Companion Change Feedback

This is now moot. If anyone believes the team will listen is only fooling themselves. The devs lowered the hammer knowing exactly what they were doing. Now that the sub numbers went down, they are now trying to save the farce.

Totally agree

Soo true and im with you on that and i unsub until i see a fix.

Toons : all classes to 65
Gear : 208 - 216
Can i do content? yes for my gear and bonus, even cant solo all the H2+ some still are harder to imposible with companions nerf.
Enjoying the game as "intended" ? NO IM NOT ENJOYING THE GAME.

My sub runs out on 8 days i hope we see some fixes other way must move to another game what im seeing dont cares much to all you on the BW team since you dont show any evidence we as costumers really care.

• Your level: 65
• Roughly Average Item Rating: 216 & fully augmented
• Discipline: Corruption (Healing) Sorc
• Companion: Lana
• Companion role: Tank or DPS
• Companion Influence level: 40
• Which Mission or Star Fortress are you playing (Solo Mode? Heroic Mode?): Heroic SF
• Your personal experience while playing this content::

I've done a couple Heroic Star Fortresses over that last couple nights, Tatooine and Nar Shaddaa, and neither experience was positive. Did I manage to complete them--yes. Did I enjoy them--no. I agree that companions may have needed retuned, but they haven't just been "retuned", they've been neutered. I employed Lana in both DPS or tanking roles, but both were painfully slow. It was mindnumbing. If you want to push the "challenge" envelope that the vocal minority has whined into your ear, actually put time into new (tested) mechanics that challenge our tactics instead of wasting many people's limited time.

Lana in tanking stance is still fairly flimsy, her DPS is piss, and it's anything but a joy to watch the mob healthbars inch their way down--even with me multitasking both heals and DPS (as a healer, so the latter is poor to begin with). So in the case of any sort of DPS race, or situations where you have escalating add numbers or spawns as the fight draws on, good luck-- (and that's if your less than bright companion that you try to awkwardly pull out of things doesn't also randomly just get booted OFF a platform and killed leaving you by yourself.)

Lana in DPS stance is marginally faster, but squishy as hell, still requires me to manage heals and DPS because hers is godawful, and it requires full ability and cooldown use. In the case of boss or multiple hard hitting elites, using the Alliance instance buffs/special abilities and a prayer that your CC doesn't get broken early was also prerequisite to avoid death. Having to turn off companion AOE abilities in a fight for fear of breaking CC is increasingly frustrating when the DPS she's doing with ALL of them active is already horrible--so it gets that much slower. On top of that, I had to employ combat rezzes repeatedly because there were still times I could not keep up with the spikes on her, so I'd kite the mob around until I could heal up and stun them then rez her, or CC again.

Even in 216 fully augmented gear, a lvl 40 influence companion (who at this point, I won't bother another 10 levels with, I've seen the horrible numbers of disappointed guildmates with lvl 50 influence), with Alliance buffs/abilities, there were still stages at which I had a couple wipes.

Yet these instances....drop 208 gear. What is even the point?

The gear rating alone tells me it was not intended as the "progression" or "endgame" that some keep trying to insist it is. The game, and its players, have simply been the victims of a poorly planned and executed sledgehammer nerf. Why not try it in increments of 25%-50% first? Why not actually use your PTS to establish the proper numbers of reduction instead of dropping it on LIVE servers?

Just bleh! You're not the only ones that will suffer as a result of declining subs for this mishap--anyone that is a longtime player that WANTS to stick with it gets to see the game pop die all over again. It kills my will to stay at this point too. You had it right, you screwed it up.

Ok
Please give us your feedback, and we simply ask you to be as constructive as possible. Include information such as:
Your level
65 (Legacy 50 all class buffs)
Roughly Average Item Rating
216 /208 augmented +2 relic 56lvl
Discipline - Vanguard shield spec/ or plasmatech /or Tactics
Stats:
Mastery: 4894
Endurance: 5503
Power: 1860
Crit: 852
Presence: 2085

Companion
Treek -(try Lana and Koth but they was practically useless and glitchy. Treek also have some glitch bt it wasn't critical)

Companion role
Heals - (try her dps - my tank done it better)
Companion Influence level
20
Which Mission or Star Fortress are you playing (Solo Mode? Heroic Mode?)
Heroic SF Alderaan/Tatooine.

Summing up - in tank build it was doable, not very challengeable but long and boring.
In plasmatech/tactics - impossible for me even with all 4 buffs and heroic moment.
Weekly heroics can be done in both specs but it's not fun anymore, it's tedious grind. And in damage spec i die a lot.
Mb i give it a try with my heal operative. I still have 6 sub days.
I always thought that I would remain a sub from start to the end, no matter what.
Bt all this grind doesn't add any challenge, just tediousness. And many bugs still in place. I love Swtor class stories and companions. But now my companions are broken and this game have even more bug and glitches.

Too funny. You need 216 gear to do things that drop 208 gear. Shows how badly designed this was.

