Sentinel+Companion?

[el_chanis]

This idea has 2 main reasons behind it: lore, and mechanics.
 

1) Lore: sentinels make no real sense in the context of the game, they are basicly "friendly sentients", wich defeat the "boogeyman" mythos around those destroyers of worlds. Plus, there is another problem... Ordis. He doesn't hump our leg because he lacks a waist, it makes no sense that he will let us just go into a super dangerous mission with a tap on the back. So.... make the sentinels the different possible bodies Ordis can use to go with us in a mission. If he can change the landing craft, this should be easy lorewise.

2) Mechanics: lets be honest, companions aren't strong. They are usefull, they provide utility, and some of them are really good at it, and they also sometimes might kill a guy or two. Given the fact that the comunity has been fighting for the universal use of vaccum since forever, this would fix that problem. It would make the new players's life easier (more allies to pull aggro and some aid in combat), and will give the veterans exactly what they wanted. This will also make the time/resource spent maxing animal/sentinels mods more rewarding, since you actually get to use both. This also makes the use of "team bonuses" (auras and  buffs) more meaningfull when playing solo.

Im almost MR23, and thinking in retrospective, i can't remember a moment where this woulded been broken while leveing up, even less now that im almost at the top end of the player expirence. 

Any idea, suggestion or objection would be appreciated.

[CY13ERPUNK]

ive thought that it could be tied to either MR and/or bringing less weapons to a mission

ie something like every 15MR gets you +1 companions

and/or not bringing a primary or secondary would 'free up a slot' to allow you to bring 1/2 extra companions into a mission with you

personally i would be fine with being melee only if i could have a sentinel+kavat+kubrow+uggo ; it actually sounds pretty awesome

Edited September 3, 2017 by CY13ERPUNK

[Tesseract7777]

Having more than one companion is not a good idea for balance reasons, and I am certain it is something DE would never even consider -- for good reason. 

It's unnecessarily just adding more power creep, and also taking away the point of the sentinel versus pet choice, it's supposed to be a choice based on what things they are good at. 

This isn't a good idea, sorry. 

You are supposed to make a choice. If vacuum is that important to you, you can use a sentinel, or beg DE to add universal vacuum. Plenty of people find reason to use pets like Smeeta over sentinel, lol. Don't act like pets aren't useful in their own right, just because you are addicted to vacuum for every game doesn't mean everyone else is. 

This has been suggested many times over the years, and I don't believe DE has ever once shown willingness to even think about it. 

[Koldraxon-732]

I'm all for forgoing a Sentinel weapon to bring any biological Companion, with a Sentinel leashed to it as if on horseback, with me. This would make Kavats and Kubrows worth bringing in and would retain the Sentinel's abilities.

However, to save the Sentinel from death, and to add a gate to this, a constructable Corpus-design 'docking saddle' for Kubrows, Kavats, and Helminth Chargers should be conceived.

Corpus Companion Sentinel Docking Saddle:

Spoiler

 

What this does is, if the Sentinel reaches critical health values, the first thing that will happen is that it starts passing the damage taken to the biological companion, while fleeing to dock with it to recharge. This recharge time is as long as its shield recharge delay plus the Warframe's shield recharge delay.

This device would come in three pieces. The first is from The Jackal (Saddle), the second is from The Raptors (Dock), and the third is from the Hyena/Zanuka with a Helios attached (Systems), with the blueprint dropping from Alad V.

The Sentinel also respawns if killed if Regen is mounted, and you revive the Companion it had docked with during the mission.

 

In the meantime, Regen should also have a cooldown timer before the Sentinel respawns, and each respawn costs some Affinity and Credits from within the mission and is done automatically; the higher Regen's level, the shorter the cooldown. Without Regen, the cooldown is twice as long.

Edited September 3, 2017 by Koldraxon-732

[Chipputer]

1 hour ago, el_chanis said:

they also sometimes might kill a guy or two.

Might? One or two?

A fully kitted out animal companion will pretty much go ham on everything around you in their detection range if you let them. Problem is everyone's so busy using their super-duper-room-clearing-pooper-scooper powers that they never stop to notice exactly how much an animal companion can actually contribute to a mission.

