Vulpaphylas are proof that better survivability, and even immortality, for companions overall is not broken but in fact sorely needed

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

7 hours ago, DrBorris said:

The usage of MOAs, Kubrows, Helminth Charger, Hounds, and Predasites begs to differ.

That's less to do with their survivability, and more to do with them just not having any worthwhile effects. All of those pets you listed are severely underpowered, and people still wouldn't be using them if they were immortal because they don't offer anything useful.

[Frendh]

7 hours ago, PollexMessier said:

I would like if they removed pet loot buffs so I could feel like using other pets isn't such a waste of time but only if they buff all the loot drops these abilities effect to compensate.

Eating the cake and keeping it.

[PollexMessier]

1 hour ago, Frendh said:

Eating the cake and keeping it.

If DE wants to have a diverse meta, and have players be comfortable strolling through their game at a leisurely pace instead of trying to rocket through snorefest grinds as fast as possible. They need to understand what's causing the problem, and fix it.
Every time they try to fix the problem, they don't bother to understand what it actually is, and they just make it worse.
Or they understand what the problem is but refuse to fix it because muh micro-transactions.

The problem is the average working person doesn't wanna spend 20 hours farming #*!%ing polymer bundles so they can play the parts of the game that they want to.

[(PSN)max141064]

5 minutes ago, PollexMessier said:

The problem is the average working person doesn't wanna spend 20 hours farming #*!%ing polymer bundles so they can play the parts of the game that they want to.

this seems a lot like people not understanding what game is Warframe. 

Warframe is a horde shooter, farming based game. 

one of the less labour intensive farming game, at that. 

the only thing that resembled what other farming games do with the amount of materials required to do anything was the release of Railjack. 

the cost of each part was fair in any farming based game, and they cut down the amount needed 2 times..

 

[DebrisFlow]

6 hours ago, (PSN)gadgaurd said:

8 hours ago, Drasiel said:

You like playing with squishy glass cannon builds? you are stuck with vulps or djin because your frame doesn't have the build or abilities to support their other pets.

And I think that's perfectly fine. Having actual drawbacks for your decisions, that require you to either adapt your play style or change your gear to compensate, is just standard game design. You pick a frame that can't do much to keep a pet alive, you pick a pet that doesn't give a S#&$ what your frame has going on. Certainly doesn't hurt that one of those pets is easily one of the best in the game.

Mind you, I also run "fragile" frames in Steel Path. When I do, I change up my pet. If I feel like messing around with Xaku or Mag, my Panzer is coming out. If I'm using Titania, my Vasca is coming out. If I had the shield generating Kubrow it'd be glued to Hyldrin's hip. Not that she's fragile to most enemies, but that's kind of an obvious pairing so why not?

 

In the same way that there are weapons I won't use for certain frames, and frames I won't use for certain missions, I pick and choose my pets based on my loadout and task.

A tanky frame does not incur into drawbacks for your decision, you can equip whichever pet you want and you are ready to go. Only squishy frames have to make the choice. Why only squishy frames need to adapt? I don't see where this can be considered standard game design, nor balanced.

6 hours ago, (PSN)gadgaurd said:

8 hours ago, Drasiel said:

Why should you have to limit your frame and ability choice to increase the survival of Pets when they already have survival mods of their own? That's clearly a failure of the pets themselves or their mods to begin with.

Not at all. This is quite clearly how it was intended to work. The benefits you get from a companion comes with costs, and/or requires a bare minimum of effort to maintain. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, and actually trying to keep your NPC companions alive is rather standard gaming fair. 

The effort for keeping a pet alive, for the same benefit, is drastically different. The cost/benefit ratio is much lower for tanky frames, that's what inherently wrong in actual game balance.

[quxier]

9 hours ago, PollexMessier said:

You take a loot frame when you want to target farm specific drops. You take a loot companion when you just generally want to have boosted pickups, which is all the time

I take anything that's not Carrier when I need something. I needed some Pyrol from open world so I've picked Smeeta. It was just 2 session in... long time. Most of the time I just stick to my Carrier.

