Droid Engineer Archive

Droid do need to be healed.
But, for a tank, you can use a probot that does 1 dmg, and have 5 auto-repair module.
He'll heal himself much faster. But will eat more batteries.
Adv R3 with 5 auto-repair and 1 combat does very little dmg and has more HAM than probot, and heal as fast.
LE repair can be a good tank too, has the biggest HAM (6K) but only 3 modules, so he'll heal slower and wont do alot of dmg.

Also, LE does melee only, R3 does melee and ranged and probot does ranged.

Resist aren't shown on the deed and are basically 20% for everything for every droid as long as the DE put the needed armor modules.

Basically, you should look for an Adv R3 with 5 auto-repair module (rating about 80-100, meaning he'll heal 80-100 dmg every 10 seconds) and 1 combat module (combat rating present but very low).
or a Probot with about the same auto-repair rating.

That's for the droids.

BE pets are stronger, have more HAM, and does more dmg.
But,
As they do damage, they take your xp.
And they don't have auto-heal module.
And they have vulnerabilities, droids don't.
Dunno if they have armor rating, but droids don't.
Also, droid don't have special attack, but are imute to special attack too.

Droid are not affected by posture change, stun, KD, dizzy, poison, bleed, blind,...

Hope that help.

Message Edited by R0ZM4N on 06-09-2004 04:29 PM

wit the R3, you can toggle range on off, but even if he does do ranged, he'll get the aggro as long as he attack first.

Just make it chase the lair and he shouldn't move unless he's on low HAM.

To have more numbers, a maxed LE will have about 6K HAM, but will heal himself of max 40 every 10 seconds, an adv R3 will have 4.4K HAM but will heal himself for 100 every 10 seconds.

The best of the 2 depend of the mob I guess.

First my perspective, I have a master creature handler carbineer so I have used pretty much the whole range of pets. I also have a soon to be master smuggler, merchant, pistoleer character.

Having recently had the opportunity to use a R3 Droid with 5 repair modules, 1 attack in conjunction with my smuggler I can say that definitely, for the nonCH the droid is the way to go.

The immunity from effects, auto healing (with occasional repairs to supplement if it is really banged up) and the ranged or melee flexibility the droid makes an excellent tank.

My R3 only really has trouble when he gets swamped by 3 or so giant anglers with a few regular anglers thrown in. This will overwhelm his healing capability.

Also you need to keep on top of the batteries. Preferably recharge after every engagement.

The really cool thing I noticed though is what he does when he decides he has had enough. He will zip off in some direction (for some reason to the water everytime on Yavin IV) taking a couple of mobs with him. The thing is since he auto-repairs he just runs around repairing while he is being chased. After I clean up the mobs that stayed behind I call him back and often he is well on his way back to health. No creature pet can do that.

Since you do not need costly pet or regular stims droids are also inexpensive to run, requiring mostly batteries.

Since I am fully buffed and armored with composite I can actually tank myself most of what I am hunting on Yavin IV. However the droid is nice in that it helps to shield me from many poisons and other special effects. It also makes things a little easier on the armor.

The tactics I have been using to good effect is that since I can tank(Buffs+Brandy+Composite) I attack first, usually the biggest target. I then send the droid in to my target to block it. Since the targets often are ranged they will switch from ranged against me to melee against my droid. I then proceed to reduce my target, rinse and repeat. I do this since the R3 will tend to go ranged first and my preference is to use it as a wall. A more cautious strategy is to send in the droid first and make sure you immediately move to behind the droid so he picks up the mob. Otherwise the droid will just plunk away bringing the mob right on top of you. On occasion my droid has gotten wise to my trick to make him take the brunt of it and he has actually moved to keep me in front of him, very clever these little droids hehe.

Sending in the droid second is the opposite of what I do with my non-armored master carbineer master CH who does not tank well. Instead I send in two or more higher level pets and then open up with my own weapon.

Finally the main reason to use droids over CL10 pets is that droids are hilarious to watch. The R3 in melee mode has a little arm it shoots out at its target. Cracks me up every time.