Companion Change Feedback

[CaulderBenson]

Your level - 65

 

Roughly Average Item Rating - 208

 

Discipline - Merc dps

 

Companion - Mako

 

Companion role - Healing

 

Companion Influence level - 32

 

Which Mission or Star Fortress are you playing (Solo Mode? Heroic Mode?) - Heroic

 

Your personal experience while playing this content - It's not fun. The enemies have a lot of health and hit hard. The healing companions are now very inadequate.

 

------------------

 

I'll say again, dailies, solo fps, and heroics are NOT FUN with nerfed companions and level sync.

 

You need to either do away with level sync or return the companions a significant portion of their power.

 

I was enjoying running the old heroics and dailies and solo fps with my guildmates and the PRE-NERF companions.

 

Dailies and heroics should be quick activities, and they're slower with the nerfed healing companions.

 

That's not good.

 

--------------

 

My feedback is I'm looking at cutting back my playtime and playing my alt characters significantly less after the nerf.

 

I don't find it FUN.

Edited November 19, 2015 by CaulderBenson

[Lanessar]

Your level: 40-44

Roughly Average Item Rating: 102 (?) - Adaptive Orange gear. Current armoring/barrel mods, I think my enhancements and other stuff is possibly 4 levels out of date.

Discipline: Sharpshooter

Companion: Corso (Rank: 14), Bowdarr (Rank: 11), Risha (Rank: 11), Akaavi (Rank: 5)

Companion role: Experimented with all.

Companion Influence level: Above

Which Mission or Star Fortress are you playing (Solo Mode? Heroic Mode?) Solo Story Mode, H2 Planetary line for Balmorra.

Your personal experience while playing this content:

 

Gold melee mobs out-DPS my companion incoming heals (drastically), even with defensive cooldowns in use (including Heroic Moment). If they are ranged, I can have Corso tank them, but this then requires resting after any fight with a gold or more than one silver mob.

 

As a tank, the companions above either die or are at near-death and cannot hold threat, my damage frequently pulls the mob off of Corso and Surrender does not restore their threat. Tank companions are nearly useless due to the taunt ability cooldown.

 

Attempting the Collocid (sp?) questline, the Ravagers spawn in groups of three or four silvers, and I've probably died about 8 times attempting those quests. Companion can't hold threat as tank. In Heal mode, healing for 198 per tick on Kolto. There is considerable downtime with companions in any role through heroics.

 

I could not complete the Collocid Queen quest, using all CDs, HM, interrupts on the boss, escape/evasion for the freeze. Tank goes down in approximately 2 minutes. Putting on DPS, haven't been able to survive past the second add spawn. Putting on healer, I survive until my cooldowns are spent (which means, they aren't doing jack, really).

 

In Story mode, I either come to close defeat or am defeated when facing melee gold enemies. This occurs repeatedly. I'm using optimal rotations (it's gotten better since trickshot at level 42, but it's still pretty tedious). I was unable to defeat the Ancient Wampa on Hoth, the adds ignore the tank and straight up murder me. Had to skip that mob - which was 2 levels below mine.

 

Random melee gold imperial mob out-DPSes heals in all instances. it was guarding the entrance to a mission, there was no avoiding him, and he utterly destroyed me regardless of CDs due to the companion's lack of heals. This mob was 3 levels below mine at the time.

 

It has gotten to the point where resting is faster than allowing a comp to heal you and themselves to full after a fight. An example: Risha and I doing content. Both reduced to 35% health. Allowing the companion to heal me took longer to get to full than resting/meditating (2:15 seconds to full versus 30 seconds to full).

 

My impression: All content was easy mode except for some heroics at-level (and only because of multiple golds clustered in such a way as to prevent single pulls) prior to the companion adjustment.

 

This has now changed to the point where I am having to take a third of the time I spent doing the story for rest/recuperation between sets of mobs. The "coasting" through the story was what I truly enjoyed, and felt like a hero, and liked my companions because they seemed like useful people. Now they are an annoyance I have to micromanage.