As my player, if I got to Alderaan to speak to, whatshisname, and then get sent out to the fortress to click on the shield, then yes level sync is fine.
If I got though the bunker to destroy it, then level sync and the difficulty are fine.
If I got to the SF to solo whether 2H or not than I expect it to be hard.
In fact not once have I asked for pre nerf difficulties, but a happy medium would be great.

However if whathisname sends me on a normal planetary mission, one that I have done before to kill kiliks because they are about to invade the castle, this is in fact part of the story from 4 years ago, I did this levelling through the planet, then no I should not be level synced or gimped.

I understand you say its reset so new content, however you should replace new with recycled.

The issue is that there is no new content for this part, so to avoid having to make some (which is how it seems to me) they took old content and then reduced our power, its not to fit in with the story, as it doesn't, (go and get some gear for our troops) sure so send me on a mission where I am killing level 65 mobs with crates or something, not send me to old content who's story doesn't fit the new and act like its new content..

You know what Eric all the data you need to know is the money, how much money are you willing to lose? How many subs does it take to get thru to you guys or get your bosses attention. That's the numbers you need to worry about. You are making a huge mistake by taking your time on this. I would rather people are happy and paying and playing but its your call. I dont want server pop to drop any lower is why I am saying this, the game is no fun without people to play with.

Level 65
item rating mix of 216/220, fully augmented.
Merc, Innovative ordnance. I have been playing swtor since beta, and MMOs in general for 10 years, so I'm no noob.
Companion: Senya, rank 30, dps/heals. I chose her since rank 30 is easily obtainable my most normal players. I have higher ranked companions, but for the purposes of testing, i chose one in the "middle" rank range.

In order to test the changes, I went into H2+ Star Fortress, Voss, since that's considered to be one of the more challenging ones, and also it's the one I got the "One and Only" achievement on before the patch. I used zero alliance buffs, to simulate the achievement.

Trash, Senya set to DPS, i had absolutely no issues. First Paladin killed us pretty quickly, they hit hard. I changed her to heals and managed to kill him, but I had to use all my CDs (except heroic moment).

Second paladin was easier, probably because i was more wary.

the Praetorian was fine, my hp got a little lower than before, but all in all not bad.

the rooms around the reactor was where i began to have issues. First, I was hit by the "disappearing Dampers" bug, which is ok for the first two rooms, but the last room proved to be a challenge and we got overwhelmed 3 times before I finally managed to (barely) live through it. Being a merc with no taunt skills, it was challenging to keep mobs off senya while she healed. consequently, I died because she was taking too much damage and healing herself more than me.

On to the Exarch. well, on to death. Not sure if the others would be different, but after one attempt, I knew there would be no way to kill him now. even with my shield running, he hit me for 14k a pop, which, as we all know, there's no way a healer companion could keep up with after the patch. Not sure if it's a function of being too soft as a DPS merc, but even avoiding all mechanics, his melee just ate me alive too fast for Senya to heal through. I ran around throwing my dots on him and shooting myself with Kolto Shot and Emergency Scan, to no avail. I thought about speccing arsenal, but that's even less mobile, and i'm sure it would end up the same. Being stubborn, I tried again, this time with Senya set to tank. HA! she died faster than I did.

On this same character, as a note, all of the weekly Heroics are fairly easy, even when I use a rank 10 companion.

I'm going to say something that might be unpopular, but after reading your goals as articulated in the OP, I think only a very slight buff to companions' healing is needed, along with some bug and AI fixes, especially with the tanking armor/shield issues. I'm sure if I used a rank 50 companion I could have completed the "One and Only" style HSF.

OR it could be this...

They knew, based on the stated goals for difficulty in this OP, that the companions were overpowered. The longer you let it stay that way the worse the backlash can get. Yes it could be worse than it is.

So they design the nerf based largely on math sourced by data mining. This is never 100% accurate but it needs to be pushed because it is obvious that their preplanned difficulty has been completely invalidated by the companions.

Now Eric makes his first post. He says that things should be more challenging, he asks for feedback. The only feedback is "this should be doable solo!!!" When it comes to the H2 SF. A couple of us point out that is supposed to be the goal of a grind... We don't know what we are talking about though. We say that the H2s in the old world are doable, the response is "yeah but its old world, it should be easy."

Well BW wants to actually make people happy, within the borders of their plan of the expac. People are not seeing the obvious so Eric needs to hold their hand with a new post explaining that the old world H2s are not supposed to be easy and the H2 SF is supposed to be hard and at the end of a grind and then ask for people to give actual detailed feedback instead of hyperbolic rage posts.

In essence people have to decide. Do you accept that the level synced H2s are NOT supposed to be easy, that the H2 SF is supposed to be hard and at the end of a grind? If yes give constructive feed back. If no speak with your wallet. It really is that simple. It just seems some people hope if they shout enough or insult and threaten enough BW will completely rethink the paradigm of the expac. They won't. It's one thing to bring back flying mounts but its an entirely different thing to redesign the complete pace of progression in a game.