Pets revision

[(PSN)Pablogamer585]

[Wall of text ahead^©]

While we wait for “Pets 2.0” since 2 years ago (or perhaps even longer, I don’t recall anymore), it seemed right to me to do a revision to pets on my own now that I have tried them all, understood their kits, functionality and how much I have gotten like them!

As per usual, this is intended to be used as feedback for the upcoming updates, if the things that were talked in the past will ever make it to the future, but leaving the “We are going to do this - and it never happened - to this thing of the game that has been requested” mentality, lets go over the things I think could change for the better for our companions after all this time.

 

 

First, why are pets?

After we complete “The Kubrow’s Howl” quest very early in the game, we get our first pet, a doggy! which can be from different races, each with its own good things, and no downsides to it.
No really, the thing I like is that a pet because of its variants doesn’t really change anything about it but the precept mods they come with, which somehow is both bad and good as it makes pets feel like re-skins with just 2-3 different mods each.
But do these little fellows help us all that much?

Pets do port their own precepts, which technically make each “unique and only”, but if we take a look at said percepts, only a few are rather useful, and even with that, not even all of the ones on the same pet are that good, looking at Hounds ahem.

Companions easily fall within 4~ish categories imo, though the game says 3 (Robotics, Kubrows and Kavats) not sure if we should even consider Hounds something different from Moas, as they are also “modular”, but anyways:
-Kavats (+Vulpaphylas)
-Kubrows (+Predasites)
-Moas (+Hounds)
-Sentinels

 

Pet overview

 

Kavats

I am pretty sure Kavat-type pets compose close to or over 70% of pets usage on the charts right now and for all the right reasons. They are versatile, grant amazing support/buffs (though randomly) and can evade dying most of the time thanks to their tricky tricks. Or at least most of them do.

• Adarza Kavats are mainly used for a rather reliable crit chance boost that is very nice as it also affects teammates and not only yourself (I am all about team support so this is one of my favourite Kavats).
  
  They can also redirect the damage taken to enemies, dealing a bit more of what they took, which is useless, as this works the best for heavy hitting units, but if Adarzas get shot by some auto-firing enemy it won’t matter to redirect 1 shot out of 10.
  Because of that, this Kavat has the ability to spend most of its time lying on the ground to be revived on high level missions.
  
   
• Smeeta Kavat is considered the best companion in the game as its survivability greatly increases thanks to using its Mischief mod which deploys a doppelganger and turns it invisible (so Loki but better and in pet format) + its Charm precept mod grants awesome random buffs (affinity, crit chance, shields, energy) though with a way lower chance of happening that Adarza’s Cat Eye.
  
  Stills, excellent for any situation given, but mostly resource and affinity farming.
  
   
• Vasca Kavats are the funniest, most hilarious thing in the entire game for spanish (only the natives of Spain, not just spanish-speakers) Warframe players, even more if it happens to be the Ostia variant.
  
  Vasca Kavats are really good support companions, for they can heal you if you happen to be downed, which can happen more than once sadly. The good thing is that the heal the Kavat loses to heal you it can return when using the Draining Bite mod, though the damage it restores is only 40 and doesn’t scale based on how much damage the mod does which easily cuts out any possibility for the pet to scale or survive further. And not only for him.
  
   
• Sly Vulpaphylas are great. They grant its master evasion for each enemy they kill or after a certain time, which translates to less chances of dying or taking damage. Just like the rest of Vulpaphylas, it is also one of the best type of pets because they simply cannot be killed thanks to their Devolution precept that allows them all to turn into flying noodles that will still help you and return to their prime form after a certain time.
  
  They are pretty much cooler Wyrms in all ways.
  
   
• Crescent Vulpaphylas are not that great though.
  While they can still go back into larvae form, this is intrinsic to all Vulpaphylas, but what they do with Crescent Charge precept is… meh. Charge at an enemy to deal 200 damage, surely it looks like it is a  good amount - on paper - if the pet does 80 at base and probably you’re going to fight level 10 enemies. Outside of that, what will you do with that? Yeah you could say it acts as some pocket version of Titania’s Lantern or Rhino's Stomp, but dealing puncture damage and to a single target only pretty much means it won’t attack many more.
  
  However, if Kavat mods such as Swipe worked for this type of melee attacks, Crescent Vulpaphylas would actually be really, really nice for Crowd Control and debuff enemies at the same time.
  
   
• Panzer Vulpaphylas* have the coolest name out of all the Vulpaphylas (imo) and also the best precepts. Now, they also happen to be the best Vulpa’s for a very simple reason: They do have ranged attacks with viral to them, which happens to be one of the best damage types in the game.
  Basically he is an immortal viral turret, which combines perfectly with mods such as Synth Deconstruct & Fiber. No need to worry about clumsy pet behaviour trying to reach to melee an enemy if it can attack from a range.
  I would consider this the best pet in the game alongside the Smeeta Kavat.
  *_{One small note about Panzers, I like how the game says they have a thick skin that works like an armour yet they do possess the exact same amount of armour as all other beasts.}

Kubrows

Kubros got it really rough right now. While they have the most species from all pets in the game, 6 without taking into account the 3 Predasites + the Helminth Charger, more on these later, they have been overshadowed by the Kavats due to their unreliability and lack of helpful mechanics as a companion. Sure there are some very strange combos out there that might work in really, really strange situations but is that enough for the doggies to be used more? It seems like not to me.

• Huras Kubrows are basically mini Rhinos/Lokis.
  
  They can charge towards an enemy damaging everything in its path for a whooping… 160 damage. Yeah, that won’t work outside of Earth/Mercury/Venus levels all that much...
  HOWEVER, the Stalk precept is ever so slightly good, as it acts as a better Shade in a much wider range. Still, it seems these two are rather inconsistent to me, as it will cloak you randomly when there’s enemies nearby that are unalerted, but not mid-action or while in battle which renders it as an inconsistent stealth. Making it work 100% of the time when an enemy is nearby would be utterly broken but perhaps it should work 100% of the time as long as the enemies are unalerted or only suspicious of your presence. On full alert/battle mode, it shouldn’t work at all, that’s all.
  
   
• Raksa Kubrows are better than Huras for they provide Crowd Control and now that shield gating exists, shield gating/shield replenish. However it would be nice if precepts actually indicated how much cooldown do these abilities have until they work again.
  
  Sadly like the rest of Kubrows, the survivability of Raksa Kubrows is low, so he won’t get too far unless he manages to keep Crowd-Controlling all foes around it, which honestly isn’t all that impossible considering that Howl has really good range and duration in spite of having a cap to how many targets it can affect at the same time, but 15 is a big number so no complains. Really nice doggy companion although I do not fully like its base fur pattern.
  
   
• Sahasa Kubrows are great! With Dig precept allowing them to find ammo, energy or even health + resources if am not mistaken, these little fellows indirectly can act as a dispensary which synergizes with Equilibrium + Synth mods, which is excellent iteration between companion and master, as all pets should be.
  
  The second precept is also great -- in concept -- for it allows to perform a finisher on a target. Sadly finishers of pets in Warframe little to no times terminate the target but the pet instead. Even with that in mind, I do consider the Sahasa the best Kubrow species, and also one of the prettiest too, it was my first Kubrow after all!
  
   
• Sunika Kubrows are a copy paste of Sahasa Kubrows but with an useless precept mod.
  
  No, seriously, “Unleashed” allows the Kubrow to tag down a VIP target, so basically this mod is usable for capture missions which are all but challenging or requiring something of sorts like this. I would consider these a bit not so useful. If so, I’d say they are the worst Kubrow type.
  
   
• Chesa Kubrows are another of my favourite Kubrow species. They can disarm enemies, which is an awesome sort of CC and kind of survivability too, plus, you get extra loot from nearby corpses or containers (randomly). You can use him as a mini Nekros, but sadly it has a 10 seconds cooldown to work. Cool Kubrows!
  
   
• Helminth Charger is a really good, really unique pet you should try to obtain.
  
  While he has the exact same crit stats and status chance by default as all other pets*, he has an extra damage type; toxin! Toxin and slash, which are great damage types for a pet as they make him useful against Grineer and Corpus alike, aaand, he has 4 special mods for himself! 2 are the precepts; Proboscis which allows the Helminth to drag an enemy nearby with a ranged attack (Super useful as it counts as kill assist) and Trample, which is a copy paste with a different name of Huras Kubrows’ precept that allows to charge to an enemy… for convenience I removed this one from my Hellminth so he can use ranged attacks more often instead of just rocket launching itself and hitting only 1 enemy because that is all it had in sight.
  
  Still, this mod is actually great on places like Grineer Galleon corridors for Steel Path as it will be a multi-hit charge and that counts towards Synth Fiber & Deconstruct in the best way possible Bearing that in mind, it is too situationally useful… Perhaps if pets had these mods as abilities by default, we wouldn’t have the issue of having to decide whether to slot its precepts or not.
  
  Moving on to the Strain Set, the Charger has two of the 4 mods; Eruption & Fever.
  Eruption is the only pet mod which gives scaling damage based on enemy level, however, being just a 4% of the current health of a target can be a bit underwhelming.
  Fever also gives the charger a much needed damage increase per cyst affecting the enemy (capped at 8 though, so 240% damage increase), and the rest of the kit grants  really strong healing as it is missing hp % based + crit damage for melees. In general, the Strain Set is amazing and pairs awesomely with Mecha set, if you can fit it all in the lil fella.
  _{* I know Kavats and Vulpaphylas have more**,  but still, extremely lame copy paste.
  **great crit chance compared to the terrible 10% of Kubrows but still mediocre 7.5% status chance}
  
   
• Vizier Predasite are nice companions. Having rather fast (considering it is a pet) ranged attacks, they can hit more enemies in less time, though the AI is clunky and at times won't target any enemy. As per usual, hitting enemies without being restricted to melee attack is a huge contribution for Mecha Set which only Kubrow-types can equip. Also, they can heal allies really consistently with Iatric Mycelium! 300 hp over 5 seconds every 8 seconds, amazing :)
  Conclusion, nice doggy! But they can’t wear armours :c
  
   
• Pharaon Predasite is also a nice little buddy! He has a ranged attack precept, and a damage boosting one, which is percentual instead of just, a flat value, so it is great! Combined with Deimos arcanes for kitguns, you could run double combined elemental damage without having to equip more than two mods :D
  Conclusion, this is an excellent pet for combining sets aaand, support! Though it cannot heal you or your allies, but that’s fine, he is like a pocket Toxic Lash.
  
   
• Medjay Predasites combine CC capabilities and AoE attack capabilities thanks to their precepts Paralytic spores & Infectious Bite, which, combines the best out of all pets with the Mecha mods so he can spread this virus in a 30 meter radius, sadly, the spores do not generate on the subsequently infected targets by the Mecha Set.
  This is my most used Predasite personally, and he is a really, really good companion.

Robotics

Sentinels are super nice little fellows and unlike animal companions, they do follow you around easily without getting stuck somewhere, and also have better focus on targets you might be facing. For me that is already a point in their favour.

While it is true they are also super easy to break, and the only way to help them overcome that is by using Full Reset on Parazon¹ or slotting Prime Regen², they have really fancy mechanics, such as scanning stuff for you, and for a Codex Junkie like me Helios is the perfect boy, scanning plants, repairing Railjack wounds, grouping enemies, protecting you from statuses… you get the point. They are good, yet I have heard some players complaining about them being useless and that no one would choose them over pets, to which I very much disagree. I mean if you’re a meta Smeeta Kavat guy then it’s on you but don’t assume for the rest of us that our choices are “bad” because they don’t give the amazing benefits of Charm, which are also inconsistent & random.

Moas were added later on, and while the premise of “modular pets” sounded cool… they failed to be something unique or as helpful as the rest of Companions and Sentinels while they are some kind of middle ground, though, they have some unique and useful mods on their own.

And then there’s the Hounds which are, you know that meme of “Boss when you fight it vs boss when you have it on your team”? Yeah, they are basically that.
Modular like the Moas, and equally as useful with the only good thing about them being (some of) their unique mods. Not even their “unique” weapons save them from sucking A LOT.

¹_{best imo, as it can be triggered endlessly, as long as there are heavy units, that is}

²_{Outdated, only obtained from Baro so completely random, consumes a slot, takes a lot of space, and needs to be upgraded which isn’t cheap}

 

So, first lets go over to the sentinels, we have quite a few to cover surprisingly!

• Carrier/Prime of course had to be the first one. Back in the day (from what I’ve heard) this pear shaped floating drone was everyone’s best companion because it was the only one who had a vacuuming mod, but now its only purpose is to act as an ammo printer, and break crates, which mind you, is actually very convenient to passively loot places, but this pulse and the registering of said crates is rather slow. Can’t blame the ability itself but the AI of the game for being this slow.
  
  So, Carrier is a very decent companion and his weapon is… the Sweeper/Prime. A mini shotgun which does basically nothing. Honestly not that many sentinel weapons do anything at all but this one is particularly bad.
  
   
• Dethcube/Prime  is the ultimate health and energy generator thanks to Synth mods + Energy Generator + Equilibrium. While his name is “Death Cube”, Dethcube isn’t quite lethal or deadly, because his offensive precepts work mostly for low level enemies, and his base weapon isn’t exceptionally good either. Though he looks really gud!
  
