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(They each have a talent that gives an xp bonus, among other things.)
You can leave their AI on and it will cycle through skill/spells.
You still need to set up spells (if you want the to cast anything) and choose talents & assign a stat point when they level up.
Companions give the game a lot of flavor, lore, and insight. In addition, they provide more freedom in terms of the player-character's build. For instance, if you don't want to be a tank, you can let Barik be one. If you don't want to be a spellcaster, Lantry can be one. (Lantry can be just about anything, as he has three(!) talent trees).
And you can solo the game even on the hardest difficulty, solo path of the damned ironman runs are a popular challenge run in this game (though from what I understand they're much harder after the single buff nerf). But any difficulty below that is much more easily solo-able.
Verse is strictly speaking the better tank NPC (even though she's obviously meant to be melee-dps) due to her dodge replacing parry ability and her ability to stack dodge.
Barik is just kind of useless. He's not well suited to any specific purpose. He can't even hold aggro due to the wierd way the AI works despite his taunt abilities.
Agreed that in general Verse is better in a tank role due to her Dodge replacing Parry.
I think Barik is good in physical fights where his armor is great. I equip him with two-handed so he can go against high-armor units. Once I get a Spire, I get the Forge upgrade to give him better armor and reduce recovery.
Where Barik fails IMHO is magic; it is VERY difficult to get magic armor outside talents and consumables. Thus deflection takes precedence over dodge, parry, or physical armor.
Due to the fact that a significant portion of the game takes place in the Oldwalls, and there are numerous "boss battles" there, Barik becomes more of a niche character than perhaps he was meant to be. He is good situationally, not universally.
If only Barik had a perk to make his carapace function against both physical AND magical damage, he'd be somewhat useful in the Oldwalls. I still love him though :)
When just random chaff enemies are hitting you for 100 damage basic attacks, I am not sure what purpose armor even serves. The only thing that keeps you alive in that fight is a defence stat (marginally) raising the glance threshold and then hit mitigation changing that 50 damage glance to a miss.
Barik can't do any of that though.
...Barik doesn't actually need dodge. ♥♥♥♥ that ♥♥♥♥, respecc him periodically and put it all into parry (well, athletics too, so that his taunts can hit more regularly, and a bit in lore, so that he can cast some spells and build up that experience pool), and give him a shield that favors parry. His pierce armor is so high that if you upgrade his armor (admittedly an expensive undertaking, much more so than just making Verse a tank) most ranged attacks won't do ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to him, even on PotD. Usually it's like 1 hp, and if you keep his armor up to snuff, it will rarely get into the double digits. He's weak against fire and IIRC crushing, though, but his armor still does a pretty good job protecting him from everything else, and if his parry is high enough he usually just acts like Verse in melee and doesn't get hit period. However, unlike Verse or Lantry tanks, you actually WANT Barik to get hit semi-regularly, and hard enough to reach certain thresholds. His weaknesses are almost a trap for the opponent, if you think about it. He's kinda like Kills-in-Shadow in that regard. She's designed to get stronger when she's got wounds, but not necessarily with low health, whereas Barik is designed to get stronger at low health, but necessarily with wounds. That's why so many of his skills trigger when he reaches a damage threshold, or an affliction ends, or just when he gets hit. He heals himself, he powers himself up, he delays unconsciousness, he does all kinds of ♥♥♥♥. And he's often the last person standing in a fight where everyone else has fallen, although granted that's not the kind of situation you want to be in. But it shows how tough he really is.
Not only that, but he does some support stuff, and a lot of it is passive or automatic, so he doesn't have to actively focus on it much. And of course, he does slow but massive single hit damage, which he has a bunch of skills to help with. Although he's not as good at it as Kills is, but she's practically a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ OHKO machine. He doesn't even hit that often unless you make sure he's accurate, but when he does, it's usually pretty major even when he grazes. Finally, you can mix and match all of these things, so that he can fill however much of whichever of those roles you want him to. The only real trouble is that taunts in this game are a little too inaccurate and don't last long enough. But you can do a few things to slightly mitigate that, like using the sigil of emotion to cast it's taunt spell, which is why it helps to put lore on even Barik. It seems a bit odd, after all, that Sirin's personal sigil should be tied to vitality when it's like her weakest trait, right? Like, why not resolve, something that sounds like it has more to do with emotion? I mean, partly that's just her being poorly optimized initially, because her performance is tied to vitality too, so it helps to just respecc her when you get her to favor vitality more. But partly it's so that guys with high hp can use the taunting move when the need to. Life and fire are tied to it, too, so that Barik can heal himself and others easily, and have a good offensive spell option. And his other main attribute is might, which is tied to another good offensive spell type, stone, as well as vigor, which he can use to buff himself. There's also fire and stone spells you can use to increase your armor against fire and (I believe) crush damage, so that he can compensate for his sole weaknesses.
He's actually a very focused character, more so than most of the others. All the spell casters, for example, have attributes that either run completely counter to their strongest spell and ability types, or have too many different attributes involved in their various strengths to be able to fully focus on them. With Barik, it's a lot easier to attain his fullest potential because he only has a few different focuses and they all mesh really well with each other.