Corralling Vacuum

Two of the most effective means to mitigate or negate the effectiveness of Area of Effect attacks are to keep a group spread out and to get out of the danger area before the attack hits. The Corralling Vacuum counteracts these measures in two ways: it brings enemies together, and it confines them to some degree, making evasion of follow-up attacks difficult or impossible.

These attacks will often have wider-than-average AoEs, have faster travel speeds, have less warning than other attacks, and/or have other means of making them easier to catch multiple enemies in than other AoE attacks. Naturally, their effectiveness would be more limited if they were no easier to land than the attacks you would follow them up with.

These abilities will often (but not always) be relatively weak in their own right - however, because of how well they enable follow-up, they tend to be powerful abilities. Often, in addition to being drawn in, victims may be partially or completely disabled for the duration, making these abilities potent crowd control.

Simply pulling in an enemy isn't enough to qualify - there are two key traits.

• The ability can bring (potentially) multiple enemies together.
• The ability makes it difficult for those affected by it to immediately leave the area they were just pulled into - whether that be by slowing them down, disabling them, continuously pulling in things in its AoE, or similar.

With the Corralling Vacuum often being themed around gravity, you can expect to see in the repertoire of a Gravity Master. They are frequently caused by the summoning of an Unrealistic Black Hole, due to the inextricable link between black holes and sucking things in.

Compare You Will Not Evade Me. Contrast Knockback.

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Examples

Action-Adventure

• One Runic Attack from God of War Ragnarök causes Kratos to pull in all enemies within ten or so feet before hitting them with a close-range area attack that knocks them off their feet and fills up their stun meter. Have fun decimating your foes as they try to struggle to get up or shake off their stun.
• Guardians of the Galaxy (2021): Rocket Raccoon's "Gravistick Grenade" causes all enemies within a huge radius to be drawn into a single point and stunned for a short time. This makes them easy pickings for Peter, especially since stunned enemies take double damage.
• The Gravity Well gadget from Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a bomb that implodes, sucking every enemy nearby it into the same spot. This causes them to collide into each other and fall over on the ground, leaving them scrambling on the floor long enough for Miles to easily follow up with a Venom Smash or a barrage of web gadgets.

First-Person Shooter

• Destiny 2:
  • Stasis subclasses can use the Duskfield Grenade, which creates a small sphere that sucks in enemies that are one step away from its area of effect and builds up continuous stacks of Slow until they're finally frozen, making them easy pickings for the user. Only bosses are immune to its effects. Bungie removed the suction effect as of the 30th anniversary update.
  • Season 15's exclusive Exotic Linear Fusion Rifle, Lorentz Driver, creates a small electromagnetic field from the corpse of any enemy killed by a precision hit with the weapon, forcefully drawing in all nearby enemies and damaging them with an additional Void detonation that's potent enough to oneshot smaller mobs and seriously hurt larger ones. Its catalyst also removes the need to proc a precision kill when the Lagrangian Sight buff is active, making it easier to provoke explosions.
  • The revamped Void subclasses in The Witch Queen now all have access to Vortex Grenade, which has been upgraded to suck in all nearby enemies short of bosses. The singularity created from the Voidwalker's "Nova Bomb: Vortex" also draws in nearby opponents.
• Zarya in Overwatch has Graviton Surge as her ultimate ability, which continuously sucks in enemies in a wide area. Enemies can shoot back, but, barring certain abilities, are unable to escape - often allowing another ally to wipe out everyone caught in the vortex with their own ultimate ability.
• Paladins: Seris' ultimate, Convergence, allows her to throw the soul core from her lantern, pulling in and stunning most enemies that are in range.
• In Red Faction: Guerilla, the Singularity bomb pulls in enemies and destroys structures in a moderate radius before exploding.
• In Titanfall 2, the Gravity Star is a grenade that pulls enemies in a short radius together and holds them there for a few seconds before a moderately powerful explosion.

Hack-and-Slash

• In Path of Exile, the Void Sphere skill summons miniature black hole that slows and pulls in nearby enemies and sucks in corpses into the void. Vaal Cyclone has you spin in place and pull in enemies to blend them up.

