Chocobo Companions and You: A Guide

[AylaYukihana]

Initially I was actually leaning towards taking the Slow myself for much the same reasons (less damage taken) however there are a few problems with the way it's implemented.

Currently due to design, Choco is only useful for normal mob grind (which is a horrible way to level up) or FATE bosses. It cannot be used in dungeons or anywhere which you would critically require assistance. Thus, the only time where its "needed" would be to help you solo or low-man FATE bosses.

This is where its slow debuff and healing power is very useful, not its weak DoT (20 per tick is meh) or its tanking ability (it can't tank anyway, not enough aggro nor enough armor/HP to bother).

If you want the 15% crit buff at rank 6, you've reached rank 7 in the Healer tree to unlock the 30% heal buff anyway, so 6 into the defender tree also gets you the accuracy and the 15% crit buff.

The choco AI rarely use WS back-to-back so it doesn't make a difference if you have 2 WS or 4 WS available, its going to use one WS every ~6 seconds (on average). But I have seen many times, choco uses Kick, then immediately follow up with another Kick.. theres no individual WS cooldown. It appears to be a random timer (maybe random 2-10s) to select a random WS and use it. Healing is based on a different AI.

[Maelwys]

Currently due to design, Choco is only useful for normal mob grind (which is a horrible way to level up) or FATE bosses. It cannot be used in dungeons or anywhere which you would critically require assistance. Thus, the only time where its "needed" would be to help you solo or low-man FATE bosses.

Agreed

(Though I'm still sore that they cut the promised "full replacement party member" aspect of Chocobo Companions before ARR launch and am hoping for dungeon content at some point!!)

This is where its slow debuff and healing power is very useful, not its weak DoT (20 per tick is meh) or its tanking ability (it can't tank anyway, not enough aggro nor enough armor/HP to bother).

I agree that the Healing provided by the Chocobo is undeniably useful in those situations, however I find the exact opposite concerning the slow debuff. This is because for "normal" Fate Bosses their autoattacks are weak and/or kitable (it's the special abilities that I want to avoid!) and "hard" Fate Bosses tend to be immune to CC effects. It might technically be helping, but it's such a small benefit that it's unnoticable.

I still disagree concerning the DoT. Whilst 20 potency taken by itself might indeed be "meh", that 20 potency reoccurs a LOT over time and comes on the back of an initial spike hit of 130 potency. Essentially there is never going to be a case where your Chocobo would deal more damage by using another sub-rank-10 weaponskill instead of the DoT. As such, it is far from weak: any time the Chocobo uses it, that Fate boss we're talking about will die a little bit faster... and if you're just farming trash mobs for drops then the extra kill speed could come in quite handy.

If you are in the unlikely situation where you are very gradually dying from a Fate Boss's Autoattacks then the Slow might be useful, assuming that the boss is not immune to Slows and that your Chocobo decides to use it. But in such cases, I would suggest an alternative tactic: take the DoT and "stance swap" - use Attacker Stance until the DoT is applied, then switch to Healing Stance in order to have more regular Cures whilst the DoT deals damage.

If you want the 15% crit buff at rank 6, you've reached rank 7 in the Healer tree to unlock the 30% heal buff anyway, so 6 into the defender tree also gets you the accuracy and the 15% crit buff.

Agreed. Assuming that you never want to be able to force the Chocobo to only use Choco Drop, the only difference (besides the HP Passive) is whether you want a DoT or a Slow.

However as shown above, I place greater value on the DoT than the Slow...so given insufficient SP to take both, I will always opt for the DoT. I appreciate that YMMV.

The choco AI rarely use WS back-to-back so it doesn't make a difference if you have 2 WS or 4 WS available, its going to use one WS every ~6 seconds (on average). But I have seen many times, choco uses Kick, then immediately follow up with another Kick.. theres no individual WS cooldown. It appears to be a random timer (maybe random 2-10s) to select a random WS and use it. Healing is based on a different AI.

Largely true as well - the behaviour I have observed so far would suggest that the Chocobo has a short global cooldown on ALL attacks (albeit slightly longer than our own 2.5s version) but has longer ability-specific cooldowns on certain buffs (such as Choco Regen, or the Rank 7 abilities). I've also observed a tendency for the Chocobo to rotate different attacks rather than spam one back-to-back; particularly if it has multiple attacks in the same tree.

I would however maintain that there are benefits to having more than one or two Weaponskills available - if the higher-rank Weaponskills are greater DPS (like the DoT) or provide some form of useful utility (like the Slow) compared to the basic Rank 1 150 potency attacks... or if taking them unlocks access to valuable buffs (such as the Rank 9 Attacker tree's +10% Autoattack Speed passive)

[Solfleur]

We get such a limited number of points to spend on our companions which at this point can not be done over; a little heads-up would have been nice. Not everyone has time in their lives to spend poring over every single tidbit the great and powerful Yoshi-P lets slip from his gilded lips...which it often takes weeks to translate in its entirety to those not in Japan anyway!

Ugh.. this is just one of those "very last straw" kind of days as far as this game build goes. So much could have been done so much better with such minimum effort--it's just AGGRAVATING as all hell. If I do my job wrong premature infants DIE, but I guarantee I make several zeroes less in salary per year than these bozos do! Thankfully I also make fewer (zero and counting) mistakes, given the stakes are so high. If people cannot do the job right, they should take themselves OUT of the job.

I thought that was the time honored Japanese way.

[Maelwys]

The HP should stack in "free" stance; what a rip off!

It does.

Passive "Traits" (such as +HP%) stack across trees. Selecting a stance will make your Chocobo unable to use weaponskills/abilities from other trees, but it will keep all passive stat boosts.

Note the link to OmegaXtc's thread: a post where I claimed that passives stacked across stances, was called out on it, and subsequently proved it.

Any passives that you pick will always be in effect regardless of what stance your chocobo is in- the only thing changing stance does is prevent your Chocobo from using certain abilities (and auto-attacks, in the case of 'Healer Stance').

It's easiest to see this for HP% passives since you have exact numbers to look at... but by checking the attack/heal numbers in the battle log you can see that this works for other passives such as Strength and MND.