Abyss of Dagath - Dev Workshop: Companion Improvements and Tweaks

[CanOfCraig]

I love these changes but see something that feels missed. 
Mods like Assault Mode/Striker waste a whole mod slot just letting sentinel companion use the weapon you already need to equip and mod separately. Is there a chance we can see a death to this mod and the behavior of attacking be set to weather or not I gave the thing a gun to shoot? If it needs to be a compromise can there be behavioral mods that dictate weather the companion attacks freely, or attacks to assist enemies you've already attacked as a mod to the weapon, and not the companion preferably as some new exilus type to refrain from wasting mod spots on behavior. 

TL;DR
Please Kill Assault mode mods.

 

Edit: 

Also will we be getting a balance pass on companion weapons - many of them have some base stats that are more just sad to look at than anything. ie. Artax with it's 2% crit chance, 3% status chance, 1.5% crit multiplier, and 5 cold damage. 

Edited September 29, 2023 by CanOfCraig

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

3 hours ago, Minifig3D said:

So, are we also reducing the damage enemies deal per hit to only 50? or does the 50 healing scale with mission level? I imagine it being somewhat difficult to keep my companion alive on steel path after this change...

This sounds like a horrible change even with the added overguard.

[Kaokasalis]

Quote

Sentinel Sanctuary and Companion Shelter Mods have been improved. The shield globe, while the player is performing a Revive, has been increased from 600 Health to 1800 Health.

This is still bad. 1800 Health is nothing at higher levels. Either the shelter should get scaling based on the companions health or shield values. They could also get the snowglobe treatment where the protective barrier is briefly invulnerable and then adds total absorbed damage to its health. Also, even with the previously suggested buffs there is still little reason to use the sanctuary/shelter mods as there are just much better alternatives for the limited mod slots. Maybe have the barrier erected by the companion persist after it has been revived or turn the remaining health of the barrier into Overguard for both the companion and the player?

Edited September 29, 2023 by Kaokasalis

[Temragon]

All of these changes are positive, and I'm glad to see them. Looking forward to the mentioned next set of changes as well.

[(PSN)devack13]

I feel the need to say that at one point I really wasn't playing the game much due to quality of life stuff. But good God you guys at DE have blown me out of the water with how good the game has gotten the past couple years and this pet update sounds like another slam dunk. Huge thanks and props to you guys.

[L3512]

10 hours ago, [DE]Momaw said:

Companions will no longer gain Health when your Warframe does if using certain Health-absorbing powers together with the Mod Linked Vitality (formerly Link Health). The restrictions of the following abilities and features, as they apply to granting Health, Shields, or Damage Resistance to Pets. have been removed:

Some of the damage mitigation abilities are very powerful, removing them from effecting companions is effectively a big nerf to survivability.

In the context of this part;

10 hours ago, [DE]Momaw said:

New Companion Mods

Referring back to the introduction, one of our goals with the Companion rework is to add opportunities for the player to work together with the Pet. Instead of a Mod that only affects your Pet, we looked for ways that you and your Pet could amplify each other.

What could be more synergistic than your frame abilities helping your pet to survive. This goes back to the melee nerf with Helios using the gladiator set to grant the set bonus to your frame, people had a reason to run Helios instead of Smeeta or Panzer. Now Helios is only used to try and fill out a completely broken codex and has zero incentive to use for the vast majority of the player base.

While you are looking at companion mods, now is maybe the time to nerf the vigilance set mods working like the gladiator set use to for consistency's sake.

 

10 hours ago, [DE]Momaw said:

• Pack Leader has been changed. Instead of healing your Companion by 36% of melee damage inflicted, it now restores 50 Health per melee hit. Excess healing becomes Overguard instead, with a maximum of 600 Overguard.
• Primed Pack Leader increases Pack Leader effect to 92 Health restored per hit, and increases Overguard cap to 1100.

Dev note: Pack Leader's healing was so strong that, functionally, any upgraded melee weapon would fully heal your Companion in a single hit. You would hit an enemy for several thousand damage, and your pet would proportionately receive thousands of Health. This change tries to make the healing values more sensible so that you can heal your Companion efficiently but not *instantly*. By letting you overflow into Overguard, it also provides some extra ability to tank large hits.

This is a major nerf to survivability in SP, while DE have mentioned that SP is not meant to be balanced around (the last year of content suggests this is not the case.) these changes effectively weaken companions in content where the enemy damage renders the new health/shields/armour values moot. As others have pointed out companion AI is a large factor is constant downings and healing 50-92 health per hit is nigh useless.

