Companion Changes in 4.0.2

[Aries]

The majority of companions are purely cosmetic now, so there isn't really a point in making each one to 50 to begin with.

 

Then why add them in the first place? The player will almost certainly run with the highest influence companion every time. The initial companions per class were fine and fun to level since you would unlock a mission with actual story with them. Some you loved, some you hated.

 

KotFE companions have very little story, you blow up a Star Fortress with them or do a few grind quests to unlock them only to begin a huge gift clicking grind fest. Yay. I hate em all.

[Hiply]

Absolutely! It certainly may be a bit more challenging than before but you can complete them. The intent is that you can complete any [Heroic 2] with your Companion counting as one of the two. If you find this isn't true for any Heroics tomorrow, let us know.

 

-eric

 

I did the Alderaan Fortress H2 on an Arsenal BH and Shadow, last night and today respectively. I'll do it with my Sorc (would do it now but the 208 vendor in the Force area has vanished so I can't get out of the 190s he's wearing) tomorrow, and if need be confirm it again with the BH and Shadow. Have to say that it wasn't a cakewalk in 208s for the BH with Lana healing in the final couple of fights and wound up strafing/kiting for half of the final fight since I couldn't pull the boss wench off of Lana and she got obliterated.

 

Lana is only at 11 on both of them and the same on my Sorc...so we'll see.

 

If the data mining is correct and you aimed at anything like a 50% nerf I think you went way too far, but again, we'll see.

 

It's pretty clear that the "we'll scale them up with influence" is nothing more...or less...than a "spend, spend, spend on influence items or forget the companion you are used to...or anything resembling it" mechanic. It will reward, instantly, those in a position to spend their way to 50 inf.

Edited November 16, 2015 by Hiply

[Jinook_Phi]

I was in early BETA and have come and gone many times. When I came back, I was very pleasantly surprised by many things and wondered, is Disney telling EA- start listening to the players? Ive seen improvements in every single area and the mood of the community reflects that on many levels. So when I hear of drastic nerfs, I pause and am reminded of all the reasons I left so many times. But this time, it COULD be different.

 

In my many years in MMOs, devs in general, tend to hold their views of how a game should be played versus how their customers want to play it. And so my big concern with this nerf is, does this take soloists out of heroics and flashpoints? And if so, will they be as quick to find a middle ground? As in, will they listen to the players? We shall see. But... the companions were WAY over powered.

 

As someone coming back from a long time a way, I was dropping golds within seconds, top tier elites (I forget what those with the white star are called) with next to no damage. It all felt like I had taken an invincibility potion which was great for rapidly leveling through content I had already seen, but boring, too. It just didnt feel like a game.

 

Now I remember the days of solosits having nothing, not really. And this posts wording of dramatically reducing stats reminds me of the old days of SWTOR when LOTS of people left. I wish they be more common ground focused, but we will see when I log in. If Im now suddenly dying all the time, that wont work either.

[VanderII]

It's a good decision.

[Anaesha]

It's a good decision.

 

That remains to be seen. BW doesn't have a good track record with balancing and they are adjusting the comps BASE stats so this can be either very good or disastrously bad.

[TheSeer]

I will give it a try tomorrow but I'm not happy with the change. I loved how companions were right now, it was one of thing I actual thought they got right. I hope it doesn't just make thing slower and more tedious but I think that exactly what it going to do. I have little faith they will balance it right (as they always over do the nerf) and I will not be surprised if some content become undo-able. Sadly I don't enjoy all that much grinding the heroic 2 simple to grind up my alliance system so it will be a turn off if this nerf just makes thing even more slow. I fear they realize people are burning through content too fast and are trying to extend the grind out. As other said tedious and slow does not make something challenging, at least in my book.

 

I wish they would catch these thing in testing because now there just going to upset people who liked the system as it. An example of this was the slot machine, this should have been easily caught with internal testing. So it should have been fixed before it was released and then prompt as fine. I think they need to be a little more carefully about these sort of things. To let something out then nerf it a month later, is going to leave a bad taste in many players mouth. Of course they might have actual mange to not over due it this time, well find out tomorrow.

[Master-Nala]

Then they weren't all that good were they?

I'm telling you a good geared companion preformed a most players in heroics and FPs if you know how to gear and manage them.

