All, I'm trying to theorycraft a bit for my 3 box which I want to be Berserker centric. I plan on running the second class as a bard which will be useful for one of my other caster mains. Now for the third class I'm thinking either a mage for the pet tankiness or some other class if the tanking can be handled by a J5 merc. My question is, with the appropriate merc AA and gear, how well can the J5 merc tank as compared to the mage pet with good focus and AA. Are they similar at all or is the J5 merc tank worthless? As an example, I've seen the mage earth pet comfortably handle gribble mobs (as a benchmark) say 2 at a time with merc healer support without breaking much of a sweat. Not clear how a J5 pet would tank. I've also seen the earth pet handle CoS mobs and named relatively easily. Any advice in advance is appreciated. Thank you!
The merc tank isn't even in the same postcode as far as tanking ability. If he has his discs up he can handle a tds t3 named and tbm named (I use 2 merc healers as a reference), without, he's paste pretty quick. The mage pet can tank them all day without breaking a sweat as long as you keep fortify companion/companions aegis up. Now that melee dps can do their jobs while a pet tanks theres not much reason to use a merc tank anymore. Merc tanks would be a lot more useful if you had some control over when they use their discs.
A zerker centric three box is a pretty unique concept on its own that I really think needs a tank class to be truly successful. If I was you I'd go with an SK for the easy macroable aggro so you can maximize your time on the zerker.
Awesome, thanks for the info! Sad that the J5 tank merc is mediocre to poor. I do have a buddy to tank for me normally, was just trying to figure out the tank issue for when he isn't online and if there isn't another to be found. SK is an interesting idea, though not sure how much I want to deal with 2 melee positioning and tank + dps cooldown management.
