Is T7 a viable companion

[Obilam]

Hey,

 

I'm just in the low 30's now and am starting to struggle a little with group mobs. This is certainly in part to my rushing in before healing up again, but I've always done this.

 

I was wondering if T7 is a good companion for us at these levels if he can tank and keep aggression.

 

Your thoughts.........

 

Regards

[witelightnin]

He's not bad. The fact that he can hold aggro while you kill mobs is nice, but his DPS is not amazing and he dies REALLY fast when grouped up on. You'll be getting a healer companion soon which helps tremendously, but don't neglect Kira either. If you keep her current in gear she is a force to be reckoned with. Edited March 28, 2012 by witelightnin

[CutlassJack]

Haven't you realized it yet? T7 is the hero of this tale. You are the companion.

[Obilam]

He's not bad. The fact that he can hold aggro while you kill mobs is nice, but his DPS is not amazing and he dies REALLY fast when grouped up on. You'll be getting a healer companion soon which helps tremendously, but don't neglect Kira either. If you keep her current in gear she is a force to be reckoned with.

 

I've just bought her a load of equal level blues and she is very powerfull, but its the balance between letting her take aggro and then taking it back I find tough.

[Asphen]

To love other men is gay, but to love T7 is good taste.

[witelightnin]

I've just bought her a load of equal level blues and she is very powerfull, but its the balance between letting her take aggro and then taking it back I find tough.

 

Yeah, I agree that it's tough. Although she does great DPS, she can't hold hate for ****. It's a balancing act which becomes much easier at higher levels when you get your full compliment of utility and DPS moves (and talents from skill trees). Not sure if you have force fade yet, but that is a TREMENDOUSLY helpful ability with Kira. Have her attack, you round everything up, they start beating on you, force fade, kira now has hate and you're probably at 30 stacks of centering, pop zen, heal back to full and game over.

[Keypek]

Most tank companions tend to lose that awesome feel when you hit the 30s and start to feel squishier as mobs and the general pve world begins to escalate in difficulty slightly.

 

My personal opinion, and is what I did on mine, once I hit 30 I did nothing but my class quests until I got Doc on Balmorra because of this. Once I got him I just burned through everything with little to no down time ever. This as a Sentinel but should hold true for any JK spec really.

[Ainianu]

Whilst i chose not to use him and dont particularly like him, T7 stays a viable companion at least till your 30's around the time you get Doc, after that his 'tankiness' (mitigation wise, he still kicks *** at taunting) is pretty lame for content your using him in.

[Rafaman]

Ok... so I learned a great deal as I capped, and the thing that stands out the most is how great T7 is as a companion. Rarely used and often overlooked, for a Sent he is, in my opinion, the best companion if you are playing as a true dps.

 

So... yes you have to gear him up, which is hard sometimes as droid parts can be hard to find, but once you get orange parts and motors it becomes quite easy to upgrade him. Throw in some level implants and and earpiece and voila. He is powerful and has good mitigation.

 

And if you remember to auto his new abilities as you go, well, there is no better companion tank. He pulls aggro, has both ranged and point blank attacks and throws and some very effective AOE.

 

For me, he surpasses Doc. Yup... but my solo playing style has changed. Where with Doc I was the tank and relied on him heavily to give enough heals to take down elites, with T7 I am a dps and burn down trash and elites with little damage. And just to be clear I don't use T7 passively. I send him in first many times. He pulls aggro, builds hate and keeps it. I tear through trash in seconds get to the strong and burn him down while little T7 usually doesn't come out the worse for where.

 

On the rare occasion that a patrol silver or gold wanders in, T7 may not make it, but he leaves me with enough to finish the fight. And for the tougher elites with blow back as their first attack, lol, its comical. T7 goes in first, gets blown back to me and I pounce on the elite with little worry of getting pushed back anytime soon.

 

I'm a T7 fan now. I use him for my dailies on Bel and Ilium and he has been a great addition for those range mobs that seemingly have a large area of sight.

