Pet Stances & agro -- Rumor or truth?

[Brawl_Kithicor]

<p>Hello I play a young necromancer (level 23) -- Being as I have been chastised twice tonight on my choice of pet stance Im hoping a veteran, necro or mage, or heck any pet class can clear up this confusion please.</p><p>Defensive stance (what i have been using) Claims to generate more hate in the description, (lowers pets dps and attack speed) -- I figure my dots make up the difference aslong as my pet holds the agro</p><p>However a few necros in passing who targeted my pet (i can only assume) saw the defensive buff on it and told me to switch to offensive.... "ALWAYS use offensive, the more dps = a higher agro generation than the defensive stance"</p><p>So ...is this true? Do pets keep agro better with offensive stance?(I know when to cast your dots and not to over do it plays a big part) but as I begin to grow and my pet holding the agro gets ever more important... which stance will allow me to use the most dots etc?</p><p>And in an unrelated subject... what the heck good is posses minion lol? Ive tried using it running in and clicking the ae root button, but it never fails... no matter how far away my real self is... atleast 1 mob charges me and doesnt stay on the pet... also frequently after it wears off my pet stays under the world (am I using this wrong? Is there a better way to get agro on an encounter so I can use my encounter dot without the 1-2 mobs my pet isnt targeted on rushing straight at me?</p><p>Please school me... Id rather admit being unknowledgeable and learn to play my class right, than pretend to know it all and suck.</p><p>Thanks for any replies</p><p>Jay</p>

[Gipper]

<p>Hi, speaking from a conjuror's standpoint, my necro is gathering dust at lvl 44,hehe.  I use my defensive stance when I am using my tank pet to solo or tank for a group. It keeps aggro on the pet and off me and or group. I have the tank pet AA line on first page as it gets a taunt for the pet.  When in groups or raids, I use either my scout or mage pet with the offensive buff. You don't want THAT pet getting aggro off the tank. I have a seperate spec for non soloing situations without that taunt line.</p><p>On that aa line for tank pet on summoner page, there is a skill that does an aoe knockdown from pet. Be careful though that other encounters aren't close. It gets the whole encounter mad at your pet and you stand back and cast.</p><p> And I have never found a good reason for possess minion. Fun to play with, possess pet and sniff someone standing around socializing. I do know a necro that uses it sometimes to send pet out to scout a room invis. But he is braver than me.</p>

[GrunEQ]

<p><span style="font-size: small;font-family: comic sans ms,sand;">The only use I found for posses minion was to see what spells the pet had, as each have a differnt set, or so it appears.  I don't know if this is correct or there are other uses.  Just what I found by trial and error.</span></p>

[Daedalus Raistlin]

Unless the pet is doing a lot of DPS, I don't think the offensive buff will keep aggro on it. Add to that the fact that your pet's life expentancy is greatly reduced by not using the defensive buff.When I solo, I always have my pet in defensive stance (usually the tank pet, unless im in a low level zone or facing greens.)One thing that will help, is having the highest level pet and stance spells you can get.My 35 Necro has the Master 2 defensive stance, and Adept 3 pets, and he can solo nicely. Remember to get the Tainted Heals AA as soon as possible - it heals quite a large amount of health on your pet (18% I think) every time you cast a certain spell (Root, Grasp, the Wis debuff, or Fear), which means you can keep your pet up for a long time.So basically, unless you're facing very low level mobs, stick with the defensive stance. You should also upgrade your primary spells to at least Apprentice 4 (App1 if you can afford it; the higher the better.) If you don't have much money, I'd hold off getting Adept 3's until you get to a higher level, though it will mean you'll have weaker pets.(One way to make money is to harvest - build up your harvesting skills, and when you're soloing, harvest any nodes you come across and put them on the broker.)I consider primary spells to upgrade:Pets (primarily the tank (skeleton) pet, for soloing)Roots (for rooting a mob so it focuses on your pet not you; also for tainted heals as this spell has a quick reuse timer)Damage spells (the damage over time single target stuff)- Others:Pet heal (Once you get Tainted Heals, you wont use this very much)Life tap (very useful to leech health, as your healing spell uses your own health)AoE damage spell (I only use it occasionally to be honest)Hope this stuff helps <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Odys]

The defensive stance if much safer, if you look at the effect description you will see that in that stance pet will "shout"very often.If you attack a pack of mob with pet in offensive chances are that all the mob but the one that the pet beats will jump at you on the first heal or aoe. In defensive pet will call back the adds to him , its impressive.If you want very fast fight just nuke/root with the necro pet.

