Venomancer Luring

Luring, also called "pulling", is a form of aggro management, specific to the venomancer and mystic classes. Indeed, it is a major reason to have a venomancer or mystic in a group. (Although their sustained damage output doesn't hurt. Wait, it does hurt. Which is good. Oh, you know what I mean.)

This can be a bit tricky to get right, but done properly is a completely safe way to draw a single monster out of a crowd.

I'm sure there are many more tricks out there. But these are the ones I know.

Basic Principle
When a monster is attacked, it calls for help from all of its friends. That can be very bad. But if the thing attacking them vanishes then they go back to what they were doing.

So you hit them with your pet, unsummon it, and all the friends go home, whilst the one you hit comes a-running. Simple.

Misbehaving Bosses
When near bosses (even if it's just a boss in the area that you don't want to have anything to do with): Have your pet on 'manual' rather than 'auto' attack. Otherwise monster AoE will often make your pet change its mind about what to attack, which could be very bad.

It is also worth mentioning here that whilst luring usually works the simple way, some bosses do not follow the normal rules of aggro and will attack whatever they darn well feel like.

A relatively low-level example of this is "Suzerix the Elder" (Found to the north west of Sumor Camp) who has a pair of wolves running with her. If you have a pet try to pull a wolf, then Suzy will aggro on your pet - which involves running some distance away and then firing off a fan-shaped AoE. Which is quite likely to catch you, or your team. And if it does, then Suzy now has you on her hate-list, which she relatively rapidly turns into a 'kill kill kill' list.

Pulling from as far away as possible is the simplest solution in this particular case, but it gives you an idea of the problems bosses can cause.

The only advice I can give you, really, is to get used to what each boss does and to practice.

And to be very careful around bosses with an AoE.

Simple Luring
The absolute simplest form of luring is this:

Choose the monster you want to kill first.

Make sure you're near enough that it will come to you once your pet hits it, but not so near that all of the monsters attack right away.

Just on the edge of your minimap at the most-zoomed-in level is just about perfect, though you can safely be closer to most monsters. Much further away than that and either the pet will fail to attack, or the monster will fail to come to you.

Now, send your pet in to attack. If it has a skill active, then make sure it's one that does damage. Slow or Howl are not sufficient. (Even 'Pounce' can fail to pull, if only the stun portion lands.)

Wait for a real attack to be started by your pet. If you ignored the above instruction this takes a bit longer.

Now you have three choices:
 * 1) Bring out a new pet (which automatically puts away the first one)
 * 2) Store the pet in its bag.
 * 3) Let the pet die.

Either of these will cause the monster that your pet hit to come to you, without his friends.

Important: Do not hit the 'follow me' button and have your pet run back to you that way, this will bring every monster in the neighborhood.

'Important: Do not'' cast a spell on the monster, attack the monster, run towards the monster, or heal your pet. Don't allow anyone else in your team to do so either! This would also cause all the monsters to come running.'''

(Of course, this only applies when luring. If you want a whole stack of monsters to come to you, then go ahead.)

Now, the monster is running towards you. Once it is away from its friends, you can cast spells on it, or resummon the pet you used to lure, have a new pet kill it, or have a little tea party, or whatever it takes to make the monster die.

Timing Notes
You can unsummon your pet as soon as you see it start to do its attack animation. The attack will still complete, and you will still lure.

If a monster hits your pet as it is unsummoning, the unsummon completes immediately and the pet is undamaged by the attack.

Both of these things let you start summoning the tank pet sooner.
 * (If you are summoning a new pet without first stowing the old one, this does not function - the old pet will get hit right up until the new one arrives.)

The latter is also useful when fighting things which get off one final attack, or explode, when they die.

'Important: (Almost always) Do not'' allow the cleric to heal you after your pet is unsummoned and before the monster is caught. During this time the aggro is on you - and the cleric will draw aggro by healing you - and the monster will go for the cleric. The tank needs to be ready for that possibility, or the cleric needs to be able to survive the attack, if you do this.

This includes being inside the blue or red bubbles. Don't be standing there unless you intend to bring everything running.'''

