BLU Chroma’s Companions 2.0 Suggestions : Addressing companion survivability to stop playing the “Stop fun and action every 5 seconds to revive the companion”, Reworking bad and outdated precepts, and Command wheel to give better control of companions.

[DrivaMain]

Warning : Wall of text ahead.
 

With the topic of the upcoming augments and companions being a hot topic at the moment. Now it’s a good time for me to give my version of companions 2.0. Companions as you all know are terrible in almost every scenario except a few outliers, They are maintenance heavy for such little gain, and too many band-aid solutions applied to them. Now the background is out the way, let’s start with the suggestions. 
 

1. Companion maintenance are completely removed. 
No more DNA decay, no more loyalty. They only add unnecessary tedium for such little gain. Companion interactions in The Orbiter can stay for flavor. DE themselves has confirmed that their companions rework will include this. As for the nutrio segment I have two options on what to do with it :

• Option 1 : Remove the segment and refund the crafting cost.
• Option 2 : Replace existing functions with new ones. It could be reduced incubation time for example.

 

2. Removal of companion permanent death in gameplay.

Now here’s the hot topic. Companion permanent death is annoying because you lose access to QoL mods. For beast companions, constantly reviving downed companions adds nothing engaging to gameplay. These needs to be removed. I will give 2 options on how we approach this.

2.1. Complete Invulnerability (Option 1)

Pretty straightforward approach. Remove their health and shields. Now they can’t take damage at all. Link-Mods are completely removed while refunding the mod upgrade cost back to the players. Survivability mods, Reawaken, Vulpaphyla devolution mods are removed and cost are refunded.

2.2. Automatic Respawn (Option 2)

Ripping a page from Djinn and Vulpaphylas, companions can revive themselves after receiving fatal damage. Here is how the mechanic works while keeping game balance :

2.2.1.1. When Companions are downed they enter a “recovering” state that will last for 60 seconds.

2.2.1.2. During the recovering state they cannot attack, cannot use their abilities, and QoL mods like vacuum are deactivated QoL mods effectiveness are reduced by 50%. So mods like Animal Instinct will give you +15 loot radar and +9 enemy radar when the companion are in the recovering state.

Link-Mods can stay if option 2 is implemented. Link-Mods are also removed. Now players are given a choice in building their companions, build for longer uptime or willing to sacrifice some uptime if they wishes to not build around survivability. Some existing mods and arcanes must change to be able to adapt to this automatic respawn change :

2.2.2.1. Regen (Sentinel) : -2/-4/-6/-8/-10/-12 seconds recovery time.

2.2.2.2. Primed Regen (Sentinel) : -2/-4/-6/-8/-10/-12/-14/-16/-18/-20/-22 seconds recovery time.

2.2.2.3. Enhanced Vitality : +40%/+80%/+120%/+160%/+200%/+240%/+280%/+320%/+360%/+400%/+440% Health. Now also adds -1/-2/-3/-4/-5/-6 seconds of recovery time.

2.2.2.4. Calculated Redirection :  +40%/+80%/+120%/+160%/+200%/+240%/+280%/+320%/+360%/+400%/+440% shields. adds -1/-2/-3/-4/-5/-6 seconds of recovery time.

2.2.2.5. Reawaken (Djinn) : -10/-20/-30/-40/-50 seconds of recovery time. Cannot be equipped with Regen or Primed Regen. 

2.2.2.6. All Vulpaphyla variants devolution mod : Functionality stays. Adds -10/-20/-30/-40 seconds recovery time.

2.2.2.7. Arcane Bodyguard : On Kill : Reduces companion recovery cooldown by 1/2/3/4/5 seconds.

2.2.2.8. Repair Dispensary (Protea) : Deploy a special dispensary by holding the ability button that revives companion of a player within 14 meters every 30 seconds.

3. General Companion Survivability Buffs (For Option 2 : Automatic Respawn)

With the alarming increase of impossible for a companion to dodge AoE attacks and staggers that significantly reduce their effectiveness in combat, examples are Void Sinks, Jackal laser barrier, Grineer Napalm’s Nightwatch Napalm effect. Companions needs immunity to some of this mechanics that are meant for a human player :

• Companions are now immune to all AoE attacks, be it from environment or enemy.
• Companions are now immune to staggers and knockdown.

Companions now need to take a direct hit be it for either hitscan or projectiles to able to take damage. With the stagger and knockdown immunity companions can now execute their precepts and attacks smoothly without interruptions.

4. All Companion Stat Changes (For Option 2 : Automatic Respawns)

All companion stats needs buffs across the board. It’s hilarious that fragile Kubrows have 50 base armor. Do note that these stats and unranked and unmodded

• Sahasa Kubrow : 300 base health, 300 armor, 150 base shields.
• Huras Kubrow : 150 base health, 150 armor, 300 base shields.
• Sunika Kubrow : 325 base health, 350 armor, 125 base shields.
• Helminth Charger : 600 base health, 0 base shields, 450 base armor, +10 base health regen.
• Vizier Predasite : 400 base health, 50 base shields, 400 base armor, +5 base health regen.
• Medjay Predasite : 400 base health, 50 base shields, 400 base armor, +5 base health regen.
• Pharaoh Predasite : 400 base health, 50 base shields, 400 base armor, +5 base health regen.
• Adarza Kavat : 200 base health, 225 base shields, 250 armor.
• Smeeta Kavat : 200 base health, 225 base shields, 250 armor.
• Sly Vulpaphyla : 180 base health, 180 base shields, 200 armor, +3 base health regen.
• Crescent Vulpaphyla : 180 base health, 180 base shields, 200 armor, +3 base health regen.
• Panzer Vulpaphyla : 180 base health, 180 base shields, 200 armor, +3 base health regen.
• Diriga : health and shields remains the same, 300 base armor
• Dethcube/Dethcube Prime : health stays the same, 150 base shields, 250 base armor.
• Djinn : health stays the same, 125 base shields, 275 armor, +2 base health regen.
• Oxylus : health stays the same, 150 base shields, 250 base armor.
• Helios/Helios Prime : health stays the same, 150 base shields, 250 base armor.
• Shade : Health stays the same, 100 base shields, 300 base armor.
• Prisma Shade : health stays the same, 100 base shields, 300 base armor.
• Taxon : 150 health, 300 shields, 200 base armor.
• Wyrm : health stays the same, 225 shields, 225 base armor.
• Wyrm Prime : health stays the same, shields stays the same, 225 base armor.
• MOA : Gilded stats only. Possible base health ranges are 100-300 health, possible base shield ranges are 100-300 shields, and possible base armor ranges are 150-300 armor.

 

 

 

5. Companion Modding.

The addition of the plexus makes me think “What if we apply that to companions?”. Companion modding screen has a second tab that will house companion precepts. It will have 6 slots that will be given the number 1, 2, 3,4, 5, and 6 that dictates the priority of the precept the companion AI will use in combat. Main tab companion mod slots now reduced from 10 to 8 to accommodate this change.

Beast Companions will now receive the same treatment as Sentinels. Beast arsenal UI are given a weapon tab that houses their weapons. DE can uses this opportunity to release beast companion melee weapons like for example razor sharp claws made out of Rubedo. But for now, let’s call their existing weapons “Claws”. The stats will be.

• 30% Critical Chance.
• 30% Status Chance.
• 3.0x Critical Damage Multiplier.
• 1 Meter Range.
• 1.0 Follow Through.
• 300 slash damage.

Current beast damage mods can now be slotted to the beast melee weapon.

6. Companion Precept Changes.

Some of the companion precepts are extremely outdated or not very practical in the current horde shooter META. Here are my proposed changes. 

