Editing Venomancer Tanking (section)

=== 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).