Squad Leader Archive

Hey I thought it was about time for a new guide here on the SL forum I finally have enough skills and experience with Release that I can make statements like this and not rely on Beta experience

Pulling -- the act of bringing a creature you intend to hunt back to your hunting group. A creature is pulled from a pack of other creatures. Preferrably, you want to only pull one creature. Thats what this guide is all about.

I spent last night on Dantooine and Lok scouting their status post-Beta. During this time, I used these tactics to seperate a single creature from a pack of five red con, aggressive creatures. I solo'd a number of deep-red cons with 10,000+ HP.

First, learn which creatures are social. Social means they help out when a nearby creature gets attacked. Social is bad for the puller Not all aggressive creatures are social. Not all non-aggressive creatures are unsocial. Learn by doing in this case.

If there are no social creatures in the pack you are pulling from, just fire away, you'll get the one creature you hit and no more.

However, lets talk about how to pull those aggressive, social, red con nasties! (Note: this does not work on humanoids or NPCs, just creatures)

Tools of the trade: /warningshot (Expert Ranged Weapon Support Ability), /actionshot1 (Carbine Specialist), Burst Run,/maskscent (works well at Exploration IV), nerves of steel (no panicking!), a quick TAB button finger

/actionshot1 is listed because it causes a knockdown/posturedown affect. I am not sure if /healthshot1 or /mindshot1 also do this. This is not essential, but it is very helpful. SuppressionFire (Ranged Specialist) also has this affect. Warningshot is really the only absolutely essential part of this... at this time, warningshot seems to work on any creature that has not been seriously engaged in combat, yes, even red con aggressives with 10,000 HP and high Ferocity can be warningshot'd at this time.

Quick note about warningshot: If you shoot a creature with anything other than warningshot (ie, you hit it with a warningshot and a regular shot), it will not forget about you, it will turn and come right back. This also applies to more than one player using warningshot. If Player A fires a warningshot at the creature and Player B also fires a warningshot at the creature, the result will be nothing more than an angry creature Setting warningshot responsibility in a group is very important.

Things to remember: you will take damage when seperating one creature from a pack of five aggressive red cons.

OK here we go:

1. If you're hunting with a group, have them stand guard a ways away from the pack you are pulling from. 100 to 150 meters is most appropriate. Make sure you tell them not to attack anything until you return with a single creature, as that will cause the whole strategy to fail. You might want to set a waypoint where your group is stationed.


2. Pick the creature you intend to pull back to the group. Preferrably, this is the creature closest to you, or can you can position yourself so that this creature is at 64m from you and the rest are at 70m+


3. Get within 64m of the creature (but not much closer than 60m). Go /prone. Go /maskscent. Now use /actionshot1. There's always a chance any creatures farther than 64m from you will not become angry.


4. The creature you hit will be knocked down, and also unaware of where you are. However its friends will all immediately know where you are and begin running from you (yeah thats a bit buggy). Between your radar (you have made this window larger, yes? ) and your overhead map (CTRL-M), you will be able to easily tell which these are and how many are coming


5. Immediately tab to the creature that will reach you first. You must be very very quick with this. It may take practice.


6. Fire /warningshot at this creature, this will cause it to turn around and run in the opposite direction for 50m or so


7. Hit /peace


8. Tab to the next incoming creature, /warningshot, /peace, tab to next, repeat.


9. If the creatures are starting to enter melee range of you, stand up and begin running back to your group, if its very bad, you might want to use a Burst Run


10. If the creature you intend to pull is approaching you, target it again and fire another /actionshot1 to park it


11. If any creatures you already warningshot'd come back, do it again, but this time run in the opposite direction they do, and make sure you hit /peace. Almost always, if a creature runs 70m away from you after a warningshot and you are at /peace with it, it will not return


12. Continue this until you only have one creature following you: the one you intended, which has suffered pretty good bleeding damage by now from your /actionshot1's


13. If you practice this, you'll have just enough room to run back to your group with one mob and have the rest of them forgetting about you

Sometimes this can take a while, you might need to run in circles a bit or just be tough and take some damage. The max number of social aggressives in a camp I have dispersed this way is six... much more than that and you take too much damage before getting them all off you. You'll notice that having a fast weapon speed is very very important here. Damage is not. Consider getting the fastest weapon possible and equip it when you pull. This might even be a well-made CDEF.

As a Squad Leader, it is not necessarily your job to do the pulling. I intend to teach a few of my regular hunting partners these tactics and have them be my pullers, I have other stuff to worry about!

Additional useful tactic about baby creatures: For whatever reason, if you are able to kill a creature in one shot, it will not cause any other creatures in the pack to become angry with you. Thus, if you can hit for 500+ damage (or get a good weapon and decent specials and you can do 1000+), consider doing one-shot kills on all the babies. This will greatly reduce the crowd control you will have to do. Also, if you haven't done this, and are about to /warningshot a baby, consider just killing it one shot as well, or using an /actionshot1 to cause it to bleed to death... no need to make it run away if you can just kill it in one or two shots!

OK, thats all for now, I'm sure there will be questions about this, and I'll happily answer them. Hopethis helps.

- Vol
Novice Carbineer, Soon-to-be Squad Leader
Naritus Server

Very Nice! Thanks for taking the time to put this together.

One thing I was confused about on #4 where you say "..and begin running from you .." and then "..you will be able to easily tell which these are and how many are coming "

When you do /actionshot1, do his buddies come towards you or away?

-Covu

DOH! Thats a typo!

Thanks for the catch!

Number 4 should read:

The creature you hit will be knocked down, and also unaware of where you are. However its friends will all immediately know where you are and begin running towards you (yeah thats a bit buggy). Between your radar (you have made this window larger, yes? ) and your overhead map (CTRL-M), you will be able to easily tell which these are and how many are coming.

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Volatris wrote:
(Note: the above guide may not be republished without my consent)

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While I thank for trying to show your knowledge of law and SOE's all-powerful EULAs...

That message is posted to prevent other players from posting that guide on their websites without my consent.

I really freakin' doubt that SOE is going to republish my guide somewhere, thats obviously no one's concern.

Odd, thats a tactic I use constantly, but for some reason I didn't write it down here!

Yes, excellent point: pull with /warningshot to reduce your adds by 1 (however it does not always work I have found, but always worth trying)

I would like to point out some interesting points on Warning shot....

It doens't work often if they are in melee (or maybe that was lag)

You can't pull with warning shot. What I mean by this is if you hit them with warning shot its just like shooting them. Warning shot only works when the victim is coming towards you. Shooting them with warning shot for pull will just cause them to run TO you (although you could double tap it but why start with warning shot when you can start with say health shot and give them some DOT while they run).

Does warning shot clear agro towards anyone, or just the person making the shot?

What I'd like to do is assign one person to be the puller, andsomeoneelse(perhaps multiple people) to crowd control. Especially if the puller has a high delay weapon (rifle), he won't have time to scare off multiple adds on his own. So when the puller initiates combat, those assigned to crowd control immediately attempt to drive off any adds with warning shot. If they're successful, they join the fight against the main target. If they're not, they need to keep the attention of the add until the rest of the group can help (more warning shots, snare/root traps, and kiting are all options).