Luring Without the Pet
OK, there are a few ways that you can lure without a pet. I'll mention them, but you shouldn't ever need them.


 * 1) Tame pet. Tame pet doesn't do damage, so it doesn't annoy all of the monsters friends. So yes, it can be used to pull. The downside is a somewhat limited range (you might annoy the monsters just by being too near) and the stupidly long recharge time. The mana cost doesn't help either. (See note below.)
 * 2) Genie skills. Most genie skills do not work for pulling any longer, they work like a normal attack. The current exception is the starter skill on a zeal genie, Earthflame. Again, range is an issue here.

These things will bring a monster to you, but will bring all of the nearby ones too. Still, this is useful when all you want is to bring monsters closer, or snag a wanderer, or move something whilst the wanderer is away:


 * 1) Throw a spell at it.
 * 2) Send your pet at it, then (with your pet on manual so that it doesn't resume the attack) hit 'follow', bringing your pet, and all the monsters interested in your pet, back to you.

Note on using Tame: Plan ahead when you level up the Tame Pet skill. If you plan on using it to pull, it's best to keep the skill at level 1. The range listed on the skill is a typo. Both level 1 and level 10 Tame have the same range. It's recommended to only level up Tame Pet if you plan on using it to tame rare pets.

Helping the Tank
A tank is a veno's best friend. (Well, a tank with a cleric is better still) Be friendly to your tanks!

After you pull the monster, it will continue to chase you for a little while, so you can get cute.

Run back so that the tank is between you and the monster. The monster will run past the tank, completely ignoring him, and the tank can smack it from behind. Tanks really like it when they don't have to chase monsters all over the place.

Now you can blow the monster up with spells, or resummon your pet, or whatever.

Tricks
There are a few things you can do to get cute and do even better. You may need some practice with these, though.

Abort!
Aborting a pull, if your pet hasn't got there yet, is easy. Unsummon the pet. Don't panic, don't do anything else. Just unsummon the pet.
 * (OK, since unsummoning takes time, you can hit 'halt' and then unsummon, which might help. Especially if it's not on auto, so won't retaliate even if the monster notices it.)

'''If your pet has hit a monster, you've pulled. It's too late. You will bring that monster. Anything you tell your pet to do at this point will only bring more.'''
 * And, of course, the pet might attack whilst it is being unsummoned.

'''Do not hit 'follow'. 'Follow' is a way to bring a huge pile of monsters back to you. You're trying to cancel the pull.'''

All you can do is try to lose that monster. If you can get out of range, then that monster will start towards you, give up, and go back.

To put this simply: Run away. Running (or better, flying, dropping into a lake - whatever it takes that the monster can't reach you) away is all that you can do.

Unsummoning your pet will slow you down. It may well be better to just let your pet die. If you get far enough away (including getting into the air/sea) then your pet will automatically unsummon anyway.

''Note: You don't have to run away in a straight line, which could lead you into another group of monsters. You can run circles, or repeatedly jump over the monster to get it to lose interest. As long as you don't fight back (and brambles counts as fighting back) it will lose interest eventually. If you're sufficiently tougher than the monster, and for some odd reason don't want to kill it (perhaps it's a pet you want to tame) then you can run through it repeatedly, and it will eventually lose interest.''

To Delay the Pull: Let your Pet Die
Seriously. Your pet is expendable. Yes, you have to buy food to get the loyalty back, but compared to a barbarian's repair bill you can swallow that expense.

If you are worried about not having enough time to do everything you need to do, because some wandering monster decided to eat your cleric whilst you were pulling - then just forget your pet and deal with the immediate problem.

This has the added advantage that the monsters will take a second or two to chew through your pet (maybe even longer, depending on what you sent) so your group won't have to deal with that problem for a while.

Full On Sacrifice
Ok, the monster is going to come to you. You can't get out of range in time, and it's sure to wipe out your group.

All you can do now is take one for the team. Run in towards the monster and die.

Now your pet is gone, you are gone - and unless your team followed you in, the monster has no aggro on anything and will go back.

You're dead. Your cleric isn't. This is much much better than the alternative.

Still, try not to let it happen in the first place, OK?

