Topaz Carbuncle's potential

I'm ACN lv20 now, I studied a lot the two Crabuncles, and now I can say that while Emerald is a fine DPS, Topaz is a wonderful tank *^*
He takes reduced damage and takes lots of aggro.
Every time I try to make him tank, the party's tank gets upset and says "do your job", but during a Guildhest I used it anyway and no one had a single HP damage :O
I saw the tank DPSing and the CNJ just walking around, while I was DPSing as ACN and casting a Physick every once in a long while.
But still, I'd like some advice from any experienced ACN/SMN/SCH about this: should I let Topaz tank in dungeons or should I always use Emerald when I'm in parties?
P.S.: Looking forward to Titan-Egi *^*

tons of bad players pre 50 during my journey to summoner which is my 4th 50. especially in dungeons I almost always use Titan just to ensure group safety

You should not use Tank pets in Dungeons, great for solo and boss fates. They do come in handy when the sh*t hits the fan and need a tank, swiftcast/tank pet. For the most part you are a DD, so do damage and leave the tanking to the tank.

you should let the tank tank when he's in the party otherwise you are:

a) taking someone else's job
b) hurting your DPS because now you're using a lower DPS pet as well as diverting some of your DPS to healing...all the while, the tank is doing as much DPS as he'd do even if he was tanking.

I admit that ACN and it's associated jobs have alot of utility potential with their pets/skills, but you still need to keep the order in your parties. Don't force a tank out of his job just cuz you want to try something unconventional. If your party's ok with it, then by all means try it. Fair warning though: the tanking potential of these pets become exponentially lest effective at higher levels. There's a point where they just can't hold aggro relative the rest of the party's damage.

The other night, I was in my THM clothes, and I waited through the DD queue to get into Sastasha. Something like an hour after I queued, it popped, and I found myself in a party with a CNJ healer, an ACN DD, myself, and a tank. The tank was the kind that you strongly suspect is only there to get away from the DD queue times, and he ended up ragequitting on us after the second giant clam fight. We looked at each other, and decided to try with just the three of us... and the ACN's Topaz Carbuncle.

Long story made short, we did just fine... cleared Sastasha with just the three of us and Carby. Now, obviously, substantial caviats apply here. It was the level 15 dungeon. All three of us had brought our A game, and none of us was without cross-class skills. Still... we did it.

I do think that you should, under normal circumstances, leave tanking to the tank. It's what she's there for. And when I'm wearing my GLD pants, I take pride in doing a good job of tanking, and I've had circumstances where I just could not pry aggro off of someone's Carby... which didn't make me the happy. Also, as noted, if you've got the Topaz Carby out, you're taking a hit in your ability to do damage. On the other, other hand, I've seen the Emerald Carby start fights the party wasn't really ready to start yet. So if you have your Emerald Carby out, make sure you have it on a tight leash!

Oh, well, thanks for advice ;)
I plan on getting lv50 on DoMs first, so I'll use a lot ACN from now on, waiting for some Coil group for the WHM (my FC does Coil only when I can't play XD).
I think I'll do the SMN before the SCH, just because I already have WP/Ifrit/Garuda/Titan weapons for SMN XD

You should not be using tank pets in a dungeon :) However, from personal experience. Done a few runs as Arcanist in dungeons. And once I decided to summon Topaz Carby to use as a tank. Because the tank we had never used any of his aggro improving skills. So one attack of the DPS or a heal from the healer would give them full aggro. Topaz tanked the dungeon like a beast.

Again, not the way it should be played. :)

Your party will love you if you use Topaz Carbuncle intelligently in the Sunken Temple of Qarn.

Tank pets do roughly 1/3rd less damage than their DPS counterparts on average. The added security is nice if you don't trust your tank, but you should never open the dungeon with tank pet.

In some situations you can use the pet intelligently to offtank something as pseudo-crowd control. But, without meaning to be rude about it, this is a bit beyond most Arcanists/Summoners that I typically see.

Tanking dungeons using topaz carby was some of the most fun i've had through leveling, usually brought on by losing the tank to connection issues. Losing the tank before Brayflox final boss was probably the most fun, using place to move out of the poison pits and maintaining sustain so the WHM didn't get overwhelmed.

As people have said though, if your tank/party is competent then there's only a few specific times when a tank pet is more useful.

You don't use Topaz/Titan under party circumstances UNLESS:

A) the tank drops from party and you guys don't want to sit there and wait around. It's good to clear trash and stuff but at upper levels, it will not be able to do bosses and yes, I've tried, even with a dedicated healer focusing on pet lol, the mechanics ultimately get the better of you.

