Tank companions are useless.

[Kemorand]

Both Kaliyo and SCOROPIO, with decent gear, die entirely too fast. A group one normal and one silver shouldn't be slicing through my tank like butter.

 

Never used Scorpio but Kaliyo? You're kidding?

On my operative, Kaliyo's still rocking the boat without problems, be it solo, HC2 or even HC4s. Did you keep her gear up to date properly?

 

Also, are you heal spec? Because if you are not, then don't use tank companions, use heal or DPS ones.

Even a tank player will more often than not get cut through like butter by a strong or an elite, unless he uses his precious cooldowns and even then, that doesn't last long.

A tank is really only as good as the heals he receives really, without heals, they are totally useless, both players and companions.

It works well for tanks because their mitigation allows the DPS intake to be on par with the heals they receive, but as soon as the DPS starts putting them into a HP deficit, they're gone, dead, wasted, useless.

 

On my 50 tank spec powertech for example, I breeze through most things using Mako, never pausing or resting. But if I go against something that is able to push out more DPS than Mako's HPS, even slightly, I'm gone. Same against these rare mobs that keep putting your companion to sleep over and over. When that happens, I'm in big trouble.

 

That system is true for tank companions too. It works GREAT for healers if their companion is geared up because we can very easily out HPS most DPS the enemies can dish out, and have spare time to do most of the DPS. I can literally go forever against an immortal champion or whatever. I mean, if such mob existed with 20 billion HP, I could do it, just would take time.

BUT if you put one single mob that out DPS our HPS (or get close to matching it), then we're in deep trouble. Such mobs are very rare though, only met two so far, the elite Colicoid Stingers on Balmora and the strong Cartel Bodyguards on Quesh I believe and these are the only ones where I had to heal more than DPS.

 

However if you can't heal, then they are useless and your goal is to kill as fast as possible, before you're dead basically, because you cannot outlast the enemy.

 

 

As for the companions, as long as we talk Heroic +2 they work fine if you remember to keep the buffs up and do some CC before sending them in.. something you should do with a real tank anywa

HC2 are meant to be soloed really, at least when you play healer.

my 4X companions in HC4, in my experience, far outclass any player tank I've met, not only in pure stats, but in playstyle. Sure it's nice to find a good tank, but most of the time, I grab 2 players and go with my 4X because I know we'll be ok then.

Edited January 15, 2012 by Kemorand

[Blackfriar]

M1-4X has better gear than my commando and less damage reduction. I'm in mostly greens and he's in mostly blues because I know cybertech. Hitpoints are virtually the same. If it's a weak hit he might be able to take one more hit than me, but even that is unlikely. What kind of "tank" has the same HP and less armor than a healer/DPS class with worse gear?! I get that tank companions were OP in beta, but that doesn't mean they needed to make them completely worthless.

 

I've found my tank companions to be worthless as a tank as well. So I just fit everyone for a gank-build and try to out-dps my enemies. That change made my Sentinal, virtually unplayable by level 25 due to the tanking issue, work within the limitations of the class.

[Tokeee]

Kaliyo is a boss. I'm still using her at 42 and I've never had a problem. She's tanked a lot of same or greater level FP's for me as well. Sounds like you need to gear your tank, get some presence, and do a little learning to play.

[dargor-]

Kaliyo is a boss. I'm still using her at 42 and I've never had a problem. She's tanked a lot of same or greater level FP's for me as well. Sounds like you need to gear your tank, get some presence, and do a little learning to play.

 

Sounds like you need to hit 50...

[DragnHntr]

Posting late to the party, didn't read the whole thread. Here's my take on it.

 

DPS toons can choose a tank or a healer companion depending on whether or not they want to tank the mob they are fighting.

 

Healer or tank toons should bring a dps pet unless you want every fight to take forever. Tank pets work great when you are dps and killing things fast, not so much when you are a healer. You have to heal the pet halfway through the fight because nobody is killing the mobs fast enough.

 

Use a dps pet and start the fight by dpsing, by the time you have to heal them, the mobs should be mostly dead. I guess my point is, don't level as healer and act surprised that you have to heal your pet, regardless of who you bring.

Edited January 15, 2012 by DragnHntr

[Kemorand]

Healer or tank toons should bring a dps pet unless you want every fight to take forever. Tank pets work great when you are dps and killing things fast, not so much when you are a healer. You have to heal the pet halfway through the fight because nobody is killing the mobs fast enough.

