I really don't know where to stand in this. Companions were OP when 4.0. deployed. They nerfed them (with a sledgehammer, of course) when people complained. Then, they buffed them (with a -I dunno- a magic wand?) when some other people complained. And now, they nerfed them (moderately for once, which is surprising) when the first lot complained again. I am not saying they shouldn't listen to community feedback, but regarding this matter, I think that's over-listening.

 

On one hand, I don't see any point in making solo content harder. What's the point? If you want it to be harder, you can make it harder for yourself. Pull out your gear, for one. What is most frustrating about this is it is mostly the old content that is made harder. It is as pointless as the new gearing system. No point. How I wish they spent their time developing content instead.

 

On the other hand, a lot of people used their comps to do everything for them while they themselves were arguing with their gfs and bfs on the phone (not that I have any proof of this). When compared to the players, companions were gods. Like I would feel guilty (I guess) for slowing Treek down as she was terrorizing the poor Gormak. And this problem was not solvable by getting my toon naked.

 

All that said, the companion nerf is moderate. I mean it is not so much. I can still solo the old heroics without needing to turn my comp heals when I am a dps myself, with all my toons. Also I still think Ashara rocks compared to my sin.

 

To wrap up, I have got nothing to contribute.

 

Sorry to waste your time.

funny though, thanx for that

How did the people survive when the fellow was not so powerful and needed to be equipped? *sigh*

I think some here did not understand that it could be even harder.

Well, i left at that time, leveling was way too slow, and that was boring, i came back much later when KOTFE came out...

I won't leave completely this time as i still want to record the stories and haven't finished that (i guess i'm lucky i already leveled the toons i want to record with to lvl 70 and CR 300 before 6.0, but i don't need a sub to record, and i won't resub when my curent sub runs out in a month or so, because i don't like these changes.

I'd appreciate if they could do something about the droid / walker fights still being far too difficult (and you don't have a companion, nor your own abilities there)

So.... OP is upset he can’t go afk while his comp kills everything for him anymore?

Are you sure about this?

I only tested this while leveling but if you do FP Bosses, Revan, Story Missions, Side Missions etc. while leveling you still can go afk.

That makes absolutely no sense - you state you cant do the harder modes - i presume because they're harder? so therefore you want the story mode (the easy version) to be more difficult - and then finish with the reason because the hard modes are hard are because of the people who want story mode to be easier...

The class stories do not exist in harder modes. Only KotFE/ET has that set-up with chapters. So it's not that the harder modes for the class stories are too hard for me, they simply do not exist.

not an opinion at all, it's a stated fact from bioware when story mode was introduced (feel free to go look it up). just because they suck at doing what they said, doesn't change the intent

He says that SM is to make it easy for everyone. BW never said it should be EASY FOR EVERYONE. I know that it was supposed to be an easier mode so that it was doable, possible for a lot more people but never that it was supposed to be easy for everyone. That's the part that makes it his opinion and nothing more.

It matters to me because when you join our master mode flashpoint and don't know how to play,

 

It's a definite vote to kick.

From my experience, most of the story players are solo players and rarely do MM flashpoints or operations so it would be 1% of them joining a flashpoint which is very rare and normally those that are doing that have already taken the time to get the gear needed and will tell you it is their first time so our group would never kick someone because of that.

It matters to me because when you join our master mode flashpoint and don't know how to play,

 

It's a definite vote to kick.

It has nothing to do with solo content, newbie never cease to exist. And most of the time it's not because these players are bad, but they are NOT familiar with the fp.

Especially ragequitters are the worst type and many of them are elitists.

You keep asking this question and don't seem to want to acknowledge the answer: Because people kept complaining about the fact that Solo content has become way too easy even without using a companion. There are quite a number of players who don't do any group content at all in this game and only enjoy doing the stories, running heroics and flashpoints with their companions, creating and dressing alts. They don't look for the challenge in the group content, but the Solo content.

 

Regardless of the fact what is written in the forums, BioWare and EA are only interested in the internal feedback they get by their data analysts and the evaluation of the information by players who canceled their sub. We all don't know the specifics of that data, but given the changes in 6.0 it is very likely that the majority of people canceling their sub wrote as one of the reasons that the existing solo content is too easy and not challenging enough for them to keep playing.

Not every content was for ppl look for challenge, you want challenge, you go for those content.

If you want challenge in solo mode, take off your gear, not to use some skills, and turn off your companion, easy.

From my experience, most of the story players are solo players and rarely do MM flashpoints or operations so it would be 1% of them joining a flashpoint which is very rare and normally those that are doing that have already taken the time to get the gear needed and will tell you it is their first time so our group would never kick someone because of that.

Most of the FP "noobs" are not bad players, they either lack of good gears or not familiar with the FP.

FP and ops are like that, it's mostly about your experience with the content itself. Not your previous skills.

Are you sure about this?

I only tested this while leveling but if you do FP Bosses, Revan, Story Missions, Side Missions etc. while leveling you still can go afk.

