Venomancer Tanking

Before we begin: Get yourself a Barbarian. And a Cleric. Barbarians are superior tankers, and with a Cleric to keep them alive you'll usually do far better than you will trying to tank yourself.

See also: Aggro for a basic guide to making monsters act the way you want them to.

Tanking

Tanking means "Getting the monster to hit you instead of everyone else."

A successful tank will have lots of defence and hitpoints. They will also have skills to make the enemy hit them instead of others.

Venomancers do not, usually, make particularly effective tanks.

Their pets, however, do.

Basic Pet Tanking

You've almost certainly done this already. Let us recap.

Send your pet to hit the monster.
The monster starts hitting your pet.
Hit the monster yourself.
The monster keeps hitting your pet.

Simple. But there are some caveats.

First of all: You have to be careful to not pull the monster off your pet. The safest way to do this is to ensure that you do less damage to the monster than your pet, although what with skills generating a bit of hate above the damage they do you have a little bit of flexibility on this.

Any time a monster is about to start an attack, and isn't stunned or whatever, they will pick a new target, if there is one available that they hate more. You can't do half the damage in one lump and then let your pet do the rest and expect the monster to stay on the pet - it needs to be (roughly) half the damage at any given time.

Secondly: And contradicting the above advice - it's relatively safe to pull a melee monster off your pet, you've got time to run away before you get hit and if you do this just before the monster dies it doesn't really matter who has aggro.

Thirdly: Your team-mates probably do more damage than you, and almost certainly do it in larger spikes. So you need your pet to out-damage them.

Gaining Pet Aggro

The first, most important thing here is:

Use high level damage-dealing skills

This splits out into several smaller pieces of advice:

You have to use the skills. Your pet will only auto-attack with the first skill in the list, by default. Either change the default skill by right clicking, or left-click (or use Alt+2,3,4) to trigger them manually.
You want to have high level skills on your pet. This means buying skill books at Mrs (or Mr) Zoologist.
You want them to be skills which deal damage. Bash is the most obvious choice, but the set of elemental bashes (Lightning, Sandblow, Toxic Mist etc.) are all just as good. Flesh-ream and pierce work too. These are often available cheaply in the auction house, or you can go to the zoologists.

Now, of these skills, Bash (and the bashlike skills) are probably the best to start with. They have the advantage of having a very short recharge time (short enough that if you put four on a pet your pet will probably never get a normal attack in).

They also do respectable amounts of damage, which is good in and of itself.

Fleshream has the advantage of generating a little bit of aggro when the bleed ticks, which gives you a bit more flexibility.

Pierce doesn't really draw enough aggro to be useful for that purpose. It can save you casting Ironheart though.

Multiple Monsters

Ok, you remember why you learnt Venomancer Luring right? Because the monster brought all his friends to come crush you? That still applies. And worse.

Ok. Things start off as you expect. Your pet attacks something, all his friends turn and start in on your pet.

Next, if you haven't cheated and skipped ahead in this guide, you heal your pet. And now, all of a sudden, almost every monster turns round and blows you away.

This is because whilst your pet attacking their friend generates a little bit of hate, your healing the pet generates a lot. (As does attacking the friend yourself, being in the area and breathing too often.) So they turn on you.

The monster your pet is actually hitting will probably stay on your pet, at least.

So. In a situation with a lot of monsters, if you don't want to be stuck with most of them yourself:

Have your pet hit them all at least once before you throw any heals.
1. Or, at least, hit the ranged and magic ones. Your pet may be able to smack the melee ones before they reach you.
Don't throw mass amounts of damage onto the ones your pet it not concentrating on.
1. This means avoid using your AOE (Area Of Effect) skills (Noxious Gas, for example, is a bad idea)
2. This also means avoiding using your DOT (Damage Over Time) skills (such as Blazing Scarab and, again, Noxious Gas). Because these will keep doing damage even if you have shifted your pet onto a new target.
If they're close to death, you can just kill them.
If you start a cast and the pet is about to kill it, switch the pet onto a new target. Or abort the spell (hit escape). No sense wasting time.

Remember - monsters have this nasty tendency to wander around and respawn on top of you. A single monster situation can easily turn into a multiple monster without warning.

Keeping Pet Aggro

The simple tip here is: Your pet mustn't stop attacking. Or, if they do, so must everyone else.

