Highest EM

[micker]

Is there a big difference between EM 7 and EM 13?? Is there a huge noticible difference in pet power or would it be just a little better. Wondering how much better pets get as you go up the EM ladder.

[svenalo]

HUGE

[micker]

What's the highest group/raid em that will be in the next expansion?? Do they go up one or two levels??

[Tweelis]

Chances are that's under the NDA so no answer for a few days yet. I'd guess it'll be at least em10, probably em12. My assumption is based on previous expansions. Seeds of Destruction had em4 and em8 is the best group focus for house of thule. For SoF it was Servitor of Scale that dropped in zeka.

[svenalo]

Once I can answer, micker, I will.

[micker]

Ok Svenalo, can't wait to hear how the new expansion is for mages. Hoping pets got a nice boost!!

I figured that they would go up by 2, so EM 10 would be the highest group and EM 15 for raiding. Guess i'll know soon, can't believe the NDA is still up. No idea why there is an NDA anyways, wouldn't it be good to get opinions on changes from everyone?? Not sure what an NDA for an expansion accomplishes.

[Voragath]

Ok Svenalo, can't wait to hear how the new expansion is for mages. Hoping pets got a nice boost!!

I figured that they would go up by 2, so EM 10 would be the highest group and EM 15 for raiding. Guess i'll know soon, can't believe the NDA is still up. No idea why there is an NDA anyways, wouldn't it be good to get opinions on changes from everyone?? Not sure what an NDA for an expansion accomplishes.

The NDA accomplishes alot. People freak out enough over things on eqlive as it is; imagine if every little bug that was in beta was known to everyone even if that bug was going to be fixed? Also, there are things that pop up in beta that don't work, break something, get dropped because of time, etc. that never go live. That would upset a lot of people as well.

Finally, and most importantly is the focus. People would not be able to focus on the testing if everyone was screaming about this change, that ability, the other spell, etc. More noise is not the best thing for beta testing as there's enough during beta to begin with.

[micker]

Another question. Is say an em13 focus on pets 90+ going to give the same power increase as it is on a 85-90 pet?? Basically, do focus effects weaken on on higher level pets?? Like does em 8 really become em1 at some point, power wise??

[svenalo]

Asking anything about 90+ is the same as asking about VOA. We can't answer until the NDA is lifted.

That said, pet focus effects don't work the same way as nuke focus effects do. A particular EM focus only affects a certain range of pets by design, so once you get outside the range for a particular EM you have to get a new one. An EM focused pet is a totally new pet from the ground up; each release they retire some EM focuses and add others, rolling out a new series of pets for the pets of that expansion and the focuses that apply to them as well as add pets in for the focuses that might apply to the base pets of prior expansions.

So as an example, EM8 effects pets pets from level 76 to 95 according to Alla's. That means if you summon a level 1 to 75 pet, it will be unfocused by EM8. Level 76 air pet would have two versions - unfocused and EM8 focused, each having a totally different definition in the SOE DB - aside from both being air pets, there is nothing else the same about them. Similarly the water, earth, fire, and rage pets for 77 through 95 all have two definitions, making a total of 40 different pet definitions for EM8, all of which have to be tuned, tested, etc, etc. And that's just for mages, they do similar for necro and beastie pets. And then each focus adds more pet definitions to roll out, test, etc.

So no, EM8 doesn't become EM1 at some point, it just stops having definitions for pets it creates at some point...just like it doesn't have definitions for lower level pets to start with, and so does nothing for them either. Where it then sits in the relative ranking of focused pets of a given base pet would then depend on what all focus effects work with that base pet. But as discussing specifically where EM8 effectively ranks in VOA in what works on any particular pet would be covered by the NDA, that's about all that can be said on the topic right now.

[micker]

No just using 90+ as an example. What I'm saying is that the em ranks don't keep stacking up. So really a pet with em 8 in this expansion is equally focused with say an em 10 pet from the next one. The power doesn't keep scaling and that's deceiving. I guess if it did there would be a ridiculus difference between an unfocused pet and a top focused pet. Each expansion really only has 6 or so ranks of pet focus and the EM numbers mean nothing.