That just makes the thread sadder.

Are you sure about this?

I only tested this while leveling but if you do FP Bosses, Revan, Story Missions, Side Missions etc. while leveling you still can go afk.

Ouch.

Are you sure about this?

I only tested this while leveling but if you do FP Bosses, Revan, Story Missions, Side Missions etc. while leveling you still can go afk.

I just did Onderon with a new character and took a level 1 comp healer for my SS gunslinger. I was never in trouble with my health. The OP still hasn't answered which content he's struggling with so I still think he's just being a troll or something cause he even says he has influence 50 companions to use. So I really don't know what he's on about because I'm trying to understand where he's coming from but I just don't know what content where you can bring companions is so hard right now.

The issue is stat capping on FPs and Heroics pre-6.0.

There, I said it.

/discuss

Dasty

The issue is stat capping on FPs and Heroics pre-6.0.

 

There, I said it.

 

/discuss

 

Dasty

You mean post 6.0?

So am I understanding correctly that people are having a hard time with planetary heroics and SM (Solo) FPs now?

You mean post 6.0?

 

So am I understanding correctly that people are having a hard time with planetary heroics and SM (Solo) FPs now?

Depending on how you phrase the interrogative, yes.

Pre-6.0, all FPs and Ops were leveled up. That is no longer the case.

I think people are having a difficult time with some of the pre-6.0 heroics / FPs because it is leveled down. In reality, there is a stat cap.

Personally, I find it annoying that gear I acquire at Level 75 which helps me on the new content is not BiS for gear that BW created prior to 6.0.

Dasty

And having gear that puts us above the level for a planet we're going to should make us more powerful, not less.

At best, paper-thin health and hitting like a wet lettuce leaf is what we've got now, thanks to their sync changes. We are less powerful than if we went there while being at the planet's max level.

I just did Onderon with a new character and took a level 1 comp healer for my SS gunslinger. I was never in trouble with my health. The OP still hasn't answered which content he's struggling with so I still think he's just being a troll or something cause he even says he has influence 50 companions to use. So I really don't know what he's on about because I'm trying to understand where he's coming from but I just don't know what content where you can bring companions is so hard right now.

No-one's talking about being able to solo Vet or Master mode FPs, no-one's talking about soloing Uprisings, we're talking about the basic solo grind we got with 4.0: heroics, especially the H2+ variety.

Even before 6.0 dropped, I ended up never touching Aurora on any non-stealther, because I found it too stressful. As for Makeb's heroics, I steered clear of them, too, for the same reason.

As for Oricon? I've always had to play as if it was 2.x, never mind whether it was 4.x or 5.x. If you ask me, this sync fracas is about draining trillions of credits in repairs so as to bankrupt players, and to make the game so unfun for casual/solo/casual solo players that they're basically inclined towards self-exile.

Depending on how you phrase the interrogative, yes.

 

Pre-6.0, all FPs and Ops were leveled up. That is no longer the case.

 

I think people are having a difficult time with some of the pre-6.0 heroics / FPs because it is leveled down. In reality, there is a stat cap.

 

Personally, I find it annoying that gear I acquire at Level 75 which helps me on the new content is not BiS for gear that BW created prior to 6.0.

 

Dasty

Dasty is so very close to nailing things from my experience. Most if not all of the people i see saying everything is fine are saying this "I ran X content on my DPS with companion set on heals and never died once nor used any of my dcd's, things are perfect". This right here is your first problem. Grab a healer and run your companion in DPS in various content and i suspect your opinion will change quickly.

INCOMING WALL OF TEXT

Pre 5.10 content is vastly different than post 5.10 content in regards to how things are scaled and how things perform. If you go to Onderon and compare your stats and your companions you see that even a rank 50 is equal to you in roughly 276 gear in just health alone. Now go to the capital planet and what do you see, that their health is almost 3X yours but their damage is roughly equal to the planets starting level in green gear. And here is where the problems start.

On the capital world you will have roughly 2500 hp and your comp 8-9k hp. Now your big heals will heal 250 to 350 hp without crits. Now to restore them from half health will take you 10-14 heals while you can heal yourself in 1-3 heals. Now two things come into play here first by ratio silvers hit really hard compared to gold and champions, second many heroic mobs have multiple silvers. So due to these factors you have to constantly be healing your companion. Because you are healing so much coupled with the companions low dps output you start pulling aggro off them. Now you have to heal your companion, yourself, and kill the enemies attacking you all at the same time. This is equal roughly to healing a MM flashpoint boss fight with adds with everybody standing in the stupid and not killing the adds. Now add in lag, ability lag and interrupts and you start pushing the limits of a good player.

The higher the planet level the less this ratio imbalance becomes but even at Yavin 4 your companion still has around 50% more hp than yourself. Now back to Onderon where you have 50-70k hp more than your companion. Now your companion is doing lvl 75 damage with green gear at rank 50 affection so they are taking a boat load of damage while taking a while to kill anything over grey trash level.

