EM8 pet focus on HoT pets?

[Ecko]

Hello there all, So I had a question I was hoping someone could help me with. I have done some searching and yet to find it addressed so I thought I would bug you good people. I have EM8 focus and recently purchased the HoT expansion. I was happy to see when I hit 86 that my pet was a yellow con. I foolishly assumed he was level 89 as to how that focus worked on 81-85 pets. Upon hitting 87 though I see he is a white con. I am still 87 so I do not know what happens to my pet at 88 and on but I am thinking he will stay at level 87.

My questions are if anyone knows if this is right and is this possibly something that is to be fixed? I imaging that with EM 9 and 10 now those will make him 88 and 89 consecutively, But I am of course hoping that I don't need to get a higher EM as the prospect of that in any foreseeable future is fairly nill. So I was just hoping maybe someone here could confirm my fears. And of course thank you for taking the time to peruse my thread.

[Voragath]

Pet con color is largely irrelevant when talking about pet power from the EM focii. The focii summons a pet of a new template. If they wanted, they could make all the new summoned pets level 86 and it wouldn't matter. To test if your focus is working, hit your pet with a symbiosis spell while using the old focus and see how much % his health drops; then, summon a pet with the new focus and do the same thing. If the new pet's health drops an equal or greater amount of %, then the new focus is not working.

Currently, EM 4 and higher are working on HoT pets. Also, iirc, all the new HoT pets are summoned as one level higher than the spell when focused. For example, the 86 air pet is summoned as a level 87 when you put a focus on.

[Piemastaj]

Currently, EM 4 and higher are working on HoT pets. Also, iirc, all the new HoT pets are summoned as one level higher than the spell when focused. For example, the 86 air pet is summoned as a level 87 when you put a focus on.

Unless Earth pet is broken this is wrong. When you summon an earth pet with EM XI or EM VIII he stays dark blue to a level 90 person. Unless I misunderstood what Vora meant by it.

[Voragath]

No, I'm probably wrong. They took down beta threads too fast this year so I wasn't able to save the tests we ran. It's possible the level does not change for the Earth pet since it's a high level already. This just further proves that con color is irrelevant for determining focus function. I checked the library and looked at the SoD pet chart. It looks as though no pet will break max level minus one for it's summoned level; meaning the earth pet will always be DB to a level 90. But, like I said, I could be misremembering the level chart for all the focii.

[Gnomeland]

You need raid focus to make the pet level 89, same as before, when EM 8 was a raid-only focus.
Pet levels do matter because it affects skill caps, etc., so a higher level pet will tank significantly better, especially against mobs lower level than it.
What it basically ensures is that pets will always tank worse than players with "equivalent" gear. TBH 86+ pets don't tank that well though they do have a significant amount of hps. The spikes in damage are really hard to deal with for merc healers, though. One merc healer is not enough to heal the pet against harder content.

[Voragath]

You need raid focus to make the pet level 89, same as before, when EM 8 was a raid-only focus.
Pet levels do matter because it affects skill caps, etc., so a higher level pet will tank significantly better, especially against mobs lower level than it.

Perhaps somewhat but not significantly. Everything, AC, dmg, base dmg, etc. is all based on focus. In SoD, EM 4-8 summons a pet at the same level but they are quite different from each other.

Here's the SoD info we got:


EM 6-8 were the new ones for SoD. The air pet alone had a 287 raw ac change in 3 levels of EM focii. The earth pet saw a 337 change over the same range. However, neither pet saw a level increase. Check their base dmg and base attack changes too. Also, their cloak gets better mods as well. Really, the meat of the pet changes are based on those values (the ones on the table, not the cloak). It's possible the pets' skill levels change based on focii too and not level. It's been said over and over to ignore pet con and really, we should. Each pet is it's own NPC so the devs have to create each from scratch. No formula says "increase x value by pet's y level" (aside from fire pet nuke). There could be some values determined by the pet's level such as when calculating resists as Prathun revealed a few months ago. Things like that where a level is used in some sort of calculation may play a part into things but it would necessarily be just a minor thing. Also, it has been mentioned pets just don't get the same caps as players and that's probably related to the fact they are NPC's and will follow those rules.

[Eandori Raintree]

Great data tables on the SoD pets + Focus!

Are there similar data tables for the HoT pets?

[Merlaina]

No. We asked for such a table in beta but pets were one of the last things to finish being balanced.

[Eandori Raintree]

Well it sounds like (based on what i have heard and read) that as one of the last things to balance, it didn't fully happen. I keep hearing that the 86 to 90 pets have better DPS but tanking only seemed to get better with increased pet level. No actual increases to make them very capable of tanking solo-xp mobs without pet focus.

[Voragath]

Well it sounds like (based on what i have heard and read) that as one of the last things to balance, it didn't fully happen. I keep hearing that the 86 to 90 pets have better DPS but tanking only seemed to get better with increased pet level. No actual increases to make them very capable of tanking solo-xp mobs without pet focus.

Pretty much. IMO, pets never did get tuned properly and that's a result of last minute changes and tuning. With them not doing changes to these after launch, hasn't been said but seems like a rule, these should be the first things done and not the last. We just flat out got hosed on pets this go around. They were probably too busy pimpin' out the BL's and Pallies.