There's a few reasons your pet might stop attacking:

Excuse the first: Pet Death

If your pet dies, (or you accidentally unsummon it. Don't laugh! It happens! Ok, well, try not to let it happen, but...) then you may be screwed. All that Aggro you took? You've still got it. Your new pet has none.

If you didn't damage it (or didn't damage it much) yourself, then this is the same as Venomancer Luring. Get some range, summon a new pet, and go.
1. If the monster is close to death, finishing it off may be faster than trying to summon a new pet.
2. If you've got friends with you, have them smack it. Although Wizards and Clerics are probably in an even worse situation.
3. Kite the monster instead of taking it. (Kiting, in this case, meaning run screaming for your mummy, whilst throwing spells behind you now and then.)
4. Don't forget that you've got the second best set of self-heals in the game. You can afford to get injured occasionally.
5. Last, and least: Have a cleric ready to bring you back to life.

Excuse the Second: Switching Targets

Ok, sometimes you need to switch the pet onto a different target for a while. (Because it just popped, because something decided to hit the Cleric, whatever)

This is pretty simple to deal with - just stop hitting the old monster, and start hitting the new one. Make sure everyone else realises too.

Excuse the Third: Resting

Ok, not really an excuse this one. But sometimes your pet may just decide to stop attacking for a while. The normal cause is lag.

It can also happen outside, if using a flying pet and the monster moves. The pet will often get stuck trying to fly through the ground and stop hitting the monster.

This can even happen indoors, especially in FB51, if the monster decides to run up (or down) a cliff and your pet can no longer reach him.

All that can be done is to watch out for these, and fix them up when they happen. If you don't notice, you'll often pull aggro.

This can actually solve the problem, as long as you only pull a little bit. The monster moves to attack you, the pet re-acquires it, hits it, the monster switches back to the pet and you're fine.

You can also use the 'follow me' to persuade your pet to move somewhere new, and attack from there.

Unsummoning your pet should be a last resort if you've already damaged the monster yourself.

Lag there isn't much you can do except hammer the attack and pet heal keys, and hope, and apologise afterwards.

Flesh-Ream

First of all, this isn't the Barbarian skill of the same name, although it serves a similar purpose.

Flesh ream does a fairly nice chunk of damage, and causes bleeding, which is damage over time.

This generates a nice chunk of aggro, and can work to your advantage.

For example - if your pet runs in, puts fleshream on one monster and then starts attacking a second then the first monster will keep gaining hate on your pet. Enough hate that you can probably get in an attack or two before it decides that it hates you more.

Which, if it's not a terribly tough monster (or is earth based, making it wood vulnerable) may be enough to wipe it out.

There is a downside, however: If the monster can't hate your pet (unsummoned or dead - or even just far enough away) and the bleed ticks, then the pet will hate you.

Not normally a problem, but worth mentioning. If things go badly wrong, and monsters have fleshream ticking, then things are going to get worse before they get better.

The other disadvantage to fleshream is its recharge time. It just plain takes a long time to come back up compared to Bash.

Roar

Note: This is not the same as the Barbarian skill of the same name. Not even slightly.

Frankly, this deserves its own guide, but in short:

Roar makes the monster hate your pet more than anything else in the world. The monster will attack your pet next (though if it's already mid-attack it will finish what it's doing first.)

But.

It doesn't make it hate your pet very much more than everyone else. It doesn't take very much effort for you (or others) to pull the monsters off of your pet again.

Higher levels of the skill do draw more aggro.

It is best to treat a monster after a pet-roar as though it was newly pulled.

So, the good part is: (Nearly) Instant effect. You can grab the boss off of the cleric effortlessly, rather than needing to out-hate them first. (Which can be tricky if the cleric is chain healing themselves, which, because the boss is eating their face, they may well be.)

The bad part is that this isn't very much use for holding Aggro. It can in fact hurt your efforts, reducing the hate from previous damage and skills to just the level of the roar.

Use with caution. This makes a very bad default skill, but a very useful emergency skill.

Good Pets to Tank with

As I said in the introduction: A tank needs good defence, lots of hitpoints, and a way to keep the monster on them.

Several pets partially meet this description. One almost completely meets it. None are as good as a real Barbarian but here we go anyway.

Magmites

Also called Golems. These walking lumps of rock, first available at level 18 outside the human FB19, have stupidly high physical defence and hitpoints.

They also do decent damage, and have a couple of decent aggro generating skills.

