Just started a bst/mage/mage/enc. i was looking at some forums and said that bst pet could tank til late game. is this true? i also got 2 mages mostly for dps but i know the earth pet is a tank in and of itself but mostly plan to use just air and water pets. Got burnt out on playing tanks. usually played sk or pally but tired of them after making so many alt teams. would this team be viable til late game? also would this team be able to do progression? will need to get those hero aa's. I know many will probably say trade out chanter for bard I just don't like playing a bard. positioning and all that kind of a headache. plus enchanter mez I feel is superior to bards.
You might want to replace one magician with a druid or wiz for ports, succor and other things. While the druid does offer DoTs, ADPS and healing power, the wiz has nice DD and targeted AoE nukes to blast away adds. BST pet does get strong near lvl 85 and has good melee mitigation. Air pet is strong vs single mobs until about lvl 85. ENC is fine for a caster group and much better CC.
When reading about pet tanking, be sure to check what sort of focus they are referring to. There are alot of posts on the board where its assumed you have a raid level pet focus.
Starting level 86 BST gets pet buff: https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=27110 upgraded every 5 levels to the current: https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=68091 Give the warder summoned armor, focus items, haste mask and weapons and it will be a better tank than mages earth pet. The warder has more HP than air pet and somewhat less than earth pet, but due to extra avoidance, damage mitigation, HP boost and and aggro modifier it is a better tank overall. In addition, a beastlord can heal it better than a mage due to extra healing AA's it gets. I usually use warder with Protection buff and mage's water pet for dps. Alternatively you can use Earth pet with warder's Aggression buff (extra hit %, damage mod, aggro reduction at expense of HP and AC loss), which is alternative to Protection. Agressive warder is somewhere between water and air pets in HP/dps. Yes, bestlord's warder can tank in-era nameds/missions except raid bosses/minis. yes and yes. And regarding raid-level Enhanced Minion (pet summoning focus) - I've done progression from lvl 2 through ToV using group gear. My beastlord got ToV raid earring during CoV era (1 expansion backward) and my mages got raid earrings in ToL+. Group progression was done by then. Although, raid EM earring makes a huge difference to pet classes.
I find the BST and MAGE pets tank named mobs fine and are good in missions. However, I also find they struggle with multiple pulls as they only seem to concentrate on the one mob. For me, Griklor can be an issue when the adds come as the pet will stick on Griklor while the adds smash the mage to death.
Yes, same summoned gear and same buffs. And I very rarely use slows with the warder tanking. Here is my reasoning: My warder normally has Cloak of Needlespikes and Forgefire coat buffs (long term stackable DS from ranger and mage, LS versions currently). Thats 11939 damage shield with short-duration DS occasionally on ( 8955+2984 ). A typical LS trash hits my warder for 40K'ish melee (yes, warder's mitigation is that good), and now comes the choice - should I slow the mob to reduce the number of 40K hits my warder takes per unit of time, or should the mob swing at normal speed and gets hit with 12K DS more frequently ? Since I use healer mercs I simply think "Hey, it's not my mana, and those mercs have nothing else to do", and as such I trade more healing from the merc for extra DS damage mob takes. Overall I increase group dps (even though by a relatively small amount) at expense of my cleric earning his pay with more workload. Hence - I rarely slow these days, only messy nameds and such.
I tanked for my group of friends as a beastlord all the way to 115 (was current max level at the time) without a raid focus. That included all the progression content too, it wasn't just sit in a corner and pull one mob. Any of the three main pet classes can tank regular mobs with a current group focus, however, you will struggle to take tier 2 named mobs as a rule. The 70s can be kinda rough if I remember right. The BST pet defensive buff line that starts in the early 80s is a massive game changer.
I second this. I love my druid. She can track. Also in raid instances, which you might want to do to farm luck augs, she can heal instead of DPS. Merc healers are great but having a good PC healer is great. Yes the mage can heal its pet well but the group heal and cures the Druid offer can be invaluable. An exodus, man, have I come to appreciate that. The utility the druid offers is worth the sacrifice of some DPS, and with Great Wolf pumping the group, it might just balance things out. Druid struggles with mana, but 1 mage for mod rods, paragon and ENC at all times will keep the Druid in the game pretty reliably.
It's all about the pet ear for Pet classes. They matter a fair amount. The BST pet can tank. The MAG pet will out tank the BST pet. Not sure why you'd use the BST pet to tank instead of the MAG pet unless the BST is geared better. If the BST is raid geared, yes the BST pet can tank late game but the BST itself probably could too. As for progression, there can be issues with pet tanks. For instance, the last of the storm boars in ToV expansion, will not work with a pet or merc on top aggro. The BST will have to tank to complete that. There are also instances where the game is coded to ignore a pet tank with a PC in range. There are various instances in the game where merc tanks and pet tanks wont work out quite right, but most of them are rare and shouldn't give you too much grief as a whole. BRD can contribute more to the group than an ENC but you are boxing and can complete a lot fewer actions per second. BRD positioning is a problem and so can song aggro, so the net benefits may be a wash due to the increases in inefficiency related to boxing. Go with the ENC over the BRD if you do not want to play the BRD. Good pulling is a better option than CC when boxing. The ENC may out CC the BRD but try to avoid the CC anyway. BRD can pull very well, but it's only better than ENC because it can fade. ENC has better tools to pull than BRD if you exclude fade and run speed. ENC has a long duration Paci, and as a box, can assist off the BST, Paci and then the BST can continue to be the focus to pull. TLDR: There may be some bumps but you will be fine, I think ENC is the better option, and as per my previous post, consider switching 1 mage for a DRU.
