The Magician's Tower

Vincentt wrote:Google isn't helping me figure out summon tanking!

Does summon tanking involve being under 40% hp throughout the encounter?

There are probably various techniques but summon tanking is basically: beat on mob/quickly gain aggro then continuously back up so the mob is constantly summoning the tank--this allows for lower damage and more time for heals to land.

I get your points on summon tanking. I'm just telling you what I noticed that when the pets were introduced, shortly there after, agro changed. I was paying attention to this since it just started happening a week or two before. This might have been in the game forever but there was something that changed for my raid setting. Yes I agree proximity is a mechanic in EQ and has been in for a long time. Again this is my observation. I'm tanking it straight up. I get pushed out just a bit, not out of melee range, and he turns to a dps thats closest to it but not second in agro. Second in agro is another war and he's standing right next to me but a little closer to raid boss. Yet it turns to rog. I was under the impression that it had to deal with pet taunt that caused this? This again started happening at the same time as the described summon tanking event above (2 different scenario's). I've been raid tanking for a long long time and I've never seen this happen.

It's extremely frustrating as a raid tank when all you you're supposed to do on a mob is make sure its hitting you. Re-evaluating how you do your job, switching augs, changing disc order to no avail....blows.

Yes summon tanking is a weak tactic but on some events it's a must when you're low on healers. Have the tank run up gain as much agro as possible while not getting hit. Soon as your discs wear off, you start just backing up continously. Keep attach on so that you get a few hits in while you're in melee range and hit your short recast discs/aa's to maintain a high agro buffer.
Some events have mechanics that will not allow for this like getting a 100K dd if person highest on agro list is out of melee range (for example).

What you're describing in proximity aggro.
What happens is you are tanking and may be the top PC aggro person, but the pet has higher aggro than you. Once you move out of range, mob turns on pet since the pet has higher aggro. However since mobs will never attack a pet if there's someone else in range to hit, mob will like just smack the closest PC in range, hence people like your rogues get trashed.
With the ability for pets to generate far more aggro than you, as a tank (MT), you have to make sure you stay in range when other PCs are also attacking.
That's why summon tanking while other melee PCs are dps'ing is a very bad idea.
This mechanic has been in game ever since they changed the code to not allow pets to hold aggro over PCs in range.