Tank Pet and Agro

[Korb]

<DIV>My Necro is only 44, and I've been reading about problems people have with the tank pet keeping agro. At 44, I experience the problem from time to time, but my def spell's are usually the ones I upgrade to M2. Well, I created a beta necro, level 70, has all adept3 spells. I go into one of the zones with all green mobs... Throw tank in, same thing as always, cast a spell, and bam! every time I get agro on me. From little spells too. I now see how bad it is in the upper levels. Is this something I should expect later? Or is the M2 vs A3 that much better?</DIV>

[RandomCarnage]

I am a 70 Necro with capped Int.  I run a master 1 tank, 2 master buffs and an ad3 buff. I also have maxed the 10% AA hate transfer. The agro from tank is erratic.  If the taunts land first thing in a fight, you have a reasonably good chance to keep agro on the pet, as long as you don't go silly with dps.  The trick here is actually getting your pet to survive long enough for you to burn the mob down because the tank pets dps isn't it's strong point, and it's mitagation is pathetic. If for whatever reason you get agro upfront in a fight, through spell pulling or prox agro, your pet will regain agro off you reasonably well IF its taunts land first time.  If they don't, it takes far to long for them to come round again and you are usually scrambling for FD or other non-pet related contingencies. If you need pet to activly take agro off a player (perhaps a wizzy got nuke happy, or you got agro while soloing) then the tank pet doesn't do very well here.  Once it has agro, it can hold it to a "reasonable" degree.  Getting agro in the first place however is a weakness that could be addressed.  I would like to see the tank pet default cast its taunts first thing as it engauges, and then spam them as soon as the refresh allows.  Maybe the devs will give us this one to compensate for the abysmal mitagation they seem to believe is "appropriate". Final word to sum up.  Soloing:  Pet in first, give it a cpl seconds to get agro and you should be fine. Pet tanking in a small group, it will struggle to hold agro, but if you have the 10% AA hate transfer, and ur friends moderate their dps somewhat, you may bluff your way through it. Pet coming in late (even by only a few seconds) and trying to regain agro off a player, start looking for your FD key, you'll need it. <div></div>

[ik]

<P>Use Offensive Stance!</P> <P>The other night I was grouped with a Ranga buddy about 2 levels lower. </P> <P>Whenever I used Defensive stance on my fighter pet, the ranger sucked in agro</P> <P>like it was going away next week. </P> <P>Then, whenever I changed to Offensive stance (Master II choice), the ranger NEVER</P> <P>was able to pull agro. </P> <P>Never</P> <P>It is strange I know, we think it's just the pet's dps.  </P> <P>What's cool about using the fighter pet is he's got more than 5k hp's (scout has under 3k), </P> <P>and with the higher dps, the mob dies much quicker. </P> <P>There may be some problems with the mitigation hit from using offensive stance, </P> <P>so if you are fighting something that hits particularly hard (named orcs for one), then</P> <P>be ready to switch to defensive. </P> <P> </P> <P>Cheez</P> <P>lvl 53 </P> <P> </P> <P> </P>

[Tharangus]

My own advice is to watch what it does.  It used to be that I could just send the pet in and not worry about it at all.  It would fire off its taunts like a champ.  Now, it's VERY SLOW at what it is supposed to do.