Parsed Companion DPS

[Khevar]

I found myself wondering how much damage to companions do, anyway?

 

Having just reached 55 on my new Commando, I have two sets of 156 rated gear, full aim / power / surge:

 

1 x Reflex Barrel 28

8 x Reflex Armoring 28

9 x Agile Mod 28A

7 x Adept Enhancement 28

 

Since all companions (including HK-51) use Aim, this made for a pretty fair comparison. I put Elara in damage stance, but I left Fourex and Vik in tank stance. I figured that Elara could still do off-healing, but if you wanted a tank companion, it would be to hold aggro. Both tanks were using the same set of dps gear, no mitigation stats (other than a shield generator offhand).

 

I ran 6 5-minute parses on the level 55 Combat Training Dummy MK-5. No reason to use the ops dummy, as you can't bring companions into operations.

 

I also used Grav Round for the armor debuff, and spammed Hammer Shots the rest of the time (I had to do this to keep the fight counter running -- otherwise torparse kept restarting the fights mid combat).

 

Without further ado:

 

822 - HK-51

751 - Yuun

741 - Aric

734 - M1-4X

709 - Elara

688 - Vik

 

I'm not surprised to see HK at the top. He always seemed pretty "punchy" to me. Elara is pretty decent as a dps / off-heads. Fourex takes the cake, just below Aric and Yuun in tank stance.

 

The next thing I want to check is what Crit / Accuracy does for companions. HK-51 had 15% crit in his parse (18% on the stat sheet) and 88% accuracy (91% on the stat sheet). I figure the easiest thing to do would be to get a set Acute Enhancement 28s, and then try a longer parse both ways and see what happens.

 

Cheers.

Edited June 3, 2014 by Khevar

[JouerTue]

nice! should be done for all

[TACeMossie]

Hows treek go? She uses aim too

 

Also test how aric goes with a Blaster Rifle instead of an Assault Cannon - I wanna see how good he'll do in my DPS gear when im tanking.

[OniGanon]

Ha! I always felt M14X did just as good a job DPSing as Jorgan.

[Khevar]

Okay, so here are the Accuracy / Crit results. I did a 10 minute fight on each, to attempt to smooth out RNG:

 

869 - HK-51 - Power / Surge

836 - HK-51 - Accuracy / Crit

 

With Power / Surge gear, he has these ranged stats:

 

1261-1391 Primary Damage

675 Bonus Damage

90.00% Accuracy

10.55% Critical

71% Surge

 

On the actual parse, he had 90.6% accuracy, and 16.17% crit.

 

(Oh, and you'll notice this parse is higher than the 5-minute parse I did earlier, which suffered from lower accuracy).

 

With Accuracy / Crit gear, he has these ranged stats:

 

1192-1322 Primary Damage

605 Bonus Damage

96.34% Accuracy

16.14% Critical

50% Surge

 

On the actual parse, he had 94.4% accuracy, and 20% crit.

 

So this answers one question I had. A guildy of mine claimed that Crit doesn't work on companions. The fact is, it actually does. Putting crit gear on companions increases their critical chance in a fight. However, the loss of power seems to be worse than the increase in crit. Similarly with the Accuracy / Surge trade-off.

 

Possibly some kind of theorycrafting could dial in an optimal gearing strategy for comps, but honestly, we're not talking about very much of a difference. I think it's safest to stick to Aim / Power / Surge and that's it.

 

I'm sorta tired so I don't feel like doing Treek or Jorgan w/ rifle tonight -- but maybe tomorrow!

[Khevar]

Okay, so here are some more numbers:

 

783 - Aric (Assault Cannon)

716 - Aric (Rifle)

651 - Treek (Healing Stance)

714 - Treek (Tank Stance)

 

Aric's parse is different from the last one (751), just RNG, I guess. Didn't feel like running four 10-minute parses.

 

So for pure dps numbers, HK-51 is the way to go. If you want an off-healer that does damage, Elara in blaster stance is the way to go. If you want a tank that does damage, Fourex (in tank stance with dps gear) is the way to go.

