It happen everytime we play this mission. Pet can't taunt mobs. Our group members: Ranger, nerco, Shaman and Monk, 1 healer mercy, and 1 melee mercy. during the fight, We see the aggro meter, our monk got all hates, They keep on attack him. The pet equipped with taunt weapon, but not any effect, mobs ignore the pet. the goblin hunter phase, they attack the nerco and pet can't save his master.
That's how pets work in missions. If there's a player in range, mobs will ignore pets in favor of real players. As long as the players are out of melee range and only doing ranged damage, the pet will hold agro.
I reported last year I think. Pets cannot hold agro against melee in missions. Its been like that for several expacs. In missions, if there is a player within melee range the mob will always agro the player no matter if the pet is doing more damage and taunting, and even if the player fades all agro. The mob doesnt care. If you want to pet tank bring only ranged dps. A dev asked for more information like he thought it wasnt normal, but then nothing happened
This is how all of the recent group missions function. The npcs will attack a player or mercenary in melee range even if a pet or npc has the highest aggro. Whether or not that's a bug or intentional is unknown to the playerbase, but there is a bug report here: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/pets-in-missions.289051/ With the Final Fugue mission, there are even friendly npcs that will tank the mobs until they die. You can send in pets, and the mobs will still attack the npcs as long as they have the highest aggro. But a mercenary or player will become the target if they get in melee range.
Quite simply, it's because the missions are scaled down versions of the raids. These mobs may not have the "take an entire army to defeat" tag but the mechanics are exactly the same. When they changed it so pets can hold agro against melee in the open world, they specifically said raid npcs would continue to act the same and ignore pets. So as far as I see it, there are raid npcs and non-raid npcs and that's all.
Which is why missions need to be missions and raids need to be raids and one should not just be a scaled down cut & paste of the other.
