Good day! I'm quite baffled by the whole pet focus thing and how it differs so greatly from any other spell focuses that I've seen yet. My necromancer has just reached 77th level and was quite excited to try a new pet focus item that claimed to work on "certain" 76th - 100th level spells. Namely, the Blackmarrow Hooks earring that has Enhanced Minion XII. It's not working at all, however, for my necromancer's new 77th level pet spell: Relamar's Shade. With the earring equipped, or completely without any focus at all, the spell summons level 75th level pets that appear identical in every way. The item in question is 75th level required, but 80th level recommended. Would that make any difference for pet focus working or not? Likely not, to answer my own question, as an Elegant Summoner's Earring (Servant of Chaos) does work. Equipped with the Elegant earring, I can summon a 76th level pet. I was greatly hoping, though, that my newer earring would work correctly. Can anyone answer with any certainty at what point the Enhanced Minion XII focus will start to work? Are the pet focus requirements actually the base level of the pets being summoned? So that the actual spell levels might be inconsistant? Finally, unlike any other spell focus items that I've tested, *none* of my pet focus items are giving any spell focus messages that I can see. I've tested with this a decent variety of pet focus items up through 75th level now. I have item speech and focus effect going to the same chat tab, just to be clear. Do pet focus items not give any standard focus effect messages? Thank you all in advance.
The level of the pet with an Enhanced Minion focus may or may not increase the actual level of the pet. In almost all cases, the level of the pet (+/- a few levels) is not important as the level of the focus enhancing it ... it's a "behind the scenes" power boost. The only way you can truly tell if the focus is working is by parsing the damage. But in most (all) cases, you should notice that the max hit of the pet has gone up with the focus so I'd focus (pun intended) on that first to see if it is working.
@Brickhaus: Thank you for the quick reply. Would the 110 pet power that Enhanced Minion XII gives work entirely differently that the 40 pet power that Servant of Chaos grants? Again, I'm quite clueless to this new class, so I'm unsure how I can even view my pet's statistics in game. Servant of Chaos did bump the 75th base level pet up to 76th level, though. I suppose that it's also possible that the claim that the item only applies to "certain" spells might mean that it won't apply to the 77th necromancer pet spell?
I can't find the link for the bug report, but I've heard that there is a very long-standing bug for TBM era enhanced minion focus not working properly. Rather than working for 76-100th level spells, as the spell data and item information show, they only work properly from 81st+ level spells.
Code: 17181] Enhanced Minion XII Target: Single Range: 100' Resist: Beneficial, Blockable: Yes Focusable: Yes Casting: 0s Duration: 3.3h+ (1950 ticks), Dispelable: Yes 1: Increase Pet Power (110) 2: Limit Max Level: 100 (lose 100% per level) 3: Limit Min Level: 76 I've not heard of the bug you're talking about, but I can't imagine that it would affect this item since the spell itself sets the reqs for how it works. Did you try doing what Brick told you? There isn't always a "visible" way for you to see it other than the pet hits harder and has more HP. Another super easy way to check is to check it's max HP. If you've got a merc, set it passive, and summon a fresh pet without EM focus. Your pet will summon below full HP. Pay attention to what % your pet is at when you summon it. Cast a pet heal immediately (if you're slower, or your pet heal is slow to cast you may want to wait 1 full tick for natural regen to happen so it doesn't conflate numbers). Divide the amount you healed by the percentage it healed. This will give you approximate max HP for the pet. In example: Level 120 Beastlord with EM 31 - Pet was at 60% when I cast my heal and I healed it for 511332 and it hit 100% meaning I healed it for 40%. 511332 / 0.4 = ~1,278,330 HP. Level 120 Beastlord no EM - Pet was at 60% when I cast my heal and I healed it for 248069 and it hit 100% meaning I healed it for 40%. 248069 / 0.4 = ~620,172HP. I know my EM is working from this alone without needing to go out and look at max hit numbers and such.
What i also observerd, is that it depends not on the Spell or Caster Level, but on the Level of the Pet, so to speak, that i will work your Pet, has to have a base level of 76, and than it will go into effect. But as im no longer Playing a Pet Class, it could be Memories of Remnants of the Past, so take my Post with a Grain of Doubt
I had the same issue on my necro with that focus. Think I had Oozing Bone Spike and the focus didn't work until I got the level 82 pet. I could tell because my previous focus (can't remember what it was) made the pet a higher level and hit harder. Thankfully at that level with all the raid buffs from GL, I zoomed through those levels and got to use my better focus quickly.
My understanding is that the pet focuses work by mapping pets to certain dev-built pet templates based off that Enhanced Minion level. What has ended up happening is that certain items have slipped in whose requirements are lower than what had been built for that focus level. There can be two problems. The item's required level can be lower than the minimum range of the pet focus and/or the minimum range of the pet focus can not actually have appropriate pet templates for that minimum pet level. The TBM items (Oozing Bone Spike and Blackmarrow Hooks) hit both of those problems. Those items are equippable at level 75 but the Enhanced Minion 12 on them alleges to be pet level 76-100. I say alleges because, as you have seen, it does not work on pets in the 76-80 bracket. I have read what has been re-stated here that it starts working for the 81+ bracket. In doing a self-imposed progression run on FV with a group including pet classes where we were trying to get the best pet focus available for each level bracket, there have been others which don't work. At level 75, the Winged Gem of Command (EM3) is equippable but its pet focus range is 76-85. At level 80, we went through the process of Discord Tower flagging our pet characters to buy the Glowing Dyadic Quartz aug (EM8) from the Void which alleges to be pet level 76-100 but it did not focus our 76-80 level bracket pets. We had to drop down to EM5 (Golem-Lord's Earring of Control from SoF, i.e. the appropriate expansion for that level range) to get our pets focused.
