. the transformational "era" for my paladin was after level 95. Otherwise, what Brohg says is you're best bet. Balefire AA works pretty well using stun to keep one back 3-4 seconds while the other runs to you with plenty of space to fade and lose the other one you stunned. Work with Balefire and stuns, and shackles of tunare works too. Most important, try new things, be creative and know this. Most of the really cool stuff, you wont learn in these forums. Go figure it out.
I had previously boxed a pally tank, shaman and necro specifically for TBM missions... it was root and pull the entire way. I have since swapped to a shadow knight and the pally only got to 89 before i stripped him and moved on. Im sure if i stuck it out as the previous posters mentioned, to 95, things would have been different. I just wast comfortable with the slow kill times and root tanking. You have to constantly be watching for the root to break, which is rare but still trouble. Root move to the next mob, root that one and kill the third... re apply root between kills.
That is a large part of the reason there are few paladins that stick it out until it all comes together. It is well worth it. An end game paladin can do anything and everything. Period! Be patient, figure it out. Paladins are probably the most complex class to play, not the easiest.
Back in the day, before call/root and burst, I had pretty good luck manipulating proximity aggro to garner single mobs. Requires some familiarity with the zone and mob 'clusters' you're working with, but worth a try.
learn assist range for mobs, its mostly the same but yes there are mobs which have large ranges and mobs which have very small ranges. Learn how spacial objects in everquest can block line of site and assist. Root is your best friend, paladins get root at a low level i think between 20 and 30. There are other spells such as blind that can be used sometimes. Use your mount if you can as this will give you the fastest run speed to out run mobs ... finally just work on it
