71 Air pet observations

[Xestiny]

Hello all,

Couldn't find this particular thing discussed so here I go. I just ding 71, bought and made my lvl 71 spell Essence of Air pet. I know this pet is NOT lvl 71 itself as it was DB to me, but I do have Minion of Darkness effect item equipped when I made pet and am hoping it is lvl 70.

I load up pet with a mixed set of Elaborate and Elegant defiant plate gear, and 2 blazing brands http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=70765 which say Proc at lvl 70. My hope is the pet is lvl 70, gets a better proc than the Ixi fists I'd been feeding it, and I didn't waste a ton of plat on some Elegant gear.

Out we go to farm some easy AAs in The Hole... I notice immediately I get the "your pet's will is insufficient to command this weapon" message spam. So pet is not lvl 70 cuz no proc, right? BUT the DS message spam is 83, much higher than Magmaskin's 74 DS, so gear DS is firing. With a mixed set of gear tho I can't tell WHICH gear is working. This intrigues me enough to kill pet and gate out to try a little experiment. I run to Baz, make new Essence of Air pet and buy a full set Elaborate defiant plate gear EXCEPT helm, which I buy Elegant (has a shown 5DS on it, and 6DS unmodified). I equip pet with all but the Elegant helm and run back to The Hole. Sic pet on first mob and DS message comes across at 78, so 4 more than Magmaskin (must be the Elab defiant gear). After mob dies I give pet Elegant helm, sic pet and BOOM get 84DS message spam.

I conclude that not only can pet equip and get stats from lvl 70 REQ Elegant defiant gear, but gets the FULL REC stats? And yet, the lvl 70 REQ proc on Blazing Brand won't fire. I'm confused. Any insight from the pros pls?

[Malleria]

You pretty much figured it out yourself Pets seem to ignore req/rec levels on gear, but are still bound by the level requirements to activate melee procs.

[nako]

Pets ignore recommended levels on gear (ie they always get full stats) but they no longer ignore required level. You can test this easily by giving a low level pet higher level defiant with +DS or Spellshield on it.. or by giving a lvl 4 pet one of those DSH attuneable 2h'ers... they would equip them and hit for 100+, they do not post-fix (just after SoF was released).

This fix appeared around the patch that introduced full-gear death (spawn at bind with gear equipped), and most likely the code was simply applied to pets also. In other words, they could equip gear with a required level greater than pet level, but would no longer get stats from it. Hence the lower level pets wouldn't even bother equipping the big attuneable 2h'ers, since they no longer met the pet 'upgrade = true = equip' code.

71 Air pet is lvl 70 unfocused or with a lower end foci (MoDarkness), so I'm guessing what happened is you gave it the SoD "Blazing Brand", which is required 75 to proc. It has the same name as SoF "Blazing Brand" which is required 70.

[edit] i spel guud.

-nako/saryrn