Thanks for the guide Hack. I’m excited to try out both new companions once they arrive to Xbox next week. Bastian has been my homie for the last year but it’s time for something new 😎
I'm just getting Ember as a tank off the ground. I'm a solo 4 man team with my pet sorc. Me - primary DPS Ember - Tank T. Matriarch - healer Volatile - AoE DPS And the Storm Atronach being that high level dude that sometimes wanders into a fight to help out a lowby for the giggles. It's fun. And as a bonus, I don't have to worry about a certain someone (really, everyone else, but Isobel in particular) getting pissed off every time I do thief and/or DB stuff.
Female WW with a nasty attitude. She should dynamically react to the player and transform if you do. Her transformation should be affected by the Call of the Pack passive allowing for very nice interactive play between player and companion.
Hypothetical. If the companions could form their own four person party, what role would each take? (Basically asking “who’s the best ___?” In a roundabout way
very helpful, thank you :) I like to have a pocket tank ready for soloing worldbosses and both Ember and Isobel do a good job. Isobel is the perfect companion for my Stamplar (what's better than a Templar? Two Templars xD) Ember compliments my StamDK just fine. As a Mag DPS she can do some pretty sick damage. I like both of them :)
I’ve noticed dual wield weapons have quite a chunk less damage than two handed weapons. Even for skills not in the dual wield line. I’m guessing it’s due to main hand and off hand mechanics. But it should have the same damage.
Can you do some more healing sorc tank builds, and some shock sorc builds. As we have the Ice Warden, Fire DK, but there's very little covering Shock Sorcs on YT
Hey, an idea for a video: a guide for a current state of game mechanics, imagine people returning after years zenimax doesnt really explain in the game what is yours crit dmg cap, skills scaling or block changes etc
Can someone direct me to link or something to how I learn to equip my companion with different gear etc? I guess I’m just a little behind the learning curve. Hack- bro- love your stuff man!!!!
If you're using Heartland Conqueror's armor your companion will get a bonus on her weapon trait also. Purple one handed weapon will get 5.2% reduce ability cooldown.
I'm confused about the DPS setups. Can they really survive without a single survivability skill? They won't just get slapped to death when one enemy notices them in a big encounter?
So which is the better healer? Making a one bar mag/sorcerer and trying to figure out which new companion would be the better healer. They sound and look pretty even in abilities for this untrained eye.
I'm a stamina ww with oakensoul ring. Which companion build do you think would be the best suit for soloing content for me?(Especially WBs') Thx in advance
So does Isabel end up being a better tank?That’s the main role I want for my companion. I have bastion but he’s not leveled all the way so I’m wondering if it’s worth leveling Isabel as well.
I maxed bastion and isobel in the sword & shield skill line. Both maxed out with same armor and Bastion is a better tank. Isobel has higher dps tho, I’m my opinion Ember has the best Dps out of all companions. I have a purple ice staff on her
You’ve said to get all heavy armour pieces, but i was wondering if is ok to add a light and a medium to get the passives from those aswell. And I think the companion is still going to be pretty powerful for having 5 pieces of heavy armour.
I'm guessing that a lot depends on what pieces you can get. It would be interesting to see someone actually running the numbers to find out for certain though.
@@SwingDancer61 I use the same build he has on Bastian as a tank, and I have light head and medium shoulders and the rest is heavy, and I don’t know the numbers but he barely dies.
Are companion tanks actually any good? I mean if I had a dollar for every time I've seen a companion tank get butchered because they failed to move out of the way of a huge AOE burst or some killer boss mechanic then I could load up on a few months of ESO+.
