With current state of Diablo 4, there is no need to pulling/dividing a group of mobs; your build can either handle the whole group, or you cannot and die.
The problem with that is:
- If you build cannot handle it, that’s it, you’ve hit a brick wall, and expect to die repeatedly just hoping to be able to kill a couple each death.
- If your build can handle it, you may feel great about just pounding and pounding on the mob groups, but ultimately it’s boring because you’re just spamming the same skills at the same spot until the whole group disappears - it’s a foregone outcome. This requires no kiting and therefore under-utilization(none at all) of the map space, be it different terrain, or the “safe space” you have cleared out earlier.
So, the ARPG genre should rein-in the AOEs, and slow down with the kill speed (yeah, I’m gonna get lots of flak here for suggesting this).
The game designers should have a number in mind as a benchmark: say, 5 concurrent enemies at a time, and it should take about 5 seconds of a well-specc’ed character to clear them. This number of concurrent enemies should be well under 10, because the screen real estate cannot hold more than around 30 enemies at once.
If a player decides to take on more than this number, the player should not be able to CC them all, and time to clear the group should increase exponentially: some enemies may find the time to cast powerful healing that heals the mob group, some enemies debuffs the character rendering attacks ineffective, etc.
Benefits:
- Promotes group play. Obviously if 1 character can handle the whole screen at a time, why play with others?
- Game designers can use this as one of the tools to balance the classes. “several builds from each class should be able to handle this benchmark number of concurrent enemies” (not saying this is the ONLY benchmark for game balance)
- Gameplay is more varied. You have to create “safe spaces” to handle mobs that you’ve pulled, and a new class of skills can be invented that enables you to divide a large group into smaller groups.
- Players are constantly on the edge of “able to handle it” and “pulling off too many”.
- More spectacular actions in an ARPG because of less AOE: “The Barbarian kicked the 1st mob back 10 feet, which also knocked down another 2 pursuers, turn and delivered a deathblow with a 2-handed sword, bisecting the 2nd mob. A swift blade draw slashed a 3rd mob on the right, a hulking one, into uncontrollable bleeding, then leaped with his 2-handed sword into the 3 mobs that got knocked down, skewering and killing the 4th mob, which is a healer, while shouting a taunt at the remaining enemies. The 1st and 5th mob got to their feet, 5th mob tries to cast a spell, only to be clobbered and stunned. The 1st mob landed a stab on the Barbarian, but the Barbarian has more pressing concerns. Despite the bleeding, the hulking mob(#3) is now over with his giant maul up in the air, but that also gives ample room for the barbarian to thrust a sword into his stomach and yanking his guts out. The wide-sweeping yank cleaved into the stunned spell-caster, lobbing off his head. Seeing how others fell, mob #1 decided it’s time to make a run for it. With the clinks of metal chains, mob#1 found himself pulled back, right into the blade of the Barbarian.”
Also yeah… Stop spawning monsters out of nowhere right on top of players. Occasionally spawn in supposedly “safe space” behind players as an ambush? Maaay-be. Right on top? No.