They need a much better AI or some significant built-in mitigation to compensate for the lack of a decent AI.

Just tired of seeing, hearing and reading the word nerf. So yeah, buff, buff, buff.........

Dawnblade wrote: »

They need a much better AI or some significant built-in mitigation to compensate for the lack of a decent AI.

You are aware they can get up to 60% damage mitigation through skills? 80% even on daedra/undead/ werewolves?

tonyblack wrote: »

I don’t mind their damage for combat pet, but their survivability is garbage. They absolutely useless on bosses who cast aoe or dots and dying almost instantly. Just to give an example, meridian guardian boss in southern elsweir, one of the easiest dlc boss to solo, yet the moment he cast rotating wall of light companion die. Doesn’t even matter if it’s fully leveled tank in purple heavy armor or damage dealer in medium. They should have balanced them in same manner as sorcerer or warden pets with decent mitigation to avoid such situations. Dead companion = useless.

It comes down to the “AI” system for the companions. You want your tank to stay put so you can lay down your AOE’s and not run all over the place and possibly reset the boss. They work pretty good for the most part. Companions just need something programmed into them to avoid certain death if in an AOE and no heal ability ready in their own toolkit they can use. We as players can move around or sidestep out of and AOE and stay in the same general area. Companions just don’t have this ability yet.

Stay safe

Me and my wife use them to fill the group for running dungeons. They do a reasonable job on healing and tanking but needs improvements to pathing and reaction logic. They will tell you to roll out of something and then proceed to stand in it themselves. The tanking is still bugged sometimes and they will drop combat and run back to you.

DPS needs boosted a bit all around.

I am happy with companions, but I'd be happier if they got some help in areas they are mechanically weak.

Companion abilities with a duration (dot, hot, etc) should not be recast while still active, it wastes some of the ability, and ruins the skill "haste".

Most companion heals should also target themselves or the whole group, as their limited skill casts can't keep up with hectic fights.

Companion taunt should be an AoE, as the 15 second cooldown is painful if they taunt the wrong mob, and they simply can't tank more than one enemy.

Companion gear traits need to be rebalanced.

Companions should gain power, and the ultimate ability much earlier, so players feel the value of companion's and are more willing to develop them to their maximum potential.

I suggest a new level 20 unlock, a choice between three passive buffs, colored red, green, blue like our champion system. These are designed to help companions support players in harder content, without needing incredible AI to deal with all mechanics.

Blue- once every 2 minutes your companion can resurrect a dead party member, including you.

Green - reduces the cooldown of non-skill abilities by 75% (e.g. block, interrupt, break-free, dodge).

Red - Companion Damage taken is capped at 20,000, to allow tanks to survive some one-shot mechanics they are too dumb to avoid.

The AI need to be more intuitive. At the moment all companions like to stand in the 🔴, and die.

Isobel is excellent as half tank, half healer.

Mirri with destruction staff is a good DPS. Ember is slightly more squishy, but that may be due to her being easily distracted by the shinies and the red laser

Bastian has permanently retired to the bibliothèque de fromages and thus cannot comment.

At current, they need a slight rework. Overall, they need like a 95% AoE damage reduction if they can't program them to move out of it. I get that they don't want them to possibly cheese mechanics. They also STILL don't have a stat screen...in an RPG. Does Mirri have a higher crit rate so it's worth to put crit gear on her? Perhaps Ember have more penetration? Who knows. In
addition, they are an AI, I don't see a reason they need to be restricted to 5 skill slots like us especially with the high cooldowns . Also quickened needs to be replaced with a better trait and cooldowns needs to be more reasonable since I believe the cooldowns are abnormally big to enforce this trait thus lowering damage if you don't use which again will lower damage so you can't use the actual damage traits. Lastly we either need a way to transmute their gear or guaranteed a specific slot drops (like weapons and shoulders in public dungeons)

Role specific.
Tanks. Reduce the melee taunt to 2-3 seconds so they actually have a chance to taunt more than that archer you happen to hit first instead of the minotaur about the heavy you. Ranged gets reduced to 10 seconds and give them an AoE taunt. Shouldn't be a problem again, they are an AI, not players they have limitations.

Side note: Also fix some attacks going through their blocks (i.e Overland Dragons's chomp heavy, and Mammoth boss in Falkreath Hold heavy attack)

DPS. I admit I'm not the dps expert. Assuming with optimal skills and traits can we have a least have 10k on the low end (white gear) and 30k on the high end (purple gear) considering the rarity and at current the randomness of the traits/weight/slots.

Healers. Mostly fine in my opinion and their best role, perhaps give them a more unique role between each companion. I just have Bastian as sort of a shield healer. Only issue is healing aggro but that's a game design thing more than a companion problem.

In conclusion, I want to like them but currently I just use them as an extra health bar and only really revive them if I'm feeling merciful.

Actually, it's more the quality I'd like to see increased, so more of the abilities and weapons can be used as options (some, as they are, are currently ineffective with the companion AI).

And, from what I've heard the two newer companions are more effective, so it's only Bastian and Mirri I'd like to see tweaked to be on the same playing field as the other two.

But I went with the poll options available to me.

I voted "everything is fine" buuuut...there is an area that needs improvement and that is gearing. I think that gear need significant improvements in attaining them and increasing the quality of gear. Companion gear should be upgradeable with our crafting skills giving additional utility to all of those skillpoints we sunk into them and probably don't use very often.

I'd also like to be able to have a companion armory system where we could set DPS/Tank/Healer presets and skills and slot them when necessary. The current system swapping a comp's skill and gear set is inefficient especially when we have multiple toons that need different roles to support them.

I'd also like to be able to customize all of my companions gear/skills at my house's outfit station while they are not my current companion.