Question - Using pet as main tank (1 Viewer)

[Soandso2]

This is a regular Everquest question and does not involve macroquest as such. I hope this is the right forum for this question.
I am used to 2-box a monk and a bard, with a merc tank and merc healer. The monk is the main toon, and sends commands to the bard. The mercs work on their own.
I am now adding a third toon, a mage, since everyone tells me over and over again that a mage pet out-tanks a merc tank by far. But the merc tank has a lot of build in features. I dont need to tell it to attack, if the monk is designated main assist and puller, and the merc tank is set to main tank. The merc tank taunts and tanks.

Will the mage pet command "/pet guard here" work in a similar manner? The pet has taunt on. Will it take over and tank the mob the monk pulls into camp automatically, or will the mage have to tell the pet to attack?
Also, any other how-to advice for this type of trio is welcome. The merc healer stays, obviously. Should I switch out the merc tank for a merc DPS (I have zero experience here) and if so, should it be melee DPS or caster DPS?

 

[Dragonslayer]

Somehow the mage has to tell its pet to attack. This can be done using one of the mautomation-tools available here, like Kissassist, RGMercs or the plugin mq2mage .. just to name some of the possibillities.
There are mobs, which has some kind of "anti-pettank"-mechanics, like mobs in raid-zones, where the mobs will prefer to attack player chars over pets if both are within melee-range, despite the pet should be the no1 on the aggro-list. So, i.e. if you attempt-to farm luck-augs going to fight trash-mobs in raidzones, or some of the other specific mobs, you should be aware of that behavior of the mobs.
Generally, if you have a mage with a decednt pet-focus its pet should perform well as main-tank.
In this case, most ppl switch the tankmerc to a melee-dps, as for a long time the melee-mercs perform much better, than the wizzard-merc.
But it is maybe worth to give the wizzard-merc a try, if you want to be shure to have the most efficient team, as at the start of the actual expansion, the wizzards got a decent boost.
I still use always melee-merc over wizzard-merc, as I rarely use mercs, so I didn't took the time, to check the actual state of the wizzard-mercs.

 

[Soandso2]

Somehow the mage has to tell its pet to attack. This can be done using one of the mautomation-tools available here, like Kissassist, RGMercs or the plugin mq2mage .. just to name some of the possibillities.
There are mobs, which has some kind of "anti-pettank"-mechanics, like mobs in raid-zones, where the mobs will prefer to attack player chars over pets if both are within melee-range, despite the pet should be the no1 on the aggro-list. So, i.e. if you attempt-to farm luck-augs going to fight trash-mobs in raidzones, or some of the other specific mobs, you should be aware of that behavior of the mobs.
Generally, if you have a mage with a decednt pet-focus its pet should perform well as main-tank.
In this case, most ppl switch the tankmerc to a melee-dps, as for a long time the melee-mercs perform much better, than the wizzard-merc.
But it is maybe worth to give the wizzard-merc a try, if you want to be shure to have the most efficient team, as at the start of the actual expansion, the wizzards got a decent boost.
I still use always melee-merc over wizzard-merc, as I rarely use mercs, so I didn't took the time, to check the actual state of the wizzard-mercs.

Alrighty thanks a lot. I am not a raider, so that part won't be a problem.
I write my own Lua scripts for my toons (not because I am in any way better at it than this community, but because it is fun) so I will have to figure out something that works.
One thing that I have forgotten to ask about is exactly HOW the pets are better tanks than the merc tanks. Do they have more AC and HP? Do they hold aggro better? Do they do more DPS? All of the above? A game patch message a while ago said "mercs now operate at their full potential". Not sure exactly what that meant, but I would still assume that the mercs now are "better" than they were before the patch. But pets are still better tanks? (I guess there would be an uproar in the mage community if they were not. Sorry, talking to myself here...)

I think I'll just play around with the mercs. Monk-Bard-Mage-Pet (tank)-Merc healer-Merc melee DPS-Merc caster DPS and see how that goes. I noticed from a friend who also uses a mage pet as tank, that her melee DPS died a lot due to aggro issues. I know that mage uses a water pet. I use an air pet, and if I give it two aggro weapons, perhaps my pet holds aggro better.

 

[Dragonslayer]

Pets should take less damage and deal more DPS than a merc-tank. If you have a good pet focus you may use a water pet, as it deals the most damage which results also in more aggro. If the pet focus is not on par with the content and your monk can reliably pull singles, I would go with the airpet, as the stuns it delivers, reduce the incoming damage to the pet.
If you expect multiple mobs to come, the earthpet may be a good choice.
This all is related to groupcontent with few to no lag.

If you experience lag, all possible should be done, to avoid that the pet casts or procc anything, as each cast and procc may result in meleerounds to be resetted/left out.
This may lead to the point, that low-level summoned weapons without any proc can result in more DPS and aggro than any recent summoned weapon, included those with aggro-proccs. Also at the ui of the pet you can create a button surpressing any pet-casts. Something like "petnocast" or alike. There are also petbuffs resulting in proccs, which may lead to reduce dps. Some of those procc defensive rune or shields, which you should evaluate if you nee them for survivability or you can keep them of the pet.
All depends on the quality of the petfocus available. The better the focus, the more proccs can be left off, the better will be the pets dps and aggro.

There are mobs around, which not behave normal regarding to pet-aggro. Those mobs ignore pet-aggro complete as soon as a player-char is within melee-range. For those mobs nothing can be done but either stay away with player-chars or else tank with a player-char.

As far as I know all mobs in raid zones behave this way, but also some mobs in normal group-content do so.
I have no insight, if there is a way to check beforehand, if a mob will behave "normal" or "antipet".

 

[RobRenfro]

My advice is for the 3rd toon roll an actual tank then use a healer Merc and 2 DPS Mercs there really is no substitute for the real thing. No Mage pet or Merc tank if you want to experience the most out of group content. You'll just end up doing it later. Might as well do it now.

 

[Dragonslayer]

As I saw it mentioned at the dbg-forum: since serveral expansions now, mobs in hero-missions act like raid-mobs and they will attack player-chars, as soon the player-chsrs get within melee-range. So if you plan to do missions, be aware that all player-chars need to stay in range-fight, if you want the pet to tank there.

 

[zarroth]

Yep, EoK and beyond, they did not set the flags properly, and pets will not take aggro over a melee from that expansion onward inside of missions. It sucks, but an all caster group is still highly effective...just don't melee anyone in missions. For my caster group, I use enc/bst/3xmag/dru. For mage pets, I use earth to tank, water and air so I get the benefits of each whenever it applies and haven't had any issues. However, it is considerably slower than a melee or mixed group. As an alternate to this, I use enc/clr/4xmag, and I think I prefer the alternate more and more lately, and use one of each pet type. No real reason to use the fire pet, except for the fact it is the one I was missing I suppose. Either way, dps is way more than sufficient without anyone meleeing in that setup. I will most likely replace the mage with the fire pet to a wizard once that class plugin releases. Given I am getting tired of playing bard after playing one as a main since 1999, I'll probably make this group my main afterwards. Good times