Make companions invincible already

[(PSN)Elvenbane]

3 minutes ago, Almagnus1 said:

I also using link armor/shield/health

I have these slotted as well, Nova doesn't have enough health/armor to make them work very well in my experience. Not the point really either, I want to use Helios, I like having a reliable turret/scanner/vacuum/enemy&loot radar over my shoulder and not some fur for brains bouncing off walls 2 rooms away doing who knows what and providing random buffs.

[Kylo.]

32 minutes ago, SECURATYYY said:

Vacuum/Fetch

They are not useless?

[Sylonus]

1 hour ago, Kylo. said:

They are not useless?

Depends who you are, and in the situation, they're pretty much useless in ESO on most frames since they implode instantly, but on the bright side vacuum/fetch isn't all that important there.

[Test-995]

2 hours ago, Kylo. said:

They are not useless?

Well, actually really really good as QoL i guess, but nothing like game-changer.

That's why i want them to be invincible, improved QoL.

[SordidDreams]

3 hours ago, (PS4)Elvenbane said:

Helios has really good survivability except in Orb Vallis where he'll eventually use up his regens.

Modding his Deconstructor for status and slapping on Healing Return works reasonably well to prevent minor damage from accumulating over time in my experience. The problem is in higher level missions he tends to get one-shot by bombards spawning behind you, kuva guardians that decide to only get stunned after they finish their swing, and various other such nastiness.

[RistN]

On 2019-04-16 at 9:52 PM, Kylo. said:

They are not useless?

Well if you are using some arcanes that get triggered  by  pickups  like Arcane Energize  or Arcane Pulse on Nekros then you are better with Vacuum. Also you will be spending  more ammo in higher lvl missions  so it would  be better  if you have your  companion  picking up ammo drops for you. 

But i guess  it all comes down to what you are used to and your way of playing. I have 3k+ playing hours and I  use Vacuum  from day 1.

[Guest]

As someone said, maybe we should have a new companion that is invincible, but only has 4 - 6 mod slots and can't shoot or use unique precepts. Then only things like animal instinct and vacuum can go into it (aka you cannot mod it for survivability, only utility).

It will not have ranks or MR bonuses, just grant some stuff from Sentinels constantly as a bonus. I mean it would be better than everything we have right now 😂

[Kylo.]

5 hours ago, RistN said:

But i guess  it all comes down to what you are used to and your way of playing. I have 3k+ playing hours and I  use Vacuum  from day 1.

I use a Kavat with Fetch, because I want to be able to revive my Kavat.

[SordidDreams]

On 2019-04-18 at 7:30 AM, Datam4ss said:

As someone said, maybe we should have a new companion that is invincible, but only has 4 - 6 mod slots and can't shoot or use unique precepts. Then only things like animal instinct and vacuum can go into it (aka you cannot mod it for survivability, only utility).

It will not have ranks or MR bonuses, just grant some stuff from Sentinels constantly as a bonus. I mean it would be better than everything we have right now 😂

I still don't understand this line of thinking. You and others seem to think it would be unacceptable to have a sentinel that shoots without itself being able to do damage. Nobody else has managed to explain the reason for thinking that, though. Maybe you will. So, why?

[Guest]

47 minutes ago, SordidDreams said:

I still don't understand this line of thinking. You and others seem to think it would be unacceptable to have a sentinel that shoots without itself being able to do damage. Nobody else has managed to explain the reason for thinking that, though. Maybe you will. So, why?

DE tends not to buff without nerfing.

[SordidDreams]

18 minutes ago, Datam4ss said:

DE tends not to buff without nerfing.

I wanted to know your reasoning, not DE's. Also, just saying that DE does it doesn't explain why it does it either.

Edited April 22, 2019 by SordidDreams

[BrazilianJoe]

I would have companions not revive - they insta-die when killed - but they respawn after a few minutes. 

Mods would speed up the time until respawn. 

And pets, especially the robotic ones, should have a survivability pass to get more HP health link, ways for the player to keep them alive for longer.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, SordidDreams said:

I wanted to know your reasoning, not DE's. Also, just saying that DE does it doesn't explain why it does it either.