One reason why I don't take anything else is Looter mod for Carrier. It destroy everything around me. You may not need it (e.g. you are using AoE weapon).

9 hours ago, PollexMessier said:

So if all companions are made immortal that reason no longer exists, and every non-looting companion becomes niche.

Maybe for us. Other find some specific feature usable.

But looking at the bright side we could get reworks or fixes. Having Sister's dog not working correctly feels bad.

4 hours ago, (XBOX)Ampathetiic said:

That's less to do with their survivability, and more to do with them just not having any worthwhile effects. All of those pets you listed are severely underpowered, and people still wouldn't be using them if they were immortal because they don't offer anything useful.

Even more, lot's of companion are either bugged or not having interesting feature. Why my hound cannot disarm single enemy? Why my Shade makes me invisible when I'm swinging my melee?

Some of them have usable but niche usage (like Moa's antigravity)

[(PSN)gadgaurd]

2 hours ago, DebrisFlow said:

A tanky frame does not incur into drawbacks for your decision, you can equip whichever pet you want and you are ready to go.

There's the drawback of, as you yourself said earlier, not being able to use a glass cannon frame if you want solid survivability with your pets. 

[DebrisFlow]

4 hours ago, (PSN)gadgaurd said:

7 hours ago, DebrisFlow said:

A tanky frame does not incur into drawbacks for your decision, you can equip whichever pet you want and you are ready to go.

There's the drawback of, as you yourself said earlier, not being able to use a glass cannon frame if you want solid survivability with your pets. 

And the point is, this is not good, neither balanced game design.

[Drasiel]

13 hours ago, (PSN)gadgaurd said:

And I think that's perfectly fine. Having actual drawbacks for your decisions, that require you to either adapt your play style or change your gear to compensate, is just standard game design. You pick a frame that can't do much to keep a pet alive, you pick a pet that doesn't give a S#&$ what your frame has going on. Certainly doesn't hurt that one of those pets is easily one of the best in the game.

Mind you, I also run "fragile" frames in Steel Path. When I do, I change up my pet. If I feel like messing around with Xaku or Mag, my Panzer is coming out. If I'm using Titania, my Vasca is coming out. If I had the shield generating Kubrow it'd be glued to Hyldrin's hip. Not that she's fragile to most enemies, but that's kind of an obvious pairing so why not?

 

In the same way that there are weapons I won't use for certain frames, and frames I won't use for certain missions, I pick and choose my pets based on my loadout and task. 

 

I'm fairly certain that if we went through all the frames and abilities the list would be significantly longer. But moving on.

 

Not at all. This is quite clearly how it was intended to work. The benefits you get from a companion comes with costs, and/or requires a bare minimum of effort to maintain. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, and actually trying to keep your NPC companions alive is rather standard gaming fair. 

 

If you want what most companions offer, you need to put in some effort to make sure they don't die. If anything I'd say the Vulpaphylas are kind of busted. You get the typical pet benefits and either viral spread(Panzer) or Lifted status+damage vulnerability increase for practicality free, as well as a free life on a regular basis. If every pet could just do it's thing indefinitely that'd be pretty ridiculous. 

 

Having said all that, I wouldn't complain, since my pets are practically immortal as is. My main point is that immortality on all pets isn't needed. It'd be quite convenient, but pets are currently quite capable of surviving high level content already. You just need to put in a bit of effort to make that happen. 

 

Sentinels are a whole other story. 

Lets take a walk through pet history you and I. Back before kubrows in the bad old days there was wyrm, dethcube, and shade. They almost never died and were a substantial DPS and utility boost only needing one to two defensive mods to be nigh unkillable except in 2 scenarios: A Napalms fire and if you went down (because that would put sentinels at body height and enemies would hit them with stray bullets when shooting the person reviving you) Even so they were given the Regen mod which at the time was enough to ensure hours worth of survival for your sentinel in missions.

