Companion AI

[Dragon_Vlad]

I think the companion AI needs an update, has its becoming a pain in combat where you companion just stands around watching you fight before they decide to actually join in. Heal take a while to active when your damage, dps doesn't join straight kinda watches for a bit, tank i haven't notice too much as always active their jump to start fights.

 

An another idea around people suggest is more of a romantic feature, when you can talk to companions that you've activated a romance with. You right click on them and have options of take out, kiss, or talk where random dialogue happens. So for different characters different scene has with companion talks about current events (e.g. apparently the mystery race called the Gree on Ilum we should check it out). Dates could be repeated questlines where characters gain influence with companion, depending on location you go could be cut scenes of hunting, club dancing, dinner with a view. Simple but adds to characters development.

[xordevoreaux]

its becoming a pain in combat where you companion just stands around watching you fight before they decide to actually join in.

 

I'd say it's been a pain, not becoming.

 

I'm all about making sure my companion contributes the maximum possible to any fight. After all, I still need to warm up my coffee meanwhile, right?

 

Kidding. Sort-of.

 

Companion management, for any game that has companion management, such as Everquest 2's mercenary system, isn't usually best left for the game to do (although I must say EQ2's default companion management is a bit more aggressive and your mercenary does a damn good job of wearing itself out against a slew of mobs without you having to direct it). One bad part about EQ2, the mercenary will stand there and do nothing but cringe if simultaneously attacked by 4 or mobs of equal or higher level as yourself. Your job then becomes peeling the extra trash off your mercenary.

 

Below is the strategy I've settled on after years of working with comps in multiple MMOs, compensating for the companion quirks specific to SWTOR:

 

Story mode flashpoints with comp + war bot when facing a multi-mob encounter:

 

SWTOR companions won't heal you at all if you're above 80% health, so you might as well make the most of that 20% window and preemptively send them in to fight regardless of how you have them set:

 

1. Decide what you want your companion to do for you, either heal or dps (the war bot is enough of a tank).

 

2. Locate the farthest mob in the encounter (as long as it's not the boss), which might not necessarily be the one with the most health. If you think that the farthest mob is too spread-out from the rest, find another closer to the overall cluster of mobs, but still far away enough that your comp won't immediately aggro the boss.

 

3. Send the companion to attack, even if you have the comp on heals. This buries your companion into the thick of things, and your companion is therefore likely (if it uses an AoE) to aggro surrounding mobs on a continuing basis, which is important for the companion to continue to attack, otherwise, once your companion kills the mob, and if the warbot is being attacked but not you, your companion just stands there (because your companion assists you, not the war bot).

 

At this point, you have not been attacked (taken damage) yet, so the war bot does nothing.

 

4. Once the companion attacks the mob you sent it to, immediately send one quick light attack at the boss mob. You will draw aggro and take damage from one or more mobs, which triggers the war bot to attack what you attacked (the boss, since that's the first thing that should have reacted to your attack because you attacked that first).

 

5. During combat, the war bot might take all aggro. In this case, your companion may stop fighting once the mob it's currently fighting dies. Continually target and aggro all the mobs in the fight with your lightest / fastest cooldown DPS ability to keep your companion engaged, again, even if your comp is on heals. I find this is faster than targeting each mob and hitting Control+1 to send in the companion. If you toss area-wide DPS, this also works, and is even faster, but you still need to watch who ultimately gets aggro across all those mobs (you, your comp, or the warbot).

Comp in veteran-mode flashpoints (meaning you have no warbot to help you)

 

Survival of your comp usually determines survival of you. Determine the best combination of heals / dps across you and your companion that is most likely to assure the highest rate of your survival, not necessarily the fastest burn-down. It's not like you're facing an enrage timer.

 

DO NOT start by enabling your defenses, such as the sage's force bubble. You'll be wasting its timer if your companion is melee and the comp must first spend a few seconds traversing the distance between you and the first of the mobs because not all melee companions deploy an initial quick-attack/stun that grabs aggro, so when using those companions, nothing's happening while they're getting to the mob.

 

Consider:

1. what the completion of the fight means for the quest you're on

2. the exact moment during the fight that the quest updates (boss's death versus finishing the entire fight).

 

In a fight you find tough, based on the above considerations, you can decide whether you even need to worry about trash mobs, specifically:

 

If the quest update occurs upon killing the boss but not necessarily completing the fight, burn the boss. If you die to trash mobs afterward, but your quest got updated, who cares? You did what you had to do. Clean up from dying, finish the trash if they're even still there, and move on.

 

Complication regarding adds: Sometimes the mechanics are such that you must burn the adds down first regardless of the state of the boss's health or what it's doing, especially if those adds are directly healing the boss or otherwise supporting a fight mechanic that delays killing the boss.

 

If the quest update does not occur until you clear the entire encounter, you have more math, specifically, survivability as it relates to boss mechanics. You have no war bot, and even if you set your comp to tank, you might wind up tanking at times depending how overwhelmed (or how dead) your companion is.

 

For me, the priority in this case is to pay attention to the boss mechanics, because all the comp coordination in the world won't amount to squat if you ignore those mechanics.

 

Get comfortable putting your companion on passive, and this goes for story mode flashpoints as well, because companions like to stand in stupid. Putting a comp on passive summons it back to you.

 

Great example: During Torch's Flame while fighting Shae Vizla, the floor opens up and fire comes out in a checker-board pattern, and soon after that, the whole floor gets covered in a damaging effect.

 

What I do when the floor opens up is to put my comp on passive, so it'll come back to me, and I make sure I'm on the edge of that checkerboard near a healing station. While I'm healing up, my companion is on the way back to me, thus avoiding the major portion of the area-wide damage, and then I send him back in again once the floor closes up.

 

 

While not necessarily the end-all and be-all of everything I do, hopefully this helps, and others might have further advice.

Edited May 14, 2022 by xordevoreaux