  His Deth machine rifle isn’t strong, Prime version isn't all that bad honestly, but at least it has lots of ammo and rate of fire, so it is really easy he assist on kills, moreover if equipping zoom mods as apparently these do increase the effective range of sentinel weapons by allowing the sentinels to see further past their assault mod precept.
  
  In conclusion, Dethcube isn’t made to kill, but to assist, which converts him into a formidable little team support.
  
   
• Diriga is the actual killer sentinel. While surprisingly being a Grineer, I think I have only seen enemy Dirigas once in my 5 years playing, and I am not sure whether it was on an archwing mission as some kind of drone swarm, or during a really old special event, but I know for a fact I have. Though this is an advantage as Kuva Diriga could be created and I am sure we would love it. Kuva Vulklok sounds super spicy...
  
  Going back to the sentinel itself, it has CC precepts that can electrocute a group of enemies in 15 meters from his range, or deal electric damage to a group of them in a shorter one. Would be cool if those affected by Arc Coil (the multi target one) could get the guaranteed stun effect of Electro Pulse (The single target focused). Would be an awesome synergy for an awesome sentinel this one is.
  
  I call my Diriga “Comandante Calcetines” (Commander Socks) due to his soggy and baggy looks. I really like this one sentinel.
  
  As for his weapon, the Vulklok, this has to be the best sentinel weapon, and lucky me, I got a riven for it years ago! While the damage of it is low, highest for all sentinels though, the stats are a-m-a-z-i-n-g. Alongside Verglas, these are the only good sentinel weapons IMO. Building Vulklok for corrosive or Radiation is a good choice, slap on some crit chance, crit damage, depleted magazine and rate of fire and boom, your best buddy is here!
  
   
• Djinn is exceptionally good as a sentinel thanks to being the only one that is (technically) immortal, but the time it takes to regenerate is rather long, which is unpleasant.
  Numbers aside, one of his precepts is not quite good either. Fatal attraction draws enemies nearby which tends to allow Djinn to die faster. Slightly counter-producent if you ask me. The combination with Machete Gazal is totally unworthy for it is not like they do gain that much of an upgrade either. But the aggro precept doubles his effective range which is neat.
  His weapon, the Stringer, simply sucks. In conclusion, Djinn is only good and reliable because he doesn’t need to be revived if you use Reawaken, otherwise, he sucks.
  
   
• Helios lord of awesomeness, he happens to be my favourite sentinel in terms of utility because... You guessed it, I am a Completionist and my personal Codex only lacks a couple entries such as Railjack enemy aircrafts or enemies that belong to unplayable special events from before I started playing, which is a pity :(
  However, Helios is disrupting the lore for he is a Corpus Drone, yet it has a Prime version. He is not a Tenno-craft object, how is this even possible? I know they recently threw in a “Some owned it” with the release of Varzia’s little shop, but Helios is not Tenno even if that is true. What happened to him? Did they simply replicate him?
  
  No matter, Helios is the one with the base useful precepts of throwing 3 Glaives (thought this was part of Diriga, I swear) and scan people, there’s also a special one to be bought off Simaris that allows him to work as a super slow Banshee Sonar, wish this one took like a second to work on each enemy.
  
  Deconstructor/Prime is really strange for it is a melee weapon that attacks at range, but it simply works well, no complaints about it.
  
  Conclusion, Helios (one of the) best boy, get it
  
   
• Nautilus is a gorgeous-looking amazing sentinel and your best friend in Raijack, if only companions could be commanded to do certain things instead of standing by your side all the time… for example, me an average Railjack Enjoyer with everything maxxed out, can repair any issue of my Railjack remotely with just opening my tactical minmap, so it is perfect. However, if someone hadn’t his intrinsics maxed, he could send his Nautilus to do this.
  
  The idea is, Nautilus repairs Railjack hazards really fast, but, we need to hold accountable the time he would take to get from point A to point B, making it balanced. That way, once you reach max level on Railjack this precept is unneeded so you can replace it by something else.
  
  Or, you could hire a Railjack engineer, which does all I’ve mentioned faster and more efficiently.
  
  Going back to him, Verglas is literally a Glaxion that has been put under a magnifying glass to look smaller, and while the Glaxion isn’t a good weapon to carry on your own, it surely is an amazing main weapon for a sentinel. That mixed with the Cordon precept to put a bunch of fools together, perfect. Top three sentinels imo
  
   
• Oxylus the Helios of plants and animal recovery. Though, he helps with no animal recovery but fishing. Going over his precepts, he has:
  -Worse Prime Animal Instinct.
  -FishHere app and MoColour extension (marking fishing spots and highlighting fish silhouettes)
  -Hey look at this plant (Scan plants)
  Conclusion, unuseful, but he looks nice.
  
  His weapon isn’t quite good either, it has good ammo, too slow of a reload for that ammo, and pretty slow fire rate so equipping double rof mods is recommendable but stills, sucks.
   
• Shade/Prisma Shade is the definition of bad stealth design. Even Grendel could do it better.
  Yes it can cloak you as long as no one is attacked, but you normally plan on attacking people in Warframe when you’re invisible, not just sneak by.
  
  Burst laser rifle is also weak, very weak, though it basically has limitless ammo and 0 reload time so it is a consistent way of getting assists. Prisma burst rifle is ever so slightly better but still unreliable compared to Verglas, Vulklok or Deconstructor.
  
   
• Taxon, every beginner’s little buddy. Weapon? smol, not deadly, it’s a baby Verglas, bad stats but works just fine. Precepts? Give you overshields or a full shield recharge every now and then after hitting a bad guy. That 's it, gud.
  
   
• Wyrm/Prime the space noodle dragon. His precepts are acceptable, giving a radial stun if enemies are nearby. Prevent status effects from affecting the frame? ¡Bueno!
  His weapon is bad though, pretty much a copy pasta of Shade’s Burst rifle but in auto.

 

 

 

Moa time!

• Para was my first Moa. She isn’t bad, but she isn’t all that good either. In all honesty what matters at the time of building a Moa is selecting always the same brackets to get a polarity when templating/gilding them afterwards.
  
  So what this Moa provides is “offense” with a double CC set of precepts. Tether mines that first clog enemies so they do not escape and then group em up real pretty just like Nautilus Cordon, and a mine that puts enemies to levitate every now and then.
  
   
• Lambeo, the top-hat Moa. This fellow basically produces Matrix slowdown effect bubbles for a certain amount of time, preventing enemy projectiles from hitting you (as fast) and reducing the incoming damage. Honestly this precept is pretty good as a defensive and utility tool if it also affected the enemies directly! Could be some sort of mini cataclysm.
  
  The second precept isn’t all that impressive as it does what every Shockwave Moa ever does, stomp the ground, knock the fools. Some sort of cc every 10 seconds but welp, there’s better ones. Not that bad of a companion but honestly the only thing that makes MOAdulars different from each other is their precepts. They are all the exact same with different looks otherwise.
  
   
• Oloro, but no, it doesn’t smell. (In spanish Oloro means smelly) This is the worst Moa of them all to me.
  While it allegedly can hack things as fast as only taking 2 seconds to do so, I’ve seen Oloro Moas take well over 15 seconds to hack a console just to leave it without actually having hacked anything afterwards. Pretty dum dum behaviour if you ask me. The other precept, Tractor Beam is a bit dumb, but it is fun as it allows you to take a nap mid air. Not quite literally but you can aim glide for longer and with no gravity, which I think combines also with a kitgun arcane of those no one uses at all. Other than that, Oloro looks ugly and is middly useless.
  
   
• Nychus the “bonk” Moa. Latest to be added to Leg’s offerings, this one Moa is designed for melee attacks and is the only one with a rare quality precept, for some reason. Said precept, Hard Engage, allows the Moa to kick the s**t outta any fool she comes in contact with, as this mod is, surprisingly like no other that I know about, affected by the mods equipped on the Moa’s weapon. A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.
  
  The other precept, Blast Shields, sounds to be one of the most amazing, most useful mods in the entire game for a pet, as it gives +3000 to max overshields¹ and can reset them if it pounces on an enemy within 10 meters of it. I need to test this one in depth, as I haven’t understood whether this means that every time the Moa attacks someone with this precept (randomly basically) you get +3000 of shields, or that it can give 3000 overshields every now and then when it attacks someone. Hopefully it is the first case as this would turn this big birb into one of the best companions in the entire game.
  _{1 way over what frames can achieve, Harrow with his passive included, Hildryn excluded²
  2 Which also made me think this Moa could be Hildryn’s perfect companion?}

 

Aaand for their weapons there are four, plus they can equip sentinel ones that aren't exclusive (Like Deconstructor)[As far as I recall].

• Cryota is the middle ground between Taxon’s and Nautilus’ weapons. Just another Ice-beam with high status chance but low crit, good to slow down single target or heat inherit.
   
• Tazicor, worse version of the laser burst rifle or the laser rifle, for the mere fact that in spite of having more or less reliable stats and good rate of fire, it only has 4 damn shots before having to reload for almost 3 entire seconds. Please give it ten times larger magazine.
   
• Vulcax. Only companion weapon with good base starts but dementially long reloads of 6 seconds render this single shot plasma heater almost useless.
  Almost because it has great crit multi, good crit chance, acceptable more or less status chance, and deals heat damage which is one of the best and scaling damage sources of the game.
   
• Helstrum, this is the one. The one and only good and reliable weapon that Legs sells for Moas. Burst fire rocket launcher with 80 of ammo and rather quick reload speed of only 2.5 seconds. It has heat damage, great status chance, but atrocious fire rate, should you equip dual rof mods for it.

 

 

Before moving on to Hounds, it is worth remarking that once you obtain all Moas, you can put eachother's precept mods on whichever you choose, and that translates to a lot of interesting and variated builds plus actual visual customization that won’t affect performance compared to Kitguns or Zaws, since honestly it is not like parts give great benefits or gamechanging stats to the pet’s base numbers, which are still too low imo.

So, Hounds, or the best example possible on how hard can you nerf something that is strong when you fight it.
Lets refer to them by their head names, just like Moas. I will put their other precepts afterwards, as Hound’s precepts are divided on the 3 parts you choose to build your robodog with instead of coming all in one of them, like Sentients or Moas do (Kind dumbo innit?).

• Bhaira ugliest head comes with the best precept of all Hounds precepts, Null Audit.
  
  This mod allows the dog to steal Eximus Units’ auras and let him use them, which roughly translates to Hounds annoying you half of the time by stepping into your way with a Frost-like bubble to stop all your projectiles.
  
  Couldn't they think of a better way to make these, seriously?
  Don’t get me wrong, the mod is amazing and extremely useful, moreover at high levels where eximus units are almost recurrent, but why does the only usable eximus ability have to be more of a debuff to yourself than it is to enemies? One simple coding change to allow all allied projectiles to penetrate friendly Snow Globes would be much welcome.
  
  It comes with the Lacerten weapon which surprisingly has acceptable stats but as a melee weapon it lacks big time. Besides, I do not comprehend why does it have ammo, if it’s a melee. Deals half impact, half slash.
  
   
• Dorma looks super weird. I do not quite understand this head, reminds me of a sock. One way or another this one does also come with a good precept that acts like a Counterpulse augment for Mag’s Polarize, so great! Problem is not knowing what the hell does it have for cooldown.
  
  Other than that, it has the worst weapon of all hounds for the damage distribution is half impact half puncture, which gives it 0 scaling.
  
   
• Hec is my favourite hound head, but disgracefully it is the worst too in terms of default precept.
  It allows him to ground stomp. Yeah, that's it. A Shockwave Moa all over again. However, this shockwave deals damage, which means it can proc Synth Deconstruct easily on grouped enemies, might be worth a try.
  
  Other than that this Hound’s weapon deals impact and slash, so it is half fine.

 

 

Mentioning their parts as separate instances seems completely unnecessary, as they are even less interesting than Moas for it’s the torso which grants the health, armour and shields, and then the tail and legs are… a minimal % of something and the base polarity the pet will have.

So, moving on to the remaining precepts we have:

Denials:

• Reflex Denial, which is a good one for it redirects almost the entirety of the received damage towards enemies, sadly as magnetic damage which is utterly useless unless you’re fighting Corpus (What’s with factions making things that affect them the most, are they stupid?), but it is a good survival tool for the doggie at least
   
• Diversified Denial turns your dog into three puppies, that’s about it.
   
• Evasive Denial is like a TF2 teleporter that activates when the Hound is at critical health, saving it from dying and allowing for some damage evasion for some seconds too. Useful.

 

 

Prospectus(es):

• Focused Prospectus is the best one vs Infested and Grineer for it fires an actually powerful heat beam for 4 seconds. The only issue is that the pet's ai is absolutely bonkers so they aim to the torso, wasting most of the time a charge of this if the enemy’s visible limb isn’t exactly that one.
   