Then carrier arrived and suddenly that rare death was a big problem because you lost one of the most important utilities in the game.

Fast forward a few years and Kubrows were added. At this point more enemies had been added, there were more aoe effects in the game and sentinel mods were starting to lag behind in survival with no updates on the horizon. Kubrows came with link mods which solved the survival issue while making it dependent on your warframe and if they did die well you could revive them! It is very important to note though that at this stage, even if you used a link mod with a warframe that didn't pair well with it (ie mag with link armour) The mods themselves provided such a large boost that it still drastically increased survival compared to the sentinel mods. At this stage you could also use pack leader in place of the health or armour mod and it was viable. If you were a weirdo you'd put all 4 defensive mods on your pet (3 links and pack leader) and they'd be unkillable.

At this point animal instinct was added to the game. A one stop fit for loot and enemy radar. Making the death of a pet even more frustrating for people as further utility was lost on death.

Fast forward again and more aoe, and higher level enemies and missions are added to the game. All companions need multiple survival mods which take up as much of half of their modding space and frame choices need to be chosen to maximize pet survival. Sentinels have stopped being a viable option at high level even with the addition of primed regen giving 3 extra sentinel revives. DE even acknowledged sentinels flagging survivability with the introduction of repair dispensory the worst kind of band aid fix I've seen in years. DE reneged on granting sentinels link mods and has done nothing to buff their survivability for years. While Pets are in a better spot than sentinels right now, with the trends I've seen they won't be for much longer.

We're now starting to reach enough constant sources of damage and high alpha damage that even link mods are starting to flag behind and you have to choose your builds to maximize and manage your pets health or risk loosing a ton of utility in the form of vacuum, radar, passive reload, dodge chance, and even life link.

The give and take about modding for pets wasn't something originally baked into the system and it's only become something because the companion system is so old with very few updates while the game has evolved and created more methods to damage pets. All that happens is new pets get added, we don't get improved ai, or new companion specific mods to fix old problems, or just buffing the woefully outdated defensive systems of companions.

Maybe Immortality isn't the system that's absolutely needed but there needs to be something done because the system has been neglected for so long that players don't even realize that the current way pets are is a series of unintended consequences as the game has grown rather than intentional design.

alternatives to never dying pets

• Torchlight's "your pet is fleeing"  Similar to vulps and djinn, your pet or sentinel explodes and you get no benefit while they have a minute long cooldown before returning. Could be an additional universal mod.
• Buff sentinel mods and add more sentinel healing mods that are equipped on sentinels
• Add a mod that make your companion invincible but they can not attack nor use any abilities that cause damage or status procs.
• Make link mods and pack leader universal (while it introduces the same issues with frame choice it's better than nothing)
• Just grant companions immunity to AOE damage, they're AI is either incapable of dealing with it or in the case of sentinels there is no method to avoid it.

13 hours ago, PollexMessier said:

Chesa isn't desired because smeeta is better than it, because it works on more stuff than chesa does. Take smeeta's buff away and you'll find everyone who was using smeeta will immediately jump to using chesa instead.

The real issue is how little the game values it's player's time. Target farming a resource drop without some sort of booster is agony. Just get rid of the ability without addressing that and I think DE will find they'll lose more players than from any other change they've ever made. Boost resources to match the average activation time of smeeta's charm at the same time tho, and the problem is fixed. Other companion loot ability like chesa will have to go too in that instance tho or people will just latch onto them to continue optimizing the grind. Because it'll never be rewarding enough.

Rebalancing all the material drops across the entirety of the game tho is way too much work. So the only fix that could realistically happen is making a universal companion mod out of it. DE will never do that ether tho. So it's just another of many inescapable holes they've dug the game into.

Players that care about their time will only ever use smeeta. It's just stuck that way now. Until the devs decide they've had enough and slash their playerbase by removing it (possibly half-heartedly bumping some drops in a fake attempt to show they care but not actually increasing anything that matters), decide player enjoyment of the game is worth actually solving the problem the proper way, or until the game dies and the servers are shutdown.