@@SwingDancer61 That says it all. Babysitting Bastian makes him more trouble than he's worth. I have found the same thing. I have to slot a group heal to keep him alive. I never went deep into it though. Took Deltia's build from day 2 after release and never updated him after that. I think he's level 12. Bastian is really good at blocking and probably never runs out of stamina. He's good against 2-handed bosses, such as Ulfnor in Fang Lair. On normal mode that is. I'm not sure he could cut it on vet. I think I took him into Black Drake once, so I would have time to deal with the salamanders in the first boss fight, but he just got flattened. You do something that is actually hard to solo, he's way out of his depth. I can solo the first arena of vBRP, at least up until the boss. The only thing that survives with me is my trusty Clannfear. I wanted to solo farm normal WGT the other day. It can be done if your lockpicking is good and the companion holds out long enough on their own. In this instance both Bastian as a tank and Mirri with a bow stood in red every single time. There's no cure for players ignoring mechanics and these two are no exception. If they could help with that dungeon, they would actually be useful.
The order you place companion skills seems to matter greatly to how effective they are Im surprised you didnt mention it once Arguably - for me at least - this is the hardest/slowest part, picking some cool skills is easy, working out the order to have the companion cast them in is very very time consuming, as there are There are 14 combinations of the numbers 1 2 3 4 5 with no repeats (6 of course is always in the Ult slot), for me (or anyone?) that means running a dungeon 14 times to find the right combination - but im sure im overthinking it... right? Does anyone have a simple solution to this? I ve heard some say just load them slowest to fastest recast time... and others say the opposite But tbh i find neither of those to be all that good Anyone got some advice?
From my understanding Companions work from left to right checking if an ability is usable or off cool-down and attempt to use it. If not move to the mezzo skill to the right. So have your conditional skills and long cool-downs at left, then balance what is last.
@@SlatsAU Thanks, i appreciate your reply, you seem to agree with what ive observed and more, because i hadnt thought about the conditional skills as much, but i have been mostly placing long CD on left and getting shorter What prompted me to ask though was i have seen some other guides where they have mentioned "moving skills around" and not really explaining anything other than to follow up with "ah yes thats better now" Not really something Hack does, more an Alcast thing (to assume we alll know as much as they do) I felt that asking on a Hack video was a good place because he _doesnt_ assume we all know it all Im still very much learning, i dont think i can still say "im new" any more as im at about 4-5 months, but its a lot to learn
I haven't properly tested this myself so YMMV, but I'll share my train of thoughts. I prefer "important" conditional skills on the far left. What I mean by the important tag is that not all conditionals are equal. For example with a healer companion many burst heals have a condition of "when you're under 75% hp" which I don't care too much about, so they don't need to be too far to the left. Mystic Fortress on the other hand is more of an emergency skill with a stricter condition of being under 25% hp, and if that condition is ever met I'd want my companion to cast it ASAP, so that goes far left. On DPS companions I'd say executes and/or gap-closers tend to take this spot. For the next priority I like to have 1 short CD followed by the rest being sorted long > short. The reason for having 1 short CD first is mostly to extend their opening rotation since they'll cast that one at the start, and by the time they've finished their rotation at least that first skill will be almost ready again while waiting for the longer CD's. Ultimately these are just my general rules of thumb though, and the "ideal" orders are obviously more nuanced and based on at which point in the fight you'd ideally have your companion cast a given skillm, taking into consideration that conditional skills only take priority if their condition is met *and* they're the leftmost skill that is currently available.
@@predwin1998 Thank you, really appreciate your sharing this I shall certainly keep it in mind when tweaking the setups Its already interesting how people setup differently, and i realise there is no "i win" way of doing it, but its definitely nice to share, thanks again
Bastian is ultimate tank so using tha cat woman for healer and human woman for dps. With a healer companion my tank is going to be even more unstoppable haha
@@Violetbunnyfish UA-camrs are normally wrong especially since bastian is the best tank in the game and best class for tank but also your imagination doesn’t count as a source for “says Isobel is best tank in the game” 🤣
@@Darth-Maul0660 What's with the stupid emoji? Isobel is a better tank if you're not healing your companions. Bastion has a higher mitigation for damage but not offhealing. Isobel for pure soloing where you're not offhealing is the better tank. She also can do hybrid roles a lot better.