• Unleashed (Sunika Kubrow) : Given this only works on Capture Targets this mod needs to be completely reworked. The new function will be : The Kubrow periodically entered an enraged state for 10 seconds allowing it to take heavy punishment (temporary invulnerability) and Taunt enemies around it, forcing them to attack the Kubrow. While enraged The Kubrow gains +100% attack speed, +100% movement speed, and +100% total damage (20 seconds cooldown).
• Neutralized (Chesa Kubrow) : The Kubrow bites the hands of 10 enemies in a 10 meter radius in quick succession causing them to drop their weapons (15 seconds cooldown).
• Retrieve (Chesa Kubrow) : The Kubrow now has 100% chance to scavenge additional loot from 10 fallen enemies every 20 seconds within 30 meters. The cooldown starts after the kubrow has scavenged 10 enemies.
• Proboscis (Helminth Charger) : The charger latches out it’s 10 tongues pulling 10 enemies within 20 meters of it’s field of view every 20 seconds. Dealing 100 toxin damage with 100% status chance. Damage Scales based on equipped companion weapon mods.
• Acidic Spittle (Vizier Predasite) : Every 10 seconds, spits tars at 5 enemies within 20 meters. Dealing 120 corrosive damage with 100% status chance and blinding them, exposing them to finishers. Damage scales based on equipped companion weapon mods.
• Paralytic Spores (Medjay Predasite) : Functionality stays. Charge Damage scales based on equipped companion weapon mods.
• Draining Bite (Vasca Kavat) : Functionality stays. Drain damage scales based on equipped companion weapon mods
• Reflect (Adarza Kavat) : The Kavat has 40% chance to reflect damage back to an enemy. Amplifying it by 1000% with 100% status chance.
• Shockwave actuators (MOA) : Moa readies a shockwave every 10s. Enemies hit by the shockwave are suspended mid air.
• Stasis Field (MOA) : Current Functionality stays. Allies take 60% less damage from hitscan weapons.
• Hard Engage (MOA) : Current functionality stays. Moa melee weapon receives a stat buff : 30% Crit Chance, 30% Status Chance, 1.5 meter range, 200 impact damage. Melee damage hits always stagger enemies.
• Security Override (MOA) : Moa can auto hack consoles over 2 seconds (5 seconds cooldown), Hack basic robotic enemies to turn against their allies for 15 seconds (10 second cooldown), Hack cameras to turn against their allies for 15 seconds (10 seconds), Hack turrets to turn against their allies for 15 seconds (10 second cooldown).
• Hunt (Huras Kubrow) : Current functionality stays. Damage buffed to 200, scales with equipped companion weapon mods.
• Fatal Attraction (Djinn) : Current functionality stays. Damage scales by equipped sentinel weapon mods.
• Arc Coil (Diriga) : Current functionality stays. Status chance set to 100%. Damage scales by equipped sentinel weapon mods.

7. Removal of Warframe stat Link-Mods and Reworking Player Weapon Stat Link mods.

One of the major issues in companion balance are the existence of Warframe stat stick mods. On one end you can buff your pet to ridiculous levels while on the other end the benefits you can give to your pet are little to none depending on your loadout. I'll give you a quick comparison. Let's take a look at link health with 2 frames that have wildly different stats affecting a companion with 200 health with +100% health bonus from DNA integrity :

• Pet health with unmodded Inaros rank 30 with +110% health from link health : 5.240 health.
• Pet health with unmodded Excalibur rank 30 with +110% health from link health : 1060 health

This can get even more ridiculous once you factor in mods. In conclusion, if you want your pet to be survivable, you must never use any warframe except Inaros. Which is bad, because you are getting punished if you wanted to use other frames with the same pet, destroying potential variety and build diversity. Even if you buff the existing mods like Enchanced Vitality, it can never compete with Link-Health. This also applies to other link-mods. So, Link-Mods cannot be saved and must be removed if we want pet stats to be balanced. How about the other Warframe stat stick mods like Mecha Overdrive and Hunter Synergy? We can convert them from stat stick mod to a normal flat stat boost mod. Why? Because we already have superior versions and Set Mods usually are a bit inferior compared to their non set counterparts because Set effects can be pretty powerful. Here is how I convert it :

• NEW Mecha Overdrive : +90% Status Chance, +60% Status Duration.
• NEW Hunter Synergy : +180% Critical Chance. 

With the removal of link mods and reworking player weapon stat stick mods. DE now have a good baseline to balance companion survivability and combat power without having to fear some new combo may start popping out if DE releases a warframe with bloated stats or weapons with bloated stats. 

In short, the fate of ALL warframe stat stick mods are written below :

• Link Health REMOVED
• Link Shields REMOVED
• Link Armor REMOVED
• Mecha Overdrive REWORKED
• Hunter Synergy REWORKED

8. New Feature : Companion Command Wheel (Beast Companions Only)

Beast companions can now responds to commands and act accordingly. A new command wheel will be placed between gear wheel and emote wheel to be able to issue command. To issue a command open the command wheel and click on the slot that contains command. Once a command is active, the slot outline that contains the said command will be highlighted with special effects. What will the effect look like? That's up to DE, but me personally maybe make the outline have a fire like effect. To revoke a command, simply click again the slot that contains the active command. What are the commands that are available and how will pets act according to that issued command? I will list them below.

• Hunt : The Companion abandons it's master and seek out and kill any enemies it can find. It will not return or follow it's master until this command is revoked. For maximum efficiency, combat precepts are prioritized while utility precepts are disabled. 
• Follow : The Companion follow it's master at all cost. For maximum efficiency, both combat and utility precepts are disabled. The Companion will not attack any enemies and continues to follow it's master until this command is revoked.
• Defend : The Companion will protect it's master or any object that is being tagged by the master's waypoint. They will not leave the master's vicinity or the tagged object's vicinity until this command is revoked. For maximum efficiency, combat precepts are prioritized while utility precepts are disabled.
• Support : The Companion will provide utility support for it's master or any object that is being tagged by the master's waypoint. They will not leave the master's vicinity or the tagged object's vicinity until this command is revoked. For maximum efficiency, combat precepts are disabled while utility precepts are prioritized.

If no commands are active, beast companion will assume the normal behavior we have today. 

QoL features regarding the command wheel :

• You can re-arrange the commands, for example : you can set Hunt at slot 2 and you set Follow at slot 1.
• You can bind the slots with a key under options like the gear and emote wheel for easier access. For example, you bind command slot 1 to Numpad0 key, allowing you to issue or revoke a command that is being slotted at command slot 1 instantly without having to open up the wheel.

Thread TL:DR

• Remove companion maintenance.
• Remove companion permanent death, instead make them invincible or respawn automatically after a period of time like Djinn and Vulpaphylas.
• Make companions immune to AoE, knockdowns, and staggers. These type of mechanics are meant for a human player. Pets can't dodge those and should not be punished by it.
• Buff all companion stats, most of them are outdated.
• Apply the plexus's strength onto companion modding and introduce a weapon slot for beast companions. Buff existing beast companion weapons, 10% crit chance and 5% status does not hold up in the current state of Warframe.
• Buff and/or Rework all companion precepts to match the current state of Warframe which is currently a horde shooter.
• Remove Warframe stat Link-Mods and rework player weapon stat Link-Mods. It's bad and limits player loadout diversity.
• Allow beast companions to respond to commands and include a command wheel for beast companions to issue and revoke commands. This allow better player control over beast companions.