These values could be increased by ten and companions would still eat bullets faster that you could heal them in SP as the current percent based Pack leader mods still fail to deal with burst damage.

[tel__arin]

I really hope this thing of vacuum not working while the companion is incapacitated doesn't ship when the update comes, the vulpaphyla will still be a meta if its the case. Also i hope you touch the cosmetics for deimos companions in future updates, alow them to use kavat and kubrow armors. 

[SteveCutler]

Quote

Consistency In Pet Healing

Previously, the Mod Link Health could cause your Companions to gain some of the healing that your Warframe did. This invisible feature was not indicated by the card, and it was never explained what forms of healing worked or why. Additionally, Pets were using some of the same mechanics that things like mission objectives did, which limited the effects of some healing or defensive powers. We've decided to remove both of these obscure mechanics and restrictions.

Companions will no longer gain Health when your Warframe does if using certain Health-absorbing powers together with the Mod Linked Vitality (formerly Link Health). The restrictions of the following abilities and features, as they apply to granting Health, Shields, or Damage Resistance to Pets. have been removed:

43 minutes ago, L3512 said:

Some of the damage mitigation abilities are very powerful, removing them from effecting companions is effectively a big nerf to survivability.

I think you're misunderstanding the Dev Workshop. They're removing the restrictions on these abilities. See the full quote above, specifically the part mentioning "Pets were using some of the same mechanics that things like mission objectives did, which limited the effects of some healing or defensive powers". This is a buff. For example, Blessing currently gives only 50% DR to mission objectives, and therefore to pets. With this update, it'll give the full 75% to pets.

That's how I understood it, anyway.

 

Edited September 29, 2023 by SteveCutler

[balckillofdeath]

that was my understanding as well, there small nerf to some power mechanics but also a big buff because all of the abilities listed now work on companions as well!

[Randomguy65]

Okay first of all, before companions if they die in mission, can't revive them(i am mainly talking about sentinels). Now they can revive in 1 minute intervals(can cool down by mods). So the companions will die, comeback repeat. I will take this then having no sentinel at all.

[ShogunGunshow]

11 minutes ago, Randomguy65 said:

Okay first of all, before companions if they die in mission, can't revive them(i am mainly talking about sentinels). Now they can revive in 1 minute intervals(can cool down by mods). So the companions will die, comeback repeat. I will take this then having no sentinel at all.

If you have Primed Regen and Medipet (and it seems at this point why wouldn't you), you'll have a 10s respawn time.

So yeah.

[ShogunGunshow]

@[DE]MomawDoes Trinity's Vampire Leech augment restore shields to pets with this change? Do pets even have an energy value, or is their energy hidden and coded as 'zero'? 

[Hawk1911]

So DE went with "keep them alive or with you at all costs" but forgot what we also have been asking for, which is, better companion AI and faster attack animations and better damage.  Not only that but unless this "rework" (which isn't saying much honestly) allows us to finally remove more than 80% of the health pool mods from the companion slots then I still do not see them being useful in any content above level 20-30.  AI behavior should have been a higher priority than merely keeping them in the game and nothing else!

10 years we've been asking for companion improvements and each time that you guys at DE introduce yet another weak, death prone and brain dead companion or made of glass MOA we ask "why no AI fixes, why no improvements to their damage avoidance, why no behavior changes?"  You had one job guys and you still came up short, what a shame I was actually looking forward to this "rework" but clearly it's just add numbers to solve the problem, lazy solution as always.  

You know, I'm crazy because I actually like bringing various companions with me to mission, even though I know that they are pointless, heck I don't even have vacuum on all of them because of how bloated the companion mod choices are.   Not just bloated mod selection but thanks to our limited 8 mod slots and all of these mods are required in order to make any companion useful, now you had the bright idea to add MORE mods?! No one asked for more mods for any companion/sentinal/robot, we wanted LESS bloat not more.  You could have combined a few different mods so that, again, less bloat taking up the very limited space inside of our companions mod slots or out right remove some of them and refund us the ENDO we spent.  SO many smart suggestions form people much more in the know than I am yet, again the lazy solution of just making them immortal.

