So for the past however many expansion, I have used earth pet as my tank and never used air. I have found earth to be fine handling current content for the most part, with little to no issues as far as survivability and results. So I ding 111 and because of the easiness of the expansion decided to use 111 air until I got earth. Air was fine, I think it died to one named in GD and that was about it. Every level increase I would buy companion fortification AA for pet defensive upgrades. At 113 I started Velk spider merc task, killed about 4-5 spiders with no issues molo the other day. Last night I ding 114. I get earth pet, decide to finish up Velk spiders. Every mob was an issue and an adventure. Used mend, healing earth pet with Renewal, using host in Shell, everything. On 4 of the 5 mobs the pet dropped to 10 health at least twice during the fight. I had never experienced an earth pet doing so poorly on one trash current content mob. And I was surprised that the air pet on those spiders never got below 60 and I was never in danger like I was with earth. Did something happen this expansion with air pet being buffed and earth decreased or something? Has air always been this good as a molo tank and I could have used it all along? Or was this just a small sample size of five Velk spiders from both air and earth and I can throw it away as RNG because earth is the superior pet tank? Just curious if other molo mages have noticed a change with earth this expansion compared to air...
Isn't there a bug post about the pets taking more damage than last expansions pets and sancus did math and stuff to indicate that those set of pets didnt seem to be summoning with the cloak? Perhaps air comes with it or perhaps the stun mitigates the loss of the cloak? Dealing with enchanter pet but perhaps all pets? https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/enc-pet-is-too-weak.261941/page-2
Almost every mob (maybe every mob?) in ToV is a caster that casts wacky DoTs that reduce hp in very large chunks (some like the spiders in Velk's have two separate 150k+/tick DoTs that they cast). Stun helps prevent that a lot more than having a lot of hit points. Do you see the same results on stun-immune mobs?
Interesting. I had not noticed any mobs outside of the spiders putting nasty DOTs on the pet, although I have a lot of that stuff turned off. Will have to try some basic trash mobs with earth and see if it tanks normally...
I double checked and both Manifestation of Earth and Air, at least with EM 27, come properly summoned with the correct Cloak of Enhancement. It doesn't surprise me that the Air pet tanks better in some situations, especially if you're only fighting one (stunnable) mob at a time. Its stun significantly reduces incoming damage vs one target, it just doesn't scale well with multiple mobs and doesn't work on red cons (or stun immune creatures). Earth's primary advantage is HP, but if incoming damage out-paces a healer merc's healing output, it's going to eventually end up at low HP. Earth should have a bit more mitigation as well, but that definitely isn't enough to make up for the lack of a stun against single trash mobs. I will run some longer tanking parses to see if anything is amiss, but just glancing at the numbers from short tests it looks like everything is in the ballpark of what I'd expect.
I have been tanking with water pet and earth pet, but haven't really tried using air much lately, I'll give it a shot this weekend. I also didn't really try our new MS or fire pet.
Air pet's stun is very significant vs single stunnable mobs. Very. And I'm guessing that is the difference you're seeing. I almost exclusively use air pet for tanking. However, I've run a few quick parses, and I'm not seeing any significant DPS increase with Arcane Distellect on air pet, at all. AD increases my water pet's base damage (just burnout and ice proc) by 12k ish - 35k to 47k dps vs combat dummy, but air pet staying stagnant at 29k dps, with or without AD...
