A Small Guide to Pulling --by Dwimble
By
Abigail Frost,
Posted on: 2005-01-16 05:31 in Player Guides
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I've always used this as a pulling guide. I think it explains things a bit better personally.
[/ QUOTE ]Come in just to link to a competing (so to speak) guide? Poor netiquette aside, at least make sure the info you're linking to isn't outdated. If people believe your post, as some surely will, then they will go to that link and get false ideas about Teleport Foe and Taunt, specifically. It's posts like yours that help propagate noobishness in an online community. I'm not trying to offend, only educate. "And knowing is half the battle." *grins with thumb up*
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No I linked to what I found to be a BETTER guide. There is a difference, and it's not poor "netiquette" to do so in a thread dedicated to just that topic. Also, as it's an article hosted off site from these forums, coming in to link it makes sense.
As to it's being up to date on some things, I see by your following post that you feel this guide here needs updating as well.... please.
I really will try to update it. Life just gets in the way. I wrote the original guide on an impulse in response to someone's question on pulling in the Player Questions forum. I posted it and then decided it was thorough enough to put it in the Guides section, so I copy/pasted it here virtually unchanged (that's why there are some typos and such). It was hastily done without any planning, in an hour or less. I didn't do any research, using only what I had learned from simple trial and error while playing.
As to the comments about "better guides," my aim was to write a simple, non-technical, plain language "small guide to pulling" for people. I didn't wish to write a technical guide exploring the game mechanics of agro, agro radius, pulling and so on (which a few other guides do quite well). If or when I update it, I'm sure that will stay the same. I have no interest in writing a "Technical Guide to Pulling." I'm a technical writer and help author for a software company. I do that all day at work and have no interest in doing it for a game I play for fun. 
Another kind of around-the-corner pull I'm having a bit of fun with these days is with Deceive (especially against targets with ranged attacks). Your temporary henchman gets the blame, and you get time to set up an ambush.
Im not much of a blaster but I find when I do play my blasters, the best bet is to have some range on your shots. If you mess up at short range the mob will target you and its open season on the blaster. You have to be part of a team that is privy to what pulling is all about. One clown in the group will ruin the session for the team. A technique I use regardless, that seems to work well, is positioning yourself at an even proximity of the mob so you can see the closest foe. Target the closest foe. Toggle to the first minion. Do not pull LT.s or bosses who are usually in the middle anyway. At a distance, that is out of range press your shot so its ready to fire. Hit follow so that you run to the target and time it as you withdraw. It will look like you are going back and forth , back and forth ever closer. It takes practice but if you hit it right you should be retreating right at the moment you come into range and your shot goes off. The foe gets the bullet and you retreat out of his range as he tries to go after you. His buddies will sit there not even batting an eye that their friend marched off to a waiting ambush. Sometimes if you whittle the mob down enough your team can overwhelm 3 or 4 leftovers. You do not have to pull every single foe.
One of the most important things about pulling, IMO, is knowing when not to pull. If there are several groups of enemies in a room, then yes, it is a good time to pull. If an AV has a lot of friends around to help him kill you, it's a good time to pull.
If there is just a small group of enemies there that your team can handle, pulling just wastes time. Pulling is always fun for the puller, but it isn't much fun for anyone else. For me, the goal is never to pull one at a time. It is to pull manageable numbers. This makes it more fun for everyone.
And as Abigail_Frost said, toggle debuffs are excellent tools for pulling manageable numbers of enemies, particularly if your team is heavy on AE attacks. I generally pick an enemy in the back of a scattered group, so that he will drag the debuff through his friends and bring them all. When they reach the party, they are already debuffed and ripe for killing. They are well grouped for AEs, and they are all within the debuff range. When I team my fire/dark corruptor with my friend's fire/rad, the enemies drop so easily and quickly that I almost feel sorry for them. Almost.
I like to "pull" with Nova. I stealth and superspeed into the middle of the mob, nuke em, then run back as fast as I can. The remaining baddies (if there are any) follow me into the teeth of my teams attacks. Hmmm seems you can pull with an AOE!
There are more inventive ways to pull. My personal favorite is what I call the "zap, tap and laugh" with my Kinetic corruptor.
To do this, you need
<ul type="square">[*]Teleport[*]A toggle area effect skill. For my kinetic corruptor, I use repel.[*]Phase Shift[/list]
Its really easy to do the "zap tap and laugh"
<ul type="square">[*]Turn on your AOE toggle[*]It might be a good idea to pop a 2-3 luck inspirations at this stage depending on the difficulty and size of the group you're going to pull.[*]Teleport into the center of the group to be pulled. Its a really good idea for you to select your second teleport spot before you actually do the first teleport. This will make you zap, and quickly zap back.[*]Wait long enough for your AOE to hit them once[*] One of 2 options here.
1) Teleport back to where your party is standing
2)Turn on phase shift and watch the group try to kill you while your group commences to open a can on em... 
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I like this technique because some pulls can be tricky and there are places where this tactic is really fun and useful. I like repel because the knockback buys me time to get phase shield up before they trying to blast me.
More advanced teleport users can do stuff like zapping up to a higher level and teleport through the floor to avoid damage and back to the group again.
wow, this is the best kept secret in CoX. If more people actually learned the basics of pulling, there wouldn't be so many bad PuG and team wipe-outs 
There's an unusual form of pulling that is more amusing than useful...works best if there's a tanker/Brute with AOE damage available. You need to be a Gravity controller or Dominator.
Have the AOE Tanker stand in a corner, out of LOS of the mobs you're going to yank. If you're high enough level to have your Singularity, have that out as well.
Use Wormhole to group teleport the mob group on top of the tank. You can do this when you're out of LOS of the mobs yourself. (I call this the "Sliders" maneuver) Make sure your singularity (if you have one) is between you and any incoming mobs that wormhole missed. If you set it up right, the incoming mobs will be bounced back and kind of gather up around the corner. Then hit them with Dimension shift to keep them out of the fight until the tank and the rest of the team finishes with the first batch.
When the Slider mobs are almost all gone, let the rest through and hide behind your tank. While your team is cleaning up the rest, go find more mobs to port back to em. Keep feeding your team mobs in bite-sized chunks, until there are no more in range.
The Optimist says the glass is half full.
The Pessimist says the glass is half empty.
While they argue about it, the Opportunist comes along, drinks what's left, and removes all doubt. - Redwood
Alvays remember, schmot guy...any plan vere you lose you hat...is a BAD PLAN!
An update would be nice Dwimble, so I can direct new players and others who are in need of this knowledge here, with everything they need to know being in the first post.
Also, it surprises me to see that the moving-jumping-behind-wall-while-blast-fires-off pull isn't more globally known. I started doing this very early in my first hero's career as soon as I noticed that shots can go thru walls. This is made even more useful depending on the powerset. For example, I was AR. There's no non-instant attacks that can be used for ST pulling, and the weapon draw helps make sure that you are well out of sight by the time that shot goes off.
An above poster mentioned that enemies aggro instantly if the attack is a miss. I've confirmed that this occurs the instant the weapon draw or attack animation starts. (So as a side note, if you think you might miss, have your weapon drawn before you click the attack.) This early-miss-aggro aspect of the AI should definitely be mentioned in any future updates to your guide, I think. Anyway, thanks for a great read.