Edited September 30, 2023 by Hawk1911

[(XBOX)Tanta Cinta]

7 hours ago, (XBOX)HawkeemXbox said:

These changes are a substantial improvement from where Companions are now. The fact that people are completely dismissing it because they can't have vaccum on 24/7 is baffling. Shield Recharge works on Moas now, Health regen mods heal a lot more per second, Hard Reset seems so much more viable. I'm excited for these changes to be implemented in game. I think having a minute at most where i don't have vaccum is okay, especially when you consider the fact that there are multiple ways to lowering that timer. 

The changes are wonderful, but with this massive overhaul being implemented, it almost seems outright petty that they're still with-holding vacuum from us. It's 2023 and this game still hasn't solved the vacuum problem.

This long-overdue rework could've been the chance to fix that, but the opportunity was squandered.

[0_The_F00l]

Ok , this is better than keeping things as they are ,

But i dont think it actually does enough.

 

Two of the major issues wit companions wsa

1) Their survivability (which is kinda addressed now) ; 50% more EHP is nice but will be ultimately not that great , the benefit of buffs is good ,  the auto revive on the other hand is what really shines.

2) Their dumb AI , which was and still is pathetic at avoiding danger as well as engaging the right enemies is what needs most help.

[(PSN)Mirishi949]

hace 14 horas, [DE]Momaw dijo:

Hello Tenno!

This is one of our many Developer Workshops for Update 34: Abyss of Dagath. To see what other changes are coming in this Update, check out our other Developer Workshops here:

• Hydroid Rework
• Companion Rework
• New Player Path Improvements
• Accessibility + HUD Improvements
• Systems Changes and General QOL
   

In our next update, Abyss of Dagath, we will be making extensive changes to the way you use, Mod, and interact with your Companions!  Please use this post to become informed about what we are changing and why. As always, with pre-release information, this represents our current plans and goals but it might differ slightly from the final version.

Our high-level objectives for this Companion rework are:

1. Make pets more viable in high-level gameplay by making them immortal. Pets can no longer die! This avoids frustrating scenarios where you are relying on your Pet to provide some feature or bonus only to have them get removed from play. The base stats of Pets has also been increased significantly to help them in difficult missions.
2. Introduce more interactive Mods that offer ways to play alongside your Pet instead of it being mostly autonomous like a specter.
3. Changes to many Pet Mods, mostly to support the first two goals of removing death states and improving basic survivability. Some Mods were inconsistent in their naming or stats, and we have improved this. We have rebalanced some Mods that players felt were not good enough, or ones that we've observed are SO good that they are considered "essential."

Pet Immortality

We've all seen the memes with people giving their Pets funny names, only to see the message over and over every few minutes: "Your pet is down!"  Dying cats and dogs have been demanding attention on your HUD, and spontaneously combusting sentinels have been robbing you of your Vacuum and Animal Instinct for years.

All that changes with this update. Going forward, Pets will still have Health and Shield values, and they can be knocked out, but they will not die if you fail to revive them. When they reach zero Health, Pets will instead become Incapacitated for a base duration of 60 seconds. All Pets will automatically revive at the end of their Incapacitate period, and there is no limit to the number of times this can happen.

• Kavats, Kubrows, Moas, and Predasites will collapse on the ground and can be, optionally, manually revived to get them back into action quicker.
• Sentinels cannot be manually revived, but they will fly along with you in a damaged state while performing their automatic self-revive.
• Vulpaphylas have their usual tricks instead, where they morph into a Sentinel-like state for a short period and then recover.
• Khora's Venari still uses its usual behavior of temporarily disappearing if defeated, but you can override its time-out by spending energy to cast her Venari Ability.

Several Mods have been modified or introduced that also change when or how your Pet deals with Incapacitation - see the section about Mods for specifics.

 

Pet Stat Changes

Two broad changes have been made with regard to your Pet's base stats to increase their staying power.

Firstly Health, Shields and Armor have been refactored across the board. This simple numeric buff was made with the goal of Pet survivability increasing by approximately 50%. This also means that the choice of whether to use, for example, Enhanced Vitality or Linked Vitality, will depend on your Warframe choice instead of the Linked Mod always being strictly superior.

Additionally, non-Sentinel Pets now gain their full Health and Shield values immediately when you acquire them. Historically Health and Shield values would increase as your Pet ranked up, which you could see as "Rank Bonuses" in the Upgrades screen. We've removed this behavior and simply given Pets what would end up being their Rank 30 values at Rank 0. This should let you immediately take your Pets on more difficult missions after earning them!