@Despond lmao who gets that mad over emojis haha 💀🤦🐑🙈🤣🍆 and clearly you haven't used the companions since isobel is a basic starter tank whereas bastion is the best unkillable tank if you're a vet and know how to use him and can be pretty much any role
Why don't you use any Shattering traits on your DPS companions for penetration? Especially if you're soloing dungeons where the enemies have 18200 armor, 1300 penetration (1100 for blue and 900 for green) per trait is better than a 1.7% damage increase for aggressive up to a certain point. I find it's best to mix shattering and aggressive to get a certain amount of penetration depending on your main character's build to deal with that armor. You wouldn't go with 0 armor penn on your main character, would you? That's losing a ton of DPS. Edit: Also, how DARE you tell people that Quickened is so good, now the price is going to go up on that and it's going to be hard for me to finish all purple light armor with quickened :P! Thanks for throwing a bone to companions with this guide, I like the companions system but I feel like it's not talked about much.
Kinda bothers me that Isobel is the strongest in 3 different categories, with Ember being the strongest mage. They should have kept each of them doing one thing better than the others at least.
Do you know would be really cool monster set the first set piece would be you take 3% less damage the second set piece would be when you deal direct damage you have a 10% chance to summon a hostile familiar that can attack you or even you know you have a 20% chance when you deal the image to summon three hostile familiars and this can happen at once every 10 seconds Now bear with me it would create a very unique and interesting way to solve specific builds that require killing enemies during boss battles where there's no ads or very little ads Necromancers with benefit from this from having way more corpses spawn too Templars for benefit from this from the healing that requires you to consume corpses Other builds that require killing enemies to get Magicka back even or stamina And all sorts of other stuff
This is helpful as of the Ember tank build because she is targeted Non-Stop and she constantly dies so it would be nice not to have her meet death every 5 seconds, I like all the recommendation and build, but as for DPS I think I will keep her the same and leave her as a lightning staff just for the point of her being magic and I feel like it takes away from the story to do anyting but a magic build for Ember. It is an RPG after all. I think half of the fun is creating your own situations like how I have an inside joke with all my friends that Ember is brain damaged from that specific imperial prison run, that's why I don't use any other weapon for a DPS Ember is so we're both staying in character.
I love companions but they are useless because overland is so easy If I summon them it becomes even more easy, when they Introduce them I thought they will make overland harder and compensate by making people buy the chapter for companions.
Elder scrolls has now been deleted from my playstation . Many reasons why I go. Lag. No one plays the game objectives in pvp any more.. Game not balanced . Player swop allaince every campaign. No true players on allaince anymore. Players Play for ap and gold . There's no real pvp fight to win .
Written Versions of ALL our Companion Builds are HERE!: www.hacktheminotaur.com/eso-companions
Thanks for the guide Hack. I’m excited to try out both new companions once they arrive to Xbox next week. Bastian has been my homie for the last year but it’s time for something new 😎
thanks Hack -- been waiting on your Companion build updates.
I'm just getting Ember as a tank off the ground. I'm a solo 4 man team with my pet sorc.
Me - primary DPS
Ember - Tank
T. Matriarch - healer
Volatile - AoE DPS
And the Storm Atronach being that high level dude that sometimes wanders into a fight to help out a lowby for the giggles.
It's fun. And as a bonus, I don't have to worry about a certain someone (really, everyone else, but Isobel in particular) getting pissed off every time I do thief and/or DB stuff.
I want a vampire and a werewolf companion! 👍
A companion with a werewolf ultimate would be awesome and imagine if there was just a werewolf one not any transformation just werewolf 24/7
And hear the constant howling no thanks
Female WW with a nasty attitude. She should dynamically react to the player and transform if you do. Her transformation should be affected by the Call of the Pack passive allowing for very nice interactive play between player and companion.
Y e s p l e a s e
@@LuciferMufinwould be sadly illegal lol if the guards see that they will say more than “please keep him on a leash” 😂
Thanks. Been waiting for such a video.
Hypothetical. If the companions could form their own four person party, what role would each take? (Basically asking “who’s the best ___?” In a roundabout way
Sounds like a good topic for another video😎
@@HackTheMinotaur I hope you do one!
