Decapitate and Headshot and Every class Fade. For you piestro :)

Rangers cover tracks is 9 minute refresh with all AA for it. It was never meant to be a pulling tool and orginally was group fade (till other classes complained) that is why it had the orginal restrictions for cast time and reuse these were not droped or lowered when it became self only.

Fluster/bluster is nothing like cover tracks please do not try and make people think it is fluster/bluster are pulling tools, cover tracks is not meant to be a pulling tool.

Bad-Rangers-R-Us card.

Those who only use Headshot and don't know rangers have spells other than Vinelash, buffs, and a heal. Those who think rangers don't use weapons other than a bow. Those who are just bad bad bad.

Don't know, cover tracks makes it safe to pull and be reliant on Fluster/Bluster bolt. My cleric has used his fade as a pulling tool before and you know that you can do something along the lines of vinelash /root then flusterbolt and then fade as a viable pulling tactic.

It might not be one of your primary tools but it's all part of a package. I've used stunning kick in the first group instance in Valley to split mobs (stunning kick then run and intimidate death can't lull or mez there) Stunning Kick is not a pulling tool in it's self but I use it as one.

What i mean is that its creation in the game Cover Tracks was not meant to be a pulling Tool it was intended to be oh crap save me from Name or Add or Big Bad Raid Boss type thing and then watch it flip to the zerker and them die ! Players use things in other ways then intended use. If a Dev intended it to be used for pulling it would have had a lot faster reuse then 12 minutes without hasten AA

Now that you're done powerleveling your friends you don't mind it being removed? Nice.

Let's be fair. Our melee has been phased out so bad it's hard to think of our melee anymore.

(it'd be nice to get those 8-9k kicks out of Jolting Kicks again after Nedrom got it re-evaluated into the ground when first introduced by pulling the "PVP balance" card. The ability had the damage tuned to nothing AND was made NPC only. At least our melee damage would take a slight uptick then)

I too am not a big fan of hs. Would rather group 100% of the time. I am not upset that decapitate is here and what zerkers can do. My questions is why are the restrictions different? Rangers get this ability for a very long time while zerkers have just earned it basically at 91 and higher? If hs was not to become so popular like it did i would still have3500 aa like i do now. Have i HS before? yes but only to powerlevel my box toons. Yes i have 4 accounts from over the years and It helps the time sink of making a character actually useable.
That said I wish they would put exp back on Old Man in POK. I got WAY more exp doing those than hs. I have 3 tons built on my acounts that all have 800+ and 80+level because of this. I liked it because when i was busy i could log in and box these mission after figuring out how to do it in an hour. Not much time to play yet i was keeping up with everyone else. Too much exp? I dont think it was because I was using it to help other new people catch up. It was open everyone and everyclass had equal chance at any level to complete. I thought it was a VERY good idea. Mad its gone? No but To be honest I think it would help the game because most people that can get to current levels need a bunch of aa and even though they have ramped up the aa experience its still a huge time sink. This type mission allowed for those of us, like myself married, to play and still be someone able to get a good amount of exp.
People who get to end game content and have the ability to contribute without a huge time sink getting thee stick around.

I think this helps me undestand a little. But let me give you another area. I know lulls work. Its in the warrens where the shock troopers are. They are bunched in that little hole. So you kill all by the catapult and you HA the mob closes to you so it doesnt run over any mobs. Right now you will get every single mob. Whats your advise. Yes my current strat is to lull each and everyone of them and hope i can get my cast off before others wear off.

With that thought Why is HA not just cast harmony AOE with no pull component? Wouldnt that make more sense? Or petter yet give our lull a faster cast recast time and have it last for a longer time? That would make this aa go away but still its doesnt work very well. yes if you lull everything with our drifting veil line they will not not assist if you just pull the same one you used HA on in the situation discribed above.
I am a huge fan of what this aa says. In fact when it was introduced i bought it before my defensive or even offensive aas which is rare for me. I understand what your saying line of sight but in that little hole in the back of the warrens they all see each other. And if you can manage to get all the npcs lulled with our single lull line you can pull the outter most trooper without pulling everything but with HA you can not. In theory Shouldnt that be the same and work?

I will be the First to admit that our Melee Damage has been stagnanted to one of the lowest attack on melee type classes now(which was not aways the case), I been trying to get things changed or at least looked into but the Devs do not respond or even reply about it.

I am willing to bet a good percentage of the rangers out there are tired of hearing people cry about it and wish it would just got a way to shut everyone up.

I have never been able to single anything out of that hole when all the shock troopers and fodder are up. It usually turns into a vineleash/fluster/bluster show for a few minutes (before we could headshot them).

Fade is not a pulling tool for any class but bard, mem blurs are not substitutes for a fade-like ability either.

You know what I see most people using a fade for? Training around zones without a care in the world because of their new magic button that they shouldn't have.

I have never done this. Ok..maybe I probably do this on a daily basis. Possibly.

As Tarvis said, you can't single out of that mess using only lulls and/or Harmonious Arrow.