I don't agree with that. If loot finding abilities were that high in desirability then you would never see a frame that wasn't khora, hydroid, or nekros (atlas gets skipped because his looting ability is an atrocious unusable mess). The trick is balancing it to be just good enough to provide a boost without being so good that's it is always the go to answer. I don't think people would gravitate instantly to chesa making it the defacto option I think chesa's ability like the warframe loot increasing abilities is only good enough to want to use it in some specific cases and not in others.

Just for example places smeeta can be used that chesa cannot because % drop chance doesn't affect these resources gain:

• Kuva farming
• steel essence farming
• Vitus essence from drones
• Fishing
• Mining
• Open world boss drops

[(PSN)gadgaurd]

43 minutes ago, Drasiel said:

Maybe Immortality isn't the system that's absolutely needed

It's absolutely not, which was my original point. It'd be convenient as hell to be sure, but it's absolutely not necessary. 

 

As far as buffing Companion survivability goes, I think just raising how much damage they can take would work a lot. Pump up the base values of their defensive stats, the boosts provided by Pet mods, or both. It'd make them even more ridiculous when paired with tanky frames and pretty much make the select immortality mods a joke, but eh. Wouldn't really matter in the long run.

 

Sentinels need serious help though. They don't move, they don't have any real defensive abilities to save themselves, their base stats and mods are utter garbage, and they can't be revived unless you use exactly one Ability+Augment combo. Sentinel survivability needs a complete overhaul regardless of play style if they're going to see any endgame use...but then, are any of those things even worth using over a good Kavat/Vulpa/Moa/Hound? Or that literal one good Kubrow breed?

[Drasiel]

1 hour ago, (PSN)gadgaurd said:

It's absolutely not, which was my original point. It'd be convenient as hell to be sure, but it's absolutely not necessary. 

 

As far as buffing Companion survivability goes, I think just raising how much damage they can take would work a lot. Pump up the base values of their defensive stats, the boosts provided by Pet mods, or both. It'd make them even more ridiculous when paired with tanky frames and pretty much make the select immortality mods a joke, but eh. Wouldn't really matter in the long run.

 

Sentinels need serious help though. They don't move, they don't have any real defensive abilities to save themselves, their base stats and mods are utter garbage, and they can't be revived unless you use exactly one Ability+Augment combo. Sentinel survivability needs a complete overhaul regardless of play style if they're going to see any endgame use...but then, are any of those things even worth using over a good Kavat/Vulpa/Moa/Hound? Or that literal one good Kubrow breed?

I would argue that there are definitely reasons to use sentinels over the the other options, if they could survive. About the only reason people started using huras over shade is survivability, Deth cube has energy orb creation on kill assist, Helios is more niche with his auto scanning but he also gets an off brand sonar, Carrier is excellent for breaking crates if you don't want to run a xaku, Taxon's slow is useful at all levels, Djinns fatal attraction provides excellent CC and utility for melee focused tenno, Dirgia used to be a very effective combat sentinel but I'm not sure how effective their sniper is anymore, Oxylus... mmm is good for fishing so it's not going to see any usage increase, Nautilus was designed as the empyrean sentinel so it's only really useful there but an instant omni repair every 20 seconds isn't bad before you get yourself crew. Aside from those mechanical reasons there's also the benefit of never being separated from your sentinel (I'm looking at you kavats why are you always 2 tiles behind me) and the all important LOOKS TM reason

there are also at least 3 good kubrows. Chesa is off brand desecrate which can be very useful for farming toroids or other high level missions if you don't have or want to play nekros, Huras casts invisibility, Sahasa can supply energy and health orbs (way more than most people think). One could also make the argument that the raksa's terrify is useful but it's also generally annoying to other teammates. If Sunika can tackle demolysts they would have a useful niche but I haven't tested that.

