Missions are based on raids, not the other way around. Tuned down for a limited number (6 max) of group-geared characters. We have run missions with no tank, and we have run missions with no healer, successfully in the past. Requiring X + Y + Z class to run a 6-hour lockout mission is not always necessary. No, you were. You were wanting to take away class-defining features because you don't like them, or because you don't have them, or something. I don't know. Maybe Sancus can help translate.
Can confirm this happens on Griklor mission, Shei, whatever that bend the knee mission is with the giants, Zlandicar, everything I've tried since rolling a Mage. I'd have loved to continue playing my Rogue, but I often don't have a tank and a healer available to me, so I switched to mage to at least have a tank. This mission pet tanking behavior makes it really hard to do any progression unless I can either find a player to tank or I just sit my rogue on her hands and tell her not to touch anything (which is frustrating as she was my main for years and is still my best dps toon). I'd seriously be overjoyed if this was by accident and missions could behave like static zone pet tanking in the future.
I'm just advocating for group only players. These missions are the only challenging content they have. I don't know why only raiders should deserve good content in EQ. And no, it doesn't impact me either way and I'm not sure why you keep implying that it does. I just want a good game for everyone.
But the issue is that having a pet that can tank is a defining characteristic of three classes in modern EQ. Having a mage as your "tank" vs. having a paladin as your tank is not inherently more or less interesting. If you want to make tanking more interesting with mechanics like adds and positioning that force a pet class to more actively manage their pet while tanking bosses, I'm all for that. (Of course that already exists in some places to some extent. It's good for plate tanks too, since it makes the encounter all around more interesting.) But part of the mag/nec/bst class identity is being able to tank via pet, and they should be able to do that in both in and out of missions. Having a fairly arbitrary rule that those pets can usually be a tank but not in certain encounters, despite having the stats and abilities to, is neither fun nor interesting. It doesn't force you to think harder or outplay the situation; it just forces you to limit which of your friends you invite. More variety and choice is more interesting, and is more important for the casual/group players than the hardcore ones. And let's not forget that in many cases this doesn't really stop pet classes from tanking those missions anyway. It just forces the group to choose between a pet tank + all ranged dps vs. a plate tank + any dps. That's not an interesting choice! Group players are well served by pets being able to tank. The only thing they don't/shouldn't want is the content being so easy (or the pets so powerful) that mag/nec/bst can just molo it in era. That's not really what we're talking about. Should progression missions require an actual group to be successful? Absolutely yes. And should a pet class be able to serve as the tank in those groups? Also yes.
I think that's the whole point of the thread: is the way it's working actually the way they intended it to work? The fact that they're at least investigating it and listenting to feedback tells me that maybe it's not supposed to work this way.
I thought it was in TDS (several people have said it was Broken mirror- they may be right) where it was announced and patched that pet tanking would now work in missions. I have noticed the past few expansions that pet tanking is either broken or it was changed back without an announcement. I believe it to be broken as in current expac missions- like the 24th anniversary mission, the one from last year that gives you the collect finder and the one before that gives you the feather- all of those I can solo with my trusty beast pet and healer merc. When I do that, the only time i take aggro is when I dont pay attention and end up FDing it off. There is no nonsense where as soon as I hit melee range I becaome the only target. Because missions like the anniversary ones are working as announced while the ones modeled on raids are not, I lean toward some raid coding that got carried over to the mission that wasn't supposed to.
You do bring up a good point though. SKs, paladins, pet classes, and even shaman being able to molo multiple missions right now isn't exactly ideal. If pets are to be main tanks in end game content maybe the content itself needs to have some other challenge to it where you'll want to bring other players.
Bump! I gave up on my rogue main because I couldn't find legit tanks often enough (I'm a filthy casual group player) and made a mage instead so I could still at least kinda play. It would be neat if I could still play my rogue and my bard WITH the mage at 2am when insomnia sucks and I just want to do a mission for some currency. Please don't make me dust off my chanter.. ain't nobody got time for that, and plus when my greater group of friends IS ONLINE, we have an SK and a different chanter. I want to fit in with that group when they ARE online, but still be able to play when they're not online. My poor rogue I played as a dedicated main for 7 years is currently so sad and she would like to stab some things!
I always figured this was an intentional anti-pet mechanic, but it really gives the other two pet classes a huge advantage over Beastlord. Necro's and Mage's can do full dps even with this mechanic and Beastlords dps falls through the floor along with any other melee compared to casters.