 

 

 

 

[Teridax68]

This thread suggests pretty much everything I'd want from a companion rework. It is a known issue that companions have some major design flaws, and DE's constant layering of band-aids does not help the problem, which is also why I don't care for the upcoming augment to Protea's 3. What we need are direct changes to companions themselves, and at this point I think the suggestions made in the OP are pretty uncontroversial: genetic decay and loyalty are already mechanics that only exist on a minority of companions now, so might as well get rid of them on the few that still have them. Companion invulnerability is already a state we're converging towards, so I'd say might as well make that a reality instead of relying on another half-dozen mods to paper over the fact that our companions shouldn't be dying. Allowing pets to have their damage modded separately would be a welcome change, and a new wheel for pet commands might be worth trying, especially if it lets us feel like our pets are more than just walking Fetch + Animal Instinct containers.

[DrivaMain]

2 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

This thread suggests pretty much everything I'd want from a companion rework. It is a known issue that companions have some major design flaws, and DE's constant layering of band-aids does not help the problem, which is also why I don't care for the upcoming augment to Protea's 3. What we need are direct changes to companions themselves, and at this point I think the suggestions made in the OP are pretty uncontroversial: genetic decay and loyalty are already mechanics that only exist on a minority of companions now, so might as well get rid of them on the few that still have them. Companion invulnerability is already a state we're converging towards, so I'd say might as well make that a reality instead of relying on another half-dozen mods to paper over the fact that our companions shouldn't be dying. Allowing pets to have their damage modded separately would be a welcome change, and a new wheel for pet commands might be worth trying, especially if it lets us feel like our pets are more than just walking Fetch + Animal Instinct containers.

Thank you for the input. The reason why I am a bit conservative regarding invulnerability is because a certain someone at DE seems to be against having QoL features to be available in gameplay at all times *cough* Univac *cough*. I believe he will probably listen to option 2 more, keeping an eye on companion status without making it too tedious.

[Teridax68]

Just now, DrivaMain said:

Thank you for the input. The reason why I am a bit conservative regarding invulnerability is because a certain someone at DE seems to be against having QoL features to be available in gameplay at all times *cough* Univac *cough*. I believe he will probably listen to option 2 more, keeping an eye on companion status without making it too tedious.

This is a fair point, there's at least one person at DE who seems to have a "vision" of the game that they don't want to compromise on (a.k.a. they think they're always right and are too stubborn to ever change their mind), which is why many crucial QoL improvements to the game have either been delayed, only half-implemented, or implemented with a curling of a finger of the monkey's paw, and us getting saddled with some equally poor and needless tradeoff. If a middle solution makes total invulnerability more of a likelihood in the future, I'd be all for it.

[Kaggelos]

Well said mate.

Take my like.

Might i also suggest that , if we want, we could speed up the revival cooldown by killing more enemies?

 

[DrivaMain]

8 minutes ago, Kaggelos said:

Might i also suggest that , if we want, we could speed up the revival cooldown by killing more enemies?

A good suggestion. Maybe that can go to the currently useless(?) Arcane Bodyguard. Current existing mods at healing companions makes the arcane a “waste of an arcane slot”. I’ll add it to the OP.

[Zeddypanda]

9 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

and QoL mods like vacuum are deactivated. 

If this post got implemented wholesale including this bit, then nothing has been fixed. I need my radar all the time.

Is it currently a time? Then I need radar and vacuum.

[DrivaMain]

10 hours ago, Zeddypanda said:

If this post got implemented wholesale including this bit, then nothing has been fixed. I need my radar all the time.

Is it currently a time? Then I need radar and vacuum.

I am trying to please that certain someone at DE. If I don't include that, he'll probably shut this entire suggestion down. He apparently choose to die on that hill. What made Vulpaphylas so much convenient to use and popular is because they require less care in gameplay. Players can focus doing something beneficial in gameplay instead of babysitting that dying pet that constantly down itself almost every damn time. It adds too much tedium in gameplay. Sentinels on the other hand, dies as soon as an enemy launches a devastating AoE attack (looking at you Eidolons). 

Can companions be able to dodge danger with an AI Fix? I am not gonna hold my breath. Smart AI demands demanding hardware it will probably crash many player's rigs.

[DrivaMain]

I messed around with the Security Override precepts and I found out the precept is too situational. I will rework it into something that doesn't require a console that be functional. Will be edited into the OP as soon as possible.

New Security override mod : Moa can auto hack consoles over 2 seconds (5 seconds cooldown), Mind control basic robotic enemies for 15 seconds (10 second cooldown), Hack cameras for 15 seconds (10 seconds), Hack turrets to turn against their allies for 15 seconds (10 second cooldown).

[Steel_Rook]

Strongly agreed with most of these. I don't want to quote you point-for-point and just go "Yup, agreed!" "Yes, this please!" etc. I do have a few specific points I want to address, though:

 

On 2021-05-02 at 5:31 AM, DrivaMain said:

Now here’s the hot topic. As we all know companions have terrible survivability and their AI not being good enough at dodging danger makes it even worse. Yes, Link-Mods exist but they only exist as a band aid solution. It also causes players to be forced to use high stat Warframes if they want their companions to survive longer. I will give 2 options on how we approach this.

Of the two options you listed, my personal preference would be Option 1 - companion invulnerability. Warframe offers basically nothing in the way of moment-to-moment gameplay to let us actually keep our companions alive. Either their AI freaks out so they run off and die, or they just get taken out by passive AoE. Worrying enemies killing my pet is only one step above worrying about the enemy shooting and breaking my guns. If I can't DO anything to stop it, it's just an annoying inconvenience. Incidentally, that's exactly how I feel about Drakhmaster weapon steal mechanics. Make companions invulnerably, get it over with.

I don't think it's going to happen, though. There's too much ego invested in the concept or pet EHP and too many mods supporting it. As such, I think Option 2 - automatic revival is much more realistic. The Djinn and the various Vulpaphyla cats already do it, it works, now propagate it to everything. I don't think you need -revival delay on so many mods, though. I'd leave it on JUST Regen and the existing infinite revival mods. It's not needed and it covers your ass against people who will inevitably scream "power creep." This is quality of life.

 

On 2021-05-02 at 5:31 AM, DrivaMain said:

The addition of the plexus makes me think “What if we apply that to companions?”. Companion modding screen has a second tab that will house companion precepts. It will have 6 slots that will be given the number 1, 2, 3,4, 5, and 6 that dictates the priority of the precept the companion AI will use in combat. Main tab companion mod slots now reduced from 10 to 8 to accommodate this change.

You're going to want to rephrase that because I can't quite follow what's being said. It sounds like you want a manual selection of AI precept priority, but it's also mixed with the concept of dedicated Precept slots, I think? Or are you suggesting a full 6 precept slots on top of 8 mod slots? That seems WAAAY too much if you're also moving offensive mods to their own item (I'll get to that). You can already determine precept priority based on mod order. Priority goes left to right, top to bottom. You can move polarities around after first Polarisation, so those shouldn't be an issue either. I could see the slots themselves being numbered, though - for the entire game, not just pets. There's really no downside to numbering them in the background as they're empty, and it would help for both AI priority and damage type mergers.

I do like the core concept of the proposal, though. The Plexus really IS a good idea, with its dedicated ability slots. I definitely want to see that used more often, though I probably wouldn't give pets more than 2 Augment slots.

 

On 2021-05-02 at 5:31 AM, DrivaMain said:

Beast Companions will now receive the same treatment as Sentinels. Beast arsenal UI are given a weapon tab that houses their weapons. DE can uses this opportunity to release beast companion melee weapons like for example razor sharp claws made out of Rubedo. But for now, let’s call their existing weapons “Claws”.

Or you can do "collar." Kubrows already have it as a cosmetic item (there's even a Primed one), and it's simple enough to imply that Kavats and the disgusting Infested critters have one too. DE could even let us optionally equip one on them as a cosmetic item. That would allow you to more easily explain how you're swapping their weapons around without having to explain declawing - it's just an attached item that boosts performance.

Personally, I would scrap the current Beast offensive stat boost mods entirely and simply let the Collar/Claws weapon use standard melee weapon mods instead. Sentinel weapons already use standard Warframe weapon mods, so why not? Would let them actually do a meaningful amount of damage. I generally prefer to avoid creating or using esoteric renamed copies of existing mods when standard mod categories can be used, instead. I'm still annoyed that Archguns use their own mod types instead of using Rifle/Shotgun/Pistol mods :)

Point being, just give them a melee weapon with melee mods. If you want to be really fancy, you can also let them use Sentinel weapons and fire from range instead of attacking.

 

On 2021-05-02 at 5:31 AM, DrivaMain said:

Hard Engage (MOA) : Current functionality stays. Moa melee weapon receives a stat buff : 30% Crit Chance, 30% Status Chance, 1.5 meter range, 200 impact damage. Melee damage hits always stagger enemies.

Counter-proposal - scrap that Precept mod entirely and replace it with an actual weapon only available to Moas. Let it take melee weapon mods. Problem solved. You can come up with a different Precept for the Moa Balboa, instead.

 

On 2021-05-02 at 5:31 AM, DrivaMain said:

A new wheel will be added that can be accessed by opening the gear wheel and tabbing. It will be placed between the gear and emote wheel. This new wheel will have 6 slots that will have the following commands below. If a command is active it’s icon will be hightlighted.

Not necessarily a correction, but I personally feel that the City of Heroes Mastermind commands can work better here. Basically, they break down into a set of three "orders" and a set of three "stances" with only one order and stance active at a time. They're Attack/Follow/Go To + Aggressive/Defensive/Passive. To adapt this to Warframe:

• Attack - pet attacks waypointed target. If target becomes unavailable (dead, untargetable, whatever), return to follow.
• Follow - pet attempts to stay within range of the owner.
• Go to - pet goes to the last placed waypoint and stays within range of it.

 

• Aggressive - pet attacks all targets within line of sight and range.
• Defensive - pet holds fire, but temporarily switches to Aggressive when it or the owner takes damage.
• Passive - pet never attacks under any circumstances.

This allows the player to mix-and-match their commands for a wide variety of behaviours without having to strictly define each separate behaviour. It's not necessarily "better" as it's still six commands, but I feel it's a bit more flexible.

 

What about Link mods?

Something I didn't see explored in the OP is Link mods. These are a MASSIVE problem which needs addressing. On the one hand, Link mods hard-wire the pet's stats to the master's stats, preventing them from complementing each other. Only a tanky Warframe can have a tanky pet. Fragile Warframes who might benefit from a tanky pet can't, because they have low base stats. It furthermore turns the underlying Warframe into a "stat stick" for the pet, bundling decisions which should not be interdependent. On the other hand, pet base stats are so absurdly low that pets can never really hope to survive without Link mods. Finally, only Sentinels can use Link mods.

Personally, I recommend dropping Link mods entirely and un-standardising Companion stats. Why should most of them have the same health, armour and shield values? Why can't we have a tanky pet, or a pet that has elevated damage, etc.? If pets remain killable (which they probably will), then they need a massive overall balance pass. Wouldn't hurt to give them Shield Gating, either.

 

What about Vacuum/Radar?

Vacuum and Loot/Enemy Radar are basic quality of life features in this game. They shouldn't have a build cost and they certainly shouldn't be tied to pet builds. I would recommend removing Animal Instinct, Vacuum and Fetch from pets entirely. I also recommend doing the same for the likes of Loot Detector, Thief's Wit, Enemy Radar, Enemy Sense, etc. Move ALL of those out and attach them to either the Parazon (with couple of new slots added) or to a brand new "Orbiter" object. The orbiter is our mission control, presumably Ordis is able to do location scans for us. Let us mod him so that he can show us enemies, loot and help with pick-up regardless of what our build is - or indeed regardless of whether we're playing as Warframe, Operator, Necramechm, Railjack or Archwing. Stop giving each of these things their own redundant copies of loot radar, enemy radar and vacuum.

Pull all of that crap out out of the dozen or so systems it's in and throw it all into a separate unified system. Best of all - that way the few contrarians who keep insisting that Vacuum or Loot Radar is ruining their experience can just not slot anything in those particular slots.

 

On 2021-05-02 at 2:04 PM, Teridax68 said:

This is a fair point, there's at least one person at DE who seems to have a "vision" of the game that they don't want to compromise on (a.k.a. they think they're always right and are too stubborn to ever change their mind), which is why many crucial QoL improvements to the game have either been delayed, only half-implemented, or implemented with a curling of a finger of the monkey's paw, and us getting saddled with some equally poor and needless tradeoff.

I don't know if I'd go as far as to anthropomorphise the issue, but you do have a point. DE as a development studio have been bizarrely, almost suspiciously resistant to Quality of Life changes. So resistant, in fact, that they're willing to waste time, resources and good will implementing workaround after workaround after workaround instead of just doing what players are asking for already. This isn't a matter of game balance or "git gud" or anything of the sort. It's a matter of making the game less aggravating to play. I don't want to speculate as to WHY they're doing it or who's responsible (although my guess would lean towards Leyou/Tencent), but this really has to stop.

DE, you're creating balance issues for yourselves doing this. Enough with the Master's Summons and Regen mods and Dispenser Agument nonsense. Give us an actual structural change, please.

[DrivaMain]

8 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

You're going to want to rephrase that because I can't quite follow what's being said. It sounds like you want a manual selection of AI precept priority, but it's also mixed with the concept of dedicated Precept slots, I think? Or are you suggesting a full 6 precept slots on top of 8 mod slots? That seems WAAAY too much if you're also moving offensive mods to their own item (I'll get to that). You can already determine precept priority based on mod order. Priority goes left to right, top to bottom. You can move polarities around after first Polarisation, so those shouldn't be an issue either. I could see the slots themselves being numbered, though - for the entire game, not just pets. There's really no downside to numbering them in the background as they're empty, and it would help for both AI priority and damage type mergers.

I do like the core concept of the proposal, though. The Plexus really IS a good idea, with its dedicated ability slots. I definitely want to see that used more often, though I probably wouldn't give pets more than 2 Augment slots.

 

I am suggesting is more dedicated slots for precepts due to how much QoL mods are fighting for the 10 main mod slots.
 

Minus companion specific precept mods there are a lot of universal precept mods that 2 slots aren’t gonna cut it. Hence, why I left it at 6. Not to mention what future universal precept mods DE is gonna throw in.

 

8 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Something I didn't see explored in the OP is Link mods. These are a MASSIVE problem which needs addressing. On the one hand, Link mods hard-wire the pet's stats to the master's stats, preventing them from complementing each other. Only a tanky Warframe can have a tanky pet. Fragile Warframes who might benefit from a tanky pet can't, because they have low base stats. It furthermore turns the underlying Warframe into a "stat stick" for the pet, bundling decisions which should not be interdependent. On the other hand, pet base stats are so absurdly low that pets can never really hope to survive without Link mods. Finally, only Sentinels can use Link mods.

Personally, I recommend dropping Link mods entirely and un-standardising Companion stats. Why should most of them have the same health, armour and shield values? Why can't we have a tanky pet, or a pet that has elevated damage, etc.? If pets remain killable (which they probably will), then they need a massive overall balance pass. Wouldn't hurt to give them Shield Gating, either.

