So I have the master for Undead Knight VII...I have the master for Grisly Protection VI...I have Preceptors Command at rank 8...I have the 10% hate reducition AA and yet, while soloing my Undead Knight cannot keep aggro to save my life...literally. All my spells seem to generate an insane amount of hate. I've seen my hate meater jump from 20ish all the way up to 90ish in just one spell. I honestly can't really do much of anything without losing aggro at least 5...6 times a fight. It's not like I'm a bad player...I've played this game for a very long time. I don't understand what the issue is. Even when I greatly hold back I still manage to get aggro from my pet. Is this more of a game issue than a player issue? Could just be me, but I highly doubt it is. Any suggestions of how to reduce hate gain while soloing? I'm honestly out of ideas...I've done everything I can think of what to do, and nothing really seems to be helping. Personally, I think it's a game issue. And it needs to be corrected. My tank pet should be keeping aggro a hell of a lot better than it does. And the fact my Preceptor's Command fails as many times as it does when it's suppose to be 100% is absurd as well. And the fact my bewilderment spell will hit the mob and do damage and yet not reduce threat like it's suppose to, and I instead see my threat meater jump is also absurd.
Make sure your pet is Master ranked, and get some Power Flux gear. Unfortunately the necro pet isn't even remotely as good at holding aggro as the conjuror pet. My only recommendation is back off your personal DPS.
I have the entire T2 armor set, as well as the master for the Undead Knight VII...so I have quite a bit of power flux, quicksilver blood and such going on. However, it doesn't help. My main concern is weather or not the Tank Pet for necro's aggro keeping ability has been addressed. As more content is released it's becoming more difficult and more frustrating for me to solo content that I shouldn't have a problem with, simply because my pet cannot keep aggro. I hold back massively on fights and even with that I still manage to draw aggro.
Make sure you don't have Unflinching Servant on when soloing (last spell from STA AA line). This was my mistake in the past and consequences were exactly as you describe That spell perma-stiffles your pet, making it unable to cast even aggro-management spells (taunts).
It's definitely a game issue. Apparently, they didn't do a great job of balancing the tank pet with the rest of our TSO upgrades. As my DPS went up from getting the gear and AAs, it became more difficult to manage hate. One fix that should help would be an increase in hate gain on Grisly Protection.
Man! I totally hear you! I was just about to /feedback this! Exactly what the OP said, except I have the tablet that proc's 50% de-aggro and other similar items with hate reduction but STILL no go! I almost use no other spell but lifetap every like 10 to 20 seconds to heal my self from the AoEs. I just can't understand why the pet just cannot hold ANY significant amount of aggro. It's a bug, otherwise it's not a tank pet. The only suggestion I have for the devs (assumming they actually care about necros at all) is to double the amount of hate the pets CA's do AND reduce the casting time on Perceptors Command by half AND change it to an encounter taunt as well. It's a tank, isn't it? So why not play like one? In my opinion and experience, it would only make sense.. I know the devs created the class and you would normally assume they would know all about them, but from what we've seen so far as a necro, I can safely say we've been abandoned. I mean, have you seen the ooze crawler? The scout pet?
Lifetap generates way more hate compared to DoTs. Just sayin'. edit for more info: Bewilderment drops you by 1 position. But if it's just the pet and you it only works when the aggro is on you and not on the pet. If it's on you then there is no one below your position, hence no decrease in hate. If the aggro is on the pet you need to cast swarm pets and then use Bewilderment, that will get your aggro to near 0. Also Lifetap, Transfer Life and BloodCloud are generating way too much hate, try to avoid them (use healing pots, jw neck item, tinkered heals, etc. instead). Swarm pets generate least hate, so spam those as much as possible.
Archimond@Antonia Bayle wrote: I'd rather not see CAs changed. They should change something that fits in with a solo/tanking spec, like perceptor's command, making it more useful for holding aggro. There's another issue I have with hate and that's the fact that we can't see the pet's hate in a group situation. There have been times when the tank will change targets and the hate will just snap to the pet and chain over to me, even if I switch the pet to the new target. This is mainly a mythical issue, but I've had the problem with the other pets. Add threat reduction to some spells. No one really wants to use aggro transfer/reduction on a pet. It's bad enough the summoner still needs it for themselves. Maybe those spells should apply to both the pet and the owner.
Scounts can't give hate transfers to pet, says that it cannot be NPC But in regards to the pets CAs, all they need to do is increase their hate gain. Atleast a time and half. I possessed my pet and used it's CAs, it seems that the computer does not cast the CAs fast enough or spam it like we do. So maybe the computer needs to start spamming the CAs more often to keep the aggro.
The thing you have to keep in mind is the more you minimize the amount of damage you do the better the pet will keep the aggro. If you haven't checked it, see how much spell crit you have and get rid of any aa that enhances damage or spell crit or anything else that you would normally have on a raid. Perceptor's command needs to be hit every time its up. Also keep in mind Bewilderment will help too most of the time depending on how much hate you generated. Sure it might take a hair longer to kill stuff than conjurors, but IMHO necros are more affective in soloing. But overall, minimize that damage, thats the biggest key a lot may miss.
Carthington wrote: Minimizing damage kinda defeats the whole purpose. If you just toss up a bloodcoil and let the pet do the rest of the dps, you can also throw a glob of paint on the wall and see if the mob dies before the paint dries. I've boxed a dirge, hate buff didn't really help much. Ranger for trick shot and just added dps, of course that doesn't work well. However, 2 boxing an Illy with the 25% double attack AA helps a little. Point is: We shouldn't have to bring a friend just to have our tank pet hold agro. It has held it fine before, they just messed up some scaling issues and don't want to fix it. Easy fix, give the pets stat boosts proportional to our spell damage and crit. For the tank, let him get extra hate gain per point of spell power, and melee crit equal to our spell crit. Simple.