Also they don't have vacuum so they're automatically worse to most people.

Foregoing a sentinel weapon in favor of a companion would be neat. The problem is the utility the sentinel would offer would make this the go-to method of setting your frame up-- Equip a cat (people would metagame and free armor removal is meta), slap on Carrier or Helios, go to town with free ammo or scans.

It's a balancing nightmare, no matter how you look at it, though.
Do you remove just the sentinel weapon or do you also remove a good portion of the sentinel's utility?
If you remove any sentinel utility, weapon or otherwise, why do you do this and what decides what gets removed?
Should Carrier/Prime be allowed to convert ammo drops for you while the pet is carrying it? Why or why not?
Should Helios be able to scan? Why or why not?
Should the animal companion get access to a full range of their mods while having a sentinel equipped to them? Why or why not?
Instead of this, why not just add a vacuum equippable or mod to animal companions to solve the problem, entirely, without the issues created, otherwise?

The idea is basically compounding the universal utility of a sentinel with the niche utility of an animal companion and while I like the idea, as a whole, I can't support it unless major amounts of utility are removed from one or the other... or both, even. Why would I ever run anything else other than my Raksa Kubrow (for faster shield replenish and free AoE CC) or one of my two Kavats along with Carrier/Prime or Helios/Prime? There's every bit of utility I would ever need in any mission and I'd even be able to replace Guardian with Medi-Ray on the Raksa setup since I only ever use one of those in favor of setting up even more utility that isn't just healing. There wouldn't be any drawbacks.

[(PSN)theelix]

2 hours ago, el_chanis said:

This idea has 2 main reasons behind it: lore, and mechanics.
 

1) Lore: sentinels make no real sense in the context of the game, they are basicly "friendly sentients", wich defeat the "boogeyman" mythos around those destroyers of worlds

What? 

2 hours ago, el_chanis said:

2) Mechanics: lets be honest, companions aren't strong. 

What is your definition of strong? A cat that can give you +60% critical chance every 28 seconds is pretty strong. A cat that strips four enemies armor in a single swing no matter the level is pretty strong. A cat that tells you exactly where every enemy in a radius so large it takes up twice the size of your mini-map is pretty strong. 

 

Onto the main point, the combinations can be broken. 

Helios and any Kavat. Critical chance and a weakspot multiplier to boot basically puts a Banshee on your team. 

Any Sentinel and Sahasa. Kubrow digs up items and you don't even need to get it. Digs up 75 energy and your sentinel brings it to you. Digs up 75 health and sentinel brings it to you. Ammo, etcetera. Especially Carrier since he converts all ammo and increases your stores. 

Djinn and Kavats or Raksa. Djinn brings them in and a Kavat strips their armor, or Raksa stacks its CC with Howl. 

Raksa and Taxon. When we get shield gating, and shields aren't a joke, you get three chances to restore shields and generate overshields. Taxon makes overshield, Protect procs if the shields get too low, Guardian procs if it's depleted again. 

Shade and Sunika, where you wait for Shade to cloak you and Sunika takes out the nullifier causing your problems, and gets the stealth damage and finisher buffs from melee (if you didn't know, yes. Dogs get that) 

There's quite a few more interesting combinations that could happen, but those are some of the most prominent. 

 

[0zryel]

I have to admit that companions feel a bit...off when you bring them with you, after being use to playing only with sentinels. After DE introduce Helminth Chargers I finally decided to try companions as I am a fan of the unique look of the Warframes, Sentinel and now I had a companion that had that look too. To make story short Im 6 forma it...and probably will have to go for a 7th... and his strong, like SUPER strong, with most its mods rank 10, at rank 9. Yet with all its power I was expecting an AI like Zanuka or Hyena ( they kinda jump and hold themselves to walls or ceilings and shoot stuff) or maybe a bit of a Hybrid between a Sentinel and Kubrow/Kavat? You know, a bit like watered Juggernaut etc...