Including both the removal of Pet rank bonuses, and the base increase to stats, here’s what the new stats will look like for all Pets at rank 0:

Revised Kubrow Stats:

• Huras Kubrow: 560 Health (from 150),  490 Shield (from 125), 200 Armor (from 50)
• Raksa Kubrow: 750 Health (from 200), 390 Shield (from 100), 200 Armor (from 50)
• Sahasa Kubrow: 940 Health (from 250), 290 Shield (from 75), 200 Armor (from 50)
• Sunika Kubrow: 830 Health (from 220), 350 Shield (from 90), 200 Armor (from 50)
• Chesa Kubrow: 940 Health (from 250), 290 Shield (from 75), 200 Armor (from 50)
• Helminth Charger: 710 Health (from 190), 330 Shield (from 85), 200 Armor (from 50)

Revised Predasite Stats:

• Predasite (all types): 710 Health (from 190), 350 Shield (from 90), 200 Armor (from 50)

Revised Vulpaphyla Stats:

• Vulpaphyla (all types) 680 Health (from 180), 370 Shield (from 95), 200 Armor (from 50)

Revised Moa Stats:

• Moa: 350 Health (from 100), 350 Shield (from 100), 350 Armor (from 100)
• Moa base stats can be modified further by their components and via gilding

Revised Kavat Stats:

• Adarza Kavat: 310 Health (from 80), 270 Shield (from 70), 200 Armor (from 50)
• Smeeta Kavat: 390 Health (from 100), 230 Shield (from 60), 200 Armor (from 50)
• Vasca Kavat: 310 Health (from 80), 270 Shield (from 70), 200 Armor (from 50)
• Venari: 900 Health (from 300), 350 Armor (from 350)
• Venari Prime: 1050 Health (from 350),  450 Armor (from 450)

Revised Hound Stats:

• Adlet Hound: 350 Health (from 100), 450 Shield (from 150), 350 Armor (from 100)
• Garmr Hound: 350 Health (from 100), 350 Shield (from 100), 450 Armor (from 150)
• Raiju Hound: 450 Health (from 150), 350 Shield (from 100),  350 Armor (from 100)
• Hound base stats can be modified further by their components and via gilding

Revised Sentinel Stats:

• Carrier: 560 Health (from 200), 250 Shield (from 100), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Carrier Prime: 650 Health (400), 200 Shield (from 100), 150 Armor (from 150)
• Dethcube: 560 Health (from 200), 250 Shield (from 100), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Dethcube Prime: 600 Health (from 300), 200 Shield (from 100), 150 Armor (from 150)
• Diriga: 700 Health (from 350), 150 Shield (from 50), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Djinn: 560 Health (from 200), 250 Shield (from 100), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Helios: 560 Health (from 200), 250 Shield (from 100), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Helios Prime: 700 Health (from 250), 200 Shield (from 100), 100 Armor (from 100)
• Nautilus: 560 Health (from 200), 250 Shield (from 100), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Oxylus: 560 Health (from 200), 250 Shield (from 100), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Shade: 600 Health (from 350), 130 Shield (from 50), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Shade Prime: 700 Health (from 350), 200 Shield (from 100), 100 Armor (from 100)
• Prisma Shade: 600 Health (from 300), 130 Shield (from 50), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Taxon: 560 Health (from 200), 250 Shield (from 100), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Wyrm: 560 Health (from 200), 250 Shield (from 100), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Wyrm Prime: 450 health (from 225), 600 Shield (from 300), 150 Armor (from 150)

 

Consistency In Pet Healing

Previously, the Mod Link Health could cause your Companions to gain some of the healing that your Warframe did. This invisible feature was not indicated by the card, and it was never explained what forms of healing worked or why. Additionally, Pets were using some of the same mechanics that things like mission objectives did, which limited the effects of some healing or defensive powers. We've decided to remove both of these obscure mechanics and restrictions.

