Sentinel survivability is becoming a serious problem.

[Nira]

It's probably something that extends to companions in general, but sentinels are the sidekicks I use the most, by a long shot, so here goes my two cents!

I love sentinels. They offer so many nifty and useful bits of kit to aid us in our missions, whether it's providing loot + enemy radar, hoovering up resources so we don't have to run around fetching them, do codex scans, replenish our ammo reserves... BUT. After a certain point, there is just no feasible way to keep them alive. Primed Regen is nice but it's not an adequate fix, especially for endless missions where enemy damage consistenly ramps up and sentinel instagibs happen ad nauseum. For things like Arbitrations and Steel Path, you can just forget about it.

So, my proposed solution? Take a leaf out of Venari's book. When the sentinel takes lethal damage, they go poof like usual, but can be resummoned after x period of time. Now, where might that leave mods like Regen and Primed Regen, you may ask? Well, I've even thought of that one too... those mods simply reduce the amount of time the sentinel is poofed and allow the user to bring them back in to the fight sooner.

I know some folk speak of just making all companions invulnerable but that would render all the health/shield/armour mods useless and could potentially be more of a balance issue?

Just my thoughts, thanks for listening! ^_^

[HunterDigi]

Are you talking about manual resummon like venari or automatic respawn after a while, like dijinn's mod?

 

I'm not really a fan of the venari system either, I never notice when it dies until I actually need its effects, like in index where I use khora to pickup points more lax.

I suggest instead that sentinels go down like other pets, they'd drop down from your shoulder onto the floor and be revived with use.

 

Additionally, dead pets should all be revived when you force-revive yourself, right now only sentinels are revived with you but cats/dogs/moas are not, would make glitches that make them unreviveable less annoying (they fall through the map or simply vanish from existence).

[chaotea]

I just thought what makes more sense is that all sentinal revive after 5 min. Once dead, any Health orbs you pick up that dont heal you (because your at max hp) go towards reducing the timer by 30 seconds each.

 

This way revives still have a place in the build, being an instant revive. And it gives health orbs some more functions over just healing.

[Scar.brother.help.me]

I am up for any sentinel improvements so whatever you guys suggest. 

[(PSN)c1234567890alvi]

I think a good start overall would be more survivability (Link Mods, evasion mods or an adaptation mod that rises the resistance slower, but is permanent, so the sentinel gets harder to kill the longer the mission goes on e.g.) and more common methods to heal and protect hem (like Magus Repair or Nova's Null Star working on them as well). If they die, when they are only glared at (like it is now) even the best revival system is useless. So I think if the player could put a little extra effort in there to protect them, like modding them accordingly or using abilities on them, that would be nice.

The best companions are those you don't have to worry about too much, but are always there when you need them. So, maybe they shouldn't die at all, but maybe if they would have died receive some kind of penalty. I think an ability cooldown system would fit well here for a penalty.
Meaning you can activate certain abilities manually and when they are used, there is a CD. And the more often the Companion dies the longer the cooldown gets, so that if you take no care of your Companion you can still use their abilities...once. But then have to be more careful for a longer period of time. Would definitely get rid of RNG and bring a certain tactical element to the game.

Do I get out of the way earlier and protect my companion and have it's abilities more often at my disposal or do I just mindlessly slay enemies, let my comp die over and over again and maybe be able to use a certain ability only once in hour.

Regen could still work the same and Djinn's Reawaken would shorten the CD every few minutes again. Sacrifice wouldn't destroy the Sentinel but would permanently disable your Sentinels abilities and you should be able to use it manually (Do I really use my Sentinel to revive me and have no more Sentinel abilities or do Revive myself and sacrifice Affinity and one of my revives?). Or just limit the use to one time per mission and increase the ability CD. Self-destruct mods would have to be limited a bit as well, maybe a CD on these as well?

Anyway those are my solutions, maybe someone else has smth better?

[ShogunGunshow]

Armor-link and Life-link mods would go a long way.

Then maybe buff the arcane so that if your sentinel is dead, instead of healing it for 300, it'll revive it.

[(NSW)JigsJosh]

Interesting that you feel that sentinels have a surviving problem. I kinda feel the opposite. Sentinels survive a lot better than all other companions for a couple reasons. They are always right next to you to receive heals and protection from killing enemies close by coupled with their second life from the Regen mod. 

I think there is a problem though which is how people use them. A lot of people prefer to use melee for example because the community considers it meta, but often forget that the time it takes to close the distance with an enemy is time the enemy could use to shoot and possibly hit your sentinel. Also another issue is that people get lazy with tanks and forget to protect their sentinels. Of course, you can face tank a bombard but your sentinel is gonna pay for it. The boon of them being close to you and being more easily protected can also be a curse because of enemies with weapons that have radial damage.

I'm also a player that prefers rifles and most of the time I use sentinels with powerful frames like Saryn, so that is just my experience. With my play style I usually don't have an issue, but I can definitely see why some would.

