"This unit is not built for combat." Great, so why are you trying to hit things?

 

Tried running a (Level 16) 4-man Heroic with a work friend who's had awful luck with PUGs, we were 18th and 19th level. The fights were rough, but doable with just us and our tank companions. Decided to switch to my geared up ship droid to see if that made any difference. When it stuck to healing we were doing just fine but inexplicably it decided it wanted to jump in with fists flailing. I'm ranged DPS so not close to the fight.

 

Setting it to passive just made it stand there and not even heal Healing stance and all that. Is there a way to tell it to stick to healing?

All of the healing companions do that. I wish they wouldn't but they do.

If I am not mistaken you can pull up their tool bars and click off the ones you don't want them to use and that may help for them just to heal.

 

Not 100% sure that will work.

At least the other healing companions have combat capability. And aren't they all ranged? None of this up close and personal fisticuffs.

 

I opened the companion quickbar but didn't see any combat abilities. I'll check the Companion page of the Abilities tab when I get home but I'm doubtful that I'll find anything.

On the flipside, if you have a bunch of people bring their ship droids into the Outlaw's Den, you can sit back and watch a grand melee of pugilist droids, and laugh at how ridiculous they all look.

There's a "Passive" button right next to "Attack" on the companion toolbar. It's visible even when the companion's toolbar is collapsed. It's a toggle switch that tells the companion not to attack, heal, or do anything but follow you until you toggle it back off. You can use it to tell the companion to stop goofing around and come back to you, essentially resetting the companion.

 

For extra lulz, try using the droid for pulls by sending him out to the mobs and back to you with Attack and Passive. When you use Passive to recall the companion, the mobs will follow the droid into your range.

Edited January 22, 2013 by Allegos

For extra lulz, try using the droid for pulls by sending him out to the mobs and back to you with Attack and Passive. When you use Passive to recall the companion, the mobs will follow the droid into your range.

 

Well the whole point is we needed him to heal, not run back and forth and certainly not distract me. This is (well, should be) a very easy AI issue to correct at least on the ship droids. I suspect for the other companions you'd want some sort of toggle or stance (fight only, heal only, balanced, etc.).

Was all your health up? If he's fighting when he should be healing that's a problemm. But if everybody is good then why not let him help out, maybe he wants to get his DPS numbers up.

The heals of the healer comps (including the ship droid) are all basically identical, and these have some hairy long cool downs. While the other healer comps have some ranged attacks & some CC abilities to fill in their time, the ship droid has only punches. It's not detrimental to his healing performance to go into melee, as he heals as often as he can, and prefers to heal over attack whenever the heals come off CD.

 

The traditional healer comps contribute more because they do more DPS & use a stun.

 

But the droid works better if you can use it to agro a weak, and soak some damage for you. If you end the fight and the ship droid has a full bar, they didn't really help as much as they should have.

 

I'd like to see the ship droid get it's own unique mainhand weapon & a stun, so that it would work just as well as any of the other healer companions.

"This unit is not built for combat." Great, so why are you trying to hit things?

 

Tried running a (Level 16) 4-man Heroic with a work friend who's had awful luck with PUGs, we were 18th and 19th level. The fights were rough, but doable with just us and our tank companions. Decided to switch to my geared up ship droid to see if that made any difference. When it stuck to healing we were doing just fine but inexplicably it decided it wanted to jump in with fists flailing. I'm ranged DPS so not close to the fight.

 

Setting it to passive just made it stand there and not even heal Healing stance and all that. Is there a way to tell it to stick to healing?

 

It's working as it should, all healing companions have cooldowns on their healing abilities and when all their heals are on cooldown they start attacking enemies and since the droid doesn't have combat abilities like other healing companions the only thing it can do is run to the enemy and start hitting.

Think the bigger question is why is he on a mission with you? I barely even send that droid on crew skills cuz he always f**ks up, wish he would just self destruct lol

There really is no way to stop it entirely. All healing companions have some sort of attack. You can uncheck their offensive abilities, which I've found will minimize the amount of agro they generate. But even then, they continue to shoot while their heals are on cool down.

Unchecking those non-healing abilities also improves their healing somewhat. I discovered with my somewhat undergeared newbish Sentinel that Doc is able to get more heals off if he's not channeling an attack when the cool down ends.

Your results may vary. It's good to experiment and find out what works for you.

Think the bigger question is why is he on a mission with you?

We were trying to see if a healing companion worked better than a squishy off-tank. Why were we using companions instead of recruiting other players? Way back in my OP I mentioned that my buddy is allergic to PUGs.

 

I barely even send that droid on crew skills cuz he always ***** up, wish he would just self destruct lol

Companion Affection is your friend. I have the ship droid with max affection on another character and he crits fairly regularly.