But that was my only disappointment, as I DE Steve was right companions are really strong if you put effort into maxing them up. My hope is that by the time Nidus gets Primed, the Helminth Charger also gets its Prime form accesories and DE takes a look at it at that point or before and makes him a bit more unique and not so similar to a Kubrow/Kavat in AI behaviour combat... 

I think Sentinel is "easy lazy mode" and "companions" are for more "active hardcore players" who like to work for their drops... lol  

On a more serious note I think it's more of play style and choice than anything else... Just like there are players who like using Excalibur Spam 4 or Embers Cheese, World On Fire, to kill everything, while other players choose to work for their kills and headshot through skill instead, using more tactical Warframes and weapons. Or like Riven vs Primed Mods vs Normal Mods... you can still beat anything with the right the combination mods and weapons, you don't need to Riven or Primed to be effective in missions.(I honestly enjoy when I meet both players in the same group as it seems their playstyle its at odds and competing with each other, like a silent duel of who can kill the most before the mission is over... To my surprise skilled players almost always beat the spammers and cheesy ones hands down... but sometimes both have rage quit either way, I learn from both, mostly form the skilled ones, but the spammers sometime bring some cool tricks too) lol

Anyway, unless DE changes its mind I think its a choice in play style nothing else...and to me choice is good.

Edited September 4, 2017 by 0zryel
Correcting Grammar and Syntax errors as English is not my native language

[el_chanis]

4 hours ago, (PS4)theelix said:

What? 

"They are mechanical entities, almost organic in appearance, with a precarious resemblance to the fearsome Sentients that had decimated human civilization."

From the Chepalon Fragments.

4 hours ago, (PS4)theelix said:

 What is your definition of strong? A cat that can give you +60% critical chance every 28 seconds is pretty strong. A cat that strips four enemies armor in a single swing no matter the level is pretty strong. A cat that tells you exactly where every enemy in a radius so large it takes up twice the size of your mini-map is pretty strong. 

They represent a VERY small fraction of the total dps (or kills). They provide a substantial help early, when the players don't have most mods and those aren't maxed. Once you maxed both multishot and base damage mods, you will outdps (and outkill) your companion by a HUGE margin. Let alone well modded dps frames like Ember, Saryn or Excal.

As i said.... "They are usefull, they provide utility, and some of them are really good at it". What you mention is utility, not strenght. And i agree that some (even most) are really usefull.

4 hours ago, (PS4)theelix said:

There's quite a few more interesting combinations that could happen, but those are some of the most prominent. 

Indeed. All of those combination (the one you mentioned included) are very interesting, and thats what i would like to see. We still get to choose wich combinations we want to use (choice doesn't go away) and from all the stuff that could be considered powercreep, this is the most benign, since provides more utility, not more damage (well... technicaly it does, but so little that wont make a big difference)

If we consider the kind of powers or equipment the players can use directly, either by frame or weapons, this type of utilty is more a quality-of-life change than a power up.

[(PSN)theelix]

23 minutes ago, el_chanis said:

"They are mechanical entities, almost organic in appearance, with a precarious resemblance to the fearsome Sentients that had decimated human civilization."

From the Chepalon Fragments.

And...? It's vague and ambiguous to say they're friendly sentients, and furthermore far too ambiguous to say it breaks lore. 

23 minutes ago, el_chanis said:

They represent a VERY small fraction of the total dps (or kills). They provide a substantial help early, when the players don't have most mods and those aren't maxed. Once you maxed both multishot and base damage mods, you will outdps (and outkill) your companion by a HUGE margin. Let alone well modded dps frames like Ember, Saryn or Excal.

As i said.... "They are usefull, they provide utility, and some of them are really good at it". What you mention is utility, not strenght. And i agree that some (even most) are really usefull.

So your idea of strong is just what shows up as DPS or kills. In which case I have no argument for you. 

[el_chanis]

10 minutes ago, (PS4)theelix said:

And...? It's vague and ambiguous to say they're friendly sentients, and furthermore far too ambiguous to say it breaks lore. 

