Sly Vulpaphyla Feedback

[Rozrin]

So today I got my hands on a Sly Vulpaphyla, one of the 6 new companions that came out with The Heart of Deimos.

 

At first, when I saw its precepts I was really hyped, having an evasion buff on kill is a really good way to add damage mitigation to some of the squishier frames that have a hard time tanking hits under normal circumstances. I went for a round of Hydron to level it up and got confused as to how its precepts worked and went to the simulacrum to get a better understanding.

 

Basically, whenever one of the Vulpaphyla pets die (seeing as they all share the Devolution precept) they immediately go on a 30 sec timer where they respawn, negating the need to revive them which is a nice time saving and is really apreciable (similar to Venari or Djinn Reawaken's mechanics). But when I came to the Survival Instinct precept, I immediately saw a huge problem with.

 

For those who may not know here what the description reads:

Increase their Master's Evasion by +40% until their next attack or after 8s whenever they kill an enemy. Cooldown: 5s.

 

On paper this sounds really good but here's the thing: loosing the buff when attacking makes it worthless.

Weapons with High Fire rate will waste the buff if a single bullet is fired after the enemy's death, Status effects that you inflict on the target DO NOT count as you killing them so you don't get the buff at all and most of all: When do I get to use it ?

 

Let me elaborate: Since the buff goes away the moment you take any offensive action, you cannot keep the Evasion while actively fighting, you do not need Evasion once the fight is over since there is nothing to Evade anymore. So what is the purpose of this buff ? Since I cannot fight if I want to keep and use the buff it means it would be used in order to be safer when taking actions such as Reviving or Hacking but, why use a pet to do it when we have the Operator that has already been doing it and does it better ?

Right now the Sly Vulpaphyla is worthless compared to any other companion new and old. It doesn't bring any advantage that is worth noting in its current state.

Why is the buff going away as soon as you take any offensive action ? In the middle of a fight, no one is going to stop for 8 seconds every time they kill an enemy, especially for a damage reduction that's RNG reliant (unless I'm mistaken on how Evasion works).

 

If it changed so that the buff isn't removed after an attack it will become so much better and might get some of our squishiest frames to be more viable but right now I'd pick any other companion over this one in 100% of cases, it just does nothing worthwile compared to the others.

It would also be really nice if status effects that you proced could be registered as your kill and trigger it, status weapons are really inconsistent when trying to get the buff.

 

On a side note here are a few bugs I encountered:

• The cooldown does not work properly. I got the buff every single time I killed an enemy.
• The Survival Instinct buff seems to take priority on the Sly Devolution buff when the Vulpaphyla is downed so you always have the stronger verison.
• During my Hydron round his Survival Instinct stopped working at some point. It might be due to leveling up but that's just a wild guess.

 

 

I could very well be missing the point here in which case I'd be glad if someone could give me an explanation about the intended purpose of this buff.

 

Have a good day/night and thank you for taking the time to read and maybe even answer.

[Traumtulpe]

I'd expect it to stay active while using abilities. So maybe a consideration for caster type Warframes.

[Chaincat]

2 hours ago, Rozrin said:

damage reduction that's RNG reliant (unless I'm mistaken on how Evasion works).

Evasion is a flat % chance for enemies to miss. You could look at it as a chance to have 100% damage reduction in a way, I suppose.

As for the sly vulpaphyla in general, the devolution buff is always there while it's dead, as far as I can tell, so at the very least a 20% chance to not get hit seems pretty good and worth considering. Survival Instinct definitely needs some work though. At least it's not as bad as the Crescent Vulpaphyla since it's devolution mod is actively worthless, meaning its alive precept is the only one worth using. So do you let it revive itself on a 30 second timer, or would it be better to manually revive it?

[Mystic_Ervo]

The first fox in the game and is kinda useless, I love it ¬_¬

[Kaotis]

hace 36 minutos, Mystic_Ervo dijo:

The first fox in the game and is kinda useless, I love it ¬_¬

The other 2 foxes are just reskins.

Same for the infested dogs , reskins just to say there are 3.

This update should have had only 2 pets not so much reskins of filler content...

[(PSN)fuzz642]

guilded one these and got 0 exp, do we not get exp points from them?

[LuckyCharm]

I agree, please give the foxo better abilities. Or let me put the fox tail on my smeeta so i can actually have the adorable fennec ive always wanted

[(NSW)Doomnougat]

Agree, the Sly is the worst vulpaphyla currently.  Which is a real shame, because it's the best one cosmetically, and I really want to gild/reactor/forma mine, but I just can't justify it compared to the other options.

Concept:

I think the point of the Sly mod set is to discourage mindless spamming of attacks.  You get a bunch of bonus evasion when you're not spamming, but as soon as you start attacking it goes away.  This is actually pretty cool, because it rewards a measured approach and might make things like bows more viable in a chaotic situation.

Problems:

1. Survival Instinct is way too easy to accidentally cancel.  I've seen it show up on the first enemy hit by a heavy attack swing, only to be cancelled immediately when the next enemy is hit by the same swing.  Due to the 5s cooldown, the 2nd kill can't re-trigger the ability, so you're stuck without it.
2. Survival Instinct seems to stop triggering at all after about 30 seconds of most missions.  I assume this is a bug.
3. Graphics blur and performance impact.  Maybe just a PC thing that I've heard of.  Honestly on Switch I've not been able to keep the buff active long enough to know if I get slowdown.

Suggestion:

• Fix the bug that stops it triggering at all, obviously.
• Remove the 5s cooldown.

