The Good The Bad and The Broken Swtor Companions

Feb 13
10:21

2012

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Even if that conversation doesn't advance any plots or tell any stories, it adds to the feeling that the companion is actually a living, breathing character, and not just a robot reading lines occasionally.

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Let's begin with Swtor Credits what's horribly,The Good The Bad and The Broken Swtor Companions Articles horribly out of whack first, shall we? Tank companions. Everyone gets them, and everyone quickly learns just how terrible they are at actually tanking. In most situations a heavy-armor clad DPS character will actually have better survivability than a tanking companion. Things werent always this way though; for the vast majority of game testing, tanking companions had as part of their tanking stance a 40 percent armor buff. This allowed them to have mitigation around 40 percent, sometimes even up to 50 percent, a far cry from the measly 20-30 percent mitigation they have now. Some players argued that tanking companions in those builds tanked far too well, and that healers had an inordinate advantage over other players because they had the ability to keep their companions up through anything short of an Heroic 4 quest. BioWare seemed to agree with that line of thinking, and the armor buff was removed a few weeks before launch.

The fallout was massive, and immediately apparent to anyone who had seen prior builds. Tank companions instantly became little more than red-shirted cannon fodder and crafting helpers. This stands in stark contrast to healing and damage dealing companions, who fulfill their roles extremely well. Tanking characters backed up by a healing companion are effectively unkillable in solo and duo PvE situations. At the same time, DPS companions can output an insane amount of damage with the right equipment. I jokingly refer to my Sniper's ranged DPS companion as 'mini-me' whenever she drops a three thousand point critical shot on a target. Tanking companions by comparison are lucky to survive a fight with an Elite, and have to rest nearly every other fight at higher levels.

That's not to say that tanking companions can't get the attention of the enemy; they do a marvelous job of holding aggro in most situations. The problem is that once every enemy in sight starts shooting at them, they crumple faster than a wet paper bag in a demolition derby. BioWare needs to either return the flat armor buff to the Tanking stance of defense minded companions, or find some other way to significantly improve their durability, perhaps by adding a scaling armor buff with their primary stat while in tanking stance. Until that happens, most players will relegate tanking companions to the role of personal crafting assistants.

There's only one Cheap Swtor Credits other thing that's bad about companions at present, and compared to the situation above this is really more of a "would be nice" item than an actual issue: the static nature of companion interactions. Currently, players can only speak to companions in a series of scripted conversations at specific affection and story thresholds. The end result is bursts of conversation at the beginning of every chapter, with little to no interaction throughout said chapters.

The solution to Buy Swtor Credits this is quite simple, and in fact is already implemented in another BioWare franchise: generic conversations. In the Mass Effect series when you speak to a companion you don't get a canned on line response, you actually get a conversation. Even if that conversation doesn't advance any plots or tell any stories, it adds to the feeling that the companion is actually a living, breathing character, and not just a robot reading lines occasionally.