Flawed in my book because healers have such HPS output that it takes literally 1.5 seconds to heal up after a fight most of the time. Everything else is done DPSing usually. I mean, I just throw a quick heal to my companion after a fight but all I do otherwise is DPSing.

 

Also, as a tank, I'd never even move out of the outposts without a healing companion. It's such a pain to rest all the frikkin time, I rather just maw down through everything in perfect safety and without a pause, even each fights take a little longer.

 

Use a dps pet and start the fight by dpsing, by the time you have to heal them, the mobs should be mostly dead. I guess my point is, don't level as healer and act surprised that you have to heal your pet, regardless of who you bring.

 

Flawed also I think, simply because even as a healer, when we are both dpsing, I end up with the aggro, not the companion. That not only slows down my DPS because of the pushback (since I'm not specced into DPS to prevent that and commandos have a lot of channeling) but also put me at risk because well, I'm taking damage and it'd just take an add, a stun or something to ruin it.

 

To each his own though of course

 

ps: btw, people with biochem and who are spamming reusable medpacks do not count in this discussion because it changes everything. This discussion I believe assumes "normal" conditions.

Edited January 15, 2012 by Kemorand

[DragnHntr]

Flawed in my book because healers have such HPS output that it takes literally 1.5 seconds to heal up after a fight most of the time. Everything else is done DPSing usually. I mean, I just throw a quick heal to my companion after a fight but all I do otherwise is DPSing.

 

Then what is the problem? If you heal up that quickly, either a tank or a dps pet will work, dps would just increase your total dps, no?

 

Also, as a tank, I'd never even move out of the outposts without a healing companion. It's such a pain to rest all the frikkin time, I rather just maw down through everything in perfect safety and without a pause, even each fights take a little longer.

 

I havent leveled as a tank yet, however in my experience, resting restores life/energy very fast and healer companions heal rather slow. With rest not having a CD I don't see the issue with resting after fights rather then waiting for the pet to heal you. The downtime is compensated by finishing the fight faster with a dps companion.

 

 

 

Flawed also I think, simply because even as a healer, when we are both dpsing, I end up with the aggro, not the companion. That not only slows down my DPS because of the pushback (since I'm not specced into DPS to prevent that and commandos have a lot of channeling) but also put me at risk because well, I'm taking damage and it'd just take an add, a stun or something to ruin it.

 

To each his own though of course

 

Send your pet on the strongest enemy then take out the commons yourself. (edit: if you let them aggro on the pet before attacking, you will only have to deal with 1 at a time until you heal) Kill them so fast that pushback is not an issue. By the time you get to the enemy that is actually a threat, your pet will have enough aggro.

 

This is just my experience though, my healer had knockbacks and shields and stuns, and a lot of instant attacks to finish off standard enemies, so ymmv of course

Edited January 15, 2012 by DragnHntr

[Kemorand]

I havent leveled as a tank yet, however in my experience, resting restores life/energy very fast and healer companions heal rather slow. With rest not having a CD I don't see the issue with resting after fights rather then waiting for the pet to heal you. The downtime is compensated by finishing the fight faster with a dps companion.

Comes down to personal preferences really. I HATE resting, period. That's why I try to keep a play style where I never, ever have to rest.

On my healer commando, I never rest. ever. I mean..never. I still have the rest ability hotkeyed somewhere but I haven't used it since level 10 when I got my advanced class. Solo, grouped, flashpoints...I never, ever need to rest.

On my powertech tank, using Mako (heal), it was "almost" never but there were some times when I had to.

On my guardian tank....I don't have a healer companion yet. It was driving me so nuts to rest all the frikkin time that I dumped all my crew skills around level 20 JUST to level up biochem. Now 24, I'm a beast rocking with DPS companion and reusable 2.5k medpacks (bit more than 50% of my current HP) and reusable adrenals.Once I get my companion that heals, I might drop biochem again, we'll see how that goes.

[jediabiwan]

Again, my complaint isn't that he's not as good as a player tank. Of course he isn't. That's just fine. My complain is that he's a worse tank than my healer. The only difference between my tank and DPS companion is that the tank does less damage. What's the point of a tank with LESS ARMOR THAN A HEALER. Not a player tank. A freakin HEALER.

