Vomalyst As Sentinel

[kyori]

As per title, I am sure many of us wanted that ya? hehe

[Kainosh]

I would prefer Wisp skin for Helios.

[peterc3]

Fires slow moving, sort of tracking shots. When damaged, it stops any ranged attacks and flies towards enemies.

This would be better as a skin for... Dethcube?

Otherwise, what would this Sentinel do?

[DreamsmithJane]

5 hours ago, peterc3 said:

Fires slow moving, sort of tracking shots. When damaged, it stops any ranged attacks and flies towards enemies.

This would be better as a skin for... Dethcube?

Otherwise, what would this Sentinel do?

That doesn't sound like something Dethcube can do.

It would carry the usual sentinel utility mods, and be somewhat fragile, but never really die, I expect. Its unique precept would have to be the undying thing: temporary disabled state, can only be killed by void damage, rushes enemies, with higher ranks making it reconstitute itself faster. The homing energy bolts would have to be a unique weapon (like Helios' Deconstructor). Yeah, I think it would be fun.

[JonesmanThe64th]

That's a funny way to spell Cetus Wisp...

[Rawbeard]

today while fishing a bunch of vomvalysts were just hovering around and observing me. unsettling to say the least. not sure I could handle one of those creeps as a companion... but worth a try

[Kalvorax]

12 hours ago, DreamsmithJane said:

That doesn't sound like something Dethcube can do.

It would carry the usual sentinel utility mods, and be somewhat fragile, but never really die, I expect. Its unique precept would have to be the undying thing: temporary disabled state, can only be killed by void damage, rushes enemies, with higher ranks making it reconstitute itself faster. The homing energy bolts would have to be a unique weapon (like Helios' Deconstructor). Yeah, I think it would be fun.

boom...new sentinel :D

[DiabolusUrsus]

19 hours ago, DreamsmithJane said:

That doesn't sound like something Dethcube can do.

It would carry the usual sentinel utility mods, and be somewhat fragile, but never really die, I expect. Its unique precept would have to be the undying thing: temporary disabled state, can only be killed by void damage, rushes enemies, with higher ranks making it reconstitute itself faster. The homing energy bolts would have to be a unique weapon (like Helios' Deconstructor). Yeah, I think it would be fun.

 

7 hours ago, Kalvorax said:

boom...new sentinel :D

And outside of niche functions like Helios, it would effectively replace every other sentinel because having a Sentinel that can't be nuked by out-of-control AOE and doesn't need to equip the Regen precept would be infinitely more useful than say, Crowd Dispersion.

Not needing to worry about losing Vacuum or Guardian permanently will outweigh the others for the same reason Carrier-only Vacuum skewed the numbers so severely. I'm against the no-death gimmick.

[DreamsmithJane]

1 hour ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

And outside of niche functions like Helios, it would effectively replace every other sentinel because having a Sentinel that can't be nuked by out-of-control AOE and doesn't need to equip the Regen precept would be infinitely more useful than say, Crowd Dispersion.

Not needing to worry about losing Vacuum or Guardian permanently will outweigh the others for the same reason Carrier-only Vacuum skewed the numbers so severely. I'm against the no-death gimmick.

Unless it were comparatively fragile and could be ghosted easily. Vomvalysts don't have shields, do they? I pegged the "ghost" form as a disabled state, basically assuming it would disable the weapon and other precepts until it regenerated. Then it's just a matter of balancing its health and the amount of time it stays disabled. There has to be a happy medium between "used by everyone all the time" and "only used by people who hate themselves".

[DiabolusUrsus]

19 minutes ago, DreamsmithJane said:

Unless it were comparatively fragile and could be ghosted easily. Vomvalysts don't have shields, do they? I pegged the "ghost" form as a disabled state, basically assuming it would disable the weapon and other precepts until it regenerated. Then it's just a matter of balancing its health and the amount of time it stays disabled. There has to be a happy medium between "used by everyone all the time" and "only used by people who hate themselves".

I don't think it would be possible to strike that balance.

Either its frequency of death and relative downtime are short enough that it's still useful (in which case the lack of permanent death will make it superior)... Or they are frequent/long enough to be so inconvenient that nobody wants to use it. Sentinels are ultimately about convenience, after all.

The only way to prevent a strong preference one way or the other (again, excluding niche stuff like taking Helios to get scans) that I can see would be keeping the downtime short and removing the one-time limit on Regen.

Then the Vom's main non-aesthetic benefit would be the ability to forgo Regen and use a different precept.

[DreamsmithJane]

14 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

I don't think it would be possible to strike that balance.

Different people draw such lines at different places. DE has usage statistics to work with, that already inform a lot of their balance decisions.

16 minutes ago, DiabolusUrsus said:

The only way to prevent a strong preference one way or the other (again, excluding niche stuff like taking Helios to get scans) that I can see would be keeping the downtime short and removing the one-time limit on Regen.

Then the Vom's main non-aesthetic benefit would be the ability to forgo Regen and use a different precept.

Except that it's not forgoing regen. As I described it, it has its own unique precept that revives after a delay, an infinite number of times, which replaces regen but still takes up the mod slot. If regen has no limit, it's objectively better than this sentinel, and nobody would use it at all except for the sake of aesthetics.

[DiabolusUrsus]

55 minutes ago, DreamsmithJane said:

Different people draw such lines at different places. DE has usage statistics to work with, that already inform a lot of their balance decisions.

I remain skeptical; I'll believe it when I see it, and I don't think DE can commit to the repeated tweaking necessary to achieve an even split.

57 minutes ago, DreamsmithJane said:

Except that it's not forgoing regen. As I described it, it has its own unique precept that revives after a delay, an infinite number of times, which replaces regen but still takes up the mod slot. If regen has no limit, it's objectively better than this sentinel, and nobody would use it at all except for the sake of aesthetics.

Derp. Got mixed up with going too fast over the "disable other precepts" bit.

I still think that, unless Regen is functionally equivalent to limited immortality, this sentinel would effectively replace or otherwise be pointlessly inferior to other Sentinels for support purposes. Moreover, it's not like there is no value in aesthetic preference.

Simply put... A Vomvalyst sentinel strikes me as fine. A Vomvalyst sentinel that is the only functionally immortal sentinel strikes me as more likely than not problematic and going straight back to the Carrier problem.

Maybe just make it a skin + sentinel weapon skin similar to Carabus Dethcube?

[Lost_Cartographer]

The only way I could see an immortal sentinel working is if the respawn timer got longer and longer with each death.  People confident they could keep it alive would take it along while those that eat rockets regularly will find themselves practically without a sentinel anyway.

I think a better precept might be phase shift, where it turns the player immortal for a few seconds when their shields break, with a lengthy cool down of at least 30 seconds.

 

Edited November 9, 2017 by Littleman88