How is it possible that a developer responds in this thread acting like they're unaware of this mechanic? Communication is needed across DB's developers. In my opinion, it's clearly an intentionally coded mechanic in which some group missions allow for pet agro tanking, while others don't. We need a proper developer response and update. Example #1: In Claws of Veeshan, only the mission Vulak'Aerr is able to be pet agro tanked (all dragons + Vulak can be pet agro tanked), but all of the other three missions have an anti-pet agro mechanic implemented. Example #2: In the newest Stone Cold Summer Mission: Feel So Fungi, every single mob in the instance is unable to be pet agro tanked. Go ask the developer who just created this mission what they did to cause that. Is this intended? Have a developer to developer conversation. In my opinion, this is an easier/fun seasonal mission for casual players, and it doesn't make sense that pets should be constrained from being able to tank. However, if there is an intention of incorporating that constraint, then it would make more sense for a mission like Zlandicar in Claws of Veeshan (Example #1) to have these constraints. This would require a more traditional/legitimate group to be able to complete the mission.
If it is intentional, they need to find a way for it to also affect casters. The way it currently is, casters see no penalty from this mechanic. It's basically saying, if you're gonna have a pet tanking (and lets be serious, a lot of people do so they can get stuff done), then you need to just play casters only. It's making melee a less viable type of character.
Replying mostly to bump this, but has there been any kind of answer addressing this? I've played Bst for many years, mostly because of the versatility that pet tanking provides when boxing standard group content. One of the main things that pushed me away from the game for a few years was this exact issue, having every named in Vex Thal (ToL version) being effectively undoable, not being able to run missions with my own little mini-crew, etc. I'm back now and trying to find ways around some of these issues, but gotta say re-addressing this years later and seeing that absolutely nothing has been done about it is rather frustrating. Playing through each expansion on a recent TLP end to end (Selo server) this was just not an issue in any expansions until around the Kunark revamps with a few extremely rare exceptions. It seems to me it is a combination of many years of pet adjustments. I remember way back in PoP the original nerf to pets was due to Enc charming being far and away the best strat for all mobs, even including several of the flagging raids. The melee range-agro nerf went into effect then and has been applied seemingly randomly over the years.
This policy does nothing but prevent melee/caster players from playing together. There are rarely enough tanks to run the missions everyone wants. I've given up my spot for a melee in a group with tanks, and turned down melee from pet groups. No one wants to sit on their hands while the rest of the group nukes from afar. Even as a caster, I am in the habit of meleeing. This mechanic doesn't stop pets from operating as tanks, it just makes the whole thing less fun. If the goal is to make everything impossible without a tank, please find an interesting way to create that outcome (and recruit us more tank alts!). If not, let us pet tankers include our melee friends in the most common guild group activity.
It definitely makes an archetype divide for missions, but pets not tanking raid mobs makes sense. Frankly, I wish raid mobs would completely disregard pet agro so tanks to could still reposition smoothly on events like When One Door Closes while there are eleventy billion gargoyles on the boss.
There appears to be some clouding of the issue here, the question, asked by a Dev was "...could you give the names of the mission(s) and or NPC(s) that you are encountering this issue with?" The question was not "Do you think pets should be able to tank any of the mobs in any of the missions?" You may feel strongly that they should not, but that is not the question here, and only clouds the issue which for a lot of people is, is it a bug or working as intended" The answer is every mission in the last 5 expansions. Every mob ignores pet agro if a player character gets into melee range. It may go back further than that but that should get you started, and yes I realise I have not answered the question correctly, but I thought that you would have lists of all of the missions in the last 5 expansions. It isn't just some of the mobs or some of the missions, it's all of the mobs in all of the missions in the last 5 expansions. It is so wide spread that most people, me included, thought it was intentional and if this turns out to be a bug/not working as intended, then Kudos to the OP for raising the issue!
I've pet tanked both LS missions on bst many times, just depends on group composition, don't bring pure melee just like you don't bring plate tanks. My BST pet has smoother single target tanking with a deeper hp pool, easier to heal with always having the BST as an extra healer (which along with nukes/dots/adps is plenty of role for a bst in a mission even if we can't melee), plenty of single target agro and ability to tank 3 without much issue. My raid geared SK is similar of course, OP especially with epic/MC running, but paladins and warriors aren't so easy. My SK long ago finished LS augs, but somehow my BST and mage (who are literally incapable!!!1!) are also about to and have all mission achievements, even with never/rarely grouping with a plate tank in either mission... My perception is that the reason people can't find plate tanks for stuff is that they take WAY too much investment to be capable of those missions compared to pet tanks, and at the end of the road they take more damage spikes and require more effort/babysitting than BST/mage pet, and nonraid tanks want a group slot for a priest that pet tanks don't need (and pets deep hp pool and heals from master make merc far more viable, even easy mode imo).
This is just a silly thing to keep bringing up. There's absolutely no reason/excuse for daybreak not being able to change the attributes of mission mobs without changing the attributes of raid mobs. Even if it is somehow difficult or tedious, it only needs to happen once per year. They have demonstrated the ability to differentiate between the two with the TBM era (?) patch mentioned above.
The answer is: The last mission to have pet agro mechanics enabled was Vulak'Aerr in Claws of Veeshan. That's all the developers should need to get to it and provide an answer. Either fix the issue, or confirm that the pet agro mechanic is intentionally disabled.