Intriguing idea - 👏
Such a cool question
Bastion DK tank. Mirri Mag NB dps. Isabelle Mag Temp dps. Cat healer
Great content as always!
very helpful, thank you :)
I like to have a pocket tank ready for soloing worldbosses and both Ember and Isobel do a good job. Isobel is the perfect companion for my Stamplar (what's better than a Templar? Two Templars xD)
Ember compliments my StamDK just fine. As a Mag DPS she can do some pretty sick damage.
I like both of them :)
Fantastic video!!!!!! I noticed when you level one and gave the sane companion it appears to be account wide as to the level???
Hoping to see an updated one bar build for magblade soon
Nice. Will either use Isabel for heal or Ember for tank.
I’ve noticed dual wield weapons have quite a chunk less damage than two handed weapons. Even for skills not in the dual wield line. I’m guessing it’s due to main hand and off hand mechanics. But it should have the same damage.
Can you do some more healing sorc tank builds, and some shock sorc builds. As we have the Ice Warden, Fire DK, but there's very little covering Shock Sorcs on YT
Hey, an idea for a video: a guide for a current state of game mechanics, imagine people returning after years zenimax doesnt really explain in the game what is yours crit dmg cap, skills scaling or block changes etc
Thanks xD
So which role is the best for each companion?
Excellent video. I also would like to know what build you're using at the very start of the video.
I'm using a few different versions of the Godmode Solo Templar. Using Whorl Of The Depths and Medusa I believe.
Can someone direct me to link or something to how I learn to equip my companion with different gear etc? I guess I’m just a little behind the learning curve. Hack- bro- love your stuff man!!!!
Which companion will be good when using a Necromancer.
What style did you use for Ember's tank outfit?
If you're using Heartland Conqueror's armor your companion will get a bonus on her weapon trait also. Purple one handed weapon will get 5.2% reduce ability cooldown.
Really? That seems like a bug if true..
Yes
Can companions pull aggro from guards chasing you?
I'm confused about the DPS setups. Can they really survive without a single survivability skill? They won't just get slapped to death when one enemy notices them in a big encounter?
Hey, ty for the vid! What Isabel build would you recommend for one bar magica templar?
I'd like to know this as well.
@@Grippeh I went with healer, other builds just don't stay alive in though situations. Don't need more damage anyway.
What outfit is that on her ? It’s awesome !
Who is the best Tank? Isobel or Bastian?
So which is the better healer? Making a one bar mag/sorcerer and trying to figure out which new companion would be the better healer. They sound and look pretty even in abilities for this untrained eye.
I prefer Isobel
@@HackTheMinotaur Thanks
I'm a stamina ww with oakensoul ring. Which companion build do you think would be the best suit for soloing content for me?(Especially WBs') Thx in advance
I would go with Isobel as a healer
these tips that in the video is still valid for 2023 ?
So does Isabel end up being a better tank?That’s the main role I want for my companion. I have bastion but he’s not leveled all the way so I’m wondering if it’s worth leveling Isabel as well.
What did you end up with
I maxed bastion and isobel in the sword & shield skill line. Both maxed out with same armor and Bastion is a better tank. Isobel has higher dps tho, I’m my opinion Ember has the best Dps out of all companions. I have a purple ice staff on her
where are you getting all that purple gear?
This is on the PTS to show the optimal traits
Who is a better tank? Bastian or Isobel? I guess Bastian Tank. ISABEL HEALER THE OTHER TWO ARE DPS OVERALL?
You’ve said to get all heavy armour pieces, but i was wondering if is ok to add a light and a medium to get the passives from those aswell. And I think the companion is still going to be pretty powerful for having 5 pieces of heavy armour.
I'm guessing that a lot depends on what pieces you can get. It would be interesting to see someone actually running the numbers to find out for certain though.
@@SwingDancer61 I use the same build he has on Bastian as a tank, and I have light head and medium shoulders and the rest is heavy, and I don’t know the numbers but he barely dies.
@@mariusm.3961 I've had good success with Bastian as a tank also. He's not maxed out yet, but still pretty strong.
Hack, are these two better at tanking than Bastion in your opinion.