Companions will no longer gain Health when your Warframe does if using certain Health-absorbing powers together with the Mod Linked Vitality (formerly Link Health). The restrictions of the following abilities and features, as they apply to granting Health, Shields, or Damage Resistance to Pets. have been removed:

• Warding Halo
• Blessing
• Immolation
• Blood Altar
• Splinter Storm
• Intrepid Stand
• Eclipse
• Discharge
• Desolate Hands
• Penance
• Thurible
• Mend & Maim
• Sancti Magistar
• Protective Sling

Changes To Existing Mods

Sentinel Survivability Mod Changes:

• Calculated Redirection changed from max 275% Shields to max 250% Shields
• Enhanced Vitality changed from max 220% Health to max 250% Health
• Metal Fiber changed from max 110% Armor to max 250% Armor
• Regen has been changed significantly. Because your Sentinels no longer die after reaching zero Health, Regen instead reduces the Incapacitation time of your Sentinel by 20 seconds, and provides 6 seconds of Invulnerability after reviving.
• Primed Regen provides a greater benefit: Incapacitation time is reduced by 35 seconds, and provides 6 seconds of Invulnerability after reviving.
• Sacrifice still allows your Sentinel to automatically revive you; however, the Sentinel now goes into Incapacitation instead of being destroyed. Adds 15 seconds to your Sentinel's Incapacitation time.
• Repair Kit has been changed from providing your Sentinel with 6 Health per second to 18 Health per second.

Companion Survivability Mod Changes:

• Link Health has been renamed to Linked Vitality, and changed from max 165% of your Warframe's Health shared with Companion, to max 125% shared Health.
• Link Shields has been renamed to Linked Redirection, and changed from max 110% of your Warframe's Shield shared with Companion, to max 125% shared Shield.
• Link Armor has been renamed to Linked Fiber, and changed from max 110% of your Warframe's Armor shared with Companion, to max 125% shared Armor.
• Medi-Pet Kit has been changed from providing your Companion with 6 Health per second and 72% Bleedout Reduction, to providing 12 Health per second and reducing Incapacitation time by 15 seconds.
• Accelerated Deflection (+90% Shield Recharge) has been changed from being only equipped on Sentinels, to the Robotic category, which means it is now also compatible with Hounds and Moas. Additionally, it also provides -45% Shield Recharge Delay.

Other Companion Mod Changes:

• Djinn's "Reawaken'' has been changed. Now it will reduce Djinn's Incapacitation time by 6 seconds for each Energy Orb you pick up.  Djinn will also revive with 300 points of Overshield for each collected Orb.

Dev note: Since every Sentinel now has a free immortality feature, Djinn needed something to be special again.  

• Pack Leader has been changed. Instead of healing your Companion by 36% of melee damage inflicted, it now restores 50 Health per melee hit. Excess healing becomes Overguard instead, with a maximum of 600 Overguard.
• Primed Pack Leader increases Pack Leader effect to 92 Health restored per hit, and increases Overguard cap to 1100.

Dev note: Pack Leader's healing was so strong that, functionally, any upgraded melee weapon would fully heal your Companion in a single hit. You would hit an enemy for several thousand damage, and your pet would proportionately receive thousands of Health. This change tries to make the healing values more sensible so that you can heal your Companion efficiently but not *instantly*. By letting you overflow into Overguard, it also provides some extra ability to tank large hits.

• Sentinel Sanctuary and Companion Shelter Mods have been improved. The shield globe, while the player is performing a Revive, has been increased from 600 Health to 1800 Health.
• Self Destruct has been altered and renamed. Formerly this would cause Sentinels to cause 600 Blast damage in an 18-meter radius on death. This is now renamed to Knock Out Blast and causes 600 Blast damage in an 18-meter radius on Incapacitation.
• Loyal Companion has been replaced entirely. Formerly it provided a 90% Bleedout-Link so that your Companion had a longer period of time where it could be revived. Since pet death is no longer a factor: Loyal Companion causes your pet to taunt enemies and draw fire to itself for 30 seconds if your Warframe falls below 35% Health. There is a 60-second cooldown between activations.
• (Parazon) Hard Reset: Changed from instantly reviving your pet if you achieved 3 Mercy Kills within 40 seconds, to reducing your pet's Incapacitation time by 10 seconds on each Mercy Kill.

Dev note: We found that this was fairly difficult to achieve. Changing it to allow incremental progress makes it more reliably beneficial to use this.

• Fired Up has been both improved and simplified. Previously this would require that your Sentinel has been shooting continuously for some period of time, and then added a Heat damage multiplier. This has been changed so that the Sentinel gains a 5% bonus Heat damage on every weapon hit up to 100%. The bonus resets after 5 seconds without the Sentinel getting a hit

Dev note: This Mod was difficult to understand and only worked if the Sentinel weapon already did some amount of Heat damage. The mechanics are now more intuitive and the bonus applies the same way adding a Mod would, so your Sentinel's weapon doesn't need to already do Heat damage to benefit.