 

As far as end-game gear goes, (with slot bound armorings punishing HK-51 fans), Arik is a good bet (but needs an Assault Cannon.

[TACeMossie]

Okay, so here are some more numbers:

 

783 - Aric (Assault Cannon)

716 - Aric (Rifle)

651 - Treek (Healing Stance)

714 - Treek (Tank Stance)

 

Aric's parse is different from the last one (751), just RNG, I guess. Didn't feel like running four 10-minute parses.

 

So for pure dps numbers, HK-51 is the way to go. If you want an off-healer that does damage, Elara in blaster stance is the way to go. If you want a tank that does damage, Fourex (in tank stance with dps gear) is the way to go.

 

As far as end-game gear goes, (with slot bound armorings punishing HK-51 fans), Arik is a good bet (but needs an Assault Cannon.

 

Good to know. I think ill stick to treek, because she also puts a little healing out and also is a lot tougher than Jorgan, and wont break CCs.

 

And by that, I mean Ill stick to HK51 because Im sick of those silver-ranking enemies with a lightsaber on oricon who constantly stun me, and I like insta-killing them.

[Nkya]

I suppose you'll get stronger damages with Power/Accuracy. As a rule of thumb,

damage = base(power) * accuracy * ( 1 + critical * surge )

the "base" value depend on the base damage, which varies with the power.

 

According to your parses, in your power/surge case, the base is 860, for critical/accuracy it's 805, which is expectably lower since the power was traded for more critical.

 

If you took the Power/Surge value but replace Surge with Accuracy, with 860 base, 50%surge, 16.17% critical rate, 94.4% accuracy, you'll get expect 878 dps, which is 1% more than the 869 from Power/Surge

 

On the other hand, if you took the Critical/Accuracy base and replace the Accuracy with Surge, with 805 base, 71% surge, 20% critical rate and 90.6% accuracy, you'll expect 833 dps, marginally lower than the 836 from Critical/Accuracy.

 

That concurs with the player character gearing: DPS need to max out their accuracy first. However since surge has a diminishing return, maybe the best value would be to sacrifice a bit of accuracy for a better surge.

[TACeMossie]

Something else to point out: You will mainly be using companions on non-boss enemies, so any more than 5% accuracy is a waste.

 

E.g. my HK51 is running with crafted armorings, and token mods/enhancments/earpiece/implants. Hes got 4 enhancements as accuracy and everything else is surge - end result is a nice and big amount of damage.

 

(Im killing the Corrupted Subertooth before surge, the tentacle boss before he summons a tentacle, ect...)

[Gyronamics]

Yuun would be the best dps companion if he wasn't bugged.

 

Several of his abilities are force while others are tech.

 

The force ones gain nothing from the correct tech/aim gearing.

 

Play any other class and you'll see their melee dps specialist is much better.

[yoomazir]

About Aric, i was wondering, I always felt there was like 2 AOE attack that weren't worth using due to the long time casting, could you try him without is channeled AOE attacks please? I want to know if there's a positive difference. Edited June 8, 2014 by yoomazir

[Khevar]

About Aric, i was wondering, I always felt there was like 2 AOE attack that weren't worth using due to the long time casting, could you try him without is channeled AOE attacks please? I want to know if there's a positive difference.

Sure. Here's two more for comparison:

 

784 - Aric with all abilities on

774 - Aric with Spread Fire and Auto Fire turned off

Edited June 9, 2014 by Khevar

[Rykaird]

This is great information, thanks for doing this.

 

I really like to run with 4X - he has such a fun attitude when it comes to killing Imperials. I'm a Vanguard tank so I use him in DPS mode. I would love to know what kind of DPS he puts out in DPS stance.

[BobaFaceroll]

Yuun would be the best dps companion if he wasn't bugged.

 

Several of his abilities are force while others are tech.

 

The force ones gain nothing from the correct tech/aim gearing.

 

Play any other class and you'll see their melee dps specialist is much better.

 

True, and extremely frustrating. I use Torian with my Merc and he's a beast in my mostly 168 hand me downs. No armor debuff either, just a DOT to keep Torian in combat.

