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Kavats really need better survivability for higher level missions.


Yeehaw_Prime
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I find that on any mission with enemies around level 50 or above, my kavat will be getting downed constantly despite having 100% DNA stabilizers and maxed link armor and health unless I'm playing a frame that has insane armor and health like Nidus, Inaros, or Valkyr. Pack Leader is nice and all but that would pretty much mean you'd need to be meleeing constantly in order for your kitty to stay alive, and the 6 health/s that Medi-Pet Kit offers really doesn't do much at this stage. I strongly feel as if these companion mods either need their numbers bumped up or there needs to be some kind of change made so the pets are dying less, as this is something that's really mostly out of the player's hands and it's irritating to have to revive your cat every 5 seconds or eventually just say "screw it" and let furball die so you can stop worrying about it.

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I just don't like that I'm forced to use melee if I want a simple way to my kavat healed regardless of my other choices in gear.

I'm able to do 80+ level content fine, but I run Vazarin and often save my instant revives on myself and my kavat and leave reviving other players to others, and just heal them while they do so, and occasionally dashing into my kavat to heal them, and running the Shepherd aura on my usual played frames, since kavats are the best for my own survival with their healing/damage. I absolutely can't run sentinels since I usually run squishier frames and sentinels do not provide good healing at all (medi-ray is terrible, and odomedic is very annoying to proc.)

The Shepherd aura provides a flat +300 health and +180 armor for ANY companion, including sentinels, but I'd imagine other auras people would much rather run, or the occasional anger from squadmates "wtf why aren't you running corrosive projection."

Some healing that's dealt on you while you and your kavat is damaged with the Link Health mod equipped healed both you and your kavat until your warframe reaches max health, then it stops healing your kavat, Some healing doesn't do this either, or maybe a lot, I wouldn't know but I only run Vazarin and use it's healing dash often on myself. I always wear a health mod on my frames regardless of which frame I'm running as well and that grants my companion more health with their Link Health equipped.

Kavats usually need a good amount of forma to use them well, and it depends on your frame which Link mods you use if you don't use all 3. My personal preference is 5 damage mods equipped (2 60/60 mods, bite, maul, swipe) 2 Link mods, lifesteal-link and medi-pet kit or bleedout-link. One of the new Kavat set mods is pretty decent too that grants 60% to survive lethal damage, but I don't use it at all myself so I wouldn't know how good it is. I'm not so keen on using my kavats for buffs (like smeeta's random buffs or Adarza's extra crit chance) so the new Vasca kavat is the best for me for easy revives on myself. The Adarza kavat's Reflect mod is good for their survival as well, if you're using that kavat, you should definitely keep that equipped. Some one mentioned Smeeta's stealth mod already.

Link shield's max % it grants is much less than Link health's, so it is probably much more worth to run Link Health unless you're running specific Shield-based frames. Running Link Shields allows you to grant your kavat overshields but I believe the overshields has to be casted on yourself to give your kavat overshield (but I'm unsure, and don't often use Link Shield). Losing your frame's overshield does not deplete your kavat's overshield.

With being able to heal very easily, Vazarin also has an ability to provide overshields to yourself or squadmates but it eats up energy quickly to do so, so extra operator energy/energy regen is nice.

There's always the few ways with Melee to keep your kavat healed, Arcane Bodyguard which heals your companion's health on 6 melee kills in a set amount of time and any rank of it is useful but it takes up an arcane slot. Sancti Magistar releases a heal aoe on every melee heavy charge hit (unsure if heavy slams heal), running charge mods/builds can still do a lot of damage in high level content and it heals you without the use of Life Strike, this weapon has decent crit as well. And last Pack Leader which is probably the easiest to run, but takes a mod slot on your kavat. It really sucks that all of these easier choices require you to use melee often, I don't find it that fun myself.

An obvious answer is also run a frame that provides healing, but that's not always fun either. I always run Vazarin to heal myself, companions, and squadmates since it's my own preference but I know others would hate to be stuck with it. I wish they'd add more ways to heal our pets. It's always good to watch over your kavat to make sure they're not attacking groups of enemies alone and eventually get knocked down as well. A damage-based kavat can often take down enemies in level 50 content, but it's harder in higher leveled armored content.

 

..i made a post without reading op's post first..again.. my bad

Edited by Spharin
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Smeeta is kind of OK, I can run kuva flood with her and she survives most of the time unless kuva guardians start chasing her. I do have 6 forma and mostly survival mods on her, she's tagging along mostly just for that sweet Charm buff, Fetch and primed Animal instinct. The AI pathing is horrible on some tilesets and she can get stuck although she usually recovers. It helps to keep an eye on them pets. Tek assault mod is certainly helpful as well as Loyal companion and Mischief. The latter with Medi-pet kit gives her 60+ seconds bleedout timer, which is usually quite sufficient. She can survive Eidolons in most cases if I manage to stick around Trinity or play as Oberon. Although she does not do well in Profit taker or Exploiter or even high level bounties in OV probably due to massive AoE damage. Although, 60 seconds is usually enough to revive her if you are really committed in keeping her alive. I don't use link mods on low and medium armor and health frames, just basic vitality on her.

Sentinels are generally more survivable but cannot be revived after primed regen revives run out and Djinn is pretty useless IMHO compared to Helios, Dethcube or Carrier.

Edited by akots
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As far as i observed, a lot of problems are caused by dumb pet AI: 

- kavat (and i'm sure, not the mischief copy) face-tanking damage, without moving/dodging, under direct fire

- kavat not following the player (thus staying to face-tank damage at 150-200m of distance)

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This is doubly a problem for MOAs. With the exception of the bubble MOA, none of them have any kind of survivability precept. They're just sorta... There. 

Also something really needs to be done about Warframes with high damage reduction and low armor. If I run Baruuk, then my Kavat/MOA is made of tissue paper, despite him being one of the tankiest Warframes in the roster. 

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It's mostly the problem of AI.  Versus corpus, a sentinal has a much better chance of surviving because of those blue rings of death that drop.  Cats are to stupid to move and they die so fast.  Sentinals stay with frame, so they stay alive better on a frame that moves a lot.  

Something that would help pets drastically is separate the body from the "weapon".  Give pets a tooth & claw "weapon" to level up and forma, like exhaulted weapons.  

Then the 2-3 mods dedicated to damage can be removed and replaced with survivability mods.  The extra damage from more mods on claws will also keep it alive longer.  

Base damage can be reduced to balance having new mod slots and much more power.  

Edited by Educated_Beast
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9 hours ago, Emolition said:

The stealth mod on smeeta is pretty good for keeping smeeta alive but the new kavat that im using now don't have same survivality so I use it for mostly support mods and vaccum that my smeeta dont have.

I do use the stealth mod for my Smeeta, but it really doesn't help much.

9 hours ago, Spharin said:

GIANT WALL OF TEXT

That's nice and all, but that's all super extra and detracts from normal play. My main point is this really shouldn't all be necessary if you just want your companion to stop dying every 5 seconds.

8 hours ago, DebrisFlow said:

As far as i observed, a lot of problems are caused by dumb pet AI: 

- kavat (and i'm sure, not the mischief copy) face-tanking damage, without moving/dodging, under direct fire

- kavat not following the player (thus staying to face-tank damage at 150-200m of distance)

I suppose you have a point there, yeah. This could really be fixed with better companion AI but it would take a lot more work than just buffing mods or adding extra survivability ones.

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