[UltraRareSloth]

My idea is add innate evasion stat, increased life or armor would be nice. They die real fast when face a supra in corpus hands.

Also add a mod to heal them like Pack Leader is good too.

[Oorel]

There are many ways to adress it, a simple one could be for the mods [Regen] and [Primed Regen] to not be limited by charges at all. [Regen] could bring them back at 20% hp, while [Primed Regen] brings them back at full health. A limiting factor could maybe be downtime once they are brought back.

In general Im not sure its worth it to have downsides to sentinels, such as them dying, being disabled in any way actually. There isn't anything you can do as a player to avoid them being destroyed. Even with Link mods its only a matter of time until your sentinel will just be dead.

Maybe the solution should just be that they dont take damage, ever. The way the game is currently set up, its not reasonable to have this system where they aggro enemies, take damage and die if players cant prevent it through any action at all (being invisible does kind of work, but AoE's still happen).

[(XBOX)Hyperion Rexx]

Just make them invulnerable for goodness sake.   I don't see how doing so would affect "balance".   The new pets are essentially immortal now anyway.

We have no control over their survivability except a cple of health mods.   We have no way of keeping them alive during missions, sure, they're close and don't have wonky AI like pets, but they're essentially on their own.

[Vaml77]

sentinels must be invencible....kuva lichs, bombards, nox, eidolons,  spiders, flame trowers kill sentinels with 1 shot......

Something must change....!

[tantanoid]

If the reason sentinels don't currently revive is due to balance I have a few suggestions to offset this:

• Require a new orbiter segment
• Require an arcane to be equipped
• Add a new landing craft and revive the sentinel when the air support charge is used

[-Bluhman-]

Sentinels really should just become the companion option for people who don't want to have to babysit an actual companion. Heck, that's kind of what they are in the early/midgame, and during that time they basically are providing a set of 'exilius' styled buffs to you - so that you don't have to waste time individually picking up each piece of ammo/loot, or taking out your scanner manually, or having to figure out how to fit in both loot-detector and enemy radar at the same time on a build that needs all the other numbers it needs.

They just really don't have the tools available to scale their survivability up into the late game. Djinn's slowly but surely becoming the Sentinel I use the most because it's the only thing that can possibly reincarnate itself through all the massive eidolon and profit-taker explosions I keep transferencing through. The sentinel surviving was never an option. Meanwhile our lovely predacites and kavats get mods that can net them around 7k HP with the right setup. Sure, they can be the late-game answer to providing utility during an explosive battle, but they still kind of confuse players with the whole 'X is Down!' message constantly fooling me into thinking someone important like a player died.

Throwing my own suggestion in: Sentinel weapon that's just a forcefield or barrier deployed in front or around the sentinel. It should totally be a viable option to exchange their applicability as a possible combatant or source of damage for just making them pure, consistent utility.

[p_silveira]

On 2021-02-12 at 8:41 AM, HunterDigi said:

dijinn's mod

The Djinn experience in higher levels:

1 - It's alive
2 - Dies in 5 seconds from one hit from a Bombard's attack
3 - Stay dead and useless for 90 seconds
4 - Respawns
5 - It's alive
6 - Dies in 5 seconds from one hit from a Bombard's attack

** repeat **

[bubbabenali]

It already would be a blessing if thy would get the companion/ Moa survivability and link mods. 

[Crabopoulos-Michael]

Totally agree, since I got the panzer vulpaphyla I don't even consider sentinels.

[HunterDigi]

15 hours ago, p_silveira said:

The Djinn experience in higher levels:

I know, that's why I'm not a fan of it, it's just bad. Let sentinels get down and be revived manually!!1 :}

[Famecans]

This needs to be reworked for respawn death companions,

it costs energy and needs to be more useful:

Masters Summons | WARFRAME Wiki | Fandom

 

 

off topic:

If someone wants to take a peek at my suggestive topic of mods, there are significant improvements for companions,

a mod to correct chroma self damage, mods to balance all arrows and much more...

Some Mods Sugestions - General - Warframe Forums

[ontorfel]

I wunna unkillable ScanSat

[(XBOX)Shodian]

The reason sentinels keep dying so fast is players keep going head first into groups of enemies. Try not engaging in close combat if you can. They'll survive a lot longer than expected.

[Yrkul]

30 minutes ago, (XBOX)Shodian said:

Try not engaging in close combat

 

[(XBOX)Shodian]

18 minutes ago, Yrkul said:

 

Okay? And? If you don't want your sentinel to die, don't go in the line of fire. It's as simple as that.

[Vahenir]

One potential solution here could be a new "attack" mod that rather than make the sentinel attack just renders it immortal. Further downsides can be added such as making the sentinel unable to use abilities or unable to heal the owner etc.

[Zeddypanda]

Remember when sentinels had more armour than your typical Warframe? Zeddy remembers.

[ontorfel]