Been away. What's the current state of pet tanking?

Pets can now taunt aggro reliably since the Feb, 2016 patch where they fixed pet taunting. My wizzie mercs regularly get aggro but the pets can now taunt it back. The more pets you can throw with taunt capability the more likely your wizzie mercs will survive. I'm pet tanking named mobs in all the TBM zones without an issue. In order to keep things stable early in the fight I start each fight with the wizzies on Balanced and only switch them to Burn once the mob is debuffed and slowed.

The "fat pet" is our family name for the Remorseless Servant limited duration high damage (at high mana cost) pet. I think my wife coined the term way back when the early graphic for it was quite large.

Doing progression and hunter through TBM I've been boxing mage, chanter, cleric with all 3 having wizzie mercs for most content and switching 1 wizzie to a healer for namers and groups of non-mezzable mobs. A fully equipped chanter animation pet with hate swords grabs aggro quite well with the mage pet grabbing it back usually a tic later. The chanter and cleric are raid equipped but the mage is only group geared although the pet is up to Minion 19 from a Rain of Fear raid drop.

2 of the 3 wizzie mercs have all their subtlety max'd and it makes a big difference!

Interesting. Thanks Metanis. So, from what reading I've done, DB basically broke pet agro and then later "fixed" it by making Taunt actually work for pets?

So, since PCs in melee range no longer automatically steal agro from pets, how are the rogue mercs these days?

Worthless

Little more detailed info regarding pet tanking.
http://www.eqmagetower.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4162

You can do it, but it's much harder than running with a player tank. Use earth. The end.

I know the above link is not your post .. so dont take this personally this is jmho about pet tanks and from what i read in the post you linked that toon didnt know how to play his class or box ..

mages pets pre-nerf were gods (i play a mage, bst, necro not all at once) so yes pre-nerf you could sit there and have your air pet tank a mob and you could go afk and come back pet would have mob lying at his feet (if they had feet ).. now after nerf everyone is soo up in arms that they just cant sit there and do nothin and let pet kill mob.. people pls learn to play your class.. mages have no problem with air pets tanking 1 or 2 mobs with your help even 3 mobs is double with CC .. especially if you have a cleric merc helping ..

in the post from above link.. the mage seems like he just expected his pet to do all the work for him .. and he was boxing 3 accounts ..

Thanks for all the info and advice guys.

I love seeing all these old mage names

Yea and I remember you Tornt, from the Mage forums. Another blast from the past!

Actually that parse is mine. The point of it was to show how well a basic pet holds up against a mob, not how lazy I can be.

Your bit about an air pet tanking up to three mobs with just a clericmerc plus you assisting.....,that i want to see. The parse and following post about my earth pet getting eaten was with a J5 cleric merc on reactive, no boxes.

The earth pet isn't as good of an option moloing as it used to be. It doesn't hold agro as well as the airpet.

Our pet can tank 3 mobs with us and our merc doing our job, earth pet is fine; and we don't need to be nerfed again cause real tanks can tank dozens and laugh at them.

Edit: per to pet. Also, even when our pets were great before '14 nerfs, tanks were already better. Only time, recently, pets were fundamentally broken was abusing DA, and we can't do that anymore, especially with silent casting changes.

The earth pet is fine if your boxing or kill a mob every ten minutes. Otherwise it's to easy to pull agro off of. Please post a log of your earth pet tanking three mobs 105 ish with just you and your merc and don't use any AAs that will not be up after the fight.

Enkel. What zone and mobs is your air pet tanking three at a time? I must be doing something wrong and would like to be better. Also are you willing to post something saying what spells and discs you're using to help the merc keep your pet alive?
Thanks.

Just shoot me a tell in game. I don't like posting things on the forums anymore.

Edit: And I thought I said Earth pet, not air pet.

i believe the post that was linked was about DH HA's gribble tasks .. and i'll list a few of the aa's i use which shouldnt be anything new..
1 mend companion
2 companions blessing
3 companions aegis
4 fortify companion
5 frenzied burnout
6 virulent talon
7 companion of necessity
8 host in a shell
those are the AA's that help with assisting your pet .. there are more .. also having your pets max defensive abilities help alot and current group EM focus .. my mage is in only CoTF Group gear and few pieces of TDS gear has chitin stud which is EM 16.. I know our fat pets dont do alot for agro these days but they can still be used to off tank 1 to 2 mobs .. as long as you dont hit those said mobs with any dd spell fat pet should hold agro on while you finish 1st mob with your twincast (spell) I assume ssense you pulled 3 mobs whether by accident or an add came bye your using all of your offensive abilities to burn down the mobs as fast as you can .. IT also wouldnt be a bad idea.. also dont forget about forcefull rejuv AA.. to get another Twincast round in.. your T5 healer merc and you should have no problems keeping your Air pet or earch pet alive with 3 mobs if done right .. now im not saying that you cant have a bad hp spike where the mob gets a good few hits in or maybe you lag meter hits a high and your pet dies.. also do you have a pet backup in your pocket ? if pet dies bam pull out next pet.. if im boxing and i want to make sure i have a backup pet ready togo ..

Another reason this class gets nerfed so much. People bragging about something they can in a one time situation that usually requires down time. No mage is consistently killing 3 mobs at time. The OP asked if pets can tank current content and the answer is yes, but it requires AAs to do it efficiently. So you will need All Access. Don't think you'll be reliably killing three mobs at a time. I would stick with air pet, unless you are boxing - then the earth pet is fine.

I never said i would be killing 3 mobs at a time All the time .. it was situational on a bad pull or add .. and yes there would be down time .. but can it be done in an emergency situation yes.. can air pets tank current content single mob maybe even 2 at a time yes.. is it fun yes

You're correct it can be done. But it's situational. I think the op just wanted to know if he could molo with a mage pet. The answer is yes. This thread just got off track.

I'm the OP and yes, I was just wondering that if I came back (haven't played in months, since before the recent pet agro changes) would I be able to continue my old playstyle, which was 2 boxing with a shammy and using the pet to tank. It seems that the general consensus is, yes I should be able to.

The reason I even asked is I was doing some reading about the pet agro changes and how mages could barely even nuke without pulling agro off their pets. It seems that issue may have been addressed with the most recent patch involving pet Taunt adjustments.