 

 

You're telling me to fix my companion by completely gimping myself in flashpoints. Yeah, that's a great idea.

 

Yes a player healer. Try gearing up your healer companion and compare the stats. Companions are rarely even close to player stats unless you have a ton of presence. Even then they still fall short by quite a lot. Companions are simply not meant to be as strong as you think they should be.

 

That being said, you are also a trooper healer which has far more armor than say the Jedi Sage which I play as. Currently, at lvl 36 qyzen has 25% more armor, health, and damage reduction than me. He is geared out in his quest rewards, and I'm wearing moddable armor with balmora mods and the rest is blue crafted gear.

Edited January 15, 2012 by jediabiwan

[kyuyu]

You fail if you are healing commando and use a tank companion.

 

So you want to grind mobs for ages to death?

 

Use your DPS companion! On my seer sage, I use Zenith or Nadia and I can solo pretty much all 2-man heroics and 1 champion.

 

Tell me the reason why you need a tanking companion? Aggro issue? If you position correctly, you can have your companion aoe all mobs and they will all aggro on companion and you just heal your companion. If there are multiple elites, turn off your companion aoe attack and CC.

 

Again, as a healer, do not use tank companion unless you want to take ages to kill.

[Tsillah]

My Sorcerer uses Ashara as dps tank. Much better than Khem Val in my experience.

[Attaraxia]

kaliyo let me solo all the 2+ quests and a few of the easier 4 man quests. either she's just better than your tank classes(unlikely because i hear a lot of snipers crying about how weak she is too), or you expect something unrealistic from your tank (i hear a lot of that), or you don't know how to gear a tank properly (its not all about hp, you know).

[Areka]

You fail if you are healing commando and use a tank companion.

 

So you want to grind mobs for ages to death?

 

Use your DPS companion! On my seer sage, I use Zenith or Nadia and I can solo pretty much all 2-man heroics and 1 champion.

 

Tell me the reason why you need a tanking companion? Aggro issue? If you position correctly, you can have your companion aoe all mobs and they will all aggro on companion and you just heal your companion. If there are multiple elites, turn off your companion aoe attack and CC.

 

Again, as a healer, do not use tank companion unless you want to take ages to kill.

 

You must not know how to alternate DPS/Healing while playing Combat Medic with tank companion, while obliterating normal groups in Voss like hot knife through butter? Elites may be slower to kill, obviously, but nothing I cannot afford.

 

If you were right, one must wonder why did BioWare bothered at all adding tank companions.

[Tsillah]

You must not know how to alternate DPS/Healing while playing Combat Medic with tank companion, while obliterating normal groups in Voss like hot knife through butter? Elites may be slower to kill, obviously, but nothing I cannot afford.

 

If you were right, one must wonder why did BioWare bothered at all adding tank companions.

 

I will say that the companions are one of the biggest mysteries to me. They tend to favour one advanced class over the other.

 

Companions are mostly there for solo content. So it's you and your companion. One person needs to have some heals really for bosses and the other needs to be able to handle damage doing some sort of tanking.

 

I don't understand why an inquisitor gets a tank companion as the first companion....why would an assassin need that? Sure for the healing sorc it's fine but not so much for the assassin. The healer companion then is the very last one? No, this makes no sense. Mako is a healer for the BH, that makes more sense because even the healer spec is in heavy armour and can take a punch. I really would like more companion choices at the beginning so you can choose a companion fitting your advanced class or simply getting two companions early on.

 

I am sure in one way or another it's doable but my wife's marauder really doesn't have enough options and the healer companion tends to take aggro to easily....so yeah, I don't follow how they run their companions.

[Count_Fooku]

The point of the tank companion is to keep aggro off you so you can blast away at full DPS. A DPS companion may put out more raw damage than a tank companion, but they're also not going to be holding aggro either, and the moment you toss out a heal, everything your companion isn't attacking is going to lock in on you.

 

Also, it's been stated that if you really want to buff your companion, you pick up Presence on your gear.

 

So instead of pissing and moaning about your companion having mitigation only slightly better than yours (I'm sorry, but both of you wear heavy armor, so no **** your mitigation is going to be approximately equal), remind yourself what their role is.

 

TL;DR - A tank's job is not to deal damage, it's to hold threat. If he's doing that, then he's doing his job. Stop complaining.