• Spare Parts: Replaced completely. Previously Spare Parts would cause Sentinels to drop rare materials on death. This has been replaced by Salvage Scanner, which causes your Sentinel to mark enemies for 5 seconds, choosing a new target every 15 seconds. Killing the marked enemy causes them to drop extra loot.

Dev note: Since Pets no longer die, we wanted to change their resource drop to something that was more interactive and rewards combat instead of your Sentinel randomly exploding.

New Companion Mods

Referring back to the introduction, one of our goals with the Companion rework is to add opportunities for the player to work together with the Pet. Instead of a Mod that only affects your Pet, we looked for ways that you and your Pet could amplify each other. Our current plan is for these new Mods to be available at the Conservation vendors in Cetus, Fortuna, and Deimos. These new Mods are still in development, so we aren't quite ready to share them in this Workshop post, but full details will be available in the Abyss of Dagath patch notes.

Further Companion Quality-Of-Life Changes

A few further changes that are worth mentioning:

• Sentinels now avoid damage from Fire Eximus explosions if you also avoid damage with a successful Roll.
• The improvement to Shield Gating where it now scales with maximum Shield strength and fully resets as long as you have any Shield charge at all, also applies to Companions.
• Companions can now gain Overguard and Overshield.

 

Closing

Thank you for taking the time to review the Dev Workshop! We hope you'll have fun playing our changes, coming to the game with the Abyss of Dagath update. As ever, we will be watching for your feedback and welcome constructive discussion.

 

Please do not add shields to helminth, make him more similar to his master Nidus.

 

[S2Weak]

Just make Vacuum built-in for Warframes and removed from Companion already.

Should have done that when Vacuum was made a passive and a Precept for every Sentinel 7 years ago.

 

We have so many enemies to kill and we have to kill at light speed now in comparison to 10 years ago that resources drop faster and farther than we have time to go and pick up without Vacuum.

 

Edited September 29, 2023 by S2Weak

[minicheatbook]

9 hours ago, Cerikus said:

And will continue to do so. Doesn't matter if you rename it, put it on a cooldown or give us more ways to revive companions, it will STILL be an issue.

Unless there is permanent vacuum/fetch I am NOT giving this rework a chance. Will continue to use my Helios.

Please fix it, otherwise this rework was a huge waste of time.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news. This applies to Helios too. (ALTHOUGH it sounds like not giving it a weapon will still probably result in BETTER survivability than it has right now actually due to the stat and mod and shield changes)

15 hours ago, [DE]Momaw said:

Sentinels cannot be manually revived, but they will fly along with you in a damaged state while performing their automatic self-revive.

 With THIS being the downside. This DOES benefit in some way because you never have to worry about running out of sentinel lives. Trade off being you have to use mods or augments to reduce the revive timer on sentinels.

 

15 hours ago, [DE]Momaw said:

• Regen has been changed significantly. Because your Sentinels no longer die after reaching zero Health, Regen instead reduces the Incapacitation time of your Sentinel by 20 seconds, and provides 6 seconds of Invulnerability after reviving.
• Primed Regen provides a greater benefit: Incapacitation time is reduced by 35 seconds, and provides 6 seconds of Invulnerability after reviving.

And from the looks of it.... not great but not terrible at 25 seconds with primed regen or 40 seconds with regular regen and you can also use that parazon mod to make mercy kills knock off another 10 seconds each mercy kill.(decent in my opinion, but i like to do mercy kills... so...YMMV)

With the Bond mods, or wtvr they will end up calling them, that they did not show on stream hopefully we may have other ways to reduce the revive timer? we'll see i suppose...

However,

15 hours ago, [DE]Momaw said:

• Sentinels now avoid damage from Fire Eximus explosions if you also avoid damage with a successful Roll.
• The improvement to Shield Gating where it now scales with maximum Shield strength and fully resets as long as you have any Shield charge at all, also applies to Companions.
• Companions can now gain Overguard and Overshield.

these ensure that better survival methods exist instead of paper companions that just die a lot. you technically have ways to keep them alive longer now.(i hope)

aaannnnd best of aaaaaaaaaaaaalllll.

15 hours ago, [DE]Momaw said:

The restrictions of the following abilities and features, as they apply to granting Health, Shields, or Damage Resistance to Pets. have been removed:

Now we can actually use more abilities on sentinels properly!

