[2023] Abyss of Dagath - Dev Workshop: Companion Improvements and Tweaks

Hello Tenno!

This is one of our many Developer Workshops for Update 34: Abyss of Dagath. To see what other changes are coming in this Update, check out our other Developer Workshops here:

• Hydroid Rework
• Companion Rework
• New Player Path Improvements
• Accessibility + HUD Improvements
• Systems Changes and General QOL
   

In our next update, Abyss of Dagath, we will be making extensive changes to the way you use, Mod, and interact with your Companions!  Please use this post to become informed about what we are changing and why. As always, with pre-release information, this represents our current plans and goals but it might differ slightly from the final version.

Our high-level objectives for this Companion rework are:

1. Make pets more viable in high-level gameplay by making them immortal. Pets can no longer die! This avoids frustrating scenarios where you are relying on your Pet to provide some feature or bonus only to have them get removed from play. The base stats of Pets has also been increased significantly to help them in difficult missions.
2. Introduce more interactive Mods that offer ways to play alongside your Pet instead of it being mostly autonomous like a specter.
3. Changes to many Pet Mods, mostly to support the first two goals of removing death states and improving basic survivability. Some Mods were inconsistent in their naming or stats, and we have improved this. We have rebalanced some Mods that players felt were not good enough, or ones that we've observed are SO good that they are considered "essential."

Pet Immortality

We've all seen the memes with people giving their Pets funny names, only to see the message over and over every few minutes: "Your pet is down!"  Dying cats and dogs have been demanding attention on your HUD, and spontaneously combusting sentinels have been robbing you of your Vacuum and Animal Instinct for years.

All that changes with this update. Going forward, Pets will still have Health and Shield values, and they can be knocked out, but they will not die if you fail to revive them. When they reach zero Health, Pets will instead become Incapacitated for a base duration of 60 seconds. All Pets will automatically revive at the end of their Incapacitate period, and there is no limit to the number of times this can happen.

• Kavats, Kubrows, Moas, and Predasites will collapse on the ground and can be, optionally, manually revived to get them back into action quicker.
• Sentinels cannot be manually revived, but they will fly along with you in a damaged state while performing their automatic self-revive.
• Vulpaphylas have their usual tricks instead, where they morph into a Sentinel-like state for a short period and then recover.
• Khora's Venari still uses its usual behavior of temporarily disappearing if defeated, but you can override its time-out by spending energy to cast her Venari Ability.

Several Mods have been modified or introduced that also change when or how your Pet deals with Incapacitation - see the section about Mods for specifics.

 

Pet Stat Changes

Two broad changes have been made with regard to your Pet's base stats to increase their staying power.

Firstly Health, Shields and Armor have been refactored across the board. This simple numeric buff was made with the goal of Pet survivability increasing by approximately 50%. This also means that the choice of whether to use, for example, Enhanced Vitality or Linked Vitality, will depend on your Warframe choice instead of the Linked Mod always being strictly superior.

Additionally, non-Sentinel Pets now gain their full Health and Shield values immediately when you acquire them. Historically Health and Shield values would increase as your Pet ranked up, which you could see as "Rank Bonuses" in the Upgrades screen. We've removed this behavior and simply given Pets what would end up being their Rank 30 values at Rank 0. This should let you immediately take your Pets on more difficult missions after earning them!

Including both the removal of Pet rank bonuses, and the base increase to stats, here’s what the new stats will look like for all Pets at rank 0:

Revised Kubrow Stats:

• Huras Kubrow: 560 Health (from 150),  490 Shield (from 125), 200 Armor (from 50)
• Raksa Kubrow: 750 Health (from 200), 390 Shield (from 100), 200 Armor (from 50)
• Sahasa Kubrow: 940 Health (from 250), 290 Shield (from 75), 200 Armor (from 50)
• Sunika Kubrow: 830 Health (from 220), 350 Shield (from 90), 200 Armor (from 50)
• Chesa Kubrow: 940 Health (from 250), 290 Shield (from 75), 200 Armor (from 50)
• Helminth Charger: 710 Health (from 190), 330 Shield (from 85), 200 Armor (from 50)

Revised Predasite Stats:

• Predasite (all types): 710 Health (from 190), 350 Shield (from 90), 200 Armor (from 50)

Revised Vulpaphyla Stats:

• Vulpaphyla (all types) 680 Health (from 180), 370 Shield (from 95), 200 Armor (from 50)

Revised Moa Stats:

• Moa: 350 Health (from 100), 350 Shield (from 100), 350 Armor (from 100)
• Moa base stats can be modified further by their components and via gilding

Revised Kavat Stats:

