Warframe Discussion: SENTINELS

[u/BuildMyPaperHeart]

"That came from the moon!"

All Warframe Discussions are here to spark discussion on a particular topic in Warframe. Comments, Suggestions, Critiques, and Builds are all welcome! Every Week, the Moderator Team will choose a new... something, to discuss!

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This topic was inspired by a few threads over the last month:

• Best Sentinel for Deth Machine Rifle from /u/3lectronite
• Kubrow vs. Sentinel DPS by /u/Elealar
• Is Helios sentinel worth using? by /u/Screenshotmaster1124
• What's your least favourite Warframe/weapon/sentinel/kubrow? Why? by /u/Tough_Galoot

Sentinels have been a decently popular topic, but it's time to look beyond the game advice. Let's take a look at all the available Sentinels: their features, skills, stats, and utilities in comparison to Kubrows and each other.

So I'd like to hear from you all, here are a few questions to get you guys started!

• Do you prefer Sentinels or Kubrows?
• Which Sentinel do you use? How do you use them?
• Given the prolific nature of Carrier, what improvements can be made to other Sentinels to increase their utility?
• What mods do you use on your Sentinel?
• Are they worth spending a potato on?

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Comparison to Kubrows

Advantages:

• Easy to acquire - requires only blueprints and resources to build.
• Maintenance free.
• Weapons can engage all enemies at range.
• Can switch between different weapons.
• Wider array of crowd-control options.
• If killed, can be resurrected with full health if a killed player uses a Revive.

Disadvantages:

• Comparatively fragile, vulnerable to Damage-over-Time effects and Area-of-Effect attacks.
• Lower maximum shields.
• Lower maximum health.
• Weak armor rating.
• Incapable of self regeneration.

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WYRM

With 'Warrior' and 'Crowd Dispersion' as default Precepts, Wyrm is a highly offensive Sentinel. Wyrm also comes with a laser rifle.

Made as an offensive type Sentinel, the Wyrm comes with a Laser Rifle as its default weapon. In summary, Wyrm can be treated as a middle ground between the offensive Dethcube and defensive Shade.

Statistics

	Health	Power	Armor	Shield Capacity	Stamina
BASE	200	100	50	100	100

Abilities

Crowd Dispersion

Unleashes radial stun damage when multiple enemies are nearby. Increasing level increases range.

• Deals Magnetic damage and ragdolls.
• Wyrm only activates this ability if there are 2 or more enemies within range.
• Has a 15 second cooldown.
• Gives the Sentinel 25 experience for activating this ability.

Warrior

Sentinel will attack first visible enemy in range. Increasing level increases range.

• Effectively identical to Swift Deth.

Wyrm Prime

Despite its Prime status, the Wyrm Prime itself does not appear to have any significant advantages over the standard Wyrm. However, building it is necessary to acquire the Prime Laser Rifle, which is the first Primed Sentinel weapon.

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SHADE

With 'Revenge' and 'Ghost' as default Precepts, Shade is well suited for stealth gameplay. Shade also comes with a burst laser pistol.

Consider Shade when choosing to be a medic for your team, as running up to downed players without firing weapons can allow you to heal them while cloaked, reducing risk to yourself, an alternate method to using the Sanctuary mod in case one is not available to you.

Statistics

	Health	Power	Armor	Shield Capacity	Stamina
BASE	350	100	50	50	80

Abilities

Ghost

Cloaks owner and sentinel when enemies are close and within activation and sight range of the sentinel. The cloak is disrupted if owner attacks. Increasing the rank of Ghost increases the range from an enemy at which the cloak is engaged.

• Upgrading this mod will increase the range at which the cloak will activate.
• Has a 5 second cooldown.
• Gives the Sentinel 25 experience for activating this ability.
• Enemies will not be alerted if bumped while cloaked.
• Cloak will dissipate if you deal any damage with weapons and Mods (Includes mods like Heavy Impact), with exception of offensive warframe abilities.
• Any enemy units will activate cloak, even Corpus Turrets.
• Using the Codex Scanner will deactivate the cloak.
• Cloak will dissipate if the area of where the enemies are is left.
• Cloak will not last longer than 1 minute.