 

So use him. You will need to anyway before the end. You will be very happy with the results and as you head into that final boss, as it were, you will be thankful you spent the time and creds on him.

[ShawnSixtyTwo]

So use him. You will need to anyway before the end. You will be very happy with the results and as you head into that final boss, as it were, you will be thankful you spent the time and creds on him.

 

THIS. I so wish I had done that. I got through that fight, but it probably would have been much easier if I had used T7 all the way to 50.

[Bishidoblade]

You are def able to lvl all the way to 50 with him. It also helps keep his gear relevant for when you do some of the end of the line class quests.

 

So yes he is, and i recommend if you dont end up using him, keeping him geared with quest stuff you get. Pain in the butt gearing him at that point rather then keeping him geared as you go - but its not that big of a deal really. currency has no value and everyone has a ton - so I'm sure you will find some goodies on the AH.

 

 

 

Good luck!

[LilTsar]

tank pets arent really meant for non healer players, they make for a good first companion because they're damage output is slow it gives you time to l2p (mofo) your class without worrying about health or anything, but around your 20s youll want to switch between dps and healing companions depending on the toughness of the fight.

[Ryat]

I found him to be a viable companion all the way.

[Veniras]

For me the choice is easy. If I'm a DD, then my comp should be tank/healer and vice versa.

 

So my guardian uses Kira/Rusk (sometimes Doc), and my sentinel uses T7 (sometimes Doc).

[Dirania]

If you keep his gear updated, he is awesome! I took cybernetics as crewskill and have his gear up to date constantly. He is really better than kira. I would keep T7 and the doc up to date and switch between them when needed.

 

And apart from that, I find Kira annoying..

[clearsighted]

Viable? Sure. I suppose. Soloing without ANY companion is 'viable'. It's also 'viable' to equip Kira with a one-handed saber. (it's such a shame there are so many young, female, double-saber clones in this game).

 

That said, he is the least 'efficient' of your companions. Even if I was going to need a companion tank, I'd take Scourge...who can actually be pretty brutal, especially since it's so easy to gear him in your own stuff. I used him in his DPS mode for almost ten levels, simply because I had much better strength gear available.

 

Sergeant Rusk and Kira are both great DPSers. Provided you give them some love, each one can put out enough DPS to help beat the enrage timer on a hard mode boss. Kira is actually the better DPSer, cause Rusk's 'beam' attack is bugged.

 

Doc of course, makes it easy to cruise, whether soloing, or when duoing heroics. I'd never take him into a hard mode, but he's terrific for heroics.

 

T7 just has too many points against him. He needs droid parts, which even as a cybertech, are a pain in the *** to get to purple, and even at end game, just can't compete when you're lavishing second-hand columi or champion gear on companions.

 

He's a ranged tank for a melee class, which is a further point against him.

He is a ranged tank given a useless charge ability.

He is a ranged tank that has to be in melee to use his flameburst.

His DPS mode is pathetic, compared to some other's like Scourge or Qyzen, who can get 25% faster attack rate. He gets +5% damage instead.

Edited March 29, 2012 by clearsighted

[JamieKirby]

Most tank companions tend to lose that awesome feel when you hit the 30s and start to feel squishier as mobs and the general pve world begins to escalate in difficulty slightly.

 

My personal opinion, and is what I did on mine, once I hit 30 I did nothing but my class quests until I got Doc on Balmorra because of this. Once I got him I just burned through everything with little to no down time ever. This as a Sentinel but should hold true for any JK spec really.

 

Thats the problem that needs fixing, you shouldn't have to use your healer companion, but from what everyone is saying, you HAVE to use him to get a positive experience leveling up, while the trooper, smuggler and their imperial mirror classes do not need to use their healer companions beyond their companion quests to get the best positive results in leveling up.

[Mr_Pancakes]

Haven't you realized it yet? T7 is the hero of this tale. You are the companion.

