What level is my animation pet?
 

okay, not all pets are created equal...
but how do i know what level the pet is that i just summoned?
is there a way to know by its name? (xabn, etc)

If their all blue, you can tell by what they hit for. The max for each should be on the wiki,and every level below max is -2 dmg,If I recall.

Yes as previous poster said, eventually you have to go by how much they hit for - use the pet table to see max hit. Until that point go by con message if possible (there is a window where there are two versions of blue text).

In P99 pets usually hit for their max dmg often, so you can usually know in one fight if you have a max pet or not (buffing with STR makes max hit happen more often if you aren't sure).

The RNG can be really annoying but sometimes you will get one on the first cast!

When available (depending on zone) find the weakest mob nearby to engage, this will increase the amount of max damage hits your pet puts out and is a quick, easy, and safe way to determine if you have a max pet.

If you don't already get a reclaim energy item so you can recoup the mana while de-summoning your non-max level pet and re-summoning another one to get max level.

Max pet is best pet but for most content I haven't seen a big difference between max and 1 or 2 levels below, at least as an ench. Bottom 2 levels will get trounced fast though. So you don't necessarily need max but avoid the worst ones.

I know because I'm too lazy to reclaim 5373773 times to get max pet.