First off, when a mob is agroed and calls for help, it is just one call that goes out. That mob is actually whining over and over again, "Help me!" and will continue to call for help until agro is dropped, it kills you or you kill it. Secondly, a lull does not prevent a mob from assisting, it only shrinks the distance that a mob will respond to a call for help. The Lull component of HA will reduce the assist radius of any mob down to 12 feet. Drifting Veil will reduce the assist radius to 18 feet. Drifting Veil Rk. II will reduce the assist radius to 15 feet. Drifting Veil Rk. III will reduce the assist radius to 12 feet. Lingering Veil (our indoor lull and also the absolute worst lull in game) will reduce the assist radius to 23 feet. Lingering Veil Rk. II will reduce the assist radius to 20 feet. Lingering Veil Rk. III will reduce the assist radius to 16 feet. Anything that is inside that radius or passes though that radius around the lulled mob is going to get it to assist.

The mobs are packed into that pit like sardines and even with the best lull in game (which is not a ranger lull and will reduce the assist radius to 10 feet) you can plan on getting at least four or five adds.

Pertaining to Line of Sight. Just because you can see a mob or one mob can see another does not mean they or you have Line of Sight. LoS seems to be calculated at ground level. That is what I meant by the SOLES OF YOUR TARGETS FEET being able to see the SOLES OF THE FEET of the mobs around it. If one mob is standing in a small depression LoS is broken. A chair is between the two mobs, LoS is broken. A small pebble is located between the two mobs, LoS is broken (Ok, I am exaggerating a little bit on the pebble, but only a LITTLE bit).

As for why HA wasn't just made an upgraded Harmony when it was switched from a DC tool to a lull tool... I dunno. /shrug

Plus, the pathing out of that shocktrooper pit is atrocious. Those mini goblins run all sortsa crazy once they are agro'd.

At fan faire this year the headshot topic did come up and the answer from the dev panel was, Now this skill is only meant to clear trivial mobs. As I understand it they dont want these skills turning the game into easy mode by boosting them even more.

As for the original question, I am a warrior my one Fade is about the same as all the new ones from HoT, is like 5 min refresh yeah thats the only one we get. I know pallies seem to be better pullers than warriors for sure.
Maybe he was using a stun or some thing? im not to familiare with pallies.

Paladins have several pulling tools. Our fade is 3 minutes refresh with .5 casting time it is far from amazing in comparison to bard fade. It does have a leg up on ranger,zerker, mage and a few other non pulling classes b/c of our ability to leap separating us from the mobs to allow cast time. We also have root/pacify and stun which help in splitting mobs which are the exact same tools we have had forever and a day (minus the years they didn't boost pacify).

While our fade is faster refresh than a rangers fluster/bluster more than make up for this especially in today's content. We are better pullers than warriors b/c we have spells suited to that purpose and warriors do not, not b/c of fade.

The best way to do this as a ranger is a little extreme but it gets the job done most of the time (which is to say, a LOT more often than HA/Lull would). For the shocktroopers camp specifically your tools will be: Extended Target Window, WeaponShield Disc, Entrap AA, Cover Tracks AA. First things first...go around invis and target a shocktrooper. Right click on your extended target window, select "Current Target". Repeat this process for the other 2 shocktroopers, placing them in your 2nd and 3rd extended target window slots. Ready? Now, click WS and pull the pit out to a wide open space. Everything will come. Target the first shocktrooper, Entrap, rinse repeat for 2nd and 3rd troopers. Once you are confident that all 3 are snared, use Cover Tracks. Everything else will path home, and in a moment you will have just 3 shocktroopers standing at you. Pull them apart using whatever means necessary.

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Now. On the topic of Cover Tracks, the (F/B)lusterbolt spells, and Vinelash...lets not get confused. Here are some facts for you. Vinelash and ye old fashioned (elddar's grasp etc) root spells are Crowd Control tools. Pulling and Crowd Control are NOT the same thing. Flusterbolt and Blusterbolt, are definetely pulling tools, moreso than CC tools. However, the ranger community got Flusterbolt because of how jacked up Harmonious Arrow became after a bazillion changes were made patch after patch, to try and get it working (but not OP as it was originally). Blusterbolt came as a surprise to me...but I guess it shouldn't have. The way spells are 95% spreadsheet copy/paste, beef up effectiveness a smidge, and given a *slightly* different name...
Cover Tracks is a fade. Do you think rogues got Escape so that they could be pullers? Or when the reuse timer on Escape was lowered when rangers got Cover Tracks because of the chaos that insued from rangers getting a fade at all? Now nearly every class can fade, and most of them can do it more often than a ranger. Regardless of what its intent is/was, it is beyond ridiculous to me that a paladin (sorry, its the first one to come to mind...cuz I have a paladin alt and my brother is a paladin) can fade every 3 or so minutes, base without any reduction, and as a ranger I clawed and fought against rogues and bards and monks in UF beta just to GET a fade at all, that I can reduce to 9 minutes (15 minute base), has an invisible cast time, and isn't foolproof.

Easy solution = each rank of hasten cover tracks drops 2 minutes off base timer instead of 1 minute. That would put it at 3 minutes with all ranks bought, taking a decent chunk of AA to get it there.

My point is...fade does not equal pull tool.

People still pull in Everquest? What? As a warrior, I grab 2,3, sometimes 4 mobs and just tank them as they are...that's about as much pulling as I've ever seen in the past few years. As far as insta-gib abilities go, they're not getting nerfed. They just aren't being upgraded. Maybe we'll see less terribad rangers at level 100

I will say, however, that the middle area of Sepulcher does requite a bit of pulling as the buff that mobs have there is likely over-tuned (from a group-geared aspect -- I have raid gear, and even then it's a bit much). I've also been boxing a bard since SOF, and I can say with all certainty that I don't use him for his pulling ability