Let $\mathcal {I}$ be an ideal on $\omega $ . For $f,\,g\in \omega ^{\omega }$ we write $f \leq _{\mathcal {I}} g$ if $f(n) \leq g(n)$ for all $n\in \omega \setminus A$ with some $A\in \mathcal {I}$ . Moreover, we denote $\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}}=\{f\in \omega ^{\omega }: f^{-1}[\{n\}]\in \mathcal {I} \text { for every } n\in \omega \}$ (in particular, $\mathcal {D}_{\mathrm {Fin}}$ denotes the family of all finite-to-one functions).

We examine cardinal numbers $\mathfrak {b}(\geq _{\mathcal {I}}\cap (\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}} \times \mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}}))$ and $\mathfrak {b}(\geq _{\mathcal {I}}\cap (\mathcal {D}_{\mathrm {Fin}}\times \mathcal {D}_{\mathrm {Fin}}))$ describing the smallest sizes of unbounded from below with respect to the order $\leq _{\mathcal {I}}$ sets in $\mathcal {D}_{\mathrm {Fin}}$ and $\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}}$ , respectively. For a maximal ideal $\mathcal {I}$ , these cardinals were investigated by M. Canjar in connection with coinitial and cofinal subsets of the ultrapowers.

We show that $\mathfrak {b}(\geq _{\mathcal {I}}\cap (\mathcal {D}_{\mathrm {Fin}} \times \mathcal {D}_{\mathrm {Fin}})) =\mathfrak {b}$ for all ideals $\mathcal {I}$ with the Baire property and that $\aleph _1 \leq \mathfrak {b}(\geq _{\mathcal {I}}\cap (\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}} \times \mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}})) \leq \mathfrak {b}$ for all coanalytic weak P-ideals (this class contains all $\bf {\Pi ^0_4}$ ideals). What is more, we give examples of Borel (even $\bf {\Sigma ^0_2}$ ) ideals $\mathcal {I}$ with $\mathfrak {b}(\geq _{\mathcal {I}}\cap (\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}} \times \mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}}))=\mathfrak {b}$ as well as with $\mathfrak {b}(\geq _{\mathcal {I}}\cap (\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}} \times \mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {I}})) =\aleph _1$ .

We also study cardinals $\mathfrak {b}(\geq _{\mathcal {I}}\cap (\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {J}} \times \mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {K}}))$ describing the smallest sizes of sets in $\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {K}}$ not bounded from below with respect to the preorder $\leq _{\mathcal {I}}$ by any member of $\mathcal {D}_{\mathcal {J}}\!$ . Our research is partially motivated by the study of ideal-QN-spaces: those cardinals describe the smallest size of a space which is not ideal-QN.