Who all thinks a Bard and a shaman merc would work with players

It is nothing new that bards are at best used in medium sized and full groups but it is very situational. The class is not meant to be part of the holy trinity (tank / healer / DPS), instead as an extension for CC, ADPS, and other support like being the best class for pulls. The list is long.

There is a passive merc stance for pulls. Not using it is like not marking the puller as the puller by the group roles. 99% of problems are user made.

The game is not all about DPS which is a player sickness. A mage+bard combo is much better than a mage+monk combo as both are bad pullers and because the monk has not much to offer beside DPS and offtanking. Good synergy between mage and bard and so much more utility and QoL than with a monk. The time that the monk or mage can waste with pulling is not worth the DPS bonus. Mage+bard could even be better DPS then. Killing goblins in FM does of course not require a good puller as it is designed as a FTP and newbie zone. Btw, the thread is about mercs and not about PCs.

Nope, Setting someone as puller is set and forget. No need to actively cycle merc on and off for every mob. The same thing for Call Assist.

The idea of a merc is for less work, not more.

Yes, and having to cycle the merc for every mob is user made, when for 99% of the time I can just use Auto Assist for my mercs.

As for the AI, still hoping some day tank mercs can figure out that if we have more than one mob on aggro to leave the rooted ones alone until the others are dead instead of ping-ponging between them.

That's simply discussing ease of boxing though. Which does have its place, no doubt, but a bards contribution to 1 character still falls short of another full fledged dps in its place.

This comes down to the player behind the keys. Sime people, absolutely. Bard melody bot adps will contribute more than them trying to drive multiple characters. Other people do surprisingly well driving more than one.

A BST + Ranger combo would do more damage than a BST + Bard combo. The Rangers overall DPS is higher than the bards dps + the ADPS the bard adds. The bards adps would have to be attributed to multiple characters to make up the slack from the Bards own low DPS.

Bard + 1 does not compete against 2 DPS. In terms of pure DPS at least

Sure, but we were discussing aDPS. Context is important. And you've clearly never played a Monk before. Monks are the OG pullers. The monks ability to pull negates the need of a bard. And the monk can easily triple-quadruple a bards DPS, also negating the "synergy" between bard and mage.

Marking someone as main assist helps. But the problem is, if that MA is targeting multiple mobs, you're sending that tank merc at different mobs. But it does help keep them away from that rooted mob (until you target that rooted mob to hit it with a few debuffs while it's incapacitated and the merc rushes over )

We were discussing about overall DPS not just ADPS. I boxed a monk with a ranger but rarely used it for pulling as it is bad there. Ranger is so much better for that. FD for split pulling is just rarely needed anymore today as about all classes can pull better than the monk, without FD. Even in the old days split pulling was a silly, because very slow and often unnecessary, method but the players got used to it as they were noobs when being compare to today.

There was no "we".

Me, Fransisco, and Alnitak were discussing the implications of adding a bard to groups. Which explains why you don't know what's going on.

Just means you're bad at playing a Monk. Monks do not have to use FD splitting for pulling. They have tools for pulling so FD isn't required. Anyone who plays a Monk knows this.

People split pulled because they didn't have the knowledge, familiarity, nor tools to handle multiple mobs.

Which tools are that ? Throwing ? I played it until below lvl 80 and there were not such things.

No knowledge is right but they had the same tools that are around until today. Their problem was that they didn't wanted to take any risk and responsibility for deaths/wipes as there were corpse runs and more serious experience losses than today. And they got programmed to think that monk and bard are the only pullers in the game.

Monks are BAD pullers now?

I'm pretty sure Iven has posted every side of every EQ argument at this point in at least one of his posts.

At this point, most of us just assume he's someone's random AI bot using the EQ forums to language train ... although it seems to be getting less, not more, refined.

Been in the game for over 20 years. Literally since the level cap was 65, first ability becoming available at level 35. So I'll reiterate. Just makes you a bad Monk. Doesn't make Monks bad pullers.

No, only you thought Monks were bad pullers. Again, Monks were THE OG puller back in the day. And they didn't have the same tools. As expansions and new abilities came out and got introduced, they had to go back and retrofit abilities into lower levels. Bards infamous Fading Memories ability they use to be that specialized puller you so claim they are, wasn't available until PoP. Lot of pulls made without all the "same tools we have today".

OG puller ? Monks only had FD as a pulling speciality just like shadow knights and necromancers. Classes that had access to lull spells and songs were always superior to the monk as pullers. Our memories can trick us and that is how myths arise.

Yes OG. OG doesn't mean superior though.

The fact Monks got FD as a skill and not a spell made it stronger and better and it had a faster refresh time and it was instant, and could be used indoors (which takes Rangers and Druids out of the mix).

Sure a Necro could do it as well, but they weren' use outside of last resorts
Same with SKs. They could do it but the last thing you wanted was the down time of having your Tank do all the pulling. Sheer number of Monks + their superior usage of FD made them the OG pullers.

Bards didnt become the defacto pullers until PoP when they got Fading Memories and Boastful Bellow

OG does mean original gangster and in a stunted variant just original which is about the same like superior. Yes, the monk was an original puller but never superior so it should not be called an OG. The monk got used as an assistant puller for splitting mobs but the class was never superior in pulling. It was an assistant and not an OG. Nostalgia is notorious for blocking out some things and to assist the creation of myths and legends.