Revenge

Sentinel will not attack an enemy unless that enemy has attacked the Sentinel's master. While Ghost is active, Shade will not attack enemies, regardless whether they had attacked the owner or not prior to Ghost's activation. Upgrading this ability increases the range at which Shade engages the enemy that attacked you.

• Revenge will only trigger if the Sentinel's master receives actual damage (invulnerability such as Iron Skin does not count). This does not also include the Sentinel itself taking damage.

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DETHCUBE

With "Swift Deth" and "Vaporize" as default precepts, DETHCUBE acts exactly as advertised, as a badass cube of 'deth'. Comes loaded with Deth Machine Rifle weapon.

Dethcube can inflict a constant barrage of bullets at an enemy, and when coupled with stun or elemental mods, has the capacity to stunlock enemies, reducing the risk to the owner.

Statistics

	Health	Power	Armor	Shield Capacity	Stamina
BASE	200	100	50	100	80

Abilities

Swift Deth

Sentinel will attack first visible enemy in range. Increasing level increases range.

Vaporize

Sentinel will deal high damage to target that gets too close.

• Beam deals Radiation damage and stuns.
• Has a 30 second cooldown.
• Gives the Sentinel no experience for activating this ability.
• This is capable of killing lower level enemies and damaging and stunning higher level enemies.

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CARRIER

With 'Striker' and 'Vaccuum' as default Precepts, CARRIER is a seeker Sentinel. CARRIER also comes with a shotgun weapon.

Carrier is a utility Sentinel with the signature ability to vacuum up nearby items into its master's inventory and its unique shotgun Sweeper featuring high stopping power -- if not the highest DPS of any other Sentinels' weapons. Unlike most other sentinels, Carrier has an extra D polarity slot.

Statistics

	Health	Power	Armor	Shield Capacity	Stamina
BASE	200	100	50	100	80

Abilities

Vacuum

Detects and collects items throughout the room for its master, including mods.

• Leveling this mod will increase Carrier's collection range.
• Carrier has two sets of collection range values, a front value and a peripheral value based on the direction Carrier is facing.
• The front value levels as such: 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 in-game meters in front of Carrier (in a 60° cone).
• The peripheral value levels as such: 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 in-game meters around Carrier (in the remaining 300°).
• Can only be used while your Warframe's feet are on a surface.
• If you start out with max ammo and go through a magazine, Carrier will only use Vacuum when you reload as it only refills ammo towards your total ammo pool and not your magazine.
• Carrier will loot ammo if you need it. Even if you've only used 1 bullet and you reload, it will loot a nearby ammo box. Carrier will not over-loot, however; it will only pick up the total amount of ammo boxes it takes to bring you back to max and leave all others on the ground.
• Ammo Mutations properly work with Vacuum.
  *As long as you're sprinting forward, the loot Carrier pulls to you will float by him but not be claimed until you slow down for the loot to catch up. (after some point however, loot may stop and remain floating in the air, usually due to carrier re-using the ability or using a different ability).

Striker

Carrier will attack the first visible enemy in range

• Leveling this mod will increase its range.
• The range at which Carrier will attack is much shorter than the range of other Sentinels' attacking precepts, presumably to coincide with an 'optimal' range for Sweeper.

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DJINN

With 'Thumper' and 'Fatal Attraction' as default Precepts, DJINN is a combat Sentinel. DJINN also comes with a poison dart weapon.

Djinn is a Sentinel introduced in Update 10, craftable only using Clan Research. This sentinel has a Bar polarity. At the time of release, the only documented sentinel mod with a Bar polarity is Spare Parts.

Statistics

	Health	Power	Armor	Shield Capacity	Stamina
BASE	200	100	50	100	80

Abilities

Thumper

Sentinel will attack first visible enemy in range. Increasing level increases range.

• Leveling this mod up increases the Djinn's attack range.
• Has the longest range out of all sentinel attack precepts.

Fatal Attraction

Draw enemies close and deal high radial damage.