They have the disadvantage of not having a terribly high magic defence (important later on) and, although not actually vital for tanking, they are so very very slow that it's worth mentioning.

There's really no reason to not at least try out a magmite.

If you're dead set on not using a magmite, then the scorpions and beetles fill a similar role, trading a little bit of defence for damage.

Antelopes

First available at 30, from the hills east of shining tide, these pets are often said to be good magic tanks.

That is, they have a high magic defence. They also hit pretty hard.

As an added advantage, they have a self-heal which can give you a bit more room to attack.

The only real disadvantage is that you don't face a great many magical enemies at that level.

Frog

The frog is a rare pet, with a lot of magical defence, and a decent physical defence. It doesn't hit very hard, though. Very fast.

Shadou Cub

The Shadou Cub is another rare pet, and another decent magical tank. It's more of an all-rounder though, having a decent physical defence.

It has the advantage of having a suite of decent aggro-generating skills, including pounce.

Baby Hercules

Legendary pet, from the Cash Shop (or from other players who bought the bits there)

This pet gets its own full section later on. For now it's worth saying that this pet has a stupidly high defence, stupidly high magical defence, more hitpoints than a battleship and the offensive capabilities of a pink blancmange.

Direct Damage Pets

If the monsters don't hit particularly hard, and most non-boss monsters don't, then a direct damage pet is actually a better choice as a tank.

Doing more damage, it holds aggro better, meaning you can unload your spells more quickly, meaning that the monster dies sooner - which is the object.

Of course, if the monster does hit hard, then you need to heal more, or put up with having a dead pet. So this isn't always the right choice.

A good choice of direct damage pet for this purpose is the eldergoth (Level 41) because it is useful in other situations, and comes with 'Roar'.

I don't advise this as a primary tank, but as a secondary ready to go, it has big advantages.

(The eldergoth, being a ranged pet, also has some special tricks available)

Tanking Yourself

No, this doesn't mean making sure that you survive your own attacks and attack no one except yourself. That would be strange.

This means that sometimes, very rarely, you may actually be the best choice of tank - rather than your pet.

This is a very rare situation. But worth knowing about.

I shall take Krixxix (an elite quest monster, outside of Orchid Temple) as my example.

Krixxix punches far above his weight in levels. He does a lot of damage. Huge amounts. Earthshattering amounts. Your pet is petfood, amounts.

He also has both a physical attack and a ranged magical attack. And this is where you step in.

As a Venomancer you can take magical hits reasonably well. If you can keep him on you, then with potions (or a cleric) you can survive that.

So, in this situation (where a monster will hit you for magic, but absolutely cream your pet, it is actually better for you to tank.

How do you do it? Just reverse the usual advice. You need to out-damage your pet (and your group)

This is one of the few times that you can really stretch and unload your arsenal. Ironheart as soon as it recharges, lucky as soon as it recharges, make sure that the enemy is poisoned and on fire at all times. No need to heal your pet, no need to stop. Don't forget your spark!

Well, some need to stop. To stay alive you probably need to use your healing skills on top of potions (unless you have apothecary items or a cleric)

You also need to make sure that your pet doesn't outdamage you. You may need to turn off its aggro dealing skills for a while. If you've got 'reduce magic defence' skills, use those, they're great.

(In case it isn't clear, by staying at range and using magic attacks, you cause Krixxix to use his magical attack in return. Others, including your pet, can hit him at close range, but as long as you keep aggro, he will ignore them. Be careful though, many bosses have an AOE and can hit you all at once...)

Right. Enjoyable as all that is? It's almost certainly a suboptimal (if not actively bad) idea.

First of all, a wizard is almost certainly better than you as a magic tank. (They have element-specific buffs) Secondly, a ranged pet can possibly do it better than you. Thirdly, just go and get a group. A barbarian and cleric will do the job, if they're high enough level.

But getting your revenge on Krixxix is sweet, and pulling aggro off a sensible-level Barbarian is fun. You don't get to do it very often, so enjoy the chance when it presents itself.

Hercules

TODO: Great defence and HP, crappy attack. Mention reflect.

Reflect

TODO: Why it works, why it doesn't work, how to get the most from it.

AOE grinding

TODO: Big fat warning. Practice practice! Noxious, keeping it going. Good starting area.

Ranged / Magic Monsters

TODO: BIGGER FATTER warning. Priority. (Usually) don't grind, why at least one is good.

TODO: Ranged pet to force monster to use its alternate attack.

--Vitenka