I am curious what is the state of pet focus at the higher levels? Up to level 105 it used to be that any pet focus helped. It is my understanding that at higher levels past 110+ mage pets come focused already with some innate EM effect equivalent to Enhanced Minion XX. I vaguely recall reading patch notes about this a few months ago. Maybe I was dreaming... ((I know that mage pets come with armor already for some years) So if you are level 116 you do not need to obtain pet focus unless you can get EM XXI - Shivery Earring of Summoning or better. What are the levels that mage pets get focused for "free" ? Does it apply to necros (and BSTs) as well? EDIT: I see that there is no free EM but pets do get Cloak of Enhancement even without focus: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/mage-pet-em-focus-question.277759/ has anything changed since ?
The biggest advantage of Pet Focus is the pets are summoned at a higher level. It's worth having any pet focus as long as the result is a higher level pet.
That's not correct. The pet level is cosmetic; the important part of a pet focus is the stats of the pet that is summoned. For a long time the increase focus rank -> focus rank has been standardized and is not higher for focus ranks that confer a higher pet level. As to the original question, pet foci have always had minimum/maximum levels. EM 22 is the lowest rank that will focus pet spells above level 115. The increase from an unfocused ToL pet to an EM 22 pet is the same as the increase between focus ranks (i.e., an unfocused pet is like an EM 21 pet).
Thank You Sancus for the thorough explanation! You are right every EM number does have a min max level range for the pets it summons. In a way it is nice to know that there is a floor of EM21 at 116 for those without a good pet focus. In low 100s there seemed to be no floor -> floor was EM0. More specifically clicking EM XIII on https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=117741 made a difference for a 101 air pet. (EM XIII has a level range 81-105) On the other hand it is sad that Summoner's Conflagrant Earing with EM XVIII (level range 91-110) became useless so fast. So how about 111 air pet, will it be roughly EM XIX or EM XX without any focus?
Looking at the stats that are easy to check, it looks like no EM -> EM 20 (on the ToV pets) is about 1.5X the size of the normal increase EM rank -> EM rank. Technically something like EM 18.5, though the scaling on ToV pets focus rank -> focus rank was unusually low anyhow.
I always thought the pet level did impact the ability for pet classes with bash (warrior pets, many swarms) to be able to have a bash potentially stun a mob... Where the mob level must be equal or lower than the basher in order for a bash to be able to stun/interrupt. Frequent stuns making pet tanking easier. Am I completely wrong there and/or just imagining that when confronted with a pile of ToL raid-focused mage/necro pets (120) and swarms (125) that mobs spend a lot of time being stunned?
I ran two 30+ minute parses, one with an EM 30 (level 120) ToL Earth Pet and one with an unfocused (level 115) ToL Earth pet, both versus a grim shade (level 117) in Shadow Valley. The only buff the pet had was Burnout. I made sure both were meleeing the whole time (and, thus, bashing). The level 120 pet took 1.93 hit attempts per second while the level 115 pet took 1.97 hit attempts per second (a 2% increase). If there was any impact from bash/relative level, it was very small. I did find two other things, though: Although the stats of unfocused ToL pets are like an EM 21 pet would be, they come with Cloak of Enhancement 20 (20% mitigation). EM 30 pets still have 25% mitigation. I double checked EM 28 for both ToL pets and ToV pets, and they also had 25% mitigation. I'm pretty tired now and need to sleep, but I guess I need to go through my old notes tomorrow (the 25% cap surprised me, but also vaguely rings a bell).
Entirely cosmetic? Pet take agro depending on there level if you ever tried tanking with lite blue pet and even con pet at same time you will see that mobs easily gain agro on the lite blue con. I also believe that pet use it level for taunt success. So you are probably correct in level doesn't affect pets, but their level does have an affect upon the mob they're fighting.
No. I didn't intend to suggest that, for example, a level one pet (with comparable statistics) wouldn't have some penalties applied to it vs a level 120 pet. What I was responding to was the common notion that the increase in pet levels conferred by pet foci are per se of substantial benefit. Increasing a pet's level from 115 to 120 (a five level change from an unfocused pet to EM 30) is effectively cosmetic. What matters is the statistics conferred by the pet focus. In CotF after the pet nerfs and TDS at launch, there was no parseable difference in tanking performance between group and raid focused pets. The foci still changed pet levels, but the increase in pet stats rank -> rank was too small to make any difference. ToL pets, with a comparable range of levels, have quite significant differences in statistics (and therefore performance) rank -> rank. The important takeaway for people is that 1) for a long time stat increases have been standardized (either linear increases or % increases) rank -> rank and 2) that to determine the benefit from your EM foci, you need to go out and parse it rather than looking at level differences. As far as aggro, in my experience, pet DPS output (and the spells they cast) has been the determinant of their aggro generation. I've never experienced a low con pet generating more or less aggro than would be explained by their DPS. Taunt success does take large differences in level into account (similar to resists).
Thanks for undertaking that effort. Makes me want to do further investigation into my prior belief here. I'll report back.
I know this to be false, at least for necro pets in the same level range. The difference between the best group focus at that level and last expansion's raid focus was the pet not tanking trash vs the pet tanking trash with a single merc healer. <edit> I will add that at the same time mage pets were tanking named when my pet could not even with an extra 5 levels and a prickle.
I think you're misunderstanding what I was saying. I never claimed that pet foci were inconsequential (their effectiveness depends on the level range). I said that their power increase was derived through increases in statistics, and that the pet level change per se is not impactful.
Pets gain a huge amount of hps this expansion, with each better pet focus. The base hps are so high now, that even a small percent more is a lot of hps. I did a lot of tests with the current 120 pets(mage/bst/nec) with different focus levels. Pets hps pretty much doubled from last expansion. Get the best focus you can, period. That is always my #1 item for my pet classes.
