Herding vs. Non-Herding: TIME FOR SCIENCE!

Run Citadel. The council bases are all the same and a string of several missions will edit out fluke responses to one mission. Or if you prefer just start and abandon it several times. The second mission is a kill all.

But honestly herding or pulling are the slowest ways to complete missions unless you have a team that doesn't know how to play their characters. So long as everybody knows what they can and can't do then any mission can be steamrolled.

Your groups will be varied enough in skills and powersets to pretty much render any comparisons pretty much meaningless.

You would need each group to do each run twice, once via herding and once via steamrolling, in order to make any comparisons valid, and then repeated runs of such.

Otherwise there are too many other factors to consider that will not be controlled for.

That's why the experimental protocol calls for each group to run the mission three ways.

And why I'm offering 25M for results, not just asking people to do it quickly and report back.

On my tanks I got all the macros to be considerate and tell people of my intentions. I rarely use them. Truth is people could be anticipating any one of my intentions or playing in a way they find fun. If they act in a way thats counterproductive to my intent and crucially compromise themselves then the blame is firmly parked at their own door.

I did do a herd up on -1s and -2 before and prove to a team that they would be quickly dealt with as a result but there are so many variables it's not much to care about. All I can say is some people shoot off and herd before the group the team has fully finished the previous group can increase speed. However sometimes constantly pulling in the direction that the team is going anyway is often complimentary. A constant flow of AoEs maximum numbers can be end economic too.

My "hearding" normally consists of tossing out an aoe to one group and then having them follow me to the next group. Tends to speed things up a little that way. Sure I may end up with more than the aggro cap, but on a decent team it will be back down under again pretty fast.

Okay, we have a preliminary result, which is that no one is curious enough to do the test.

I am really curious about this, and I would love to get solid data, but apparently the forums consensus is sufficiently unambiguous that no one sees the question as interesting. Any suggestions as to how I could get people who could test this? Alternative methodology that would be more convenient?

As someone who is in the SG that started this controversy to begin with (The macros in the original post are word for word of 3 of my close friends in the SG), I think I can give the best idea of how we run things around here in relation to what you're talking about.

We use a "herding mentality" in order to get things into a rhythm and pattern, so that we steamroll things based on the exact same thing happening over and over. It's not exactly faster, per se, but it's more effective in most situations. The one thing I heard, however, is that we generally don't leave spawns before every single enemy is dead, which is supposed to be completely false, though I'd imagine a couple of our newer tanks probably don't know how to do that for speed. However, if you ever watch "drill sergeant" roll, he will generally leave whatever bosses are left after the rest of the mob melts, and the next mob is generally herded up by the time the boss dies, this all assuming that we are in a closed-in map where everything can be herded up quickly, like office buildings. However, there are always spawns that have no way of being herded up, at least not easily. In that situation, you will see the "jumping in" macro, and they swirl around in the mob a couple of times, waiting for the enemies to fall down on top of the tank as closely knit as possible, THEN the teammates rush in. This is opposed to how things work sometimes where your resident controller wants to get his/her group immobilize off quickly so they can resort to doing other Fun Stuff (tm) and end up spreading the group out too much, ruining a spawn and creating extra time. It's all a method meant for AoE-built toons, and that's why you also hear us talk a lot about not liking knockback or chaos toons, things such as energy blasters or illusion controllers.

Now, the debate rages simply because people view this method as "old and useless" for reasons relating to the aggro cap, tradition, and personal experience. However, many who criticize it have simply not seen it done in our particular way. I completely understand, and I will agree that this game is far too broad to come to a conclusion based solely off of a handful of maps, a single enemy group, etc. Let me put it in plain terms for you.

There is no way to scientifically prove that herding is or is not better than conventional mob-to-mob techniques.

"Why?" you ask?

1. The tank makes the team. If the tank is bad at doing what he's doing, the team will be slow regardless. You cannot compare someone like "Drill Sergeant" to someone that's been playing this game a week and just learned the mentality. It's all up to the skill level, and more importantly, the personal experiences of a tank. If you've been herding your whole career, you're going to be worse at mob-to-mobbing than another tank, and vice-versa.

2. The other people on the team can ruin everything. Run with a herding team that's all my SG-mates that have seen it done a million times and knows how it works. Now make it one of us as tank and the rest random PuG people who have either never seen herding before or don't believe in it. The time difference is INSANE because most of us in the SG know the herding technique and in 10 missions will never see a single macro from our leader because we know all the spots, we've seen it before, and it's easy. In PuG groups, however, the macros must be spammed to keep everyone informed, and you also have to make sure that there isn't some newer or "smarter" player jumping into mobs before you're ready, breaking the aggro, and causing problems for the rest of the team. If the rest of the people on the team aren't ready for it, aren't smart enough to comprehend, believe that his way sucks, etc etc, then you're going to skew results in more ways than 1.

