De-squishing Companions in Steel Path etc

[Blau-]

Hey! I took a two year break and a bunch of new mods and mechanics have come out since then that I'm not familiar with, so I'm hoping you folks can help me come up with some ideas:

My companions (specifically right now, my smeeta kavat, but broadly to other companions too) are a lot squishier than I would like, especially in spicier content like Steel Path. I'm mostly using them for buffs / utility, not damage. How can I help them stay alive better?

Relatedly: How important is it to keep them off the ground now anyway given they recover over time? I do have Tenacious Bond for the crit buff where headshots reduce recovery timer, I'm just not super great at reliably gettting headshots (tremors! woo). Aerial bond would be more useful for getting them off the ground but the zone of cold doesn't seem super useful?

Here's my smeeta's current loadout for context:

Thanks in advance for any advice!!

[Tiltskillet]

16 minutes ago, Blau- said:

How important is it to keep them off the ground now anyway given they recover over time?

Between that, how quickly they can recover, and radar and vacuum continuing to work while they're incapacitated, not that important to me.

[helioth137]

a few answers for you: 1. you could use scourge / scourge prime to make getting headshots much easier with your secondary. 

2. you could use covert bond to keep your furry friends alive, in combination with either vazarin void snare OR killer's rush from the naramon tree, getting finishers/ mercy kills is easy, stealth is one of the best survival methods, alternatively a high impact weapon or the ZAKTI will open up for finishers too. 

3. my panzer vulpaphyla keeps buffing me even while in larval form, i think the other methods of pets being "down" disables them. 
 

I'm sure there's more answers, but those are what i can think of for now.

Edited March 9 by helioth137

[Hexerin]

How to make your companion borderline immortal in Steel Path:

Pretty much the only time your companion would die with this is if you're:

• Spending a lot of time in Operator mode.
  • Hopping out to Operator makes your frame go invulnerable (unless you have a buff or channel running), but your companion doesn't. However, because your frame is invulnerable, the enemy will focus their attacks on your companion instead, letting them kill it since it is no longer moving around.
• Never picking up the health orbs generated from Synth Deconstruct (or general drops) to grant the +100% final armor buff from Synth Fiber.
  • The keyword there is final. The +100% is based on the total armor of your companion, which means it includes Metal Fiber (and any other sources that count as modded armor). This results in some very high armor values, giving your companion significant armor DR to shrug off the occasional hits it takes.
• If you're running SP Endurance, where eventually the enemy will simply 1-tap your companion if its shield gate has already passed.
  • There's literally nothing you can do about this other than use a frame capable of restoring your companion's shields, however. Things like Trinity's Blessing or Mag's Crush are among the extremely limited collection of options for this.

Edited March 9 by Hexerin

[_Anise_]

if you want to cheese it the only mod you need is pack leader and all you have todo is melee every now and again (do it with a gunblade if needed) and your companion now has 2 shieldgates https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Pack_Leader

you can also run a moa with blastshields and the 200% shield mod (not the link mod the base mods are good now) my moa runs around constantly with 5000 shields, and 1200 overguard and does really well against high level enemies! I dont think I used any other survivaiblity mods

Edited March 10 by _Anise_

[Blau-]

1 hour ago, _Anise_ said:

if you want to cheese it the only mod you need is pack leader and all you have todo is melee every now and again (do it with a gunblade if needed) and your companion now has 2 shieldgates https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Pack_Leader

I was running Pack Leader for a while but after a certain point (and whenever we ran into something with direct HP damage) she'd end up on the floor immediately so I swapped it out. It is a solid mod though!

[_Anise_]

4 minutes ago, Blau- said:

after a certain point (and whenever we ran into something with direct HP damage) she'd end up on the floor immediately

then you're probably going to have to run a frame that gives allies / companions damage resistance / status immunity or do what Hexerin said and go all in on survivability mods (pretty much that build was my old goto build) but dosn't leave much room for the new fun things.

though I guess you could always just stack a bunch of the revive time reduction mods and let your companion die with the aim of getting it back up quicker?

I guess vulpa still self revive too

[(PSN)Onder6099]

 

Sheperd for Aura

Combo: Subsumed Dispensary + Arcane pulse and/or Arcane Blessing

[voltocitygel]

I use mostly an adarza kavat, and he stays alive thanks to a few things. 
1) adarza damage reflect (won’t help you in this case

2) tek assault - gives companion a 60% chance to ignore lethal damage and be immune for 8 seconds. It’s nice.

3) shield link (I use mostly volt prime with primed redirection)

4) reinforced bond - you know this one.

5) tenacious bond - you know this one too. 

6) primed pack leader - a few melee hits and you’ll give your companion plenty of overguard. You don’t need to be a pure melee setup for this, but it’ll certainly help.

7) overshields - I run capacitance on my volt, so anytime I use my 4th, I get overshields, and so does anyone in range (including my companion!). This might not apply for you, but can be very helpful.

beyond that, as others have said, if you do long endurance runs, enemies will eventually be able to 1 tap your companion after overguard and overshields. It really just comes down to how much utility and offense are you willing to sacrifice for your companions survivability?

i get lots of headshots so when I get to an hour plus on a steel path void fissure, my kavat does go down a fair amount, but comes back up quickly as I rack up headshots. In your case maybe a different mod that helps with speedier revives might be helpful.