I noticed that enemies like to hit the pet in the middle, so I reorganized my party so that my tank was in the middle. They appear in the new order on the Party page, and I can select their attacks in the right order... but they're still standing in the original format, so enemies are still targeting the wrong pet.

To use visuals, let's call them 1, 2, and 3. I changed the order to 2, 1, 3. On the Party page, they stand like 2, 1, 3, and in battles, I can select their moves in 2, 1, 3 order, but in battles, they still stand like 1, 2, 3.

Is there any particular reason for this? I've tried changing the party to completely different pets and then manually changing back, but it didn't help.

More importantly, does the order they stand in actually have any effect on whether or not my one pet gets targeted so much? He's not the lowest level and he's water aligned, so I'm not understanding why else he might be getting so much attention. All three enemies go for him and stay on him until he dies. :L

No particular reason I know of. As you may have determined, you need to arrange for your tank (being the pet that can handle being bullied the most) to show as the pet on the far left of the party page (slot 1). This will mean they'll stand in the middle of the battle screen and yes, I think it often seems that they middle pet is more of a target.

Some of it can be attributable to abilities (like the Earth ones) which make that pet a target instead of others but I don't believe the Water alignment contains any such "taunt" abilities at the lower level.

Early in the game, while progressing the story-line, I did find that sometimes I had to rotate pets during battle to take one out of harms way and put another in. You can do this in the later zones using Manage and then the red arrow - if I recall correctly, the change takes effect after that round so you need to preempt the move a little.

Some of the alignments provide healing abilities which may focus only on the pet with the ability (Shadow) or can provide healing to the party as a whole (Light). So that might be something else you could consider.

I just find it easy to take my strongest pets and have them in battle. So far I can take two pets with me. I'm selling Luffox. Anyone want one?

They're cheap and only one is 100 coins. You can buy as many as you want from my Luffox. Don't care if you buy them all. I'm selling them for space. Check my hatchery and you will see why. I'm selling my hatchling Luffox too.

@Wander

Well, shoot. I guess I'll just have to keep an eye on him then, haha. Thanks!