Mage pets able to tank?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by AKing2713, Sep 5, 2022.

  1. AKing2713

    AKing2713 New Member

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    Title says it all. Wanted to make a all caster group where the mage pet would tank. Was thinking Mage, Shaman, Cleric. Mage pet would tank (either fire or earth) and add a bit of extra nuking DPS. Shaman would buff, slow, and DoT. Cleric would heal, buff, and calm.

    Would this work or would my pet get smoked at higher levels?

    Coming from P99 so don't know much past Velious.
     
  2. snorks

    snorks Well-Known Member

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    It works better than a monk, but worse than a knight or warrior. If you plan to play on here seriously and exp in the best places, your best bet is to make a proper tank part of your trio :)
     
  3. Darchon

    Darchon I Feel Loved

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    In PoP mage pets are pretty poor tanks generally.

    Pre-PoP they’re fine using earth or epic to tank provided you have cleric or potentially Druid to heal them. Slowing definitely helps them of course as well.

    For reference, an Epic pet has 4K base HP, usable at level 50. The level 65 earth pet has 4.8k base HP. That jump though it’s nearly 20%, doesnt increase nearly enough considering epic was available in Kunark and 65 pet required PoP.

    With the summoned girdle/weapons (+600 HP), and either a VT gloves (+520/600) or Time book (+1040/1200), you can get your pets unbuffed HP up to just shy of 7k. Adding in Virtue and Focus they are just shy of 9k HP! However this require two priest buffs, time focus book and even after all of that they don’t mitigate anywhere close to a plate tank.

    With your proposed trio, I think that’s about the only way you could make it work? But pet tanks generally require single pulls and will be very difficult against any random named mob that is more challenging than a regular trash mob. I wouldn’t be shocked if you could make it work in Tactics or BoT, it would just be slow.
     
    Last edited: Sep 5, 2022
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  4. Braven

    Braven Well-Known Member

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    You could change your shaman to an enchanter and use charm pets to tank. Alternatively, you can go with the trio you like and just start grouping or finding a melee 4th when you hit PoP.
     
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  5. AKing2713

    AKing2713 New Member

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    Thank you for all the reply’s. I think I am going to give it a shot and see how it goes. I know someone mentioned enchanter but I really hate charming. I like to play rather casually and sometimes I have to do quick AFKs. Don’t like the idea of always having to be on my toes for a charm break. As far as specific items to get should I just focus on getting my mages focus items? Anything in the other two to make the group better?
     
  6. Draeko

    Draeko Active Member

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    You could use the shaman or the cleric to tank in that trio at high levels

    Shaman uses poison counter dots and slows for aggro. Cleric uses stuns. I'd say shaman is the better choice because they can go full dot dps tanking with cleric CHing

    For below 50 there are quested pet mods from Sol Ro Temple, the ones used for the epic. Or the elemental staffs from Phinny, PoHate, etc
     
    Last edited: Sep 5, 2022
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  7. Devour_Souls

    Devour_Souls People Like Me

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    Would a decently-geared magician out tank her best pet? If this were a poll question, I would select yes. I feel like my fairly under-geared enchanter out tanks the 61 air pet.
     
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  8. Quellious

    Quellious Member

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    Draeko does have a good point. For most kills Shaman tanking would be sufficient enough and if shaman tanks, he could pull more dps (and mage pet to do more dps from being on mob's backside) than if he were to sit back and let the mage pet build agro. Might even become super useless aside from malo/slow on pulls. If the shaman does tank, it'll allow kills to be much much quicker.
     
  9. Sverder

    Sverder Well-Known Member

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    There's lots of PoP content you can do without a tank at all via aggro kiting, so another possibility would be to do something like mage/necro/shaman, or mage/druid/X. Leveling up sub 50 the pet or pets can tank for most of what you want to do. Then in PoP you can switch to aggro kiting with the necro or druid, and the pets are just added DPS.

    I run necro/druid/sham, and while I can't trio the big named there is still no shortage of stuff I can exp or farm.
     
  10. Foxboxx

    Foxboxx People Like Me

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    I know you said all caster trio, but I feel like a beastlord would solve everything for you, as it becomes quite tanky and is perfect for quickly setting up at an exp spot and casually afking as needed. Plus, you said all your experience was up to only Velious. Lets you throw something new into the mix!
     
