Obedience School

1. Attack  style="border: 2px solid ;" alt=""
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This is the basic command
that tells your pet to go attack an enemy. You'll find plenty of use
for this command. You can use it to get your pet to pull the mob and
take the first few hits of the battle. If you get and add and you want
your pet to off-tank, you can use the command to get the pet to attack
the new mob.



I have two very important notes about this command:

• Your pet attacks whatever mob you have targeting when you
  issue the Attack command. Make sure you can the right mob in your
  target reticule.
• I often find that my pet can behave erratically after a
  frenzied fight when I have "ping-ponged" from one mob to the next using
  the Attack command. In those instances, my pet runs away really far and
  attacks the next mob I pick from a great distance. To solve this issue,
  I usually have to dismiss the pet and summon a new one.

2. Follow  style="border: 2px solid ;" alt=""
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This command tells your pet to follow you. You pet automatically does
this, so you might ask why you need a command to tell it to do that.
Well, the command has 2 good uses:

• If you have previously used the Stay command to get your
  pet to remain in one spot, Follow will get it to come running to you
  again.
• You can use Follow to call your pet after you and you flee
  from a sticky situation to hopefully draw the train after you. If you
  forget to use Follow, your pet will stay and fight and leave the mobs
  near the rest of your group.

3. Return  style="border: 2px solid ;" alt=""
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You'll use Return often if you use your pet to pull. A key point to
remember about your pet is that mobs start off neutral
to it. That is, your pet can run by an aggro mob without drawing any
attention. You may find yourself using this feature to have your pet
pull the lone mob from the back of a camp. Once the mob is engaged, you
can tell your pet to Return and drag the mob with it. Return also
serves as a failsafe when you accidentally click attack while targeting
the wrong mob.

4. Stay  style="border: 2px solid ;" alt=""
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At first, I couldn't find much use for this command outside of
role-playing purposes. I would tell my pet to Stay when I entered a
house out of respect for its owner. Later, I heard from some players on
the PvP servers who use the Stay command to set traps for opponents and
to keep a pet of higher or lower ground while the owner went the other
directions.



Applying that same principle of trapping PvPers, I began to play around
with the Stay command in dungeons. Take a dungeon with narrow
corridors, say Kalendra's Coven, and you can use the pet to guard the
back entry way. Sure, the would-be adds will try to bypass the pet to
go for the players, but an alert pet owner or a Shaman who does not
need to face the group to heal can keep an eye out for the roamers
while performing other duties.

5. Dismiss  style="border: 2px solid ;" alt=""
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Dismiss makes your pet go away. There are a few instances where you
will want your pet to go away. The first is when you are in a town on a
non-PvP server. Removing the pet reduces clutter, sprites for your card
to render (which increased FPS), and targeting problems (it is a little
too easy to target the pet near any NPC). Another time you should
consider dismissing your pet is before
teleporting/evacuating/recalling. Though your pet will follow you to
your new location, it is likely that it will behave oddly and force you
to summon a new one anyway.

6. Always Assist  style="border: 2px solid ;" alt=""
src="http://media.tentonhammer.com/vanguard/gallery/albums/album47/6always_assist.thumb.jpg"
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This is the command I use most with my pet. It causes your pet to
attack any mob you attack. This is an easy way to get your pet to
change targets in the heat of battle without a lot of extra clicks or
keystrokes from you. Also, I never have the weird behavior from my pet
I described under the Attack command when I use Always Assist.



So far as a Shaman, I have identified two types of spells that do not
count as attack spells for my pet, meaning I can cast these without the
pet going to attack:

• Root
• Slow

7. Guard  style="border: 2px solid ;" alt=""
src="http://media.tentonhammer.com/vanguard/gallery/albums/album47/7Guard.thumb.jpg"
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Guard is the basic command that tells your pet to attack any monster
that attacks you first. This is useful for relying on your pet to save
you from adds when someone else is tanking in your group. It is an easy
transition to go from Always Assist to Guard. So far, I have not had
any luck in getting my pet to guard my defensive target.

8. Defend
Yourself  src="http://media.tentonhammer.com/vanguard/gallery/albums/album47/8Defend_yourself.thumb.jpg"
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This orders your pet to fight back against any monster that attacks it.
Now, you may recall that I told you that pets do not have inherent hate
built with mobs the way player characters do and wonder why this would
be a useful command. The utility lies in pulling multiple mobs with
your pet. If you send in your pet to engage one mob in a group of three
using the Attack command, chances are the other two mobs will aggro the
pet once it starts generating hate by attacking the first mob. Using
the Defend Yourself command once the first mob is engaged will cause
your pet to switch to the new targets as they add onto the fight and
build more hate with them.

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