Companion Chocobos and Their Role in Modern Battle

[Canadane]

I do pretty well with my chocobo. Placement is definitely important and sure sometimes I've gotten close to death because of her heals. But you should also consider- Their skills undoubtedly have a recast timer just like ours. And they also don't have as many heals as us--even at their max level..they have like 3?
Eating aoes is annoying but as posted earlier you can command them to move or watch your own footing. I love my chocobo and am honestly excited to bring her to dungeons with me.

Not to be that guy but your company chocobo is undoubtedly male.

[Kerii]

If they're going to let us bring chocobos into dungeons as battle companions then they'll need to make some adjustments to the algorithms for how they work. Honestly, more so the tank and dps trees than the healing one. As for how they are now, I think they're fine. They require about as much micromanagement as carbuncles to be useful. What I would like to see is Choco Sprint (with stamina meter) and choco break (Limit Break). Preferably I'd like both of these to be player controlled, but that might be too much to ask.

[worldofneil]

Mine's rank 20 (all skills capped) and usually when he's out I'm white mage and I force him into DPS mode and that works well as I can just heal myself when needed and I'd rather switch stances a lot than rely on him for heals. I can set him on one mob, I take out another and we finish at a similar time. I'm personally happy with the DPS, he's not as good as if I go a dedicated DPS job myself, but puts out enough damage as an assistant for me not to complain.

Tanking wise he was great when I had worse gear (and if I gave him a headstart to get hate), but lately I haven't even bothered as he can't keep hate off me, but I feel that's because I've geared up a lot more when he's really stayed the same.

Healing though I have the same complaints as everyone else, the AI is rediculously stupid with spamming chocobo medica. I could unlearn it, but I don't want to. It also bugs me that when he's in healer stance he insists on following so closely he gets hit by every AOE under the sun that tries to hit me (that I dodge and he still gets hit by).

If SE could just adjust it so when he's in dedicated healer stance the chocobo:

A) Stays ranged, unless I move out of ranged and then he moves back into range (only as far as is needed)
B) Doesn't use medica to cure unless it's actually needed and/or forces switching back to regular cure if a person gets under a set HP level, say 50% (their heals aren't that powerful so anything less might be a bit risky).

I don't use free stance enough to know how it performs under that, but I think generally I think if we want it to be doing a specific role, then we should tell it, not have it being a super chocobo that knows everything. It might be our faithful companion, but essentially it's still a dumb bird who needs us to feed and train it

[Eidolon]

In some cases, Chocobo's are smarter than players.

Which is a little sad o:

[MugenMugetsu]

Not to be that guy but your company chocobo is undoubtedly male.

Ummmmm.....while you, sir, have a very valid point, being that this is a RPG, what's wrong with roleplaying that the chocobo is female? I am. I named my chocobo Pwnelope and I see her as a female chocobo!

On topic, I think the gambit system (FFXII) would be a great way to give us more control over our companion chocobos AI.

[Spawnie]

i love my chocobo lol i had to leave a fate once due to visitors arriving so ran out of fate to where i thought i was far enough to drop boss targetting.. came back 5 mins later my chocobo was still alive tanking the boss lol was in coethas aswell so wasnt low level boss :P

[CelestePinke]

My chocobo is rank 20 and I reset his SP and didn't put it in choco medica. I did this because I'm usually in a party of 2 and he was constantly casting medica, now he just throws cure and quite frankly does a better job than some healers.