 

The healer is practically useless at my level, dps creates more downtime as I have to rest more often, and tank is... well, not terrifically useful, but the best of the three options for this spec.

 

I honestly don't want to bring "newly added" companions along for the fight any longer, they contribute very little and don't survive. Any companions added late in the story line, I would not use. Not due to dislike (I want to use Akaavi), but because they aren't even at the point where they can tank two silver mobs and survive.

 

TLDR; Fun has gone out of the story due to downtime. I think the current difficulty on H2 planetary needs slight improvement, I just pressed through to see it to the end, but I would not do that out of choice any longer without other players.

Edited November 19, 2015 by Lanessar

[tmwfte]

I'm not beating a strawman here.

 

Yes. You are. When you're trotting out "impossible" and no one is saying this, you are indeed trotting out a strawman.

[Alssaran]

Yes. You are. When you're trotting out "impossible" and no one is saying this, you are indeed trotting out a strawman.

 

It was said. Multiple times yesterday both here and on reddit. Try again?

[MaximusRex]

I'm sorry, even if it is not a scientific poll it can be very well surmised that if one poll from before the patch says 70% liked something and then after the patch 70% of people don't like, and both of those polls are well over 1000 people that you can see a general trend forming. That along with the general outcry on the forums, in the game and elsewhere I can't imagine that this is going over well for those "100's of thousands of people".

 

Unless someone can give nearly as much data saying people like it this way I think its safe to assume most people are upset over this.

 

No, it cannot be well surmised at all. Have you ever even taken a class in statistics and do you know anything at all about how to create a proper poll designed to limit bias? Almost none of the community uses the forums, and those who do most are only here because they are pissed off. I am here every day and haven't even seen this poll, so already we can tell its skewed because not everyone on the forums even knows about it. I'm on harbinger, almost no one have even discussed it in chat, and open world H2s are still really busy. Real world observation contradicts flawed forums rage poll, and neither is close to being reliable.

[OmenQ]

You ran it in a tank spec overgeared for the content, found it challenging, and still died, and your'e berating people about not being able to solo it...stop and think about that for a minute and let it sink in.

 

"One for All" is meant to be a challenge. It was. I probably overestimated my gear, since I'm not able to check it at the moment, but I do recall having 190-200 relics, a 190-ish earpiece, one or two 216 pieces, and mostly 208's, plus the overpowered legacy companion saber.

 

Does being an Immortal Jugg make surviving things easier? Yes. Is it hard to kill a room full of the Exarch's mobs with a wiffle bat? Yes. Was it so much of a challenge that I'm worried I won't be able to do it on my Merc? No, not once he hits 65 and spends some common crystals on a basic set of gear.

[TheSeventhJedi]

Yo Eric,

 

Isn't this the type of data and feedback you should like, be getting before making a big change to a system/feature? Shouldn't a large change like this be, you know, tested before rolling it out? This is horribly slapdash and feels reactionary in the extreme, with poorly communicated goals for the change beforehand (hence the longer post now) and a complete lack of communication in the immediate aftermath that makes it feel as if you guys were caught totally unaware by the reaction and were rushing to figure out what to do.

 

I keep wanting to think that you guys are going to turn a corner and start consistently communicating well and stop making knee-jerk reaction changes. But then you continue to do this.

 

Why are people angry? Because you're not doing your bloody jobs, that's why.

 

Hear hear. I'm sure they could have implemented a nerf that wouldn't have brought the sky down for most casuals, but for some reason, they are insistent upon making all changes without any player input, and then notifying us a day beforehand. Has it ever worked well for them?

[MightyZeus]

Can I just say that I was having tons of fun before the patch and that now I have zero desire to log in? You are lucky I bought a 60 day game card or my sub would already be up.