Fast Monsters
The monster is too fast for you to get back and resummon your pet? It's hitting on you (and not in a good way)?

My friend, you need 'slow'. Slow is a wonderful pet skill, causing the monsters run-speed to be drastically reduced. Great when soloing. (In a group, it's not so much of a problem, because someone else will usually pull the monster off of you.)

Even better, some pretty good luring pets have have the slow skill built in. Many wolves have it (though not your starting wolf) and they are good luring pets anyway, since they generally have a high movement speed (again, not your starting wolf).

It's not a perfect skill though. First, slow alone won't cause the monster to come running, you need to do damage. A useful trick here is to click (or use the Alt, Alt, or Alt key combinations) one of the skills which is not the default skill when you send the pet in. This will cause your pet to use that skill first, and then the default skill. Which should be enough.

Second, slow can be resisted. Monsters with a high magic resist will often ignore it, in which case another debuff might be more useful for that pull, such as Threaten (reduce p.attack). If you aren't the puller the first time you fight the mob/boss, you can throw the genie skill Tangling Mire on it. If the red "Resist!" text pops up above its head, then the slow part of the skill was resisted. You can then make the mental note that the Slow skill will be worthless on that target in future pulls.

Slow doesn't last very long, so make sure you unsummon the pet quickly after it starts to cast it. It is best for your pet to use its attack skill first, and then the slow, for this reason.

Another useful skill in this situation is pounce. Unfortunately a rare (and therefore costly) skill, it has a chance to stun the monster - which stops it attacking and freezes it in place for a short time. Since pounce does deal damage, it works well for luring. However, the stun effect often fails. The easiest way to try out pounce is to get your paws on a Shadou cub. Also note that bosses are immune to stun.

Drawing More Than One
Isn't the whole point of luring to get only a single monster? Well, no. The point is to not get more monsters than you can handle.

So if there's a pile of twenty, and your group fancies that they can take more than one (but not all of them), it's pretty simple to grab a couple.

Send your pet at one, choose a new target, let your pet hit the first, then send it at the new target. Unsummon after it's hit them both. (If you want every monster in the area, then you don't need to unsummon.)

Both will come to you, the rest will stay.

It is usually, however, better to pull one at a time - just pull them more often. You can have a new one coming to the group whilst they are still killing the first one. Just be sure you stop if people run out of mana!

Pulling from further away
Some monsters (an early example are the guards around Farren, in FB39) have a very short aggro range. They may aggro on your pet, but then fail to notice you.

The simplest solution, of course, is to stand a bit closer. But sometimes you don't want to do that.

So another thing you can do is combine a drag and a lure. When your pet has their attention, hit 'follow' to have the pet come back towards you. This will drag all the nearby monsters back to you. Once the one you're interested in is close enough, stow your pet and it will lure as normal, whilst the rest should yellow-bubble and run back to their places.

Be careful, if you wait too long before unsummoning, then they could all aggro on you.

Ranged Monsters
Ranged monsters have two problems.

The first is simple: They can hit you from further away, so you just need to run further back.

The second is that they tend to run diagonals, and run away and...

For running away, make sure that you pull them past the tank. Then when the tank hits them, they will run away from the tank, and towards everyone else. (And since there's an exception to every rule, including the exceptions: Don't do this with exploding monsters. Your 'everyone else' won't thank you.)


 * To make this explicit: Once your pet is stowed, and the monster is chasing you, you need to run far enough back that the monster will stop between the tank (who should be out front) and the rest of the party. Which, taking into account the monsters attack range, means that you probably need to run a fair distance behind everyone else.

For the ones which run diagonally? (The casters in FB39 are probably the first you will meet which do this to any great extent) All you can do its practice. After a while you'll recognize their patterns, and you can work out where you need to stand to bring them near to the tank.

Corners
Corners, especially with monsters which can shoot through walls, can be a pain.


 * Recently, the game introduced 'tab targeting' - hit TAB and you target a nearby monster (hit it again to cycle through) - which, since it ignores walls entirely, makes this much much easier. Just stay round the corner, hit tab, and send your pet over. The following section still works - but it no longer needed.

But there is a solution, as long as you remember that your pet can (usually) manage to navigate round corners.