B) the tank has trouble doing his AOE rotation and you find that monsters are peeling away from tank towards you

C) the tank dies and you need an emergency tank to take over while the healer swiftcast+raise and heal him back to fighting condition

One thing I like about leveling and Topaz is that it is capable of tanking Fate bosses so if no one's around, feel free to bring it out and start the Fate! Just don't forget to heal it using Sustain+Physick

I think using the tanking carbuncle is perfectly fine (coming from a person that plays a tank); I like to run dungeons with my husband who uses the tanking carbuncle to either serve as another meat-shield to soak up some damage from a boss or to keep the adds busy while I tank the boss. My husband also pulls with the tanking carbuncle. From my opinion it helps the healers out so they don't get overwhelmed with healing my marauder and I don't have to worry as much about dying from crappy healers that don't heal me in time. Basically play what you want and see how it works out in your group; if they want you to do more damage play the other carbuncle or if you have a lot of adds and need another tank, play the topaz carbuncle.

tanking with carbuncle is perfectly fine imo. i have participated in entire dungeons run with a carbuncle tanking, basically carrying the tank that we were running with because they were that bad.

and yes it can tank bosses if it's properly maintained (i have seen a carbuncle do this).

I only used Topaz/Titan in certain situations (like the bees on first boss in Qarn) or if we had a bad tank that wasn't capable of tanking multiple mobs very well. If you have a good tank there's no reason to use your tank pet.

As a tank, it REALLY annoys me to have to compete with a stupid yellow piece of $!@# when I'm doing just fine and holding aggro on all mobs. I see too many noobs running dungeons with topaz, even starting the dungeon with it. As a melee DD it's equally annoying if aggro is switching back and forth having to run to the rear of the mob.


I can understand if the tank is really bad, topaz does have it's uses, but give them a chance first. It's also amazing how defensive people get when you ask them to switch their pet. I'm not trying to tell you how to play, but when you're just playing WRONG and effecting the party I have to say something. I had one guy desummon his pet and use NO pet for entire instance after we all got on him for using topaz.

DD = damage dealer. Not tank. do your job... your job is damage, and arcanist are already on the low end of the damage scale even without playing wrong. Emerald carbuncle does the most damage and doesn't annoy the party.

If you DO need to use topaz, PLEASE use it intelligently. i.e. issue the "sick" command to other mobs, NOT the main mob the entire party is attacking and the tank is holding fine. Topaz offtanks are sometimes useful and I don't mind if people are intelligently playing them like this but so few actually do.

When you're in a dungeon, you're there for your role. Your default setting should be to maximize your role. Ironically, a few days ago I ran two instances where I was running conjurer and got paired with two arcanists. In the first one, the arcanists wanted to heal -- they were spending half of their time casting physick instead of laying dots and doing dps (overhealing the tank, of course, because I was doing fine). We had a substandard run, slow and painful. In the second one, both of them had Topaz out and were clearly trying to tank the instance (the tank took very little damage over the course of the run), and again, slow and painful run. I'm a fine healer, and our tank in the second run was fine too. It's awesome to have utility, but you should start out a dungeon in the role you queued as, and you should generally stick to that role. It really sucks to queue as a healer expecting to do a healing job and end up being shoved out of the way by overexcited utility players.

Today I did Halatali with another ACN, he kept Topaz all the time and that made me notice what are the issues in doing so.
Trash mob should never be double-tanked unless they're too many and the tank is dying, because they'll just go right and left while the two aggro parameters of Topaz and the tank are nearly the same.
I used Emerald nearly all the time but Topaz became useful when we understood the tank was clearly undergeared and he was overpulling.
We did a 3 tank run XD all went pretty well and the tank almost (almost!) never died.
When we arrived to the Hall of the Bestiari I said it loud and clear, "switch to emerald please", because 3 tanks are a real waste against a lv20 boss.

All the storyline missions up to level 30 on my ACN, I was the main tank, main healer as well as dps. Heal with the regen, its fast cast and costs no MP. Topaz tanks better than low level classes before they get all their later abilities. DPS wise, its just DoT spam and Ruin inbetween.

Even at L50, there's people running AK with 4 DPS, SMN Titan does the tanking..

Edit: At lower level where a lot of players are new, and some parties without CC, sic Topaz on second and third mobs, allowing the tank and group to focus down the main target. You just regen once every 10 seconds for Topaz to keep tanking the 2 adds. It works wonders.

It really does not tank better at lower levels, people are learning at lower levels and using tank pet just disrupts that. It may be painful for some of you who can single AK while standing on your head but the early dungeons are good for players to find out about how to use their class. If you are playing with your friends and doing low dungeons together than go for it, do whatever pleases you. I just think in DF you encounter all levels of players and should work as a group.