Pet Tanking - Best Practices

Hey folks, I'm looking for some recommendations/best practices for pet tanking before suffering through the school of hard knocks.

I am basically making a group of the neglected characters on my accounts (I 5 box and my partner plays the 6th) that don't fit in my more optimized groups.

Would be mage, druid, wizard, ranger, berserker. My partner will choose something random and unlikely to be consistent. Mostly I would be looking for the group to do zone progression and hunters. (I'll probably sub them into my more powerful groups for missions).

The last time I was more seriously trying to pet tank was during VOA but I seemed to have enough deaths in common situations at the time to dissuade me from trying harder at it instead of just reconfiguring to include my more powerful/developed characters. (At that time it was mage, cleric, enchanter, wizard, ranger).

I'm a pretty veteran player but I never got good at pet tanking and have actively avoided doing it since. Thanks for the help.

Earth pet is tank pet, if you are under AAd that is probably the best bet. Depending on the expansion and the tuning/con (and your pet AAs) people swear by air pet tanking because it stuns. I used to air but personally its felt like they started to falter so I fell back to using earth. Air is less important if you have someone/box a class with stuns and/or slows.

Theres a number of pet runes mages can cast that also stack. Keep them refreshed to mitigate the damage.

Can't remember air pet aggro any more, but earth pet aggro is atrocious, if you arent running the hate pet weapons you are bound to pull aggro even with pet taunt on (speaking of only have the mage pet taunting). Pet aggro is a little delayed compared to player aggro, you have to let the pet engage a couple seconds before starting DPS or you can also pull aggro.

Until you are comfortable with tanking more than 1 mob and surviving, try not to do it. If there are multiple mobs, as long as no one does any DPS you can chain cast RS to offtank one mob. You may have to go to a slightly lower level zone until you get more comfortable with mage mechanics.

Whoever is pulling is likely tagging with zero aggro, and like pet aggro statement above, if you have a melee dps and pull a second mob while tanking 1, they are likely to get hit. Whether thats a few hits or extended depends on how fast the pet reacts.

Enable pet hold and focus to have the most control over its target, while also allowing it to keep attacking if its struck by a second mob. In the same vein, qswarm is also your friend, use it to keep your swarm attacking the current target but then immediately switch to the queued mob after the current is dead.

1. Get the best EM pet focus earring for your mage. CoV+ raid earrings would be a significant boost over NoS group earring. Raid-focused earth and air pet are sturdier tanks than a player plated tank without disciplines.
2. Always give your pet aggro-proccing summoned weapons. If you feel like it - also summoned "focus" items: earring, ring and bracer (it will refuse other summoned gear).
3. If you are using earth pet (best tank) - consider disabling its' root casts by using "spellhold" command - rooting a mob on the pull will mess up positioning and also takes some time so the pet delays the engagement of the mob on pull. Also, pulling with the druid or ranger with snare (and calming nearby mobs prior to that) is an efficient method. In any case - actively play the mage on the pull to time "/pet attack" on mob intercept.
4. if you pull with your mages' Malo - do not forget to have "Unity" up on the mage to have mini-pet defensive proc active to divert aggro.
5. Zerker, druid, wizard - typically do not pull aggro off the tanking pet unless they go nuts on the pull.
Ranger builds up aggro to a dangerous level, so control ranger's aggro with Jarring kicks at least.
6. Tanking pets use "taunt" frequently (if ordered to) and aggro-weapon proces build up aggro reliably though a bit slow, mind the aggro on the pull in general. Typically, actively casting mage does not pull the aggro off the pet either by damage spells or by healing the pet (which is quite strong).
7. The biggest difference in pet tanking - pets have almost no area aggro. Which means if you want your pet to tank more than 1 mob - you need to cycle through adds, redirect your pet to each of them and let it taunt for a few rounds. Meanwhile your group concentrates the dps on one target at a time - for example wizard AE'ing the mobs will most definitely pull the aggro from adds. With a Fortitude the pet can take alot of beating but still has no reliable way to AE aggro. With multiple adds - Fortitude up, cycle pet though adds, and then focus on 1 mob at a time - the pet will withstand the beating.

Feel no worries - with MAG/RNG/BER/WIZ in the group trash mobs will die within seconds, and the nameds will last just a bit longer.

2. All mage pets since like SoF come summoned with the current gear for the respective level, just no weapons. Unless you have outleveled the gear on the pet somehow. Only need to gear non mage pets.

3. While a true statement, I have been lucky enough to be saved by the root spell a number of times. But a fast casting nuke usually breaks the root when its an issue.

4. More specifically its the "bodyguard" line that predates the unity AA.

Much good advice in this thread so far.

IIRC, the focused mage pets come with everything but the summoned earring and ring. Give them that if you want and it might make a very small difference. The mage pet will also accept the summoned (jewelry) bracer, but I would not give them that because they come with the summoned plate bracer, which is better.

What am I missing? How is
https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=143100
(135 AC, 1230 HP)
better than
https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=142885
(175 AC, 2400 HME, +54 stats, +50 resists, +85 ATK, +70 spell damage)
?

Jewelry bracer is superior, I am just too lazy to cast it sometimes.

Yep, I stand corrected.

well there are some missions where pet can't hold agro if a real players are close to the mobs, you got ranged dps except zerker,

you could add another mage who would be close for dps vs zerker but you would have another tank ( mage pet ), if you got an add,

btw playing mage is easy ( specially at higher levels, when you can get a good ( decent EM earring ), you just send pet and forget about it, you are sure it will stick to the mobs and keep agro ( usually ** ),

having a melee toon you always have to place him in attack range and hope mob will not move even a tiny move away or on the side ** can't see target or out of range message ** unless you use a 3rd party software and your zerker will move by himself behind the mobs all the time,

Tsssss, do not spoil a surprise !

Or just have a mage and a bard as alts on every account to play a variety of combinations. Though that is a project for after the leveling the mains.