In the context of the game, anything remotely similar to a sentient is a "shoot first, ask later" scenario. There is no explanation of why would we even consider befriend such creatures when we have that kind of background with them (or the background the sentients have on their own for that matter). And the other point remains, is really out of character for Ordis to just let us go if he could join us in our mission.

12 minutes ago, (PS4)theelix said:

So your idea of strong is just what shows up as DPS or kills. In which case I have no argument for you. 

Its not my idea, is the most common and accepted use of the word, thats why we have concepts like "utility" and "versatility", so we can differentiate between sheer power, and resources that might apply to different scenarios without trying to overcome the problem head-on (like CC, or survivality. Made no sense to slow down enemies or try to resist them when you coulded simply blew them up with the old tonkor, just an example). Thats the difference between Hulk and Iron Man, i imagine even you can tell wich one is the strongest and wich one the most utilitarian.

[(PSN)theelix]

3 hours ago, el_chanis said:

In the context of the game, anything remotely similar to a sentient is a "shoot first, ask later" scenario.

Clearly, the game disagrees with you in multiple ways. I.E. the quest in which we don't shoot sentients until they start attacking us. 

3 hours ago, el_chanis said:

There is no explanation of why would we even consider befriend such creatures when we have that kind of background with them (or the background the sentients have on their own for that matter).

 

Excuse me? Let's take a look at the fragment you've quoted twice now. 

"On the border of chartered space, an enclave of small, strange, seemingly intelligent creatures was discovered by Tenno explorers. They are mechanical entities, almost organic in appearance, with a precarious resemblance to the fearsome Sentients that had decimated human civilization. Howevere, these creatures showed no signs of aggression, and they immediately began carrying out helpful tasks in peculiar alliance with the Tenno." 

It's like having fought wolves your whole life and suddenly coming across a pack of dogs, and they bring you things like a rabbit to eat. Surely, you are skeptical. Yes, sure. You've watched wolves tear your friends to ribbons, but this thing that kinda looks like a wolf happens to bring you food and is quite passive and complacent. What, do you break its freakin' neck? That would be wholly unreasonable. 

3 hours ago, el_chanis said:

And the other point remains, is really out of character for Ordis to just let us go if he could join us in our mission.

It was never a point, what are you talking about. Understandably, Ordis wants to join us in battle. He even has catchphrases for when he actually DOES fight with us on the front line. The thing is, he's the one piloting the ship. His main battle duty is to provide air support, which is why we have those air support charges. He is also tasked with keeping the Liset safe since it should go without saying that enemies want to destroy them, if not capture and study them. Which is very hard to do when not inside the ship. It would be like if a fighter pilot jumped out of the plane to fight on the ground with his pistol. 

3 hours ago, el_chanis said:

Its not my idea, is the most common and accepted use of the word, thats why we have concepts like "utility" and "versatility", so we can differentiate between sheer power, and resources that might apply to different scenarios without trying to overcome the problem head-on (like CC, or survivality. Made no sense to slow down enemies or try to resist them when you coulded simply blew them up with the old tonkor, just an example). Thats the difference between Hulk and Iron Man, i imagine even you can tell wich one is the strongest and wich one the most utilitarian.

A more apt example is what Jarvis is to Tony. Jarvis doesn't kill anything directly, but happens to provide life support, utility, scanning. Without Jarvis, Tony goes in with a super powered suit and gets himself killed, end of story. 

Basically the same with us. We go in, guns blazing and no sentinel we lose out on close range CC, item collection, so forth. Now imagine the exact opposite. 

Tony goes in with Jarvis, the suit, and Iron Legion and he's basically unstoppable. We go in with a sentinel and companion, both with their own sets of strengths melding together like that of alloy metals becomes a massive force. 

 

Spoiler

The joke is that usually, the Hulk is incapacitated by some stupid means. Yes, he beats up one super baddy that proves to be a problem for everyone else, but he gets that one punch, goes up to 89% Damage Dealt, and is then useless for everything else. Or, he goes in and kills everything when that's not the objective while everyone else goes to do the objective. Yes, Hulk is strong, but the support that is Tony Stark is also strong. 

