Fairly certain the OP was talking about Class companions and their missions specifically, so your whole thing about playing space Barbie by answering 30 alerts or getting comps at level 1 etc. etc. is a moot point.

Since KotFE/ET made companions basically obsolete and no better than background window dressings I no longer care about their stories. If it's not Lana, Theron, or any other of the newer characters that Bioware is obviously more interested in investing time and resources in, I skip their missions and go straight to the expansion stories on my alts as if the comps don't exist. I'm willing to bet there's a lot of players who have followed suit.

I honestly have never understood why this was left out, considering the first CM comp (Treek) is able to, other than sheer laziness with the coding. The argument could be made that they didn't want to give them voice lines, since crew missions have success/failure (and start?) voice lines, but these could just as easily have been left out for text lines.

Your "counterargument" here was no counterargument at all. Treek's healing abilities were indeed better than any other comp, and she could DPS and tank better as well. She was, unfortunately, nerfed into the ground YEARS ago because of crybabies crying on the forums that a Cartel item was better than the story comps. That was even before 4.0 rolled along and other "bonus" companions even existed. HK's snipe ability has been nerfed for as long as I can remember. It isn't a matter of "oh it turns out it only happens every so often blah blah', it's that it was nerfed at some point. He DID have better DPS at one point. Your entire argument is moot. Maybe you're just a newer player so you never used those comps when they WERE better, but that doesn't mean the history of them is fake just because YOU didn't experience it.

Yeah I will say I have an I-08 droid at level 50 on two characters and it still does okay. It actually does its assigned roles, unlike the creature comps. I can't speak for other droids, however, as I've never bothered buying any. They're all just kinda meh to me tbh. Only reason I have the I-08 was someone offered it to me for 1m credits.

LOL didn't notice all the posts before Zen's were from September of 2018.

I'm legit confused by this post. I did this post-6.0 on a Madness Sorc following the storyline, so Raina is level 1, and I ended up just ignoring all of the mechanics and face-tanking the droid while ignoring the adds. My HP dropped some but the boss died so fast it wasn't an issue. Is this just a difference in the bit of heals Madness has over Lightning or is there some RNG factor with the encounter itself? It seems like I might have used one of the heal station thingies, and killed one or two of the first adds before saying forget it and just face-rolling the boss. I do know for the rest of the fight I just stayed in the big glowing circles and ignored it (or them) and all the adds entirely. I did use my DCDs and of course had Raina (again, the level 1 as she was given me) in Healing stance. **EDIT** Come to think of it, I didn't have a single issue with any boss or pull in any of the post-KotET FPs except the extra boss in Umbara. Since I was Madness I accidentally AoEd his adds down first and yeah, that's a big nope. I just kind of keeled over dead after that.

Not exactly the same but kind of sort of similar to that--around here in the late 90s and early 2000s the libraries got computers, people flocked to them, people were surfing garbage they had no business surfing at a public library and ERPing--I mean "chatting"--in Yahoo chat rooms, etc. That was fun sitting down at a computer and taking it off screensaver after someone had left it on some trash site in full view of passersby, let me tell you. It took them a couple of years to get proper IT departments to lock down their computers and monitor them and ban the users doing it. I'm no prude, but every library around here for a few year period was a rathole of patrons you didn't want your kids around, especially based on some of the sites they left open on the computers.

Yes and no. Pre-6.0 they could get the job done. There were still better options, but you would never die as all companions were so OP it was ridiculous really. This is why I have a couple chars who HAD high level beast comps (they have now been changed to Shae). I had one with a level 40 ginx, one with a 40 nexu and one with a 50 akk dog. These were quite capable of doing all content easily. With 6.0 Bioware nerfed companions into the ground with some broad sweeping changes that made the Cartel ones just completely obsolete. Shae was and still is far superior to any others as DPS, can heal fairly decently and can tank decently. Doc (I think it's Doc, can't remem) is an excellent tank. Z0-0M (not sure of spelling) is reportedly one of the best healers. Treek is once again a great healer and DPS. Tank, not so much, at least not for me. Note that she is the ONLY Cartel comp that seems to have escaped the fate of the others, which makes sense since she was the first and had/has her own unique skills rather than the copy/paste mess they did for every later Cartel droid and beast comp.

Yes, CM comps are basically useless now since Onslaught dropped, as I and others have pointed out numerous times. You can thank Bioware's sweeping one-size-fits-all approach for that. Most of them are absolute trash now and I've personally seen Influence 1-10 original class companions heal/dps/tank better than level 40 beast ones. Yeah, that wampa might look great, but that's ALL it's got going for it. If you want speed and efficiency, look elsewhere and save your CC/credits.

Every time the idea of 'gray Jedi' comes up someone comes along who's like 'omg there's no such thing'. Except for the fact that Disney gave us one in canon in the form of Kanan Jarrus. Morally ambiguous, followed the ways of the Jedi more or less, killed when needed, had a long-lasting relationship with Hera and even fathered a son with her by the end of the show. Yet that dude was arguably more a Jedi than Luke ever was as far as I'm concerned. In short: this idea you either have to be so edgy and Dark that flowers wilt when you walk past them or so Light that you're basically a non-singing Disney princess with no middle ground in between needs to stop. It's just stupid at this point. We've had too much canon and EU material that says otherwise.