• Adarza Kavat: 310 Health (from 80), 270 Shield (from 70), 200 Armor (from 50)
• Smeeta Kavat: 390 Health (from 100), 230 Shield (from 60), 200 Armor (from 50)
• Vasca Kavat: 310 Health (from 80), 270 Shield (from 70), 200 Armor (from 50)
• Venari: 900 Health (from 300), 350 Armor (from 350)
• Venari Prime: 1050 Health (from 350),  450 Armor (from 450)

Revised Hound Stats:

• Adlet Hound: 350 Health (from 100), 450 Shield (from 150), 350 Armor (from 100)
• Garmr Hound: 350 Health (from 100), 350 Shield (from 100), 450 Armor (from 150)
• Raiju Hound: 450 Health (from 150), 350 Shield (from 100),  350 Armor (from 100)
• Hound base stats can be modified further by their components and via gilding

Revised Sentinel Stats:

• Carrier: 560 Health (from 200), 250 Shield (from 100), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Carrier Prime: 650 Health (400), 200 Shield (from 100), 150 Armor (from 150)
• Dethcube: 560 Health (from 200), 250 Shield (from 100), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Dethcube Prime: 600 Health (from 300), 200 Shield (from 100), 150 Armor (from 150)
• Diriga: 700 Health (from 350), 150 Shield (from 50), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Djinn: 560 Health (from 200), 250 Shield (from 100), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Helios: 560 Health (from 200), 250 Shield (from 100), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Helios Prime: 700 Health (from 250), 200 Shield (from 100), 100 Armor (from 100)
• Nautilus: 560 Health (from 200), 250 Shield (from 100), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Oxylus: 560 Health (from 200), 250 Shield (from 100), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Shade: 600 Health (from 350), 130 Shield (from 50), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Shade Prime: 700 Health (from 350), 200 Shield (from 100), 100 Armor (from 100)
• Prisma Shade: 600 Health (from 300), 130 Shield (from 50), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Taxon: 560 Health (from 200), 250 Shield (from 100), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Wyrm: 560 Health (from 200), 250 Shield (from 100), 80 Armor (from 50)
• Wyrm Prime: 450 health (from 225), 600 Shield (from 300), 150 Armor (from 150)

 

Consistency In Pet Healing

Previously, the Mod Link Health could cause your Companions to gain some of the healing that your Warframe did. This invisible feature was not indicated by the card, and it was never explained what forms of healing worked or why. Additionally, Pets were using some of the same mechanics that things like mission objectives did, which limited the effects of some healing or defensive powers. We've decided to remove both of these obscure mechanics and restrictions.

Companions will no longer gain Health when your Warframe does if using certain Health-absorbing powers together with the Mod Linked Vitality (formerly Link Health). The restrictions of the following abilities and features, as they apply to granting Health, Shields, or Damage Resistance to Pets. have been removed:

• Warding Halo
• Blessing
• Immolation
• Blood Altar
• Splinter Storm
• Intrepid Stand
• Eclipse
• Discharge
• Desolate Hands
• Penance
• Thurible
• Mend & Maim
• Sancti Magistar
• Protective Sling

Changes To Existing Mods

Sentinel Survivability Mod Changes:

• Calculated Redirection changed from max 275% Shields to max 250% Shields
• Enhanced Vitality changed from max 220% Health to max 250% Health
• Metal Fiber changed from max 110% Armor to max 250% Armor
• Regen has been changed significantly. Because your Sentinels no longer die after reaching zero Health, Regen instead reduces the Incapacitation time of your Sentinel by 20 seconds, and provides 6 seconds of Invulnerability after reviving.
• Primed Regen provides a greater benefit: Incapacitation time is reduced by 35 seconds, and provides 6 seconds of Invulnerability after reviving.
• Sacrifice still allows your Sentinel to automatically revive you; however, the Sentinel now goes into Incapacitation instead of being destroyed. Adds 15 seconds to your Sentinel's Incapacitation time.
• Repair Kit has been changed from providing your Sentinel with 6 Health per second to 18 Health per second.

Companion Survivability Mod Changes:

• Link Health has been renamed to Linked Vitality, and changed from max 165% of your Warframe's Health shared with Companion, to max 125% shared Health.
• Link Shields has been renamed to Linked Redirection, and changed from max 110% of your Warframe's Shield shared with Companion, to max 125% shared Shield.
• Link Armor has been renamed to Linked Fiber, and changed from max 110% of your Warframe's Armor shared with Companion, to max 125% shared Armor.
• Medi-Pet Kit has been changed from providing your Companion with 6 Health per second and 72% Bleedout Reduction, to providing 12 Health per second and reducing Incapacitation time by 15 seconds.
• Accelerated Deflection (+90% Shield Recharge) has been changed from being only equipped on Sentinels, to the Robotic category, which means it is now also compatible with Hounds and Moas. Additionally, it also provides -45% Shield Recharge Delay.

