Please...just STOP with the flame turrets.Follow

This has to be the most obnoxious move that any mob could possibly have to me. I usually level healing classes and have to rely on my pets to do all the tanking. But these turrets are beyond annoying. I can't tell you how sick I am of having to set my pet to passive, wait the obligatory 10 seconds for it to click in his head that it's time to move now, wait till he gets to me then make him attack the mob again. And have to regularly do this over the course of the battle since those flame turrets need to be cast every 10-15 seconds. This is not fun, this is annoying.

Ranting, complaining...etc. It accomplishes nothing, but sometimes it just needs to be said. Awkward mechanics are bad.

Well, half of it is me complaining about the delay in companion reaction. The other half is complaining about the AoE flame turrets that mobs summon onto their primary threat target. The turret that sits there for 10 seconds until they cast it again on their primary targets new location. If I was tanking and had a healing companion this wouldn't be an issue, but I'm not a class that can handle having Elites/Champion mobs hitting me. My companion ranged tank or not has to tank for me and since he's the primary target I have to constantly move him around with his slow reaction times.

I'm just frustrated having to do that same thing 15-20+ times while I fight a single mob.

They'll tear you up if you're a melee class, or else have to rely on a melee companion. For instance, I can get around them on my Sentinel by using Rusk or Doc instead of Kira, T7 or Scourge (T7 works if I remember to turn his jet boost off too, but I rarely do that). Otherwise it's a frantic race to destroy the mob before I get wrecked by elemental damage that I can in no way mitigate outside of Rebuke/Guarded by the Force.

But my Sentinel can self heal, and with practice I've learned where to stand to maximize the space I have available in melee range. My Jugg it's harder. I have to run with Vette or Quinn, as there's no real use using Pierce for ranged damage over Vette, and Broonmark will just get owned by the aoe, as will Jaesa. Now, it took me about 45 levels, but I eventually learned the position maximizing skill I mentioned a moment ago. This works...most of the time versus ranged mobs that use this skill. Melee mobs are far easier, since you can just drag them out of it, while ranged ones will just sit there and keep firing on you. So unless I can nail the positioning just right, then I get one chance to reset with Push, which more often than not is enough, assuming it's safe enough to push them in the area (i.e. other stuff won't add).

It's not game-breakingly hard, but it's something that turns "pleasantly challenging" into "pure @#%^ing annoyance." The same goes for any kind of DoT-using mob. One DoT isn't a problem, and two isn't too hard to deal with, but any more than that and I find my admittedly well-geared Juggernaut suddenly at critical health. I get it, elemental and internal damage ignore armor/defense/shield etc., but the balance is that these kinds of skills are supposed to be rare in some way. The few mobs that have both this damnable little turret and more than two DoT's are just ridiculous to face as a non-healing class.

Most annoying thing about companions is the priority system they run with their abilities. Some companions have AOE abilities set to a high priority, which is awesome as they'll hit a maximum number of enemies (most often). Other companions use their AOE abilities as the very last thing on the list, usually when I'm delivering the killing blow to the last standing survivor, putting the AOE on cooldown for the next pack.

Off-topic rant, sorry.

Oh I know what you mean. Typically I run with Kira or Jaesa on my Sent and Jugg respectively, and a lot of times it comes down to fighting a new mob, finding out it uses the damn aoe turret (or some other such annoyance) and sighing as I swap Kira for Doc or T7, or Jaesa for Vette or Quinn. Of course, I need to survive that first fight, not entirely impossible what with proper cooldown use, but it adds a level of frustration that irks me from time to time.

Course, this is just nitpicking about the overall game. 95%+ of the stuff in this game I'm pleased with, but this is just one of those things that raises my hackles.

I either die so often anyways or something but I'm just not seeing this problem. Not to the extent of changing companions anyway.

I generally move away from the turrets but sometimes I just kill through them.

One difference I guess is that I've not really done any serious companion tank options where I heal. I normally have the aggro anyway so I am free to move. The exception is Kaliyo who does seem to die easily in some fights. Since she has no eyebrows to singe I've never associated it with the flame turrets. Perhaps I should look harder.

I honestly don't know. I leveled as a Sage with a tank companion for pretty much the whole game. Never really watched whether or not they were in AoE, to tell the truth.