 

 

indeed finally one who gets it

[Erevan_Kindelar]

As a Sent, the "ideal" option is either a tank companion like T7 or a healer companion like Doc. However for the Tank option to work, T7 needs to be really well geared when you get into the 30's, and you do not have your healer yet, so that is out unless you have a friendly player healer who does not mind helping out.

 

Going with Kira gives you the glass cannon approach - good DPS from both of you, but it is a race to see if you go down first or the mob does.

 

As for not healing up between the fights, get into the habit of healing up and lose the impatient edge. When grouping, this will make you a more effective group member so you will be invited to more groups. When soloing, it is like saying "ok, I am going to handicap myself here because this should be an easy fight. I will only use two different abilities". In some ways, maintaining your focus means you do need to move onto another mob group quickly, but not at the expense of recovering that 50% health that was depleted in the last fight.

 

Expanding on the group thing (sorry for bashing this, but as I play tanks and healers in groups, it is kind of my pet hate), a DPS who goes charging off to the next group of mobs right after we have downed the current group without stopping to heal up is putting unneccessary strain on the healer and will probably cause the group to wipe. Google "Leeroy Jenkins" for a WOW-based example of what I am referring to.

The DPS jumping into a fight unprepared also tends to strip mobs from the tank before the tank has had chance to build aggro. Waiting for a few seconds allows the tank to build enough aggro to do their job (being the poor sod the mobs are beating on) so that you can get on with beating on the mobs and the healer only has one person to concentrate on healing.

 

[CutlassJack]

T7 just has too many points against him. He needs droid parts, which even as a cybertech, are a pain in the *** to get to purple, and even at end game, just can't compete when you're lavishing second-hand columi or champion gear on companions.

 

He's a ranged tank for a melee class, which is a further point against him.

He is a ranged tank given a useless charge ability.

He is a ranged tank that has to be in melee to use his flameburst.

His DPS mode is pathetic, compared to some other's like Scourge or Qyzen, who can get 25% faster attack rate. He gets +5% damage instead.

 

Heh your 'points against him' dont even take your other points into acount. His charge ability isn't useless since he always fights in melee range, which is negates your first point and your third point. True his DPS mode isn't as good as others, but why would you ever use him in DPS mode? No tank, even in DPS mode compares to an actual DPS companion.

 

As for gear, its not an issue. Its incredibly easy to get him in a full set of 'orange' droid parts by 30 which means he's exactly the same effort to keep geared up as any companion. Slightly better in a way since that includes the droid version of 'belt/bracer' slots.

 

Sure you can give Scourge your hand me downs as you mentioned, but since this topic is about Sentinels, I can't say I'd reccomend it. Wrong weight. Also since the OP is asking about his 30's Scourge is a non-consideration.

Edited March 29, 2012 by CutlassJack

[LordbishopX]

As I learned today not keeping T7 geared is a big mistake lol.....

[Rafaman]

Viable? Sure. I suppose. Soloing without ANY companion is 'viable'. It's also 'viable' to equip Kira with a one-handed saber. (it's such a shame there are so many young, female, double-saber clones in this game).

 

That said, he is the least 'efficient' of your companions. Even if I was going to need a companion tank, I'd take Scourge...who can actually be pretty brutal, especially since it's so easy to gear him in your own stuff. I used him in his DPS mode for almost ten levels, simply because I had much better strength gear available.

 

Sergeant Rusk and Kira are both great DPSers. Provided you give them some love, each one can put out enough DPS to help beat the enrage timer on a hard mode boss. Kira is actually the better DPSer, cause Rusk's 'beam' attack is bugged.

 

Doc of course, makes it easy to cruise, whether soloing, or when duoing heroics. I'd never take him into a hard mode, but he's terrific for heroics.

 

T7 just has too many points against him. He needs droid parts, which even as a cybertech, are a pain in the *** to get to purple, and even at end game, just can't compete when you're lavishing second-hand columi or champion gear on companions.

 

He's a ranged tank for a melee class, which is a further point against him.

He is a ranged tank given a useless charge ability.

He is a ranged tank that has to be in melee to use his flameburst.