So in "short" there are three issues combining into this one problem.

#1 The change to level sync lowered your stats including your damage reduction to the lower end of the planets level. Because of this you can now die on the capital world doing heroics instead of Hoth like it was in 4-5.0.

#2 The changes to companions stats and abilities. Much like #1 they can take damage now but their damage is equal to yours with 2-3X the health. Add to this that max rank companions went from being equal to BIS DPS players to starter gear players with half their abilities. This alone is like a 30-50% dps nerf. On top of all this we once again have highly imbalanced companions. My rank 50 Scorpio has 196k hp on Onderon while my rank 50 Shae has 221k hp

#3 The scaling done to the enemies. While this may not have actually changed the two above changes make it feel like everything has been made harder.

Now you can adapt by one of three ways.

#1 You can set your comp as a tank and accept that everything will take 40-50% longer.

#2 You can keep your comp as dps and restore your class resources and dcd's between fights making everything take 40-50% longer.

#3 You can just quit playing all content before Ossus because it takes to long, is boring and doesn't have a decent reward. (My guess is this is the BW goal)

Now what the devs should do to fix this is increase the dps of tank and dps spec in pre 5.0 content up by 30-40% to offset the aggro issue.

In level 75 content they should increase the stats to where a rank 50 companion is equal to a player in 294ish range gear in both health and damage. (I would rather it be 300, but 294 would be acceptable i think)

And remove the health stations in solo mode.

 

Why are you trying to take the fun from solo players? There are solo content and MMORPG nowadays shouldn't be about forcing ppl to group for a lot of content.

SOLO players asked for it here in this forum a couple months ago.

Depending on how you phrase the interrogative, yes.

 

Pre-6.0, all FPs and Ops were leveled up. That is no longer the case.

 

I think people are having a difficult time with some of the pre-6.0 heroics / FPs because it is leveled down. In reality, there is a stat cap.

 

Personally, I find it annoying that gear I acquire at Level 75 which helps me on the new content is not BiS for gear that BW created prior to 6.0.

 

Dasty

I'm inclined to agree. Mobs below should be boosted up to meet us, not the other way around. I know this isn't necessarily feasible in open world, but it should be plenty feasible in instances. And that's where some of the harder heroic encounters are anyway. I would think that (generally speaking) from a balancing standpoint, it'd be far easier to balance for mobs meeting us at our expected power cap, than trying to weaken us to an arbitrary level of pathetic to make us match where the mobs are at and rendering our RPG progress pointless in the process.

Gosh, I never realized I was an elite player. Since a couple of months before 6.0 was released I have been playing on the English European server (I am in the Midwest USA). This is a new server so I didn't have an existing legacy. I have 2 characters that have completed Chapter 1 and another that is almost done with Chapter 1.

I also have a level 75 character on the east coast US server that I play with my wife. Currently we are on Rishi as we play through the game in order. We never have companions out - our biggest annoyance is dismissing them after every cut scene.

I have not really noticed much of a difference with companions since 6.0 dropped, but I never use them for healing. I find that DPS and tank works better depending on the character I am running. The game is still very easy although it was challenging doing the Alderon heroics starting at level 28 with a stealth operative (mob level was 33).

I didn't think there could be a more casual player than I, but from reading this entire thread I am obviously wrong.

Gosh, I never realized I was an elite player. Since a couple of months before 6.0 was released I have been playing on the English European server (I am in the Midwest USA). This is a new server so I didn't have an existing legacy. I have 2 characters that have completed Chapter 1 and another that is almost done with Chapter 1.

 

I also have a level 75 character on the east coast US server that I play with my wife. Currently we are on Rishi as we play through the game in order. We never have companions out - our biggest annoyance is dismissing them after every cut scene.

 

I have not really noticed much of a difference with companions since 6.0 dropped, but I never use them for healing. I find that DPS and tank works better depending on the character I am running. The game is still very easy although it was challenging doing the Alderon heroics starting at level 28 with a stealth operative (mob level was 33).

 

I didn't think there could be a more casual player than I, but from reading this entire thread I am obviously wrong.

Uh, you said you play with your wife though... a lot of people play solo. Also, the differences can be subtle in my limited experience with the changes. You'll think it's all hunky dory and then it'll catch you off-guard on something you used to be ok in.

But honestly, casual is kind of a misnomer anyway. There's casual meaning hours put in and then there's casual meaning the mindset you have in how you play the game, and then there's your actual skill level. You can put few hours in and be highly skilled, you can have a casual mindset in how you play the game and be highly skilled, you can have a hardcore mindset in how you play the game and be mediocre at it, you can put in few hours and be low skilled. There's just so much more variation than the casual/elite or casual/hardcore dichotomy people like to do.

The bottom line is, some people are more skilled at the game than others. It's a spectrum. It may be you rank higher on the spectrum than you think you do. It's easy for people to have an inaccurate picture of how skilled they are and difficult to get an accurate one.