[EinheriarJudith]

2 minutes ago, Drasiel said:

Chesa is off brand desecrate which can be very useful for farming toroids or other high level missions if you don't have or want to play nekros

chesa can also disarm eximus ^_^.

[PollexMessier]

4 hours ago, Drasiel said:

I don't agree with that. If loot finding abilities were that high in desirability then you would never see a frame that wasn't khora, hydroid, or nekros (atlas gets skipped because his looting ability is an atrocious unusable mess). The trick is balancing it to be just good enough to provide a boost without being so good that's it is always the go to answer. I don't think people would gravitate instantly to chesa making it the defacto option I think chesa's ability like the warframe loot increasing abilities is only good enough to want to use it in some specific cases and not in others.

Just for example places smeeta can be used that chesa cannot because % drop chance doesn't affect these resources gain:

• Kuva farming
• steel essence farming
• Vitus essence from drones
• Fishing
• Mining
• Open world boss drops

I addressed this in another response already:

20 hours ago, PollexMessier said:

There's an extreme difference between warframe and a companion loot abilities.
Your warframe significantly effects how you play the game. Your companion is little more than a glorified qol passive. There's an extreme negative to taking a loot warframe into mission types they're not good at, and you might just not like how they play, so they balance out. But with a companion, you barely notice their presence at all really, they're completely disengaged from whatever the player is doing. You take a loot frame when you want to target farm specific drops. You take a loot companion when you just generally want to have boosted pickups, which is all the time. Some other companions are useful, but not often useful enough to justify sacrificing boosted drops to use different ones, unless you don't want to fight against them constantly dying. In which case you use an immortal companion.

And that's where the issue kinda is. Immortal companions are singularly the most compelling reason to ever not use a looting companion. So if all companions are made immortal that reason no longer exists, and every non-looting companion becomes niche.

This isn't an issue with warframes because there are massively compelling reasons to use many other warframes over a looting one in general play.

[sunderthefirmament]

On 2022-05-24 at 2:21 AM, (PSN)max141064 said:

Just mod any pet? 

we have tons of mods that make any pet almost unkillable...

This has not been my experience.  My smeeta dies all the time on sorties, to say nothing of her performance in the steel path.  This is with half of her build dedicated to survivability.  I'd dedicate even more of it, but I just don't think it would make much of a difference.

 

If DE doesn't want to make pets immortal, they should at least give them 1-5 minutes of complete invulnerability after being revived by a player.

[Karonuva]

23 hours ago, PollexMessier said:

I actually find that pets being able to buff drops is an issue. Not because I think it breaks the game in any way. But because it encourages you to only ever use that pet for the sake of efficiency.

I would like if they removed pet loot buffs so I could feel like using other pets isn't such a waste of time but only if they buff all the loot drops these abilities effect to compensate.

You don't really need to ONLY use smeeta. It's a great starting pet, but at a certain point it's just excessive and unnecessary hoarding to keep using smeeta, as if you need another million nano spores. At that point a vulpaphyla, vasca or adarza does you much more good from a gameplay perspective. 

[Karonuva]

5 hours ago, (PSN)gadgaurd said:

It's absolutely not, which was my original point. It'd be convenient as hell to be sure, but it's absolutely not necessary. 

 

As far as buffing Companion survivability goes, I think just raising how much damage they can take would work a lot. Pump up the base values of their defensive stats, the boosts provided by Pet mods, or both. It'd make them even more ridiculous when paired with tanky frames and pretty much make the select immortality mods a joke, but eh. Wouldn't really matter in the long run.

 

Sentinels need serious help though. They don't move, they don't have any real defensive abilities to save themselves, their base stats and mods are utter garbage, and they can't be revived unless you use exactly one Ability+Augment combo. Sentinel survivability needs a complete overhaul regardless of play style if they're going to see any endgame use...but then, are any of those things even worth using over a good Kavat/Vulpa/Moa/Hound? Or that literal one good Kubrow breed?