• Synergized Prospectus is stronger vs Corpus because of their intolerance towards electric damage, so this seeking orb fits a great damage dealer, or at least it is when a level 90 Hound is shooting you with it. More on that later
   
• Lastly, Aerial Prospectus is a mini Vauban Photon Strike that deals really high base damage, but has 0 scaling. At very least the explosion is pretty big so it can trigger Synth Deconstruct and count as an assist too! Not that bad after all :)

 

 

 

The “general” take on them

To me, pets and companions have become a vital part of my late game (fun) builds and overall gameplay, for I make use of almost the entire arsenal I have at my disposal every time I fight. 

However, as I go further into the game and things become tougher, only those things that are cheesy can really save me, like invisibility, protective dash, shield gating, rolling guard… etc, etc.

For pets, the same happens. Only unkillable (Vulpaphylas and Djinn) companions become reliable pets to carry to the battlefield in harder, more hazardous environments/content, as otherwise you’ll spend a lot of your time reviving them, and possibly die because of that if you’re not used to go into operator mod for this.

It is also a pity how most of the pet special and unique precept mods deal as little damage as to only allow pets to kill low level enemies from the start-chat with ease, not even reliably honestly as on the later planets they struggle already, while their AI isn’t the best either to allow them to attack more than one enemy, and even with that in mind, not even consistently. 

Sentinels are good at enemy targeting because they do share the players point of view and stick close to you all the time while using ranged weapons only and being alerted of enemies presence from much much further away than the distances we normally fight at, which is extremely helpful compared to a Kavat that once downed will begin to teleport randomly and not allow you to revive it, leading to its death and inability to keep making use of him until you respawn, which a lot of players prefer doing if their pets happen to fall in battle.

Parazon mods like Full Reset are a blessing for they fix this one issue and I love to use Parazon for my builds, but honestly, if I have to be targeting very specific units¹ in order to stop worrying about my pet dying so consistently during a mission, what is the point of carrying something that isn’t a Vulpaphyla who attacks at range and procs viral all the time even if it dies?
¹ _{Will talk about Parazon on another article but it is still an important point to bring here}
 

Another important issue is, I have little to no options when modifying a pet because while they have 10 mod slots,which is a 2 more than average Warframe & weapon’s modding grid, it is completely unworthy of slotting a lot of them starting by damage mods, as pets damage is really low, even if their crit multipliers are high. 

While Fortuna tried to give pets more lethality by implementing 60%/60% status mods to them, the low status chance of most pets is also a diminishing return that reinforces my points about them not being worth using as damage sources but rather “buffing bags” that carry sets of mods that benefits us, but not them.

And that bring us to the part I like to do the most about my posts, (Before the comments & opinions, that is) The Rework Proposal;

 

Companions, refreshed, reworked, reliable:

As mentioned in all my rambling above, pets have a crap ton of issues, which can actually be fixed with ease if we upgrade their base stats, and give them more modding options. 

For my pets rework I’ve taken two sources of inspiration: Necramechs, and enemy companions.

Necramechs; Their modding UI is way more extensive, feels like a great sandbox to play around and put lots of different mods on it, most of them which aren’t necessarily vital or important but add a really nice QoL enhancement to their kits. The other half of the reason I chose Necramechs is the Forma-ing of them adding +2 capacity to their capacity of mods’ cost/drain.

In the case of Enemy companions; I have chosen them for obvious reasons, they target their objectives with meticulous precision and won’t stop til they are done with it, besides they have amazing survivability and damage output because they do scale.
My favourite case is Lockjaw & Sol, a Zanuka whose little friend is a Helios sentinel, forming a perfect couple.

A disclaimer before I begin with this;

Spoiler

I do not think companions should simply have gigantic health bars and limitless scaling in the game like enemies* do (Well, it is capped but I think you follow what I mean), however, I do think that those pets we can revive ourselves, deserve to be much more healthier than what they currently are. 
*_{Learned from my mistakes when talking with Steel_Rook :d}
 

The best example for this is comparing a Sister of Parvos’ personal Hound which dies again and again and gets replaced by a brand new factory model each time reliably, whereas our re-made Hounds with all the love and caress in the world plus mods we put on them so they resist more, take a hit and are already whining on the ground like it’s the end of the World.

Another thing that upsets me about modular pets to be precise, is how little of a stat increase they get when selecting different parts.
What is +10% when the base health of a Moa/Hound/Predasite/Vulpaphyla is what, 100?
What is -2’5% armour when his base armour is what, 50?
What is the reason our Moas have armour and our infested pets have shields instead of simply being extremely sturdy by having a lot more health or armour in the case of the infested pets, and extreme shields + recharge to them in the case of modular robotics?

Nothing makes sense!
_{I swear if someone in the comments comes with a “bUt nOtHInG iN wArFraMe mAkes SENse, DuH” am turning you into a tubemen, but one of those who is trapped on a glass tank in Tyl ‘Regor’s lab with infestation tumours crawling all over your body >:(}

So without further ado, lets go over my proposed changes for our fellow companions:

 

1) First and most important, dual companions

I like Lockjaw & Sol a lot and I think they represent the best out of the pet category in spite of being our enemies.
Sentinels are meant to be support units, and while I do not debate their role as companions, I still defend their weapons being buffed to the extent of being rather usable outside of low level missions. 

At the same time “Beasts” feel way too much like “pets” for their resistance and damage potential is, put simply, bad and nothing comparable to the likes of a “beast”, yet you can pet them all the time.

So I thought a nice first implementation would be allowing the player to run a sentinel and a Beast at the same time!
This way we fix a couple issues:

1. Lack of pet’s survivability. Pets do not have something to “support them” and rely on mods such as Medi-pet kit or Prime Pack Leader, which is unreliable because only melee strikes triggers its effect and has a lot of cost for a single mod. 
   
   Why does running a Sentinel alongside a pet fix that? Sentinels have the amazing Medi-Ray mod and some others that allow for reliable health and shield regeneration, which would highly benefit pets for they draw a lot of attention towards them. Even if I am not going to give pets a mass increase on EHP stats, this should help nicely with their survivability.
    
2. Lack of support. This wouldn’t only benefit the animal and the sentinel but yourself too. They could attack multiple & different enemies at the same time and at different ranges, while also helping spread status and trigger set bonuses in case you’re using some of them, such as Synth Deconstruct! Double health orbs chance means double survival after all, unless you’re a Hildryn user.
    
3. Lack of focus on target. Like I said this would allow your companions to easily focus on multiple enemies, as melee companions cannot fight flying units for obvious (though dumb) reasons, nor those who might be targeting them at range. All in all 2 is better than 1.
   
   Ideally mods like Hunter Command could work if Sentinel weapons had way higher status and procced slash, thing which I only see Helios doing reliably with the Glaives precept.
   Might be a good synergy for this specific sentinel.
    
4. Giving a way higher maximum performance. By using two companions at the same time you can get the best out of modding. As an example, Venari and Rare Catto (the two Kavats from my Khora setup) both have Fetch slotted, yet I feel like only one is working, unlike double Prime Animal Instinct, which gives absurd detection range, and I mean, absurd.
   
   What does that mean? If we had a Sentinel and a beast equipped at the same time, we could drop a vacuum mod for another mod instead. Why is that, you might say:
    
   1. Personally I do not want to increase Sentinels’ modding grid, I feel like with 10 mod slots we do have enough and most of the mods we slap on sentinels fit without having conflict with others. Not that sentinels have many mods either. (That can be equipped on any of them, as I am not counting precepts as “mods” but rather something intrinsic to every sentinel already).
       
5. Lack of perception of pets. If a sentinel were to follow a pet instead of us (will make this an option), it could “mark” where the enemies are for the pet AI thanks to their way larger visual detection range. Diriga for example, would turn any pet into a true predator that would target its enemies from afar instead of just, you know, a mole that attacks people randomly when they get close to it and gets stuck somewhere in the map just to die. 

 

 

2) Enhancing what can be enhanced

One of those things I also do not fancy particularly about pets is their lack of Effective Health Points, be it by default or modded.

While yes you can get high armour, shields or health on your pet by using the link mods, you are required to bring something strong enough to the battle in order for these to gain the max benefit possible from it, as Warframe does not precisely advocate for balance but to be an extremist instead… just look how tank Frames now rely on shield gating more than their own armour or health values, with the exception of Nidus and Inaros, to survive the longest… A shame to be sure.

So, I thought, why not make pets gain more health, armour and shields per level than what they currently do? (Until level 30 that is)
Yes your Hound won’t be as resilient as [PH Sister of Parvos] Hound once she is as rank 5… but he will surely endure a lot more  than what he currently does!

To boost this even further, let's give special upgrades to pets once we go past rank 30, and Forma them 5 times til rank 40. Every level, some small extra  upgrade could be added.

Before beginning to list all these changes, another small disclaimer :
I would like to make companion precepts behave like abilities instead of mods.
The idea is to make an additional mod section of 2-3 slots (depending on how many can a pet equip, Moas for example can only have 2) within the same modding menu of companions for precept mods only, similar to how Parazon has requiems and its own mods on two different rows.

Here's a visual example made with my low tier photoshopping skills and Overframe, as it is way easier for a console peasant like me:

 

Now; time for some numbers. First, I'll propose the EHP increase formula for different pets, and then I dive deeper into detail.

The order will be the same one as I’ve used to review them, I’ll go over the weapons and mods  afterwards.

General: Each forma increases the capacity of the pet by 2, up to 5 max.
Whether you continue forma-ing after the five formas have been applied, (Sentinels do not gain more cap if you forma em), is up to you.

Kavats (Vulpaphylas included) [0-30, 30-40]

Spoiler

Kavats are gentle, so I thought it would be logical to give bigger increases to their shields, instead of their health and armour values which is more proper of Kubrows.

Taking an Adarza Kavat base stats for demonstration purposes: 

-40 health, triples at R30 (+200%)
-70 shield, triples at R30 (+200%)
-50 armour, remains the same as level does not affect it.

Proposed changes

General Kavat stat-increase formula for R0 to R30:
+250% health from R0-R30
+500% shields from R0-R30
    - 2s to shield recharge delay [-0’2 every 3 levels]
    + 120% shield recharge rate [+12% every 3 levels]
+175% armour from R0-R30
+12’5% status chance from R0-R30
+20% crit chance from R0-R30

 

 

Extra upgrades from R30 til R40 for Adarza (Forma-ing required, obviously):

Spoiler

Kavat’s Eye: +40% crit chance to Kavat’s Eye and -4 second for it to proc again [+10%, -1s at: 32,34,36,38]

Reflect; +40% chance for Reflect to proc & amplify damage by another 60% [+10%/15% at; 31,33,35,39]

Extra upgrades from R30 to R40 for Smeeta:

Spoiler

Mischief: +2 second to Mischief’s invisibility, -2 seconds to invisibility cooldown [+1s at: 32, 36; -1s at: 34, 38] ; +30% evasion rate to Mischief’s decoy [+10% at: 33, 36, 39]

Charm: +12% chance for Charm to proc, -7 seconds to cooldown [+3% at:32,34,36,38; -1s at: 31,32,35,36,38,39]

Extra upgrades from R30 to R40 for Vasca:

Spoiler

Draining Bite +500 damage to Draining bite, +20% heal for healing [+100 damage at: 32,34,36,38,40; +5% at: 33,35,37,39]

Transfusion: -15% health loss per Transfusion [-5% at: 33, 35, 37]

Venari has no special mods to it so it’s pointless to try and think of an upgrade for this catto.

Extra upgrades for Sly Vulpaphyla:

Spoiler

Survival Instinct: +20% evasion to Survival Instinct, -2s of cooldown [+5% at: 32, 34, 36, 38; -1s at: 35, 39]

Sly Devolution: -10s to Sly Devolution’s cooldown [-1s at: 31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40]

Extra upgrades for Crescent Vulpaphyla:

Spoiler

Crescent Charge: +5 seconds to lifted status, +50% vision range (15m) [+1s at: 32,34,36,38,40; +10% at: 31,33,35,37,39]

Crescent Devolution: (view Sly Devolution)

Extra upgrades for Panzer Vulpaphyla:

Spoiler

Viral Quills:  +2 spore generated per impact, -2s to cooldown [+1 at: 36,40; -1 at: 34,38]

Panzer Devolution: (view Sly Devolution)

That should do it for our Feline companions, hopping on to the doggies!

 

Kubrows (Predasites included) [Rank 0-30, 30-40]

Spoiler

Kubrows are meant to be sturdy and get dirty in a fight, with the dog-nside being they have to focus on one target at a time and grant 0 buffs to its master, or any other useful help.
That is why Kubrows have fallen into Oblivion (or so I’d think this one was it from all their flaws), as some of their precepts are the same but with a different name and more often than not, will end on the ground in need to be revived. 

So, here’s how I’d fix it:

Taking a Cheese(a) Kubrow for exemplification: 

-125 health, triples at (current) max rank

-75 shields, triples at max rank

-50 armour, remains the same at all ranks ‘,:|
 

Proposed changes

General Kubrow stat-increase formula:
+500% health from R0-R30
+250% shields from R0-R30
    + 90% shield recharge rate [+9% every 3 levels]
+375% armour from R0-R30
+25% status chance from R0-R30
+15% crit chance from R0-R30

 

Extra upgrades for Chesa Kubrows R30-R40

Spoiler

Neutralize: Increased effective range by +10m [+1m per rank]

Retrieve: Overall effectiveness upgrade (more loot chance, more range, less cooldown) of 50% [5% per rank]

Extra upgrade for Huras Kubrow R30-R40

Spoiler

Hunt: currently “Hunt” has not much of a hunt to it imo. A mini rework is in order for a mod like this so it doesn’t collide with the other K9 precepts that do the same (looking at the helminth charger, ahem).
Hunt now adds an incapacitation factor to the mod, so all enemies affected by the Kubrow’s charge get staggered for 5 seconds, and the target one, knocked down. The forma-ing of the pet would make staggered enemies take longer to recover and take extra damage.

Stalk: Mods that turn owners invisible currently suck a bit. Stalk is no exception, but at least it has reasonable detection range. Further upgrades should only increase its range by a 33% or maybe more and that should do it.

Extra  upgrades for Raksa Kubrows R30-R40

Spoiler

Howl: Howl is a better Terrify for it takes 0 energy. A reasonable and non-game breaking upgrade would be increasing its effectiveness by a 33% (3’3% every rank from 30 to 40)

Protect: Protect is a great mod, however, the lack of a cooldown indicator on its description is rather annoying for balancing purposes so unless a counter is added to these types of mods, I do not plan on touching anything besides the amount of shields they give. Will edit this one part if we get said (kinda needed from my perspective) change.

Extra upgrades for Sahasa Kubrows R30-R40

Spoiler

Dig: I think Dig is already amazing, so the only thing I’d “buff” on it would be the success rate by giving it a +130% for a total of 400% success rate. [+13% at: 31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40]

Ferocity: I am a big fan of finishers, but you know, Warframe has an issue with finishers. Finishers don’t finish off people most of the time. And by most of the time I mean around 80% of them. So at very least, make Kubrow's precept that allows them to do one finisher, to finish AT LEAST non-heavy units in one blow, given how much time they take to attack and execute this animation already…
Now if finishers were fixed, I’d make it so the upgrade decreased the cooldown for this precept.

Extra upgrades for Sunika Kubrows R30-R40

Spoiler

Savagery: Savagery is… Ferocity but with a different name. I would change Savagery to something new like this:
Savagery (!): Kubrow goes rampage towards [x] enemies in 15 meters, inducing lethal wounds on them and opening to Parazon finishers. (Y seconds cooldown) [Thought of something rather large like, 20s of cooldown given that Parazon finishers are actual finishers and this would allow for great pet-master synergy] The extra upgrades would reduce the cooldown for it to work again and increase the range of action.

Unleashed: So he can hold down a VIP target, how nice that is. On Capture missions. The hardest missions to fail in the entire game. This mod is a waste of space for anyone’s build.
Lets rework how it works:
Unleashed (!): Kubrow incapacitates (a number of) targets within 25m of his master, rending them unable to get back up [Basically he could give them a massive injure on their legs or wings, if the Kubrows knew to jump and grab Ospreys, thing which I’d expect from pets made for hunt and fetch games, but what do I know.)

Extra upgrades for Helminth Charger R30-R40

Spoiler

Proboscis: Proboscis is a good pet mod, however, targeting only one enemy isn’t all that amazing. +2 Proboscis(es?) [+1 at: 35, 40]

Trample: Now where have I seen this exact same mod before… oh, right, Hunt. I don’t like it.
Rework time: Trample now allows the Helminth Charger to do Virulences like Nidus, he can ground stomp towards enemies without having to move from where he is. The “upgrades” for this would be allowing it to have more range on Trample and increase the ground stomp’s angle to be more of a cone and hit more fools.

Extra upgrades for Vizier Predasite R30-R40

Spoiler

Acidic Splittle: Acidic Splittle is great, in spite of doing little damage, it has good range and good cooldown, so making it have less cooldown seems unneeded. +3 projectiles are added to Acidic Spittle [+1 at: 33, 36, 39]

Iatric Mycelium: Iatric Mycelium is also amazing, but what kind of annoys me is that the cloud is static and can be confused for some enemy infested moa bug cloud if you’re playing an infested mission, other than that, the cooldown is extremely short so I think it should be untouched. +400 healing [+100 at: 32, 34, 36, 38]

Extra upgrades for Pharaoh Predasite R30-R40

Spoiler

Endoparasitic Vector: + 4m of range for the tentacles, increased duration of the effect by 4 seconds [+1m at: 31, 33, 35, 37 | +1s at: 32, 34, 36, 38]

Anabolic Pollination: +5s of duration to the cloud, +60% effectiveness to the effect [+1s at: 31, 33, 35, 37, 39 | +15% at: 32, 34, 36, 38]

Extra upgrades for Medjay Predasite R30-R40

Spoiler

Infectious Bite: I think I’ve said all I had to say about finishers. That said, I wish the pustule growth also propagated with the Mecha set, as the virus already does, which is awesome! +4 pustules to the infected target [+1 pustule at: 32. 34. 36. 38]

Paralytic Spores: +2 seconds to stun and +6 meters to effective range. [+1s at: 35, 40 |+2m at: 32, 36, 40]

And that is it for the best doggy bois of the game, moving on to the robotic companions.

 

Robotics (Sentinels not included) [R0-R30, R30-R40]

Spoiler

Why haven’t I included Sentinels?
Sentinels to me are just support units, and already grant good support, there’s no need to really buff them in my opinion, just their weapons need to be a bit better, that’s all, as if not, with the proposed “Dual Companions” a sentinel and a pet could doom mid-low level places on their own, and we don’t want more AFK setups or Wukongs (I do not dislike Wukong but people really are pissed at him man…). That is why forma-ing a Sentinel won’t unlock more slots on his grid or buff their precepts.

Now, Moas and Hounds really require some touch… So here we go:

General Robotic stat-increase formula:

+400% shields
-2s to shield recharge delay
+200% shield recharge rate

+250% armour

+250% health

Extra upgrades for Moa precepts (since they can be put on any) [All R40]

Spoiler

Whiplash Mine: +10m of range.

Anti-Grav Grenades: +2m of radius.

Stasis Field: Increased Status Fields range and duration extended by 10s.

Shockwave equators: Reduced ability cooldown by 3 seconds.

Tractor Beam: increased effectiveness by 50%

Security Override: Increased chance to hack nearby robotics, chance of affecting complex ones.

Blast Shield: +2000 extra overshields, leap increased to 14 meters.

Hard Engage: Detection range increased to 16 meters, damage increased to 120.

 

Also, can we please get cooldown indicators for the mods descriptions at least?

Extra upgrade for Hound precepts (as just like Moas, they’re interchangeable) 

Spoiler

Null Audit: Can now fetch 2 extra Eximus auras, +15 seconds of duration [Applies at rank 40]

Repo Audit: Increased disarm range by 10 meters, added concussion for 4 seconds [R40 only]

Equilibrium Audit: Increased waves length to 20 meters, can now lift enemies [R40 only]

-

Reflex Denial: Duration increased to 15s, range to 17m [R36]

Diversified Denial: Creates one extra mini hound, all of them deal 100% of his damage [R36]

Evasive Denial: Increased duration of evasion to 16s [R36]

-

Focused Prospectus: damage increased to 1200, duration increased to 7s [R38]

Synergized Prospectus: Increased damage to 400, when it finishes searching for all enemies, a discharge erupts chaining all of them and the ones in between if they get caught. [R38]

Aerial Prospectus: Increased damage to 1800, increased range to 11m [R38]

 

What does this [R(x)] mean? That only a Moa/Hound of that range or above will make use of these buffs for the precepts. If the companion isn’t at that range, the precepts will work normally. So, now we have a reason to Forma our pets, a bit more. If at all in some cases.

 

Weaponry

Spoiler

It is time to give a little touch up to weapons, all I’ll be doing is post some stats changes, don't’ expect me here to lose my mind and turn them into better secondaries or something… they are meant to support, but also enable the pet to kill on its own, here we go:

(Starting by Sentinels > Moas > Hounds)
General improvement: all robotics now have 100 accuracy.
Sentinels

Spoiler

Artax:
Really early-game sentinel weapon, so there’s no need to give it a crazy buff, although, I personally think it could work better if its rof were to be way higher, like 5 instead of 1, since it has a lot of ammo to use and a rather fast reload. Increasing the crit to 5% and x2.0 should be fine too, and making the status 15% should work too, although it already procs cold forcefully, which allows for constant slowdown.

Burst Laser/Prisma:
The base stats of the weapon are close to fine, but the rate of fire is horrible, though this weapon has the fastest reload in the entire game. I would double the rof, and increase the damage to 7🔨/13📌/6🩸, the crit chance to 12,5%, crit damage x1.5, status to 8%

As for the Prisma, I have a small debate with Prisma weapons… They’re good, but then you have the most recent one, the Prisma Machete. I think anyone who knows about the Machete family understands what I am referring to but lets focus on Shade’s weapon for now:
Once again, double or even triple the rate of fire for this one, increase damage to lets say, 18 - regular would have 26 - give it 15% crit chance, keep the multiplier, and 12% status chance, that should convert this into a good and reliable sentinel weapon.

 

Deconstructor/Prime: Deconstructor is actually a very strong sentinel weapon right now. Only thing it lacks is some crit! I’d give base Deconstructor 10% crit chance with x2 crit multiplier and for Prime 20% with x2.2 and feel happy ever after.

 

Deth Machine Rifle/Prime: The weapon stats are good, but it is lacking status and crit chance, as for the rest I’d leave this weapon intact. 10% status chance for base Deth machine rifle and 20% for Prime should be more than enough.
 

Laser Rifle/Prime: Saying this weapon has a “high rate of fire” is a crime. Moreover considering its magazine size is only 5. I would give the laser rifle 50 ammo, and double its base rate of fire, then give it 12’5% crit chance and 15% status chance and be good to go.

Prime Laser Rifle is actually acceptable stats-wise. So, lets increase its crit damage to x2, crit chance is fine as it is, and put mag size to 80 for this one. Status to 20% pleaseee.

 

Multron: Multron is the only Sentinel weapon whose performance pleases me in spite of being meh.
Oxylus is meant to be helping on recovery tasks, not killing, so this one remains untouched.

 

Stinger: Djinn’s rifle just needs a 20% increase to its base status chance and 16 more rounds, that would make it an "okay" weapon.

 

Sweeper/Prime: The Sweeper family is one of the most acceptable sentinel weapons. They just lack the rate of fire and status. Increasing both would be a fine adjustment.

 

Verglas: Hands down best sentinel weapon thanks to its really high stats, I would leave Verglas as it is, since it is a pocket Glaxion.

 

Vulklok: Beast, leave it as it is.

Moas

Spoiler

Cryotra: Cryota walks the path between Artax and Verglas, so I would leave it as it is.

Hellstrum: One of my favourite robotic weapons, and a great one! Needs rate of fire, that’s all.

Vulcax: Reduce its reload to 2s, that is all it needs, otherwise it is a good single-shot weapon. But 6 seconds to reload is a crime.

Tazicor: Can we stop having burst weapons that need to reload after the companion pulls the trigger once, thank you? Give it a 0’5s reload if you’re gonna do that at least!

Hounds

Spoiler

Akaten, Batoten & Lacerten: Because these three share the exact same stats and are melee weapons, it seems right to me to give them better base stats. 20% status and 25% crit chances should work perfectly for them.

 

All those tiny changes should help robotics be better companions with their weapons.

 

Lastly, a summary.

While surely I could spend a bunch of extra neurons creating new mods for pets, I feel we already have a good lot, and honestly I have 0 ideas for new ones + I know people don't really need new companion mods.

I know one of the things that pisses off players the most is how little pets can survive at “end game content” and how easily they die, and I do agree with this, but I also gotta thank DE for adding Full Reset to Parazon which is a splendid mod for someone like me as it frees a mod slot on my pet and now I don’t have to worry about bleedout again as long as I can find three heavy units.

Sadly, allowing us to Parazon only heavy units, hasn’t been the best of the changes in my opinion.
I have become a big fan of the Parazon system and I’d rather all enemies be Parazon-able or opening them to these finishers under certain conditions, otherwise mods like Full Reset can be weakened just by playing on one tileset or another, taking the Plains as an example of a place where this mod sucks, and Steel Path Grineer survival a place where it works super well.

Companion's survivability mods are pretty uneven, as the ones that directly give a +% are easily outmatched by the +%link, even for squishy warframes like Banshee.

Their damage mods are good, but there’s little to no space to slot them in, and even with that in mind, due to the low base stats, their effectiveness is rather low.

I love pets and companions because they’ve opened a new world to me in terms of combos and synergies with the mod sets they have, unlike the ones we got for Warframes with Jupiter rework and so…

All in all, pets deserve a nice rework as the one listed above,and I am sure some players would fancy carrying a pet and a companion at once to a mission.
Though I am not sure if this should be locked behind some challenge, adapter or whatever… Or just be something like Railjack’s Crew. 

The game has enough "brain" to allow us to carry more than one pet to a mission, which has been proven already.

As per usual, now I wait for people’s input on this subject, adjust, and perfectionate.

[cute_moth.npc]

3 hours ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said:

Moa time!

 

• Para was my first Moa. She isn’t bad, but she isn’t all that good either. In all honesty what matters at the time of building a Moa is selecting always the same brackets to get a polarity when templating/gilding them afterwards.
  
