Helios Scanner - Useless?

[Morwyn]

I bought the Helio/swag pack right away for 100p for the scanner. I maxed it out right off the bat and set off for a night of regular shenanigans. After 3-4 hours I checked codex only to find it hadn't done much. I researched a bit of how it worked, added a few more mods - it levels SLOW but I have both Helios/Deconstructor at 30 now, ran both for another night with maxed mods and...

 

WOW DOES IT EVER SUCK!

 

Even for useless inanimate objects it takes FOREVER. Why would I stand in front of Reinforced Glass for AGES to do a scan? The insult to injury here is that MOST of the entries in codex require a dozen scans or more.

 

The Deconstructor is meh at best, even well modded but the scanner is a joke.

 

Am I using this wrong or is anyone else seeing a similar problem with this?

[Trouvo]

Nope you are not alone on this, I thing for it being its ability it should def be an instant thing, even if the Cooldown is raised that would be fine but I kill stuff too fast to get any scans.....so all I have gained from it is mastery points....so yeah....

[AXCrusnik]

Would have been better if the scanner gave you like speed scan charges over time that increase scan speed with normal codex scanner. Or an instant scan with priority on ENEMIES instead of it scanning boxes and windows all day.

[LGear]

It potentially has its uses - for instance, I've already scanned more Corrupted in the last two days than I have in the last two months - but yes, it definitely scans too slow for a supposedly automatic scanner. And unlike using the scanner yourself, you can't even choose what to target.

 

At the very least, ranking up Investigator should speed up the scanning speed to nearly instantaneous, so the Helios gets to scan something before you kill it.

[Morwyn]

I bought almost 1000 scanner charges before I began using it, I wanted to load it up. The damn thing hasn't used half of them in almost 12 hours of use. Yes, leveling the scanner should buff the speed. Or then again, maybe it does and the 'basic' is even slower! :(

[zat-bust]

It burns through all of your codex scans, started with over 800 scans, ended with 13, when I finally leveled it up to 30. In its lifetime, it helped me scan canisters and many objects/enemies that I have already finished scanning before. 

[8bit_Ghost]

Helios is the buggiest of the buggiest of the buggiest. Helios is also the single most unique of all the sentinels (melee weapon, non-combative power).

It's gonna take a lot of hotfixes to match the vision DE has for this fella, but I can see it becoming the most useful sentinel, to me. The glaive power already does a lot of damage to enemies with 1 hit, and leveling it up as well as the precept helps it shoot faster and more. The investigator is probably under...investigation as well. It has the potential to do so much.

I think the problem with investigator is that if instantaneous, it would scan way too much stuff as you ran past it (read: the 3-level grineer galleon control room that is composed of entirely alarm/unlock consoles). So, to combat that, the investigator takes a moment so that if you don't want something scanned, just be fast and Helios forgets about it.

Maybe it should instantly scan enemies but not environmental objects?

[Morwyn]

^^ yes at least put a priority on enemies and at least half the scan time. Although even at half (4seconds) it would be an eternity!

Edited March 27, 2014 by Morwyn

[D3ST]

Good luck to you guys,..

 

i mean, they havent even fixed the vacuum yet, and thats been out like what?,.... 6 months now...

[GreyEnneract]

I thought ranking up the scanner skill would make the speed faster.

But nope, it didn't do a damn thing.

[8bit_Ghost]

Good luck to you guys,..

 

i mean, they havent even fixed the vacuum yet, and thats been out like what?,.... 6 months now...

Vacuum has some very specific things going on. 1: it can't suck up stuff that's moving. 2: it can't suck up stuff on slopes. So basically all outdoor areas.

[kscott190]

It's probably best to use this with Loki

[DeadlyNerd]

Meh, take yer vauban, throw a bastille and go get a coffee while helios scans stuff.

[dashashou]

De releasing  a buggy feature that doesn't work  at release  , seems like  we have seen this before 

[ReapsterPL]

Meh, take yer vauban, throw a bastille and go get a coffee while helios scans stuff.

yeah that is how me and a m8 of mine did infested, throw bastille scann kill, i did it for testing purpose with a helios yeasterday, i was done with 5 chargers before helios was done with one... (on maxed out investi-snail-gator), so yeah MR fodder then back to carrier :(

[Tulzscha]

Moved to the proper section.

[Keltik0ne]

You have to admit the art guys did a really good job though.

 

Makes the "posing pouch" carrier look silly(er).

[Davoodoo]

ive been doing plenty of 35 minute t3 defs.

Ive killed on average 600 enemies, teammates did same amount on average, yet ive spent at best 20 scanners per mission.

Helios managed to scan 20 out of 2400 enemies thats less than 1%.

Its useless.

[Morwyn]

Agree with a lot of the comments here, it seems pretty obvious it's simply broken. That or it's just really, REALLY badly designed. Either way, I feel 100p to beta test a senti that doesn't work is a cheap money grab and basically feel like I got robbed.

 

Does NOT do what it says on the label.

[dashashou]

You have to admit the art guys did a really good job though.

 

Makes the "posing pouch" carrier look silly(er).

The art guys  are really holding this game together .

[Scryed]

all they need to do is make the scanner instant, with an internal cooldown. That would perfectly balance it.

[JHarlequin]

 I have more issues then just the scanner.  It does seem to take pictures and sometimes it is better then usual, but it is still really kind of pathetic.  My biggest problem with it still comes back to the usual, "precepts are like the behaviors for your sentinels" issue.

 

 Since you can't really change the precepts, you can't really chose how it acts.  Making this issue worse is that it's weapon is unique to this sentinel.  The sentinel looks good and has a unique weapon that I would like more then the others, but it has such a useless ability that it can't last long for anyone.  It is basically built for people to use investigator until they really really don't want to anymore and then change it out for coolant leak.  The problem is that there are three other sentinels with much better abilities.

 

 Helios looks good, but it just isn't going to stand up to other sentinels because it can't do anything.  For us to be able to keep enjoying it, some of the powers might have to be shared, or we just have to give up those other bonuses.  To the point that I don't really expect to see a lot of people turn on investigator even if a new faction comes out that requires 50 scans for each of 30 some enemies.  Manual scanning will still be much better so Helios won't have enough use ever.

[Me.Greedy]

I dislike that Helios is clan tech. it should be the newbie sentinel with a fast codex scan so new players can learn about the game faster... This was a sad oversight by DE.

 

it does need to scan faster, and maybe even have a built in thinker that prioritizes scans that are not completed yet. (if only it would scan the last electric crawler for me, since i can never find them, and when i do.. POOF it's dead.)

[Morwyn]

I've run quite a few experiments and come to the conclusion that;

 

a - It fails to be effecient, it's MUCH better to simply whip out your scanner since Helios is entirely bugged and was a waste of platinum

b - it's working as intended

 

Either way, it's fail.

[dashashou]

all they need to do is make the scanner instant, with an internal cooldown. That would perfectly balance it.

wow elegant well thought out solution ! sadly never to be imp. that way