Quickly pop your head round the corner, target a monster, and run away. (It may be safer to leave your pet behind, rather than risking it drawing aggro too early.)

Alternatively, you can use the F9 function to go into screenshot mode and maneuver the camera around. Adjust your camera, click on the mob to target it, and hit F9 again to get out of screenshot mode. The mob will still be targeted and you will not have left your safety area.

If peeking around the corner causes them all to chase you, then sorry, I don't think you can do any better than just trying to kill them all in one go.

Presuming you were quick enough (and the genie skill 'Holy Path' is wonderful for that) then they won't have had time to aggro on you. Now you can just keep them targeted whilst you get as far away as possible.

You want your final position to be a minimap radius away, but you can't let any part of the path from here to there be much further than that - your pet won't go round the whole of FB51 to get over a wall, for example.

Make sure that wherever you stop you'll have at least the monsters range in clear view - it's no good pulling it from one corner to another one.

Now send your pet in as normal, even though you can't see the monster you can still attack it as long as you still have it targeted. (Sometimes called 'blind pulling').
 * You can even cast spells on things that you can't see, even through walls. And since they can cast back and your melee guys can't get in between you, it's not a good idea.

It will take longer for your pet to reach the monsters, as it wanders round the corners, but it should get there eventually.

Now let it hit them, unsummon it, and watch the monster navigate back to you.

This will take a while, but you're trading speed for safety. You could always just rush in, instead.

Pre-Position your pet
This one is for catching really fast monsters that are roaming, when your pet is too slow. Scrunchkins in FB51 (and some in the boss room in 59, and also some places in 79) are a good example of these.

It's dangerous. Far better to use a faster pet, if you can.

Ok, warnings over. This one is actually pretty simple. All you do is have your pet follow you to somewhere you know the roaming monsters will be.

That's the dangerous part. Time it wrong, and the monsters will be there, and beat you up.

Now, hit 'halt' on your pet, and run back to somewhere safe, though not so far away that your pet will teleport back to you, or unsummon.

When the roamers turn up, have your pet hit them, unsummon your pet and continue as normal. It may be easier to have your pet start attacking (or running to attack, which happens often) while the roamer is running towards you/your pet. Don't wait for the mob to aggro on your pet or to get to where you should be hitting it to start attacking. Letting the mob help you close the gap is more effective than trying to play it safer and end up chasing a mob.

Don't forget to take your pet off of 'halt' mode when you're done!


 * One potentially safer way to position your pet is to send it to attack the running mobs. If it catches one, great! Lure as normal. If it fails to catch one, halt it and wait for them to come back, as above.

L-Shaped Pulling
If you find that your pet is having significant difficulty making its way around the corner you may consider doing an "L-shaped Pull". An L-shaped Pull is essentially a combination of the two previously mentioned luring techniques. First of all you will need to select the mob that you wish to pull. This requires you to travel to the end of the hallway/room until the desired mob is visible. Once you have your target selected, halt your pet at the end of the hallway/room (your pet should be parallel to the mob that you have selected). You may now travel a bit further away in order to place a safe distance between you and the mob that is being pulled. Note: Be careful not to move too far away from your pet though as it might bounce back to you when you initiate the pull. Your configuration should look as follows:

When you're ready press "Attack" on your pet's Pet Panel. While you won't be able to see your pet attacking the mob, the best way to know when to stow your pet is whether their special attack is on cooldown. The attack should look like the following:

Once your pet has been stowed, only the mob that your pet has attacked will begin to run towards you. In the meantime you should be summoning a pet.

Changing Target
You're at a huge risk of bringing more monsters doing this, use with care.

Send your pet towards one monster. A bunch of other monsters get drawn out of position running towards it. Before your pet attacks the first monster, switch it to attacking one of the new ones.

Use a slow pet for this, otherwise it is likely to have started its attack before you can get it switched.

This lets you attack round a corner without sticking your head out (and getting it chopped off)

If you get this wrong, however, you will pull both monsters.

The only place I've found this to be useful is FB29, where you can bring the lanterns from around the corner, by bouncing your pet off of the Towerling (which can't move, so can't be accidentally pulled).

