Being Hunter in this game is more like trying to train a gold fish or a cat to do things you want.
Telling the person who knows nothing about Hunter that his companion could be as reliable as a trained dog is sarcasm to the point it nearly becomes mockery xD
The worst thing is that ± all companions are re-skinned templates with ± the same stats and A.I.
The Armadillo, although it looks pretty sturdy, is in fact weaker defence-wise than the Penguins who come with 2 armor sockets instead of one; their base stats and stat growth are also exactly the same as far as I know.
By the way, the companions don’t even have any distinct skills. They are pretty much autonomous robots when it comes to attacking [i.e. tackling into the enemy], and Hunter is the only Class that has the privilege to actually give proper fighting maneuvers to the companions[that’s until it gets stuck somewhere and stops taking commands].