3. The support toons determine speed, not the method. This is the biggest point I have. I'd say herding and mob-to-mobbing are quite equal most of the time, but it depends on your support toons. If you are running a team of all tanks, then it really doesn't matter if you have a tight herd. If you've got a team that's got Rads, Therms, Colds, debuffs galore, you want a tight mob so that everyone gets a debuff, and sometimes that just will never happen without herding. If your team is filled with blasters, you want to make damn sure your entire mob is on you, cause you don't want your squishies to die, and herding is definitely SAFER than mob-to-mobbing. Oh, and did I mention that the perfect team (something with the perfect mix of damage, debuff, and buff) can steamroll anything in both ways in probably the same amount of time, and herding is simply meant to be used as either a teaching method or a way to hit a particular rhythm and pattern to keep things methodical. Again, it doesn't matter on the method, it matters on the team.

4. Some maps will never work for herding. This is another one of the biggest points. Take caves, for example. I run ITFs all the time, and I have never herded that task force once, unless you count rounding up the generals. I jump into a mob while the last mob is still dying, circle around, get em on me, and by the time they're on top of me, my teammates have killed them, and I'm moving onto the next mob. It's the quickest way to do that task force. Period. Herding would take so much longer because there really aren't any herd spots. Now go back to random office maps or warehouses... Many times, these maps will have multiple groups in the same area, and isolating them without disturbing other mobs is crucial to minimize faceplants. What works best there at keeping the team safe, AND creating the pattern that can get people into a consistent rhythm? Herding. Again, any given map can throw the method off. Please refer to point 3 for how speed is REALLY affected...

5. Some enemy groups will never condense in mob-to-mob. Nemesis, anything from Praetoria, anything that has no melee attacks... Try jumping into a mob of them, running around in circles, spamming taunt, and watch how they will stay scattered. Now grab all of their aggro, break their line of sight, and watch them cluster around you, ready to be destroyed. Sometimes herding is just simply more practical, not faster.

I might be able to pull a few more points out of my butt, but I don't believe it's necessary. You get the point. The argument is null and void, really. It's a matter of personal opinion as to what you prefer more. I prefer herding if it's possible in the right situation, other people may prefer mob-to-mobbing. There is no answer as to what is faster because the number of factors going into it are so many that you will never complete consistent runs on a part that will represent the whole. Period. Again, it's an opinion, not a fact, and thinking otherwise is ignorant. We will continue to herd because we like it. This is a game that we all pay $15 a month for. We play it to have fun and to relax, not to get into petty arguments about who's right and who's wrong in the world. What's fun to me is herding. What's fun to other people is mob-to-mobbing. That's what matters: What's more fun to you?

That's MY 2 inf.

As a person who helped develop the art of herding (yes, I've been here that long) herding does still benefits while not necessarily still the fastest way of clearing maps, it is one of the safest. Keep in mind that when you are running +3/+4 teams of 6 or more tanks that herd maps really come into their own.

Also the so called "agro cap" has a flaw, it does not work, anybody on the Champion server who has been on a team with Tankless Job since the "cap" was put into place can tell you that I can herd entire floors, and yes, I do mean more than 18 enemies. I have done a mission that a person counted my herd and I had 42 enemies, and this does not count what came in after the initial amount of defeated enemies. Not every tank knows how to do this and I have passed the technique on to only a hand full of other players.

As mentioned maps play a crucial part in herding so lets stick with the office/warehouse layouts for this post. Sharp corners are great and allows for the most effective herds. As a tank I always try to announce what my plans are, and let the other players know if the plan changes. Such as a huge group in a small room that allows me to pull my current herd and add them without having worry about the safety of the other players. Players who jump the herd before it is fully gathered can actually break a herd up, thus wasting the time that the tank spent herding. If I've done my job correctly, I have a huge herd that allows my teammates to jump in take down most of the collected herd and then move on while I'm moving ahead and getting the next group setup. Rinse and Repeat. Again If I've done my job correctly I have prevented any members from dying. After all, it is all about loss vs. gain, if you die, you have been set slightly back.

Some outdoor and most cave maps are horrible for herding and I don't even try. As a herding tank you must know your role in a team structure. You can still have all the agro, and move from group to group even quicker, yes, and porssibly even clear a map faster than when trying to herd. Again, Map/Team/+Level/Team Size all matter here.

I have been part of a kill all ITF that was done in about an hour and a half, I've also been on one that took three hours. It all depended on the abilities of the tank.

With all that being said herding has it uses in the game and its place.

My finial conclusion:

Herding is faster on certain maps with certain tanks (players really do make a difference.)

Rich the Tankless Job Guy