Tank Jobs' Opinion on Summoners Tanking

[Tronic]

Oh really?

http://www.twitch.tv/lleuca/c/3072571

They had 4 healers and most of the players were ridiculously overgeared. I remember back in the day seeing onyxia being tanked by a shadow priest in vanilla wow. Then again his group was ridiculously overgeared too. Not really a good example of a real life application.

[Darksword]

My point stands. Titan hard Mode is a joke.

The endless, endless, ENDLESS threads complaining about his difficulty would seem to disagree with you.

I appreciate the positive comments so far though. For my own opinion as a career SMN (9 years in FFXI and now capped in XIV), my job is to do more than just be one of the party's DDs. Looking for ways to make the party's life easier, like reducing the amount of damage the tank eats from adds and thereby also reducing stress on the healer, is my foremost concern. It isn't something you do where it isn't welcomed, of course. Sometimes "sit in the back, manage Garuda and cast" is still the most perfect option. Still, its nice to know some tanks will welcome us as partners when the situation calls for it.

[Zikh]

The tanking pets are damn irritating. If the tank does his job properly you're being an idiot if you're trying to make his/her job more difficult.

If the tank doesn't know what he/she is doing, you can use the pet as training wheels. I've done about 10 instance runs with my arcanist, in 4 of them I had to use tanking pet to keep the healer alive.

[NZ_Player]

If the tank doesn't know what he/she is doing, you can use the pet as training wheels. I've done about 10 instance runs with my arcanist, in 4 of them I had to use tanking pet to keep the healer alive.

i disagree as the pet and tank will be competing for threat and the tank will run out of tricks long before the pet does essentially making the new tank useless and not teaching them anything

[RapBreon]

I reckon it could tank Cad and if the egi has a player controlled taunt, ADS as well. T4 would be a bit more of a challenge due to movement being so important. Regardless you'd have to replace the OT with a DPS for it to be a worthwhile strategy, but if you could do it, oooooooooh boy it'd be awesome. If I had a summoner in my group I'd try it.

They had 4 healers and most of the players were ridiculously overgeared. I remember back in the day seeing onyxia being tanked by a shadow priest in vanilla wow. Then again his group was ridiculously overgeared too. Not really a good example of a real life application.

From back when I viewed it; they had one healer was DPSing and one was a complete gooba. So only two healers really. Mountain busters didn't even get the egi into a dangerous amount of health. I do agree with them being over-geared however.

But it has more fucking health than an over-geared Warrior with food. If it has like ANY decent duration % mitigation skills, it's already gunna be a better BC tank than a WAR in static low movement fights :P

[Caraway]

Just... No. You are not only gimping yourself by using the tank pet in the vast majority of group encounters (there will always be exceptions but they are admittedly rare) but you are actually putting your party in danger.

All it takes is your tank pet grabbing aggro from the tank at the wrong time, turning the mob and the whole party getting hit with a cleave.

You need spectacular pet control to make it viable, and even still you're better off using a DPS pet to just burn the targets instead of trying to spread aggro amongst targets.

Again, there are fringe cases (the bees are a good idea if your DPS is poor) but the vast majority of the time you are wasting your MP summoning it, and wasting a Swiftcast CD that could be saved for something more life saving.

[Tanaya]

The vid posted isn't really a good example to base off of due to how heavily overgeared everyone is (plus they had 4 healers. Goodness.).

Not to mention if you die, then Titan-Egi goes away.