BaronV Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 (edited) I know this has been raised before, but since nothing has changed since LAUNCH, im raising it again. It seems like EVERY healer comp would much rather use their stupid carbonize stream rather than heal me. it dosent matter if my health is down to 5% they will still be busy using that stupid spray instead. Yes they are set to med watch, and no i dont want to turn carbonize stream off because its actually useful provided the stupid companion uses it sparingly. Ive lost count of the number of times Ive died because the comp refused to heal me. Yup not even a SINGLE heal. just spary spray spray.. Seriously!! Edited December 3, 2012 by BaronV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ruskaeth Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 Turn it off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MariaD Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 Companions are of their own mind about what to do! Make sure you have selected healing mode. But overall, you want to have full companion ability bar visible, and either shortcut their heals or click (however you play). You need to tell companions what to do, most of the time. It's a fun mini-game, I find. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stenrik Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 (edited) I get the sense that BW intended players to micromanage their companions much more than they actually do. I personally would like to see more situational companion abilities, such as better CC's/heals/finishing moves that can ONLY be activated manually. I think it would help keep players on their toes if they so choose. Perhaps converting one of our 2 new bars into a second companion bar, and earning extra companion abilities as a side part of the game. Perhaps... "companion ability datacrons"? Edited December 3, 2012 by Stenrik Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grayseven Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 Turn it off and if you want to actually use it, keybind it. I've not seen a situation yet where the ability is useful. If I want something stunned, I do it. It's why I turn off all healer damage abilities. It would be nice if the healer companions would still heal you when they are on Passive since at no point do I need my healer companion attacking a target. Ever. If it needs to enter the BART state, I'll take care of it. My healer comp should be taking care of ME. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MariaD Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 I've not seen a situation yet where the ability is useful. I use it in two situations. First, when a player tries to run away from me and is outside of my (melee) stun range. Second, when I want to grab a resource (say, a box in BH or archeology) without fighting the mobs guarding it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentinelDranoel Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 I never use healer companions, they annoy the hell out of me. I hate the way they shoot at people too. If I could just turn off they ability to attack, then maybe I might like using a healer comp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auraleus Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 I turned it off and all of Doc's offensive abilities and noticed about 200% improvement in his healing. A lot of the time they will also prefer to stand there and use their blaster abilities while you die. It is just poor AI coding; in an ideal world, when you pick your companion's "stance", the AI will kick in and think "hey, I should probably be prioritizing heals!" I would just keybind it, but you can't rearrange your companion's toolbar nor can you bring their abilities onto your hotbars. So if you use more than one companion you pretty much have to bind everything as the abilities will be placed in different, unalterable locations on their bars. Would be nice to have some control over it so that we could just keybind 1 or 2 slots on the companion's bar then move the necessary abilities to them across all our comps. It is just too sloppy of a system right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
itsmymillertime Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 Make sure they have a healing ability off cooldown. I noticed that they will sit there and use blaster abilities as all healing abilities are on cooldown. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WhillB Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 How do you "turn off" certain abilities? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Digimanbyte_ID Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 Hit the guy your companion is streaming and they will get back to healing you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ephesia Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 How do you "turn off" certain abilities? Every companion ability has a aquare at the top right of each ability that is most of the time green, green means you allow your companion to use that ability, if you turn it off by right clicking on the said ability the companion will no longer use that ability. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkgryphon Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 (edited) I just got Doc on my Sentinel, and for that 1 mission I needed have him out, it was the worst fighting yet. I am so used to just DPSing things down really quick with Kira. I do use the healer on my assassin, but that's only for certain daily heroic bosses when I am solo. On him, I shut off both blaster abilities and his CC. Edited December 3, 2012 by monkgryphon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Furiel Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 I've not seen a situation yet where the ability is useful. If I want something stunned, I do it. It's why I turn off all healer damage abilities. With the nerf to CC range I find CS to be useful to ranged stun something since it's range was not changed like player abilities were. But I have it turned off and keybound so I choose when it's used, not Elara. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheOuroborus Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 How do you "turn off" certain abilities? You'll see a little green or empty box in the upper right hand corner of some companion skills. Right click on it to turn it green (on) or empty (off). Once off, your companion will not use that skill at all. On my dedicated healer companion, I've turned off all the fighting skills. Makes his using healing a lot faster leaving all the fighting to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cleet_Xia Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 Companions abilities don't work the same way as player abilities, they have no resource bar, and they can do their thing indefinately. Basically their more advanced abilities, such as taunts & heals, have longish cool downs. For that reason, turning off abilities will do nothing to increase the frequency with which they heal. And if you turn off their basic attack that doesn't have a cooldown, they will begin standing around idle, as they wait for any ability to become available. Ability selection for healing companions is not sensitive to player health at all ~ they don't react to your urgent need for healing, they pick there abilities at random. That is why they will routinely heal even when you're very close to full health. When they cast a heal on themselves, it doesn't get put on cooldown like it does when they heal the player. Since the companion AI isn't terribly sophisticated, they will regularly put all of their abilities on cooldown at the same time, and then default to their attack that has no cooldown. This leads to player health ratcheting downward a little bit during each of these periods. If incoming dps from mobs exceeds the max HPS of the healing comp- your health will not recover. You need to save your defensive cooldowns until they enter one of these periods, and then use them to bridge the gap in healing. If you're a dps spec, and your comp has it's dps abilities on, you can use your threat dump to let the comp soak some damage while you self heal. Carbonized stream is a damage mitigation abilitiy ~ frozen mobs are not dpsing. Turning that ability off, only makes your healing companion less effective. By the same token ~ turning off their dps only prolongs the fight & gives the mobs more time to dps ~ increasing the amount of healing you require. Turning off abilities might increase the random selction of healing abilities are selected. But once all those abilities are on cooldown ~ nothing will increase companion HPS other than pressence stat, companion gear, and manipulating the fight so that the comp takes some damage. Turning off everything but the heals is trading all their mitigation & dps for a tiny increase in healing done. Every pull with a healing companion is a race against the clock to reduce the incoming DPS from the enemies below the HPS the healing comp is capable of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morgalica Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 good thing lokin doesn't get those and only uses his heals when in human form. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackbird_BbB Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 I wish they had brought in the same idea they used in Dragon Age where you could just set priorities for all AI abilities. Your companions did what you wanted them to pretty well in that game once you set them up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DroidDreamer Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 good thing lokin doesn't get those and only uses his heals when in human form. Yeah, but sometimes I've seen him standing around and DPSing instead of healing while in human form. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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