Top level content will probably still nuke em hard though, no getting around that. Here's hoping the second revision/tweaking pass after this comes out will actually improve the ai for companions. and make them able to HIT THINGS WITH MELEE ATTACKS consistently.

[Mozitaka]

Yes, many of the update is well deserved and needed considering it's been many years of pain for kavats just lying around for x reasons

No, it's not enough. Vacuum, enemy radar, and loot detector should be built in feature for any warframe without any mod. Mods should increase their functionality, not they're needed.

No, we still don't know how it will be considering dev didn't say they're sure it won't work while your cat is ded. gotta wait for the answer.

[MichauNeedsHealing]

10 hours ago, Cerikus said:

Yeah. I don't use vulpaphylas. So if everything is vulpaphyla, nothing changes for me. The rework should incentivise me to explore other companions.
As long as they can die (be downed) which results in a loss of vacuum (even if it's only temporary) I will NEVER equip animal/mechanical companion, because they attack enemies and aggro their attacks, which results in their death. Sentinels don't do that if you unequip the weapon, which increases their chances of survival.

So this rework means I won't be touching companions and I don't have a reason to swap from Helios, because I like scanning things.

hey so this is just not true, vulpaphylas keep vacuum when downed, do you think it was the most used companion in the game for no reason lmao

[(PSN)RB3-Reloaded]

11 hours ago, Cerikus said:

Pablo said that when companions go down you lose Vacuum and Animal instict temporarily. I will say this:

If this is how it's going to work, then all that hard work team has put into the rework was a WASTE OF TIME.

Damn I see Warframe Players have already got their pitchforks ready 😭 anyways it’s not that serious as this how companions have always worked but it’s true I expected with this rework something about this would change somewhat

[Cerikus]

21 minutes ago, MichauNeedsHealing said:

hey so this is just not true, vulpaphylas keep vacuum when downed, do you think it was the most used companion in the game for no reason lmao

It is obviously true in the live build, but it sounded like that will not be the functionality in the rework. Maybe that's why I am bringing it up and discussing it.

19 minutes ago, (PSN)RB3-Reloaded said:

Damn I see Warframe Players have already got their pitchforks ready 😭 anyways it’s not that serious as this how companions have always worked but it’s true I expected with this rework something about this would change somewhat

Same answer as above. I have no issue with how Vulpas work now, but based on what Pablo said, every companion will lose the vacuum and radar functionality when downed. Unless he was mistaken or it changes, that will be a BRUTAL nerf to Vulphas and will render this rework a useless waste of time. Nerf Vulphas and make everything Vulpha sounds atrocious.

Edited September 29, 2023 by Cerikus

[Khold90]

27 minutes ago, MichauNeedsHealing said:

hey so this is just not true, vulpaphylas keep vacuum when downed, do you think it was the most used companion in the game for no reason lmao

Thing is, that is a bug. One the devs have tried to fix a couple times.

No mods except the revive one are supposed to be active while in larva state.

Even now if the larva form dies then you do lose vacuum and animal instinct like you are supposed to. It even worked that way for a while when they did fix it but then broke it again somewhere.

Unless you are talking about the innate 5m vacuum everyone has and losing a companion means you lose the range extension.

[Chewarette]

6 hours ago, (PSN)Joylesstuna said:

This sounds like a horrible change even with the added overguard.

I guess we have to test that one though. 50 HP per Hit doesn't feel huge, but the melee attack speed and/or range might keep it great. 

7 hours ago, Monolake said:

Also please add the most crucial option  - removing attack mod should prevent pets from melee attacking (which is just a suicide on high level), so they would just stay by your side and do their abilities. Even specters can be commanded to hold ground, but pets are still running to their death non-stop.

Maybe that's part of the new mods they didn't talk about (unless I missed them). They could implement a "Pacifist" mod for companions that would make them follow you, why not even with some damage reduction on top of that

[(XBOX)Ezerald]

10 hours ago, (XBOX)HawkeemXbox said:

These changes are a substantial improvement from where Companions are now. The fact that people are completely dismissing it because they can't have vaccum on 24/7 is baffling. Shield Recharge works on Moas now, Health regen mods heal a lot more per second, Hard Reset seems so much more viable. I'm excited for these changes to be implemented in game. I think having a minute at most where i don't have vaccum is okay, especially when you consider the fact that there are multiple ways to lowering that timer. 

They don't get that a dead pet is a dead pet, so no Vacuum all game AND also downed pet disable Vacuum, so this is a massive improvement overall