Old thoughts about Companions

[CplFives]

Hey, I understand this may have been mentioned before.

This is a suggestion about companions, along with possible ideas on how it can be updated. This isn't a rant, and it is about a change that was made a very long time ago.
If anyone else remembers companion's old, unique abilities, you may wish to see them again. Like blizz pulling out a bazooka way too big for him, or torian's flame abilities.
Even if these things would remain aesthetic, and not have any meaningful differences, it feels so possible. If you still have the old animations & abilities already made, we can revert the companion's original role to that style of abilities.

Example: Using Mako as a healer would visually change to her old style of abilities, but switching her to damage would use the normal companion preset we have now.

Maybe this won't change anything for some, but it is an old wish of others that feels genuinely doable. Companions like HK, Shae Vizla, Treek, and some other special ones seem to have uniqueness to them. I hope some of you agree, and I hope this suggestion is lucky enough to be considered for even a moment.
Thanks.

Edited September 30 by CplFives

[The_Hightower]

There are already several posts about that, especially Blizz' Bazooka. However, afair they stole him that thing long before the age of companion deindividualization (probably because some people complaint that this thing never ever fits under his coat, WHICH WAS EXACTLY THE POINT!).

However, original pure dps companions had two stances, usually a direct damage and a dot stance. What to do with them? Shall they have 4 stances, i.e., tank, heal, 2 DPS stances, in contrast to original heal or tank companions which would only have 3 stances (this would also very likely cause a s...storm...).

Furthermore, In case they re-introduce their unique abilities, they would have to balance them (at least their dps roles).

Though, companions are already heavy unbalanced, with the Creature companions from the Cartel Market being the worst, having a TTK on the 2,000,000 HP OP Training Dummy with Training Dummy Armor Reduction Module of > 4 min. Treek is slightly below that (~3:45 min), still very bad because one of her abilities requires a range of 10-30 m which she does not use on the Training Dummy but neither really in mob groups since they mobs usually do not stand 10 m or more apart. Since Treek is also a Cartel Market Companion, fixing that by simple removing the minimum range requirement would be nice.

The rest of the companions (including Cartel Market Droid companions) is between 2:05 to 3:05 min. Dual Wielding companions are slightly better than those carrying only one of the respective weapon, e.g., Vette is better than Mako, Ashara better than Scourge, D-R3D (Cartel Market Droid companion with double Vibro Sword) better than Broonmark etc.

(all companions tested were influence level 50)

However, imho they are unable to balance player classes (also several posts about this already) and this should take priority. Especially a way to balance PvE and PvP separately at least to some extent.

Edited September 30 by The_Hightower

[Setta]

On 9/29/2024 at 11:33 PM, The_Hightower said:

However, imho they are unable to balance player classes (also several posts about this already) and this should take priority. Especially a way to balance PvE and PvP separately at least to some extent.

While I completely agree with the notion that player classes are more important to balance.  There is a fundamental difference between balancing these two things, and because of that I think companions should be balanced first.  The reason I say this is that companions are very easy to balance overall.  Companions have very few abilities, they don't have a rotation but a priority system that they follow.  As such balancing one companion against another is more or less a numbers tweaking thing.  As you pointed out, animal companions (a CM item that people have spent money for) are trash.  They should not be this bad.  Treek who was once great is now trash as well.  But really all that needs to happen is to have the damage / healing numbers increased for the under performing companions to make them more or less even with dual wielding companions.  Tanks could probably have their threat increased or damage reduction increased, or w/e it is that they're lacking in comparison to other companions. Companions with 1 weapon vs dw would need even smaller number tweak to be roughly on par.  While I'm all for OP's idea of giving classes unique abilities back, or just new ones to separate them I realize that would take more work, and if we were going this route of making all or most of the companions unique across the board rather than just an aesthetics choice that it is now (very few exceptions apply), than I would completely agree to focus on the player classes first.   

In contrast players have a lot more abilities, different rotations or priorities they follow.  Changing something to make a class perform better in PvE could also have adverse effects in PvP or vis versa.  While it's still technically just a number's game the devs don't have control over player classes like they do over companions.  We often times think outside the box, and create rotations or use abilities in ways they haven't thought about.  Which is why balancing players classes is harder.  I honestly believe that this is why every dps class has a dot spec, that generally does more damage in PvE.  They don't know how to balance burst for PvE & PvP to save their life, and hence why the burst specs are often worse for anything outside of PvP.  Even though every other MMO does not need to do create a dot spec for each class, and has found ways to make direct damage specs work just fine for PvE.  Furthermore because players have a very wide range of skills, a buff for an experienced player could go a lot further than it would for an average or new player.  And while I believe buffs / nerfs should be balanced against the top players, I imagine the devs want the average player to feel the effects of the change rather than it being completely insignificant to them too.  Which is why balancing classes becomes more difficult.