[Windowlicker]

I don't see why you would be so concerned about hate, your hate is split between you and the pet.  I rarely see even extremely skilled Necro's experience hate problems.

[Killerbee3000]

<p>I have a 80 conjurer alt, the pet that gets closest to being able to keep aggro is the mage pet (and even that struggles), which is the one you really dont want to have aggro, problem is that at high levels you get all the fancy +spell dmg and +spell crit and fast cast.. and the pet nothing, any pet can keep aggro though at low levels.</p>

[Brawl_Kithicor]

<cite>Zahne@Mistmoore wrote:</cite><blockquote>I don't see why you would be so concerned about hate, your hate is split between you and the pet.  I rarely see even extremely skilled Necro's experience hate problems.</blockquote>because I wear toilet paper for armor.... so my pet keeping agro is paramount to my survival... understand now?

[Brawl_Kithicor]

<cite>Daedalus Raistlin wrote:</cite><blockquote>Unless the pet is doing a lot of DPS, I don't think the offensive buff will keep aggro on it. Add to that the fact that your pet's life expentancy is greatly reduced by not using the defensive buff.When I solo, I always have my pet in defensive stance (usually the tank pet, unless im in a low level zone or facing greens.)One thing that will help, is having the highest level pet and stance spells you can get.My 35 Necro has the Master 2 defensive stance, and Adept 3 pets, and he can solo nicely. Remember to get the Tainted Heals AA as soon as possible - it heals quite a large amount of health on your pet (18% I think) every time you cast a certain spell (Root, Grasp, the Wis debuff, or Fear), which means you can keep your pet up for a long time.So basically, unless you're facing very low level mobs, stick with the defensive stance. You should also upgrade your primary spells to at least Apprentice 4 (App1 if you can afford it; the higher the better.) If you don't have much money, I'd hold off getting Adept 3's until you get to a higher level, though it will mean you'll have weaker pets.(One way to make money is to harvest - build up your harvesting skills, and when you're soloing, harvest any nodes you come across and put them on the broker.)I consider primary spells to upgrade:Pets (primarily the tank (skeleton) pet, for soloing)Roots (for rooting a mob so it focuses on your pet not you; also for tainted heals as this spell has a quick reuse timer)Damage spells (the damage over time single target stuff)- Others:Pet heal (Once you get Tainted Heals, you wont use this very much)Life tap (very useful to leech health, as your healing spell uses your own health)AoE damage spell (I only use it occasionally to be honest)Hope this stuff helps <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></blockquote>Your Rock sir.... very helpful post and Raistlin was my favorite character in the dragonlance novels!

[Anesh]

When you're in a group/raid do not use the aggro stance. If you're soloing/duoing it is a good idea to use it if your pet is tanking. Maybe not now but once you hit the ROK mobs you'll need to use all the hate management you can get. Might as well get used to knowing which stances to use now.Posess minion is mostly a fluffy spell. There are a couple things you can do with it, though. First, when you're in that mode you can open the persona window to check your pet stats. Secondly in a non aggro area you can take your pet out for a walk for a bit of reconnaissance.

[Brawl_Kithicor]

<cite>Aena@Storms wrote:</cite><blockquote>The defensive stance if much safer, if you look at the effect description you will see that in that stance pet will "shout"very often.If you attack a pack of mob with pet in offensive chances are that all the mob but the one that the pet beats will jump at you on the first heal or aoe. In defensive pet will call back the adds to him , its impressive.If you want very fast fight just nuke/root with the necro pet.</blockquote><p>Sorry I dont know how to quote multiple posts in one reply so</p><p>Thanks Aena... this is very helpful too, I didnt know that the shout was an ae taunt. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Brawl_Kithicor]

<cite>Aneshia@Oasis wrote:</cite><blockquote>When you're in a group/raid do not use the aggro stance. If you're soloing/duoing it is a good idea to use it if your pet is tanking. Maybe not now but once you hit the ROK mobs you'll need to use all the hate management you can get. Might as well get used to knowing which stances to use now.Posess minion is mostly a fluffy spell. There are a couple things you can do with it, though. <b>First, when you're in that mode you can open the persona window to check your pet stats. Secondly in a non aggro area you can take your pet out for a walk for a bit of reconnaissance.</b></blockquote>Cool I had no idea I could see the pets stats will check that out... as far as reconnaissance goes... am I to assume I can use him to hit markers in the zone (like the bootstrider field guide line of quests)... if im in minion form can the minion im possesing run over the waypoint to get the updates?

[Anesh]

You're welcome. When you're doing some recon with your pet, it can't get any updates for you. Not sure on the marker thing, maybe someone else knows <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />