Galeb Duhr Companion - and your opinion

jiralya · June 2013

Hello everyone, i come here again to ask for your opinion about this companion and its useful/lessness.
I am a lvl 60 cleric and i cant decide whether to buy Galeb or Cat, they both sound great.

Also, does anyone has any info on Honey Badger ? I never saw anyone with it

yerune · June 2013

My 2cents, I have a Galeb for my CW, but when pets can be unbound I'll definitely be using it for my DC to help in leveling. I don't really like the way it spreads outs the mobs for AoE's of the CW. But it's a nice little tank which does more damage on lower health, which IMHO seems perfect for a DC.

That's solo though. In parties you probably don't want pets competing with the tank for threat and they generally tend to spread out the mobs, which is bad for GWF's and CW's.

Clueless about the badger, but in theory they seem like the strongest strikers.

swoomustdienow · June 2013

As a Cleric I feel confident in saying the answer is Ioun Stone of Allure. No pet you can buy will help you as much as that little bugger.

Galeb Dur would have been amazing to have while leveling, but I wouldn't use him in instances as he would wreck with our GF's play (yep, we took pity and have an active GF. What we do for friendship ;P) The Honey Badger is a beast of a pet and would be great to have for solo play, but since you a mentioning the cat it means you probably do not have a stat-companion, so his worth is more of a novelty than a need. Of the two stat companions, I find the Ioun Stone to be superior, speaking as a Cleric. And if I knew what I know now, I would have made sure he was my very first Zen purchase.

imivo · June 2013

My recommendation would be Galeb for solo PvE (questing, foundry) and the Cat or the Stone of Allure for group PvE. Galeb is really lovely when foundry questing and I never regretted buying him (in fact, I'd like him for some of my alts, too!), but for dungeons the usefulness of the Cat and the Stone is just unmatched by combat companions.

docsc00ter · June 2013

As a 60 Cleric, I love my little rocky companion! It's true that he competes with a party's tank to pull agro, so you need to be discerning before pulling him out in a dungeon. (On the other hand, I've been in plenty of parties where the tank isn't doing a great job at holding agro, or when the game's design is to simply throw so many zillions of mobs into the final fight that you practically need another tank gathering some of the threat. In these cases, my little Galeb has been great.)

So, yeah, use the Ioun Stone of Allure in good parties, and use Galeb Duhr just about everywhere else. And if you can only afford one right now, I actually recommend grabbing Galeb Duhr first, because you'll have him out in more situations... and certainly for leveling.

jetah · June 2013

Ioun/Cat for Instance or Raid

The Galeb is good, though my GWF friend had much better luck with his (tanking a quest instance and not taking damage while mine would die pretty easy).

raithwyn · July 2013

I must be missing something because I HATE this companion. He never holds aggro for me. I looked at his aggro generating ability and it's on a 2min cool down. Meaning if you move fast enough he might not even have time to use it every fight and he certainly can't regain aggro if he looses it. I feel like I got ripped off when I bought him.

sigreg · July 2013

Hello,

At start - forgive please my nonperfect english, its not my national language, anyway i hope you can understand this strange version of "globish"

I have purchased Galeb about 2 days ago, reason why to do that was pretty simple - im mostly playing solo and my squishy Wizard do need something to keep at least part of the crowd out of him. I do have regular Man at Arms (this free one) at level 15, but in my actual quests with wizard lvl 39 my good trusted tank companion shows that its already his limit, in simple words - hes dying more and more often, not only in fights vs boses, but also in regular fights vs lots of trash or couple "minibosses".
Here i must confess that as for me, price for Galeb is very high, actually too high. I paid 28Eur for zen needed to fund this purchase, in my opinion this kind of "microtransaction" have nothing with "micro" anymore. For such money i could buy whole new "top" game in store or couple so called "classics" (5-6 Eur each). Such price for virtual companion really is way above accceptable limits. I had couple spare Euros so i paid, but really, i felt strange when paying such amount for bunch of pixels. It would be easier to handle such price if galeb would be a "account" purchase for all characters at account, but its not the case, hes a single char companion. Of course there will be more people like me for sure, paying such money because they actually like this game, so i think nothing will change in that matter in future.

My Golem is now at 14 lvl, but already hes stronger than regular Man At Arms with level 15. Actually when i compared HP pool of those two companions Galeb was equal to Man at Arms in matter of HP when he was at level 12, if i do remember he had about 8100HP vs 8000HP of lvl 15 Man At Arms. This is very important factor for me, as Galeb have to be my tank, and obviously he will tank with his HP, so more is better, currently at level 14 he does have 9600 HP (without any glyphs) and still do have 16 levels to go. I like that.