The reason why I left link-mods out is it’s already overpowered with certain frames. Squishy frames can opt to use the reworked vitality and redirection instead. Now you have build diversity. Tanky frames uses Link-mods, squishy frames used vitality and redirection. They already have shield gating, but given how bad their AI at dodging damage it doesn’t do much.

8 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Personally, I would scrap the current Beast offensive stat boost mods entirely and simply let the Collar/Claws weapon use standard melee weapon mods instead. Sentinel weapons already use standard Warframe weapon mods, so why not? Would let them actually do a meaningful amount of damage. I generally prefer to avoid creating or using esoteric renamed copies of existing mods when standard mod categories can be used, instead. I'm still annoyed that Archguns use their own mod types instead of using Rifle/Shotgun/Pistol mods :)

 

It would be nice, but I know DE isn’t probably gonna do this. The reason why DE adds specific use mods every new content is it acts as a “soft reset” to make veterans and newbies start at the same point in progression. It also prevents players from chewing through content too fast.

 

8 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Vacuum and Loot/Enemy Radar are basic quality of life features in this game. They shouldn't have a build cost and they certainly shouldn't be tied to pet builds. I would recommend removing Animal Instinct, Vacuum and Fetch from pets entirely. I also recommend doing the same for the likes of Loot Detector, Thief's Wit, Enemy Radar, Enemy Sense, etc. Move ALL of those out and attach them to either the Parazon (with couple of new slots added) or to a brand new "Orbiter" object. The orbiter is our mission control, presumably Ordis is able to do location scans for us. Let us mod him so that he can show us enemies, loot and help with pick-up regardless of what our build is - or indeed regardless of whether we're playing as Warframe, Operator, Necramechm, Railjack or Archwing. Stop giving each of these things their own redundant copies of loot radar, enemy radar and vacuum.

Pull all of that crap out out of the dozen or so systems it's in and throw it all into a separate unified system. Best of all - that way the few contrarians who keep insisting that Vacuum or Loot Radar is ruining their experience can just not slot anything in those particular slots.

Again, my previous reply already mentions this. A certain someone at DE is very adamant having QoL features at all times. He even say he would die on that hill. It would be nice that DE allow us to slot QoL mods on the landing craft. But that’s very unlikely unless the backlash is so massive it forces his hands.

 

[(XBOX)Graysmog]

I honestly like most of these ideas, I would just say that I would want a sort of "safety measure" for all Companions. So they'd receive an inherent high DR to AoE attacks, or just an outright complete avoidance of AoE damage. It's clearly the only real issue Companions have, and no matter how specific we allow their A.I to function they are going to constantly get obliterated by it at higher levels. Knockdowns and other CC effects would still apply of course, they just wouldn't be so easy to hit. Making it so they can only take damage from direct hits would hopefully drastically improve their survivability while acting as a sort of compromise between full Invulnerability and the outright kicks to the face the damage is now, plus with your previous A.I changes it should make it so your Companion doesn't consistently die.

As for how I'd make it function;
 
Grounded Pets (MOA, Kubrows, Kavats, Hounds, etc) now are completely immune to AoE damage. CC effects like Knockdowns or Fire will of course still apply.

Airborne Pets (Sentinels) now take 50% reduced damage from successive AoE attacks. The first AoE attack will be outright ignored.

Going further down the list to the Companion Precepts, I also would want some more changes to ones like Trample for the Helminth Charger or Paralytic Spores for the Medjay Predasite. Something like this I suppose;

Trample (Helminth Charger): The Helminth Charger rushes an enemy, dealing 160 damage that scales with their Melee Mods. The Helminth Charger now prioritizes enemies CC'd by Proboscis, with enemies that are Trampled being kept on the ground for 5 seconds. So that way, Trample is more of a CC effect that is less of a copy-paste of Hunt, dealing less damage for some utility.

Savagery (Sunika Kubrow): Functions similar to how it currently does, but now the damage will heal the Sunika, healing it to full on kill. The damage per second is now dealt twice as fast. So this is now more of damage-dealing Precept that also helps the Sunika stay alive, pairing perfectly with your proposed Unleashed change. The Finisher Damage itself should also probably be buffed up to 200% as it's clear that the damage is a little lacking.

Howl (Raksa Kubrow): Enemies affected by the Howl are stunned for 3 seconds before they take off running, allowing you to get a few hits off on enemies before they go all over the place. The ability now has a 20 second cooldown to make it more reliable.
Protect (Raksa Kubrow): Now restores 30% Shields every 7 seconds, with no variance between the amounts, reducing Shield Recharge time by 1 second when it procs. That should hopefully make it a valid choice for any Warframe despite their current Shield value. This now also applies to the Raksa Kubrow itself, helping it survive a bit longer as well.

Ferocity (Sahasa Kubrow): Renamed to "Burrow", the Sahasa Kubrow buries itself underground every 20 seconds, being completely invulnerable to damage as it moves. It will explode out of the ground after 3 seconds, covering all enemies in mud in a 40 meter radius and slowing them by 50% for 10 seconds. This would take away some of the Sahasa's offense, but I honestly always felt it was more of a Support-type Kubrow, so I see no reason to not try and embrace that idea, and I would think this fits the theme of it more than a regular damage Precept. 

Mischief (Smeeta Kavat): Not much to obviously change here, other than the evade chance. Bump that up to 95% at least.

Anabolic Pollination (Pharaoh Predasite): Now applies to the Pharaoh Predasite as well, automatically applying the buff to both you and it for 8 seconds. The trail of spores left behind now have an activation range of 10 meters, making it easier for allies to receive the buff as well.

Endoparasitic Vector (Pharaoh Predasite): Instantly activates on a random nearby enemy with no travel time, eliminating the potential for it to break on terrain as it currently does. Outside of that it works just fine (when it actually works).

Crescent Devolution (Crescent Vulpaphyla): Enemies hit by the charge now have their damage reduced to the full Puncture proc amount, gaining 10 Puncture Procs and 75% reduced damage for 10 seconds. The damage now properly scales with all Companion Damage Mods (including Elemental) and now has a base AoE range of 8 meters.
Crescent Charge (Crescent Vulpaphyla): Damage is kept the same but now the charge has a 8 meter AoE around it, to hopefully make it more reliable.

Reflect (Adarza Kavat): I would honestly take out the whole "damage redirection" aspect of the ability and make it more about increasing Adarza's lifespan. So now 
the Kavat keeps the 40% damage ignore, but now once the damage is ignored it ignores all future damage for 3 seconds. If the Adarza is supposed to die from an attack the dodge rate increases to 95%.

Molecular Conversion (Taxon): Completely ignores enemy defenses and deals raw Neutral damage so the Shield gain will always be consistent. 

Infectious Bite (Medjay Predasite): After a spore is popped, the enemy will be afflicted with a single Viral proc each time. These spores will spread up to five nearby enemies on death.

Scan Matter (Oxylus): Now functions exactly the same, but now the chance to find Rare and Reinforced Containers while this Precept is equipped are doubled, giving them a special icon on your minimap. Rare pickups like Syndicate Medallions, Ayatan Treasures, Plants etc. are also highlighted on your map with their own icons.

Scan Aquatic Lifeforms (Oxylus): Now renamed to "Scan Lifeforms" (again), Oxylus now marks Conservation targets as well as fish. 

Botanist (Oxylus): Scan time is reduced to 1 seconds for very obvious reasons.

Looter (Carrier): Functions the same, but now while this Mod is equipped all Containers have a 35% higher chance to reward rarer loot (like Ayatan Stars, Argon, etc).

Vaporize (Dethcube): Now fires five times in quick succession, ramping up the damage by 100% per hit on the same target. This damage is added after your base damage Mods, and now Vaporize has a 100% chance to proc Status at base.

