[Spoiler] Exactly How Does The Sentient Adaptation Work?

[ArkNeither]

So, exactly what is it adapting to, when a Sentient enemy has adapted to your attack?

 

Is it adapting to your specific skill like Slash Dash so switch to Radial Javelin?

 

Is it adapting to your damage type like Impact therefore switch to say Radiation?

 

Is it adapting to your equipment? Adapted to your Soma so take out your Lex?

 

Whenever I'm facing a Sentient and it 'adapts' I just brute force my way through its damage reduction with even more Artemis shots cuz no matter what I throw at it, it's damage reduction remains universal against me.

[NobleParadox96]

Not too sure but my guess is after taking a certain amount of damage to the attack you're using, it can "adapt" and be "immune"

[Matrixryu]

I think it gains resistance to every damage type that your current weapon throws at it. So, if you use a weapon that does ALL damage types, it will become resistant to all of them. It is best to use several different weapons with only a few damage types each.

[TARINunit9]

It works like this: 

The advice you've probably heard is "bring lots of different elements and switch weapons after he adapts". However, you've also probably been in a situation where he adapts to all of your elements and you suddenly become unable to deal any more damage. This is because of two really dumb problems with Sentients, Shadow Stalker included, that means "build diversity" is a heck of a lot less important than simply having the right gun for the job:

 

The first is how Sentient adaptation reacts to IPS damage. If your weapon has, for example, a lot of Puncture and very little Slash, the damage adaptation does NOT adapt to Puncture first. It'll just adapt to Puncture and Slash at the same rate. Bring a Paris and a Broken-War? The minuscule Slash on the Paris means they'll adapt to the Broken-War too. In practical terms, this means you can lump IPS under one big element called "physical damage".

 

The second is the event flags used to determine when Shadow Stalker adapts. Shadow Stalker adapts to a damage when either A) he's taken a certain number of damage tics from that type of damage, or B) after he's lost a certain portion of his health to that type of damage.

 

BTW, as far as I can tell, Condition B doubles as a per-shot damage cap. If you have a Tonkor powerful enough to one-shot the guy on paper (as I'm pretty sure I did), he'll survive the blast with about 50% of his health left.

 

This brings me to my first real tip: bring weapons with huge burst damage. Your goal with Shadow Stalker is to hit him hard and fast. You want to hit Condition B before Condition A. Bullet hoses like Grakatas and Supras could quickly become a liability. Beam weapons like Gammacors are safer (I've tested them) but check to see if you have something else first .

That post is about Shadow Stalker, but Sentients use the same coding. The only real difference is that Sentients have more health than Shadow Stalker

[TrinityPrime]

I always assumed it was gaining resistance to all the elements and damage types used against it when it triggers its adaptation, at which point switching to a different weapon with different elemental combos to finish it off.

 

To me this is usually one shot Rad viral kulstar, one shot corrosive cold tonkor, ka-splat sentient.

[ThePredicament]

More per shot than actual damage, so automatics are boned, and any weapon with IPS is boned.

 

Resistances also don't revolve like it should.

 

All in all, hard hitting stuff and be decked out all the time.

 

(Yeah, it's awful design)

[undernown]

I had a strsnge encounter with sentients today.

Loadout:

Rubico with magnetic

Marelok with rad+ viral

Tonbo with corrosive + fire

It was strange; I first shot at them with the rubico till they hit half health.

Then I wipped out my marelok to finish the rest, but the damage was realy low.

When i switched to my tonbo the damage was insane and they were down in seconds.

I do have to say that some corpus were also shooting at the sentients for a time. So perhaps that explains their radiation resistance.

As to why my tonbo did so much damage?

Yes it was in stealh so 4 x multiplyer might have been the culprit.

But even mij rubico felt like it did less damage with its crazy crits.

Pehaps their adaption to one type also makes them weaker to other types. That would certainly be interesting.

I agree with poor design though. The only real difficulty with new stalker and sentient is their bullet spongyness.