  11. Placer

    Placer Well-Known Member

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    It was slow and mana taxing, but at times I found myself on old AK using a fully buffed beast pet on a militis in BoT. A beast slowing that thing and a healer can at least do something therefore with a pet. The bigger thing which seems to have gone unmentioned is elem charming in BoT. That is one zone a mage can do quite a lot in PoP with a pet.
     
  12. Maelin

    Maelin Member

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    When I came back to the server I asked a similar question, check out the discussion here: https://www.takproject.net/forums/index.php?threads/pop-questions-returning-player.22075/

    I did shaman/mage/mage as my original trio here. Did that up to 50s and mage epic 1.0 in Luclin era. It was decently powerful through the early 50s but then felt pretty weak after that. In the PoP era, I would imagine that you would have to lean on groups hard between 46 to 61 since I don't think those level mage pets would be viable tanks in PoJ and beyond. Even the mage epic fares poorly as a tank in these zones because it is only level 46. The 61 pet jumps to level 60 and gets a big boost to regen which makes a big difference.

    I recently came back to server and leveled up bst/dru to pair with my mage. bst/dru/mage is way more fun and powerful than my shaman/mage/mage ever was. Something else wonderful about this combo is the ability to aggro kite things in PoP zones. Snare the mob, hit it with a dru dot, flame licks, have pets chase it around and whittle them down. Can hunt in Nightmare/Valor with essentially no gear this way up to 65 and AAs. Surprisingly mellow and fun way to the play the game compared to sweating slow resists and landing complete heals on poorly geared characters (or even worse - pets) against mobs that hit in the 200-400 range. As mentioned by Darchon & Thucy in the other thread, the lack of mob summoning in PoP opens up lots of interesting kiting trios and this is just one example of that.
     
    Last edited: Sep 6, 2022
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  13. pivoo

    pivoo People Like Me

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    Sorry for hijacking, have a couple noob questions. My bst/dru/mag are 55/56/57 I was just wondering where to go, what to do with them. I never played this way, but sounds like fun! Which part of PoN you can aggro kite, like you described without too much worry to pull additional mobs? Which mobs did you pull? I would of course prefer near zone line. lol lol lol

    So you pull and run around with druid, while bst & mag are on auto-follow, all you use these two for is, to send in pet for attack, correct? Or these two are parked somewhere and druid runs around/near them? Do you only use one DoT (have lvl53 Winged Death) or one of the earlier levels also, to cast two different DoT's on mob?
     
    Last edited: Sep 6, 2022
  14. Maelin

    Maelin Member

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    Hey no problem! It is really simple. I did directly south of graveyard, before river. Use harmony of nature to split the static mobs at river, and otherwise pull from the open area to the east. Run circles in that little area. With ensnare, you dont need a lot of room! Good luck.
     
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  15. pivoo

    pivoo People Like Me

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    Perfect, will do. I just saw someone there aggro kitting treants. If I have any questions later on, especial at later levels for Valor, I hope I can shoot you a PM.
     
  16. Maelin

    Maelin Member

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    Any time. Also, turn your pet taunt off. The mage and beastlord can just sit in one spot, send the pet and spam DoTs/nukes/sit down. It will be very easy to keep aggro on the druid with flame lick.
     
    Last edited: Sep 7, 2022
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  17. kai4785

    kai4785 People Like Me

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    I played with a guy for a few years here on takp that played Mag/Clr/Dru, and would extol the virtues of having 3 casters and a pet tank all the time. He loved that trio.
     
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  18. Cadsuane

    Cadsuane People Like Me

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    Ya, back on old AK at release, when 1-boxing was the norm, the person who beat me to 50 played clr/mag on 2 computers. Not a bad pair, and adding druid gives the option to kite also.
     
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  19. pivoo

    pivoo People Like Me

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    Thank you for the suggestion! I tried it and I like it. It is simple and easy to play, even for this clumsy player. :D
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2022
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  20. Shawn

    Shawn People Like Me

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    I do cleric, mage, ench.... Most of the time
     
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  21. sowislifesowislove

    sowislifesowislove People Like Me

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    I started with this combo but felt I needed a melee so swapped out a ranger for the mage.
     
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