  So what this Moa provides is “offense” with a double CC set of precepts. Tether mines that first clog enemies so they do not escape and then group em up real pretty just like Nautilus Cordon, and a mine that puts enemies to levitate every now and then.
  
   
• Lambeo, the top-hat Moa. This fellow basically produces Matrix slowdown effect bubbles for a certain amount of time, preventing enemy projectiles from hitting you (as fast) and reducing the incoming damage. Honestly this precept is pretty good as a defensive and utility tool if it also affected the enemies directly! Could be some sort of mini cataclysm.
  
  The second precept isn’t all that impressive as it does what every Shockwave Moa ever does, stomp the ground, knock the fools. Some sort of cc every 10 seconds but welp, there’s better ones. Not that bad of a companion but honestly the only thing that makes MOAdulars different from each other is their precepts. They are all the exact same with different looks otherwise.
  
   
• Oloro, but no, it doesn’t smell. (In spanish Oloro means smelly) This is the worst Moa of them all to me.
  While it allegedly can hack things as fast as only taking 2 seconds to do so, I’ve seen Oloro Moas take well over 15 seconds to hack a console just to leave it without actually having hacked anything afterwards. Pretty dum dum behaviour if you ask me. The other precept, Tractor Beam is a bit dumb, but it is fun as it allows you to take a nap mid air. Not quite literally but you can aim glide for longer and with no gravity, which I think combines also with a kitgun arcane of those no one uses at all. Other than that, Oloro looks ugly and is middly useless.
  
   
• Nychus the “bonk” Moa. Latest to be added to Leg’s offerings, this one Moa is designed for melee attacks and is the only one with a rare quality precept, for some reason. Said precept, Hard Engage, allows the Moa to kick the s**t outta any fool she comes in contact with, as this mod is, surprisingly like no other that I know about, affected by the mods equipped on the Moa’s weapon. A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.
  
  The other precept, Blast Shields, sounds to be one of the most amazing, most useful mods in the entire game for a pet, as it gives +3000 to max overshields¹ and can reset them if it pounces on an enemy within 10 meters of it. I need to test this one in depth, as I haven’t understood whether this means that every time the Moa attacks someone with this precept (randomly basically) you get +3000 of shields, or that it can give 3000 overshields every now and then when it attacks someone. Hopefully it is the first case as this would turn this big birb into one of the best companions in the entire game.
  _{1 way over what frames can achieve, Harrow with his passive included, Hildryn excluded²
  2 Which also made me think this Moa could be Hildryn’s perfect companion?}

Blast Shield raises the MOA's overshield cap permanently even without the MOA using the ability.. If you pair it with an ability that grants overshields like Protea with shield satellites it becomes a really nice synergy, less than having a tank frame boost your pet's stats but not bad!

I actually use my MOA basically 100% of the time, and Pax Soar lol.

Are you playing Titania and you want AoE or need to break an arbitration drone but you also don't want to die or have to land? What if you could switch out of Razorwing, glide through the sky firing an entire magazine from your secondary kitgun pre-boosted by one or more of your pistol arcanes while barely losing any altitude, gliding around, and switch back on demand?

You can ^^;

Tractor Beam is a part of that puzzle if you want to do it without using your Exilus mod slot for Aero Vantage and it actually replaces it flawlessly.

It also lets Protea hang out in mid air placing turrets way above objects that block line of sight, placing Dispensary above nullifier bubbles and it actually works extremely well.

Blast Shield, Stasis Field and Tractor Beam are honestly the 3 winners from MOAs for me. It's nice that you can at least mix them all between the different MOAs to make your ideal setup, though I wish some of the other options were more enticing.

[(PSN)Pablogamer585]

hace 6 horas, Twin_Fawn dijo:

Blast Shield raises the MOA's overshield cap permanently even without the MOA using the ability.. If you pair it with an ability that grants overshields like Protea with shield satellites it becomes a really nice synergy, less than having a tank frame boost your pet's stats but not bad!

I actually use my MOA basically 100% of the time, and Pax Soar lol.

Are you playing Titania and you want AoE or need to break an arbitration drone but you also don't want to die or have to land? What if you could switch out of Razorwing, glide through the sky firing an entire magazine from your secondary kitgun pre-boosted by one or more of your pistol arcanes while barely losing any altitude, gliding around, and switch back on demand?

You can ^^;

Tractor Beam is a part of that puzzle if you want to do it without using your Exilus mod slot for Aero Vantage and it actually replaces it flawlessly.

It also lets Protea hang out in mid air placing turrets way above objects that block line of sight, placing Dispensary above nullifier bubbles and it actually works extremely well.

Blast Shield, Stasis Field and Tractor Beam are honestly the 3 winners from MOAs for me. It's nice that you can at least mix them all between the different MOAs to make your ideal setup, though I wish some of the other options were more enticing.

I hadn't thought of such a peculiar case as the one you've mentioned with Titania! What a good idea Fawn :D

[Broken_Samurai_Cothiro]

Omg Pablo why would you do this to us....

The way I see it, it doesnt matter, how much damage your companion can deal, the way things are now, in Steel Path it will die in seconds. You can res it and it will instantly die again. So its not about whether or not you can res them, they need either immortality like vulpaphylas or straigh up invulnerability.

I personally would switch out my panzer for something more stylish the second I can be sure I will still have vacuum/radar 10 mins into any steel path mission.

[(PSN)Pablogamer585]

hace 23 minutos, Broken_Samurai_Cothiro dijo:

Omg Pablo why would you do this to us...

The way I see it, it doesnt matter, how much damage your companion can deal, the way things are now, in Steel Path it will die in seconds. You can res it and it will instantly die again. So its not about whether or not you can res them, they need either immortality like vulpaphylas or straigh up invulnerability.

I personally would switch out my Panzer for something more stylish the second I can be sure I will still have vacuum/radar 10 mins into any steel path mission.

I do this on a lot of my posts hehe

I don't think simply giving pets immortality or invulnerability is the answer, that would be broken.

Imagine if a player requested the same thing to happen to Warframes because some of them are way too squishy and die too easily, No one would agree.

The solution to pet's survivability is giving them better base starts to work with and creating new mods or upgrading the current ones so that they are beefier.

At first I had thought of giving pets scalability like specters do based on the enemy level of the mission, but that would be too unfair and probably need a lot of constant calculations to be done in the background while playing and apply these in real time, which I don't see happening in Warframe anytime soon.

Helminth Charger to put an example is the best DPS beast (not necessarily companion) in the entire game right now thanks to Mecha + Strain set, in spite of not being immortal or invulnerable like Vulpaphylas are. It simply outmatches a Vulpaphyla on damage and actual EHP, but it can die. Also it is really interactive with those sets, not just an immortal turret of viral damage.
Only reason people really uses Vulpas isn't because they are better than the rest of pets but because they cannot be killed, it's that simple.
Djinn was the previous "best" companion because of the exact same reason, but given he dies and takes triple the time a Vulpa does to respawn, he isn't worth it now.

 

Atlas + H.Charger setup
I use the health link mod and armour link mod, as I take my pet to Steel Path almost on the daily. Little to no time does it die, and when it does I got not time to revive it because I dropped Medi-Pet kit for one of the other two effective health mods. Thing is, if I had more slots to mod my Charger with Medi-Pet kit, and some other mods + have a sentinel healing it and replenisihing its shields, chances are he would die little to not times. Even then, I have Full Reset on my Parazon, and getting him back on the battlefield is extremely easy.
Normally I do over 40 mins on Steel Path Survi > Grineer > Sedna, and even so, my pet might die once every hour or not even die in the entire run, but it is thanks to the link mods and the fact that Atlas Prime has strong base armour and heal.

 

The easy fix isn't making everything unkillable, but to make it less likely to be killed
Warframes have a lot of damage reduction mods and abilities, arcanes even. Pets have nothing of that, they just have health mods.
Perhaps the creation of mods that allow companions to self-revive at a lower hp percetange like Clem does in his weekly missions could do the trick for companions, but then what would be the point of using other mods or augments (as in the case of Protea)?
There has to be a way so pets can endure more on their own, and that is making them stronger, not just turning them unkillable. Like I mentioned, feline pets are squishier so they rely on evasive precepts, invisibility, or devolutions, but Kubrows, Moas and Hounds are sturdier, and could use better stats to reflect that.

[(XBOX)Bloxanity2816]

Daaamn, bro, I like this post sooo much!

I'm a MOA enthusiast and totally agree with what you say, in addition to also giving commands to MOAs similar to what Veso (yes I'm one of the ppl who respect this poor person by saying his name right) did in the new war gameplay, and it could also replicate the feeling Veso had when using an osprey and a MOA, Osprey = sentinel, and MOA = MOA/Hounds/Kavats/Kubrows.

However I propose that using multiple companions could be unique to certain missions and quests (example: the new war) , because if you get a god build on both of them, you will be unstoppable, causing a nerf that will probably be the base for the next 30 forum posts or so.

[Steel_Rook]

On 2021-12-08 at 1:27 AM, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said:

Companions easily fall within 4~ish categories imo, though the game says 3 (Robotics, Kubrows and Kavats) not sure if we should even consider Hounds something different from Moas, as they are also “modular”, but anyways:

It's actually closer to 2 categories - Beast and Robotic. The pets within those categories can differ significantly, but the mods usable on pets typically only distinguish between those broad categories. Fetch goes on Beasts, Vacuum goes on Robotic, more or less. Not important, just figured I'd say something.

 

On 2021-12-08 at 1:27 AM, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said:

But do these little fellows help us all that much?

Yes, but only because of the same reason most things work in this game - the dreaded "stat stick." Pets in Warframe are more of a liability than a help. A few (VERY few) have actually useful abilities, most of the others are worthless. We keep them for 2 primary reasons: Vacuum/Fetch and Animal Instinct. Well, and I personally have a third - Medi-Ray. Medi-Ray is robotics-only, which is why I don't bother with Beasts - on top of Kubrows still having a Loyalty stat.

I'm personally of the opinion that all of vacuum, scanner and locker mods from all sources ought to be moved to a separate item all their own. Maybe even to the Parazon, given that that already hosts a bunch of hacking and locker mods of its own. The Parazon is a weapon, a traversal tool, a hacking tool so why not a map tool, as well? After all, the Esc. menu already displays out of our Warframe's right wrist where the Parazon is. It would be simple enough to suggest that it's the Parazon displaying that. It's also mounted on our hands, meaning it would make sense for the "pick up items remotely" mods to go there, especially since it's also a grappling hook.

On top of "standard issue Universal Vacuum," the reason I suggest this is so that we can focus Pets on being useful in their own right, rather than "just a slot to put Vacuum in." Because that's most of what they do right now. If we could make our Sentinels inert and invincible, I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that most people would. Pull all the precepts, pull all the weapons and just have a stat stick that reveals the map and picks stuff up for you, which you don't have to worry about keeping alive. It's because the value of the pet itself is low relative to the value of the Vacuum/Fetch/Animal Instinct it carries, and that's a problem.

 

On 2021-12-08 at 1:27 AM, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said:

Another important issue is, I have little to no options when modifying a pet because while they have 10 mod slots,which is a 2 more than average Warframe & weapon’s modding grid, it is completely unworthy of slotting a lot of them starting by damage mods, as pets damage is really low, even if their crit multipliers are high. 

This isn't quite true. Several Robotic weapons have actually very good stats. The Verglas has a base status chance of 34% and a fire rate of 12/s, with access to all rifle mods. That's basically an exact copy of the Glaxion, including the 26 damage. Sure, we also have access to the Glaxion Vandal which is slightly better, but that's not bad. The Vulklok is also pretty dang good. It does low damage at 85 and shoots slowly at 0.15 per second (so a shot ever 6-7 seconds), but it has a 35% critical chance with a *2.5 critical multiplier. That's not bad, and decent at one-shotting even Lich/Sister level enemies sometimes. There are also the Helstrum and the Vulcax with decent stats, as well. Sure, most of the Robotic weapons are awful, but a few of them are good. I've been going back through them and applying Primed rifle mods and more serious builds. The results I get back are quite decent.

A broader issue here, though, is that I had to specify ROBOTIC weapons. Overpowered precepts aside, Moas and Hounds are easily the best pets in the game currently. They behave like Beasts in that they can be revived, they have access to a number of Beast mods (chiefly Link mods), they have access to most of the Robotic mods (chiefly Medi-Ray) AND they have a separate weapon item which can be slotted with powerful Warframe weapon mods (including Galvanized mod). This means their damage output is a LOT better than Beasts, plus they have 10 slots on the pet and 8 slots on the weapon.

As far as I'm concerned, Beast pets need a weapon item of their own at the VERY least. Hounds have proven that you can have a "weapon" that's not actually a weapon because it only modifies stats but not behaviour. Moas use Sentinel weapons which have their own graphics, animations, attack rates, etc. Hounds just have a placeholder items which tweaks the stats for their standard melee attacks and - crucially - carry their attack mods. Even better, it uses Warframe melee mods, which can make for some pretty strong builds. Or rather "could," if the Hound weapons didn't suck ass.

So change the first: give Beasts their own weapon item and let them use Warframe melee mods.