[Mahrdol]

 

So now that I've done that, I can confidently say: If you're whining about the One for All achievement not being obtainable by an average player in average gear with an average companion: You're wrong. Slow down, pay attention to your abilities, and check your gear. I'm sure the +75 defense and +145 Mastery that I was missing from my relic would have made a difference, but I managed without it.

 

Lies all of it! 4 year player with raid gear is average?

[tmwfte]

It was said. Multiple times yesterday both here and on reddit. Try again?

 

It's very clearly obvious that you're not reading this thread or the feedback presented.

[OmenQ]

Lies all of it! 4 year player with raid gear is average?

 

Not raid gear, comms gear.

[SamAnders]

No, it cannot be well surmised at all. Have you ever even taken a class in statistics and do you know anything at all about how to create a proper poll designed to limit bias? Almost none of the community uses the forums, and those who do most are only here because they are pissed off. I am here every day and haven't even seen this poll, so already we can tell its skewed because not everyone on the forums even knows about it. I'm on harbinger, almost no one have even discussed it in chat, and open world H2s are still really busy. Real world observation contradicts flawed forums rage poll, and neither is close to being reliable.

 

You do realize that poll was before the nerf, yes? Meaning there weren't people pissed off about the nerf?

[PorsaLindahl]

This thread is a farce.

 

You're asking for feedback, but getting debates and arguments for the majority of it.

 

It's not the players job to QA your changes unless they're on PTS and the players choose to test it there. These changes should have been done on PTS and tested extensively before patching it live.

 

Sure, companions were overpowered and encouraged laziness in players. But nerfing them to near uselessness for the casual gamer was a bad move. I can agree, to an extent, that people need to learn to play their classes as well. But this nerf is more of a slap in the face than a fix.

 

I think the main issue with healer companions is that they can't even heal 1/10 of a players health at 65 with 208+ rating gear. They also go into stupid mode when there's a "hidden" mob that has the player aggro'd and they just stop healing and stare at the floor.

[Atalantia]

I SNIP Cause it was too long?

 

While you may find this highly enjoyable fun i don't

 

Yes i took my 65 jugg thru SFH+2 today (Senya inf 43) to test the difference, it took me almost twice as long.(without the buffs)

 

Did i use more CD's and have to heal myself more yes. Was it enjoyable for me, not really. It was just longer.

 

for this type of content (Tedious long and sometimes boring) our guild has 2 raid nights a week.

 

I fell much like someone posted in one of the deleted or moved threads yesterday, BW saw how fast people were progressing through the alliance content and panicked and did the easiest thing they could nerfed the living daylights out of healing comps

[freeoftime]

• Your level: 65
  
• Roughly Average Item Rating: 208 – 216, partially augmented
  
• Discipline: Lightning
  
• Companion: Lana
  
• Companion role: all three
  
• Companion Influence level: 39
  
• Which Mission or Star Fortress are you playing (Solo Mode? Heroic Mode?): Heroic 2+ Rock-Eaters on Voss
  
• Your personal experience while playing this content: Not challenging, but tedious. Lana's heals were so pathetic as to be pointless, her DPS and tanking were at least somewhat better. However, this is my most played class and one of my two most played specs so I'd expect to be able to solo it with relative ease.
  

 

 

 

• Your level: 60
  
• Roughly Average Item Rating: 156
  
• Discipline: Concealment
  
• Companion: Temple
  
• Companion role: all three
  
• Companion Influence level: 10
  
• Which Mission or Star Fortress are you playing (Solo Mode? Heroic Mode?): Heroic 2+ Rock-Eaters on Voss
  
• Your personal experience while playing this content: Heals still small, and frankly probably still a waste, though I guess my health dropped slower than it did with DPS Temple, though she barely managed to heal us through the larger group after the force field. Tanking was… okay, I guess? And DPS got me killed during the
  first pull buy then I tried it for the two elites before the boss and boss itself and that worked fine. Boss whittled our health down but I also didn't offheal much. I still wouldn't call it challenging… but tedious. Really, really tedious.
  (Incidentally she still speaks in Kaliyo's voice. And in general, the buffs keep disappearing from comps and sometimes don't reapply properly. And heal comps have a bad habit of suddenly stopping to heal.)

