AFAIK you're just mis-remembering. As long as I've been doing charged RP runs (a couple years, maybe a 3-4), it's always worked the same way it does now.
Gravity has never been able to stop a mob from moving entirely, though with all the currently available potency gear, it can still be very slow. Maybe you also had an indi-gravity on it? They still move, just very slowly.
Plenty of mobs are possible to bind with the spell Bind, (virtually?) everything can be shadowbound, most/all can be slept.
If you're just looking to RP and you know you can reliably get the 5%, you can also just wait 10~13 minutes to pull and do your % at the end so you don't have to spend a lot of time holding it once the damage is done.
Finally: You need punctuation and paragraphs to make that ***more readable, holy smokes.