[TACeMossie]

This is great information, thanks for doing this.

 

I really like to run with 4X - he has such a fun attitude when it comes to killing Imperials. I'm a Vanguard tank so I use him in DPS mode. I would love to know what kind of DPS he puts out in DPS stance.

 

Well in DPS stance hes at least second best (+5% damage from stance) and then there's the DPS offhand instead of tank one to consider...

[LaniAkavir]

Ha! I always felt M14X did just as good a job DPSing as Jorgan.

 

I think the only difference would be Aric having multiple AoE abilities, but then since they may break cc and aggro different mobs, I have some of them off at times anyways.

[Exquisitr]

To the OP: Great post! Thanks for doing this. Question: If you don't have HK, it looks to me like Yuun is a pretty decent second choice even though he's bugged? The replay on Aric indicates that he's probably better than Yuun, but the OP didn't rerun the simulation with Yuun.

[Khevar]

To the OP: Great post! Thanks for doing this. Question: If you don't have HK, it looks to me like Yuun is a pretty decent second choice even though he's bugged? The replay on Aric indicates that he's probably better than Yuun, but the OP didn't rerun the simulation with Yuun.

Hiya. A 10-minute run with both would probably be required to know for sure -- the 5-minute runs seem to have too much variation.

 

The main problem is that you can't just order your companion to attack and walk away -- torparse requires you to keep attacking yourself or it breaks the parse into a hundred tiny fights. I haven't been able to work up the desire to do anymore tests.

 

I will say that I personally have been converted to using a tank companion this for ALL of my toons. Mainly due to the fact that tank companions do almost as much as a dps companion (if wearing dps gear), and with the taunt they have aggro for most of the fight and their heath can be restored in a flash (speeder/rocket boost).

 

For me, the biggest gameplay benefit of a companion is to speed fights up. With a dps companion, fights are quick, but you have to rest in-between. With a healer companion, fights are slower, but you don't have to rest in-between. With a tank companion, fights are almost as fast as with a dps comp, and BONUS, you rarely have to rest in-between.

[TACeMossie]

To the OP: Great post! Thanks for doing this. Question: If you don't have HK, it looks to me like Yuun is a pretty decent second choice even though he's bugged? The replay on Aric indicates that he's probably better than Yuun, but the OP didn't rerun the simulation with Yuun.

 

Nope, still Aric. You can't put your old mainhand's barrel into Yuuns techstaff (because reasons), so Yuun's damage is pretty much capped at slightly more than the 156 realm of mainhand stuff.

 

Meanwhile Aric can stick a 186 barrel into his mainhand and roll over everything with... ~1200 dps! (Yeah I checked, though it was with a 180 mainhand barrel)

And if you're desperate enough to craft HK51 a set of armorings, he could probably get up to 1500 dps. I know with HK51 blue augmented and in 156 armorings/180 comm mods + enhancements/180 earpiece/156 mainhand + offhand barrels he does 1.05k dps, and most of his damage is reliant on the mainhand + offhand.

[DarthZaul]

Someone did a similar test to prove that, apart from HK-51 if you can actually be bothered crafting his the best gear, melee companions all do the most dps.

 

For accuracy or surge I think it depends on what type of attacks they use. Jaesa/Kira uses melee attacks so needs accuracy, and If Jorgan/Rusk/Gault etc use ranged attacks (haven't looked) they will need accuracy, but if they use tech attacks they already have 100% on non elites so should use surge.

[Elyx]

Mild necro....

 

Only downside with these results is Companions are used most often on world trash. 3/4 of the fights we are in involve 2-3 or more adds, thus AoE on companions needs to be taken into account as well (though this is hard to parse on a dummy).

 

So while these are definitely interesting results from a single target/high health target, It would be interesting to see how HK does with traditional comps in larger add groups, where much of his burst damage is wasted on low health mobs and he simply takes more time.

 

I personally think that in larger groups the traditional Comps with AoE skills will outpace HK in overal time, but HK leads the pack on single targets with larger health pools.