Wait until you do the new Op and see the Huntmaster reset in the middle of the fight 10x in a row weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. And then, after you finally manage to get him to NOT bug out and the giant sandflea looking thing spawns, IT bugs out and resets the entire boss fight and you have to start all over YAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY. And hey how about the fact that TWO MONTHS after 6.0's release one of the Sin/Shadow tacticals still has the completely wrong description when you view it Pub side? Been confusing players for two months weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. But hey, that Cartel stuff is looking good.

Part of the issue is there is now a BIG difference in some of the companions (again), and I suspect that is part of the issue with some of these "The game is too hard now!" threads. I have Shae at just level 40 on some of my 75s, and I faceroll through content like it isn't even there. On another character I have a level 40+ Ginx beast comp as her comp and that thing is 100% trash now. I mean Bioware absolutely ruined it. I can't stress enough how garbage it is. It's slow to run in and tank, so mobs are all over me and have me half dead before it gets there. Same with DPS, way too slow. And heals are about non-existent. In Vet RR solo a similar level Lana healed my Marauder like it was nothing. My Sorc? I dropped to 5% right out of the gate and barely survived by blowing all of my DCDs, and had to heal myself AND the garbage ginx the whole fight. On another character I have a Nexu beast comp and it's actually better than the ginx, so it's apparently not all beast comps. This is obviously a balance issue where Bioware needs to go back to the drawing board and take a lot closer look at ALL of the companions instead of thinking they all just fit into one category, because they quite clearly don't. But I bet if we took a poll of all the folks saying they had issues we'd find they were using a wide range of comps and not the high-rollers like Shae (DPS), Doc (Tank--or was that Lokin? can't remem), etc.

Don't use Maul 3x in a row? I'm assuming you're Deception. As long as you're using them as they proc you should never even begin to run out of energy. After my initial rotation that's all I do, keep my rotation going as best I can in sequential order via what procs. I don't think I've ever dropped below 75%. You're just spamming something unprocced and killing every bit of your reserve. If you're insistent on doing that, though, there is a tactical that replenishes energy faster.

Star Wars super-fan: "The story is fine." Me: "How many times has 'We have to destroy/capture the new super-weapon' been used as a plot now? 20? 30? 50? 100+?"

If I had absolute control of this game one of the first things I would have done is split the game into three factions instead of two, and no, I don't mean that messy Alliance stuff. In my mind Smugglers and Bounty Hunters should have never belonged to either Faction, because both toe the line of "whoever has the most money is whose side I'm on". The game should have been more along the lines of: Empire-- Warrior, Inquisitor, Imp Agent, Imperial Trooper Republic--Knight, Consular, SIS Agent, Trooper Freelancer--Force-wielder (non-religious, aka NOT a Jedi or Sith), Smuggler, Bounty Hunter, Mercenary In my mind a Merc is separate from a BH in that their job is not about "the one mark". Their job might be more akin to destroying a settlement or breaching a fortress, working with a military group, bringing in intel for an employer etc. So I'd have a separate set of jobs and stories for them over the BH and their targets, but again they may work for either the Empire OR the Republic depending on who pays the biggest creds.

The absolute respect of every furry in the game.

Just ride through the Stronghold section until you have a sudden epileptic seizure. When you come to and reorient yourself you'll find yourself at the vendor surrounded by a lot of people spamming decor unlocks.

Difference is is you almost always know exactly how long it's going to take you. You can pretty much clock that it's going to take you 10 - 15 mins to jump into a solo Vet/MM, run through the bosses, collect your loot, start again. With groups you never truly know what you're going to get. You got the folks who run straight up the middle at the start and aggro everything and its mother, the people who don't understand the bubble mechanic at the end, people who have to watch the cutscene all the way through, people who don't understand LOS if you have to LOS a group, the special types who love to fight all the forcefield mobs even though everyone else rushed through and leashed them so the player dies and has to run back through previously CC'd mobs and...yeah...it's better to just solo it.

Saw someone link their achievement last night and they had 999/1000 done, so, it's possible. Just gotta be vigilant at it and practice I guess. Not saying it isn't frustrating, but it's possible.

If your friend was buying gold, I honestly wish he'd used the money to purchase you a keyboard with working punctuation keys instead. REAL friends help friends punctuate.

Not to start anything, but I thought discussing datamined items was a forum no-no.

The people hoping for this SH to be small are probably going to be disappointed. Large SHs means more $$$ for BW as people buy more decors off the CM. Gotta get those personnel decors. Our last several SHs have been large ones--the train, Rishi, Yavin--all have quite a bit of real estate with large unbroken areas (arguably you could give each train car its own theme). Even Manaan isn't exactly tiny given that large outdoors area you have to cover.

Every time I see that ridiculous outfit I'm reminded of those Halloween outfits where someone goes as half male/female, like a dress on one side and a suit on the other. I just can't take her seriously at all because of it.

Another very important thing to keep track of now is your Dark/Light tokens. They actually have a use now. They added a Weekly gear crate to the Dark/Light Token vendors on Fleet, purchasable for 100 faction tokens. So if you're not interested in purchasing a 300th pet or saber or something, save them up. Before anyone asks--you get DS/LS tokens every time you level up Renown when your side is winning the war, and/or if you kill DvL bosses.