The term "strong," especially in the context of gaming, applies to what something adds to the table, how much of an effect it has, and its worth in battle. Yes, the ability to hit 10,000 damage is very strong. But you suddenly start hitting 10 on an enemy with massive armor. In that context, thus the ability to strip the armor that stops you from doing 10,000 damage is also strong. The ability of something else to multiply your damage to 100,000 is also strong. The ability to keep you from being detected so that other things can't counter you is strong.

It's just striking that you assume utility cannot be strong. It's like assuming a hydrogen selenide is less deadly than a flame thrower. Or a baton more deadly than a taser. Thing is, either are strong separately. They're extremely strong together. 

 

[Chipputer]

I find it peculiar that you took the time to talk to the person who directly quoted you but didn't address any other posts talking about balancing issues.

Aside from the fact that you've blatantly mislabeled the use of the word, "strong," by applying it purely to DPS and ignored phrases like, "a strong support," or, "it provides excellent (a word used in replacement of strong) utility," you've also not looked at and answered basic balancing questions that would shoot down your own idea in a heartbeat.

"I can't think of a single moment when this would have been overpowered," is something someone says when they have no perspective on what the word, "strong," means when applied to Warframe abilities and extending to sentinels and animal companions.

[el_chanis]

1 hour ago, Chipputer said:

I find it peculiar that you took the time to talk to the person who directly quoted you but didn't address any other posts talking about balancing issues.

Aside from the fact that you've blatantly mislabeled the use of the word, "strong," by applying it purely to DPS and ignored phrases like, "a strong support," or, "it provides excellent (a word used in replacement of strong) utility," you've also not looked at and answered basic balancing questions that would shoot down your own idea in a heartbeat.

"I can't think of a single moment when this would have been overpowered," is something someone says when they have no perspective on what the word, "strong," means when applied to Warframe abilities and extending to sentinels and animal companions.

Nothing you said is a "balancing nightmare""  At all. I can't get into a sortie and sit down to take tea and let a sentinel, kubrow, kavat, or combination of all of them at the same time and expect to win, even if i could make an entire squad of companions. Funny thing... some warframes can do that, or close to, in Solo.

And again if you have to clarify that something is strong ONLY AS A SUPPORT, then isn't strong, is usefull. I never said thats bad,i just said that makes no sense to put everything under the same concept, prevents nuance. Then again, He is the one going crazy about the usage of the word, i just followed his line of.... "reasoning". 

But lets say you are absolutly right... so what? What's the big deal with having two "STRONG" supports instead of one? Have you seen the kind of S#&$ the warframes can do? or the weapons? The only real consistency across companions in terms of support, is "Animal Instinct", everything else, vaccum included, can be fully ignored and pretty much nothing will change for 90% of the players expirence with companions. I still can't imagine a single instance when having both fully aviable at the same time would be a "OMG I BROKE THE GAME" moment. Given that pizzas exist, nothing, NOTHING you could argue against this idea will be in the order of opness since players are already op for 9000 credits and a bunch of crapy resources we don't even care to farm because we have more than what we can spend, literaly.

Their damage output is laughable, their support is ok, ludicrous compared to what players can do on their own. Having that x2 won't make us any more op that we already are.

 

6 hours ago, (PS4)theelix said:

A more apt example is what Jarvis is to Tony.

I guess you can't tell wich one is the strongest and wich one more usefull then, my bad. Ill lower my expectations.

Edited September 4, 2017 by el_chanis

[Darkuhn]

I love the Idea of taking both my Hemelith Charger and my Helios Prime with me in Missions 😁 atm I almost never take my Charger with me, because the usefulness of Vacuum beats all the Tankyness and DMG/utility the Charger or every other Pet can offer.

I even would trade a weaponslot for this to be possible. I also like the Idea of a Masterylock on this feature.

Maybe this is a possible Arcane for the Tenno to be added later after the release of POE.

But im totally against fielding more than one Pet and one Sentinel, Because that would make every Player an walking Army.

Edited September 6, 2017 by Darkuhn

[el_chanis]

9 hours ago, Darkuhn said:

I love the Idea of taking both my Hemelith Charger and my Helios Prime with me in Missions 😁 atm I almost never take my Charger with me, because the usefulness of Vacuum beats all the Tankyness and DMG/utility the Charger or every other Pet can offer.

