How far Can you get with pet tanking? Is it viable to run multiple pet classes And rely on pet tanking instead of a tank class?
It depends on where your end goal is. For 95% of the leveling part of the game, yes, you can rely on pet tanking and yes it is viable to run multiple pet classes. The trick is that you may not (always) be fighting on the bleeding edge, but tackling a level or two lower content. Since there is so much content to do, this shouldn't be an issue for you until the very end game scenario. If you are only concerned about the 5% end game scenario, i.e. the bleeding edge, then a tank class would be good to plan. That said, the real challenge is... how far can YOU get with a pet tanking group? Have fun with it!
Pet tanks are like substitute teachers. They can get the job done but they are not going to fully replace to person designing the course. For example, the mage earth pet has very good tanking ability, and with the right setup (Enhanced minion earring, AA, pet armor, buffs, debuffs, healing power) it can sub a tank and it can sub it well. However, the pet tank does not handle multiple mobs well. The mage pet will not AE taunt, change targets to crowd control and etc. It is very easy to a bad pull with a mage pet to go sideways fast, or a not properly managed pet to lose aggro on an add to cleric heal aggro. A skilled mage will manage these situations, but a mage pet will never even remotely hold the crowd control tanking of real tanks. On the up side however, with the addition of pet resume, mage pets are extremely responsive to crowd control. They do not break mez and immediately resume fighting when mez if broken. Since Delude can blur a mob, a tank that is not proactive might not realize they lost aggro and slack on the mez break. A mage pet will immediately rejoin the fight the second mez is broken. Another huge advantage to pet tanks is that their armor is summoned. The only thing mage pets need are a few hundred AA and an EM earring. This is a far stretch from a real tank that needs thousands of defensive and aggro management AA, armor and a full set of augs. A mage can spend a small fortune on the ultra-rare pet earring and have the best Enhanced Minion, and that's it, done. Real tanks take a lot more work. DPS wise real tanks do more. A SK, Warrior or Paladin will almost always out DPS an earth elemental, and the strongest raid tanks do not need to sacrifice their DPS for defensive stances, but in most cases the mage pet hits a plateu about equal to a strong group tank. As a 3-boxer who likes to play with real people, the mage was the way to go. My ENC main handles all of the adds, the mage pet is an automated tank and my 3-box is easy to integrate into groups. My mage is tank ready with minimal work and is readily accepted into a group that already has a tank. For instance, the other night I joined a group using only my mage as a main. If my mage had instead have been a SK, it would have been much too weak to tank Kael (lack of AA and armor), but as a mage I was welcomed into the group. At one point our SK went down, I hit pet taunt and fortification and my air pet easily finished off the fight as the main tank. Meanwhile, the fully decked out mages in my guild are using their pets to take down named in Kael and trash in ToFS (possibly named too, not sure in TOFS). My weak mage can pet tank Kael and named in T1 with 2 healers (as long as the mob isn't casting brutal AEs taking away from cleric healing). My mage currently is I think Fortification 144/160 and EM21. So yes, they are very viable for almost all of the game's content. There are pros and cons as listed above. I hope that is enough information so as to help you determine what is best for you.
- - awesome, in-depth response and you both answered every question I was going to ask lol. It sounds fun to me, more so than rolling another SK tbh. Now I’m excited to try it. It will be a long time before I catch up to that last 5%. I want to visit places from the past and work my way through the game slowly. Might eventually catch up to raid but not concerned about it.
If you are playing on live, remember up until L55-65 FTP is just as good as a sub. You can easily box a free class to tag along if only for the apprentice merc. A druid is great as it can patch heal, DPS, port and track. Wizards are much easier to DPS with and can port, but no track. SHM and BST can be a big heal for slow and buffs and so forth. A SHM, BST or ENC would pair well with your mage (druid for port and track). A bard is awesome but a lot more work.
You can tackle all group content with at least mage pet tanks. Minus perhaps Prince Ralaifin in TBL due to swarming spiders. In TBL amd TOV you will need adequate support for named, but so would most group geared tanks. If you are tanking in raid instances, TBL trials, or ToV missions, pets can only tank if no people stand in melee range. Something to be aware of and umderstand, as the prevalence of these old school aggro rules appear to be increasing in recent expansions.
Oh thanks for that tip about the melee range issue. So essentially if my Beastlord is dpsing alongside the pets, the pet tank will lose aggro? I really want to play bl since I never played one before and this is odd but ten years of EQ and I never played a mage before. Just occurred to me. Lol I played Wiz for years on FV and had a friend that was a mage so never had the urge. Sadly I re-rolled to a enchanter from the wiz as our static group lost our enchanter to a new wife and baby. Prior to whenever fv started allowing more than one character.
Going to create a pet class on each account hehe. Should be interesting. Add one or more as I get more comfortable with boxing. Don’t think a necro would work well in a pet group if not main. Require a lot of set up with the dot’s as I recall and I don’t imagine it got any easier. Was reading how wound line can take up 10 detriment slots on a mob.... By the time I get to latest expansions I’ll either hopefully have a static, a guild that helps, or I’ll be running 4-6 myself to do content. This is besides the point but I always soloed as a necro till I started raiding and turned into a mana battery. After that we moved to fv and I didn’t want to be a mana battery when we raided, this the wizard.
No. The pets will hold (or try to hold) aggro away from your beastlord that is in melee. You must have pet taunt on though. You aren't looking at raids, so any raid mechanics should be ignored until much, much later. In a pet group, your necro would be your best puller for a long time. It has the power to split multi-pulls quite nicely, allowing you to "play up" easier. You will not need to use all that many DOTs for group content. You'll likely use 2 or 3 tops for damage for most of your group game play, especially if it is the third box. Things will die too fast to use more for the most part.
