Tuls wrote:What makes a bear more efficient for AoE tanking? I got my beetle cause I thought it could do that as well as any tank pet. Sorry for my ignorance I just recently got way too into my hunter and decided to research the hell out of everything so I'm still learning :]
Demoralizing Roar is an AoE debuff that reduces damage done by 10%, that the bear applies. Great for grabbing initial aggro, tagging spawns so that they don't get glued to you by healing aggro, as well as giving that added edge in AoE threat generation throughout the fight. So, bears are great tanks; they get used the most when I'm soloing.
I decided to try out a scorpid recently as a tank pet; tamed a Venomscale Spitter since they look more like tanks, but have yet to seriously try the critter out. They are going to be situationally useful; a disarm isn't always going to be possible, and only affects one target. But, when used against a single hard-hitting NPC that can be disarmed, your pet gets a nice chunk of threat and mitigates a lot of damage over 10 seconds.
Worms fell out of style when their AoE was changed so that your worm lost aggro while using it. However, their debuff still comes in handy. Not only do you burn through mobs faster, but your pet gets the lion's share of the extra DPS - and consequently more threat. Of the abilities that give your pet threat, only Thunderstomp doesn't deal Physical damage. By contrast, the only physical attack that gives you threat is Auto Shot. On top of this, worms are surprisingly clever, as TygerDarkstorm discovered. When faced with multiple mobs, a worm will try its best to maintain the Acid Spit debuff on two different targets at once. So, definitely worth a try if you're a tanking pet fanatic like myself.
Gorillas are another situationally useful tanking pet that can be a great boon at times. Their special ability is Pummel, a spell interrupt and 2 second partial spell lockout on a 30 second CD. The neat thing with Gorillas that Kurasu discovered is that when Pummel is left on autocast, your gorilla will only autocast the ability if his current target is actually casting/channeling a spell. This is huge when facing a boss that has an interruptable heal that will otherwise make killing the boss quite difficult. The only way to improve upon that would be to let your target get close to finishing their spellcast before interrupting it, effectively making your target waste the previous seconds spent casting.
Shale Spiders will provide both of you with a powerful DPS buff that doesn't require refreshing, and can also stun targets at range and for 3 seconds. The latter isn't too terribly useful for tanking, but you can find clever uses for it nonetheless.
In case you were wondering, I didn't bother mentioning turtles and beetles, since you already understand why they're awesome.
