Crab Spiders and Pet survivability

It's basically what the topic title says. I have a Crab Spider build with perma pets. My crab itself is pretty survivable with softcapped Ranged defence and 33% on Melee and AoE, plus perma Serum and 30%-45% resist on everything but Psi. But my pets die a bit too easily for my tastes even though I try my best to keep them within the range of my Auras. Here's what I'm sitting at right now:

- Between Tactical Training: Maneuvers and Leadership: Maneuvers, my pets get a 20% overall defence boost when around me.
- I also have the Call to Arms: Defence Aura for pets unique, so that's an additional 5% defence boost, putting it at 25% defence.
- The Expedient Reinforcement: Resist Aura for pets unique is also slotted. So that makes 25% defences all around and 10% Resist.

Is there anything else I add to my build to increase the survivability for my pets? Any help would be appreciated.

The only things I can think of are the Edict and Sovereign uniques (another 5% def and 10% res), Aid Other (to heal them when they inevitably take damage), and Provoke (to keep aggro off them and on you).

How much of a difference that'll make will depend on what sort of difficulty settings you run - if you're doing x6 to x8, they'll probably still die pretty fast; mine usually don't last a single spawn, so I mostly reserve them for cracking single hard targets.

Yeah, I'm usually running him at x8 either solo or duo with a friend.

Also, aren't the Edict and Sovereign uniques specific to the pet you slot them in though, not Auras?

You really just have to think of them as visible long-term DoT's. If you can approach it from that angle it's not too bad. On your own it's not so bad, as you can usually melt the spawn before it's a problem. On teams however, it can be frustrating. Summoning after the Alpha's been taken can help.. but they will die, alot, just don't get too bothered by it.

The more auras you can put up for them the better obviously.

There are just situations where you can't avoid it. The two new TF's in particular are espically nasty toward pets of any kind. MM's have to constantly re-summon. Since that's not really an option to us, even with perma-pet builds.. you have to recognize that even though you may have a perma-build.. it may benifit you to hold them back for the opportune moment.

Such is life, whattareya gonna do, eh?

SoA pets are disposable and like the power says-call reinforcements. They meant to help you out, and give you some extra fire power. I find them an inconvenience because they aggro someone before I have a chance to bu and surv.

With a recharge alpha (the route I'm going), you can fit in another proc in Call instead of the Rech IO - also do you need all 4 slots in stamina? I'm doing fine with 1 less - then you could drop it into spiderlings and pic up that 2nd missing proc.

Also, with radial boost you'll get 33% heal, so an unslotted Aid Other might actually be worth it - and you could recover a slot from Serum if you're not married to the 5%.

The provoke suggestion is a decent one, and one I wouldn't mind trying if I had a free power... I was already planning it on my tank-ish build. Hmm. I may try and squeeze that & AO into my build... maybe toss out the second assault & second passive status prot.

Thought: Do you use aim that often? Gaussian's is such a better fit for TT:L IMHO. With all you recharge, an unslotted aim is ~33s, putting a rech into it only brings it down to ~29, so I would suggest swapping those two out.