Game Mechanics: Sneak pulling

[paulgiamatti]

Hypothesis: Tagging a mob that does not have you in its line of sight, while sneaking, should decrease the aggro radius of that mob. This means that other mobs that are not looking at the mob you tagged can still aggro if they're close enough - just like with Harmony or Lull. It is, for all intents and purposes, a minor Harmony/Lull effect. This also means that other mobs that are looking at the mob you tagged will not aggro if they're outside of the reduced aggro radius of the mob you sneak-tagged.

Evidence:

From Monkly Business, 10/3/2000

Its claimed that sneak can be used as a minor harmony effect on *SOCIAL* mobs to reduce their add radius, but personally I haven't had much success with this at all.

From The Safehouse, 6/11/01

In the end, it's all in the placement of the mobs, use angles and line of sight to minimize aggro with the others you don't want. It's not a simple case of "put sneak on, stand in front of two mobs, hit one and the other shouldn't come". There is no substitute for experience, pathing and aggro is different everywhere. Learn exactly how sneak affects/reduces that aggro in different places and then put it to use.

Yes, aggro radius pulling is useful with sneak too. I use this in Karmors basement where the halls are narrow an there is no room for range weapons.

Line of sight helps a lot in these cases. If you get in a position where one can see you but another can't, while having sneak and hide engaged, then you drop hide - but keep sneak on.

Soon as you see one start to aggro and move, back away quickly. As long as you are out of aggro radius of the other by the time it hits you and sneak drops, you only get the one.

From Monkly Business, 6/25/01:

You don't even have to do the FD pull if you have enough room to maneuver. Just turn on Sneak

and walk up to mobs from the side so that you will become closer to one than the others. As soon

as you come within aggro range of the mob he will come after you and the others will stay.



Walk backwards till you are clear of aggro range of the other mobs then un-sneak and run back to

your beatdown posse.

Evidence to the contrary:

From Monkly Business, 9/25/2000

4) Using Thrown Weapons and Sneak to split.

With the changes to Sneak (no longer dropping when you use a thrown weapon ) another use has come up! In order for this to work, you must be using a ranged weapon with a ranger greater then the static aggro of the mob ( ie method # 3 listed above): engage sneak, throw, insta split. Personally I'm using summoned suriken for this, and I haven't had to use FD on a split since I got back into EQ. This includes splitting spawns where the mobs are literally on top of each other, although some times I have hit the mob i didn't have targeted, I have never aggro'ed the other.

Discuss, and please prove this wrong.