 

On 2021-12-08 at 1:27 AM, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said:

While yes you can get high armour, shields or health on your pet by using the link mods, you are required to bring something strong enough to the battle in order for these to gain the max benefit possible from it, as Warframe does not precisely advocate for balance but to be an extremist instead… just look how tank Frames now rely on shield gating more than their own armour or health values, with the exception of Nidus and Inaros, to survive the longest… A shame to be sure.

Agreed completely. Right now Bird (my favourite Moa) typically runs around with 13 000 health and a ton of armour, thanks to me predominantly playing Inaros. When playing just about anything else, though, he turns super squishy and needs to be revived constantly. While I'll obviously take that over my Sentinels just DYING and going away for the rest of the mission, this is a fundamentally bad mechanic regardless of stats. DE already have a solution to this, which you also mentioned - the Djinn and the Vulpaphyla. These go down for a bit, then come back up on their own with no interaction from the player. Incidentally, Venari does the same, but can also be resummoned manually in exchange for energy (if I recall).

In my opinion, ALL pets should be able to do this. If they die, let them stay dead for 20-40 seconds, then just bring them back to life at full health. Allow all pets (Sentinel or not) to use the Regen mod, simply reducing this recovery time by a percentage. All of the current ways to revive pets (Dispenser, that one Parazon mod) can stay, and simply bring the pet back to life immediately without waiting for the timer. Get rid of Beast-style pet revival altogether. If a pet dies, it goes straight to "dead" and comes back after a while. No sense reviving them like they're Warframes.

So change the second: Let all pets auto-revive. Reduce the micromanagement.

 

I'm also with you on the dislike for Link mods, as they're another example of a "stat stick," this time in reverse. If you want a tough pet, you need a tough Warframe, meaning they can never complement each other. Get rid of those entirely and just buff the pets' base stats significantly. They're fairly dumb and can't be expected to dodge heavy damage, so balance them to be tough. I'd pick a "Tank" Warframe and start pets off of maybe twice that, if not more. Then, scrap the pet-specific copies of Warframe mods and just let them use most of our Warframe mods. At least the basic non-set, non-corrupted ones, like Vitality, Steel Fiber, Vigor, Redirection, etc. Hell, why not more extreme ones, like Adaptation? Let us build them for toughness if we want.

While we're at it, let us slot ability strength/duration/range, etc. Maybe then their innate abilities won't be so bad in high levels. Mind you, I'm of the opinion that ALL damage-dealing abilities in Warframe are awful and should be using a different system with finer granularity and more control, but that's a battle I'm not prepared to fight here. Warframes can min/max ability stats for better ability use, why shouldn't pets?

I'm somewhat ambivalent on "precept slots." Pets already have 10 mod slots to work with, and it feels like the extra 2 are FOR precepts. Instead, I'd look into stripping Beast pets of some of the garbage precepts they already have, like "300% melee damage" and such. If we give them their own melee weapons as a separate item, all of those passive buffs can go there and free up mod slots for something else. Sentinels, Moas and Hounds have a much tighter system, where they're allowed 2/3 precepts total anyway (usually from categories of mutually-exclusive mods), so they don't have as much of an issue.

So change the third: Give pets across the board much higher stats and let them use Warframe mods (at least some of them). Should help keep them pretty tough.

 

On 2021-12-08 at 1:27 AM, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said:

So I thought a nice first implementation would be allowing the player to run a sentinel and a Beast at the same time!

This one I'm not so sure about. Pets are already fairly ubiquitous, and throwing even more of them into a full team seems overly chaotic. I get what you're trying to achieve, but it strays a bit too close to making all our Warframes into "beastmasters" for my liking. If we move the basic Vacuum/Scanner/Locker mods over to the Parazon, then most of the mod capacity issues are resolved without adding the extra complexity of having 2 pets to worry about.

For this one in particular, I'd prefer to wait for whatever "Pets 2.0" brings, because that has promised quite a bit of direct pet control. Having played a Mastermind in City of Heroes, I know first-hand that managing multiple pets is just not practical. Most of the time, I'd either let them do their own thing or command them all in bulk. Adding multiple pets adds chaos without, I think, adding sufficient complexity to justify it. I'd rather have one pet with more precise controls than two dissimilar pets constantly blowing stealth by shooting enemies I was sneaking up to (thanks, Bird!) and such.

Personally, I feel it's worth looking into making individual pets worth having before we start throwing more of them at the game.

 

Overall, though - the pets system is a frikkin mess in Warframe. You can practically see all the eras of conflicting design just going down the list of pets we have available. You start with Kubrows as an obvious Tamagochi, with their surrogate-food-item needs and their constant attention needs and the breeds and genetics and all that. You move to Sentinels, which were the obvious "OK, here's a simple pet if it'll make you shut up!" addition. Then you look at Moas as an experiment of mixing the two, and now Hounds as "what Kubrows would look like if they were designed today." Kavats are somewhat off the side, as a clearly failed attempt at creating "another kind of pet" before the cost of supporting it proved too high to justify making more.

Well, it's high time we compressed this timeline and kept only the lessons worth learning, rather than trying to support the full history frozen in time.

[(PSN)Pablogamer585]

Finally, a worthy opponent, our battle shall be legendary!

hace 5 horas, Steel_Rook dijo:

I'm personally of the opinion that all of vacuum, scanner and locker mods from all sources ought to be moved to a separate item all their own. Maybe even to the Parazon, given that that already hosts a bunch of hacking and locker mods of its own. The Parazon is a weapon, a traversal tool, a hacking tool so why not a map tool, as well? After all, the Esc. menu already displays out of our Warframe's right wrist where the Parazon is. It would be simple enough to suggest that it's the Parazon displaying that. It's also mounted on our hands, meaning it would make sense for the "pick up items remotely" mods to go there, especially since it's also a grappling hook.

On top of "standard issue Universal Vacuum," the reason I suggest this is so that we can focus Pets on being useful in their own right, rather than "just a slot to put Vacuum in." Because that's most of what they do right now. If we could make our Sentinels inert and invincible, I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that most people would. Pull all the precepts, pull all the weapons and just have a stat stick that reveals the map and picks stuff up for you, which you don't have to worry about keeping alive. It's because the value of the pet itself is low relative to the value of the Vacuum/Fetch/Animal Instinct it carries, and that's a problem.

Honestly, if we moved said mods to Parazon, the Parazon would be pets 2.0 and now people wouldn't have a single reason anymore to bother with pets anymore, the way I see it that is.

Lets be honest one of the quickests fixes is making Vacuum part of pets/sentinels directly and forget about a dumb mod requirement. Only reason why vacuum was worth not slotting back then was for OP Steel Essence farms and that got patched so now there's 0 reasons. 1 slot freed from vacuum is 1 slot closer to having better companions, but I would keep Animal Instinct/P.A.Instinct on pets and sentinels, would be too unfair to have it on Parazon albeit your point makes lots of sense, from a logical perspective (which I very much enjoy).

Parazon is for another thread but if we were to move said mods to it, we'd need more mod slots for the tool too.

hace 5 horas, Steel_Rook dijo:

This isn't quite true.

I wasn't too specific, I meant as for beast, not Robotics. I am already aware of the potentical of certain robotic weapons (but there's like, 5 out of 20 that are good so...)
[Plus it is not like they can trigger said Galvanized mods at high level missions due to these weapons being weak compared to those that can actually kill reliably, even if they aren't as bad as the rest of robotic weapons.]

Going back to the original point, beasts have very low base status/crit/damage and very expensive mods that don't really boost these all that much (Remember those 60% status Fortuna mods for pets? Yeah...), that is what I mean by little to no options when modding for damage, it only applies to beasts.

hace 5 horas, Steel_Rook dijo:

So change the first: give Beasts their own weapon item and let them use Warframe melee mods.

Something like Sevagoth's Shadow claws type of thing, would work wonder, magnific idea.

hace 5 horas, Steel_Rook dijo:

So change the second: Let all pets auto-revive. Reduce the micromanagement.

Fair and not fair. I think I've found a middleground for this one.

Regen, to take the best known example on the game, could change from "Revives X amounts of times" to "Revives after X amount of time", and Primed Regen would simply boost this to a way lower cooldown.

As for pets, bleedout mods could change from "more time to bleed" to "Time to recover" as honestly I don't think it's fair to simply get rid of "manual" pet-reviving.

Example:

1. Loyal companion: Pet will get back up after 10 seconds at 30% HP
2. Medi-Pet Kit: Beast will get back up after 15 seconds at 75% HP (+ The already existing healing factor to it)

Shouldn't be much time without our pets on action, and we could always go to revive them if we find a minute. Though I would greatly increase the revive speed of pets so it take like 3 seconds or so, that way it can be a considerable option instead of loosing half a year baptising it with week smokes.

hace 6 horas, Steel_Rook dijo:

While we're at it, let us slot ability strength/duration/range, etc. Maybe then their innate abilities won't be so bad in high levels.
Warframes can min/max ability stats for better ability use, why shouldn't pets?

I'm somewhat ambivalent on "precept slots".
Pets already have 10 mod slots to work with, and it feels like the extra 2 are FOR precepts.
Instead, I'd look into stripping Beasts of some of the garbage precepts they already have, like "300% melee damage" and such. If we give them their own melee weapons as a separate item, all of those passive buffs can go there and free up mod slots for something else.

So change the third: Give pets across the board much higher stats and let them use Warframe mods (at least some of them). Should help keep them pretty tough.

Very plausible idea, I like it.

Not really a fan of having power mods for pets as this could complicate the building a bit too much, though I think my idea of making the companion precepts work as abilities that are affected the more level your companion has, would work wonders.

But since we are at it. we could make some of them be affected by the mods slotted of the "pet weapons" just like Hard Engage does on Moas.

 

About the base stats being way higher, it simply is what they need the most to work well, no further comments for that one as we all agree.

hace 6 horas, Steel_Rook dijo:

This one I'm not so sure about. Pets are already fairly ubiquitous, and throwing even more of them into a full team seems overly chaotic. I get what you're trying to achieve, but it strays a bit too close to making all our Warframes into "beastmasters" for my liking. If we move the basic Vacuum/Scanner/Locker mods over to the Parazon, then most of the mod capacity issues are resolved without adding the extra complexity of having 2 pets to worry about.

For this one in particular, I'd prefer to wait for whatever "Pets 2.0" brings, because that has promised quite a bit of direct pet control. Having played a Mastermind in City of Heroes, I know first-hand that managing multiple pets is just not practical. Most of the time, I'd either let them do their own thing or command them all in bulk. Adding multiple pets adds chaos without, I think, adding sufficient complexity to justify it. I'd rather have one pet with more precise controls than two dissimilar pets constantly blowing stealth by shooting enemies I was sneaking up to (thanks, Bird!) and such.

Personally, I feel it's worth looking into making individual pets worth having before we start throwing more of them at the game.

Idea was to allow running a Sentinel + Any other type of pet but considering that could imply running 2 robotics both with Medi-Ray and Shield Charger, that could be a bit unfair... though the idea was to give the pet someone to look after him instead of us, which I am sure is something we all are tired of at this point in time, is something I still defend.

For example Khora would have 3 companions if this proposed change were to happen and she is kind of a beastmaster, but not that running - Oh wait, I've just had a wonderful idea to try this weeked WHEEZEEE - nevermind (¬‿¬)

But yes, lets wait for Pets 2.0 which mind you, I think we are really close to getting it.
Just like someone pointed out that Hildryn was a test for shield gaiting on another thread, I think Veso as @(XBOX)Bloxanity2816 mentioned, could be the last test before implementing pet commanding, which would fix the main issue with pets, the dumb AI.

Lets hope for the best on this one ☜(ﾟヮﾟ☜)

[Steel_Rook]

20 minutes ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said:

Honestly, if we moved said mods to Parazon, the Parazon would be pets 2.0 and now people wouldn't have a single reason anymore to bother with pets anymore, the way I see it that is.

If pets weren't awful, then the reason to bring a pet would be HAVING a pet. If the only reason I'm bringing a pet is so that I can have 2 mod slots following me around, that smacks of missing the point entirely. If I'm better off removing the weapons from my Sentinel (which I am - they live longer that way), something's gone horribly wrong. After all, I have no real reason to bring a secondary weapon on most missions, but I do anyway. Some of my secondaries are pretty good, not to mention fun to use. Ideally, the same should apply to pets. I mean, I love my Bird and would take him to missions even if I didn't have use for him. That his primary reason for being is as a walking clothes rack for Vacuum and Animal Instinct only serves to take away from his value, I think.

Point being, I'd like to see pets rebalanced on a fundamental level. I want players bringing them along because they want to, not because they feel they have to. I want players selecting their pets based on what each individual one brings to the table, not based on "whichever one dies the least" or "whichever one has an ability that's not garbage." Right now, Bird is pretty much the only pet I can use because he has the bleedout of a Beast, the Medi-Ray of a Sentinel and a good weapon. Nothing else I own has all of those perks.

 

25 minutes ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said:

I wasn't too specific, I meant as for beast, not Robotics. Beasts have very low base status/crit/damage and very expensive mods that don't really boost these all that much (Remember those 60% status Fortuna mods for pets? Yeah...), that is what I mean by little to no options when modding for damage, it only applies to beasts.