 

Basically, you're saying a talented and informed player (ie the one that geared the companion) could outperform a bad player. And this proves what exactly? That Bioware's reasons for this change are invalid or untruthful. That's ridiculous.

 

 

and where are these numbers? But I'll talk from my in game expereince: My geared 220/224 toons heals about the same as my level 50 companion. Should a level 50 companion heal that well. You bet it should. Should it heal better than some 208 geared skilled player? You bet it should.

 

You're entitled to your opinion. But Bioware developers are entitled to both their opinion and to change the game to fit their opinion. And no companions should not be a good as a well-geared player. That removes the need for the player. No matter how many anti-social folks we have, no one runs a MMO like that.

 

OR BW screwed up and should have left well enough alone. Another game feature not broken but damn lets try to fix it anyway. Especially in a part of the game that an OP companion didn't make a hill of beans about anyway. SM content that was never going to be a challenge because everyone is suppose to easily finish it and some 4 year old heroics 2's you were going to have to grind over and over and over anyway in the new grind alliance system. As if that needed to be more tedious.

 

You will see this change affect gamers and it wont be good. It will affect the time to finish in heroics and for solo star fortress it will affect challenge and time to finish.

 

But hey, thats the goal right? 2 things to do at max level need more time to completion. Solo needed more time added to them anyway as we as star fortress. Those good companions made that content to easily done. The grind a bit trivial. Can't have that when nothing new is planed till 2016.

 

You're entitled to believe what you want. Not like I can change your mind. But companion healers removed the 'game' from this game. They turned this game into playing with little invincible dolls. It was extremely overpowered and I doubt it's going to be much harder tomorrow.

 

I guess going from invincible to just really really strong can be jarring though.

[Hiply]

That remains to be seen. BW doesn't have a good track record with balancing and they are adjusting the comps BASE stats so this can be either very good or disastrously bad.

 

Well, you'll know...if he's being honest...how big a hit it is by noting your companion's stats today and then checking them post-patch. Which reminds me to go in a screen-shot that right now.

[LoverNoFighter]

Does this mean that if the community doesn't like the changes, you will listen to us and revert them?

Remember; a happy community = a prosperous game!

[Mahrdol]

so lemme see if I follow this correctly, you have nerfed my companions healing without fixing the bug that gives them 0 armor rating and 0 damage mitigation....well done:mad:

 

I was thinking same thing. Brilliant! Seems like typical knee jerk reaction Bioware always employs,

[NRieh]

Not that it would do any good. Your tank pulls the mobs and because of the bug that isn't getting fixed until 4.0.3 he dies almost instantly.

 

Well, that's still better than pulling extra non-hostile beasts AND a CCed elite anyway, isn't it?

 

You know how they say? 'If you want to make a person happy, make their life worse and then undo the changes'. So very true. Hopefully this 4.03 with its armor fixes comes soon, and then I'm going to be the one and only healer in my part (as intended).

[Master-Nala]

Does this mean that if the community doesn't like the changes, you will listen to us and revert them?

Remember; a happy community = a prosperous game!

 

They won't revert them. But if they are too much in the other direction, it will show up in their metrics.

[Denerio]

2016 will be a disastrous year for SWtoR. Devs have their heads up their butts as a lot of the changes show. Glad I cancelled my sub and won't ever be coming back. Edited November 16, 2015 by Denerio

[VanderII]

That remains to be seen. BW doesn't have a good track record with balancing and they are adjusting the comps BASE stats so this can be either very good or disastrously bad.

 

Now I'm an immortal with my companion, there isn't challenge, with this patch 4.0.2, there will be more emotion.

[dovid-r]

Hey folks,

 

If you haven’t yet seen the 4.0.2 patch notes, you can view them here. There are some patch notes that we wanted to highlight and talk about specifically.

 

• Companion base stats have been reduced.
  
• Companion damage and healing output has been reduced.
  

 

Some of you will certainly ask, why the need to nerf Companions? This is something that we definitely saw the community be divided on, and it was good for us to hear feedback from both sides. Ultimately, this decision came down to our own goals for Companions, along with data on how they were performing. What we saw in those instances is that Companions, simply put, were just way too good. Their healing and damage output could be greater than that of a very skilled player with a fully maximized character. In order for you to understand why we are making these changes, we thought it best to explain our goals for Companions in Fallen Empire.

