You are mistaken, all my (4) Bane Dragons and Dread Mares were 4 slotters before Pub98, that's why I left them, they were useless to train only one slot. Did you not hear that I trained the same
one on TC from 3-4 and 4-5?
You are mistaken. Let me try to explain it.
After patch 97, legacy pets (those tamed before patch 97) remained the slots they were even if their wild or newly tamed counterparts were now a slot higher. However, their lore window said they were the control slots of what they would be if they were wild and fresh tamed with those stats. They would remain the stable slots they were unless you attempted to initiate the training process. At that time you would get a gump saying initiating the training process would update their control slot requirements and would increase by one. Only selecting ok at this point was the animal's control slot adjust.
Examples: This is all AFTER 97.
Legacy White Wyrm with 460 hits and 750 str was three control slots. Lore window said 4 =>5, only after "begin animal training" and selecting the gump that said it would update the control slots before initiating the training process would it increase to 4 control slots. A post 97 tamed white wyrm with 460 hits and 750 str would be four control slots wild.
Legacy Predator Hellcat with with 130 hits and 170 str was one control slot, I could control my pride of 5 hellcats even though their lore window said 2 =>3, only after "beginning animal training" and selecting the okay to the update control slots gump would it turn to 2 control slots.
Legacy Nightmare with 315 hits and 515 str was two control slots. Lore window said 3=>5, only after "begin animal training" and selecting ok to the gump stating ... would it increase to 3.
Dreadmare with 620 hits and 530 str was 3 control slots. Only after "beginning animal training" and selecting the gump to update the control slots would it turn into 4 control slots. Dreadmares have the stat allocation to fall into the 4 slot animal pool which is why they wanted updating.
What this patch did was not revert Banes and Dreadmares from 4 to 3, they were never 4 unless you clicked Begin Animal Training and yes to the gump stating control slots would be updated. It allowed them to be trained at their current/legacy slot level without... a slot jump before training began. This was considered part of the slot jump bug.
Yes, if you pressed that little training button before patch 98 your pets slot updated and there is nothing that can be done. This goes for all legacy pets whose wild counterparts are a slot above them. I made this mistake day 1 without reading the gump carefully on my legacy rare pred hellcat, he's now a forever 2 with stats equal to my legacy 1's, even though his brethren can now train successfully from 1=>3.