I used to mass pull in Plane of Fire with my Mage while Healer merc gained agro. I could pretty much do the entire zone in 2 pulls and it was 100% safe. Then I just cast a DS on the heal Merc. I could step in and AoE and Healer merc would never lose agro. But my Mage was 100, thus Merc was also 100 and my Druid is only 85 so dont know if I can do the same. Im looking to PL up 2 new characters to box with my 85 Druid and was wondering the best and quickest way to go about this.
The 85 druid won't be able to tank as well as the 100 merc, so you'll have to figure out what your limit is on tanking those trash mobs. When I'm PLing, I use heal aggro and the druid pbae snare (Bonds of Tunare?) for aggro. If the mobs are too weak to damage me, I nuke myself so heals will actually be able to heal and generate enough aggro. If you've got a healer merc up, they might steal aggro from you. Which is a good sign that it's safe to AE away with newbie. You can also nuke yourself and let the merc heal you so they get the aggro if you're more comfortable having the merc tank everything while you PL.
I use the pincushion approach described above, with stacked damage shields (with frequent use of the big 12-counter DS and promised heals on myself) but no mercenary. I keep the pulls to 4 or 5 at a time since that's the target limit of Bonds of Tunare.
If you can box DH HA's, I'd do that. Bringing up a wizard that started out as level 85 when my other boxes are 105. I go through, do an HA, pop Lessons of the Devoted on wizard before hail, hail and then port him to PoK/guildhall and leave him there. Then I go through to the next HA, being careful not to complete any stages. Like if a stage is kill 16 mobs, I kill 15 and leave the last one up. If it's Loot a spellbook/dynamite/pick, I kill till I see the drop and don't loot. When I get the HA down to one mob to kill, whatever to loot and whatever to click or throw in a fire or give to a box, then I campfire the wizard over and complete all the stages ASAP with him in zone (otherwise he doesn't get stage updates and loses a lot of exp), hail and port the wizard back to PoK. He's pretty much on permanent lessons of devoted. It takes me @2 to maybe 6 minutes to complete the remainder of the HA once I port my wizard over and for me that means Lessons of the Devoted is refreshed before the lessons buff wears off. he'll be 105 in a couple more days and all the AA's a want shortly after. Get's @ a bulb of yellow+ per HA and it takes me less than 30 minutes per HA. Bringing up the wizards caster merc along with him as well.
