Changes to bondings and companions

flyderial

https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/11481153-bonding-runestones-&-companion-changes

plasticbat

Another big change. I guess 3 less things to be refined up. And much more companions to be upgraded.

jules

Just a cash grab.
"Last part of these changes is that companions will be able to be upgraded to Mythic, which will have a base 1500 Item Level like mounts do. Mythic companions provide 20% bolster and a given companion category will be able to max out at 100% bolster with the top 5 quality companions in that category."

But it is for sure "what players asked for".

mullymoomoo

i guess Cryptic have decided the player base isn't buying sufficient companions and companion token packs from the ZEN store, so to boost sales they've found a way to break the current setup and force us to grind/farm/buy more companions and tokens to boost their sales figures for the next quarterly review.

thats the only reason i can think to do these changes.

this on top of grinding out mount upgrade tokens to get the mount bolster to 100% as well don't forget. not all the players are whales with 100m AD and nothing to spend it on.

b33lz3bubba

As companion influence is also being dropped, what happens to insignia of dominance / dark enchantments? Or is this going to be like tactical over again?

neidanman

Will there be a trade in for Dark enchants as well?

jules

neidanman#1423 said:

Will there be a trade in for Dark enchants as well?

And the traded-in-for will be bound?

darthpotater

And wich stat will replace companion influence? thats important tho

erevel09

My guess for dark enchantments is run speed... capped at 3% at rank 15. Ha...

mythdemeanour

jules#6770 said:

Just a cash grab.
"Last part of these changes is that companions will be able to be upgraded to Mythic, which will have a base 1500 Item Level like mounts do. Mythic companions provide 20% bolster and a given companion category will be able to max out at 100% bolster with the top 5 quality companions in that category."

But it is for sure "what players asked for".

Unless you can buy companion upgrade packs with AD from the wonderous bazaar I can see myself skipping this "update" like I am with the collars. Just another thing to make the ZAX exchange more constipated IMO. Seriously hunting for whales at this point will just lead to many empty servers, but I suppose that is working as intended.

raiderone000

darthpotater said:

And wich stat will replace companion influence? thats important tho

I just did free race reroll and took +2 Charisma on my OP Tank for companion influence... My tank goes Con/Cha.
What other benefit will be added to Charisma? How about Physical Damage... Tanks are again getting hit bad.

I hope we get free rerolls too. Goes without saying all my Dark Stones need free change. But this is a money grab, no different than mounts. And knew Companions was next. Mythic Mounts by 10. At least Companions is only by 5 and most are already Legendary in given Category for Bolster. Mounts never had bolster n no real need for multiple Legendary mounts before change. So Mount change more of money grab...

rikitaki

A big question is about the companion damage formula/or how much stats will the companion gain. If they could comfortably sit on 90k+ of various off/def stats, then it would be an improvement. But that seems unlikely, so once again their attacks will get significant damage reduction. And I doubt they would use player's stat for the damage formula purposes.

On the other hand, they appraised "combat ability" at 15% stat loss? That is way too low to justify augment, unless the combat ability equals a vanity pet.

mullymoomoo

Campaign boons tier 3 - simple support, gives 2% companion influence per rank. that will need to be changed to something else.
will we get to exchange dark enchantments that we have slotted in utility slots for the companion influence??
will we get to exchange dominance mount insignias becaue they have companion influence on them??

carloswartune

mythdemeanour said:

jules#6770 said:

Just a cash grab.
"Last part of these changes is that companions will be able to be upgraded to Mythic, which will have a base 1500 Item Level like mounts do. Mythic companions provide 20% bolster and a given companion category will be able to max out at 100% bolster with the top 5 quality companions in that category."

But it is for sure "what players asked for".

Unless you can buy companion upgrade packs with AD from the wonderous bazaar I can see myself skipping this "update" like I am with the collars. Just another thing to make the ZAX exchange more constipated IMO. Seriously hunting for whales at this point will just lead to many empty servers, but I suppose that is working as intended.

There's no need for companion upgrade packs in the wondrous bazaar, companions can be upgraded with plain AD. I don't think they're gonna change that and, even if they do, there are many sources of free Companion Tokens, Legacy Quests being one of the best.

longhers

more cash grabbing again fancy that game must be in a bad shape. Plus was any of this discussed in a CDP anywhere or is this just more change's that they didn't not discus with the player base again to see what we were thinking cause if not then whats the point in having a CDP if the first place.

tvorez

So to compensate the changes we need to upgrade ALL items to max? Good plan, really good!

gromovnipljesak

I've had better ideas when I was drunk on an entire bottle of rum.

I do hope you show the changes before black Friday because if you think people will invest before knowing what they're investing into... I got bad news for ya.

And this is indeed another cash grab
Taking and then reselling us lost power.

