Mayonnaise3737

No, I mean when Merulina gets destroyed or you dismount. You get 1.5 s of i-frames to recast Merulina or do whatever else. Basically a shield gate that you can chain into the i-frames from summoning Merulina. Without that buffer you open yourself up to immediately getting downed when Merulina runs out of hp. As for the knock back, she is still immune to self-stagger from weapons, but is now vulnerable to enemy cc.

Not really. The damage reduction isn't all there is. You also have cc immunity while riding and get 1.5 s invincibility when you dismount/Merulina dies. You lose both of those with Loyal Merulina. In high level gameplay those benefits are arguably far more important than the damage reduction.

I don't think you guys realize what Yareli misses out on by using Loyal Merulina. Merulina Guardian is definitely the biggest part, since it essentially triples her dps, but she also loses important defensive potential--damage reduction isn't the only defensive aspect of Merulina: 1. Yareli can't get cc'd by enemies while riding Merulina, and she loses that immunity with the new augment. She still doesn't self-stagger from weapons, but enemy cc will now affect her. 2. When Yareli dismounts or Merulina dies, she receives 1.5 seconds of invincibility, allowing her to recast or do something else to survive, which gives her her own shield gate to play around. She does not get that invincibility when Merulina dies with Loyal Merulina, leaving her open to getting downed if she can't react quick enough. 3. Merulina Guardian also heals Merulina, so you don't need to recast and lose the HP increase from absorbing damage when you first activate Merulina. You give up all of this and the fire rate increase to be able to use primaries and melees that you can't buff in any meaningful way without helminth, but if you helminth for dps, you can't helminth to fix the survivability you lost. Every mod you commit to make up for that is a mod slot you had for something else when Yareli didn't have to worry about those problems. Sure, if you don't like k-drive and want to use those other weapons/helminth, you might consider it a worthwhile trade off, but it's disengenuous to say the augment is a straight buff when she literally loses some of the most important aspects of her kit and only gains quality of life improvements, no direct increase in power. Loyal Merulina may make the game easier for some, but it does not necessarily make Yareli stronger.

With the new Critical Mutation mod on the Catabolyst, the reload grenade should add the 30% crit chance and crit damage for each enemy it kills. This works normally on other frames. Testing this on Yareli, while she is riding Merulina, when I throw the reload grenade, the mod doesn't register any kills or hits that I have gotten, and the buff drops 30% each time I throw it. Using the beam while on Merulina still increases the crit buff 30% for each kill, but the buff does not increase when throwing the reload grenade. Enemies still take damage and die from the reload grenade, but the game doesn't register that I have hit at least 3 enemies, so it drops the buff by 30%, and the kills from the grenade do not increase the buff by 30% for each kill. This all only happens while riding Merulina. When I get off, and start moving around on foot with Yareli, the mod buff behaves as expected, increasing 30% for each enemy killed by the grenade explosion, and not dropping 30% if I hit at least 3 enemies.