Run 2 mages and an enc. With 2 merc clerics. You get lots of DPS with the twin mages. You have cc and slow with the enc. The only item i ever ran into though was no snare. If your pet isn't getting enough aggro make sure you use the aggro pet weapons. You lose some dps but it procs hate. The only item is you need to try and get the highest pet focus you can. Also get all the aaxp for pet. I played up to 85 with no issues. I have since switched over to TLP so I am not sure where they are on live these days. With mage / enc combo there are ways to pull singles out of groups. The 3rd merc if your 3 boxing with 3 mercs I would go with the caster. The merc warrior never seemed to be very good.
Thank you for answering that question Dahaman. I found the answer as well but not before I saw your reply. I love Necro so that actually really cool. Ebine - twin mage dps I imagine would be very high compared to any other combination. I’ll be running a chanter no matter what....too useful not to. I’ve never used Merc’s before so ty for that tip. I’ve read tank merc is not great unless it’s a journeyman and then can carry a group a long way. Is that correct? Was thinking one tank merc and either double up pocket heals or carry dps depending on situation.
I am going to talk live numbers atm... On current live in ToV the following DPS numbers apply... Warrior 8k DPS on aggressive (PC DPS about 100k shield, 200-300k in DPS stances) Wizard 50k DPS on aggressive (PC DPS 300-500k DPS burning at 1-2million DPS) Rogue 150k DPS on aggressive (PC DPS 300-500k DPS burning at 1-2million DPS) It is my understanding the the rogue mercs received a revamp that the other 2 mercs have not gotten yet. The problem with the warrior merc is it got 1-rounded by Glassbeak in Stratos at 115 with about 1/2 of the tanking AA and Valient armor. The tank merc is a lesser tank than a mage pet on live atm, and contributes virtually no DPS. It is a so-so tank in the absence of any other tank. My enchanter animation does 8k DPS without fury AA. My mage rogue is doing 40-60k DPS without any AA beyond autogrant. Wizard mercs DPS is pitiful, but usable with mage pets, so in ToV I use wizard mercs. The 50k DPS sounds like a lot at your level but as an ENC I am putting out 80-110k DPS with my 3 dots alone. My mage has no DPS AA and is doing about 60k DPS with spells only (pet extra, so about 120k DPS without any DPS AA). Oh, and also my mage is 114 so she is not using the TOV 115 nuke spells and has rk1 RoS 110 nukes. The wizard merc is actually lower than 50k, because in my group it's getting twincast aura, MR aura and beguilers synnergy. Rogue mercs seem like a lot at 150k DPS, but they are only slight ahead of me as a raid gear ENC. They are doing about 1/3-1/4 the DPS of real rogues, but more importantly they have absolutely no aggro management. They are either on burn, pull aggro and die, or they are on balanced and just stand around doing nothing. YOu can use a rogue merc with a mage pet, but the rogue has to be left on passive until the mob is at least 85%. By the time you manually manage their interaction enough to keep them from dying, they are only around 50-70k DPS and took your attention away from your other characters. So just use a wizard. Until warriors are corrected, use a wizard and 2 clerics. I hope at some point they fix wizards. THey need to be around 150k DPS, but for now the 50k DPS is better than none I guess.
if you want to go beastlord, beast, mage and chanter works wonders as well. having the mage to drop summoned stuff on the beast pet is nice, and the beastlord also brings more mana regen ( both se line and paragons ). As far as i know, the main problem with mage is their mana regen, and adding a beastlord will help a ton there. Apart from that, you also add melee buffs to your mix ( useful for the pets), more pets of course ( later on for the mage's shock of many line) and you even get an FD down the road, for the occasion when you're about to wipe. I am playing on 1 of the earlier TLP's and i do feel nowadays like there's not much i cannot do if i set my mind to it. both molo and solo. Playing beastlord for me is the most fun i've had in mmorpgs since 1999.
Plate tanks are just too strong right now. It's really hard for pets to keep up. I recently started a 4x mage, 1enc, 1 dru team, leveled them from 1 to max, did some of the group missions in TBL and was fairly disappointed by how it turned out. For grinding random mobs down it's fine, but trying to scale up to difficult named mobs or missions is really tedious and tenuous.
Wow, that’s a confusing mess; but only to me since I’ve never boxed. That is a huge concern is setting things up just right; creating the macros to function correctly. That one prog will be needed for anything over three. I have a 34 ultra wide and a little 27 off to the side. So plenty of screen space. I think after all of the feedback I am going to spend time leveling the classes I would really like to try as molo or duo at most and then have a 3+ box with tank (sk or war), sham, bard/enc, wiz or zerker,rogue for dps cleric or Druid. As I get used to boxing I can swap in the toons I really like and want to continue playing. That leaves a account for mage, necro etc. depending on where I put all of them. I rolled a bl and almost through tutorial for first time eve. Didn’t know the plat rains from the sky lol
From what I see in your pic, every character has same command to same hotkey and if a toon doesn’t have that ability you left it blank. example pet back is your number 6. I’ll need to look at that closer when I am not on a small screen. Ty Tucoh, your explanation and breakdown is clear and the image provided helps a lot. Makes sense but a full pet tank box set may require more expertise than I have for now. None of the pet classes are fire and forget or require minimal interaction. I’ll start off easy and work my way into something crazy like that
