Pets having health adds nothing to gameplay.

[Gahrzerkire]

I dont want to have to revive a wandering idiot every 5 seconds so that i can pick up loot. What exactly is empowering about having a dead pet every 5 seconds. It adds nothing to gameplay having to revive a pet make them immortal already, you literally just released one that is immortal and i am willing to bet ANYTHING its one of the most used pets in the game now. I literally named mine immortal vacuum. vacuum being the number one reason to have a pet in the first place, if you dont believe me try playing warframe without vacuum, if you say its easy go to steel path where drops matter. 

Most I am asking the question what is lost if pets are immortal? and is what is lost something that players like in the first place? 

Does anyone like reviving their pets? anyone? does anyone actively think it makes gameplay more engaging?

What exactly is overpowered about a pet not dying? 
Answer to this used to be infinite vacuum but that is in the game now, and we are back with the old everyone runs carrier conundrum.

[XRosenkreuz]

Should probably throw some mods on that puppy so it doesn't keep falling over. Hell, there's even a couple that let you heal it at frankly absurd levels. Can't even remember the last time one of mine kicked it.

 

[Venus-Venera]

vor 2 Minuten schrieb XRosenkreuz:

Should probably throw some mods on that puppy so it doesn't keep falling over. Hell, there's even a couple that let you heal it at frankly absurd levels. Can't even remember the last time one of mine kicked it.

 

no! its bug or what ever...

even tanked panzer with best mods dies sometimes in trash missions against lvl 30

[Venus-Venera]

vor 10 Minuten schrieb Reaverhart:

I dont want to have to revive a wandering idiot every 5 seconds so that i can pick up loot. What exactly is empowering about having a dead pet every 5 seconds. It adds nothing to gameplay having to revive a pet make them immortal already, you literally just released one that is immortal and i am willing to bet ANYTHING its one of the most used pets in the game now. I literally named mine immortal vacuum. vacuum being the number one reason to have a pet in the first place, if you dont believe me try playing warframe without vacuum, if you say its easy go to steel path where drops matter. 

wait till next hotfixes. this is bug and was reported already

[Gahrzerkire]

1 minute ago, XRosenkreuz said:

Should probably throw some mods on that puppy so it doesn't keep falling over. Hell, there's even a couple that let you heal it at frankly absurd levels. Can't even remember the last time one of mine kicked it.

 

what you mean the thing that forces me to play melee to keep my pet alive? im good. I prefer shooting things, melee is boring. would be healthier if they just didnt die. what exactly is overpowered about a pet just not dying?

[Soy77]

I'm all about last of us and god of war (ellie and atreus), but apparently DE haven't catch up with gaming, most of warframe are just huge escort missions. Escorting prisoners, escorting stationary coffin, escorting huge drills, escorting bait stations, escorting loid, escorting tanks with your shield...

Somebody let DE in on gaming's biggest secret: gamers hates escort missions.

[Corvid]

Friendly reminder that if a crewship is destroyed with you inside it, your companion will be killed through no fault of your own.

Yeah, I still don't see why quality of life functions are tied to a thing that can be killed independently of the player. Sentinels in particular have gotten the rough end of this treatment, considering how common rapid-fire AOE enemies have become over the last few years.

[0_The_F00l]

You don't get vaccum 100% of the time.

Any time the vulp is in larva stage all the beast mods are disabled.

I think this acceptable , they really should expand all the companions to have this immortal mechanic.

[NinjaZeku]

7 minutes ago, 0_The_F00l said:

You don't get vaccum 100% of the time.

Any time the vulp is in larva stage all the beast mods are disabled.

Is that actually true?

Going by Wiki comments, Mods like Fetch and Animal Instinct stay active while in Larva form (as they IMO should).

8 minutes ago, 0_The_F00l said:

they really should expand all the companions to have this immortal mechanic

Agreed. But with support stuff like Vacuum etc staying active all the time :P

Have Mods for Bleedout / stuff like Regen changed to instead affect how long the Companion is in a "recovery" state,
during which your Companion's offensive capabilities are lowered if not deactivated,
so there's still reasons to mod for Health etc / use a Frame that can protect and / or heal.

[0_The_F00l]

7 minutes ago, NinjaZeku said:

Is that actually true?

Going by Wiki comments, Mods like Fetch and Animal Instinct stay active while in Larva form (as they IMO should).

Unless they "fixed" it in an update.

I haven't really been paying attention to resource pickups recently.

Could test and confirm later.

But I like the conversion of the bleedout mods.