Something like Sevagoth's Shadow claws type of thing, would work wonder, magnific idea.

Bit of a collage quote up there, sorry about that.

Yeah, Beast pets I will agree on. They're overall pretty bad. Their only saving grace is one or two Precepts on that one Kavat, and that's about it. Beasts have a very obviously archaic design that holds them back significantly, and would need significant changes JUST to bring them in-line with Robotics - especially the walkers (Moas and Hounds). The very minimum there is a separate weapon. And you don't even have to go as far as Sevagoth's Shadow's Exalted Claws. Like I said - Sister of Parvos Hounds already have the exact system I'm talking about.

A Hound can equip one of 3 weapons - Lacerten, Batoten, Akaten. They're all basically the same weapon with the damage types moved around a little, but that's all it has to be. All the weapon needs to do is carry the pet's basic attack stats and accept 8 mods. That's it. Maybe move a few of the Beast mods there, such as Maul as an alternative to Pressure Point, or Swipe to add armour shred per attack or some such.

I feel we need the above as a baseline before we can talk about overall pet balance, simply because it puts most pets on even footing.

 

1 hour ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said:

Regen, to take the best known example on the game, could change from "Revives X amounts of times" to "Revives after X amount of time", and Primed Regen would simply boost this to a way lower cooldown.

As for pets, bleedout mods could change from "more time to bleed" to "Time to recover" as honestly I don't think it's fair to simply get rid of "manual" pet-reviving.

Why, though? I realise this may come across like uncompromising, but I just don't see why we need pet death and bleedout at all. It makes sense for Warframes since we're in direct control of those. If we make mistakes, we go down, but other players (or our own Warframe mechanics) can still come to our aid. Pets aren't player-controlled. More often than not, they die for reasons we have very little control over - often due to bugs or poor AI. It seems pointless to punish me because my pet got itself killed - either punish me by losing my pet, or punish me by having to micro-manage it. Imagine if any amount of damage had a chance to knock the weapon out of your hands, requiring you to find it and interact with it for 3 seconds, then reload it - and that could happen over and over again from every enemy. That's what my pets dying feels like.

To put it another way - if I never had to revive my pet again and it simply revived itself when I wasn't looking, then I wouldn't be here wishing I had to revive it manually. Not through an interaction, not through the Parazon, not through the Dispenser. It wouldn't even cross my mind to suggest that my pet should die and require me to revive it manually over and over again. The only reason that's in the game is the grandfather rule - we have it because we've always had it, and not having it would be weird.

A great deal of the issues inherent to pets boil down to archaic design grandfathered into the modern game paradigm, where it no longer fits. DE have gone SOME way towards improving this by removing Stasis and Genetic Stability (but not Loyalty, like they should have). I want to go farther. I want to remove as much busywork out of my pets, make them as autonomous as possible. Then, once they're not a pain to manage, maybe we can think about adding some control over their behaviour back into the mix - even though I'm almost positive few would ever use that.

Basically, what do you figure is the point to even entertaining the thought of retaining pet permadeath and pet bleedout? Honest question, because I see them as objectively bad systems, the both of them.

 

1 hour ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said:

Not really a fan of having power mods for pets as this could complicate the building a bit too much, though I think my idea of making the companion precepts work as abilities that are affected the more level your companion has, would work wonders.

I'm somewhat ambivalent on using power mods on pets as well - I wouldn't. Just... my general design principle is that "if you already have a thing, use that instead of making exact duplicate copies of it. I'd like to see Archwings use Warframe mods, Archguns use pistol/rifle/shotgun mods and Archmelee use Warframe melee weapon mods, for instance. After all, Sentinel weapons already use rifle/pistol/shotgun mods while Hound weapons use Warframe melee weapon mods as it is. Makes sense that pets themselves would have direct access to our Warframe mods, along the same logic.

It's not necessarily vital, of course. It just seems that if we let pets use Warframe mods, then filtering the likes of Intensify, Continuity, etc. might be more trouble than it's worth. Hell, I'm half-way tempted to suggest letting pets use Warframe Arcanes. Wouldn't that be something :) Overall, though, this is more of a tangent on my part. I HATE it when DE create renamed exact copies of existing mods instead of just using existing mods. It's almost always done to make us grind more, and I'm only willing to meet the business side of the game so close to the middle on this point.

Incidentally, both suggestions are not mutually-exclusive. Simply tie Precept performance to the pet's Strength/Duration/Range stats. For my idea, we'd need mods that modify those. For your idea, levelling up would need to affect Ability Strength - exactly like it does on Nidus. There's already precedent for both. It seems like there's already preexisting coding for both, as well. Doesn't mean you HAVE to accept my proposal, merely that it seems like a fairly small thing to me :)

 

1 hour ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said:

Idea was to allow running a Sentinel + Any other type of pet but considering that could imply running 2 robotics both with Medi-Ray and Shield Charger, that could be a bit unfair... though the idea was to give the pet someone to look after him instead of us, which I am sure is something we all are tired of at this point in time, is something I still defend.

It's not a bad idea, mind you. I've considered the same, myself. The problem is that it's addressing the wrong problem, I think. Pets are bad and more pets healing each other would certainly help. However, it's something of a brute-force solution to the problem that's susceptible to power creep and unintended ability interactions. Ensuring that individual pets are themselves worth having for more than just a mod pouch (got tired of calling it a "stat stick" :) ) would do a better job of addressing the core issue of pet usability - and you already have proposals for that in the thread.

Mind you, we can still allow multiple pets under some conditions. Maybe a Warframe mod which allows it, maybe a specific Warframe which can host multiple pets, etc. Just as a general rule of thumb, I'd like to keep the baseline to "1 pet" and work backwards from there to ensure all pet types are created equal. As of right now, this means bringing both Beasts across the board and Sentinels in particular up to the level of Moas and Hounds. Of course, pets as a whole would need drastic improvements after that, but normalisation first. Across-the-board changes second :)

[Broken_Samurai_Cothiro]

You guys are something else. I agree with a lot of points you make, yet your walls of text are so time consuming to go through. Can I suggest condensing your posts? ☺️

[(PSN)Pablogamer585]

hace 15 horas, Steel_Rook dijo:

Point being, I'd like to see pets rebalanced on a fundamental level. I want players bringing them along because they want to, not because they feel they have to. I want players selecting their pets based on what each individual one brings to the table, not based on "whichever one dies the least" or "whichever one has an ability that's not garbage".

And I completely agree with you here.

One of the worst part about pets, which I think I mentioned on the main article, is how they feel like re-skins that have different mods, which aren't even something intrinsic to the pet but instead something that takes physical space. If we removed precepts from pet, then they would all be the absolute same, and that is a shame.

hace 15 horas, Steel_Rook dijo:

A Hound can equip one of 3 weapons - Lacerten, Batoten, Akaten. They're all basically the same weapon with the damage types moved around a little, but that's all it has to be. All the weapon needs to do is carry the pet's basic attack stats and accept 8 mods. That's it. Maybe move a few of the Beast mods there, such as Maul as an alternative to Pressure Point, or Swipe to add armour shred per attack or some such.

I feel we need the above as a baseline before we can talk about overall pet balance, simply because it puts most pets on even footing.

So what you suggest is moving Pet mods that affect to the pets' damage, to "Pet weapons" as "Pet weapon mods" when they become a thing (if they do). Taking the Lacerten for instance + Bite mod, the results would be excellent, though I'd buff a bit Hound's weapons...

Conclusion, yes, good idea, a baseline as you've mentioned.

hace 15 horas, Steel_Rook dijo:

Why, though? What do you figure is the point to even entertaining the thought of retaining pet permadeath and pet bleedout? Honest question, because I see them as objectively bad systems, the both of them.

Certain pets can revive you (Vasca, Sentinels), and allies can too (Railjack Crew).
Then why shouldn't pets be able to be manually revived, even if they had a way of self reviving after some time? I do not think that the revive mechanic would have any advantage over a self-revive after some time unless it were a case like the one of Clem, as I mentioned.
Clem, on his weekly mission, might fall into a semi-bleedout state, looks more of a "weakened", and he will come back at a certain HP percentage, but never 100% of it unless you, the player heal him.

I see pets the same, why can't we have the option to revive them manually, even if they could self-res?
In any case, I think manual res should be extremely faster just so it is convenient instead of being fully replaced by something else that is, to put it boldly, lazy and cheap.

I am partidary of getting res mods for pets that allows them to revive on their own, but honestly, if a fallen ally that isn't an Inaros or a Sevagoth can't do that himself, why should someting way more archaic than a warframe, as an animal is, be allowed by default to do so?

hace 15 horas, Steel_Rook dijo:

I'm somewhat ambivalent on using power mods on pets as well - I wouldn't.
Just... my general design principle is that "if you already have a thing, use that instead of making exact duplicate copies of it."

It's not necessarily vital, of course, it just seems that if we let pets use Warframe mods, then filtering the likes of Intensify, Continuity, etc. might be more trouble than it's worth. Hell, I'm half-way tempted to suggest letting pets use Warframe Arcanes. Wouldn't that be something :)

Overall, though, this is more of a tangent on my part. I HATE it when DE create renamed exact copies of existing mods instead of just using existing mods. It's almost always done to make us grind more, and I'm only willing to meet the business side of the game so close to the middle on this point.

Incidentally, both suggestions are not mutually-exclusive. Simply tie Precept performance to the pet's Strength/Duration/Range stats. For my idea, we'd need mods that modify those. For your idea, levelling up would need to affect Ability Strength - exactly like it does on Nidus. There's already precedent for both. It seems like there's already preexisting coding for both, as well. Doesn't mean you HAVE to accept my proposal, merely that it seems like a fairly small thing to me :)

Pet arcanes sounds awesome to me, and you know who could sell them? Those dumbos at Open World markets in charge of animal preservation, which have absolutely nothing useful to their offerings (With the exclusion of Son selling the Helminth slots).

I also hate havinbg twice the same thing but with a different name ( ¬-¬)

Both your suggestion and mine, as per usual, can be complementary, although, Charm could become a bit broken if "pet power mods" existed leading to a potential nerf, call if foreshadowing but we all know how the devs are in rewards to rewards... One way or another, having better abilities by levelin up the pet and then having the option to go even further with modding, would greatly increase the modding options for pets which currently are extremely limited.

hace 15 horas, Steel_Rook dijo:

It's not a bad idea, mind you. I've considered the same, myself. The problem is that it's addressing the wrong problem, I think.

Pets are bad and more pets healing each other would certainly help. However, it's something of a brute-force solution to the problem that's susceptible to power creep and unintended ability interactions. Ensuring that individual pets are themselves worth having for more than just a mod pouch would do a better job of addressing the core issue of pet usability - and you already have proposals for that in the thread.

Mind you, we can still allow multiple pets under some conditions. Maybe a Warframe mod which allows it, maybe a specific Warframe which can host multiple pets, etc.
Just as a general rule of thumb, I'd like to keep the baseline to "1 pet" and work backwards from there to ensure all pet types are created equal.

As of right now, this means bringing both Beasts across the board and Sentinels in particular up to the level of Moas and Hounds. Of course, pets as a whole would need drastic improvements after that, but normalisation first. Across-the-board changes second :)

Brute force solutions is Warframe's second name isn't it lol.

I also like to call pets "buff bags", if you want an alt name to "stat sticks"

A good solution to the "too many pets being unfair" could be tying the ability of carring multiple pets based on a frame's survivability... but that seems a bit too complex since we can simply mod for it. Lets leave that as a "?" for now, it is not something that necessarily needs to happen, even less if pets can become self-sustainable with the correct buffs and upgrades to their system.

hace 1 hora, Broken_Samurai_Cothiro dijo:

You guys are something else. I agree with a lot of points you make, yet your walls of text are so time consuming to go through. Can I suggest condensing your posts? ☺️

Trust me, you have yet to see the worst of Rook & I lol, my Atlas thread would blast your head if you were to read it 🤣

Of course, we try to be the short & to the point~est as possible, but due to the amount of experience we have on multiple subjects, it is inevitable to type a lot and to make it as clear as possible, even if it might be a complex-to-get-over cliff of words.

[Steel_Rook]

I think we may be talking past each other a bit here. I'll try to clarify as we move along.

 

1 hour ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said:

One of the worst part about pets, which I think I mentioned on the main article, is how they feel like re-skins that have different mods, which aren't even something intrinsic to the pet but instead something that takes physical space. If we removed precepts from pet, then they would all be the absolute same, and that is a shame.

Clarification: I wasn't referring to moving ALL of the Precepts to the Parazon. Just the Vacuum/Radar/Locker ones, since those are generic to all pets anyway. This is another aspect to my "don't duplicate functionality" design guideline. If game design encourages players to equip all the same mods to multiple items, then you have two options - pull those mods out to a separate unitary item and remove them from everywhere else, or simply bake the effects of those items into the player character directly. To paths to the same result. Since the one thing common across pretty much all pets in Warframe is Vacuum, Fetch and Animal Instinct, it makes sense to move those off the pets since they aren't really a choice anyway.