 

In KotFE, with a large focus on going back to story, we wanted to make sure that all of our story content was accessible to all of our players. The power that Companions bring to the table, definitely played a part in that accessibility. Companions, from a combat perspective, should complement and provide support to your character, not overshadow them. However, in looking at how strong Companions are, we may have gone a bit too far in that direction. Simply put, while playing through much of the game, there are a lot of situations in regular combat where it is practically impossible for you to be killed if you have a healing Companion. Although this can be fun for a time, this wasn’t our goal. Companions should be strong, they should fill any role you need, but they should not make your actual gameplay be overshadowed by how strong they are.

 

So with 4.0.2 we have brought their effectiveness down quite a bit, let’s talk about some of the specifics here:

• There isn’t a flat % that healing was reduced by. Effectiveness reduction varies greatly depending on level, Influence, level sync, etc. That being said, the healer companions are still quite competitive, but they no longer trivialize content that was meant to be challenging.
  
• Healing power increase by Influence level has been increased. That means that as you scale up Influence levels with a Companion they will get more powerful per level than before. This helps to offset the base healing reduction a bit as you gain influence with your companion.
  

 

We did want to make some improvements to tanking Companions:

• We increased the threat generated by tank companions, so they should be able to hold the attention of enemy NPCs better than before.
  
• We fixed an issue involving the tank companion’s mass grapple ability, it will no longer pull in enemies that are out of combat.
  

 

Will your Companions feel a bit weaker than they did when KotFE launched? Yes. But believe me they will still carry their weight and fill the role you need them to in combat. All that we ask is that you log in tomorrow, and check the changes yourself. Play around with the Companions in each role and let us know your feedback. Thanks everyone.

 

-eric

 

cool.

 

I've got a 20 influence level with t7 so I'm good.

[Anaesha]

Well, that's still better than pulling extra non-hostile beasts AND a CCed elite anyway, isn't it?

 

You know how they say? 'If you want to make a person happy, make their life worse and then undo the changes'. So very true. Hopefully this 4.03 with its armor fixes comes soon, and then I'm going to be the one and only healer in my part (as intended).

 

only a little better. I still wish they would of left comps healing alone and focused on fixing both of the tanks issues THEN addressed the comps healing.

Edited November 16, 2015 by Anaesha

[Apache]

only a little better. I still wish they would of left comps healing alone and focused on fixing both of the tanks issues THEN addressed the comps healing.

 

More agro ability, less healing, and zero armor... That's not a Tank, that's a Corpse waiting to happen

[jimmorrisson]

Stop the nerfing

[MerlockVonBaron]

hi eric any plans to give us any new alliance alerts before chapter 10 is out

[Mahrdol]

Hey folks,

 

So with 4.0.2 we have brought their effectiveness down quite a bit

 

Will your Companions feel a bit weaker than they did when KotFE launched? Yes.

-eric

 

Sorry those don't Jive!

[Icestar]

Will be interesting to try tomorrow, thanx for the information.

[Sarfux]

Phew. Thanks for the explanation. I'm glad you cleared that all up! I just hope it wasn't nerfed ToO Much! :eek: Edited November 16, 2015 by Sarfux

[Anaesha]

More agro ability, less healing, and zero armor... That's not a Tank, that's a Corpse waiting to happen

 

LOL, That is SOOOOOOOO True!!!

[Transcendent]

Absolutely! It certainly may be a bit more challenging than before but you can complete them. The intent is that you can complete any [Heroic 2] with your Companion counting as one of the two. If you find this isn't true for any Heroics tomorrow, let us know.

 

-eric

 

Eric, does that include or exclude the [Heroic 2+] Star Fortresses?

[DarkAnnihilation]

More agro ability, less healing, and zero armor... That's not a Tank, that's a Corpse waiting to happen

 

Unfortunately the issue with zero armor is not limited to tanks, applies to healer companions as well, I stated earlier that at 63 healer has 23.16% in damage reduction and 4799 armor rating, at 65 it goes to zero, the armor issue seems to apply to all stances, not just tanks unless the healer was never supposed to have any damage mitigation at all which I doubt.