Other Companion Mod Changes:

• Djinn's "Reawaken'' has been changed. Now it will reduce Djinn's Incapacitation time by 6 seconds for each Energy Orb you pick up.  Djinn will also revive with 300 points of Overshield for each collected Orb.

Dev note: Since every Sentinel now has a free immortality feature, Djinn needed something to be special again.  

• Pack Leader has been changed. Instead of healing your Companion by 36% of melee damage inflicted, it now restores 50 Health per melee hit. Excess healing becomes Overguard instead, with a maximum of 600 Overguard.
• Primed Pack Leader increases Pack Leader effect to 92 Health restored per hit, and increases Overguard cap to 1100.

Dev note: Pack Leader's healing was so strong that, functionally, any upgraded melee weapon would fully heal your Companion in a single hit. You would hit an enemy for several thousand damage, and your pet would proportionately receive thousands of Health. This change tries to make the healing values more sensible so that you can heal your Companion efficiently but not *instantly*. By letting you overflow into Overguard, it also provides some extra ability to tank large hits.

• Sentinel Sanctuary and Companion Shelter Mods have been improved. The shield globe, while the player is performing a Revive, has been increased from 600 Health to 1800 Health.
• Self Destruct has been altered and renamed. Formerly this would cause Sentinels to cause 600 Blast damage in an 18-meter radius on death. This is now renamed to Knock Out Blast and causes 600 Blast damage in an 18-meter radius on Incapacitation.
• Loyal Companion has been replaced entirely. Formerly it provided a 90% Bleedout-Link so that your Companion had a longer period of time where it could be revived. Since pet death is no longer a factor: Loyal Companion causes your pet to taunt enemies and draw fire to itself for 30 seconds if your Warframe falls below 35% Health. There is a 60-second cooldown between activations.
• (Parazon) Hard Reset: Changed from instantly reviving your pet if you achieved 3 Mercy Kills within 40 seconds, to reducing your pet's Incapacitation time by 10 seconds on each Mercy Kill.

Dev note: We found that this was fairly difficult to achieve. Changing it to allow incremental progress makes it more reliably beneficial to use this.

• Fired Up has been both improved and simplified. Previously this would require that your Sentinel has been shooting continuously for some period of time, and then added a Heat damage multiplier. This has been changed so that the Sentinel gains a 5% bonus Heat damage on every weapon hit up to 100%. The bonus resets after 5 seconds without the Sentinel getting a hit

Dev note: This Mod was difficult to understand and only worked if the Sentinel weapon already did some amount of Heat damage. The mechanics are now more intuitive and the bonus applies the same way adding a Mod would, so your Sentinel's weapon doesn't need to already do Heat damage to benefit.

• Spare Parts: Replaced completely. Previously Spare Parts would cause Sentinels to drop rare materials on death. This has been replaced by Salvage Scanner, which causes your Sentinel to mark enemies for 5 seconds, choosing a new target every 15 seconds. Killing the marked enemy causes them to drop extra loot.

Dev note: Since Pets no longer die, we wanted to change their resource drop to something that was more interactive and rewards combat instead of your Sentinel randomly exploding.

New Companion Mods

Referring back to the introduction, one of our goals with the Companion rework is to add opportunities for the player to work together with the Pet. Instead of a Mod that only affects your Pet, we looked for ways that you and your Pet could amplify each other. Our current plan is for these new Mods to be available at the Conservation vendors in Cetus, Fortuna, and Deimos. These new Mods are still in development, so we aren't quite ready to share them in this Workshop post, but full details will be available in the Abyss of Dagath patch notes.

Further Companion Quality-Of-Life Changes

A few further changes that are worth mentioning:

• Sentinels now avoid damage from Fire Eximus explosions if you also avoid damage with a successful Roll.
• The improvement to Shield Gating where it now scales with maximum Shield strength and fully resets as long as you have any Shield charge at all, also applies to Companions.
• Companions can now gain Overguard and Overshield.

 

Closing

Thank you for taking the time to review the Dev Workshop! We hope you'll have fun playing our changes, coming to the game with the Abyss of Dagath update. As ever, we will be watching for your feedback and welcome constructive discussion.

 

Edited 6 hours ago by [DE]Momaw

Just to clarify, Fetch/Vacuum and Animal Instinct continue to work while your pet is Incapacitated. So anybody who was sad about that can stop being sad :)

Locking this pre-release informational thread! If you have further discussion of changes related to Companions now that the update is live, please continue here!:

https://forums.warframe.com/forum/1852-companion-rework-feedback/

Edited 1 hour ago by [DE]Momaw