So you base your claims on anecdotal evidence for the vast majority of pets. "It has apparently flattened out at EM 17+, but other than the bottom two on the list those are essentially the Pet Focus tiers." Aspect of Air - EM8 and EM12, can parcel you both earrings if you want, I think Aspect of Air is No Trade but I can also parcel you some plat if you need it, I would use a smaller gap but at 81 those are the two highest pet focus it's possible to equip. Testing on mobs in Working Overtime since that's the only daily bonus HA I can get today and that's really convenient for Gate and run back, targeting the mob while it's still injured from previous attempt to be sure it's the same one and obviously waiting for it to regen to full before engaging. Night and day, feel free to parse it however you want or feel free not to parse it. Either way it would be nice if you stop making generalizations about "The differences between each rank are, however, small, like I've been saying." because it's simply not true without a qualifier. When the original post references testing on a Level 60 pet they can most likely get substantial benefit by investing the time and/or plat into upgrading their Pet Focus, the most important warning which I included in my first reply is that the Pet Focus won't necessarily work on your pet so caveat emptor.
The actual generalization that I definitely made in error was, "In general, though, the increases between pet focus ranks are very minor, especially at higher levels." That's inaccurate; the potency of pet foci vary greatly over the numerous level increase expansions, and many of them are reasonably potent. I should've written, "In general, though, the increases between pet focus ranks are very minor at higher levels," and perhaps further clarified "higher levels" to mean (91/)96+ (the last 6 years of pet templates). My second post and beyond that were clearly about those higher level pets. You can take sentences out of context from them, but they were intended to explain the inaccuracy of "It has apparently flattened out at EM 17+, but other than the bottom two on the list those are essentially the Pet Focus tiers." That's simply not the reason why EM foci are ineffective; it has nothing to do with EM 17. Instead, it's that the devs decided to drastically reduce the scaling between each tier starting in RoF. Going from EM 12 to EM 21 or EM 17 to 27 or whatever doesn't change the fact that the difference between ranks for pets made in and after RoF is extremely low. There is no situation in the future, unless the devs decide to increase scaling between foci, where the differences between focus ranks will be significant.
https://www.eqmagetower.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=83 This post explains what it does Basically it tells the server to load a different NPC. If the NPC doesn't exist for that focus, it loads the base (BST don't get affected by focus until like 60+ or something for example)
The Broken Mirror is after RoF. TBM is the expansion for which EM12 Aspect of Air (Level 81 spell, Level 86 pet) is created. The Dev(s) created templates in 2015 which are substantial upgrades. EM12 to 21 is only Level 96-100 pets. Shard of Air: No Focus - Level 95 Shard of Air: EM12 - Level 97 Shard of Air: EM21 - Level 100 Now explain your parameters for testing and for extremely low. I currently have a 93 Mage with EM14 not doing much if you want level appropriate passive pet AA. EM17 to 27 I can't test for some reason but in the future only Level 106-110 pets will meet the criteria for both focus.
Focuses were a mess in TBM because of the way the gear was made to be level agnostic. Note that the EM12 focus on that ear was the same for people that were level 105. You should not base any assumptions upon TBM gear. It was a novel idea that was very poorly implemented done by a developer that had never done itemization before (or after). Also note that Imprint of the Enhanced Minion gives EM XIII and is usable at level 86. That was introduced in CotF.
Everything was a mess in TBM. Thankfully they followed it up with EoK, which while smaller than I would have liked was pretty solid and not broken.
You dont want the pets to keep the gear when they die. If that was the case all pets would be tuned with the best possible gear in mind.
Either the pets will be tuned with the best gear in mind or droppable gear from Conflagrant upwards will all be flagged as NO PET. Imagine dinging lvl 106 and the first set of Conflagrant gear obtained goes to pet first before the player himself gets it. It's just not right. The way pet gear works is bound to be heavily nerfed if pet gear is ever made persistent. It's just not worth the risk of asking for it.
Just like Merc gear, I could see a select few slots being made persistent through a pet inventory window, without making pets OP in any way. I would love to swap out weapons and masks. Maybe a 4th slot would be reasonable.
I can’t follow your moral judgement here. I think the persistent gear is never going to happen, so this debate is just passng time; Having pet geared to the max is completely viable and ˋrightˋ from a main mage’s perspective. We pump an immense ammount of AA into it, and we used to manully summon armor and gear and equip it. Mage pets already wear armor, and they can aready equip more powerful armor, for example fom TS. I have given my pet more or less full sets of summoned or bazar gear hundred+ times over the years, if I had to guess. It does not change the maximum power potential, but it does make the malsimum power potential a LOT more accesible.
Shrugs... I think pet focus should have been done away with years ago. It's not an elegant implementation, and way more coding (even in templatized spreadsheet gear universe) than needed to create layers of all these pets over the years. They have to code a "bad" pet in to justify us wanting the generic slot focus... and then put a better one behind top raiding to be a carrot for pursuit... I'd be fine with AA and the gear you give it being all that differentiates one player's pet from another. It will never be up to me (lol) but I would just make the new pet(s) (for those with more than one type like mage) in the expac with the AA in the expac to focus it up. Pet inventory window mentioned in the thread is a neat idea. They probably prefer us having to poof the pet and regear if we want different weapons on them though...