I would say they are both slightly better yes
Are companion tanks actually any good? I mean if I had a dollar for every time I've seen a companion tank get butchered because they failed to move out of the way of a huge AOE burst or some killer boss mechanic then I could load up on a few months of ESO+.
I think a lot depends on the boss you're going up against and whether or not you're supporting the tank with heals and shields.
@@SwingDancer61 That says it all. Babysitting Bastian makes him more trouble than he's worth. I have found the same thing. I have to slot a group heal to keep him alive. I never went deep into it though. Took Deltia's build from day 2 after release and never updated him after that. I think he's level 12.
Bastian is really good at blocking and probably never runs out of stamina. He's good against 2-handed bosses, such as Ulfnor in Fang Lair. On normal mode that is. I'm not sure he could cut it on vet. I think I took him into Black Drake once, so I would have time to deal with the salamanders in the first boss fight, but he just got flattened. You do something that is actually hard to solo, he's way out of his depth. I can solo the first arena of vBRP, at least up until the boss. The only thing that survives with me is my trusty Clannfear.
I wanted to solo farm normal WGT the other day. It can be done if your lockpicking is good and the companion holds out long enough on their own. In this instance both Bastian as a tank and Mirri with a bow stood in red every single time. There's no cure for players ignoring mechanics and these two are no exception. If they could help with that dungeon, they would actually be useful.
Having the right skills for survival and traits to lower cooldown is the key IMO
The order you place companion skills seems to matter greatly to how effective they are
Im surprised you didnt mention it once
Arguably - for me at least - this is the hardest/slowest part, picking some cool skills is easy, working out the order to have the companion cast them in is very very time consuming, as there are
There are 14 combinations of the numbers 1 2 3 4 5 with no repeats (6 of course is always in the Ult slot), for me (or anyone?) that means running a dungeon 14 times to find the right combination - but im sure im overthinking it... right?
Does anyone have a simple solution to this?
I ve heard some say just load them slowest to fastest recast time... and others say the opposite
But tbh i find neither of those to be all that good
Anyone got some advice?
From my understanding Companions work from left to right checking if an ability is usable or off cool-down and attempt to use it. If not move to the mezzo skill to the right. So have your conditional skills and long cool-downs at left, then balance what is last.
@@SlatsAU Thanks, i appreciate your reply, you seem to agree with what ive observed and more, because i hadnt thought about the conditional skills as much, but i have been mostly placing long CD on left and getting shorter
What prompted me to ask though was i have seen some other guides where they have mentioned "moving skills around" and not really explaining anything other than to follow up with "ah yes thats better now"
Not really something Hack does, more an Alcast thing (to assume we alll know as much as they do)
I felt that asking on a Hack video was a good place because he _doesnt_ assume we all know it all
Im still very much learning, i dont think i can still say "im new" any more as im at about 4-5 months, but its a lot to learn
I haven't properly tested this myself so YMMV, but I'll share my train of thoughts.
I prefer "important" conditional skills on the far left. What I mean by the important tag is that not all conditionals are equal. For example with a healer companion many burst heals have a condition of "when you're under 75% hp" which I don't care too much about, so they don't need to be too far to the left. Mystic Fortress on the other hand is more of an emergency skill with a stricter condition of being under 25% hp, and if that condition is ever met I'd want my companion to cast it ASAP, so that goes far left. On DPS companions I'd say executes and/or gap-closers tend to take this spot.
For the next priority I like to have 1 short CD followed by the rest being sorted long > short. The reason for having 1 short CD first is mostly to extend their opening rotation since they'll cast that one at the start, and by the time they've finished their rotation at least that first skill will be almost ready again while waiting for the longer CD's.
Ultimately these are just my general rules of thumb though, and the "ideal" orders are obviously more nuanced and based on at which point in the fight you'd ideally have your companion cast a given skillm, taking into consideration that conditional skills only take priority if their condition is met *and* they're the leftmost skill that is currently available.
@@predwin1998 Thank you, really appreciate your sharing this
I shall certainly keep it in mind when tweaking the setups
Its already interesting how people setup differently, and i realise there is no "i win" way of doing it, but its definitely nice to share, thanks again
How comes you don't use the execute on your magplar? Never understood why people don't have it slotted it's op, your missing out on so much dps.
