Traits on companion gear are pointless.

Red_Feather

They are so weak it doesn't feel like they are defining the companion at all. RPG games are supposed to feel like our choices matter.

FrancisCrawford

Red_Feather wrote: »

They are so weak it doesn't feel like they are defining the companion at all. RPG games are supposed to feel like our choices matter.

They're probably stronger than traits on player armor ... relative to companions' overall dubious strength, of course.

Ippokrates

When I started to play ESO i look at those stats and think: Really? Magicka steal with 168? With skill costs around 4-5k? It is some joke or what?

Now I know how things works and that MS is quite powerful and useful tool

So take for example penetration bonus from purple item - 1300 per piece. Not sure about rings and weapons, but for the sake of discussion, cummulate 12 pieces with penetration bonus only and... you will have 15600k pen. The penetation better than some players can have. And without any debuffs ^^

Mythreindeer

They are stronger than would appear. As are companions in general.

phaneub17_ESO

I'm focusing mostly on cooldown reduction so they can spam their abilities faster between auto attacking droughts.

Red_Feather

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

I'm focusing mostly on cooldown reduction so they can spam their abilities faster between auto attacking droughts.

I thought about that too, but with a full set of legendary gear I bet the cooldown is 30% and I've played other games where that kind of reduction is just a small part of the stats they use not the whole thing.

These traits need something more. Even a Major Trait + Minor Trait on higher rarity gear would feel nicer.

hrothbern

I think these traits are already pretty strong, especially when chosen for a good fit with the technical combat role in your team.

For now a good enough start of adding the practical concept of a compasnion and develop from there, from the "incubation room" of our daily practice in Tamriel together, improvements.

Not only the gold gear items in perspective.

Red_Feather wrote: »

These traits need something more. Even a Major Trait + Minor Trait on higher rarity gear would feel nicer.

Perspectiver like what you propose in your post above.
Whereby I think that a minor trait of the same 9 kinds at a value of 1/3 of the current major trait would already be very nice.
I can also imagine glyphs, whereby we do have our own customising choice, whereby you can add armor, reduce cooldown time dodging, increase block mitigation.

But first I would give the combat technics some time to see how it all works out in our daily practice. Get the glitches out, the tweaks in. See how popular it becomes. The bread and butter in the groove stuff.
See if it is after the concept of the CP addition many years ago (now in maturity phase), a new dimension to the game.

And I would guess that after the DK like Bastian and the NB like Mirri other "class like" companions come first.
I can also imagine variations on the "classes" with the racial whereby, besides ofc the appearance, only the racial passive changes.