His DPS mode is pathetic, compared to some other's like Scourge or Qyzen, who can get 25% faster attack rate. He gets +5% damage instead.

 

To each his own, but I think your last points against him are missing the fact that he has force leap which he uses quite liberally and which is also and interrupt. He literally jumps into mobs when sent in first. Sometimes if not sent it at all. He pulls aggro at point blank range and then AOEs with great effect. Yet, when its time to turn to ranged opponents outside of that initial attack point he uses range attacks including rockets to quickly engage. So he is both a range and a melee tank.

 

But its the interrupt that works like a charm. For those mobs that power up first, I force leap in first and interrupt. The mob starts its second pass and T7 force leaps and interrupts. Really, at that point the mob has no chance.

[DoctorNordo]

Like others have said, T7 is great at HOLDING aggro, but his ability to take a hit really starts to suffer later, although this is not a problem unique to T7. All tank companions that I have used (T7, Scourge, Blizz, Skadge, Kaliyo) have seemed very lackluster compared to DPS and, especially, healing companions.

 

From my understanding, tanking companions were stupidly overpowered in Beta and Bioware went and overnerfed them.

[Cerion]

Thats the problem that needs fixing, you shouldn't have to use your healer companion, but from what everyone is saying, you HAVE to use him to get a positive experience leveling up, while the trooper, smuggler and their imperial mirror classes do not need to use their healer companions beyond their companion quests to get the best positive results in leveling up.

 

And yet there are several people here who are saying you DON'T have to use Doc.

 

Personally, I want to roll a female alt (who's the daughter of my main JK and Kira) as a Sentinel, and I don't want to use Doc. It's heartening to read accounts of successful play with t7.

[Chessack]

Thats the problem that needs fixing, you shouldn't have to use your healer companion, but from what everyone is saying, you HAVE to use him to get a positive experience leveling up, while the trooper, smuggler and their imperial mirror classes do not need to use their healer companions beyond their companion quests to get the best positive results in leveling up.

 

I don't know about the other classes.

 

I think that Doc is great and I used him almost exclusively after I got him, but let's be clear on what Doc provides. In general, he does NOT provide increased survival DURING a fight. What he provides is dramatically reduced down time AFTER the fight.

 

I just did the final story in the Jedi Knight saga. For reasons I will not get into (spoiler-wise), I swapped to T7 for parts of it. The battles were fine. We didn't die except for once when I was stupid and over-aggroed, totally my fault and I would have died with any companion because I did something dumb. Except for that, against everything in the mission, up to and include some powerful elites, we had no problems. T7 died a few times but I did not, and I came out of most battles in good shape (not close to death or anything). Except for my own stupid over-pull, I did not use my medpacks once.

 

That's really not any different than the sort of results I would have had for Doc in that same instance. Except for one thing. I kept having to stop and "Meditate" because T7 can't really be healed any other way, and because I needed healing too. With Doc around, you don't have to bother because he heals both of you as you run from one fight to the next. So what Doc adds is dramatically reduced inter-fight down time.

 

Using Doc kind of reminds me of getting and triple-slotting Health and Stamina from the Fitness pool in City of Heroes. These were passive generic powers that slowly, very slowly, regenned your health and endurance over time. They were utterly useless DURING a battle, because they regenned so slowly. But they worked fast enough that in between battles, your health and endurance came back up so you could literally run full tilt through a mission, never stopping, going from battle to battle without a break, as fast as you could (at least, you could do that as a scrapper -- not necessarily for other classes). You didn't win more battles. But without stamina and health, you'd have to stop every couple of battles and "take a knee" (the COH equivalent of meditation) to get your health and endurance bars back up. Because people hated having to constantly take a knee, the vast majority of CoH players took Stamina.

 

And Doc is the same way. He keeps that health bar maxed out in between battles so you don't have to "take a knee." If you want reduced down time and increased speed, Doc's your man.

 

But if that doesn't matter to you, then any NPC will do. Including your little droid buddy, T7.