The Magician's Tower

svenalo wrote: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.

See this is the problem. EM power doesn't keep increasing even though the numbers do.

For Instance
EM1 pet hits for 10% more damage and 10% more HPs
Em 5 pet hits for 50% more damage and 50% more HPs

couple expansions later
Em 5 pet hits for 10% more damage and 10% more HPs
EM 10 Pet hits for 50% more damage and 50% more HPs

You would expect with EM10, that the pet would hit for 100% more damage and HPs if it kept scaling from EM1. It doesn't and each expansion the EM start over so that EM 8(for example) becomes the first pet power increase instead of the 8th level increase that the name suggests. If it kept scaling, EM 15 would mean the pet is 15 levels higher on the focus chart then a base pet, when its probably 6 or so.

Danille wrote: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?

You mean a level 91 unfocused air pet. Good question.


Micker, I see what you are saying and you have a point. Each new expansion obsoletes a number of pet focuses and the actual number following the "EM" keeps climbing higher and higher, but the focus effect isn't really getting better (for the current expansion's pets). I don't think it's deceiving, it's just a lazy way of naming items. I thought about it for a few minutes and I was unable to come up with a better naming scheme that didn't sound stupid or like something from a math textbook.

Danille wrote: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?

Pets have had a set max level from focii for the past few expansions. So, in your example, if the max focus when that pet came out made it level 91 then any other focus for that pet also makes it level 91. In short, the answer to your question is no.

Though, things can and do change in everquest

Actually its a better way of naming items than the old way where each focus had a name unrelated to the others. EM with a number is easy to compare to the others...without looking it up where do Spire Servant and Servant of Chaos fit? When they switched the naming (think it was when SoF was released) to the EM style, it was a great improvement.

I agree, the old naming got out of hand. They need to come out with new names each level raising expansion. Like Superior minion 1-5 for the next expansion. This way you don't have Enhanced Minion 10 and think its some super focus, when its the lowest focus for that expansion.

Except that that would not work given that some affect only some of the new pets. What focuses work on an expansion's pets is a combination of new ones, and a bunch of the old ones.

Take level 76 pets...

EM1 and 2 work on 71 through 85.
EM3 and 4 work on those at their minimum, but EM3 cuts off at 85 whereas EM4 cuts off at 90.
EM5 and EM6 work on 76 through 90.
EM7 through 12 work on 76 to 95.
EM13 doesn't work on 76, it is 81 to 100.

So when HoT came out just how would you have named them? As soon as you say "well the new ones get Superior Minion" but unfortunately you now fall right back into the problem of the old names. HoT had 2 new ones, so EM12 would be Superior Minion 1...but where then does the old EM11 fit? If you changed its name to Superior 11, then on the 85 or 76 pets at some point you have a conflict of trying to figure out where things fit. Basically you end up with a convoluted naming that would drive us all nuts again like the old naming did.

The real problem here is you are expecting the name and power rating to imply how much focusing in concrete terms is done on a pet - but the devs stated when the new names went in and pet asked what the power number meant/did, that it all was just a relative rank and didn't mean anything in specific other than that.

So EM7 seems to be the lowest focus that will work on the 91+ pets. Last expansion was EM 4. The highest group focus was EM 8, so that should mean EM11-12 will be the highest group focus in the next expansion. The highest raid focus was EM13, should be EM 16 in the next expansnion im guessing.

EM 11 drop in windsong zone from THE CONDUCTOR named (pos 1405, neg 1400 ),was a stationary mob,can pop from other mobs around also.
other loot is an augment = 40ac,110 hp + 8 dex.

bobipet wrote:EM 11 drop in windsong zone from THE CONDUCTOR named (pos 1405, neg 1400 ),was a stationary mob,can pop from other mobs around also.
other loot is an augment = 40ac,110 hp + 8 dex.

I take it this is a tier4 group named?? smurf that's a nice aug for a group drop!!

Conductor is in windsong which is a T4 zone.