I even would trade a weaponslot for this to be possible. I also like the Idea of a Masterylock on this feature.

Maybe this is a possible Arcane for the Tenno to be added later after the release of POE.

But im totally against fielding more than one Pet and one Sentinel, Because that would make every Player an walking Army.

Yeah, the companion army wasn't proposed anyways, but is good to clarify that. 

On the utility point, i would say that even if vaccum becomes global (or passive), i would still want this to happen, simply because i would love to actually use both animals and sentinels.

[Darkuhn]

11 hours ago, el_chanis said:

On the utility point, i would say that even if vaccum becomes global (or passive), i would still want this to happen, simply because i would love to actually use both animals and sentinels.

I'm with you on that one 😉 

[(PSN)TheHypothes]

I've always been for this idea myself.

 

If it's seriously a balancing issue, they can balance it some. Maybe reduce offensive potency of both since we all bring pets to do our damage?

 

Either way, the IDEA itself is much more FUN than being forced to pick one or the other, and I vote for more fun.

[Shikkoku]

It should be like you can bring sentinel and companion when in solo mode and only one of them when with team. 

[INight00]

Substitute... sacrifice...

One or the other.

If its balance. There are ways around it. For example, if you choose to bring both, you have to be in:

13 hours ago, Shikkoku said:

solo mode

Also, since the pets are melee attackers, you can not bring a melee weapon with you.

More sacrifices? The pets and sentinels only use half of their designated 'abilities'. So if you sentinel has: Vacuum, Coolant Leak, Animal Instinct and Sanctuary, only two will be used.
One could argue the sentinels attack with rifles (excl. Helios), so you cant bring a primary weapon either.

You could go harsher, but then you would (if I'm not already) be going into nerf territory.

[el_chanis]

4 hours ago, INight00 said:

Substitute... sacrifice...

One or the other.

If its balance. There are ways around it. For example, if you choose to bring both, you have to be in:

Also, since the pets are melee attackers, you can not bring a melee weapon with you.

More sacrifices? The pets and sentinels only use half of their designated 'abilities'. So if you sentinel has: Vacuum, Coolant Leak, Animal Instinct and Sanctuary, only two will be used.
One could argue the sentinels attack with rifles (excl. Helios), so you cant bring a primary weapon either.

You could go harsher, but then you would (if I'm not already) be going into nerf territory.

It makes no sense to make such sacrifices. The weapons/skilss we have are FAR (and i mean FAR) more powerfull/usefull than ANYTHING our sidekicks can provide. As i said before, except for Animal Instinct, anything they give is minimal compared to what we can get on our own, either by frame, focus, or equipment. This isn't a plea for more power, but for more "utility" and some inmersion (i can't see how having a dog prevents me from having an intelligent drone). We can even make the sentinels more important, like them being the ones who makes the hacking on mobile defense, and we can have the air support from ordis only if the sentinels are alive. Just some ideas...

[Cloudyvisage]

If the animal companions acquired a weak vacuum or the... Sunika? The item grabbing Kubrow, if that grab mod was changed for every animal then it would be a very good reason to use a pet, as it is, pets are either no-brain, passive effects(Sentinels) or high effect and potentially high maintenance as they will get downed at higher levels or if they are too weak and you will have to deal with that instead of forgetting about them like primed Regen lets you do about sentinels.

As for having both out, the technical side is it would probably minorly affect performance, which is already a precise balancing act but more importantly as was said before would be a power creep issue.

That being said I can totally see them potentially implementing it one day, though considering the interest in pets it will probably be way off from now.

And to the responses about power creep, Warframe is highly resilient to power creep given how they update and implement weapons and warframes, weapons could theoretically never be updated and it would still be fine, Warframes would need to be updated but that will happen every now and then regardless, the game only needs to be wary of true power jumps, the likes of which I suspect the Zenistar nearly embodied, power creep is practically healthy for this game.

[el_chanis]

1 hour ago, Cloudyvisage said:

but more importantly as was said before would be a power creep issue.