[Khevar]

I personally think that in larger groups the traditional Comps with AoE skills will outpace HK in overal time, but HK leads the pack on single targets with larger health pools.

I think you're right about this.

 

Also note that the melee dps companion I tested (Yuun) is bugged and has less dps than he should.

 

Torparse is still down so I can't link it, but I did a test with Nadia (on my Sage toon), and she did about 1000 dps in similar gear while in AOE mode. So from a pure damage perspective, non-bugged melee dps companions are probably better than HK.

 

That said, I'm still in favor of tank companions. A tank companion (in dps gear) does close the same damage, has slightly better survivability, and has taunts. It is infinitely better for your tank companion to eat CC (such as the Oricon commanders) than to get hit with it yourself.

[Tamanous]

I think you're right about this.

 

Also note that the melee dps companion I tested (Yuun) is bugged and has less dps than he should.

 

Torparse is still down so I can't link it, but I did a test with Nadia (on my Sage toon), and she did about 1000 dps in similar gear while in AOE mode. So from a pure damage perspective, non-bugged melee dps companions are probably better than HK.

 

That said, I'm still in favor of tank companions. A tank companion (in dps gear) does close the same damage, has slightly better survivability, and has taunts. It is infinitely better for your tank companion to eat CC (such as the Oricon commanders) than to get hit with it yourself.

 

Your point about a tank companion is, well, they are a tank companion when you want a tank. Sort of the point to them. I still outfit mine with real tank gear. Any companion's dps is nearly trivial when you are a well geared dps class. My concealment Operative simply wants things off of him so he can backstab. All current open world pve content drops in seconds to this toon due to gear superiority.

 

AOE dps companions obviously do higher overall damage than HK but I have tested many times which survives longer in single target fights: HK by a long shot. That is the entire point of HK. He is a single target companion MEANT to aggro-wipe. It is a group friendly companion that won't break cc due to aoe and doesn't pull aggro for long so not to disrupt organized group play. If this is what is wanted for solo play then it is yet another option to normal dps companions. My sniper uses HK nearly exclusively. I use it basically as a CC against a tough target while I mop up softer mobs. When I unload on the tough mob I gain aggro and my defenses keep me alive for what is left of the target.

 

Each companion has their uses and is why they were offered to us. More tools in the tool shed. Now if only gearing droids in this game became easier.

Edited November 25, 2014 by Tamanous

[Khevar]

Note that I don't disagree with you, but I just wanted to clarify a couple of points.

Your point about a tank companion is, well, they are a tank companion when you want a tank. Sort of the point to them. I still outfit mine with real tank gear.

In my experience, tanks even in tank gear are very squishy, and do about 1/2 the dps they could do in dps gear. I believe that the only benefit a tank companion brings to the table is a taunt, which is why I put dps gear on them -- things die quicker.

 

Of course, this is somewhat of a moot point. A while back I successfully solo leveled a toon from 1-55 with no companion out whatsoever, fighting most mobs 1-2 levels higher than me. Which tells me that any companion in any configuration is perfectly viable.

 

AOE dps companions obviously do higher overall damage than HK but I have tested many times which survives longer in single target fights: HK by a long shot.

The biggest disadvantage with AOE companions is the fact that they break CC.

 

But you should know that when I parsed Nadia in AOE spec, it was in a single-target training dummy fight. In other words, she did more damage than HK, in similar gear, against a single target.

 

HK has the out-of-combat-one-shot on silver mobs. And I enjoy his combat barks. But as far as straight numbers go, a non-bugged melee dps is going to top the charts.

[Tamanous]

Again the point of a tank companion is to tank. You don't care about dps when you want a tank. They live far longer with tank gear than without. It depends on what you use them for. You use them to dps with a taunt. That is 1 choice of 2.

 

HK does not do the dps because you cannot gear him the same as normal dps companions. The OP clearly was talking about equally geared companions. Again though, this is mute because the point of HK is to have a single target dps companion that does not break CC. In order to do that with normal dps companions you have to turn off their aoe abilities which drastically lowers their dps.