Performance:
I did some simple tests to compare how acually Galeb does work as tank, compared to Man At Arms. First of all - Galeb loses his aggro easier than Man At Arms, sometimes when i do use powerful spell mobs fighting with Galeb are leaving him, and running for me and it is moment when i need to teleport. But Golem dont stand and watch.. hes running after his enemies and getting aggro back when he got them. To be honest - this situation does happen with Man At Arms too, sometimes he does lose his agro and running after mobs leaving him and attacking me, but i do have feeling it does happen way more often in case of Galeb. Also Man at Arms does have this interresting "guardian" feature, sometimes hes leaving his current enemies and running to fight those who are directly attacking me, Galeb rather stick with his enemy, no matter if its a main boss or some trash and what is going on around me. From other side Galeb can handle beating a much better, i do think he does have better Armor Class or other hidden stats, generaly he was noticably sturdier when had the same HP as Man At Arms. As for now, with my wizard at level 39 and his own lvl 14 he can handle fight vs multiple trash mobs, 2-3 minibosses at once, or one main boss. Of course hes not doing that forever and finally eventually will get killed, but this does give me enought time to turn into dust most of enemies and seriously cripple those few still alive. Most problematic for him are areal and powerful attacks used by bosses (red circles), we all do know that AI of pets is not brillant in this case, Galeb is not exception. But still bosses fights with him are much easier now.
Other thing are daily dungeons given as quests by Rhinx. Yesterday i had good a test of Galeb tanking skills, because some people were bored with long waiting in queue, we have made own party and went directly to Throne of Idris. It was strange party, two wizards, two TR's, and cleric, so my young golem (he was lvl 13) had to take responsible role of main tank in lvl 38 up quest. Mobs in such quests are much stronger than in solo content, but most of time he was doing pretty well - if we managed to burn down rather quick mobs gathering around him, in case of longer fights he wasnt able to hold them all the time and finally get killed. Final boss - Irdis and her minions was too much for him. When fighting vs one or max two "hulk like" minibosses he was doing pretty good, but two hulks plus deamons, archers or irdis alone ... pretty fast he was down. I tried to ressurect him when i had time, but his Hp after ressurection is pretty low and irdis was quickly correcting it again to 0. But still we all were quite pleased with lvl 13 Galeb as party tank, maybe because we hadnt anything better

Damage:
Damage is not main role of tank, and Galeb follows this rule, he have to get and keep aggro, i have to deliver dps. Galeb at lvl 14 is doing outstanding 150 dmg per hit of his base attack, Man At Arms does 110..so they both are doing rather "symbolic" damage.

So in my opinion:
+ very durable
+ can hold direct fight with main boss keeping him busy
- loses aggro and does need to chase enemies to get it back
- poor dmg

knarsist · July 2013

raithwyn wrote: »

I must be missing something because I HATE this companion. He never holds aggro for me. I looked at his aggro generating ability and it's on a 2min cool down. Meaning if you move fast enough he might not even have time to use it every fight and he certainly can't regain aggro if he looses it. I feel like I got ripped off when I bought him.

Two minute cooldown? Where are you getting that from? He taunts frequently and well in my experience.

zahinder · July 2013

My 60 cleric's Galeb Duhr is awesome, at least once he hit rank 30, though I had a little trouble with him at earlier levels.
I mainly soloed, so he's a great tank partner.

If you primarily do skirmishes or dungeons, the cat might be more useful. On the other hand, a pocket tank could theoretically fill in any gaps in the main tank's aggro.

Although the inability to control pets directly might limit the usefulness of that. mmm.

Unknown · July 2013

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zahinder · July 2013

That's unfortunate. Really cuts down on the fun of alts.

milkbonedog · July 2013

verdonix1 wrote: »

I just wanted to add, that in the interview with Raptr the other day, PWE/Cryptic were 100% clear in stating that companions will NOT be able to be unbound... they said it was a feature in Beta that they say did not work in a way they felt was good for the feel of the game, or something along those lines (I forgot the exact quote) ... but bottom line, NO companion unbinding!

That is very unfortunate. I bought some of those companions with the idea that in the future I would be able to unbind them and either sell them or give them to an alt. The feature is there in the game, it just hasn't been implemented yet. I was new to the game and foolishly failed to thoroughly research the usefulness of companions before I bought them. Now I know the stone is the only one worth buying and I definitely won't be buying any others because they are useless.

Just an FYI.... Upgrading the companions is pretty much a waste too. I really don't recommend it for anyone unless they are swimming in unneeded AD. I leveled a cleric to 30 and there is no boost in healing or survivability. At lvl 30 the cleric I have can now heal over a greater distance. That's it. I really expected a lot more bang for my buck here.

I wouldn't even upgrade the stone. For 750K AD you will get 28 more power, crit, and recovery. I believe it is supposed to give you +32 to each stat since that is the actual stat increase a fully upgraded stone receives but for now it only gives +28. I'm not really complaining about this too much because the stone is already awesome. I am just pointing out that there is no real value in upgrading it and it is something that I think most players should skip doing. Adding +28 (or +32) to 3 stats is such a small change that it would be almost impossible to even notice a difference.

My advice for all new players... Take the free companion (Cleric or tank) and save for a stone or buy it with Zen. Use the free one as needed and when it is max level swap it out with your stone before turning in any quest or completing any leadership tasks. This way the xp isn't wasted on a fully leveled companion. You will level your stone very quickly this way and not have to use it in combat until you feel comfortable without the extra support. I would not buy any other companion. There are one or two that may be slightly useful when leveling, but they are just not worth the buying if money is an issue for you (if money isn't an issue buy all you want. Lol).

adinosii · July 2013

Don't forget that there are some companions (at least the green Tiefling Cleric) that you buy once and are available to all alts.

giggliato · July 2013

Galeb needs an AOE taunt, and companions need to be unbound.

erion37 · September 2013

I think Galeb Duhr is terrible even at level 25. You pull something and he hits the ground, using up his aggro. Everything comes at me the cloth mage. He focuses on one thing, what is hitting me, no one taught the dumb rock to off tank. What a rip off for $30.

Galeb Duhr Companion - and your opinion

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