He's using it at around 4:10 in the video
I think the next two companions should be a Nord Warden and a Argonian Necromancer.
NORD WARDEN!!!
Oh right, they exist :O
Bastian is ultimate tank so using tha cat woman for healer and human woman for dps. With a healer companion my tank is going to be even more unstoppable haha
Another youtuber said that Isobel (the human woman) makes a better tank than Bastian, and says Isobel is the best tank companion in the game.
@@Violetbunnyfish UA-camrs are normally wrong especially since bastian is the best tank in the game and best class for tank but also your imagination doesn’t count as a source for “says Isobel is best tank in the game” 🤣
@@Darth-Maul0660 What's with the stupid emoji? Isobel is a better tank if you're not healing your companions. Bastion has a higher mitigation for damage but not offhealing. Isobel for pure soloing where you're not offhealing is the better tank. She also can do hybrid roles a lot better.
@Despond lmao who gets that mad over emojis haha 💀🤦🐑🙈🤣🍆 and clearly you haven't used the companions since isobel is a basic starter tank whereas bastion is the best unkillable tank if you're a vet and know how to use him and can be pretty much any role
Companions can tank most world bosses....thats some convenience
Why don't you use any Shattering traits on your DPS companions for penetration? Especially if you're soloing dungeons where the enemies have 18200 armor, 1300 penetration (1100 for blue and 900 for green) per trait is better than a 1.7% damage increase for aggressive up to a certain point. I find it's best to mix shattering and aggressive to get a certain amount of penetration depending on your main character's build to deal with that armor.
You wouldn't go with 0 armor penn on your main character, would you? That's losing a ton of DPS.
Edit: Also, how DARE you tell people that Quickened is so good, now the price is going to go up on that and it's going to be hard for me to finish all purple light armor with quickened :P! Thanks for throwing a bone to companions with this guide, I like the companions system but I feel like it's not talked about much.
Kinda bothers me that Isobel is the strongest in 3 different categories, with Ember being the strongest mage. They should have kept each of them doing one thing better than the others at least.
Do you know would be really cool monster set the first set piece would be you take 3% less damage the second set piece would be when you deal direct damage you have a 10% chance to summon a hostile familiar that can attack you or even you know you have a 20% chance when you deal the image to summon three hostile familiars and this can happen at once every 10 seconds
Now bear with me it would create a very unique and interesting way to solve specific builds that require killing enemies during boss battles where there's no ads or very little ads
Necromancers with benefit from this from having way more corpses spawn too
Templars for benefit from this from the healing that requires you to consume corpses
Other builds that require killing enemies to get Magicka back even or stamina
And all sorts of other stuff
This is helpful as of the Ember tank build because she is targeted Non-Stop and she constantly dies so it would be nice not to have her meet death every 5 seconds, I like all the recommendation and build, but as for DPS I think I will keep her the same and leave her as a lightning staff just for the point of her being magic and I feel like it takes away from the story to do anyting but a magic build for Ember. It is an RPG after all.
I think half of the fun is creating your own situations like how I have an inside joke with all my friends that Ember is brain damaged from that specific imperial prison run, that's why I don't use any other weapon for a DPS Ember is so we're both staying in character.
I love companions but they are useless because overland is so easy If I summon them it becomes even more easy, when they Introduce them I thought they will make overland harder and compensate by making people buy the chapter for companions.
Agreed. *high cp life*
I dont think they could make it and dumber
Quickened is a garbage trait.
Is this game still an MMO ?
Yes it is.
You... think it's going to change genre?
It's a racing game now.
@@Nikephorus 🤣🤣👌🏾
The only thing I don’t like about the companions is how scrawny they are, does everyone have a moonsugar addiction
Useless things
Elder scrolls has now been deleted from my playstation .
Many reasons why I go.
Lag.
No one plays the game objectives in pvp any more..
Game not balanced .
Player swop allaince every campaign. No true players on allaince anymore.
Players Play for ap and gold .
There's no real pvp fight to win .
Maybe go play a PvP based game