That being said I can totally see them potentially implementing it one day, though considering the interest in pets it will probably be way off from now.

And to the responses about power creep, Warframe is highly resilient to power creep given how they update and implement weapons and warframes, weapons could theoretically never be updated and it would still be fine, Warframes would need to be updated but that will happen every now and then regardless, the game only needs to be wary of true power jumps, the likes of which I suspect the Zenistar nearly embodied, power creep is practically healthy for this game.

Thats the argument i keep reading and keep not understanding. From any perspective, all focus (but unairu, because F*** unairu) represent a FAR GREATER power creep, compared to having boths pets and sentinles. Im the only one seeing this? I mean...

We either assume that we allways use pets, or sentinels, boths cases with animal instinct by default,

Allways pets: we get as buff the the sentinels weapons, the strongest ones being the primes and prisma variants, none particularly strong, and their precepts, wich i would say the most usefull are vacuum, obviusly, guardian, medi-ray, sacrifice, shade and... crowd dispersion maybe? That just 6, 2 of them being sentinel specific. On top of that, one revolves around the weakess form of defense (shields), and other is just extra revival, wich is already hard to use more than 1 per mission, let alone spend all, not even counting full arcane set. Medi-ray is unrealiable at best, and the two remaining are just a gimmick useless in the context of warframes and focus powers.

Allways sentinels: here gets a bit more complicated, but basicly you get whatever your pet can do. I do admit that some of them can have a bigger impact, all of them are more tanky, that alone is a better performance at pulling aggro, the problem is, all of their "precepts" are VERY unreliable (except maybe huras's stalk, but don't attack or you are out in the open). They hit much harder than sentinels, but their attack and re-targeting speed is absurdly low, so... once again, unreliable as attackers. So you are basicly getting a tanky ally+unrealiable damage+ some unreliable buffs from time to time that you might find usefull if the situation fits.

TL;DR:  Either way (adding sentinels or adding pets), we are getting a minor buff, nothing compared to the kind of crazyness we get by ourselves with some minor equipment (im talking about pizzas). Throwing focus+rivens+augments+syndicate procs+arcanes in the mix just makes the "power creep" argument more ridiculous
 

Edited September 8, 2017 by el_chanis

[(PSN)TheHypothes]

The only sacrifice I could see being fair is having to choose between sentinel weapon or pet companion.

 

That way you would have the utility of the companion aside from it being able to attack in exchange for a pet.

 

Otherwise, seriously, the bonus damage of bringing both vs one is completely trivial. The only thing worth looking at here is the utility combinations.

[el_chanis]

1 hour ago, (PS4)Vagnar said:

The only sacrifice I could see being fair is having to choose between sentinel weapon or pet companion.

 

That way you would have the utility of the companion aside from it being able to attack in exchange for a pet.

 

Otherwise, seriously, the bonus damage of bringing both vs one is completely trivial. The only thing worth looking at here is the utility combinations.

that is way to "balance" this (again, is kinda absurd to balance this when people run rampant with soma prime and sonicor, and broken war is a quest reward).
As you said, the damage provided is ludicrous, and i would even argue that their utility is "ok", with some few "great" moments here and there. I find hilarius that some ppl coment like if im proposing cheat codes, while they are swinging the exalted blade in a completly blinded room fully invisible each time they crit... Apparently they'll become trully and completely unstoppable after, and only after one more companion.

this is just to add more customization to the builds. After playing for long periods of time with both sentinels and pets, i came to the conclusion that playing with one isn't a choice against the other, but a neglect. Because of the way they are used, you end up choosing between pets (kubrows or kavats), or between sentinels. The choice is allways in the same category, not between categories, because they are completely different, and requiere completly different mods. 

Investing in one most of the time means you won't even get close to the other category until you are utterly bothered with it or you have so much resources that you decide to max out what you don't use because you have nothing else to do.

Edited September 8, 2017 by el_chanis

[(PSN)fullblast35]

any veterans, remind me if sentinel+companion wasn't ta thing.  I could swear it was way back, assuming its been removed.