The rest of the pet precepts - those can stay as they are. Though it can be argued that different Kubrow breeds are identical but for a few precepts, I think that's "different enough" in this case. With the massive inventory in this game, it's inevitable that a lot of items will function as near-copies of each other with minor stat tweaks, and pets are no different. Hell, Warframes by-and-large are little different, themselves :) I'm perfectly fine with keeping the individual pet precepts unique to the pets they're currently tied to as a means of making them unique, even if they look similar. I'm also fine with leaving a lot of the other "universal" precepts as they are, since those aren't as commonly used as the big three above. Not everyone has Guardian on their pets, not everyone has Pack Leader (I don't), etc.

Hounds and Moas, again, are a good example here. All Hounds and all Moas can use the full pool of precepts available to their "kind," with some restrictions on mutually-exclusive precept types. However, their abilities are so impactful that different configurations act sometimes as differently as wholesale Warframes. My own Bird was often a bone of contention because his footstomp annoyed my friends due to knockback and I had to recolour his bubble since it often looked like a Nullifier. Similarly, I had to redo the precepts on Wolf, my Hound, because the bubble shield absorb ability kept blocking my own shots and knocking me back from AoE self-stagger. It's a powerful ability, but it ABSOLUTELY did not work for me.

To make a long story short - I believe that individual pets will remain "unique enough" on just their core Precepts even if we move the big three of Vacuum/Fetch/Instinct off to a different item. We may need to work on making individual awful precepts better, though. Especially when it comes to Sentinels - some of theirs are quite bad and they generally only have 1 or 2 unique ones.

 

1 hour ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said:

So what you suggest is moving Pet mods that affect to the pets' damage, to "Pet weapons" as "Pet weapon mods" when they become a thing (if they do). Taking the Lacerten for instance + Bite mod, the results would be excellent, though I'd buff a bit Hound's weapons...

Just to confirm - more or less, yes. Give Kubrows and Kavats a separate weapon (Fangs, Claws, Collar, whatever you want to call it) and let players slot Warframe Melee mods into it. Move all passive offence mods from the Beast to the Weapon, and maybe turn a few active precepts into passive mods, to boot (Sharpened Claws from a bespoke attack to a passive armour strip proc, say). We seem to agree here, I just wanted to clarify what I mean.

 

1 hour ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said:

Why shouldn't pets be able to be manually revived, even if they had a way of self reviving after some time? I do not think that the revive mechanic would have any advantage over a self-revive after some time unless it were a case like the one of Clem, as I mentioned. I see pets the same, why can't we have the option to revive them manually, even if they could self-res?

Hmm... well, I proposed removing the "pet downed" state to simplify things, but I suppose there's no harm in that. Let the pet go into bleedout and just get back up afterwards like Clem. Alternately, let the player revive them to get them up sooner. If that's what you proposed initially, then I must have misunderstood. Sounded like you wanted pets bleeding out and dying forever like they do now UNLESS Regeneration is equipped on them. If you're fine with letting all pets self-revive after a time with an option for the player to manually revive them faster, then I'm in full agreement.

The one major issue you're going to have is Sentinels, as those don't have a "downed" state. When they run out of health, they die instantly. For this idea to work, we'd have to add a "downed" state to them, same as Kubrows and Kavats. Incidentally, I think this should be a case even if none of our other proposals go through. Simply letting players revive their Sentinels would already be a MASSIVE improvement over their current finite state. It's THE single most important reason why I don't use Sentinels any more and why I wouldn't even entertain the thought if nothing changes.

So to sum up - you want pets to god into bleedout when they run out of health, but get up on their own when the bleedout timer expires. In the interim, a player could revive them faster. A Regen mod would shorten the bleedout timer, and Sentinels would get bleedout as well. Do I have that all right? If so, I agree.

 

1 hour ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said:

Both your suggestion and mine, as per usual, can be complementary, although, Charm could become a bit broken if "pet power mods" existed leading to a potential nerf, call if foreshadowing but we all know how the devs are in rewards to rewards...

There's always the option of simply making some aspects of some precepts not affected by pet stats. Warframe abilities do this all the time. Inaros' Scarab Armour values, for instance (armour amount, health cost, cast speed, etc.) are not affected by mods at all. Intuitively, Streamline should reduce the health cost, but it doesn't and yet nobody complains. If Charm or other pet Precepts seem overpowered with Ability Strength scaling on the pet, then the problematic aspects of those Precepts could be set high by default and not affected by Ability Strength.

We are almost certainly looking at buffs and nerfs and lateral shifts for pet Precepts if a change like this goes through, but that's just how video game balance works. If anything, Warframe can use more of this altogether :) DE have historically been very leery of nerfing things even when they really should (or going back on nerfs even when they're warranted) so who knows. But I'm willing to take a hit on some of the more overpowered Precepts if we get a decent modding system out of it.

 

Also, as a passing thought - when is the game going to allow me to put Lenses on my pets? I mean, the whole Lens system is awful and needs to go, but until such a time - why not? I can put a lens on my sodding K-DRIVE, but not on my Bird? This honestly feels like an outdated limitation from back when we couldn't use the same mods on Warframe and Sentinel weapons (still have listless duplicates from back then). Just let me put lenses on my pet and pet weapon already.

[(PSN)Pablogamer585]

hace 6 minutos, Steel_Rook dijo:

Clarification: I wasn't referring to moving ALL of the Precepts to the Parazon.

Neither was I referring to Parazon on that bit. I was just complaining about how if we take out the precept mods a pet comes with, all of them are equally useless.
Just re-skins, reshapes, renames... Precepts shouldn't take a slot and simply form part of the pet, except for Moas and Hounds, as those are swap-able.

My Moa is called Nimda btw.

hace 8 minutos, Steel_Rook dijo:

Do I have that all right?

Almost, what I proposed was Bleedout mods to allow pets to self-revive, but not let pets directly self-revive by default.

If self-revive was intrinsic to pets by default, with an already given timer of 20 seconds if am not mistaken is what it takes for a pet to fully die, what would be the point of slotting these mods if it takes less time to bleed out without them and with you've asked they would "die and revive" even faster than when adding these mods.

Now, since we are at it... lets make it so without bleedout mods they can self revive, but at very low hp, and bleedout mods can improve the time they take to get back up, and how much health do they get when they do.

As for Sentinels a "deactivated state" could be added, and regen would "repair" then same way as bleedout mods would work for pets with these changes done.
Could function on "maintenance mode" after reviving on their own without these mods. Trinity would be a great pet master.

 

As for the last part, fair, lets make it so not all precepts are affected by the power mods, that would work.

[(XBOX)Bloxanity2816]

Oh dear....you guys have posted so many posts with long texts to the point where I'm lost...someone care to summarize whats going on rn? Thanks.

 

[(PSN)Pablogamer585]

hace 2 horas, (XBOX)Bloxanity2816 dijo:

Oh dear....you guys have posted so many posts with long texts to the point where I'm lost...someone care to summarize whats going on rn? Thanks.

Rook and I normally tend to go on very long and deep arguments as to how to do things properly.

We are making minor adjustements here and there to my proposed rework, that's about it. It is changing little by little for the better!

So far we have:

-Companions will not simply die but enter bleedout mode and get back on their feet at low hp if you do not revive them.

-Bleedout mods to decrease this recover cooldown and increase the HP that the pet has when it stands up again

-Beasts will have their own moddable melee weapons, we are transfering mods such as Bite or Maul over those.

-Idea to treat pet precepts as abilities that could be affected by new power mods (Duration, Range...) for pets, potentially more options to customize

-Idea to add pet Arcanes.

-Upgrade pet stats to the point they are reliable and mods feel worth using on them instead of simply using some for their precepts (Such as Charm, Devolution...)

[Steel_Rook]

8 hours ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said:

Now, since we are at it... lets make it so without bleedout mods they can self revive, but at very low hp, and bleedout mods can improve the time they take to get back up, and how much health do they get when they do.

I'd do both low health and long bleedout. There's no reason pets need to "bleed out" as long as Warframes, so you can easily set them to 60 seconds or so. You can still revive them at low health, but not "Clem" low, else they'd just keep dying over and over again. I'd say set them to 50% by default. That way, Bleedout mods could reduce bleedout time (and so force auto-revival sooner) while Regen mods (which should be shared with all Robotic and Beasts) would improve revival health. Vulpaphyla Devolution and Djinn Reawaken can entirely override this behaviour, auto-reviving the pet in, say, 15-20 seconds while doing something else in the meantime. Yes, that means slashing the delay on Reawaken significantly (it's 90 seconds currently) and giving the Djinn SOMETHING to do while dead, but I'd argue that ought to happen regardless.

When it comes to pet revival, I'm willing to err on the side of the players. Losing a pet is simply not fun since it's almost always outside the player's control, thus punishing the player for it seems unreasonable. Chance for death does still need to be there else we don't have a lot else to slot it for (without the need to slot for survivability), but I don't think death itself should be a meaningful penalty. As such, a generous auto-revival timer by default and SOME auto-revive health reduction on top of the ability for manual revival in the meantime ought to be good enough, I think.

[(PSN)Pablogamer585]

Oh man, I tried the idea Rook (indirectly) gave me of trying Khora with a Kubrow-type pet at the same time as Venari and I've found two errors that need fixing! D:

I have created a "Beastmaster" Khora setup using Residual Contagion to boost pets damage, and wanted to try it out with Venari and my Abhorrent (Helminth Charger), but turns out, certain mods do not work properly on them!

For example, Venari can equip Tek mods but the mod set buff doesn't apply to the rest! I was running the full set on Khora and the Keres as a test-melee and only the Tek mods of the frame and the weapon were applying so I had "2/4" parts of the set, in spite of having the mods equipped on Venari :(

And the Helminth Charger, in spite of being a Kubrow too, can't equip Mecha Set mods, but the Predasites can!

I am super saddened dude, I was super excited to try a triple mod set build that could be really interesting even if it wasn't strong :(

 

Do you guys think I should create a thread to report this?
I think it isn't intentional that these mods don't work/can't be equipped on these two companions.

[Steel_Rook]

22 hours ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said:

Do you guys think I should create a thread to report this?
I think it isn't intentional that these mods don't work/can't be equipped on these two companions.

Obviously. If you've found mod setups that don't work like they should, post a bug report about it. Even if it's an intentional decision (which I don't think that it is), posting a report doesn't hurt.

 

22 hours ago, (PSN)Pablogamer585 said:

I have created a "Beastmaster" Khora setup using Residual Contagion to boost pets damage, and wanted to try it out with Venari and my Abhorrent (Helminth Charger), but turns out, certain mods do not work properly on them!

From your description, it sounds like issues of hard-coding. Mod set abilities only check one of the two pets, and it happens to be the "other" one that you didn't put the mods on. My "guess" is that the game simply isn't properly equipped to handle multiple pets, or else mods aren't properly equipped to use the pets system. Warframe's actually full of these, and reporting them with replication steps is the only way to get them fixed. After all, seems like DE fixed my old bug where I'd fall out into space in my Necramech and break my UI completely :)

The game already allows us to have multiple pets (Venari + something else) so it needs to have a generic "multiple pets" implementation that doesn't rely on special-case exceptions. If said implementation is done right (i.e. to assume an arbitrary number of pets rather than "just one" and "just two") then multiple pets past that point should also be doable. I still don't know that it's a good idea across the board, but we definitely need a "beastmaster" Warframe with the ability to bring 2 or 3 pets, or "one of each kind" or some such. Could even bind each ability to a different pet. That's outside the scope of this thread, though.

[(PSN)Pablogamer585]

hace 35 minutos, Steel_Rook dijo:

Obviously. If you've found mod setups that don't work like they should, post a bug report about it. Even if it's an intentional decision (which I don't think that it is), posting a report doesn't hurt.

 

From your description, it sounds like issues of hard-coding. Mod set abilities only check one of the two pets, and it happens to be the "other" one that you didn't put the mods on. My "guess" is that the game simply isn't properly equipped to handle multiple pets, or else mods aren't properly equipped to use the pets system. Warframe's actually full of these, and reporting them with replication steps is the only way to get them fixed. After all, seems like DE fixed my old bug where I'd fall out into space in my Necramech and break my UI completely :)

The game already allows us to have multiple pets (Venari + something else) so it needs to have a generic "multiple pets" implementation that doesn't rely on special-case exceptions. If said implementation is done right (i.e. to assume an arbitrary number of pets rather than "just one" and "just two") then multiple pets past that point should also be doable. I still don't know that it's a good idea across the board, but we definitely need a "beastmaster" Warframe with the ability to bring 2 or 3 pets, or "one of each kind" or some such. Could even bind each ability to a different pet. That's outside the scope of this thread, though.

Thanks Rook, have had a really bad day in Warframe that ended a couple minutes ago. gGot struct by a lot of the things players hate at the same time, all evening along.

Will make sure to create a thread on the "PS Bugs" about this, hopefully it gets fixed so I can try it out just for fun, but the things that have made me upset today have "fixing" in spite of not being bugs >:(

[DimitryZulfiqar]

The main problem i found with sentinel that their Mods Health is worse than companion counterparth. Sentinel health only below 1K, while companion can reach 2-3K.
Also since you cannot revive sentinel, after 3x died, it's over. Djiin Mods honestly should be Universal.
Nautilus is so poor. Sad, i love her design. Being RJ company gimmick but will die under 5 minutes in Void Strom.