I've been using a young yeti as the summoned companion for my combat HR for quite some time but I'm now considering replacing him for a few reasons :
- defender companions seem to be undesirable in a few situations : when fighting the blue dragon of dragonflight it seems that if they take aggro and die it triggers its instant death attack and when fighting a dungeon boss with a GF tanking if the pet steals aggro and the GF takes it back right before an attack the attack can, in some cases, count as coming from behing the GF effectively killing them.
- its active bonus was "fixed" but with a 60s cooldown it really doesnt count as a useful active bonus
So I've been trying a few other companions. Since I use aspect of the pack I was looking for a melee companion which can stay in melee range and, hopefully, stay alive as much as possible. I also want 3 offensive runestone slots and good damage and/or a useful active bonus.
Here are the ones I've tried :
- Shadow Demon : Its damage is far above any other companion, I've seen it do 3-4% of my total damage. Its active bonus however is rubbish. Its teleportation has a somewhat long cooldown which means that if it gets knocked away from the pack it may take him a few seconds to come back. I'm also concerned about its teleportation sending him into a void/water/precipice, I remember it used to happen with the dragon turtle in FBI, was it even fixed?
- Air Archon : Very low damage but great active bonus. No teleport or charge. One of its attacks seems to build extra aggro which is the very reason I decided to replace my yeti for.
- Death Slaad : Pretty good damage, no teleport/charge but very nice active bonus (specially for a combat HR). Its active bonus however is a lot less effective once upgraded to epic quality which basically rules him out as a summoned companion.
- Sellsword : The debuff is great, no doubt, but apart from that she is slow, cannnot teleport/charge, deals next to no damage and doesn't have any real active bonus.
- Boar : Surprisingly good damage, I'd say about half as much as the shadow demon, which still is a good 1.5-2% of total damage compared to the 0.x% of other companions. Its charge attack happens to be its main attack with a cooldown of 1s which means he stays right in the middle of the pack most of time if not always. Decent active bonus, 2% crit severity is very little compared to the erinyes or the cambion magus but it's better than nothing. I am concerned however that in epic dungeons the poor thing will spend most of its time being dead.
- Vicious Dire Wolf : very low damage, no teleport/charge, interesting active bonus but probably not really useful.
Any feedback regarding your own experience or anything I could have missed or overlooked would be most welcome.
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If you run Aspect of the Pack, the wolf prones everything all the time. I like running AotP, so it works well for me.
The bleed stacks Protector's Camaraderie nicely.
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@beckylunatic : That's interesting, I'll give the VDW another try.
It may not do that much damage but it's triple bite attack has a small knock effect on mobs, cancelling their attacks (thus us why they are hated in Throne skirmish) and with CA the prone is quite nice. As Becky says, it works very well with Aspect of the Pack.
While BIS probably goes to the RebelConSword, the wolf is a solid choice.
I first narrowed my list to VDW and rebel mercenary. At one point I contemplated the idea of getting both to blue quality and making my siege master legendary for the 15% stat buff. But then I compared the stats of rank 30 and 40 companions, which are (with 16 charisma) : 8922 HP and 460 ArP, Power and Crit. With rank 12 bondings and legendary buff this translates into 1338 HP and 1380 ArP, Power and Crit for me. That's far from negligable.
In the end I decided to go with the wolf because :
- the sword trio will get nerfed sooner or later at which point they will become completely useless since they don't have any good active bonus
- the wolf's control effects can be pretty effective in a few situations and only an HR with aspect of the pack can make good use of it
- an animal companion makes a lot more sense for a ranger than some mercenary warrior
- the wolf's sound effects are a lot less annoying than most other companions : like humans saying the same sentence over and over again everytime you change zone or the yeti's constant yelling.