Just watched it. My only concerns were.
1). Hack is a great player who can easily solo the bosses he showed. Even with him healing he found Bastion to have problems with blocking, mitigation and AOEs.
2). He was using a fully spec'd out Bastion with all skills and gear maxed. Currently the only way that is possible is by template. If gear drop rates and leveling stay as they are, good luck.
3). Even with being fully spec'd the companion struggled to stay alive on very easy bosses.

Right now the problems I'm seeing is gear is bottlenecked, companion progression is slow to almost non existent. So after all that grinding you get a helper that will allow you to do content you could do without them easier.

Grandchamp1989 wrote: »

I'm sure some of you have read my thread where I upper fail and using companions, but have a blast using them.

Looks like Hack has kinda cracked the code.

Helping them out with a heal and using the reduced cooldown he actually gets some good results with damage shields. Much better than me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWyodKbcsrk&ab_channel=HackTheMinotaur

This is exciting.
Very promising, thx Hack!

Let me preface this by saying: I like companions and have wanted them for a long time.

With that said, I don't think he cracked the code very much and my experience on PTS is not promising thus far.

The WB he chose wasn't dropping AoE with a lot of knockdowns like many WBs. My WB results were usually a dead companion within 10 seconds. If I rez'd them they lasted another 10 seconds before being dead again. In all cases it was better just to leave them on the ground and focus the boss. Notice how Bastian died on the last boss in FG to the AoE every time? That is pretty much my experience with them on any fight other than overland.

Even in playing FG1 normal, the only way companions survive is a full healing setup. Slotting them for DPS in any capacity just results in constant death.

I can solo nFG1 in about 5 minutes. With my companion out, they actually pull mobs all over the place and slow me down. In their current state it is actually less fun to run with a companion than it is to just do it myself. This is a problem because I want to run with a companion. I love the idea of them. I don't need them to be super useful, I just want them to not take a dirt nap on every. single. fight. If they slowed me down a few minutes but stayed alive the entire time, I would choose to run with them just because it would be more enjoyable.

I'd like to see him try again in all white gear since purple seems to be extremely rare. Just curious. In my testing purple didn't seem to really help much at all. The best was the cooldown reduction gear, I thought, because then they didn't stand there light attacking half the time.

Companions seriously need much higher base damage mitigation overall. At the very least they need 75% AoE damage mitigation to make up for them standing in every red circle possible.

I don’t see the companions as being all that useful in the tank role when solo playing, considering the amount of babysitting necessary. If they could have been equipped with player gear, they could be made amazingly effective, but that isn’t happening. I think companions may prove to be useful as DPS / light healers for solo tanks who want to adventure without having to change their setup.