MOBA

• DOTA 2:
  • Enigma's ultimate, Black Hole, damages and disables enemies for several seconds while pulling them towards its center.
  • Dark Seer's Vacuum sucks enemies into one spot while damaging them.
  • Magnus' Reverse Polarity not only brings nearby enemies together in one spot, it also stuns them for several seconds afterwards.
  • Storm Spirit's Electric Vortex normally stuns one enemy and pulls them towards him; however, Aghanim's Scepter upgrades it to affect multiple enemies in a small radius.
• Heroes of Newerth
  • Riftwalker's Cascade Event damages and pulls all enemies to one spot after a short delay.
  • Torturer's Chain Reaction deals damage to an enemy and pulls additional enemies around it a short distance.
  • Kraken's ultimate, Release the Kraken!, summons a whirlpool that pulls in enemies towards the center. If they touch the center, they take additional damage and get stunned.
  • Flux's ultimate, Discharge, pulls every enemy hero on the map towards himself, or push them.
  • Prisoner 945's ultimate, Prison Break, chains up all nearby enemies then pulls them all towards him to damage and stun them if they don't get far enough away from him on time. When upgraded, he can target an enemy hero to chain up enemies around them instead.
• Diana in League of Legends has the ultimate ability Moonfall, which pulls in enemies in a radius around her and slows them afterwards.

Real-Time Strategy

• The Soviets in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 have Magnetic Singularity as one of their Top Secret Protocols. It pulls all ground vehicles within its AoE into the epicenter for the duration, while instantly killing infantry and disabling anything vulnerable to being disabled (which includes most of the vehicles which would be pulled in.)
• The Mothership in StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty has the Vortex ability, which absorbs all units in its area of effect for the duration, essentially keeping them in stasis. This was patched to make affected units invulnerable for a short time after leaving the vortex, due to how effortlessly armies could be wiped out by the AoE attacks of Archons after coming out of the vortex, and was removed completely in following expansions.

Role-Playing Game

• The spell "Pull of the Abyss" in Dragon Age II and Dragon Age: Inquisition creates a vortex of energy that pulls all enemies within a certain distance towards its center, while also slowing them down. This provides crowd control, while also making them vulnerable to devastating AoE follow-ups which would otherwise be impractical.
• One of the unlockable specials from Final Fantasy XV lets Prompto shoot a black hole from his gun that pulls every sufficiently weak enemy into it. It combines great with spells, which are big enough to hit every enemy sucked into the area of the black hole.
• Genshin Impact:
  • Venti's Elemental Burst, Wind's Grand Ode, creates a Stormeye which continuously pulls in small to medium-sized enemies in its area of effect for its duration, continuously applying damage over time while leaving enemies helplessly flailing about in the air.
  • Sucrose's elemental burst, Forbidden Creation, creates a large wind spirit that pulls in nearby enemies, occasionally knocking enemies within it into the air.
  • Kazuha's Elemental Skill, Chihayaburu, draws enemies in before launching him into the air, and can be followed up by the Plunging Attack Midare Ranzan, which creates a wind tunnel upon hitting the ground that continuously sucks enemies in for a time.
• The Magnet line of spells and related abilities in the Kingdom Hearts series have the main purpose of drawing enemies in:
  • The regular Magnet spells are introduced in Kingdom Hearts II and create glowing orb in midair that pulls enemies into it while dealing continuous damage. Sora's drive forms add effects like changing the spells' duration, periodically drawing more enemies in, or launching them toward Sora when the spell ends. The Updated Re-release adds Magnet Burst, a combo finisher with the same effect centered on Sora.
  • Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories introduces the Magnet Spiral sleight, which pulls enemies in before striking them with a Spin Attack.
• In Mass Effect, the Singularity biotic power involves creating a black hole in order to corral enemies helplessly in midair.

Shoot 'Em Up

• Brood Star: The Gravity Drone flies to the far end of the screen and pulls enemies toward itself, preventing them from moving away until it gets knocked offline from collision damage.

Survival Horror

• Like many other variants of this trope, there's a grenade in The Persistence that summons a small black hole that suck enemies into it. The sucking isn't the important part of the weapon, though, as it also does massive damage.

Tabletop Games

• The Maelstrom spell found in a couple Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition sourcebooks creates a twenty-foot pool of water on the ground that pulls in anyone stepping within it. In addition to pulling everyone inside, walking through the water is difficult terrain, cutting enemy movement in half, so most enemies can't run out of the pool from the center before getting sucked in again.
• Starfinder: The solarion class's "Black Hole" power functions like this in theory. But the fact it is easily negated with a fortitude save and worse, centered on the caster, relegates it to near-uselessness.