Mainly because a Sentinel sometimes blocks the over the shoulder view on my end, but generally because of how DE does things.

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

The amount of formas necessary to get a half-decent pet is imho the biggest issue here. The pet mods are just so expensive and pets have so many slots due to them having precepts and all that. It's also really annoying to revive them, both for the player and other players.

 

[MJ12]

On 2019-04-17 at 7:30 PM, Datam4ss said:

As someone said, maybe we should have a new companion that is invincible, but only has 4 - 6 mod slots and can't shoot or use unique precepts. Then only things like animal instinct and vacuum can go into it (aka you cannot mod it for survivability, only utility).

It will not have ranks or MR bonuses, just grant some stuff from Sentinels constantly as a bonus. I mean it would be better than everything we have right now 😂

Or maybe we should just make Sentinels invincible and make Kavats/Kubrows work the same way Clem does-they don't bleed out, and after a period of time they automatically revive.

Wouldn't this be so much simpler and better for the game?

[SECURATYYY]

+1 for Invincible Robots

Also the Sacrifice mod doesn't really work. If you go down, everyone targets your robot and it dies in .02 seconds.

[C4ptainGrumpy]

Use link mods. And sentinels tend to take no damage if you kill enemy fast enough.

[Vitalis_Inamorta]

On 2019-04-14 at 11:15 AM, (XB1)Tucker D Dawg said:

my cat never dies.  once in a rare while it will go down but is easily revived. FWIW I really only do Sorties, endless Neo/Axi, and ESO hoping to get hit by lightning - I mean doing what DE considers an "achievement" and getting blessed by RNG for a cosmetic.

If I recall, the last time my companion   ended up being unavailable for the remainder of the mission was around the 4 hour mark in MOT when Carrier finally gave up the ghost.

They most definitely do not need invincibility.

 

Notice how he conveniently neglects to mention what frame and build he was playing to have a carrier "unluckily" die at the four hour mark.  My bet is on Loki/Zephyr or another frame whose self-defense ability automatically protects companions.

News flash, stunt.  You can't do anything to keep those companions alive if you're playing any other frame that doesn't innately do it for you.  Either the method of survivability your frame utilizes automatically applies to your companion with sufficient efficacy to keep them alive without you doing much out of the norm, or you're just completely shafted because you're playing something like a healthy non-quake build Banshee whose pets are just going to explode or fall down period before the one hour mark ever comes around.

As to making a consumable to revive pets automatically, that doesn't even rise to the level of laughable as a solution.  Again, most frames will have to spam them literally every few seconds at a certain point in missions, while the few fortunate ones would use them maybe once every ten minutes or less.

 

Now, on to the actual problems:

#1:  Forced pet similarity to frame. (Link mods, innate survivability-share or bust)

#2:  Bad AI.

A large part of the first problem is the link mods.  They're obviously a really, really bad design dynamic.  Innately tanky frames get a tanky pet, while for frames that for example need to use CC to stay alive, the non-link mods are basically worse even with 225 health or 225 shields, meaning they're completely useless, where they should be putting the pet somewhere in between "Inaros with health link"/"Hildryn with shield link", and "Ivara with health link"  Maybe close to "Nidus with vitality and health link", at the least.  I mean, they're ten rank mods that are for all intents and purposes totally useless.  Really?

So, solution #1:  Either remove link mods, or make GOOD alternative mods for frames that can't use them.

The second part of the first issue involves pets on frames who don't automatically get the survivability share.  Ivara for example is fine in this regard, her companion gets prowl cloak shared to it, so it stays alive fairly well until it gets caught in AoE, which is usually not a big deal to deal with.  Zephyr is fine.  AFAIK Nezha can put warding halo on his doggo/kitty (not sure about how it works with a sentinel) so he's at least most of the way to great, and so on.

Frames like Mesa, Nyx, and especially ones like Vauban or Banshee that are totally reliant on CC abilities though?  They need some pet help.

My suggestion would be to either make a mod that does a CC in an AoE around them, based on an interpreted "magnitude" of the CC their master frame used, or give them a temporary damage resistance scaling based on the same magnitude interpretations.  Alternatively, make this kind of CC/resistance share a built-in thing to all pets with all frames who don't already automatically share well.

