Chocobo Companions and You: A Guide

[Maelwys]

Having 20% slow debuff is very nice, because it scale versus the enemies very well

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.

+ Firstly, taking Choco Kick actually reduces the (already poor) Tanking capability of your Chocobo. This is because it will spam all available abilities, and using Choco Kick instead of Choco Drop doesn't pull any enmity. IF the Chocobo was able to simultaneously hold hate and keep an enemy Slowed, then I would consider it to be much more useful.

+ Secondly, you are correct that Slows reduce incoming damage... but it only impacts the rate of standard autoattacks (which Tank classes largely laugh at and Ranged classes end up kiting) and due to the way Chocobo AI works the debuff is usually only going to be affecting a single opponent. It's very unlikely that you're going to die from autoattacks from a single standard trash enemy, and Bosses and other tougher foes are often slow immune.

+ Thirdly, as already mentioned, is the diminishing returns angle. Having two sources of a debuff can easily mess up a debuff rotation. Perfect Slow debuff timing obviously isn't as vital as with Stuns, but it can still become annoying if someone is used to a specific rotation (I'm thinking of Lancers here).

+ Finally, combined with "Choco Rush" (the Stun) it has the lowest damage potency (130) of any of your Chocobo's attacks. Therefore any time your Chocobo uses the slow instead of another Weaponskill it loses DPS - so if you are in a situation where you won't gain any benefit from the debuff, the attack could be wasted.

Note that I'm not saying "Don't take it" - almost every debuff is situationally useful - but if you are going to take it, be aware of the downsides!

Personally, if there was enough SP to take Choco Kick and still have enough left to grab Healer Rank 7 and Attacker Rank 6, I might consider taking it. I almost never have my Chocobo "Tank" and have no other sources of Slow. Unfortunately, it's the weakest link in an already-strong lineup so was the obvious choice for me to drop...

the weak DoT attack just doesn't scale versus tougher opponents.

I'm not so sure about that.

Choco Beak (the DoT ability) is the highest potency attack your chocobo has available. The initial 130 Potency is the same as Choco Kick (so even if it spams it and the DoT doesn't stack with itself, it's not doing any harm) but the DoT effect is quite strong and has no danger of negatively impacting anything. It's therefore practically never going to be "unhelpful" to have the Chocobo use it.

If the DoT lasts for the entire duration, it grants 20 potency every 3 seconds over 18 seconds, so 120 additional potency total. However even if the chocobo spams the attack back to back and overwrites that DoT, you would still get at least 1-2 DoT ticks between attacks, bringing it up from 130 potency to 150-170 Potency (Choco Drop and Choco Slash - your "main" attacks are both 150 potency). So it's still going to be your most powerful ST attack even when spammed.

And there's one last thing to consider... if you get into trouble and your Chocobo needs to start spamming heals, or you manually swap it into Healing stance, the DoT will still be ticking...

7 in the healing tree is a must, the 30% healing buff is very good.

Agreed. Healer Rank 4 is going to be the first major milestone, but if you have the SP available, it's never going to be a bad idea to take it to Rank 7.

As to the attack's having an Internal CD, I don't think so, because I've seen many times, back to back usage of the same WS, in a short period of time. Whereas, other times, the bird goes for a long duration between WS spam.. its too random.

Try clicking the regen off and see how long it takes for the Chocobo to reapply it.

There's definitely some kind of internal cooldown in place there (the same goes for Choco Cure - even in Healer stance it can't quite spam it back-to-back) but I agree that it's very tricky to get decent numbers for the attacks because of the behaviour of the AI.

[Maelwys]

Does anyone know how much exp% goes to the chocobo? 5%? 10%?

It's higher than that. Can't check in-game at the moment, but very rough numbers are that with Rested EXP and food I'll usually get a little more than double what my Chocobo gets per monster kill. I can check in-game later tonight.

Also I heard talk that you need to gain exp from mobs and can't be lvl 50 (no exp at 50; therefore no exp for chocobo to take from). Is this true or false?

You can still earn EXP for the Chocobo whenever your main character is at level 50. However the rate of exp stays the same as before - the chicken doesn't get any "extra" exp so the amount your character would usually take is wasted.