But I don't think offensive mods are all that effective honestly , the difference in damage output of companions to regular weapons is too large. They are better as pure utility.

[_R_o_g_u_e_]

11 minutes ago, 0_The_F00l said:

Unless they "fixed" it in an update.

I haven't really been paying attention to resource pickups recently.

Could test and confirm later.

But I like the conversion of the bleedout mods.

But I don't think offensive mods are all that effective honestly , the difference in damage output of companions to regular weapons is too large. They are better as pure utility.

It’s even a common practice to remove all combat/ targeting mods to reduce the likelihood of losing your radar/ vacuum.

[NinjaZeku]

18 minutes ago, 0_The_F00l said:

I don't think offensive mods are all that effective honestly , the difference in damage output of companions to regular weapons is too large.

Sure your Companion isn't just gonna (quickly) clear Steel Path missions for you, but for "normal" content,
a well-modded e.g. Deth Machine Rifle / Deconstructor Prime isn't to be underestimated.

Even ignoring damage though, the debuffing / CC options (procs) you can get are also considerable,
and it does make a difference if they're not available for a time.

[0_The_F00l]

3 minutes ago, NinjaZeku said:

 

Even ignoring damage though, the debuffing / CC options (procs) you can get are also considerable,
and it does make a difference if they're not available for a time.

True , that's why I believe the "time out" is enough of a detriment and the whole reviving and needing primed regen is pointless where players prefer to lose their own revives than go though the mission without it.

[Chroia]

6 hours ago, NinjaZeku said:

Is that actually true?

afaik has always been, but is certainly still true as of this morning.
Though you sometimes still retain radar and vacuum if you stay within a certain distance of the spot your vulp died.

-----

Pets have 10 mod slots for survivability, utility and offence.
Weapons have 8 mod slots.
The pet elemental damage mods are A) rare and B) terrible.

And survivability's a must, so you're left to choose between offence and utility.

Also,
The only player survivability options that benefit Companions from are straight stats, complete hard CC and Invis.
Mobility? lol, Pet's 2 rooms away trying to kill a Hyekka Master.
Defensive buff, e.g. Iron/Mesmer Skin? Dead Companion.
DR buff, e.g. Shatter-Shield, Null Star? Dead Companion.
Adaptation? Dead Companion.

Sentinels at least stay near so, and so benefit reliably from AoE defensive buffs (e.g. Vex Armor, dark Eclipse) (though this opens them to proximity soft-kills from AoEs), but that's countered by the fact that they can't be revived.

tl;dr-
Pets need to be rethought, and then reworked.

@0_The_F00l
Agreed.

[(PSN)ErydisTheLucario]

Panzer Vulpaphyla is a good alternative to...any other pet honestly. They're immortal. If I'm not farming resources with my smeeta, I have my panzer 99% of the time. Should one or two pets have immortality? No, it's honestly not fair, and all other pets should be looked over so they can reach the same usefulness as panzer.

[vanaukas]

I laugh a lot when eeryone talks about panzer (viral), but all vulpaphylas has the "inmortal" mechanic.

[(XBOX)Sir Sponks Alot]

Pets having health does add something, pain.

[Teridax68]

I'm in complete agreement with the OP. Putting aside how Vacuum still ought to be made universal and baseline to our frames and Spoiler Mode, it makes no sense for companions to have health bars. Health bars exist to measure the amount of mistakes the player is allowed to make by getting hit and/or failing to heal, with 0 health being the threshold. This can work for our own warframes, because we have full control over how they move, how to heal them, etc., and could even work for competently-designed objectives we're able to reasonably protect (which does not describe all of the objectives with health bars in Warframe). This does not work for our companions, however, because we don't have any actual means of controlling them. If a pet Kubrow gets its AI in a muddle, wanders off, and dies, that's not on the player. If a Sentinel gets blown up due to gratuitous, room-filling AoE, that's not on the player. If a pet MOA simply takes too many shots from a high-level enemy too quickly and dies on the spot, that's not on the player. Warframe isn't and shouldn't be this constant escort mission where we're fighting to keep our pet alive, particularly as our companions are there to offer quality-of-life convenience in addition to some nifty utility. The sooner companions are made immortal and have their health bars removed, the better.

[Gahrzerkire]

3 hours ago, (XBOX)Sir Sponks Alot said:

Pets having health does add something, pain.

exactly it adds nothing to gameplay. they slapped a health bar on pets becuase pets are alive and in video games living things have health bars. S#&$ty ass #*!%ing reason to add health bars to pets. 

 

take em off. 

