Editing Venomancer Tanking (section)

== Hercules ==

The [[Baby Hercules|Hercules (Herc)]] is the tank of choice at higher levels (although it is available even at level one).

* It has a huge defense, and a long-lasting buff to massively increase that defense.
* If has a huge magic-defense, and a long-lasting buff to massively increase that defense.
* It has a tonne of hitpoints.
* It doesn't have a particularly great attack...

But it has reflect.

=== Reflect ===

Reflect works, basically, in the same way as your bramble buff.  When a monster hits the Herc, a big chunk of that damage is sent right back at that monster.

With the stupidly high amount of defense that the Herc has, it's often the case that monsters will kill themselves on the reflect before they can kill the Herc.

This reflected attack counts as your Herc hitting the monster, and generates [[Aggro]] as such.

Put together, this means that you can have your Herc concentrate on one monster whilst the others create plenty of hate even though the Herc is ignoring them.  So you can, amongst other things, heal the Herc ''before'' you have had it hit everything in the area.

The disadvantage of Reflect is that it only works on melee physical attacks.  It won't help you with ranged attacks, or magic attacks.  Though it will work on a few boss AoE attacks.

To get the most out of reflect, you want to have as many monsters as possible hitting it (obviously not so many that the Herc dies), so that the most total damage is done in the time.

For absolute maximum efficiency, switch the Herc and your own attacks between the monsters, and use AoE attacks.

As a note, technically there's nothing stopping you putting reflect on another pet.  Except that the scroll is only available in a high level dungeon and sells for tens of millions in the auction house.  Still, reflect will work the same way whatever you put it on.

=== AoE grinding ===

'''OK, you've got to be careful.  Getting this wrong is a recipe for having ten monsters walk all over you.'''

This can be done with other pets, but the Herc makes it much much easier.

The basic principle is simple.  Get a lot of monsters to all hate your pet, then use Noxious gas on them all in one go, so that you do a huge amount of damage in total, and can kill more monsters than you could one at a time.

There's really nothing for it except practice.  You need to learn how long it takes your pet to get enough [[Aggro]] on each monster that they won't come after you when noxious lands (and again, when it ticks).

You need to learn how many monsters your pet can safely take on at once, and how fast (and where) the monsters respawn so that you can replace the dead ones at a useful rate without overwhelming yourself.

you need to pay special attention to the modifiers - especially increased defense (which will cause the monsters to hate you more than the pet) and increased (and sacrificial) attack - which you will need to kill sooner than normal monsters (or heal more).

So yes practice.  Good practice areas include the Scrunchkin Beserkers near kings feast (just north of Krimison) and the various Aerox just South-East of there.

With the introduction of the legendary pet Harpy, a different type of AOE grinding is available for venomancers. The Harpy comes with a spam-able AOE wood magic attack that can even work as a continuous AOE much like the seeker's vortex or the wizard's dragon breath. 

If you have a target available, set the Harpy to continuously AOE on it while you pull monsters to your pet. Alternatively, pull monsters and then AOE at the same time with your pet. Keep in my that the Harpy is more vulnerable than the Hercules so the main difference is that with the Harpy you have to pull monsters and kill them fast whereas with the Hercules you have the monsters aggro the pet and then AOE when it's safe (safe meaning that you won't pull aggro off the monsters).

=== Ranged / Magic Monsters ===

'''Ranged / Magic monsters do not trigger reflect.'''

'''Really.  They will go for you in a heartbeat.'''

So, if there are this sort of monsters around then you will need to have your pet hit them the old fashioned way.  Which means you need to go for them first.

Usually this also means that you can't AoE grind on them.  but there is one exception.

When you've got a lot of physical monsters and you intend to finish them off with AoE attacks, your pets own physical attack its pretty much going to go to waste.  So in this situation, having one ranged monster for your pet to attack can be useful.

There are also several monsters which have both a ranged and a physical attack.  A good example are the red dodo's in FB39.  These will happily stand off at range setting fire to your pet, but if your pet closes to melee range they will also happily fight back - killing themselves on the reflect.

Most of this class of monster won't chase your pet, however, so unless they happen to be close together, you usually can't persuade more than one at a time to go physical.

On the flip side of this - if you have a pet with a ''ranged'' attack (such as the Cactus, an Eldergoth or the legendary pet Harpy) - then you can often persuade a monster to use its magical attack instead of a physical attack.  (Be sure to turn off your pets default skill, or it will run up to use it, triggering the close range attack. This only applies to the Cactus and the Eldergoth however. The Harpy has ranged attack skills by default.)

This is useful if the monsters ranged attack is particularly weak, compared to its physical attack.  Which is a fairly rare situation, but worth knowing about.