How can I toughen Qyzen Fess?

Question

I play as a Jedi Sage using the Telekinesis tree (damage and a little crowd control). My character cannot take much damage because of the light armor and the endurance values.

So I'm using Qyzen as a tank. But he does not have many more hitpoints than my character. I used to equip him with armor with high endurance values but replacing them with high aim values was a good idea as he dealt much more damage (aim is his primary attribute) and he seemed to live longer.

The char is lvl 38 now but I have difficulties with lvl 35 mobs. When they beat Qyzen and are on to my character, I mostly die.

What can I do now to increase Qyzen's toughness? Should I change back to "endurance-armors" or should I try to increase his armor value? Are there other possibilities?

Answer 1

For tanking, you should equip Qyzen with a Shield Generator in the offhand, and Heavy Armor with Aim and Endurance. Value Endurance over Aim and if you can get some other defensive stats, grab those, although that doesn't really matter too much around your level. Do make sure whatever equipment you give is near your level though, don't let him run around in level 20 gear.

Then expand the companion Quickbar and make sure all his abilities are enabled (right-click) and that he's using Trandoshan Regeneration (his defensive stance) instead of Combat Stance (offensive).

Answer 2

Aim is his primary stat, so will add to all of his major attributes, Endurance is his secondary stat and will increase his health pool, and other attributes. So essentially you want to be kitting him out in the same sort of gear as a tank-specced Vanguard. +Endurance and +Aim stacked gear (with Endurance as the bigger value). If you've got an Armoursmith friend, see if they can do any "Redoubt" Heavy Armour gear for you (as that'll have an extra +Defence stacked on top of the Endurance and Aim).

He's shield qualified, so you want to make sure he's carrying a decent level Shield Generator in his off-hand, else you're missing out on a lot of his damage mitigation.

Open up his companion bar (you can also assign it to the left or right side of the screen if you don't want it covering the bottom bar) and check which stance he's got active, and which abilities he's using. Abilities he'll use in combat have the green button active on their top-right corner, toggle them on or off with a right-click. Change stances with a left click. You might want to keep this bar open, as companions don't always activate new abilities that they learn, and often reset to defaults as you change zones.