Why don't ya stop beating around the bush and just increase everyone's damage proportionately to how much Zen they've bought.

mickyce

another move for grabbing money, other players will leave the game. Good job!

jrfbrunet

When does this aberration become available on preview shard?

mullymoomoo

so you need 5 companions from 1 category, lets say beasts all at mythic level to get 100% bolster, then you need to use one of those as your active companion. so far ok, but then you will want to upgrade all the companions you've chosen for the companion offense, defense and utility slots to go to mythic to max out those bonuses as well, so you may need to upgrade 10 companions to mythic, just like mounts

crusthelvete

Ofc, im gonna test this when it comes live.
But im sceptic to this, really sceptic.

Maybe its time to move on, wich is sad tho i really enjoy this game and are closing in to endgame, but i cant afford
spending money after money in it to get anywhere.

noworries

tvorez said:

So to compensate the changes we need to upgrade ALL items to max? Good plan, really good!

That is not what the info says. It says that the item level was adjusted to compensate for bondings going away and then companions were made to be upgradeable to Mythic to increase stats even higher than they currently are on live.

For those asking about upgrade tokens, companions can still be upgraded directly with AD as they always have as well as with upgrade tokens.

Companion Influence will be swapped to another stat. The reason every single detail isn't in this post is that the work is currently ongoing. We're hoping to be able to have it ready for preview in a few weeks and will have all of the details ready for that time as well. Since that preview will be after the Black Friday timeframe we wanted to give the heads up on Bonding Runestones now so everyone had that info.

gromovnipljesak

> @noworries#8859 said:
> (Quote)
> That is not what the info says. It says that the item level was adjusted to compensate for bondings going away and then companions were made to be upgradeable to Mythic to increase stats even higher than they currently are on live.
>
> For those asking about upgrade tokens, companions can still be upgraded directly with AD as they always have as well as with upgrade tokens.
>
> Companion Influence will be swapped to another stat. The reason every single detail isn't in this post is that the work is currently ongoing. We're hoping to be able to have it ready for preview in a few weeks and will have all of the details ready for that time as well. Since that preview will be after the Black Friday timeframe we wanted to give the heads up on Bonding Runestones now so everyone had that info.

So if say, I have 5 mythical comps in beasts, and then meta changes and BiS comp is now fighter, you mean to tell me I have to upgrade 5 comps to mythic AGAIN?

Sorry, but genuinely what the shi

longhers

noworries#8859 said:

tvorez said:

So to compensate the changes we need to upgrade ALL items to max? Good plan, really good!

That is not what the info says. It says that the item level was adjusted to compensate for bondings going away and then companions were made to be upgradeable to Mythic to increase stats even higher than they currently are on live.

For those asking about upgrade tokens, companions can still be upgraded directly with AD as they always have as well as with upgrade tokens.

Companion Influence will be swapped to another stat. The reason every single detail isn't in this post is that the work is currently ongoing. We're hoping to be able to have it ready for preview in a few weeks and will have all of the details ready for that time as well. Since that preview will be after the Black Friday timeframe we wanted to give the heads up on Bonding Runestones now so everyone had that info.

where is the heads up in the CDP discussion to give the players a good chance to a tleast talk about it or are CDP just a complete waste of time.

erevel09

I have a question about companion bonuses in offensive, defensive, utility slots. Are those touched as well? I mean, I know we get new rank for companions (mythic), but I want to know if there is something more in there than just simple increase in values for mythic ones.

For example, Deepcrow Hatchling currently on live has 8000 power. I assume mythic rank will just increase it to 10000, right? Or is there something else going on/planned for those?

deanski07

Hey Cryptic don't forget you will have to change things like darkened storytellers journal and replace the stat for companion influence, also the tier 3 boon companion influence. Does that mean everyone who has that boon active gets a free re-roll?

bruce55

after all the time and effort and you screw us again. Do you enjoy doing things to make people decide to leave the game and not support it. everyother week you do something stupid. geez when will it stop. I can guareentee you will neve get another penny from me and never support this craptic bs anymore.

regenerde

Well, any point in upgrading Bonding Runestones now, or should i just wait for the exchange to go live and trade them in as they're?

arazith07

bruce55 said:

after all the time and effort and you screw us again. Do you enjoy doing things to make people decide to leave the game and not support it. everyother week you do something stupid. geez when will it stop. I can guareentee you will neve get another penny from me and never support this craptic bs anymore.

Not enough info to know if they have "screwed us" or not.

arazith07

regenerde said:

Well, any point in upgrading Bonding Runestones now, or should i just wait for the exchange to go live and trade them in as they're?

You have all the info you need about that...just need to do the math.

benyr

I hope they're either going to remove the need for companions to gain experience before you can level them up, or make companion experience tomes more readily available and revert back to all companions slotted (currently 5) gain experience as we do rather than just the summoned one.