There are two necromancers in my guild that I regularly group up with. One of them is insanely powerful at with a potency of 172k+ potency, and the other with 137K. Both necros have one thing in common: it is incredibly HARD to actually break agro off of them as a tank. I've been playing as a Monk literally since the start of the game, with 166K potency, expert+ quality on 3 taunts, a threat booster, a threat transfer buff, two agro snaps, and all of my offensive spells firing off throughout the fight, and I'm genuinely having a hard time keeping agro from that Undead Knight pet. I know how much potency factors into your overall strength at the high level, so it makes sense that a necro with more potency than myself would be doing so much more DPS that it would give tanks some issue, but a necro with nearly 30K less was out-taunting me for the most part last night. Are necro pets supposed to be that over-tuned when it comes to agro?
So first any necro that plays well will know how to drag grp their pets. Secondly, make sure the necro doesn’t have grisly protection running. My necro has 195k potency and I have no issues with my Aggro or my pets aggro.
I may be wrong but is the undead Knight a tank pet for the necro if so ask your necro to cast there mage pet as a tank pet will try to pull across from you
There's also a bug...necro scout pets are incorrectly showing as "undead knight". It's been a bug since BoL launch.
there are currently no legitimate issues with necro pets like you describe. therefore the issues you're having have to do with players involved doing momo things
Make sure they don't have their pets in Defensive stance. If they do, the pet will taunt. Make sure they're using their deaggros. They definitely should have Arcane Bewilderment and they have a 100% Feign Death that will drop their aggro to zero. Remind them patiently that they need to monitor their own aggro, because a dead necro does zero DPS.
The OP says the pet is stealing aggro from the tank. If necessary they can deactivate the pet and deaggro, or simply call the pet back and deaggro.
Thank you everyone for you advice. I have ZERO knowledge of how the Necro class works, so I don't know what they need to be doing on their end to help the tanks.
Necros have possibly the worst aggro management of any dps class, the responsibility is pretty much on the tank to hold aggro.
I consistently hear the raid tank telling the necros in raid to get their pets out of defensive stance for this very reason..they're taking aggro from the tank. No doubt it's a holdover from the days when necros were actually tanking instances, haha.
In Ye Olde Dayes, I know conjurors used the lowest level Defensive Stance spell (Grandmastered) so as not to gank much aggro from the tank, because the Offensive Stance was not very good most of the time (the stances are much better now). I expect the same is probably true of necros. We actually have our conjy's tank pet act as the tank for the alien triplets in Wracklands Barrens raid. It holds aggro on all three pretty darn fine. This is using the BoL Defensive Stance spell. If you can raid tank with it, then you sure don't wanna use it in groups with an actual tank. I have seen both types of Summoners manage to control their own aggro. This is a critical skill with grouping or raiding, because you don't want to gank aggro, you sure don't want to turn the mob around to face a raid because so many raid mobs have frontal AOEs, you don't want to make the tank (and the tank healers) chase you like a junebug on crack because you're standing way back. If you are DPS and you can't manage your own aggro, then you aren't playing it right. You may need to get adorns to lower hate, ask for Peaceful Links, etc. I think the problem comes in when people are worried about the parse and have a philosophy that "if the spell does no DPS, I won't use it". You can't DPS when you are dead, so really this is kind of self-defeating. I expect this is why Arcane Bewilderment does do some damage when you use it... work it into your regular spell rotation, say, right after a huge hit, that helps. If you are DPS and have enough health to tank a mob when you gank aggro, then stand up in front beside the tank so that if you or your pet get aggro, the mob stays facing the right way and the tank has some hope of getting it off of you. In this case, it's not fatal if you occasionally take aggro. But best of all is to try not to steal aggro to start with. When you have a player who does this a lot, I feel that the Gods should decree that they be forced to play a tank and group for a month. After having aggro stolen, the DPS "pre-pulling" with a fireball or arrow before the tank is ready, and so forth, I think they'd be better about their own aggro management.
We use the same strat for the aliens and have been for a while. As far as the managing the hate agro, my impression isn't that it's a skill issue, it's a "desire" issue. Being on top of the dps charts seems to be the prominent goal for way too many people these days. We've got healers and utility players talking about dps. Too little recognition is given to those who are actually performing their job. Recognize the healers and utility players on a regular basis. All you ever hear is: "nice parse," so the underlying message given is if you aren't dps, you're not contributing. That's a sad atmosphere to have in a raid force, but it seems to be a consistent problem (IMHO). As far as the pre-pull, we had a saying years ago, "you pull it, you tank it." Frankly, players have gotten so consumed with DPS (or lazy) that they're making fundamental mistakes that would never have been tolerated in raids years ago or they're busy watching television during raid. Pre-pulling a mob, tab targeting, etc. It's almost like there needs to be a Group/Raid Fundamental Mechanics School about how to play the game.
I know when I played a necro, I used the lvl 14 GM def stance on my pet for the HP boost for soulburn. Are people using the higher level version for that same purpose now?
Def Stance (even lv 14 ancient) is very dangerous; The spell shout with high stats produces really a ton of aggro, Should not be used anymore (and the result is the OP problem)
This is 100% correct, When they made changes to Summoners, they added SHOUT to Every cast. so your pet will generate absurd amounts of threat, tank, scout, mage it doesn't care. the small amount of HP given from Defensive stance isn't worth it anymore and all you do is cause a TON more trouble for your tanks. Run offensive (Antagonize for Conji and Howl of the Damned for Necro). I've had to fuss at several folks for running defensive.
Good to know... shout wasn't really a thing (or at least not a major issue) when I last played necro, which was in CD. Just a new thing I learned and can now use to help others