Ijjob on Apr 29, 2014 wrote:

Greetings!

This is just a minor rant that I have about the tribal pack companions. I've unlocked two of them (Holkun and Kawil), and, honestly, I think they're lacking. I've fully promoted Holkun, and there's nothing that sets him apart from other companions (special powers, etc.). In actuality, I mainly use him and Kawil just for novelty.

My main problem with this is that since they're "special" companions, why not make them stand out amongst the El Toros and Bonnie Annes? For how rare they are to actually get, they need something more than what they have.

I personally feel that the Tribal Crew companion's balance is spot on. They're most definitely more powerful then the average companion and the novelty value of having them makes them very much worth trying to get. But at the same time, they're not so overbearingly powerful that they dominate game. And they would be, had they been made any more powerful then they currently are. As they are now, they are roughly equivalent to a handfull of companions that are available to just about everyone, depending on your class. But, although similar, the tribal Crew companions are just slightly weaker in one or more aspect. This allows for you to have reason enough to use them, but not to have the advantage over those who don't (in other words, it's avoiding a pay to win environment here)

- Kawil Doomclaw is about identical to Kan Po/Keisuke Yagi. The difference between these two is that kawil is lacking of Kan's Cloaking and healing abilities, which is what set's him apart from other swashbuckler companions.

- Holkun Doomhorn is really the one exception to this. He's practically identical to Hawkules in just about every way, including their one power card, forced critical. Holkun's is actually a bit better, since he's on his 3rd promotion and Hawkules is on his 1st, meaning that Holkun has a forced Epic hit while Hawk only has a forced Super hit. However, Hawk isn't incredibly powerful to begin with, so I personally don't mind this.

- Itzen Kaan is pretty much equivalent to Wing Chun/Wu Tang in every way, with the exception that Itzen is lacking Wing's forced critical card.

- Chilam Bak is on roughly equal footing with Old Scratch. The one true difference here is that they have entirely different power cards. In the case of these two, there's also differences in their stats, but not really enough to make a noteworthy difference.

- Lemba Moonskull I hear being compared to Bonnie Anne quite a bit, but I find he's more like Zeena. They have the same number of epics and the same range (4 squares), as well as fairly even stats. the key difference here is that Zeena has her all too famous Rain of Fire power cards while Lemba has just one of The Big Guns card (the privateer infinite range bomb card).

*Note that these comparisons are based on each companions current final promotion.

Now this is just derived from my own experiences with them, I have all 5 Tribal Crew companions and have used them a lot in both PvP and PvE for several months now, so have had a lot of time to get to know them. More so then most. I understand why you wish they were stronger (beleive me, I have every thing to gain from this proposition), but similar to the arguments that arose when Nausica was first introduced regarding this becoming Pay to Win. In time, it may be evident that the tribal companions wouldn't be as powerful as everyone would worry they are, but it would still give a distinct advantage to whomever used them, which I am entirely against.

Silly Sebastian (,,)