Best animal companion...

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blksabbath74
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Best animal companion...

Post by blksabbath74 » Tue Jan 15, 2019 12:09 am

Years ago the consensus was the bear, I think. Is that changed?

Sea Shanties
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Re: Best animal companion...

Post by Sea Shanties » Tue Jan 15, 2019 12:35 am

If you're choosing based on power, bear and panther and badger have 3 attacks and the rest just one. Bear has strength and survivability so it's probably top choice especially early on. Panther deals amazing sneak attack damage if you can handle micro-managing it to keep it alive but they go down pretty easily. Badgers are late bloomers but get regeneration and damage resistance plus the ability to rage, I like them best in epic levels since they deal decent damage and can tank to some degree.

Spiders have mind and poison immunity so they're also a choice if you can figure out how to take advantage of that. Hawks supposedly have the ability to disarm but I tried one and never saw it actually do that once.

With an ice or flameberry, awaken, magic fang and whatever other buffs you apply they're all decent at high levels though, and you can switch out at level up so plenty of time to experiment with what you like.

blksabbath74
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Re: Best animal companion...

Post by blksabbath74 » Tue Jan 15, 2019 1:50 am

Sea Shanties wrote:
Tue Jan 15, 2019 12:35 am
If you're choosing based on power, bear and panther and badger have 3 attacks and the rest just one. Bear has strength and survivability so it's probably top choice especially early on. Panther deals amazing sneak attack damage if you can handle micro-managing it to keep it alive but they go down pretty easily. Badgers are late bloomers but get regeneration and damage resistance plus the ability to rage, I like them best in epic levels since they deal decent damage and can tank to some degree.

Spiders have mind and poison immunity so they're also a choice if you can figure out how to take advantage of that. Hawks supposedly have the ability to disarm but I tried one and never saw it actually do that once.

With an ice or flameberry, awaken, magic fang and whatever other buffs you apply they're all decent at high levels though, and you can switch out at level up so plenty of time to experiment with what you like.
Awesome, great info! Exactly what I was looking for.

Will probably stick with bear and go with Badger at 21. Definitely don't want anything I have to micromanage, and value survivability above all else.

My Summon has been outperforming my Companion all the way up (currently at 9) and the Companion is the one I am more likely to have to stop and heal.

Both are solid, but yeah, damage reduction and regeneration would be great. Would help keep it in the game more...

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Opustus
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Re: Best animal companion...

Post by Opustus » Wed Jan 16, 2019 1:04 am

Boar and bear are pretty much exactly the same in strength. Plus, theoretically you -should- be able to cast unrestricted stuff like Bless weapon and Blade thirst on the boar, because it only has the one attack item on its creature weapon whereas the bear varies between its three attack items randomly and the weapon buff gets attached to only one of them. Haven't tested this on Arelith, mind.
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Sea Shanties
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Re: Best animal companion...

Post by Sea Shanties » Wed Jan 16, 2019 1:18 am

Companions are very buff reliant. You need Greater Magic Weapon, Awaken, Stoneskin, Barkskin, strength and every potion you can throw at it. Ice and Flame berries also give it a big boost so you should see about acquiring those, most established druids would know how and may help out.

I wouldn't say there's a point where companions are spectacularly better than your summons but the beauty is you can both at the same time. At level 17 you can summon four elementals at once plus have your companion out and even a dominated animals as well.

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The Kriv
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Re: Best animal companion...

Post by The Kriv » Wed Jan 16, 2019 4:45 pm

I did a complete ranger animal companion snapshot a bit ago of the stats of every companion when one of my characters got 24 ranger levels. Have a look.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0


Link to the thread on the forums if you want to contribute to it:
viewtopic.php?f=36&t=19522&p=160333&hil ... ot#p160333

I don't know if these are the same for druids or not... maybe someone with 24 druid levels can compare theirs to this chart.
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