I can't confirm lions will still jump back a level, but with one attempt I didn't get it to jump back. Story is:
This week my lion bonded so I tried to get it to jump back a slot. First 100% gain I took poisoning to drop piercing mastery and associated skills. I used remaining points to plus up stats and split regens points to not max them out. No points spent on Hits or Strength. I started training with the hopes that the pet would drop back to 2 slot as reported some do. No luck. I trained the next 100% and tried spread points around to not raise Hits or Strength to high. I read it still might jump back a slot but it did not. My lion did have a Barding Difficulty of 70.0 (some have only 60). I anyone has information that I took a wrong step, please let me know.
