BD Sub-pets summoning - Phoenix Freeshard

I never really bothered playing my BD, but after a year i thought i might give it a go again.
And thanks to the new Supp Base nuke, i thought i'll trow a respec his way.

I did mess with different specs longer than i had planned to, so i tested some stuff while doing so.

What i did remember, even though i was rather vague, was the "LVL" cap ... or rather the ammount of sub-pet you can summon, which was 81.
I used to summon 3x LVL27 Caster from Dark spec. (27+27+27 = 81)
It also works when going for 2xLVL33 and 1xLVL15 (33+33+15 = 81)

This worked for basically all pets, of all 3 spec lines, regardless how i mixed and matched them, with 1 exception though...
The Archer pets from the Bone Army Line.
If i tried to do 3x Archers LVL27 it would not work. Not even when i tried to mix with lower LVL pet.
33+33+15 same, does not work.

The Melee Pets seem to work fine with the 81 cap, 2x Melee LVL30 1x Buff/Caster LVL21, so no problems there.

When i summoned 2x Melee LVL30 1x Archer LVL21 it was fine.
When i summoned 2x Caster LVL33 1x Archer LVL15 it was also fine.

So the "problem" occurs when i try to mix the LVL27 and/or LVL33 Archers. It seems as if those 2 are treated higher LVL than stated.

I searched for mentions of this in past BD changes, but i didn't find anything.
Long story short: Is this a bug or is this expected behavior?

Sat 27 Feb 2021 5:32 PM by joshisanonymous

This might be expected. The cap is actually 75 total levels but it goes by the real levels of the pets. For instance, when you summon a level 33 subpet, its actual level is lower than 33. This makes it difficult to add up the levels to 75 on the fly.

Sun 28 Feb 2021 2:42 PM by DJ2000

Summon Bone Shaman
Level 27
Summon Level Max 24

Summon Bone Bouncer
Level 27
Summon Level Max 24

Summon Bone Archer
Level 27
Summon Level Max 27

I see now. ok.

3x LVL27 Caster -> 24+24+24 = 72
2x LVL33 Caster + 1x LVL15 Caster -> 29+29+15 = 74

All Archer pets have no reduction in their max LVL.
Melee pets only have a reduction at LVL42 (->36) and 48 (->44).
While all others have reductions besides the lvl15 and lvl18 ones.
Which unfortunately were the only ones i ever checked for Spell/level (15-15 / 18-18). So i always assumed that it stays true for all levels. And that also added to my confusion, when i saw that the Archers were indeed 27-27. Didn't realize that all others had reduced max lvls.
My bad.

All working as intended it seems.