Charged Shot (Diriga): Now functions properly as an ability with no way for your weapon to affect it. Charging a single powerful shot, Diriga shoots a 100% accurate projectile that guarantees itself as a Headshot. The damage starts at 2000 raw Puncture damage, and this can be increased with Mods much like Dethcube's Vaporize. It has a 3x CD, 100% CC and 10% SC at base.

 

Some general Companion Mod changes as well;

Scavenge (Kubrows): Still has the 90% success rate, automatically opening any green and off/red lockers in a 40 meter radius. Lockers that are opened by the Kubrow have a 35% higher chance to reward rarer materials. This should make opening Lockers much faster and make it so this could actually be less of a giant waste of time.

Shelter (Beasts) and Sanctuary (Robotics): The Shield now scales off of the Companions overall Shield and Health (scaling that up by 600%), and allows the Shield to persist for 5 seconds after a Revive for both you, the Companion and your Ally. The Shield does not stop AoE damage still, however, and now the Shield has a 30 second cooldown before it can be activated again. To hopefully further differentiate these Mods, the "travel" bubble will only apply to Sanctuary, while a "fort" bubble will spawn on the ground where the Revive occurred with Shelter.

Coolant Leak (Robotic): Instead of just slowing enemies by 10% within 3 meters, Coolant Leak now consistently applies a single Cold Proc to enemies within 5 meters every 3 seconds. The Cold Procs can stack and persist for 6 seconds as per usual.

Spare Parts (Sentinels): Now has a 45% chance to give the player an instant Sentinel Revive on death, removing the 60 second delay for a revive if the odds are in your favor.

Territorial Aggression (Kavat): This Mod pretty much needs to be massively gutted into something worthwhile, so why not make it an area denial ability? When casting TA, any enemy that walks into the zone has a 45% chance to be Feared, it would be a great area-denial ability for the Infested and work decently for everything else. 

Fired Up (Sentinels): Now properly acts as a damage multiplying Mod, increasing weapon damage by 60% at max Overheat and adding 60% extra Heat damage. Currently for some reason it only adds Heat if it's already on the gun.

Anti-Grav Array (Robotic): Gives your Robotic Companion 50% damage reduction while you are in the air.

Odomedic (Robotic): The healing from Odomedic now also applies to your Robotic companion, and the meters needed to travel is now reduced to 2 meters.

Self Destruct (Sentinel): Now occurs whenever the Sentinel revives and upon death, there is however now a 10 second cooldown between these bursts.

Repair Kit (Robotic): Now heals 20 Health per second at all times. 

Medi-Pet Kit (Beasts): Has a form of "scaling healing", starting at 10 Health per second. At 75% Health the healing doubles to 20, at 50% Health it doubles to 40, and at 25% it scales to 80. Once the Beasts Health reaches a higher threshold the healing slows back down to its previous increment.

Anti-Grav Grenade (MOA): Really just needs a drastic Range increase, may as well make it 20 meters like Whiplash Mine, as that seems to be a perfectly fine Range to work with. All damage dealt to enemies in the air affects every affected enemy.

Tractor Beam (MOA): Keep the same stats it currently has barring the reduced gravity, I would seriously bump that up to 80% at the very least, so you can really stay in the air.

Might add more here but I'm tired, haha.
 

[DrivaMain]

3 minutes ago, (XBOX)Graysmog said:

I honestly like most of these ideas, I would just say that I would want a sort of "safety measure" for all Companions. So they'd receive an inherent high DR to AoE attacks, or just an outright complete avoidance of AoE damage. It's clearly the only real issue Companions have, and no matter how specific we allow their A.I to function they are going to constantly get obliterated by it at higher levels. Knockdowns and other CC effects would still apply of course, they just wouldn't be so easy to hit. Making it so they can only take damage from direct hits would hopefully drastically improve their survivability while acting as a sort of compromise between full Invulnerability and the outright kicks to the face the damage is now, plus with your previous A.I changes it should make it so your Companion doesn't consistently die.

As for how I'd make it function;
 
Grounded Pets (MOA, Kubrows, Kavats, Hounds, etc) now are completely immune to AoE damage. CC effects like Knockdowns or Fire will of course still apply.

Airborne Pets (Sentinels) now take 50% reduced damage from successive AoE attacks. The first AoE attack will be outright ignored.

Going further down the list to the Companion Precepts, I also would want some more changes to ones like Trample for the Helminth Charger or Paralytic Spores for the Medjay Predasite. Something like this I suppose;

Trample (Helminth Charger): The Helminth Charger rushes an enemy, dealing 160 damage that scales with their Melee Mods. The Helminth Charger now prioritizes enemies CC'd by Proboscis, with enemies that are Trampled being kept on the ground for 5 seconds. So that way, Trample is more of a CC effect that is less of a copy-paste of Hunt, dealing less damage for some utility.

Savagery (Sunika Kubrow): Functions similar to how it currently does, but now the damage will heal the Sunika, healing it to full on kill. The damage per second is now dealt twice as fast. So this is now more of damage-dealing Precept that also helps the Sunika stay alive, pairing perfectly with your proposed Unleashed change. The Finisher Damage itself should also probably be buffed up to 200% as it's clear that the damage is a little lacking.

Howl (Raksa Kubrow): Enemies affected by the Howl are stunned for 3 seconds before they take off running, allowing you to get a few hits off on enemies before they go all over the place. The ability now has a 20 second cooldown to make it more reliable.
Protect (Raksa Kubrow): Now restores 30% Shields every 7 seconds, with no variance between the amounts, reducing Shield Recharge time by 1 second when it procs. That should hopefully make it a valid choice for any Warframe despite their current Shield value. This now also applies to the Raksa Kubrow itself, helping it survive a bit longer as well.

Ferocity (Sahasa Kubrow): Renamed to "Burrow", the Sahasa Kubrow buries itself underground every 20 seconds, being completely invulnerable to damage as it moves. It will explode out of the ground after 3 seconds, covering all enemies in mud in a 40 meter radius and slowing them by 50% for 10 seconds. This would take away some of the Sahasa's offense, but I honestly always felt it was more of a Support-type Kubrow, so I see no reason to not try and embrace that idea, and I would think this fits the theme of it more than a regular damage Precept. 

Mischief (Smeeta Kavat): Not much to obviously change here, other than the evade chance. Bump that up to 95% at least.

Anabolic Pollination (Pharaoh Predasite): Now applies to the Pharaoh Predasite as well, automatically applying the buff to both you and it for 8 seconds. The trail of spores left behind now have an activation range of 10 meters, making it easier for allies to receive the buff as well.

Endoparasitic Vector (Pharaoh Predasite): Instantly activates on a random nearby enemy with no travel time, eliminating the potential for it to break on terrain as it currently does. Outside of that it works just fine (when it actually works).

Crescent Devolution (Crescent Vulpaphyla): Enemies hit by the charge now have their damage reduced to the full Puncture proc amount, gaining 10 Puncture Procs and 75% reduced damage for 10 seconds. The damage now properly scales with all Companion Damage Mods (including Elemental) and now has a base AoE range of 8 meters.
Crescent Charge (Crescent Vulpaphyla): Damage is kept the same but now the charge has a 8 meter AoE around it, to hopefully make it more reliable.

Reflect (Adarza Kavat): I would honestly take out the whole "damage redirection" aspect of the ability and make it more about increasing Adarza's lifespan. So now 
the Kavat keeps the 40% damage ignore, but now once the damage is ignored it ignores all future damage for 3 seconds. If the Adarza is supposed to die from an attack the dodge rate increases to 95%.

Molecular Conversion (Taxon): Completely ignores enemy defenses and deals raw Neutral damage so the Shield gain will always be consistent. 