[Marxam]

An exp counter would help alleviate the problem. ex. "exp 2000/19500" <-- Is that so hard to do SE?

[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)

[AylaYukihana]

Dont forget, there's many FATE bosses that cast spells with a timed cast, not just simple auto attacks and instant WS spam. Slow makes them cast slower. DR reset after 10 or 15 seconds (closer to 15 is what it feels like), so essentially the boss is slowed 20% for 2/3 of the time, pretty useful. They deal less damage to you, your choco spend less time healing and more time attacking.

Just an example, at 50, in crap gear, my WHM's Aero ticks almost twice as hard as the Choco's DoT, so it really doesnt scale well. 20% slow always scale. BLM has a 20% slow, its on a 30s cooldown, its worse than the Choco's and its a class ability.

[Maelwys]

Dont forget, there's many FATE bosses that cast spells with a timed cast, not just simple auto attacks and instant WS spam. Slow makes them cast slower. DR reset after 10 or 15 seconds (closer to 15 is what it feels like), so essentially the boss is slowed 20% for 2/3 of the time, pretty useful. They deal less damage to you, your choco spend less time healing and more time attacking.

Or alternatively; you could ignore the autoattacks, and just deal more damage in the first place to kill it faster (and stance switch if the situation calls for it - healing whilst still dealing DoT damage).

As mentioned at the end of the OP, Chocobo builds rely heavily on personal preference.

You seem to like the Slow: fair enough, I'm not saying you're silly for taking it if you consider it useful!

I consider it useful, but not as useful as a powerful attack or an extra +15% Critical Hit chance, and I place some value on being able to force the Chocobo to spam a Hate generating ability on the offchance that the occasion ever calls for it.

Reducing the rate of autoattacks for a single enemy just isn't particularly important to me. I have never been in a situation in a Fate boss fight where I thought it would be more beneficial to deal slightly less damage in order to have the Boss perform slightly less frequent autoattacks on me, and unlike "player" slows you can't rely on your Chocobo to use it on cooldown.

at 50, in crap gear, my WHM's Aero ticks almost twice as hard as the Choco's DoT, so it really doesnt scale well.

The DoT effect is a bonus to the attack, like a slow or a stun. It is not the attack itself. The individual ticks are weak, but there are a lot of them - the initial 130 potency hit combined with the DoT ticks makes it the highest damage attack a Chocobo can perform.

But I'm glad you're having fun with your Chocobo

[AylaYukihana]

I consider it useful, but not as useful as a powerful attack or an extra +15% Critical Hit chance

Its not Atk/Slow versus Atk/Dot AND 15% crit chance, its just slow vs dot, because you can get rank 6 on defender to get 15% crit as well. 7 Healer, 6 Defender, 3 Attack, yields 30% crit boost, 3 WS and potent healing, the only difference is DoT WS or Slow WS.

[Maelwys]

I consider it useful, but not as useful as a powerful attack or an extra +15% Critical Hit chance

Its not Atk/Slow versus Atk/Dot AND 15% crit chance, its just slow vs dot, because you can get rank 6 on defender to get 15% crit as well. 7 Healer, 6 Defender, 3 Attack, yields 30% crit boost, 3 WS and potent healing, the only difference is DoT WS or Slow WS.

I didn't say it was an AND situation, I said it was an OR situation.

You have enough SP to take:
+ Rank 7 Healer, plus Rank 4 Defender and Rank 5 Attacker (or 5 Defender + 4 Attacker, abilities are equal).
+ Rank 7 Healer, plus Rank 3 Defender and Rank 6 Attacker.
+ Rank 7 Healer, plus Rank 6 Defender and Rank 3 Attacker.

Therefore the choice is: (i) SLOW, (ii) DOT, (iii) CRIT BUFF.
Three abilities, pick two.

--------------------------------

Where we appear to be disagreeing is that I'd prefer the DoT and the Crit Buff, and you seem to prefer the Slow and the Crit Buff.

This is a perfectly fine point to disagree on, because Chocobo builds depend heavily on personal opinion.
I merely place greater value on a dependable additional damage increase (plus higher hate generation capability) over situational additional survivability.

[chococo]

isnt its sound kweh instead wark?

I think wark is the sound effect and kweh is what is shown in the speech bubble?
I'm sure I've seen/heard both in previous games