Now what you'd have is an ability that turns on right after any kill, and turns off again as soon as you start spamming attacks.  So if you're sneaking around doing stealth kills, you have bonus evasion.  If you're charging up your bow or lining up a sniper shot, bonus evasion.  But if you're using beam weapons, spray and pray bullet hoses, or spamming melee in a crowd, no bonus for you.

This would actually be a pretty cool way to play, and would be a nice unique benefit.  I'd even take this over the total insanity that is the Panzer vulp.

 

[Flying_Scorpion]

On 2020-08-28 at 11:08 AM, Rozrin said:

The cooldown does not work properly. I got the buff every single time I killed an enemy.

I think the wording is very confusing and it's hard to tell if this is a bug or the intended feature.
 

On 2020-08-28 at 11:08 AM, Rozrin said:

The Survival Instinct buff seems to take priority on the Sly Devolution buff when the Vulpaphyla is downed so you always have the stronger verison.

That definitely doesn't seem intended. 

 

On 2020-08-28 at 11:08 AM, Rozrin said:

During my Hydron round his Survival Instinct stopped working at some point. It might be due to leveling up but that's just a wild guess.

I noticed that too. It breaks and the only way to get it working again is if the pet dies and revives as either the sentinel or the "fox", 

[Colyeses]

On 2020-08-30 at 3:44 PM, kaotis said:

The other 2 foxes are just reskins.

Same for the infested dogs , reskins just to say there are 3.

This update should have had only 2 pets not so much reskins of filler content...

That is dead wrong. The Panzer and Crescent Vulpaphyla offer different abilities, with the Crescent being decent, and the Panzer being very strong.

The Sly Vulpaphyla is just a much weaker pick. As mentioned, the buff toggles off when you need it, and the base effect is pretty awful too. In my opinion, a better idea would be for it to give the evasion buff while you reload, and make it last until your next attack, to give it some semblance of a purpose. 

But a % chance to get hit anyway makes it trash tier no matter how you apply it. Evasion is a terrible idea.

And I don't know if this has been fixed since I got the other Vulpas, but the visual effect of a Sly's evasion buff makes it incredibly hard to see things when aiming, and is extremely overweight in terms of rendering, causing framedrops.

Overall advice: get a Panzer. Sly is awful.

[Kaotis]

En 5/9/2020 a las 8:15, Colyeses dijo:

That is dead wrong. The Panzer and Crescent Vulpaphyla offer different abilities, with the Crescent being decent, and the Panzer being very strong.

We got different power level standards then. The companions by themselves do really low damage and the status proc is rather low for the actual nr of attacks they do (that or mine are on the low IQ side of the evolution pool) .

I'll admit one thing do, the fact that the foxes (i refuse to call them kavats because kavats are supposed to eat infestation ...) can resurrect is a nice QoL effect and the dogs should have had it as well (all our companions for that mater... ).

En 5/9/2020 a las 8:15, Colyeses dijo:

The Sly Vulpaphyla is just a much weaker pick. As mentioned, the buff toggles off when you need it, and the base effect is pretty awful too. In my opinion, a better idea would be for it to give the evasion buff while you reload, and make it last until your next attack, to give it some semblance of a purpose. 

But a % chance to get hit anyway makes it trash tier no matter how you apply it. Evasion is a terrible idea.

Your idea of tying the mechanic to something else is good and probably what they will do some time in the next 1-2 months.

The thing is that % to not get hit is a good buff, let me explain :

Let's say 1 hit is 1 hp down, in a hypothetical 100 hits we would get hit by only 60 of them (rng be willing) if we have adaptation this 60 will ~ 14,1 (supposing the damage type is the same) without the buff we would be looking at 18,2 damage . 

The fact of the mater is that this buff is better suited for tank frames that won't die after first hit.

[Colyeses]

14 hours ago, kaotis said:

We got different power level standards then. The companions by themselves do really low damage and the status proc is rather low for the actual nr of attacks they do (that or mine are on the low IQ side of the evolution pool) .

Mine doesn't attack that often, but when it does, it generally kills whatever it hits, at least on starchart levels.

14 hours ago, kaotis said:

The thing is that % to not get hit is a good buff, let me explain :

Let's say 1 hit is 1 hp down, in a hypothetical 100 hits we would get hit by only 60 of them (rng be willing) if we have adaptation this 60 will ~ 14,1 (supposing the damage type is the same) without the buff we would be looking at 18,2 damage . 

The fact of the mater is that this buff is better suited for tank frames that won't die after first hit.

That makes it a pretty bad buff though, since this basically means it's at its best when it's not needed, and when you DO need it, it doesn't work. 

[Kaotis]

hace 7 horas, Colyeses dijo:

That makes it a pretty bad buff though, since this basically means it's at its best when it's not needed, and when you DO need it, it doesn't work. 

In the state it is rn ye definently 

[DrakeWurrum]

I think if the Vulpaphyla mods could be used on ANY of them, like with Moas from Fortuna (and the same with Predasites and their mods), this maybe would be less of an issue.

[selig_fay]

On 8/30/2020 at 4:44 PM, kaotis said:

The other 2 foxes are just reskins.

Same for the infested dogs , reskins just to say there are 3.

This update should have had only 2 pets not so much reskins of filler content...

Well, I found the fox who spreads spores like saryn very funny and helpful. This is almost a guaranteed virus on opponents, so you can set a different status in the weapon. Well it also works very well with synth deconstruct.

Overall, this is the only useful new pet. True, I have not tried dogs yet.