Taming2 ZZZ, softcore!! lol but yea taming is the 1 skill you can be proud of having at 100, other than yknow the kinda skills that require you to spam massive expensive mats. The lack of mounts really messes it up, before they had mounts all the way up to 100+ taming, but they'd aggro, still you could kite them.
conto, taming 100 was not a common skill in mo1. I mean people had it, but not like EVERYONE. In that way, it's kind of cool. It just requires some work. But the way SV has mobs atm is off. I mean you could level knockdown/knockback by blocking springboks iirc, so every seemingly hard skill had a 'hack.' But yea we managed to get 100 taming. There were just more mobs. I've never heard of the mercy mode taming thing, that's prolly a good idea. FOR PEOPLE WHO LIKE TO EXPLOIT!!
Just keep pushing, 100 taming is a badge of honor, one of the few in the game, esp if you got it without someone tanking for you (but I dunno if that's even possible anymore lol.)
Edit: I'll take the adventuring and the OO it's a pet that will give me exp all day over carrying 20 stacks of bone tissue + many of backing to level just reg 2h axes to max, and crafting for 2-3 points per box and dropping loot.