Companion Gift

reefriednunt

So I have a few questions regarding comp gift....I thought that when they reworked the bonding stacking, they made it so your companion can proc the gift ONCE every 30 seconds and the gift lasts 20 seconds....so basically while in combat your getting the gift 2/3 of the time....so when I let my comp attack (either mobs, or dummies) every time he attacks the 20 second cooldown refreshes....his first attack starts the timer, it goes 20,19,18..then if he attacks again at 17, the timer goes back up to 20......is this WAI....does this mean that I have the 285% (r12 bondings) 100% of the time in combat? (Assuming comp is alive and attacking)

Also if someone can clear up the underdark ring(s) on companions for me...so I know that they do work on companions, but I have a few questions:
1. Can you have the same ring on you and your comp and have them both proc? Pretty sure you can't but looking for confirmation.
2. Does your comp (assuming you have decent striker) attack enough to reach 10 stacks of the rising rings?
3. Has someone done the math to figure out if 4000 power for 1/3 (10 seconds out of every 30 seconds) is better than 1100power (400-ish from normal ring, and r12 radiant) 100% of time (in combat)....lets say that on a boss fight, when combat first starts, your gonna benefit from the 4000, as your just starting your rotation and those encounters will hit pretty hard....but then the sudden rings will go on cool down and the next time the rings procc, your toons encounters might be on cooldown for 6-8 out of those 10 seconds, and you won't benefit as much?...

Sorry for the long post, looking forward to hearing from you guys, especially the hard core testing/ number crunchers out there!!

frozenfirevr

They removed the cd iirc, and made it proc each time the companion attacks.

I don't use Underdark rings on companions, but, here's the answers:-

1. Yes, you can.
2. Yes, they can.
3. Depends on your character build.

demonmonger

I'm starting to dislike bondings.... seems way to overpowered to me.

reefriednunt

I don't think they are OP...and at lease they are proportionately OP....(meaning everyone uses them)...not just the super rich

santralafax

I preferred ioun stones, they were more consistent and didn't slam power creep quite so hard. But they aren't OP in that every one can use them, it's true.

Now it seems that killing companions is another mechanic to worry about.

frozenfirevr

Now all companions, have a pretty good chance of being used and a wide variety is being seen unlike Allure/Black Dragon back in the day. That's overall a positive thing.

reefriednunt

Does anyone know if you put an enchantment (let's say R12) into the slot of a sudden ring, does your comp get the 700 stat all the time, or only when the ring proccs??

oldbaldyone

reefriednunt#3177 said:

Does anyone know if you put an enchantment (let's say R12) into the slot of a sudden ring, does your comp get the 700 stat all the time, or only when the ring proccs??

All the time.

demonmonger said:

I'm starting to dislike bondings.... seems way to overpowered to me.

Considering they seem to be a requirement for even being considered for a high level run these days, I can somewhat agree. I definitely notice when my pet bugs in SVA and won't respawn...feels like I'm fighting naked. When you consider that any class with R12 bondings would outdps any other class (same IL) without bondings, there seems to be an issue. Single items should not be so make or break. The fact that they have the game balanced around this makes it hard to adjust now though.

That said, they had the chance to fix them, did it, and made them better...and having pets out is 1000000 times more visually entertaining to me than the old "Oh look, 5 people in a group with swirling balls of light around their heads!" days.

sundance777

reefriednunt#3177 said:

3. Has someone done the math to figure out if 4000 power for 1/3 (10 seconds out of every 30 seconds) is better than 1100power (400-ish from normal ring, and r12 radiant) 100% of time (in combat)....lets say that on a boss fight, when combat first starts, your gonna benefit from the 4000, as your just starting your rotation and those encounters will hit pretty hard....but then the sudden rings will go on cool down and the next time the rings procc, your toons encounters might be on cooldown for 6-8 out of those 10 seconds, and you won't benefit as much?...

This sort of does not have an answer as written the r12 radiant should not be part of the math, the enchantment stats are gifted on either ring. The sudden rings proc very well and while yes they go on cooldown, but companions tend to die.

This is how I learned it:
Sudden Ring with 4000 power for 10 seconds every 30 seconds: This peaks and drops but on average is about 1300 power to send over to you for long fights. And as many fights are very quick, the ring provides power in the beginning of each new fight.

Ring with 400 power: this is a straight simple transfer of x% of the power.

