I've noticed pet tanking is extremely difficult these days. Around a year and a half ago or so I noticed I took agro almost immediately from my pet. My pet cant keep a mobs attention at all. Did they change something with agro and pets? I assume the tlp servers are to thank for this little gift.
They changed quite a bit about pets in the past few years. Pets now hold aggro over players even when close to the mob. Personally didn't like this change as it opened the door for all the other nerfchanges. Pet aggro was rehauled, all pet generated aggro was reduced but then main pets had pet taunt changed to be much more aggro when its turned on. Other pets do less aggro then previously but still manage fine in most settings. Pet tanking was drastically nerfed because of tanks complaining about pets handling one aspect of the tanking paradigms better. Pets took lower incoming DI rolls. But tanks have more and better tools to use, tanks have something like 41% more avoidance, tanks dominate aggro single and multiple and when played even avg blew pets out of the water in every single situation in actual game play. But because pets took incoming hits at lower DI's dem tank parses doing nothing or popping defensive abilities and then watering down their impact with 30 minute long parses negating their actual use pets got nerfed. And rather than nerfing pet types individually because of how different they are at least for the 3 main pet classes all pets got reduced at a level they deemed appropriate for a mage earth warder. Leaving some other pets pretty hurt up unless you essentially go full bore all out just to kill single trash mobs. Its like a warrior being required to pop last stand and other AA on incoming to tank blue trash mobs.
Thanks for the reply. It is frustrating how I have to relearn pet tanking tactics all over again. As it stands now the second I stand up from a fd the mobs summons me no matter what (pet tanking is/was handy for named and summoning mobs) I guess it was due to tanks bellyaching over pets then? The things some classes complain about is just beyond me. Agro kiting agro is messed up as well. Mobs will instantly get agro on the pet. I guess that would be a whole other thread though.
Turn off taunt. Pets an have almost success 100% rate on taunt now. They don't taunt until mob is not agro on them as well. Unlike before where they would chain taunt the mob regardless of them having agro are not. So a lot of time when fighting a summoning mob it will summon but in space of time between when it summons me and mob launching a round of melee attacks the pet will taunt it off before it can make those attacks.
About one and a half year ago they changed /pet taunt so there would be a bigger difference between having it on or off. I the process they totally fu pet aggro and then made a fix for that. Pet aggro however was never returned to the level it was before the changes was made. That and the fact that aggro/dmg on dots are unproportional compared to DDs makes pet tanking suck for necros. Only solution is to FD several times/mob, annoying and a bit silly but it works.
I think this is the problem I'm running into. Dots seem to be creating so much agro then before. I fd and let the dots do damage but the microsecond I stand they summon me. I guess the developers didn't think this though fully when implementing as usual.
They did think it through. About 1.5 years ago, there were alot of nerfs/changes that made it harder for any group not relying on a tank.
Neither of those are the complaint that he has. Also, how is that second one a complaint? There are 3 pet classes that can do this. You have 2 knight classes that use DPS mercs instead of healer mercs. Then include some other classes who tank and DPS well like monks and rangers. You can even add enchanters who reverse charm (tank and dps) and pop a healer merc when needed. That is 8 out of 16 classes that can effectively molo well. The OP is complaining about instant agro upon standing from FD. YellowBelly, if you are using Dichotomic then you will gain agro a lot faster than normal. List your spell order here and maybe I can find the problem you are having. Also, what buffs do you have on your pet.
So they first decided to make pets hold agro over melee range characters? Then they decided to nerf agro? The logic of that shows what messed up place daybreak is.
The problem isnt perhaps with the pets generating enough aggro but with dots having to high aggro/dmg. My mag for example can pretty much do whatever without drawing aggro from nec or mag pet. And shm/dru have it much worse not being able to fade consistently.
If someone was to dissect my spell lineup the first thing they would point out is the damage output from using three swift dots to start. I understand that. My point is I used them for years and never had an issue until around TBM was realeaed. Pet tanking is a core tactic that's been part of the class forever. It's the reason we receive a warrior pet for gods sake. Warrior for pet tank, rogue pet for group, agro kiting, and raid use. Please don't think I'm disregarding your reply. I really do appreciate your offer to help. I just knew where you were going with it.
I think a lot more then that can molo. I'm not certain about berserkers, rogues, and clerics. I'm not certain that they can't molo, that's not saying they aren't able to, only that I'm not certain of it. The rest can solo, molo I'm sure of. You may be referring to named mobs but those are let event a new term highend moloing not really covered by molo term.
Effective moloing for me is doing end game content (current expansion yellow and even red cons) without needing a special long reuse discipline/rune AA. Also, to the point where it does not take 5 mins to kill an NPC. You could add druids, shamans, and wizards to this list, but their effectiveness gets deminished with non rootable summoning npcs.
I actually was not going that route. Sometimes it is about adding spells to your lineup that only give you 1 point of aggro that helps. Use your swarm pets and AE auras more to reduce how fast your agro spikes up. What duration does it take you to solo an NPC down? *edit I also start off with swarm pets as my first cast because they gain agro faster through higher dps than my Warrior pet. But then my warrior pet catches up with each successful taunt, leading to my Warrior pet gaining agro faster at the beginning of the fight.
It's more than just dots. When they did the taunt change, pet aggro suffered. Seems rather than building aggro as they did before, they just bounce up, then lose it again and repeat. My mage pet went from being able to hold aggro to losing it consistently to both healer mercs and caster mercs as well as players. Air pet with dps weapons holds aggro better than earth pet with aggro weapons. Likely the stuns actually help build aggro.
One thing that was explained about dot agro is that spell casting subtlety is broken for dots. Some agro is applied each tick, however subtlety only works on the initial cast. So with the advent of bigger dots for druids/chanters/shamans, its been found that they create MEGA agro. If a necro had dots of that size with all thier dot bonuses? Its quite possible no tank could hold agro against a necro - which would make them ungroupable.
There is an aggro meter in the game. You can see how your aggro stacks up to your pet and delay standing up accordingly if needed. FD doesn't instantly fade aggro all of the time.