Companion (incl. sentinel) immortality (or more specifically the removal of their revive/permadeath) IS definitely, undoubtedly, 100% necessary. If every companion was immortal, I wouldn't mind running hounds, kubrows, predasites etc just for a change of pace. I wouldn't feel forced into running Inaros for basic survivability. Companions are so intrinsically linked with basic game features like loot vacuum and radar, that's undoubtedly their most important factor. When every companion is immortal, you don't have to worry about them being dead weight, and you can use them entirely based on their precepts (or aesthetic) alone.

I get that things shouldn't necessarily be balanced around steel path, but companions might as well be literally unusable in their current state. Something I don't think would change if they only got a stat buff with how much damage enemies can pump out (both at higher level normal starchart and steel path)

[Drasiel]

21 hours ago, PollexMessier said:

There's an extreme difference between warframe and a companion loot abilities.
Your warframe significantly effects how you play the game. Your companion is little more than a glorified qol passive. There's an extreme negative to taking a loot warframe into mission types they're not good at, and you might just not like how they play, so they balance out. But with a companion, you barely notice their presence at all really, they're completely disengaged from whatever the player is doing. You take a loot frame when you want to target farm specific drops. You take a loot companion when you just generally want to have boosted pickups, which is all the time. Some other companions are useful, but not often useful enough to justify sacrificing boosted drops to use different ones, unless you don't want to fight against them constantly dying. In which case you use an immortal companion.

And that's where the issue kinda is. Immortal companions are singularly the most compelling reason to ever not use a looting companion. So if all companions are made immortal that reason no longer exists, and every non-looting companion becomes niche.

This isn't an issue with warframes because there are massively compelling reasons to use many other warframes over a looting one in general play.

I'll just quote that direct answer then. I think you are discounting how toned down chesa's desecrate is compared to nekros desekrate or even how khora and hydroids loot finding works. Desecrate is 58% chance automatically in a radius around you, you don't even have to waste casting time. Chesa is only a 48% chance every 10 seconds. that's a lot of dead that don't get additional rolls on. Yes when farming something like toroids you are going to still want to take a chesa but if the other companions could survive they also have fun uses or other better utility that eclipses an extra roll on loot depending on the situation.

[(PSN)max141064]

7 hours ago, sunderthefirmament said:

If DE doesn't want to make pets immortal, they should at least give them 1-5 minutes of complete invulnerability after being revived by a player.

1-5 minutes of invulnerability is roughly 90% of the times the time you need to finish the whole mission and then some..

[Stafelund]

What's with everyone overblowing the loot enhancing buffs like Smeeta's and Chesa's? These aren't even guaranteed all the time unlike bringing a Nekros/Hydroid/Khora in.  The difference is entirely small and there's only an extra loot from time to time. You're playing RNG with those companions. I think people who has this as an argument or brings this up, are being ingenious.

[sunderthefirmament]

15 hours ago, (PSN)max141064 said:

1-5 minutes of invulnerability is roughly 90% of the times the time you need to finish the whole mission and then some..

Which is fine, because in my opinion you shouldn't have to revive them more than once per mission.

[Drasiel]

9 hours ago, Stafelund said:

What's with everyone overblowing the loot enhancing buffs like Smeeta's and Chesa's? These aren't even guaranteed all the time unlike bringing a Nekros/Hydroid/Khora in.  The difference is entirely small and there's only an extra loot from time to time. You're playing RNG with those companions. I think people who has this as an argument or brings this up, are being ingenious.

with smeeta at least the issue is it's a booster and not a drop chance re-roll or enhancer. Due to it being a booster it was used heavily in farming kuva, steel essence, vitus, fish and mining. It was used so heavily in arbitrations and steel path DE actually changed it so that after a certain amount of time vitus and steel essence despawn so you can't just pile up a heap of it for the entire mission then pick it all up when your cat rolls booster.

Chesa as you say is a much weaker and less occuring chance to reroll loot it's not so good to pre-empt other pet choices and it doesn't affect those previous rare resource I mentioned above's drop chance so it will never have the same kind of usage even if smeeta was nerfed into the ground.