Rising ring with 135 power, up to 10 stacks each 4 seconds duration: If your companion say strikes once every second, you will have 4-5 stacks max as new stacks are added too slowly and previous stacks fall off. Some companions can hit several strikes with a short cooldown, such as the mercenary, which hits 4 times and then pauses for two seconds, so assuming it lives long enough or the combat lasts long enough you could end up with 8-10 stacks for the duration of the fight, which means best case you get 1350 power, but probably not due to death, speed of attack and duration of fight.

Use the sudden ring - ymmv

reefriednunt

Thanks Sundance..I think in my original post I had a brain <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> and was thinking the underdark rings didn't have a slot for enchants..even though I know they do.......anyways, doesn't the fire archon have a DOT attack which ticks 5-6 times? I thought I read somewhere that they could reach 10 stacks....also if the companion dies do the stacks reset on the rising rings?

madmatuzza

oldbaldyone said:

That said, they had the chance to fix them, did it, and made them better...and having pets out is 1000000 times more visually entertaining to me than the old "Oh look, 5 people in a group with swirling balls of light around their heads!" days.

And why not making companions role more like a player, ie., like a DC or a dps? and not super augments, reducing true auments to trash!

demonmonger

I'm using my augment... not falling for the bonding trap

sirjimbofrancis

I don't know if this is clear or not, but if you put your sudden ring on your companion, and you have rank 12s and one of your active companions is legendary, it will proc for 300% of the sudden ring stats or 12,000. So, if you had a brutality on your character, and another one on your companion, they would proc for a combined 16,000 power 1/3 of the time, or an average of adding 5,333 power.

You might already know this, but I thought I'd point it out, just in case.

dupeks

sirjimbofrancis said:

I don't know if this is clear or not, but if you put your sudden ring on your companion, and you have rank 12s and one of your active companions is legendary, it will proc for 300% of the sudden ring stats or 12,000. So, if you had a brutality on your character, and another one on your companion, they would proc for a combined 16,000 power 1/3 of the time, or an average of adding 5,333 power.

You might already know this, but I thought I'd point it out, just in case.

At one point I tested this extensively so I may as well share a peculiar detail.

The way companion's gift works is that it "snapshots" the companion stats when it procs and gives you X%. Each time the gift is refreshed, it re-"snapshots" the companion stats. This can lead to different results depending on how often brutality and companion's gift are proccing.

If you have a slow-proc companion, it might not proc gift right away after a brutality proc (especially at start of combat, and brutality always procs immediately when you enter combat). This means you are robbed of the first tiny bit of brutality being active on your companion and the duration you experience may be reduced.

However, a slow-proc companion can also extend the brutality-enhanced gift a bit of time after brutality ends before the next gift refresh. This may effectively increase the brutality-enhanced gift duration that you experience.

An instructive way to see this for yourself is to start combat against a dummy, let brutality and gift proc, and quickly run away to stop your companion from attacking before brutality ends (leaving the brutality-enhanced gift on you). If you open your stats sheet, you'll see that the brutality-enhanced gift will stay for quite a while (20sec duration) if it's not refreshed with another companion attack.

For many fast-proc companions (and especially ranged companions which attack really soon after combat starts) this "snapshot" mechanic doesn't make a large difference (you lose a bit at the start, but gain a bit at the end for a net of no big deal).

PS: This used to matter a lot when they had gifts last 20s and expire before refreshing, as you could "snapshot" the brutality bonus for almost the entire length and have artificially increased uptime. This isn't as big of a deal now because most viable companions refresh gift relatively frequently.

btairborne

Exactly what I have observed.
I see a lot of people thinking that using their fire archon they are getting brutality or sudden xx at 100% up time which isn't true.
Some think it's a bug with the fire archon to do with the DOT. I just haven't observed it though.

Only question I haven't figured out yet is do DOT skills cause a snap shot or not. Do you know @dupeks?

dupeks

btairborne said:

Only question I haven't figured out yet is do DOT skills cause a snap shot or not. Do you know @dupeks?

Are you asking whether companion DoT attacks have a chance to re-proc companion's gift with each tick?

If that's the question, I'm inclined to think that the answer is no. I believe that gift only procs on the initial hit, but to be honest I'm not certain as I've migrated most of my bonding companions to defense debuffers (I play mostly support roles).

@rinat114 I know you have done a lot of great work testing companions for DPS builds. Do you know if Fire Archon re-procs companion's gift on DoT ticks, or just on the 1st hit?

ghoulz66

Heh, they're not overpowered with the new content. Too much imbalance in pve now.