Infectious Bite (Medjay Predasite): After a spore is popped, the enemy will be afflicted with a single Viral proc each time. These spores will spread up to five nearby enemies on death.

Scan Matter (Oxylus): Now functions exactly the same, but now the chance to find Rare and Reinforced Containers while this Precept is equipped are doubled, giving them a special icon on your minimap. Rare pickups like Syndicate Medallions, Ayatan Treasures, Plants etc. are also highlighted on your map with their own icons.

Scan Aquatic Lifeforms (Oxylus): Now renamed to "Scan Lifeforms" (again), Oxylus now marks Conservation targets as well as fish. 

Botanist (Oxylus): Scan time is reduced to 1 seconds for very obvious reasons.

Looter (Carrier): Functions the same, but now while this Mod is equipped all Containers have a 35% higher chance to reward rarer loot (like Ayatan Stars, Argon, etc).

Vaporize (Dethcube): Now fires five times in quick succession, ramping up the damage by 100% per hit on the same target. This damage is added after your base damage Mods, and now Vaporize has a 100% chance to proc Status at base.

Charged Shot (Diriga): Now functions properly as an ability with no way for your weapon to affect it. Charging a single powerful shot, Diriga shoots a 100% accurate projectile that guarantees itself as a Headshot. The damage starts at 2000 raw Puncture damage, and this can be increased with Mods much like Dethcube's Vaporize. It has a 3x CD, 100% CC and 10% SC at base.

 

Some general Companion Mod changes as well;

Scavenge (Kubrows): Still has the 90% success rate, automatically opening any green and off/red lockers in a 40 meter radius. Lockers that are opened by the Kubrow have a 35% higher chance to reward rarer materials. This should make opening Lockers much faster and make it so this could actually be less of a giant waste of time.

Shelter (Beasts) and Sanctuary (Robotics): The Shield now scales off of the Companions overall Shield and Health (scaling that up by 600%), and allows the Shield to persist for 5 seconds after a Revive for both you, the Companion and your Ally. The Shield does not stop AoE damage still, however, and now the Shield has a 30 second cooldown before it can be activated again. To hopefully further differentiate these Mods, the "travel" bubble will only apply to Sanctuary, while a "fort" bubble will spawn on the ground where the Revive occurred with Shelter.

Coolant Leak (Robotic): Instead of just slowing enemies by 10% within 3 meters, Coolant Leak now consistently applies a single Cold Proc to enemies within 5 meters every 3 seconds. The Cold Procs can stack and persist for 6 seconds as per usual.

Spare Parts (Sentinels): Now has a 45% chance to give the player an instant Sentinel Revive on death, removing the 60 second delay for a revive if the odds are in your favor.

Territorial Aggression (Kavat): This Mod pretty much needs to be massively gutted into something worthwhile, so why not make it an area denial ability? When casting TA, any enemy that walks into the zone has a 45% chance to be Feared, it would be a great area-denial ability for the Infested and work decently for everything else. 

Fired Up (Sentinels): Now properly acts as a damage multiplying Mod, increasing weapon damage by 60% at max Overheat and adding 60% extra Heat damage. Currently for some reason it only adds Heat if it's already on the gun.

Anti-Grav Array (Robotic): Gives your Robotic Companion 50% damage reduction while you are in the air.

Odomedic (Robotic): The healing from Odomedic now also applies to your Robotic companion, and the meters needed to travel is now reduced to 2 meters.

Self Destruct (Sentinel): Now occurs whenever the Sentinel revives and upon death, there is however now a 10 second cooldown between these bursts.

Repair Kit (Robotic): Now heals 20 Health per second at all times. 

Medi-Pet Kit (Beasts): Has a form of "scaling healing", starting at 10 Health per second. At 75% Health the healing doubles to 20, at 50% Health it doubles to 40, and at 25% it scales to 80. Once the Beasts Health reaches a higher threshold the healing slows back down to its previous increment.

Anti-Grav Grenade (MOA): Really just needs a drastic Range increase, may as well make it 20 meters like Whiplash Mine, as that seems to be a perfectly fine Range to work with. All damage dealt to enemies in the air affects every affected enemy.

Tractor Beam (MOA): Keep the same stats it currently has barring the reduced gravity, I would seriously bump that up to 80% at the very least, so you can really stay in the air.

Might add more here but I'm tired, haha.
 

These are all great ideas! I will add them to the OP and you will be credited. I'll add a new section called "Other users ideas" to the OP.

[(XBOX)Graysmog]

9 minutes ago, DrivaMain said:

These are all great ideas! I will add them to the OP and you will be credited. I'll add a new section called "Other users ideas" to the OP.

Thanks, I really enjoy Companions myself, I just wish they were more akin to a second player than a convenient utility dump. Hopefully DE will implement similar changes that affects Companions as a whole (so whole separate reworks for each class of pet).

I forgot to mention it as well, but one of the other major problems with Grounded Pets is their attacks. I believe Kavats don't suffer nearly as much from this issue due to their versatile Mods, but Kubrows and Predasites suffer especially from slow attack speeds, long animations, delayed enemy targeting and inconsistent attack hitboxes. While adding Melee Weapons like you've suggested would help immensely (Attack Speed and Range being the main factors here), there's still the issue of the attack hitboxes. They seem to be literally scrapping the ground, and the Pounce attack Kubrows constantly perform seems to not even be there, especially when their aim is off 99% of the time and they end up whiffing the attack entirely. 

If you want a great example of why this is such a huge problem, look at the Mecha Mods. They work great when the proc actually occurs, but you'll find that your doggo struggles quite often to get a single hit in against some of the lighter units. Heavier units are easier to hit, until they consistently ground-slam your pup into oblivion. It gets frustrating really fast.

DE would also seriously have to adjust and increase the size of these hitboxes, while also improving their attack accuracy if any of these changes have any hope of improving them. 

[Steel_Rook]

15 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

I am suggesting is more dedicated slots for precepts due to how much QoL mods are fighting for the 10 main mod slots. Minus companion specific precept mods there are a lot of universal precept mods that 2 slots aren’t gonna cut it. Hence, why I left it at 6. Not to mention what future universal precept mods DE is gonna throw in.

But that's 14 slots total. What do you even put on your companion if you move 6 of the slots off to another screen? I'm all for increasing build diversity for pets, but that seems excessive to me. After all, health/armour/shields are themselves "universal" mods for damn near everything and the same logic could apply there. If you don't think DE will give us universal vacuum and radar, then I don't think you can really expect them to give you 6 extra slots just for precepts. Not to mention that that's setting a dangerous precedent, because the same can apply to Warframes as well.

 

15 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

The reason why I left link-mods out is it’s already overpowered with certain frames. Squishy frames can opt to use the reworked vitality and redirection instead. Now you have build diversity. Tanky frames uses Link-mods, squishy frames used vitality and redirection. They already have shield gating, but given how bad their AI at dodging damage it doesn’t do much.

That doesn't address the issue I presented, though. You're still using the Warframe as a "stat stick" and you're still tying Sentinel build to warframe build. A squishy Warframe can't have a tanky Sentinel. Yes, I get that you put revive delay reduction in a lot of mods, but that doesn't help. A system where our pets can die to a sneeze is very likely to result our pets spending most of their time dead. Reducing the revive delay helps only up to a point. Increasing survivability is equally if not more important, and standard health/shield/armour mods don't do much when most pets have garbage base stats with no shield gating, arcanes or much of any sustain.

Look at what you're saying there. "X frames use X builds, Y frames use Y builds." That's not build diversity. That's a "meta." Link mods are one of THE most substantial reasons why no changes have been made to pets. They act as a convenient excuse for not doing anything because "See? You have a workaround." Yes, but a good one. I shouldn't HAVE to play Inaros if I don't want my pet to be dead 90% of the time.