Beyond that, the only fix is improving the AI so that they can capably avoid things like obvious slow AoE attacks and hazards, but I know that that sort of coding is difficult.

The tek set mod to give kavats a 60% chance to avoid death?  Well, it's better than nothing, but it's nearly the least amount of "better than nothing" possible.  Kavats at least have mod abilities that give them enhanced survivability.

Final suggestion, the Pet AI NEEDS to automatically teleport override if they're more than 50m away from their master frame/operator, PERIOD.  As others have mentioned, pet pathing getting stuck hundreds of meters away is a quite-common issue, and one people really can't do much about themselves.

I know they already do teleport in open world spaces, but they do not seem to anywhere else, or if they do, the action does not have priority over their cyclic failed attempts to manually path.

[Guest]

7 hours ago, MJ12 said:

Or maybe we should just make Sentinels invincible and make Kavats/Kubrows work the same way Clem does-they don't bleed out, and after a period of time they automatically revive.

Wouldn't this be so much simpler and better for the game?

It would be much simpler and better for us players, yes.

The problem is the Devs won't do it. You saw how long it took for Kavat Vacuum to appear.

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

Pets have been a source of common problems for players in multiple online games. It's one reason I hate pet classes in general (Dragoons and their wyverns in FFXI being one of the biggest failures - because their usefulness as a class was dependent on their pet being alive)... and everyone is essentially a pet class in Warframe (but we're only lacking utility without our pets - we don't really all rely on them).

 

The issue comes down to pet defenses, and enemy damage scaling (especially AoE attacks), combined with methods of health restoration/keeping pets alive.

Obviously, companions have better survivability than sentinels due to the Link Health/Pack Leader combo. This is of varying strength due to the Health values of certain frames, but in general, that combo will out-perform any other options available for Sentinels. THEN, add to that, you can revive pets, whereas Sentinels have limited lives per mission... sentinels fall even more to the sidelines. Kubrows/Kavats offer much better combat potential than sentinels (Moas seem lacking, like sentinels on two legs, unlike their enemy counterparts, but at least they get the survival mods listed above)

If Sentinels had the same tools or better for self-survival, I'd be happy, stuff like:
Significant HP regen
Shield Gating
Self-revive without limits. Timer? sure, but it's a machine, much easier to revive than a living thing, right?  (on more than just the Djinn)
Higher defenses against AoE's (or simply take 90% less damage from attacks that aren't targeting them) so they don't die in the first place
Perfect cloaking so they're never seen if they don't attack.

Some of those possibilities I'd like better than others, and some of those alone wouldn't make things OK... but combined, would go a long way.

Personally, all I need from my pets are Vacuum and Animal Instinct. If I could have a non-targetable utility platform for just those mods (as suggested, and I "liked"), I would enjoy Warframe much more than having to worry about keeping those features "alive." I certainly don't use my Sentinels to attack, so all I lose when they die are my vacuum cleaner and radar. (And no, I don't think I'd be willing to waste consumables reviving them, when pets get unlimited revives for free.)

 

[Stafelund]

This is going to be a necro but this thread had the most lengthy and in depth discussion with it, which is nice

Except there's points that people all missed and I can't believe it hasn't been brought up amidst all stuff here. Pets, even when invincible, cannot win your missions for you! If you AFK, your Dethcube, Kavat, MOA, etc won't be able to deal with hordes of enemies. They won't save your cryopods and excavators if you just stand there. It's gonna take a long time to deal with extermination missions too.

No matter how much you mod them and their weapons up, they do not have the sheer power of a widespread weapon like a Kuva Ogris/Zarr. They are obviously there to be a utility and to lend some assistance to players, them dying of anything doesn't make sense and it absolutely shows that it's a relic of the past.

To make your companions invincible would be simply a QoL fix, it wouldn't break stuff if they don't die to enemy attacks. I hope after they rework on focus, they focus on companions next and they make them invincible, but deep down I feel it's going to be a gimmicky or indirect fix.