I'd suggest that 2 characters with 2 companions will do better than 90% of 4 player PUG's! Short of one specific class 4 box (Commando/Mercenary) I think 2 box with at least one healer will also do better than just about any 4 box team. Companion tanks are just that effective.Originally Posted by Multibocks
Yeah man... I could hardly believe how powerful the companions are and mine weren't even skilled up. Not complaining- I love it! Although in all fairness it does make things a bit too easy. I'd rather they buff the mobs than nerf the companions.
In retrospect I feel like Bioware wants to keep SWTOR fairly easy and cater to a much more casual audience.
Jinkobi on Shadowsong-US.
The DPS and Healing companions are not nearly as useful, and tanking companions will put out about 20% of the DPS of an actual player that can tank.
What companions give you is essentially a predictable statistically poor player. You know how they are going to behave. You know what their limitations are.
Most of the mechanics I have run into, and I've leveled two teams to 50 now in the real beta, are easily doable by a 2 box team. Boarding Party Imperial Side is actually probably the most difficult instance I have run into and I've run everything from 1-50 Imperial Side including the level 50 flashpoints which I completed at level 47. The final fight on boarding party is pretty difficult without a ranged tank as a 2 boxer due to the mechanics.
Rating the PvE effectiveness of 2 boxing groups is actually not that difficult.
Right now this is how I rank them.
1) Merc/Merc or Commando/Commando. This group literally doesn't need a tank. The Merc/Commando's run very high mitigation levels, and run very high sustained DPS, or insanely high burst DPS. On non-hardmode Flashpoints, starting in your mid-20's you will rarely need a tank for anything. Blizz might be awesome flavor, but Skadge is the superior tank. More on this later.
2) Sorc/Sorc. You will want to run one tank in this group for obvious reasons. However the force pool of Sorc's and the Jedi equivalent are so enormous that combined these two should almost never run out of power while sustaining good DPS AND healing. In the odd situation where you do run OOP, the enormous force pool combined and the pretty decent regeneration rate mean you will only be tapped for a couple of seconds before you can toss that big heal or chain lightning. Khem Val is your first companion and you're not going to find a better companion for Sorc's given the current companion tanking mechanics.
3) Operative/Operative. Like the Sorc's you're going to want to at least one tank. The interesting thing with Operatives is that for shorter higher intensity battles, Sorcerors are going to be a superior healer. However once you turn that battle into an endurance one, Operatives with their 31 point healing talent pull ahead. Operatives and Scoundrels are awesome, however, their DPS at range is not up to par with the other two classes. Better healers than Mercs, and on balance roughly equal with Sorcerors, Operative DPS and burst shines in melee range. There are two drawbacks to this. First you are in AOE harms way. Secondly due to the autofollow mechanic, your secondary character will take one step and then stop to attack at range while your primary character is meleeing away. While not such a huge concern on larger boss fights it becomes incredibly annoying when your secondary operative takes 10 seconds or sometimes longer to finally reach melee combat. You can remove ranged attacks from the secondary characters rotation, but this is not a great work around.
Depending on how healing intensive hardmode flashpoints are, Mercenaries could very well drop into third position with Operatives challenging and perhaps even surpassing Sorcerors as the top two man group in PvE.
To quickly touch on tank companions. Right now tank companions are woeful compared to melee companions. This is based on the current PBAOE mechanic for taunting/debuffing. Basically ranged tanks will fire their debuffs and taunts at range, and these abilities as of ~10 days ago remained centered on the companion. Big problems ensue when the range of these abilities is 10 or 15 meters, and they are engaging enemies at 25 or 30 meters. Basically they don't taunt or debuff. Melee companions don't have this problem since they are firing off these abilities in the face of what they are supposed to tank.
This means Skadge>Blizz, Scorpio>Kaliyo, Khem Val>Xalek from a pure effectiveness stand point. I'd also like to add that Scorpio is INSANELY good with fresh level 50 gear due to how droid itemization is.
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