Sadly, this trick, whilst funny, is now completely useless, since you can hit 'TAB' to target the monsters around the corner directly.

Running Away
Your pet will continue an attack from further away than it will start one. This means that you can start running away as soon as you send your pet to attack. This gives you a little extra range between you and the monster, giving you a bit more time to work with as it heads towards you.

This can be useful if the monster has a large attack range, or is fast; and you don't mind risking your pet dying.

However, be very careful. In increasing order of nastiness:
 * 1) You might get too far away, the monster would then be unable to see you and so wouldn't be pulled. Wastes your time.
 * 2) You might get far enough away to cause your pet to unsummon. Again, wasting the pull. Hard to do, usually the next one happens first:
 * 3) You might get far enough away to cause your pet to teleport back before it has gotten anywhere. Wastes your time, but is a big warning sign...
 * 4) You might get far enough away that your pet teleports back to you after it's woken up the whole crowd. And since the pet didn't vanish, just moved, they will run towards the new position. And, often, run into range to notice you before your pet unsummons. Worst of all, this might happen the other side of a wall so you don't notice until it's too late to do anything except die.

In all, I'd say this tactic has too much risk and not enough of a benefit.

Of course, if you started your pull from closer to the monsters than the maximum range, you can happily run away with out causing any problems at all. Just... be careful, alright?

Different monsters have different ranges at which they will pursue you. Low level monsters often won't chase you unless you are closer than you need to be to send the pet in (the harpies surrounding Farren in FB39 are an annoying example of this) - but many higher level monsters will.

It also seems that different pets have different ranges at which they are willing to attack. This may be related to run-speed. Get comfortable with what your pet can and can't do on monsters that can't kill you before you try it out in a real situation.

Instant Unsummon
If you unsummon your pet just as it takes damage, it returns instantly, and without taking the damage. And any skill it had started using will still activate.

It helps to have a pet whose attack animation is easy to see from behind.

Done right, this will mean that your pet gets its lure on, and comes back to you instantly and undamaged, ready to be resummoned for the next lure.

This trick is also really useful when killing exploding monsters such as the Reverex in FB39, until you are a high enough level that your pet is sure to survive the blast. Just be sure that the monster has burn/poison/bleed/teammates or something that is sure to kill it (lest you accidentally lure an exploder onto yourself) and practice to get the timing just right.

Another thing to note about unsummoning pets is that although when you resummon them the skill-bar will show their skills as being in cool-down, it is lying. Your pet can still use those skills, either automatically or because you trigger them. This means that, done carefully, you can hit a monster with a long-cooldown skill as you lure, and then hit it again when it arrives to be tanked. This is of limited use, because you'd need to lure with your tank, and you could always put the skill on the tank as well as the lurer if it's that important, but it's good to know.

Cacti, Eldergoth, and Other Ranged Pets
There are many advantages to ranged pets, when pulling it boils down to three things:
 * 1) They don't need to get as close to the monster, so they can often avoid getting close to the pack and so won't take damage.
 * 2) That gives them a greater total range, meaning that the monsters starts further away from you, giving you longer to deal with it.
 * 3) Eldergoths have a nice obvious attack animation, so you can easily time when to unsummon them.

Now, you have to be careful of a few things, you can't have a skill selected, or the pet will try to get right up close to use it first (which sort of defeats the object)

And, of course, you do still need to be near enough that the monster can see you and will come to you when your pet is unsummoned.

It should be noted that mobs with weaker ranged magic attacks will use that instead of their stronger physical attack (such as Yan the Traitor) if your pet only uses ranged attacks. So for certain mobs, this will allow your ranged pet to tank tougher mobs than your tank pet can.

The higher the tame level on the pet, the longer it's range is. That said, the farthest range isn't close to that of the veno herself. The Eden Cactopods have a range of approximately 15 meters, where as the level 4 cactopods have a range of approximately 6 meters. (Those distances were eye-balled, not measured). Pulling with a ranged pet can make things a little safer for both you and your pet.

In the Air and Underwater
When flying or swimming, things work much the same as on the ground. The only difference is that monsters are often a lot further away than they look; partly because the height difference counts, and partly because most air and water mobs are freakin huge!

