Most efficient companion roles?

[Quething]

So suppose you're leveling with a friend or SO, such that you've got a regular party of two human beings and two idiot companion AI tearing through the game. What roles do you take for yourselves, and what do you leave up to your companions?

 

DPS

This seems like the best fit. Companions mostly fail at DPS either by attacking a 160000 HP gold mob while fifteen grey mobs eat your face, breaking CC with AoEs, or incessantly standing in the fire. The first two are pretty easy to micromanage, by turning off their AoEs and hotkeying their default attack, and the third, every companion does, so it's a wash. This is about as good at their jobs as they get.

 

Heal

Companions are OK at this. They'll heal everyone else in the party while the tank has all the aggro sometimes, which is harder to control than DPS mis-targeting, so that's annoying. But they use their CC halfway intelligently these days and if it's getting in the way of them healing it's easy to just turn it off. Not great, but reasonable.

 

Tank

Tank companions are total crap. They don't turn bosses, they don't interrupt, and they're not even particularly survivable past level 20 because companion tank stance is terrible. So pretty much the only part of a tank's job they can even do is hold aggro. They're the most gear-dependent and the hardest to gear (lots of droids, only two humanoids who can even use your class FP gear and neither is around for 2/3 of the game). They're also hard to heal if they're not the healer's companion because of the way companions show up in the UI. Nothing but strikes against this role, though it seems like Treek might be a little better than the default guys. Haven't played with her enough yet to see.

 

Anyone have a different experience, or does this seem like the general rule to abide by (ie: for max duo potential, roll tank and heals and make the comps DPS)?

[ekimmak]

Well, if you've got two players, then yes, one of them should be a tank, and I'd rather have a player healer, because they use their cleanse intelligently (and have a far lower cooldown).

 

Most of my opinions on companion viability comes from soloing. Tank companions can be interesting to team with, and at least make it most likely that they'll go down before you do. That's one annoying thing they do better than DPS comps, keep attention where it's supposed to be.

 

They also have the best reflexes on taunts. When you're the healer, they actually do a better job keeping you out of the line of fire than some tanks that I've known.

[VitalityPrime]

The "most efficient" will always be situational.

[Korevas]

The "most efficient" will always be situational.

 

Sadly no. The best companion is always treek. She's both the best heal and the best tank, and there is little reason to even bother with dps companions currently.

[IInox]

Sadly no. The best companion is always treek. She's both the best heal and the best tank, and there is little reason to even bother with dps companions currently.

 

*

 

For A dps, treek is PERFECT, especially for a shadow infiltration.

 

As tank treek, can heal too, awesome.

 

Obv I'm building treek with DPS items, as shadow I just need to be beinhd mobs and use backstab, and treek's dps is good.

[SitHamster]

With a regular stuff update, i find a dps like Ashara quite interesting when you're a healer like the Sith Sorcerer

I'm still level 40 and i need to test that association on a tricky area like Oricon with the same level of mods my Jedi Sentinel has (and here, it's my companion who heals and sometimes i'm not far from dying when fighting Subteroth or the giant ugly squid in the northern cave)