Their attacks are easy to dodge, even in something as cramped as the corpus ship tileset.

I like the idea of addapting enemy resistance, but i feel it should slowly wear off over time.

That way it doesn't become a fight of shooting as much ammo as possible at them, its more of a timing thing and tactics.

Do i bring several different weapons and elements, or just 1 high damage per shot weapon and time my shots.

The adaptibily is realy anoying in the stalkers caee, cause most often players have have chosen the most effective damage types per faction, for all 3 weapons, as you want to use different weapons in different situations and to manage ammo usage.

Especialy in the endless missions you have moments when you need to which weapons to deal with either specific enemy types (high rof for nullifiers for example), ammo reserves, ir syndicate proc bonuses.

It also makes lvling weapons realy hard cause usualy you'd only need to bring 1 good weapon with you for the occasuon that he pops up. But now you have the problem that 1 weapon wont be enough.

So if you take one low rank weapon you already run dw risk of getting screwed over by random stalker appearance. Especialy if your other weapon isn't an insane damage per shot weapon. And when he addapts you have to have another good weapon on you. So if your primary is unranked you need to bring both a good melee and a good secondary to stsnd a chance of killing him.

This makes bringing only a single weapon so that it earns more affinity from objectives or teammates even more dangerous.

If your skilled enough, you could kill the old stalker with a low rank weapon if you took your time. Now with shield and damage adaption this becomes inpossible.

[Tzolkat]

Most of my experience with Sentient damage adaptation has been with the new Stalker. The attacks were easier to dodge as they are now, but as the previous person said, getting him to go down with low rank stuff (which seems to be when he usually shows up for me) is next to impossible because of the regenerating shield. He showed up while I was in a room with lots of cover and I managed to survive for about 15 minutes. Here are my observations. They may or may not be accurate.

 

1) The damage adaptation starts after about 4-8 hits, at which point any further damage is nerfed to the point it does very little or even nothing at all.

2) The enemy in question appears to only be able to adapt to two kinds of attacks at a time.

3) Automatic and Continuous trigger weapons are at a high disadvantage under the current system.

 

This might be -almost- acceptable for fighting Sentient, which don't show up much yet. But for Stalker and his tendency to show up anywhere/anytime, particularly if you aren't using maxed gear, combined with Dispel and the fact that he seems totally immune to Tenno abilities (whether this is a bug I don't know), it begins to pose a bit of a problem.

Edited December 14, 2015 by Tzolkat

[(PSN)MonkeysUnkle1]

So, exactly what is it adapting to, when a Sentient enemy has adapted to your attack?

 

Is it adapting to your specific skill like Slash Dash so switch to Radial Javelin?

 

Is it adapting to your damage type like Impact therefore switch to say Radiation?

 

Is it adapting to your equipment? Adapted to your Soma so take out your Lex?

 

Whenever I'm facing a Sentient and it 'adapts' I just brute force my way through its damage reduction with even more Artemis shots cuz no matter what I throw at it, it's damage reduction remains universal against me.

It seems they just become immune to everything. A viral scindo p, a corrosive vaykor marelok, and a radiation dread. Started with the dread and used until the lotus actually said it had adapted. Switched to my marelok and watched as it did about 30 damage per shot right from the start. I really thought I'd like this system, but it just seems to adapt to everything all at once and that is simply unfair.

[(PSN)Alphonso-Alonso]

Yeah, I'm running with a corrosive vectis, blast dual grakatas (I'm grasping at straws) and a slash melee and right after the vectis is adapted to, everything is reduced to single digit figures despite the fact I ran a Sorite with this very loadout just earlier today O_o. I eventually killed it with bee-stings but it took all of my vectis magazine, most of my dual grakata and invisible bonus damage God-mode Loki as well as 12 minutes of contiuous assault. 

 

I don't think Sentients should be nerfed, they are our reckoning and very well should be scary to deal with, but as they are the battles aren't difficult they are just drawn out. At least Shadow kills me and then he makes a polite exit haha.