One thing that helps is to get to the same height as the monster you wish to attack, and then use the minimap to judge distance.

It's a lot harder to judge distance in the air, so my advice is simple: If in doubt - pull.

Just Kill It
It is not uncommon to misjudge the distances of other monsters, or for the monster your pet goes for to run in an unexpected direction - and you discover that your pet has it solo.

In this situation, if your pet is good enough (for example, if you targeted a 'weak' monster) you can just sit back and let your pet finish it off, rather than pulling.

The one thing you must not do is run forward and heal your pet. You can guarantee the other monsters will choose just that moment to take notice, and they will all come running.

You can hit 'follow' to have your pet drag the monster back to you, however you need to make sure your pet is not set to 'Auto'. If your pet draws aggro from other monsters whilst doing this, you can always safely unsummon it and go back to the original plan of luring. If nothing else follows, you can safely begin healing and attacking.

If your pet looks like it is in trouble, the correct thing to do is just go back to your original plan. Unsummon the pet, and lure the (wounded) monster.

Teleport Luring
If you run just the right distance away from your pet, and your pet is set to 'follow' then it will teleport to you. And monsters that are trying to hit your pet will start running towards your pet.

So, run away, make sure your pet is on manual, and hit follow. If done correctly, you will now lure all of the mobs that were angry at your pet (so this isn't a lure in the proper sense). But they are all still angry with only your pet. You can unsummon and convert into a normal lure if needed.

This trick can be useful to pull a whole load of monsters in one go when you don't think your pet can survive being hit by them while running back to your squad (and you don't think you can survive being hit by them).

If you get this lure wrong, however, you can end up with either a dead pet (because it didn't teleport soon enough) or an unsummoned one (because you ran too far away, or didn't have it set to manual+follow).

As a slight variant, you can get a similar effect by getting healed by a cleric whilst your pet is out there. The difference is that all of the monsters will go for the cleric and your squad had better be ready to catch them all quickly.

Genie Luring
OK. All classes can use the genie skill 'Earthflame' to lure with. It acts much like a 'tame-pet' lure, the target (and only the target) has a very small amount of hate for you and comes running and is easily caught by anyone else (or your pet)

Its disadvantages are similar: a relatively long recharge time, using resources (genie stamina in this case), and having to get a lot closer to the monster you wish to lure than is entirely comfortable. (You can't use it to lure the boss from behind a screen of guards the way you can with a pet, for example.)

It does however open up two things:


 * 1) Lazy Luring. Luring with a genie can be faster than luring with a pet, since your pet is already out and ready to catch.
 * 2) The actually useful one:

Catching Monsters That Tend to Run Away
Certain ranged monsters enjoy running away from whatever is trying to tank them. This isn't much of a problem when a squad-mate is doing the catching, but when you have to do it, it can be very difficult to get your pet into the right place to stop them running back into the other monsters.

However, if you use a genie lure you can do this easily. The procedure is simple.

First - Move up close to the monster you want to lure, with your pet in tow. Second - Trigger 'Earthflame' and lure that monster. Third - Start running away. Backpedal as fast as you can. Don't forget the summer sprint! Fourth - You may need to hit 'halt' if your pet has a high movement speed or is not using a skill. Fifth - The monster will follow you, and end up between you and your pet. Lastly - Tell your pet to attack, it will catch the aggro, and drive the monster towards you and away from the others.

Not often useful, but a neat trick that a pet-user can do that others cannot.

Things That Don't Work
(Or at least not very well)

Do not allow the cleric to heal you until the single monster is free and clear. If the cleric heals you while mobs are still attacking your lure-pet then the cleric will get aggro on the lot of them. This is a bad thing! They'll all come running - and go straight for the cleric. The cleric should either use the heal-over-time (iron heart blessing) before your pet goes in, or wait until the lure is mostly complete. Or not heal you at all, and trust in the tank to catch properly.
 * Also, if they do heal you whilst only a single monster is coming - the monster will often go for the cleric instead of you. This is especially important with ranged mobs, it means that the cleric also needs to run back far behind the tank. The 79 Skill Wings of Protection doesn't generate any aggro, so it's safe for the cleric to throw that featherball on you while you're luring, but that is the one exception.

