The problem of Companions for this to work is their cooldowns. A real enemy, let's say, a dungeon boss, intermediary or final, won't wait X seconds to hit the Companion with aggro twice with attacks that MUST be dodged? Companions don't dodge often enough, don't bash enemies often enough and, sometimes, aren't "randomly" targeted often enough (e.g. Vvardenfell's Wuyuvus WB bloodsucking mechanic).

Personally, I only use Mirri as a healer 'cause she's tough. Even if I lose soft-aggro for being the hard hitter between the two of us, she can hold still for quite a while, even if she ends up "wasting" a Barrier for herself. Bastian on the other hand, even fully geared on heavy armour with tanky skills is tissue paper.

For this to become viable, Companions must be mechanic-aware, dodging wide/dangerous telegraphed attacks, bashing enemies when they have those "sparks" that indicate a bashable attack and use skills "by instinct" (e.g. Tanky Bastian would use Chains not only once but once for every mob farther than X meters from him).

Dolphinsgal wrote: »

Why play an mmo if you want to do things made for groups solo?

1.) Sometimes your friends are not online, and you want to do a group thing. I refuse to play in PUG groups, I have a very low masochism quotient.

2.) Sometimes you'd actually like to know what's going on in the dungeon. Play in a group, and people want to rush through and not look around for lorebooks and chests and actually listen to the story. Just read THIS forum for more about that.

3. Companions would be ideal in groups that just want to rush through the random normal for the bag of transmute crystals.

3.) Sometimes you're just having a bad day and don't want to inflict it on someone else.

5.) Sometimes you want to try out a new build without making real people suffer through it.

Those are just a couple of reasons out of the top of my head why we need decent, properly gearable, properly skillable companions to form a proper group with. We had lovely heroes in Guild Wars, and we still played in groups, with people, with decent companions filling in the gaps. And they could res us. And we could direct them to specific places to help.