If they don't rework sentinels as well, that confirms that DE hates sentinels and players who use them

[Hexerin]

Just sayin'. A system rework like this is the literal perfect opportunity to fix the core issues that sentinels have.

[(XBOX)Skippy575]

I would assume sentinels will be part of the companion rework.

[(XBOX)TheMadCash]

Lets not jump to conclusions, we don't even have the full details yet

[(PSN)Tactless_Ninja]

3 minutes ago, (XBOX)Skippy575 said:

I would assume sentinels will be part of the companion rework.

There's at least one miserable person that would call their adorable angry snake robot a tool. Probably Corpus too. 

[(NSW)Greybones]

Not sure why Sentinels wouldn’t be included in a rework. I’d guess that even if they adjusted them, there’ll still be players who stand around getting shot to pieces who will still get their Sentinels killed while their Warframes are invincible, or who will be sitting in Steel Path wondering why their Sentinels aren’t balanced around the mode

[Vortex]

Imo sentinels deserve even more love than the other pets, they are just useless in general.

[Alguien]

Can somebody explain to me why some people think the companion rework won't apply to sentinels?

[PhiZero]

1 minute ago, Alguien said:

Can somebody explain to me why some people think the companion rework won't apply to sentinels?

Not entirely sure, but I believe the misunderstanding is that they used to be separated into Sentinels and Kubros, making sentinels ineligible for Companion related mods.

ie, if it has legs, it's a companion. If it doesn't...well, that's just speciest.

[0_The_F00l]

Hate would be too strong ,

Apathy would be more suitable.

And not caring is pretty on point for DE and any old content.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves  since we don't even know what changes will happen.

[SteveCutler]

They mentioned giving companions roughly 50% more survivability. For sentinels, that'll still be nothing.

[trst]

From all my experience with companions Sentinels have the fewest issues. If players think they actually need reworks I suspect they're too spoiled by Predasites being death immune.

[Hexerin]

47 minutes ago, SteveCutler said:

They mentioned giving companions roughly 50% more survivability. For sentinels, that'll still be nothing.

They also stated that all companions would gain immortality, which is currently unique to Djinn and the Vulpaphyla. Which of course, Djinn's is significantly worse than the Vulpaphyla versions, having 300% longer downtime (90 seconds vs 30 seconds) and no ability to contribute to combat (whereas Vulpaphyla Devolutions all having a weaker version of the normal attacks, despite being "dead"). Which is all unsurprising, because again, DE hates sentinels and those who use them.

7 minutes ago, trst said:

From all my experience with companions Sentinels have the fewest issues. If players think they actually need reworks I suspect they're too spoiled by Predasites being death immune.

You clearly only play normal star chart against the low/mid tier enemy groups then. You start running against actual content, your sentinel gets instagibbed in the first combat encounter you engage in. They simply have nowhere near enough health or resistances to survive, and most enemies have some form of AoE to use against you (or will just outright target your sentinel directly) so there's no way to protect them.

My Helios Prime is completely kitted out to be as bulky as possible. I run it on my Ivara Prime, to gather codex while doing stealth things. Prowl extends to your companion, but since companion AI causes them to just attack anything regardless (except Shade with its unique stealth precept), I don't equip Helios with any combat mods nor a weapon. So even despite all that bulk, these are the stats it ends up with:

Armor bumps up 209 -> 418 while Synth Fiber is running, which is pretty much continuously if I'm attacking things (health orbs aren't rare drops, and are guaranteed on my mercy kills). So 41.1% HPDR baseline, and 58.2% HPDR while boosted. Yet despite all this, if I were to put Helios on a non-stealth frame and try to do a mission, all four lives would be erased within the first tile. That's how pathetic sentinels are.

Meanwhile my Panzer Vulpaphyla just runs around wiping out an enemy every few seconds. If somehow killed, just devolves and floats above me for a bit (still contributing to the fight, as well). Then 30 seconds later, goes back to running around like a madlad. Also, has significantly higher stats, because of the Link mods (which you can't put on sentinels, of course). Compare the above screenshot to this one:

These are the baseline stats. Not pictured are the boosts from Arcane Blessing and Vitality Mote (which is itself boosted by Molt Augmented). With those in play, the health value boosts to 6,196 HP. The companion can then be boosted by Vitality Mote being on the companion itself, bringing the total health up to 7,354 HP. Additionally, that 693 armor (69.79% HPDR) gets doubled to 1,386 armor (82.2% HPDR) while Synth Fiber is active (which again, is basically always).

All that being said, various abilities can contribute to sentinel survival to a degree (Wisp's Vitality Mote can also affect sentinels, and Gara's Splinter Storm can be put on them for the 90% DR, just to give two examples). However, you can just do the same with a non-sentinel companion, and get significantly better overall results. Plus, none of these prevent the sentinel from just getting killed regardless. They just protect against the occasional incidental / chip hit, which might keep your sentinel alive for an extra tile.

