Companion let down....

Companions are basically a select an aura skill. The companion themself is bad its just the aura you care about.

You can increase the damage with minion damage for example. But at that stage you would just play a minion build over using a companion.

Depends on the companion. Some of them are OP, some are good for combos like armour breaking ones. I use one for auras and CC and a pack of wolves to blast everything. Seems pretty good.

Who's gonna tell him?

Companions, like minions, require a fair bit of investment on the tree and gear to be viable as more than aura bot (in which case, you can give them the support gem that makes them invincible but unable to do damage).

I'm running a pathfinder werewolf companion build using the wolfpack and it's alright, though it required heavy investment and I'm pretty sure it's still vastly inferior to the more oriented werewolf build (minions or solo wolf).

Companions and minions require investment to do good on their own. You can get some utility from them. A pig with good auras can buff you a decent amount if you have ways to keep him vertical and not play bacon sim.

Mostly get them for their aura buffs, kinda hard to make them crazy good because their spirit costs are % based so the better you are investing on them the higher their spirit costs. I've seen builds that scale well but it's mostly just using Infernal Legion health stacking for regular attacks idk which beast types are good, maybe the Boar or Quadrilla but most them just suffer from not having much AoE clearing especially the fact that you can only have one of them unless you use that unique chest or get the notable keystone, they are mostly supplementary to buff your other minions or you rather than the main damage.

Wish there were a place that showed which mods could spawn on which companions.

I don't like them. The 30% cost ones are basically impossible to farm. I run the wolves sometimes because they're bodies.

I hope they add more skills/nodes for companions. I'm expecting to get some more if they add a companion ascendency for huntress.

I was hyped when the Druid's Wolf Pack spirit skill got the companion tag. But after trying to make something work with it and another companion, it's still pretty underwhelming.

I feel like minions in poe2 are lackluster to begin with and companions are worse because with other minions you can scale numbers but with companions you can have 2 types at most and you have to pay a price.

I also think they are designed to be a boost to you more than your whole source of damage because the idea of a companions is that it fights alongside you, making you stronger.