[DrivaMain]

21 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

That doesn't address the issue I presented, though. You're still using the Warframe as a "stat stick" and you're still tying Sentinel build to warframe build. A squishy Warframe can't have a tanky Sentinel. Yes, I get that you put revive delay reduction in a lot of mods, but that doesn't help. A system where our pets can die to a sneeze is very likely to result our pets spending most of their time dead. Reducing the revive delay helps only up to a point. Increasing survivability is equally if not more important, and standard health/shield/armour mods don't do much when most pets have garbage base stats with no shield gating, arcanes or much of any sustain.

That's why you rework their precepts to match the current horde shooter meta so they can hold out on their own  and buff their weapons. I already buffed the current +health and +shields mod, so I am sure they can compete with link-mods and doesn't feel mandatory. For example, With +440% health a rank 30 Sahasa Kubrow with +100% DNA integrity (once DNA is removed the Kubrow will have 250 base health at all times) will have 1850 base health. That's not too bad, of course most of the companion base armor are terrible so that deserves some major buffing, like companions should have more than 300 armor at base. If we make that Sahasa kubrow have 300 base armor the Kubrow will now have 3700 EHP. That's already a pretty good. If we haven't buffed the mods and left it at the current state the kubrow will have much lower EHP than we have now.

However, I do feel concerned with the existence of Link-Mods and stat stick mods in general. I will consider their existence and if I find it to be too "bandaidy" (is that a word?) I will remove them entirely for option 2. 

[Steel_Rook]

1 hour ago, DrivaMain said:

However, I do feel concerned with the existence of Link-Mods and stat stick mods in general. I will consider their existence and if I find it to be too "bandaidy" (is that a word?) I will remove them entirely for option 2. 

That's my broader point, yes. It's not that I think base health/armour/shield mods on pets are bad (not JUST, anyway :) ) but that I fundamentally disagree with the existence of Link mods. The more our builds are locked together with items influencing each other's performance, the more cookie-cutter our builds become. I'd much rather just scrap all the Link mods and work on making pets tough in their own right. Tough enough to spend more time alive than dead at "reasonably high level," which I would put at 80-100 at present.

Incidentally, this is the same reason I absolutely detest the choice to tie Railjack energy to Warframe energy. It turns the Warframe into a stat stick. I have to pick a high-energy Warframe because only energy capacity counts. But what if my Warframe of choice has a low energy pool and relies on Rage + other energy regen options? Those don't affect my Railjack, so sucks to be me I guess. Hell, it's the same reason I want to see Atlas' Landslide and Khora's whip and such turned into proper Exalted Weapons, too :)

Basically, I want to get rid of Link mods as a priority.

[DrivaMain]

9 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

That's my broader point, yes. It's not that I think base health/armour/shield mods on pets are bad (not JUST, anyway :) ) but that I fundamentally disagree with the existence of Link mods. The more our builds are locked together with items influencing each other's performance, the more cookie-cutter our builds become. I'd much rather just scrap all the Link mods and work on making pets tough in their own right. Tough enough to spend more time alive than dead at "reasonably high level," which I would put at 80-100 at present.

Incidentally, this is the same reason I absolutely detest the choice to tie Railjack energy to Warframe energy. It turns the Warframe into a stat stick. I have to pick a high-energy Warframe because only energy capacity counts. But what if my Warframe of choice has a low energy pool and relies on Rage + other energy regen options? Those don't affect my Railjack, so sucks to be me I guess. Hell, it's the same reason I want to see Atlas' Landslide and Khora's whip and such turned into proper Exalted Weapons, too :)

Basically, I want to get rid of Link mods as a priority.

I decided to remove and change some of them on the OP. The existence of Link-Mods do limits what players can bring in a mission if they wish their companions to be survivable. Link health, link armor, and link shields cannot be saved. However, Mecha Overdrive and Hunter Synergy can be reworked to make them not dependent on player weapons.

I also buffed companion stats across the board. I still can’t believe DE thinks 50 armor for a melee companion is a good idea.

The reason I can think of why DE ignored the feedback regarding flux is probably because it’s already too late. Warframe energy interaction is already well established in the RJ code. They probably do not want another bugfest trying to change it again. Plus, they probably want players to drain their energy pads reserve. Railjack is the only game mode where I have a reason to use them.

[DrivaMain]

I changed automatic respawns mechanic a little bit. Now QoL mods effectiveness are cut in half when the companion is in a recovery state instead of being deactivated. Throwing a bone to endurance runners where their pets at least have usefulness once enemies get into the one shot territory. This also benefits players who wishes not to build their pets around survivability but focusing on utility without getting punished too much by the pet constantly dying, thus removing their access from QoL mods. 

[Steel_Rook]

14 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

I also buffed companion stats across the board. I still can’t believe DE thinks 50 armor for a melee companion is a good idea.

Agreed. That's part of the problem. Pets have really low stats and their mods have really low buff values. I get the feeling that DE originally intended for pets to be a minor aspect of the game, which is why they stuck them with so many limitations. Loading them with so much QoL and making them perpetually available to everyone all of the time, however, pretty much necessitates they be tougher and more reliable. A lot of our convenience abilities are on our pets these days. Buffing base stats and durability mods should bring them to some level of reliability, like you said.

 

14 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

The reason I can think of why DE ignored the feedback regarding flux is probably because it’s already too late. Warframe energy interaction is already well established in the RJ code. They probably do not want another bugfest trying to change it again. Plus, they probably want players to drain their energy pads reserve. Railjack is the only game mode where I have a reason to use them.

Well, the old system is still there, I assume :) This is off-topic for your thread so I don't want to derail. Just this is one of those things that was obviously going to end up being universally disliked and did. It makes me wonder why they thought it was a good idea in the first place.

 

2 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

I changed automatic respawns mechanic a little bit. Now QoL mods effectiveness are cut in half when the companion is in a recovery state instead of being deactivated. Throwing a bone to endurance runners where their pets at least have usefulness once enemies get into the one shot territory. This also benefits players who wishes not to build their pets around survivability but focusing on utility without getting punished too much by the pet constantly dying, thus removing their access from QoL mods. 

Good idea. I would personally go all-in and just NOT disable Vacuum/Radar on a dead per, but that's a fair compromise. They still work when the pet is dead, just with a shorter range. I can live with that.

[Kaggelos]

How can i give more likes to your post!?! xD

[DrivaMain]

8 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Good idea. I would personally go all-in and just NOT disable Vacuum/Radar on a dead per, but that's a fair compromise. They still work when the pet is dead, just with a shorter range. I can live with that.

That certain someone at DE probably will disagree on that statement. He doesn’t want QoL mods to be active at all times without any attention to the player. 

[DrivaMain]

On 2021-05-08 at 12:19 AM, Kaggelos said:

How can i give more likes to your post!?! xD

Uh, make alt accounts? I wouldn’t do it if I were you. You may get banned for influencing the post likes.

[DrivaMain]

Would you look at that, they finally released that bandaid Protea dispensary augment. When are you gonna stop selling bandaid solutions and actually starts fixing the problem? This only makes this helminth subsumed ability even more mandatory. Watch as the usage grows astronomically.

[Kaggelos]

45 minutes ago, DrivaMain said:

Would you look at that, they finally released that bandaid Protea dispensary augment. When are you gonna stop selling bandaid solutions and actually starts fixing the problem? This only makes this helminth subsumed ability even more mandatory. Watch as the usage grows astronomically.

This. Come on DE, this is getting ridiculous, I know you can do better than this.