Additionally, all other companions have a bleedout phase (so you can bring them back up, an infinite number of times too) and also revive if your frame suffers a full death (which doesn't refresh Regen/Primed Regen, by the way... because DE hates yadda yadda). Or in the case of Vulpaphyla, just straight up can't be killed. So why bother with a sentinel, which you have to babysit with super slow and defensive gameplay? Just use literally any other companion type, and play the game properly.

[trst]

8 hours ago, Hexerin said:

You clearly only play normal star chart against the low/mid tier enemy groups then. You start running against actual content, your sentinel gets instagibbed in the first combat encounter you engage in. They simply have nowhere near enough health or resistances to survive, and most enemies have some form of AoE to use against you (or will just outright target your sentinel directly) so there's no way to protect them.

My Helios Prime is completely kitted out to be as bulky as possible. I run it on my Ivara Prime, to gather codex while doing stealth things. Prowl extends to your companion, but since companion AI causes them to just attack anything regardless (except Shade with its unique stealth precept), I don't equip Helios with any combat mods nor a weapon. So even despite all that bulk, these are the stats it ends up with:

Armor bumps up 209 -> 418 while Synth Fiber is running, which is pretty much continuously if I'm attacking things (health orbs aren't rare drops, and are guaranteed on my mercy kills). So 41.1% HPDR baseline, and 58.2% HPDR while boosted. Yet despite all this, if I were to put Helios on a non-stealth frame and try to do a mission, all four lives would be erased within the first tile. That's how pathetic sentinels are.

Meanwhile my Panzer Vulpaphyla just runs around wiping out an enemy every few seconds. If somehow killed, just devolves and floats above me for a bit (still contributing to the fight, as well). Then 30 seconds later, goes back to running around like a madlad. Also, has significantly higher stats, because of the Link mods (which you can't put on sentinels, of course). Compare the above screenshot to this one:

These are the baseline stats. Not pictured are the boosts from Arcane Blessing and Vitality Mote (which is itself boosted by Molt Augmented). With those in play, the health value boosts to 6,196 HP. The companion can then be boosted by Vitality Mote being on the companion itself, bringing the total health up to 7,354 HP. Additionally, that 693 armor (69.79% HPDR) gets doubled to 1,386 armor (82.2% HPDR) while Synth Fiber is active (which again, is basically always).

All that being said, various abilities can contribute to sentinel survival to a degree (Wisp's Vitality Mote can also affect sentinels, and Gara's Splinter Storm can be put on them for the 90% DR, just to give two examples). However, you can just do the same with a non-sentinel companion, and get significantly better overall results. Plus, none of these prevent the sentinel from just getting killed regardless. They just protect against the occasional incidental / chip hit, which might keep your sentinel alive for an extra tile.

Additionally, all other companions have a bleedout phase (so you can bring them back up, an infinite number of times too) and also revive if your frame suffers a full death (which doesn't refresh Regen/Primed Regen, by the way... because DE hates yadda yadda). Or in the case of Vulpaphyla, just straight up can't be killed. So why bother with a sentinel, which you have to babysit with super slow and defensive gameplay? Just use literally any other companion type, and play the game properly.

Unless it's something that specifically requires non-SP or I'm trying to speedrun Nightwave I exclusively run SP and I don't experience any such "instagibs" on my Sentinels. Yes they sometimes end up dead if I've spent  a full C rotation in an SP endless but even then the longer you spend in endless the more value Hard Reset can get.

My default Sentinel is Dethcube running this:

Spoiler

With this as their weapon:

Spoiler

It survives SP just fine outside of some full endless runs (even then that's where Hard Reset comes in) and the Verglas kills SP enemies at a fast enough pace after armor stripping even without a full build and otherwise works as a decent priming weapon. And Vaporize can one-shot trash enemies, multiple if they're conveniently lined up or grouped by an ability.

I also wouldn't consider other companions having a bleedout to be at all beneficial. Yeah it's technically infinite revives but it's requiring you to stop playing the mission to find and revive them. Plus, iirc, non-Sentinel companions still don't get revive invulnerability thus can end up dying again in their revive animation. All while Sentinels get their passive revives from Regen without taking you out of the gameplay.

 

But my overall point is that I simply don't experience these instant deaths with Sentinels that others seem to get all the time. Also in comparison to other companions they take far less effort to use than non-Predasites due to manual revives being necessary on them and how they take far more aggro from enemies. Ultimately in regards to companions overall Sentinels require the least/no changes since they lack all the downsides of other companions while having benefits that animal companions can't grant.

I also wouldn't say that Pedasites should be some gold standard of how companions should work as effects that remove entire gameplay mechanics is very lazy design and often detrimental to the game as a whole.

[ShogunGunshow]

Alls I know is that when the update hits the ol' Dethcube is getting pulled out of storage for those delicious, delicious energy orbs. 

[Tiltskillet]

9 hours ago, Hexerin said:

You clearly only play normal star chart against the low/mid tier enemy groups then. You start running against actual content, your sentinel gets instagibbed in the first combat encounter you engage in.

