Companion Nameplates/Item Locks NEEDED

deleted221205-002626

@ZOS_GinaBruno Morning lol... Ive been exploring Mirri quite a bit recently and enjoying the complexity of fine tuning her builds but I've noticed I'm having some difficulties in two primary areas..

1. Companion Nameplates/Healthbars.. There need to be an option ingame to always show only your companion or pets like in a group or something. in a group or bigger doing dragons for example its nearly impossible to find your own companion to receive or provide support for or with them.. Your long dead examining outfits and targeting each one to read nameplates before you can find them in the mess to know if your even in range.

2. Item Locks. Im often out hunting a good hour or two before heading back to town and aquire a considerable amount of companion gear. I have a few exchangable pieces on me all the time to swap out for different needs and I find it brutal when hitting the merchant later to know which are mine and which are trash or sellable without having to examine each piece carefully for stats and is it bound or a duplicate of what i already have etc.. Item locks would greatly ease this and remove any concern of accidentally selling our own companion gear.

3. Thank You! Have a wonderful day

4. Additionally after just messing around a bit with TANK mirri. I cant help but wonder if there needs to be a tweak of some kind. tanking a dragon in sword/shield all heavy, running all the best defences including ONGUARD and im bubbling her as well.. She is 1SHOT everytime by the dragon in all purple gear! not evnn 2shot but 1SHOT everytime he bites while bubbled even! Either that bite needs to be reduced slightly or companions need a base armor or health tweak to compensate for this.. Not fully but enough that with some player intervention is still required like bubbles etc or hard healing so they WILL survive that dragon bite with respectable gear. They aren't a player and dont block etc reliably so I'm thinking compensate a little by added base armor/hp or reduce that bite slightly. Fully geared and buffed and player bubbled mirri shud be able to survive at least most of the time IMO.

Jim_Pipp

This is really good feedback, so in case this thread gets read I'll add one.

Companions should not recast abilities while that ability is still active. It makes the light armor "haste" ability basically useless if your other abilities have durations. It's easy to reduce the cooldown below the duration of several skills, which is really inefficient for our idiot AI allies, the destro skill elemental barricade is a good example of a skill often recast too often.

I also wonder if a more detailed stats overview would be helpful. It's ridiculous that the only way to test companions is to watch them fight. Damage numbers help confirm stuff like molten weapons or powerful assault buff them, but after an hour of testing I'm still not sure if warden's frost cloak increases their resistance. Adding some focussed traits raises the crit chance from 0%, and it would be nice to actually see what the new crit chance is.

Necrotech_Master

Jim_Pipp wrote: »

This is really good feedback, so in case this thread gets read I'll add one.

Companions should not recast abilities while that ability is still active. It makes the light armor "haste" ability basically useless if your other abilities have durations. It's easy to reduce the cooldown below the duration of several skills, which is really inefficient for our idiot AI allies, the destro skill elemental barricade is a good example of a skill often recast too often.

I also wonder if a more detailed stats overview would be helpful. It's ridiculous that the only way to test companions is to watch them fight. Damage numbers help confirm stuff like molten weapons or powerful assault buff them, but after an hour of testing I'm still not sure if warden's frost cloak increases their resistance. Adding some focussed traits raises the crit chance from 0%, and it would be nice to actually see what the new crit chance is.

you can kind of organize it, since the AI prioritizes the use of skills from slot 1 to slot 5, so they try to use slot 1 first, if its on cooldown use slot 2, etc

i would also like some kind of basic stat summary (total armor, bonuses from traits, etc)

and to go along with the OP, i know we cant decon companion gear, but the system wont even let us to mark items as junk to sell if its not something we want (due to majority of companion gear being essentially worthless right now, i usually end up just destroying it, but would prefer bulk selling it when i visit a merchant for repairs/junk sell)

AcadianPaladin

I switch Mirri fairly often between tank and ranged dps. I'm okay with her armor (5M, 2H) but, obviously need to switch her weapons around. I'm quite concerned that I may accidently sell one of her unused weapons. Being able to lock companion gear should be a no brainer and would fix this. A great start.

The problem though is that I have to carry her gear around on the character I'm playing and remember to change it when I change characters - very user unfriendly. The real fix is to give companions a small inventory that only holds companion gear. It would make perfect sense that Mirri carries her own gear for when gear changes are needed and it would always be reliably in the same place, readily accessible to all my chararacters.

Jim_Pipp

Hey @Necrotech_Master - I've not explained it well, I'll clarify in case a dev reads this. Companion skill bar order is super important, it tells your companion what to prioritize (e.g. their execute goes off as soon as possible if it's in the first position, great).

It stops working well when skills are recast while they are still running, that's inefficient. Lots of companion's skills have a duration (a HoT, DoT, buff or debuffs), and if the duration is made longer than the cooldown it can be recast without doing it's full effect.

If you are properly theory-crafting a companion it makes it hard to use abilities that have a duration, too much quickened can ruin a build! This is best demonstrated with the light armor haste ability, which obviously needs to be the last skill on the skill bar, so it goes off when everything else is on cooldown, and it rests all their cooldowns so they are used straight away... If you are using abilities with a duration it adds about 4-5 seconds uptime every 35 seconds!...probably not as underpowered as the Dev's intended.

Necrotech_Master

i think the cooldown reducer one is probably better used for the really long cooldown ones like all the undaunted skills, or bursty stuff, not really DoTs

i primarily have mirri with mostly dot focused skills so that they are doing dmg for the whole duration without needing a lot of cooldown reduction (so i can build other things like more dmg/crit)

deleted221205-002626

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

I switch Mirri fairly often between tank and ranged dps. I'm okay with her armor (5M, 2H) but, obviously need to switch her weapons around. I'm quite concerned that I may accidently sell one of her unused weapons. Being able to lock companion gear should be a no brainer and would fix this. A great start.

The problem though is that I have to carry her gear around on the character I'm playing and remember to change it when I change characters - very user unfriendly. The real fix is to give companions a small inventory that only holds companion gear. It would make perfect sense that Mirri carries her own gear for when gear changes are needed and it would always be reliably in the same place, readily accessible to all my chararacters.

I never thought of that since i only play one toon... you wouldnt have access to the rest of the gear on alts.. that is an issue.. a small inventory for comp gear on them is a good idea. Even 12 just enough for 1 full swap of everything incl sword/shield. I use a 30item container for her items in my home and its lots

deejayvee

I especially agree with points 2 & 3