I was farming ogres in WN with a few guildmates earlier, and I realized that I could kite them to reduce the amount of broken bones. Our main DPS was pulling most of the aggro and using fire magic, so I figured I could use Apprehend to pull back the ogre and try to stun it, while the group focuses on bursting it down. As long as the main damage dealer isn't getting into melee range and still maintains aggro, this technique could significantly reduce the likelihood of the group getting hit by the bone breaking AoE, because the ogre's rage attack only triggers while in range to hit its target. In light of this, I went on to the PG Wiki and searched for kiting techniques. Surprisingly, this is what I found:
This statement is a rather shocking revelation to me, because in other MMORPGs like EverQuest, kiting is a perfectly valid strategy. Come to think of it, it's also rather bizarre that I rarely see other players employing similar techniques. It seems like the focus of the game is to obtain the best set of gear with the mods fit for a few classes, and face-tank everything like a stat-based RPG, rather than placing emphasis on strategical positioning, movement-based tactics like aggro-kiting, fear kiting or using traps. Yes I know that sigil scripting exists, but it does seem like the vast majority of the players I've come across completely ignore it in favor of having more stats or special effects on their gear. Not even world bosses require much consideration for positioning to fight (except for maybe Claudia because of the instakill adds), they're just giant piñatas and everyone just bum-rushes in to land their skill rotation. So I do want to ask if this is the intended playstyle, or is there something else missing here?In a game like this, where you can find all kinds of clever ways to stack speed buffs, it’s possible to run extremely fast. This is a problem in a combat, where the players can be much more mobile than the monsters.
One way the game currently addresses this is that you can not “sprint” backwards, just walk backwards. So if you want to get away quickly, you have to turn around.
"But that change by itself doesn’t solve anything, because the game doesn’t force you to face your target to attack things right now. This means you can turn away from the monster, run down the hall at high speed, and keep shooting arrows — the arrows would go through your head and hit the monster behind you. This is silly and bizarre."
— Developer blog May 13, 2014
Kiting is something the devs want to address eventually, although it is intended to allow some amount of kiting — "archers should be able to move and get a few extra attacks in".