So my experience running a lot of Dethcube and Helios is that Sentinels do fine 99% of the time in basic SP.  If I stay 10;minutes it's still unusual for them to burn through Primed Regen, and it gets sketchy at 15-20 minutes.

Some of this is probably due to playing so much Banshee--Silence short circuits a lot of attacks that are dangerous to Sentinels--but I see pretty much the same thing  with other frames with no Silence.  (Or invisibility.)

I'm not suggesting this is an impressive survival rate compared to Panzers, etc, or that I don't welcome some buffs.

Just saying that they don't explode into bits as soon as I select a SP mission. :P

[(PSN)robotwars7]

I imagine after all this time, they'll at least have the sense to include all companion types; Sentinels, Kubrows, Kavats, Helminth Chargers, MOAs, Hounds, Predasites and Vulpaphylas (the lattermost of which is likely going to get nerfed HARD).

personally I think Sentinels would work best as a purely utility-based option, with complete invulnerability, but little to no effect on DPS output, while other companions are the opposite: they can be killed, but they would offer more benefits in combat and function as a true ally. 

 

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

I certainly hope Sentinels are included in the rework. In content where I care whether the sentinel is alive or not, they're usually dead.
I only use Djinn, because he can revive. (I rarely need to bring out Helios for scans of new enemies, or Oxylus for fishing, or Nautilus for Railjack, but they're rare exceptions to Djinn.)

My ideal companion rework:
New equipment slot: Utility Belt... has all the mod slots for Companions/Sentinels, and never gets killed.

We'll see how their solution compares.

[Tiltskillet]

48 minutes ago, (PSN)robotwars7 said:

Personally I think Sentinels would work best as a purely utility-based option, with complete invulnerability, but little to no effect on DPS output, while other companions are the opposite: they can be killed, but they would offer more benefits in combat and function as a true ally. 

While that arrangement makes some sense intuitively, it's somewhat counter to the  way the game has evolved since Sentinels come with an array  of weapon systems.   I could see something a bit more complicated though, for instance they're only invulnerable if no weapon is equipped.  (Leaving aside that the weapons also need some serious rebalancing.)

Edited August 28, 2023 by Tiltskillet

[Hexerin]

7 hours ago, (PSN)robotwars7 said:

I imagine after all this time, they'll at least have the sense to include all companion types; Sentinels, Kubrows, Kavats, Helminth Chargers, MOAs, Hounds, Predasites and Vulpaphylas (the lattermost of which is likely going to get nerfed HARD).

personally I think Sentinels would work best as a purely utility-based option, with complete invulnerability, but little to no effect on DPS output, while other companions are the opposite: they can be killed, but they would offer more benefits in combat and function as a true ally.

7 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

While that arrangement makes some sense intuitively, it's somewhat counter to the  way the game has evolved since Sentinels come with an array  of weapon systems.   I could see something a bit more complicated though, for instance they're only invulnerable if no weapon is equipped.  (Leaving aside that the weapons also need some serious rebalancing.)

Speaking as one who runs companions strictly for their utility effects, I would love to be able to just equip my sentinel and have it be completely invulnerable. I never used weapons on them in the first place, because having a weapon equipped just increases their aggro and makes it more likely that the enemies would focus them.

[Tiltskillet]

38 minutes ago, Hexerin said:

Speaking as one who runs companions strictly for their utility effects, I would love to be able to just equip my sentinel and have it be completely invulnerable. I never used weapons on them in the first place, because having a weapon equipped just increases their aggro and makes it more likely that the enemies would focus them.

Helstrum is like, 30% of my reason for using Sentinels, lol.

The only time I see my Sentinels drawing obvious aggro is when I go into Void Mode.  And then it doesn't matter  if they're armed or not.  If there isn't anything around to distract or CC the enemies, that Sentinel is going down.  Animals have the same issue with Void Mode though, but are at least revivable.

[Marvelous_A]

I still remember how they wasted the prime sentinel quota with a Shade Prime. For Shade, which is by then the ONLY sentinel that already had a non-prime upgraded variant (Prisma Shade). They could choose any from the other 6 that haven't gotten any variant yet and they chose Shade. And it's a direct upgrade over Prisma so it kinda renders the Prisma variant completely meaningless.

Edited August 29, 2023 by Marvelous_A

[Dunkelheit]

Am 26.8.2023 um 23:45 schrieb Hexerin:

Just sayin'. A system rework like this is the literal perfect opportunity to fix the core issues that sentinels have.

Yeah, I understand, if someone does not the exact same thing that you wish them to do, they hate you. Of course, what else could it be?

[(XBOX)Hellsteeth30]

I call all my Sentinels "Dead", as that seems to be their name in map 

All fun and games until a power fart Eximus shows up.

[Hexerin]

On 2023-08-29 at 3:51 AM, Dunkelheit said:

Yeah, I understand, if someone does not the exact same thing that you wish them to do, they hate you. Of course, what else could it be?

I already addressed this just a few posts later, so I'm not going to bother re-addressing it. You'll either educate yourself, or not, doesn't matter to me either way.