 

 

 

• Your level: 60
  
• Roughly Average Item Rating: 168 with 2 178 pieces and the old 192 yavin companion implants and earpiece
  
• Discipline: Vengeance
  
• Companion: Vette
  
• Companion role: all three
  
• Companion Influence level: 9
  
• Which Mission or Star Fortress are you playing (Solo Mode? Heroic Mode?): Heroic 2+ Rock-Eaters on Voss
  
• Your personal experience while playing this content: Tried the first pull thrice with all companion stances. DPS needed me to pop my DCDs (which makes sense I guess), tank had Vette barely survive, heals had both of us at about 2/3rds health most of the time. DPS worked fine on two elites, so did tank stance, heals as well though it performed the worst. Healing om the next and largest pull was, you guessed it, pathetic and barely got us through. Tanking on the non boss champ worked, did DPS on the boss because w/e this is boring and tedious and time consuming enough and I have DCDs in abundance. (Guess what it wasn't was? Fun. ….Or genuinely challenging in a way that might be fun.)
  

 

 

 

• Your level: 61
  
• Roughly Average Item Rating: 192 yavin gear with 168 blasters and 116 rakghoul relics
  
• Discipline: Innovative Ordnance
  
• Companion: Mako
  
• Companion role: all three
  
• Companion Influence level: 10
  
• Which Mission or Star Fortress are you playing (Solo Mode? Heroic Mode?): Heroic 2+ Rock-Eaters on Voss
  
• Your personal experience while playing this content: I mean, come on, by the time I had three of the four enemies killed my health was at roughly at 50% and stayed there because one silver mob was literally all Mako could keep up with. The big pull needed me offhealing cause Mako, again, couldn't keep, with a Kolto Overload that… I don't think I really ever outright needed before. She managed with the first champion and them last two elites, then could barely keep up again against the Boss. Still not challenging or fun, still just tedious.
  

 

I did this one yesterday instead of just now, but tbh I don't have the patience to make a similar comparison for lowbies right now, so:

 

 

• Your level: 27
  
• Roughly Average Item Rating: mix of 66 and 72
  
• Discipline: Vengeance
  
• Companion: Quinn
  
• Companion role: all three
  
• Companion Influence level: 6
  
• Which Mission or Star Fortress are you playing (Solo Mode? Heroic Mode?): Heroic 2+ Botched Interrogation on Nar Shaddaa
  
• Your personal experience while playing this content: Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hate. Quinn's healing was useless. Like healing in general is atm, but I think it bears repeating. At least as tank or DPS he did… something. That was painful, not fun challenging but “lowbie vengeance resource management sucks and this is taking abysmally long I don't even need to do more than be smart about pulling and kill order but the freaking downtime is killing me because everything takes longer than it did before 4.0 so I take more damage because comps just suck in general and I can't compensate by using healstance because that is pathetic and useless now and ugh when am I done” challenging.
  

 

Heroics aren't particularly challenging on high level characters, but just boring and tedious. They're even worse on lowbies which is a shame, I was looking forward to doing them while levelling. (And you're expecting us to grind those again and again and again and again and again……. For the alliance, especially when one plays through KotFE multiple times which makes this even worse.) I was also looking forward to levelling another Sentinel, but I suck with those so with the current state of companions that suddenly sounds like the opposite of fun.

 

I'm not even gonna bother with the Heroic Star Fortresses because those were always bad. I could breeze through in 190 gear and a rank 15 comp, then suddenly hit a brick wall on the Exarch fight which was rather silly. And hey, I'm not the best player, but I found the Exarch fight, with a mix of 208 and 216 with some augmemts and my rank 35 – 39 Lana challenging enough, especially since doing the damn things is needed to conclude that story arc. (Which sucks, anyway. The Alliamce system in general does but I hate that part more than the damn grind now.)

