Help me understand

I have a Thugs/Storm MM that has achieved lvl 35. He's very fun to play. But something peculiar happens at times.

I keep them in Defending mode at all times, so we share incoming damage. Sometimes after I initiate aggro, place snowstorm on a mob, IceStorm has faded, they will leave one mob with just a sliver of health alive. I have to tell them to attack it. Why is this?

I use empty clips, actually have it slotted up, and along with my veteran attacks, I do contribute with damage when Im not choosing debuff targets, but its like, they want me to get the last shot in.

Also, I see they stop attacking if IceStorm will do enough damage to kill the mob. Is this to save end? Because End is never a problem for them anyway. How do I get them to keep attacking without telling them everytime? Is defense mode only important for the alpha strike? I'd think it would be advantageous to keep it on always, since I cannot heal myself. I don't want any attacks hitting me full force.

My suspicion is that you're slowing the critter's recharge sufficiently that it isn't attacking you very often. If a critter doesn't attack for a certain amount of time your pets will lose aggro on it and resume simply following you.

sounds to me like the critter is attacking one of the thugs (or nothing) rather than you.

It's a loophole in the BG mode agro - while on defensive they will attack anything which attacks them as an individual, or they will all attack anything that hits you. If you jump in and get the agro first they will attack anything thats currently attacking you. Each time a target dies they move on to the next target to attack them or you. If the last target is attacking only one of your thugs only that thug will attack back (quite common for mobs which are caught in AoEs and therefore your not their primary target unless you have taunted them in some way). If he's running away then he won't be attacking anything, and therefore nothing will attack back and you'll have to tell them specificaly to attack the target.

You'll always find situations like this, generally while using tankerminding tactics it's best to stay in bodyguard mode until the majority is down, and then flick to aggressive to mop up the stragglers and runners. Especialy once you've got the massive AoE damage which comes with the bruiser at 26 and the 2nd upgrade at 32 you'll find it's hard to stay at the top of the agro list even with the taunt from the power pool, and the incoming damage to you will be little enough that the damage sharing isn't worth it.

OK..thanks for the insight guys. I will try switching to aggressive after the majority is down, see if it hurts my survivability any. Thank you for the QRs.

My suggestion is to ALWAYS tell your pets which target to attack, never leave it up to them to decide. This is especially true for soloing. When soloing/duoing/small team, it is invaluable to direct pet groups to attack different targets at the start of an engagement as this then places all the aggro on the pets, one shot is enough. Then you focus fire on the targets in order of your priorities, depending on the situation. If you have the bigger creature debuffed then clean up the smaller or you can debuff a smaller one and take out the bigger.

Of course this is NOT a good idea for the tankermind.

Even if you are playing a tankermind (I never have) I would still suggest telling your pets all the time what to attack. But thats just me.

I have observed as a Bots/Storm tankermind (complete with Provoke) that the minions stop firing if the target isn't attacking frequently. That is pretty easy to set up between Hurricane and a good corner. As a workaround, I order the Assault Bot to attack a specific targets while keeping everyone else in bodyguard mode. That keeps 5 of my minions still protecting me while the assault bot mops up the remains.

Bodyguard mode doesn't apply if the minions aren't in follow-defensive mode. So it's a big risk to tell all of them to attack specific targets.