Don't try to pull with the Herc. Not just because it's a pain to put the buffs back on, but because it has reflect. This will cause it to 'attack' every monster which does a physical attack on it. You'll pull the whole lot.
 * Note: In case the Mob or the Boss is higher level and surrounded with more mobs, Use Herc but don't put reflect on it and this helps it behave as a normal pet with good health and defense to lure bosses.
 * You can remove the reflect from the Herc (and indeed remove all buffs from any pet) by unsummoning and resummoning it.

Don't pull with a pet that doesn't have many hitpoints. If it dies before it hits the monster, you won't pull.

For the same reason, default skills which take ages to activate are a bad thing.

Don't use a slow pet to pull if you can help it. Not only does it take longer, but it may well get hit by other monsters on the way to the one you want.

Don't be flying (or standing ankle deep in water) when you pull land monsters - they will often refuse to come to you at all.

Don't run too far away from the monster. It may fail to aggro on you, or you may even cause your pet to teleport back to you, drawing out every monster in the area.

Don't wait too long after pulling before hitting the monster, it will give up eventually. If you want a monster to follow you a long way for some reason then you will need to hit it periodically.

Don't use an archer, or a wizard, or a genie to pull. They just aren't as good. Tame yourself a proper pet!

Don't use 'tame pet' to lure. This does actually work, in that it pulls a single monster. Its limitation is that it costs a lot of mana, doesn't have a huge range, takes even longer than a pet lure, and has a gigantic cooldown. Oh, and the tame might succeed, though that does at least get the monster out of the way. (This is debatable. Tame Pet has a range of 25 meters, which is the same as Earthflame and where you need to be for most pet pulls. It takes longer and a good portion of mp, but you can have your pet out to catch while you're pulling and full energy on your genie. The cooldown is a pain, but if you rotate pulling methods, it doesn't become much of an issue. Also, using tame on a mob with 100% hp will always fail, even if you have level 10 tame.)

Don't Lure unless the rest of your group 'gets it'. Failing at this is possibly the most annoying thing in the world. If the rest of your group doesn't know what you are doing (and you did tell them, right?) then they are likely to get too close to the group of monsters and draw them all in.


 * Make sure they know how far they need to stay back (which varies depending on the situation) and that they want to pull. Make sure they know about monsters that shoot through corners, too. Just because they can't see it, doesn't mean it can't kill them.


 * There's often no need to pull, in which case, why bother?

Don't bother luring the last monster in a pile. Unless you know the others will respawn soon, you might as well just jump in and pile on the last guy rather than luring him to you. Again, make sure the group know this is what you want to do, if they don't realize quickly enough, you may end up with a dead pet.

Don't summon a new pet whilst the old one is still out, when in combat. This works like an unsummon-then-summon new pet, but is very rarely what you want. The old pet will still get hit while the new one comes out, and the instant the new pet comes out, the monster will go for you (just the same as if it killed the old pet, which it may well do, since you can't heal it while summoning). And for the icing on the cake - it will mess up your pets skillbar. (The first skill will be active, but the highlighting will be gone). This can be used if timed very carefully when luring - you want the channel to end just as your pet hits the thing you are trying to lure. But that is very hard to time, and you are almost certainly better off using the instant-unsummon trick.

