[Suggestion] Prevent Mobs From Summoning At Point Blank Range

The suggestion title is simple, and frankly very much needed. Players who utilize pets as their primary source of tanking and DPS need not worry usually. But players who actually engage in melee with multiple mobs tanking - especially in this expansion - do not need to be relentlessly ping-ponged between a group of mobs that are two feet away from you. When multiple mobs summon you at point blank, it negates any tanking skill as it shows your back to the mobs and causes unnecessary damage.

Suggestion: Devs need to basically have the range that mobs can summon increased just enough to where it doesn't affect the majority of simple tanking scenarios involving MULTIPLE mobs. The rest can remain the same. This I imagine ... would be a simple change and one that could be made across the board.

Here ye? Aye? Who's with me?

Aye.

Absolutely. This is really annoying and messes with all kinds of tactics functionality.

The summoning ability should be removed from every mob that isn't a named (rare) mob, specific quest mob, or raid level mob.

It was a lazy design mechanic that was put into the game by lazy devs.

I like the idea, having a set distance to trigger it would be a nice QoL change. Getting summoned while still in melee range is pretty annoying.

How easy it would be to change is another question. It could be a simple fix or it could be a very time consuming change since it's one of the original abilities.They already have a condition to only trigger below a certain HP %, so you would think it would be easy to add a condition for range. But if there's anything I've learned over the years, simple changes in theory don't always translate into a simple change in practice.

There's always a few people who vehemently disagree that this should change, and I will never understand why.

I don't think the intended purpose of summoning was to have a mob stop at its max melee range, hit the tank barely out of its melee range, then summon them two inches forward rather than take half a step forward, before another mob that hurt itself on their damage shield summons them two feet the other way. In my experience, 95% of all summons happen to the main tank rather than anyone who is outside of melee range nuking or healing, and I don't think the summoning mechanic was designed to make the tank pinball around the camp.

One suggestion I liked was having a summon put a 1 tick debuff on you that prevents you from being summoned again until it wears off. It allows summons to happen, but it prevents you from getting juggled by multiple mobs that were already in melee range.

This is the main issue with summoning.

I don't really want to see this ability removed, it's a part of the game, but some adjustments could be made, for sure.
A minimum range would be great, yes.

And sometimes, combined summoning mechanics can lead to silly situations, really stupid

One example?
Huntmaster Grondo in the GD mission.
This named pops 10 or 12 wolves. You kill the named, and lock the wolves, with AE mezz, or AE stun, whatever.
Fine.
But if you fight the named, and later the wolves, too close to any coldain cohort soldier, be prepared for a silly ping pong party lol.

As soon as you break a mezz, the coldains start to summon the wolves ... and the wolves start to summon you.
If 2 or more wolves are not mezzed/stunned at the same time, it can be really annoying lol.

In this mission, we're supposed to help and save the coldains, but sometimes, I just want to kill them all

It's not a lazy mechanic. It's a controlling one. It was added as an anti-kite design to stop wizards, necros, bards and druids from kiting. The classes could solo too effectively so the devs forced people back to the group game. Even classes like ENC who solo with charm were affected very negatively (charm breaks). It's an open world MMORPG and trying to dictate how people play is often not appreciated.

This would be such a QOL improvement. As a tank anytime I'm trying to position more than a few mobs i start getting ping ponged around so much i vomit.

Yes please. It's current implementation makes me think of the minimum effort a developer could put into a feature:

Hey guys, when mob < 97% HP and the player is X feet away, make the player = mob location.

It's a one-liner that completely changes the game while giving a god-mode feature to even the most trivial of Orc Pawns. It is the cheapest mechanic in the world designed to make mobs a little harder.

Even with a longer recast of 15-30 seconds, you wouldn't see folks out solo'ing equal level raids.

Agree. It’s pretty weak that you can’t kite trash mobs in some zones. The rares/named/raid fine. But to get summoned by yard trash is almost as illogical as a defiant breastplate dropping off a bat

What is super-annoying is when you tank something that you are hitting right in the face & it freaking summons you still - that is frankly stupid, especially if that summon causes you to be be the other side of the mob so it can now back-stab you after you did nothing wrong (like running away). That drives me freaking crazy.

Trash mobs shouldent summon untill below 80%, raid trash/ rare mobs at 90%, raid bosses at 97%. This way mobs have achance to make it to its spot with out a lucky riposte makeing them summon.

Also i think mobs melee range should not be longer then players unless they are a raid boss or super special mob. Its pretty annoying to get hit and not beeing able to hit back even when the mob is right in your face

i think there should be atleast one type of mobs in eatch zone that dosent summon to acomadate for kiters/ rooters, charmers ect(maybe they give slightly less exp for less risk or have more hp to make up for less risk)

I think that soloing all kinds of trashmobs should be something all classes can do. Nameds and a few choice quest-mobs should require a group though.
Kiters are very limited in where they can solo currently, and its not like its risk-free either, you need a pretty good feeling for various pathing mobs and zone geometry to get away with it. Its not really that fast either, the time you spend running and positioning is time where you can't cast spells.

Im ok with different trashmobs requiring different strategies though, as a level 115 wizard I have 3 options: kiting, rootnuking(roots break often) and "face-tanking" only strat against summoners(requires pretty much every burn and defensive ability I have, and is very risky on everything beyond RoS-trashmobs, tov and tbl-t2 is no-go).

2 mobs pingpong-summoning me is a death sentence unless I evac...

It's not even about tanking. I use my ranger to farm tradeskill stuff in zones that have nothing but grey con mobs, which means I have to run through a lot of those old zones.

I run past a mob, it takes a swipe at me and takes a hit from the DS...boom...I'm on the summoning list. Get half way across the zone and suddenly pop back to some mob I didn't even know I agro'd. It's like that scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where Lancelot runs at the castle...you know the one.

Annoying...f'ing...mechanic.

Glad to see this topic got some traction. I'm really hoping a dev or someone will take a peek. I very much doubt anyone would be strongly against such changes as long as they are minor but beneficial. Melee positioning needs to be a reliable tactic, one that is doable.

Honestly, the biggest issue I have is when you pull 2-4+ mobs and half are large hitboxes and half are small.

How it plays out is that the small mobs are next to you, the large mobs are behind them. The melee hits from the mobs pushes you back slightly, now the large mobs are a pixel out of range and summon you. Now your back is to the two small mobs. To add insult to injury you backpedal and the other large mob summons you and puts you back to the small mobs again.

My suggestion would be to extend the distance before a mob summons. Even to a range 30 doesn't really give enough room to kite a mob with latency.

I am strongly against changing summon. It works good as it is, it makes sure that casters do not get free xp, because removal of it would make the thing risk free.

I am all for changing the summoning mechanic to not summon when so close. The ping-ponging is a disorienting and frustrating feature and probably isn't what they intended the skill to be.
I was hunting the myconids in Seb when I got like 7 on me, and they all started chain summoning me. To the point where they glitched all running on top of each other like seagulls after a spilled container of fries. This caused half of them to fall into the water, and the other half to stand on top. I could do literally nothing, couldn't heal, couldn't cast, couldn't get out of the water and reposition. Died due to interrupts and being summoned every 2.5 seconds. Seems like a broken mechanic.

What sucks is when you get summoned inside the mob and it continues to beat the heck out of you while all you get is 'you cannot see your target'.

That and the mobs that have a knockback and summon.