Lull was not limited to rangers and druids and outdoor zones. Other classes like the enchanter, the bard, the cleric, and the paladin, had also access to such a spell line and were able to use it in indoor zones. It is not easy to tell which class was the best puller but it was not the monk. Enchanter and bard had lull, charm, mez, and memblur but having root was also helpfull. Paladin, druid, and ranger, all had lull and root. And the necromancer had FD and root which is also better than a quicker FD alone. Lull was the superior pulling spell line. The enchanter had lull, charm, mez, memblur, and root, so I think that the price should go to this class as the OG puller.

For the PoP era and before I would rate the monk to be in the upper middle field of all classes for pulling. For today it is only the middle field as druids and rangers can use their lull spells also in indoor zones now and because the rogue received pulling abilities. Remember that many tight dungeons in EQ and RoK like Unrest were and still are outdoor zones. Imagine tight dungeons when you think about indoor and outdoor zones.

I would rate it like that ...

Best pullers in outdoor zones (tight dungeons) in the old days:

1. Enchanter - Lull / charm / mez / memblur / root
2. Bard - Lull / charm / mez / memblur / snare / Selo
3. Druid - Lull / root / snare / charm animals / evac / SoW
4. Ranger - Lull / root / snare / SoW
5. Paladin - Lull / root
6. Cleric - Lull / root
7. Necromancer - Root / charm undead / snare / mez undead / FD spell
8. Monk - FD skill
9. Shadow Knight - Snare / FD spell

Best pullers in indoor zones (tight dungeons) in the old days:

1. Enchanter - Lull / charm / mez / memblur / root
2. Bard - Lull / charm / mez / memblur / snare / Selo
3. Paladin - Lull / root
4. Cleric - Lull / root
5. Necromancer - Root / charm undead / snare / mez undead / FD spell
6. Monk - FD skill
7. Shadow Knight - Snare / FD spell
8. Druid - Root / snare / charm animals / evac / SoW
9. Ranger - Root / snare / SoW

It was far and wide the most common puller of original/early era EQ. And continued and continues to be a strong puller through Live.

Again, they could be used but rarely were. Using Lull and having it fail, you had no way out of it (Enchanter aside). And having your healer/tank pull, again, was not common practice unless you had no other chdices.

Monks superior use of FD made them then go to pullers

Bards didn't get a memblur for awhile, and their mez spell was often resisted without the proper instrument enhancement.

Clerics are by far the strongest healers. But Shamans are your go to Priest class. Same situation

That still does not make the monk to a superior puller. People were newbies and only thought that it was the best puller and they might believe into that myth until today because they never reflected their believes.

Everything was able to fail including FD which often resulted in a dead monk. Players with lull were still able to cast root, charm, or mez, as a second option which the monk did not had. Lull rarely failed while FD failed more often. Charm pulling was cool: "Say hello to my new friend !". The druid even had Lesser Succor at lvl 18 and Egress at lvl 52 which were both great when a pull went wrong. It was a good decision to have a magician in the group that could CotH the druid back to the camp.

Send us a video of a cleric lull pulling Plane of Fear. That would truly be some OG stuff, if it existed, which it doesn't. A cleric could divine aura a death ball of stacked up mobs in the zone and then die, but there's not much gangster about that.

This is why someone would refer to monks as OG for pulling in early game. The class gains stature and clout for splitting a zone like Plane of Fear. You had multiple monks team up to make it timely for guilds on a raid timeline. There were no cleric pull teams in the planes. There were no paladin pull teams, and there were no druid pull teams.

This defines OG. Nobody is remembered as 'gangster' for splitting orc 1 in Commonlands.

Well glad someone understands what I was getting at. He talks about nostalgia warping memories and then takes examples from TLPs where people have had 15 years worth of class knowledge and game mechanics to use other classes outside of thr common 3 to do things.

Plane of Fear is a very unique zone with it's huge aggro range. About no other zone is like that and different zones do sometimes require different classes as perfect pullers. A monk was rarely required for pulling ouside of Plane of Fear even that it got used that often. Plane of Hate has a small aggro range and the monk is not OG there. Raid content is different to group content and exotic. Group content was much more common and the typical game situation in early EQ. It was about 95% group content and 5% raid content.

The monk was a raid assistant puller that had problems to get stuff done alone - not OG.
Players had to build pull teams in raids with monks but only rarely in group content without monks - not OG.
Splitting mobs with one monk is hardly possible while other classes can do that easily alone - not OG.
Five minutes for one pull made the players fall asleep - not OG.

The point is that there is a difference on how people played in the past and what was possible. I was not taking examples from TLP servers but the players there and on live servers have much more knowledge than people in the past. I myself was believing for a long time that monks are OG pullers until I slowly received more knowledge about the game which changed my mind.

The point is hindsight doesn't change the past. Sure, with time and knowledge and more tools, the meta shifts. But it doesn't change the fact that Monks were the defacto pullers for the early years of the game.

If you struggled to pull with a Monk, you were just a bad monk (or new to pulling).