Quick Tips for Luring

 * 1) Place your pet's icon on your hotkey bar for easier pulling. You will no longer need to have the Pet Bag open, which takes a lot of space on your screen. It will be faster and easier to summon and/or stow your pet and thus you can time your luring better.
 * 2) Learn your pet's animation. That will help you a lot with your timing and thus the pet will avoid being hit.
 * 3) If your pet is using a skill, and your pet is out of sight, you can watch the pet's skill bar to see when the skill goes into cool-down, meaning they have used it, and can now be unsummoned. If not, you can watch the monsters hitpoint bar (or see a debuff icon appear). In which case your pet will probably take a hit before you can unsummon it, however.
 * 4) One hit that does damage on the monster is enough. There is no reason to wait for your pet to deal more damage.
 * 5) If you have time to use debuffs during a pull, some recommended ones are: Slow, Threaten, Pounce. Keep in mind that debuffs do not count as hits.
 * 6) Make sure your pet is set on Manual to avoid random aggro if the monsters have AoE.
 * 7) Every pet can lure but fast or ranged pets will be more effective. Besides, a squad will get bored if they have to wait after your slowpoke Glacial Walker. To make your luring even faster, you can disable your pet's skill and use Alt+1 to make it attack. Keep in mind that this may make it harder for you to time your stowing, so experiment with it before using it regularly.
 * 8) Always pull the melee monster(s) first. Ranged ones will try to run away and might cause the pet to aggro unwanted monsters.
 * 9) If you can't see your pet as it's pulling and you suspect that it might be getting hit with immobilize or stun before it reaches it's target, you can change your target from the boss or mob that you are trying to pull to your pet (click on it's picture next the hp bar). Your pet will still go after what you initially told it to hit, but you may be able to get a little more insight as to what's going on in the pull. Watch your pet's skill bar to see when skills trigger and/or the minimap to see where your pet stops moving and starts attacking to know when to unsummon. When the pet is unsummoned, it will disappear from the map and can't be targeted. The boss should aggro on you, automatically switching your target to the boss, indicating that your pull was successful so far.

Why Won't My Pet Attack?
The most common reason for this is that your pet is out of range of the monster. Remember both that you can see monsters from beyond your pets attack range, and that your pet is probably a little bit behind you and so doesn't have quite the range you might think. In short - get a bit closer and try again.

Also, of course, check that you didn't tell your pet to 'halt' five minutes ago, and left it in another room. That's embarrassing. Unsummon it and summon a different pet and pretend that you just wanted to change pets and did it on purpose.

The only other reason for not attacking is because your pet can't find a route. The simplest example is when you tell a ground pet to attack an air monster that is too far up, or a water one too far from the shore. It can also happen if there's too many walls in the way, or on a cliff edge. (Especially prevalent in FB59 where the monsters will happily run about a thousand miles up the walls, leaving your pet scratching its head and the monster pinned. To fix it, you just need to unsummon your pet, or hit 'follow' to try and drag the monster back down, but be aware that the aggro is likely to go haywire when you do.)

Good Luring Pets
There are basically three things in a good lure pet. Range, Speed, and Survival.

They do not need a high attack (although it doesn't hurt to have one), so you can often just tame a monster of your level and get a decent lurer.

You want a pet which will go to a far away target, which will do it decently fast, and which will live to make that hit. Ideally it'll live long enough to be unsummoned (because resurrection is slow, and uses a lot of mana).

There's always a lot of discussion about what pets are good, and it deserves its own guide, but here's a short version:


 * Higher level wolves come with 'slow' and have a high movement speed. They don't have much defense, though.
 * The cats (Greymalkin) have a high movement speed and look pretty.
 * Antelopes are reasonably fast, and have a good magic defense. Useful only in some situations, but good-enough much of the time.
 * Eldergoth Sharpshooters / Marksmen and Cacti have a ranged attack, which gives them a special use in luring. I personally think this is overrated, however. They just can't survive if anything goes slightly wrong. Worth having up your sleeve though.
 * The Shadou Cub (rare pet) has a fairly high movement speed and a good defense. Be careful using the 'pounce' skill though, since that takes a long time to channel.
 * The Kowlin (rare pet) is the 'designed to be the best luring pet' pet. It is stupidly fast and has a level 4 Flesh Ream. There's some arguments about whether the Kowlin is 'worth' it, but none deny that is good. Best? That depends upon personal taste. Some prefer the ranged pets, and the Kowlin is pretty fragile. It's also not available until level 60.
 * You can even use a Glacial Walker or Magmite. They're slow, but nothing is likely to kill them on the way to their target. Not ideal lurers, but if you've run out of pet bag slots it can work.

(Seriously, venomancer luring is a lot more flexible than most people realize.)

Mystic Luring
Mystic luring is pretty similar, except that you do not have a way to directly unsummon a pet. Instead, you must summon a new pet, which will cause the old one to vanish, or allow the pet to die.