Quite honestly, idk why you don't give players more control over how difficult they want their soloing to be and just tie achievements to doing it the more challenging way. Everyone can do *all* their story related stuff their way and those that want a challenge outside HM FPs and and OPs can get that too (though dismissing companioms or turning them passive or turning some of their abilities pff was always an option, making them stronger isn't…)

[SGMRock]

I'm angry that they did a 75% nerf and now we have to fight and justify ourselves to get at least some of that back. Which could take a month, with holidays coming when people have more time off to play they took away my fun and now I would rather be on the forums fighting for my companions than playing the game.

 

Why didn't they do like a 20% nerf, re-asses. Check up feel things out, decide if they should go another 10%, repeat. Why blow everything up and make them worse than what they did for us in 3.0 with Yavin 4 192 companion gear? I just don't get it.

[Vember]

 

Does being an Immortal Jugg make surviving things easier? Yes.

 

That's a bit of an understatement, sir.

[Trobon]

No, it cannot be well surmised at all. Have you ever even taken a class in statistics and do you know anything at all about how to create a proper poll designed to limit bias? Almost none of the community uses the forums, and those who do most are only here because they are pissed off. I am here every day and haven't even seen this poll, so already we can tell its skewed because not everyone on the forums even knows about it. I'm on harbinger, almost no one have even discussed it in chat, and open world H2s are still really busy. Real world observation contradicts flawed forums rage poll, and neither is close to being reliable.

 

Which is why I said that it is not a scientific poll. However, in statistics (which is a requirement for a degree in mathematics so yes I've taken several) you can use such strawpolls to get a general indication of trends, while not being able to say that it is fully representative.

 

In addition, your basic premise is flawed to begin with. You say that the forums are a limiting bias for people who are pissed off, but that would mean that we would see a different percentage of players based on the poll. In other words in the older poll we should see less than 70% liking the companions, skewing the results towards people who disliked the way companions were. The fact that we see the same percentage in both polls, even though one is towards favorable and one is towards unfavorable is the exact reason we can see a trend using a strawpoll.

 

Being able to correlate people who said they liked one thing and people who now dislike a change away from it is completely possible with strawpolling like this. We cannot say that 70% exactly dislikes the change, but it is very obvious that a majority is upset with this change. You and Bioware can ignore this and claim its non-representative (which is true), but doing so ignores a huge trend.

 

The put it simply, if someone was making policy decisions and these kinds of polls were seen then no one in their right mind would ignore them and simply state they are non-representative. They would absolutely take them into account and use the data that is there. To do otherwise would be idiotic.

[Jeweledleah]

OK, I'll run it on my Merc too.

 

run it on a sniper. mercs have self heals AND can take more bearing then sorcs (who have self heals, but do not take a beating as well) snipers have minimal self healing and while in possession of nice cooldowns, are not as tough as mercs.

 

now. you may still manage. with some deaths and careful progressing through the isntance and spending some time in

 

there tell me though.

 

IS,

IT

WORTH

IT

TO DO

MORE THEN

ONCE.

 

this is supposed to be repeatable, aka farmable content. is all that "challenge" worth repeating week after week? is it fun.

Edited November 19, 2015 by Jeweledleah

[Daezihang]

pffft.. this thread is nothing more than fluff. They aren't going to do anything

 

People have been giving testimony here for two days and now they want detailed information?

 

Eric didn't care about detailed information when they let the companions be the way they were for weeks. He didn't care about detailed information and player feedback when they dropped the nerf bomb from orbit

 

A now they want feedback with supporting data? As if they didn't have access to any of that before?

 

I call BS. This is nothing more than an attempt at damage control so they can blow us all of until after the holidays.

 

Note that he said "Future Adjustments" Not immediate. Not soon. Not even When they get around to it.

 

We are all just being duped again. We wont see any kind of 'adjustments' until some future patch that wont happen until well after BW enjoys their Christmas vacations using our subscription moneys that they suckered us out of.

