Best Companion Builds?

[DuperFriend]

What the title says, anyone know any good companion builds? I've already looked up good main character builds but the companions almost eluded me. Also mentioning what companion build might go well with main character build would help too! Builds can imply traits, skills, gear, special stuff, etc.

 

[VDX_360]

There's no universal "best" Companion. There's just too many variables between playing style, main character choices and desired goals for any one Companion build to be objectively better than all the others. There are broken Companion builds but as long as you avoid anything obviously problematic you should be okay.

Best advice? Pick a Companion you like and build him or her out in a manner that compliments your main character and playing style.

Some examples:
1) Gris as a group tank for a mage main character. Give her a shield, and group attacks and let her occupy the hordes while you blast away with strong spells.
2) Gris as a 2-H slayer with a focus on aggressive abilities, paired with a Mage. Best defense is a good offense followed by a fireball.
3) Hirge with healing as the only active skill paired with a 2-H warrior. She can hit hard, and can heal you main character as needed.
4) Hirge with a lot of active skills, including Arbenos' Might. Paired with anyone. Sure, she'll end up healing fire elementals more often than not, but those pesky goblins won't know what hit them. And the undead will learn to stay dead.
5) Adaon, with high DPS build, paired with a 1-H Cleric. For long fights, the Cleric can heal. For short fights, Adaon stabs.
6) Adaon built as a thief, paired with anyone. Max out his trap expert skill, his secret finding skills, screw combat, he's there to find the loot. That frees up your main character to focus on combat abilities.

Those are just a few examples.

 

[VDX_360]

You can use the search function on the forum to find numerous discussions on this same topic, too.

 

[stonedwolf]

6) Adaon built as a thief, paired with anyone. Max out his trap expert skill, his secret finding skills, screw combat, he's there to find the loot. That frees up your main character to focus on combat abilities.

This variant is good to build as an Archer.

Trait wise focus on Agility and Awareness.

Maximize Dungeoneering.

The Rogue's Archery skill is superb. Extra damage and a stun chance. Pair this with the Jester's Bow (low damage, but high rate of fire, each one triggering a stun chance) and he can help stun-lock bigger opponents whilst you do the heavy hitting. Even if you use a damage bow get this skill. Maximize it.

One point of Kick has utility. Though it is cheap to upgrade I'd wait until I had all four Archery skills maxed.

He starts with Disarm Devices at 30 (20 for Rogue, 2x 5 for each point of Agility). He will start to Auto-Disarm when you have Trap Master, and when he has at least 60 in Disarm Devices. It starts to become expensive for the amount of Disarm Devices bonus: the first level you get a 10% bonus per skill point spent. At second level you get 5% per skill point spent. At third level you get 3.3% bonus per skill point spent. So if you can get to Disarm Devices 60 with one point in Trap Master that's by far the most efficient way, else spend two points max.

For his advanced skills, this is other 3 Archery skills. If you're going the Jester's Bow route then Rapid Fire is first on your list. If you decided to give him a more damaging route then Precision Shots and Massive Criticals might be the first port of call. But that's not to say raise one to 3 then start on the others. It might be more efficient to get them all to 2 first.

When you respect him you can get rid of Stab and Gossip. That frees 4 points up for the above.