Sentinel survivability is becoming a serious problem.

[(XBOX)GodMasterTP]

On 2021-02-12 at 7:34 AM, Dualice said:

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! ^_^

Making them revive is not a fix, it's just adding a stupid cooldown to their effects, and considering enemies at endurance runs can pretty much insta-kill them, you just won't have enough time to benefit from their effects.

They should be immortal, there is not argument against that, end of discussion.

[(XBOX)GodMasterTP]

On 2021-02-17 at 9:54 PM, p_silveira said:

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 **

That's what people don't understand. Pets have to be immortal, because if not, they're pretty much useless. 

A revival mechanic is still useless because it just puts the sentinel into a loop.

[Nok-Rntha]

Always has been, but it's only gotten worse. I don't expect it to change in any good way in the near future or ever.
Haphazardly pushing out content and then forgetting about it is how things go.

[Steel_Rook]

I say what I've said for years - make pets invulnerable. Simple as that. Despite what some "git gud" types will tell you, players have very limited control over their own pets' survivability in combat. You can place Health/Shield/Armour links on them and that's about it. Beyond that point, Beast type companions will run off and get themselves killed while Sentinels will just melt from collateral damage. There's no gameplay inherent in it. It's just a penalty for the sake of having a penalty - a way to deny players their Vaccum/Fetch and their Animal Instinct. We don't command or control our pets, we have exceedingly limited means of defending them - might as well strip the whole system and call it a day.

Failing that, just give the Vulpaphyla revive ability to all of the pets. They die, they stay dead for 20-30 seconds, they live again. Regen mods can serve to reduce the duration they spend dead, so they don't need to be deprecated. This way, "git gud" types can keep pretending there's some kind of skilful gameplay to keeping our pets alive while the rest of us can move on without the added frustration of permanently losing QoL features until the end of the mission.

And get rid of the damn "Loyalty" stat while you're at it, too.

[CephalonCarnage]

Invulnerability does seem to be the way - but there's no threat to them in that case, so there needs to be a penalty of some sort to make up for the 2 new mod slots you'll get.

I would say that invulnerability for a sentinel is essential, but as they die rather than disappear, they go into a passive state where they only use passive mods - such as animal instinct and vacuum (ie no more attacks), and even then possibly at a reduce rate or range that slowly comes back until they pop their little heads out of their magic immunity bubble and return to normal. That way, there's still risk they die that you should be concerned about, and the opportunity to add mods that keep them alive for longer, and also mods that return them to full health quicker.

So far I have seen players say in chat "don't revive me, I want my carrier back". Deliberately dying should not be a choice players make to get sentinels back!

[Nira]

Nice to see the discussion still going. My suggestion was but one of many, maybe invulnerability is the way to go!

Just good to have a dialogue on it that hopefully is noticed by the developers :)