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Conclussion: The Phoera is useless! (aka phoera phailure)
killerella
Member Posts: 215 Arc User
After leveling this thing to max@30, I've played it in a lot of scenarios. End result, its terrible at everything. Its extremely underpowered, and it dies quickly. I've even tried dressing it up in all purple, thinking it would wake up the beast or something, but honestly the difference was negligible.
In all fairness, I didn't realize how useless it was until I started playing a bunch of other companions just to get a taste of what else was available. I thought, well, if this purple companion is this bad, I cant imagine how bad a white, green or blue companion must be...boy was I wrong! Even the White level companions are more useful at something than the poor purple Phoera, which just seems to have no purpose.
A low level wayward wizard was having nice standoff battles with casting mobs, which was great because it freed me up to do a little melee business. The Cleric was saving me a ton of money on potions as long as I could keep her alive. Its not even worth the effort of keeping the Phoera alive though...just so I can watch it die again?
Pitted against mobs, the high level "very rare" purple Phoera companion can barely hold its own against the weakest mobs available...add a 2nd weak mob, and he quickly becomes toast. Compare that to the blue level Wererat, and well there is no comparison...even a low level wererat was handily taking on a boss and 3 minions and doing a pretty good job of holding his own. That low level wererat is hitting 3X as hard as my top level super rare phoera, and seems to be 3X as tough too. I've read that the Galeb Dhur and the Honey Badger actually take companions to a whole other level, but I couldn't afford to take one for a test drive.
This all brings me to question of, what is the point of even having a Phoera? Aside from looking pretty cool, its pretty worthless, and seems to be more of a liability than an asset. Now that I've tried other companions, I feel like I wasted 44 player levels just training this crazy thing. Did someone maybe just forget to activate his attack powers so get more powerful as he grows? Is it possible to maybe "patch him up" later so he's truly representative of his purple brethren companions? Right now I give him the 2 thumbs down, and I wouldn't recommend him to anyone, especially when there are free companions that do a much better job at "something".
Feel free to share your stories of Phoera triumph, well, if any exist.
In all fairness, I didn't realize how useless it was until I started playing a bunch of other companions just to get a taste of what else was available. I thought, well, if this purple companion is this bad, I cant imagine how bad a white, green or blue companion must be...boy was I wrong! Even the White level companions are more useful at something than the poor purple Phoera, which just seems to have no purpose.
A low level wayward wizard was having nice standoff battles with casting mobs, which was great because it freed me up to do a little melee business. The Cleric was saving me a ton of money on potions as long as I could keep her alive. Its not even worth the effort of keeping the Phoera alive though...just so I can watch it die again?
Pitted against mobs, the high level "very rare" purple Phoera companion can barely hold its own against the weakest mobs available...add a 2nd weak mob, and he quickly becomes toast. Compare that to the blue level Wererat, and well there is no comparison...even a low level wererat was handily taking on a boss and 3 minions and doing a pretty good job of holding his own. That low level wererat is hitting 3X as hard as my top level super rare phoera, and seems to be 3X as tough too. I've read that the Galeb Dhur and the Honey Badger actually take companions to a whole other level, but I couldn't afford to take one for a test drive.
This all brings me to question of, what is the point of even having a Phoera? Aside from looking pretty cool, its pretty worthless, and seems to be more of a liability than an asset. Now that I've tried other companions, I feel like I wasted 44 player levels just training this crazy thing. Did someone maybe just forget to activate his attack powers so get more powerful as he grows? Is it possible to maybe "patch him up" later so he's truly representative of his purple brethren companions? Right now I give him the 2 thumbs down, and I wouldn't recommend him to anyone, especially when there are free companions that do a much better job at "something".
Feel free to share your stories of Phoera triumph, well, if any exist.
Post edited by killerella on
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Comments
You solved it, It does have a purpose. I just forgot to take the BBQ sauce with me
no life, No dps, No KI.
Not sure do havent tested him myself but it just sounds like hes a sort of off-mage, not capable of tanking mobs directly but inflicing good dps if he doesnt get's focused?...
maybe test him with ure cleric?...
This ^^^
/10 char
But if Cryptic buffed it, I'd be even happier!
If you want a companion into dungeons, you get an augment companion.
Make GWF a companion and everybody wil want one in there dungeon?
/jk
Bird hits for 1/5 to 1/10 of damage of my weakest aoe, accounting for crit and damage variation.
Bird aoe cd is 15 seconds.
Useless pet once you hit high levels.
Earlier today I just say my phoera being surrounded by 4 rotters (zombie things) and die
The one thing it does decently is that it draws aggro pretty decently with a group of mobs, as long as I don't hit them. Although, that's admittedly not much benefit since it dies in a few hits anyway...
And that's exactly what companions are, mob distractions with a few gimmicks. Some of these gimmicks are useful, others are not and it depends on your class and playstyle.
The phoera's gimmick is that it has AoE damage, which helps in attracting the first few thrashmobs while my TR takes the mobs individually or deals with a stronger target first.
But I think the strongest companion by far is the man-at-arms. If that guy ever got buffed to purple he'd make a very decent tool to keep trash mobs busy with his AoE taunt.
Perhaps it is merely coincidental, but the sellsword(GWF) is probably the worst companion in the game. Imagine a Phirechicken, only with even less damage and survivability, and nothing to do outside of melee range!
I call that balance.
(sorry couldent resist
There should be no "probably" in that statement. She can't heal, buff, control or tank and the damage she deals is beyond pathetic.
And ya, I'm
Only cost $30 bucks
Yeah I can't understand how a junior level programmer (even an intern) wouldn't have immediately thought it was a good idea to have companions despawn from zones their masters aren't in the moment they started coding anything to do with companions. Makes you wonder what other memory/cpu resources are being wasted by needlessly processing things that should have been killed.
Even thinking about it from an aesthetics perspective instead of a resource one it should have been an obvious thing.
I love this game, but sometimes I'm just completely mind boggled at how some things are.
The only thing I do like
Yeah, for a lvl 30 "striker" companion , it should at least hit a lot harder, even if it still dies quickly.
True, its his best feature drawing agro from small groups of trash mobs. The problem is he only lives for a few seconds, so what happens in these few seconds determines his worth. If he actually stuck with the trash mobs for his 10 seconds of glory it would be much more helpful, but as soon as I attack a tougher mob, he abandons the trash mobs and leads them all over to me, which compounds my fight since I end up agro'ing everything at the same time...and since he did very little damage to any of the trash mobs during his initial encounter, it really just ends up making the fight worse than it needs to be. At lvl 60, if you want more precise control of the battle arena, and better survivability, you are better off to just dismiss him for 90% of the fights you will encounter.
He will die in almost every single fight at lvl 60, so you either have to wait for him to heal up, drop a portable altar, or be a cleric, if you want him to go into the next fight with full HP. If you rush to the next fight before he is fully healed, he will die even quicker, and prove more useless. Its a shame that such a nice looking companion has to be such a thorn in your side. I believe there is some real potential there for Phoera if they tweaked his powers to at least get them on par with the other purple level companions.
That would be totally awesome. I hope you're right
Umm no it isn't 1 companion level = 2 normal levels. So a 30 companion is equal to a level 60 mob.
Um, yes it is, go test it.
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?298701-Striker-Companions-Are-Useless-Broken-Please-Cryptic-D&highlight=companion+damage
its on my bucket list, lol....or if I win the lottery, whichever comes 1st
But i think the whole community can agree that companions (strikers) are just plain bad, their damage isnt good, but what makes them worse is there ridiculous slow attack speeds.
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".