[Gahrzerkire]

3 hours ago, (XBOX)TyeGoo said:

They're not invulnerable because de thinks their damage is relevant. Which it's not. I don't even equip weapons on sentinels and I don't use any dmg, cc, Stat links or anything the like on my pets or sentinels, it's literally only ehp stuff and they still die. 

So while I'm already 'sacrificing' the dmg, there's literally no payoff. 

I'd make it like this, create a mod that makes all pets/sentinels invulnerable, but this mod disables ALL dmg and link mods, while sentinels get the weapon slot removed. This includes augments that increase player dmg. (I think only shade has this but idk, haven't used sentinels in..) 

this is the definition of a bandaid mod, and there is no reason to "compromise" with the developers. they made a stupid design decision and it shouldnt be in the game. they should change it. pets shouldnt have health bars period. their damage is completely irrelevant.

The only useful stuff pets have that is useful beyond vacuum, from a damage perspective is the armour shred Kavat ability as it prioritizes high value targets, the viral on the new infested doges, and cats eye. everything else is literal trash and there is no reason for it to be in the game. 

[ebrl]

This wasn't really a major problem before this update, which completely broke pet AI. Plenty of frames can either provide durability through link mods or protect pets with damage reduction abilities. It'd be nice to have pet durability be decoupled from frame choice, but honestly, most pets that aren't a Panzer or one of the regular Kavats being downright useless is a much more serious issue.

[sunderthefirmament]

13 hours ago, XRosenkreuz said:

Should probably throw some mods on that puppy so it doesn't keep falling over. Hell, there's even a couple that let you heal it at frankly absurd levels. Can't even remember the last time one of mine kicked it.

 

Even if you dedicate as many slots as possible to maxed out defensive/survivability mods on your pet, it will still die.  It will die a lot, especially on content at sortie 3 and above.  Pets die because we, as players, move too fast.  We leave them behind, and they resort to standing in harm's way like a brainless idiot.  Warframe's mobility system is one of the best things about this game, yet our pets die when we take full advantage of it, forcing us to slow down if we want to enjoy vacuum (and likely loot radar) for the rest of the mission.

 

I agree with the OP.  Pets don't need to have health.  Neither do sentinels, especially with the absurd newish Corpus AOE supra crewmen around to annihilate them the second they lose the silver health bar from their last regen.  It feels really crappy to invest a massive amount of forma into a pet, loading it up with survivability mods, only to have it fall over every few seconds because I wasn't mashing E nonstop.

 

I suggest removing their health and refunding the endo/credits for those mods that will be phased out of the game.  If that's too much, then keep the health and give them at least 2 to 4 minutes of invulnerability on a successful revive, along with adding an Adaptation effect to their armor mods.  For sentinels, massively increase the invulnerability time after Regen revives them, then add the ability to restore a Regen charge for every 10-20 enemies killed by the Warframe or something.

[Yamazuki]

15 hours ago, Reaverhart said:

What exactly is overpowered about a pet not dying? 

Nothing, because if it really mattered, DE would've nerfed the loadouts that already make companions never die, especially given one of the most played Warframes achieves this. It's also not as if Warframes are "balanced' [lol] around whether they make companions effectively immortal or not. They even buffed Wisp's ability to keep companions alive back when they made the changes to healing objectives.

The only reason they have HP is because DE intentionally removes functions that are standard in other games to pad out the modding system as a form of "progression" or to shove solutions behind grind. There are the mods specific to different types of companions, the aura, the arcane, the companions on Deimos, and who knows what else in the future.

[ebrl]

37 minutes ago, Yamazuki said:

The only reason they have HP is because DE intentionally removes functions that are standard in other games to pad out the modding system as a form of "progression" or to shove solutions behind grind. There are the mods specific to different types of companions, the aura, the arcane, the companions on Deimos, and who knows what else in the future.

Well, if there was nothing to grind for, there would be absolutely nothing to do in Warframe, would there? The game is just a collectathon with extra steps.

[Yamazuki]

3 minutes ago, ebrl said:

Well, if there was nothing to grind for, there would be absolutely nothing to do in Warframe, would there? The game is just a collectathon with extra steps.

I would rather be collecting something useful, rather than something useless. I'm never going to use Shepherd or that other Arcane.

I don't even care if getting unkillable companions was something I had to grind for, it's better than the constant band-aid mods/arcanes or the being forced into using specific Companions or Warframes to achieve it. Without having to waste so many slots on surviving/reviving/sustain or an entire companion slot, they could just release interesting companions and mods to grind for.