Topaz Carbuncle's potential

[YanDere]

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 *^*

[aswedishtiger]

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

[NeonC]

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.

[Nichigo]

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.

[JeniLinsky]

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!

[YanDere]

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

[Elysaine]

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.

[Supersun]

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

[SeraviEdalborez]

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.

[Kunimatsu]

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.