 

 

No they haven't, people have been screaming 'IMPOSSIBIBBLE!!" without giving ANY data. I struggle to believe any of them did anything serious-- probably pulling 4 packs of mobs because you could do that when the comps were in Death Star mode. It is actually something that happens it games, this dying thing.

 

I found the HC dailies to be only slightly more challenging. It does indeed feel like I have to actually use my abilties once again. Tried dailies on Korriban (silly easy), Alderaan, Hotyh and Corellia. It also now feels like I play a role, because it's possible for me to pull aggro from my healing companion.

 

I am a Marauder about 210-ish.

 

The reason why the companions seem to be more passive is because they are spending more time healing themselves.

[Skauron]

My personal view is that the healing change has been too harsh, playing on the republic side was levelling nicely from 1, got my first companion, then just before getting to craft my first lightsaber met a large creature with a Star difficulty and my companion started to heal a bit.. but then it was as though the heals just completely stopped. I died, then because of my level noticed i was able to upspec by pressing K to sage, and was able to heal myself to survive the fight.. i was still really learning at this point, but my general feeling was that my companion was not healing.. i was getting no heal numbers from my companion and my medpack was not sufficient in the fight.

 

Play better ? sure.. i try , but I am mostly a solo player who groups when the opportunity comes up.. i don't want to have so many deaths though that i find it hinders rather than helps play.

[AlrikFassbauer]

run it on a sniper.

 

I'm interested in seeing reports of that, too.

[Wazlak]

 

But where does that leave the community? One side will be annoyed by any change that is made now. I can safely say that, should Bioware return companions to the godmode status of pre-tuesday...I'll drop the game for a bit.

 

It's now a very hard job to find the middle ground inbetween soloable and challenging.

 

That's just not true, is it. You don't have to be on one extreme or the other.

 

I'm very casual. I had a lot of fun playing the old style, however, even I agree the healers were too powerful. But, for me, the balance has shifted to where it isn't fun any more. You, however, are saying it was boring and is now great. But there is a middle ground. The comps could be balanced more.

 

As a solo don't want to get rolfstomped trying to do the only things I can do that let me advance. But to advance, I have to play H2+s.

 

You want challenge, and you can move onto ops, or if you have to do H2s, use lower level comps, different stances or even not take one.

 

I don't have those choices. My choice is "l2p noob".

Edited November 19, 2015 by Wazlak

[Neoforcer]

Yes bioware that just happened http://i.imgur.com/TjVMsBR.jpg love almost dying on a fight because you are forced to use a rank one comp that went to the Mikey mouse school of nursing and heals like he is stuck on retard. Did i live yes by comp should not die on story mode content and i should not have to use med packs to save myself while leveling an alt on story content to adds spawning while a gold elite smack koth around, That's good design can't wait till the arcann fight where they start do do real damage lol. This is in the free 60s gear but the way with a rank one comp using only defensive and med packs. Any geared player running this would not have issues as we all cam in to this expac over geared for it. I showing how just knowing a rotation and how class works makes it hard for noobs to play starting out with nothing. could i run this with my legacy gear and kick back yeppers this is not the point were making. elder players can still live through stuff with the nerf it the little guy who walks up to you tutorial and learns rotation after i invite them to play tor that should be considered.

 

Can not believe koth died lol

[Ceinwyn]

Thank you for responding before the weekend, Eric. I would have had to ignore the forums for the next few days for my own sanity if you hadn't!

 

I posted feedback yesterday regarding Heroic Star Fortress - no need to re-post as I believe this is working as intended though I will be testing further when my characters/companions/specialists are levelled sufficiently.

 

Based on your post, the only thing I haven't experienced since 4.0.2 is levelling. Heroics, Star Fortress and Heroic Star Fortress all seem in line with your expectations. I do have concerns about newer players having a poor experience levelling based on feedback I have seen since Tuesday. Hopefully there's some constructive feedback in this thread with respect to that aspect of the game (TL;DR).