The Magician's Tower

it would be nice if the group drops go up to em12, if the difference is group10 raid 15, thats getting to be rather huge

micker wrote: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.

To use HoT, the 86 pet unfocused is supposed to be stronger than ALL versions of the 81 pet (focused or not). There is no scaling comparison that you can use in the way you are trying to. At best, you can compare focused pets within a "group" to themselves, from unfocused at the bottom, then relatively stronger with each focus that works getting a stronger pet, but all of those are stronger than the group of pets derived from the next lower level base pet. An EM10 focused pet will always be stronger than an EM8 focused one...and as long as EM10 functions a level 81 EM10 will be weaker than a level 86 EM10 will be weaker than whatever comes next in the sequence. That really is all you can say about them.

Put another way, if EM8 when it was X best added 1khp, 3dmg pet swing, and so on, if you were correct then when EM10 is X best it would add similar numbers (whether as a percentage or an outright fixed amount), but it doesn't. EM10 when its X best may add more or less as it all depends on the pet tuning for pets derived at the point when EM10 becomes X best. I can't tell you why I know this without breaking NDA.

deadman1204 wrote:it would be nice if the group drops go up to em12, if the difference is group10 raid 15, thats getting to be rather huge

The pre-VOA stance was the group available focus in an expansion should equal the best raid focus from that expansion - 2. So in HoT it was EM8 for groups and which was the best in HoT-2, which was SoD. If that pattern holds, then in VoA you would expect EM11 as VoA - 2 is UF, and EM11 was the best in UF. Whether that is the case, or not, is still under NDA.

micker wrote: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.

If I am understanding you correctly, then yes, the EM numbers really do mean nothing, other than higher is better, as long as that particular EM actually affects the pet you are summoning. There might be less confusion if the in-game item descriptions of EM items were more.....descriptive, telling us what level summoning spells are affected. Another fact that causes some confusion is that the EM item's effect is tied to the level of the spell used to summon the pet, not the actual level of the pet, which may be higher than the level of the spell that summons it.

As for which pet is more "powerful", a level 91 EM8 focused air pet VS a level 86 EM10 focused air pet, we will have to wait for the NDA to lift for the beta mages to give us their opinions. It's really a moot point as a mage is always going to use his best focus with the current expansion's pets anyway.

svenalo wrote:The 86 pet unfocused is supposed to be stronger than ALL versions of the 81 pet (focused or not).

Hmmm, I wonder if that is actually the case? When the 81 pet was the highest level air pet we could summon, what was the highest level EM focus in the game? EM11? I have my doubts if an unfocused 86 pet is stronger than an EM11 focused 81 pet. Anyway, it doesn't matter because the first thing any mage would do that had EM11 when HoT went live is ding 86 and then he would have an EM11 86 pet.

I guess what I'm trying to say or figure out is..EM levels don't keep adding up. If EM 8 is the lowest and em13 the highest, then really EM 8 only increases the pet the same as em 1 did when it was the lowest in earlier expansions. So you could say EM 8 is really EM 1 now a d next expansion EM 10(just an example) would be the new EM 1.

They should relabel them something like EM 1 (91) to EM 7 (91). This way you know what is the lowest and highest focus for a level range is and its not deceiving. EM 15 makes it sound like it is 15 levels better then EM1 and it's not.

deadman1204 wrote:it would be nice if the group drops go up to em12, if the difference is group10 raid 15, thats getting to be rather huge

The highest group drop now is EM8 I believe and the highest raid is EM13, so that's a 5 level difference. 10-15 would be the same.

Personally I don't see where it's deceiving. If you continually get the best focus you can for the current content (whether you are a grouper or raider), then when the next expansion comes out your focus will still work. Also your labeling scheme wouldn't work because a focus works across several levels of pets, but does not have the same cutoff points as the next highest level focus, so it is unworkable to name them in some manner where the name indicates the strength would never be accurate.

Also, assuming there were no artificial low/high end on the focuses due to the work to roll out a new series and all focuses worked on all pets, if EM1 were to work on given pet, then it would focus far less than EM8 would and that focuses far less than EM15 would. Cutting off the low end does not change how much EM8 should do proportionally on a pet, they just don't roll out some of them.

Goranothos wrote:

svenalo wrote:The 86 pet unfocused is supposed to be stronger than ALL versions of the 81 pet (focused or not).

Hmmm, I wonder if that is actually the case? When the 81 pet was the highest level air pet we could summon, what was the highest level EM focus in the game? EM11? I have my doubts if an unfocused 86 pet is stronger than an EM11 focused 81 pet. Anyway, it doesn't matter because the first thing any mage would do that had EM11 when HoT went live is ding 86 and then he would have an EM11 86 pet.

Whether it came out that way in the end, that is what it was supposed to be.

Is it possible that a top tier raid focused level 89 Construct of Earth, could actually attain level 92, one level higher than the level 91 unfocused earth pet?