[Stafelund]

6 hours ago, Drasiel said:

with smeeta at least the issue is it's a booster and not a drop chance re-roll or enhancer. Due to it being a booster it was used heavily in farming kuva, steel essence, vitus, fish and mining. It was used so heavily in arbitrations and steel path DE actually changed it so that after a certain amount of time vitus and steel essence despawn so you can't just pile up a heap of it for the entire mission then pick it all up when your cat rolls booster.

Chesa as you say is a much weaker and less occuring chance to reroll loot it's not so good to pre-empt other pet choices and it doesn't affect those previous rare resource I mentioned above's drop chance so it will never have the same kind of usage even if smeeta was nerfed into the ground. 

I'd see this an easy issue to deal with. Special items like vitus and steel essence should not be affected by the Smeeta's ability. Resources or the usual crafting components , i'd say those are fair game. 

[Chroia]

On 2022-05-24 at 9:32 AM, (PSN)jaggerwanderer said:

Make Vacum universal. Then I would just leave my companion slot empty.

  I'd agree, except that Primed Animal Instinct is too good to pass up.

 

On 2022-05-25 at 3:15 AM, PollexMessier said:

I actually find that pets being able to buff drops is an issue. Not because I think it breaks the game in any way. But because it encourages you to only ever use that pet for the sake of efficiency.

I would like if they removed pet loot buffs so I could feel like using other pets isn't such a waste of time but only if they buff all the loot drops these abilities effect to compensate.

On the one hand, yes.

On 2022-05-25 at 6:28 AM, PollexMessier said:

Chesa isn't desired because smeeta is better than it, because it works on more stuff than chesa does. Take smeeta's buff away and you'll find everyone who was using smeeta will immediately jump to using chesa instead.

On the other, if they removed Smeeta's booster, I'd just always use some Vulpaphyla, because undying Vacuum + Enemy & Loot Radar totem.

 

On 2022-05-25 at 5:28 AM, Yamazuki said:

I find Smeeta's value is severely overblown. Other than for people who care about Rivens or actively do Steel Path, what exactly is Smeeta doing? This is before even considering the rng nature of the buff anyways.

Unless you need a specific companion's abilities, there are exactly 2 pets that improve your out-of-mission progress: Chesa and Smeeta.
And given that, as you point out, even before AotZ, very few of the most lucrative resources were subject to Desecrate, Smeeta's effectively the only companion that can accelerate your resource-farming, saving you time - sometimes. (And sometimes>never.)
(And even moreso when stacked with a plat booster.)

 

On 2022-05-25 at 10:02 PM, (PSN)gadgaurd said:

Sentinels need serious help though. They don't move, they don't have any real defensive abilities to save themselves, their base stats and mods are utter garbage, and they can't be revived

Also, they're susceptible to proximity soft kills (e.g. grenades, rockets), and will nearly-guaranteed die from any mid+ level Electric proc you take.

[DoomFruit]

On 2022-05-24 at 2:57 AM, Karonuva said:

Self-revives/immortality for companions really doesn't break the game, it's something that needs to be universal in some shape or form for every companion if just for the fact two important base gameplay aspects are basically inherently tied to them, enemy/loot radar and vacuum. 

Alternatively, make loot radar, enemy radar and item vacuum into waybound unlocks for your operator. That way the whole issue about pets dying is moot because the abilities aren't even there any more.

[Karonuva]

18 hours ago, DoomFruit said:

Alternatively, make loot radar, enemy radar and item vacuum into waybound unlocks for your operator. That way the whole issue about pets dying is moot because the abilities aren't even there any more.

Not really, it wouldn't help pet relevancy to make these mods universal features, ironically. If there was no reason to revive them then I feel like they might as well not even exist in the first place since they'd just die 3 seconds into a mission and then you never see them. If vac/radar became universal waybounds then it's even more reason to make companions immortal, so they fit more into a familiar role where they are more as a support eximus.