 

Show me one quest reward that has presence on it. I've never seen a single piece of gear with presence on it (except craftable gear that only armor mechs can make).

I don't know why they even bothered including that stat. If you need presence gear to level, the stat should be on all quest reward gear.

[Saber_Six]

So, can we boil this thread down to players > companions. And this is a shock how?

[Count_Fooku]

No the thread is about tank companions can't tank.

DPS companions can DPS

Heal companions can heal

Tank companions CAN NOT tank.

Pretty simple huh?

Tank companions have the same mitigation as DPS companions, but do less DPS. That's a problem.

[DragnHntr]

No the thread is about tank companions can't tank.

DPS companions can DPS

Heal companions can heal

Tank companions CAN NOT tank.

Pretty simple huh?

Tank companions have the same mitigation as DPS companions, but do less DPS. That's a problem.

 

If you think tanking companions have the same mitigation as dps companions you are mistaken. Perhaps you are simply attempting to overstate the situation in order to draw attention to it, or you just have not actually tested it.

 

Regardless, it is pretty simple to see the difference between tanking and dps companions in comparable gear, tanking companions take damage significantly slower in similar situations. You would think this would be particularly noticable to a healer specced character, but apparently not.

 

Mitigation is only part of the equation anyway, tanking pets are designed to hold aggro off the player so you can cast without being pushed back, and they are also quite good at this, better then dps companions of course.

 

I completely fail to see how tanking companions are supposedly not doing exactly what it says on the label.

[Knockerz]

What I need is a tank and I can't get one. What they gave me is a sub-par DPS with an agro bonus.

 

That describes exactly what I sometimes would get in wow using the lfg system. Except, it's not a companion, but a player.

[Sai-to]

This seems to be an issue specifically with the Trooper companion then. I have run with tank pets on all my characters, and have no issues.

 

Khem Val is an amazing tank

Corso is pretty decent, though he dies faster than Khem

T7 is a decent tank, but again, not as good as KV

Qyzen is a good tank, nearly on par with KV

 

 

As someone else mentioned though, you can increase your Presence stat for some nice boosts.

[spankolol]

Tanking companions are useless because Bioware nerfed their armor in beta. They used to get +60% armor buff in the tank stance. Bioware also greatly increased the damage mobs deals after level 30 because people said the game was too easy. So these two things combined make pretty much every non-healing companion useless. Leveling past 30 is also extremely tedious and frustrating because silvers basically crap all over you and take too long to kill.

[Dayshadow]

I prefer Tanno Vik. Organics > droids in this game. I tried using Forex against colicoids and their DOT ignored his armor rating, shield, etc. He has no resistances whatsoever to DOTs. Now note that I'm 10 levels above the content and a single strong (again, 10 lvls betneath him) would wittle him down within 10 secs.

 

Another problem with droids is upgrading requires planetary commendations. No hand-me-downs, or looted gears will due. Not even WZ commendations. When I'm offered armor for companions as quest rewards I HAVE to get the droid part, because it isn't sold by any merchants I've visited save commendation vendors. And even those vendors will only have like 1 droid part.

[SnoggyMack]

Tanno Vik's a decent tank. Better than Forex.

[Andryah]

So, can we boil this thread down to players > companions. And this is a shock how?

 

Nice try, missed the target. I get it, you don't like companions, get over it.

 

We are discussing tank companions, which need some love so that they are not glass tanks.

 

The droid tank for troopers IS a gimp, even when fully geared out in crafted blues. He's got a glass jaw and he hits like a wimp. Whereas the dps and healing companions work very well (at least with a dps commando). [My test for this is generally how well they work on gold elites]. I can handle gold elites easily on my dps commando with the healer companion, or even with my dps companion. On the droid tank, it's generally a disaster waiting to happen.

 

On the other hand, Qyzen on my Sage seems to be a pretty good tank, but I think this is more because he is sturdy but also hits like a truck. So he can hold agro while both he and the dps sage just blow stuff away quickly. Mobs die so fast, he does not look gimp in the tanking department.

[Rodolfulus]

as a cybertech who keeps 4x in top-notch parts, I have to say he's a great tank. He has about 2k more health than my dps-vanguard-self. He simply doesn't die unless we face a particularly nasty elite or two strong (silver elite) mobs.