"Combat companions no longer deal an absurd amount of damage."

tribbulater

Topic title taken from the patch notes.

For the past couple months I've pretty much dropped out of actually playing NW, since it seems the devs are just in some weird cycle of "let's take away everything the players ever paid for/ground for/upgraded and replace all those things with new stuff that doesn't actually work, works completely differently, or needs a ton of grind to functionally replace".

However, seeing this odd line in the patch notes made me do a small experiment before the maint began. I ran a character with a combat companion into Neverdeath graveyard (simply because I have run lots of tests there on things and so have a baseline idea of what companions do there).

Before Mod 16 dropped and companions became useless, my Zhentarim Warlock could take out a spawn of kobolds in Neverdeath if I happened to be doing something else. (I don't have great gear on my companions, mostly purple items from IG and rank 9 runestones.) It would take her a couple minutes but she could whittle them down one by one.

After 'the Great Uselessing' dropped, this same character, same Warlock, but with some 'boosts' now from other pets... pretty much can't take out a single kobold on her own. IIRC, kobolds in Neverdeath (at the dragon end) are level 28, and I believe I and my companion get shifted down to level 30. So she is a rank 30 blue companion, who can't take out a level 28 kobold minion. (The kobolds heal about as fast as she does damage.)

Before the patch, while combat companions were allegedly dealing "absurd" damage, my Warlock could actually kill a kobold on her own. It took her about 10-12 hits, 2 of which are her stronger 'encounter' attack - so about 30 seconds to kill each one.

I am just wondering if that's what represents "absurd damage" in the minds of Cryptic these days - a rank 30 companion being able to kill a minion 2 levels below her in 30 seconds or so.

Or were there other situations where other, higher level/better geared companions were doing something actually absurd?

poisd2strike

I have heard that Xuna was doing what the devs would consider an absurd amount of damage. I play NW on XBox and don't have a Xuna, so cannot test myself.

arazith07

Here is the original Bug Report for Xuna specifically, but later found other companions than were just as overpowered. https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1251097/xuna-does-too-much-damage

114k-200k dps is a lot for players, much less companions.

methuselas

Apparently the only ones allowed to ROFLSTOMP are the mobs.......

hustin1

Doing some testing. Yep, companions now appear to be useless once again. FFS.

feanor70118

"Absurd," if it's something that works for us, means "useful" in real terms. Rather like the dev definition of "broken." See also the dev definition of "in a good place" whenever applied to toons with bows.

kharkov58

See also "in a good place" when applied to scaling.

finalfantasyac7

Don't spend real money cuz no matter how hard you try to get stronger. You'll get nerfed back to level 1 lol

hustin1

One of my biggest gripes has to do with Indomitable runestones. Just by slotting one you're already taking a huge performance cost and committing to using your companion as a damage-dealer. In addition, it's the only runestone whose additional benefits decrease as its upgrade cost increases. Making a rank 15 Indomitable has an enormous cost for a measly 13% increase. If the devs are worried about everyone's companions doing a lot of damage, then they should at least make it worthwhile to deliberately chase companion damage in lieu of personal damage as a personal playstyle choice. For my tank characters I actually enjoy positioning my Powrie behind an enemy so she can light it up with Murderous Charge while I act as bait -- but I make the deliberate choice to use Indomitables for that purpose.

smokebailey

Seems if something works good....



....NERF IT!

cdnbison

There is "good" and there is "Xuna companions are the top 4 damage dealers in a LoMM run"...

tribbulater

With luck maybe Cryptic can figure out their own code long enough to pick a place between "boss-killing power" and "might as well be a piece of stat-boosting gear because they're functionally useless" for companions to settle in.

mebengalsfan

tribbulater said:

With luck maybe Cryptic can figure out their own code long enough to pick a place between "boss-killing power" and "might as well be a piece of stat-boosting gear because they're functionally useless" for companions to settle in.

Mod 16 was just for that reason, so the smaller team wouldn't have to figure out the older more complex code and yet even with updated easier code the development team continues to make mistakes. One great mistake is that certain classes buffs are not additive like the rest causing those classes to over perform.

rev

There's a difference between working well/usefull and beeing completly broken... if you were a tank and you had xuna well congrats you would most likely be the best dps in your lomm party, HAMSTER i saw xuna 3 hit a boss on a master exp with 2 runes.

Don't get me wrong, companions have been doing garbage damage since mod 16 dropped but i don't wanna see them as the best dps.

And scalling is HAMSTER so testing stuff on scalled content = not advisable...