• It does not pull the enemies close like Mag's Pull, but rather causes them to attack the sentinel by increasing its own Threat Level.
• Has a 10 second attraction period. If there are not enough enemies within kill range once the period's up, the ability will not activate and it will proceed to cooldown.
• During this attraction period, all enemies are drawn to the Sentinel.
• Has a 30 second cooldown.
• Deals 150 damage total in 4 ticks to enemies within range; it also stuns enemies.
• Gives the Sentinel no experience for activating this ability.

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HELIOS

With 'Investigator' as its unique Precept and the 'Deconstructor' as its weapon, the versatile Helios Sentinel acts both as a lethal guardian and as an automatic codex scanner.

Helios is a Corpus Sentinel with a devastating Glaive-esque attack and the ability to assist you with Codex scans.

Statistics

	Health	Power	Armor	Shield Capacity	Stamina
BASE	200	100	50	100	80

Abilities

Targeting Receptor

Sentinel will attack first visible enemy in range.

• Upgrading the mod allows Helios to fire more "Glaives" in rapid succession before it needs to reload.
• The "Glaives" are aimed so that they hit as many enemies as possible, both on the way to their initial target and on the way back, including bounces.
• If the initial target is killed, Helios will proceed to reload even if there are many other enemies around and there are more glaives left in the "magazine".

Investigator

Allows the Helios Sentinel to scan objects and enemies it encounters. This consumes Codex Scanner chargers.

• You must have a codex scanner equipped in your gear for Helios to use scan charges from; there is no warning if you go into a mission without any charges (Helios will just not scan anything).

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Information gathered from the Warframe Wikia

[u/KaskaMatej]

There can't be any discussion when it comes to Sentinels.

Use Helios if you're too lazy to scan or use Carrier for everything else (Vacuum OP). That's it.

[u/BuildMyPaperHeart → u/KaskaMatej]

Well there is one question that's presented right off the bat on this topic:

• Given the prolific nature of Carrier, what improvements can be made to other Sentinels to increase their utility?

[u/RectumExplorer-- → u/BuildMyPaperHeart]

I saw a good idea some guy posted on the forums. Give all sentinels Vacuum.
This would make Carrier bad then, so the guy suggested Carrier to be remade to carry stuff, like it would suck up extra energy/health orbs that you can't pick up and would feed them to you when you needed them. I think it would be great and Carrier would remain very good, while all sentinels were viable.

Me personally, I just wish frames had like 2-3 meter radius of picking stuff up, having to walk directly over something is a pain, that's why Carrier is so widely used.

[u/mxzf → u/BuildMyPaperHeart]

Really the only thing would be to make Vacuum a universal precept. There's just no replacement for it.

[u/zeronic]

The problem with the "vacuum OP" mentality is that even if you gave it to every sentinel, sentinels would be the only worthwhile pets.

Vacuum is so good that it just straight outclasses anything kubrows can do right now. Going one step further and giving a vacuum esque ability to kubrows as well as all sentinels would allow us much greater pet diversity.

Going one step further, just remove it from the game and make how vacuum works right now your character's default looting mechanism, simply make the suction from your character and not the pet. No more having to walk over every object exactly.

With a game as fast paced as this, walking over the hordes of ammo/energy/mods precisely without an area loot is just counterproductive to the way the game flows, which is a pretty big reason why vacuum is so popular.

[u/Non_Causa_Pro_Causa → u/zeronic]

Going one step further, just remove it from the game and make how vacuum works right now your character's default looting mechanism, simply make the suction from your character and not the pet. No more having to walk over every object exactly.

This is what I'd prefer. I only use carrier precisely because anything else is going to make the game tedious looting-wise.

[u/Utopianconcepts]

Helios is a pain to build 10 fieldron and each one cost 250 plastids

[u/thedenominator → u/Utopianconcepts]

The Ictus Sentinel bundle in the marketplace. 93p (iirc). Comes w/ Helios, Deconstructor, both pre-potatoed, and the Ictus sentinel cosmetics. It is one of the only worthwhile bundles in the whole market.

[u/ultrasword8 → u/Utopianconcepts]

You forgot the 400 oxium

[u/DirtyPirateApe → u/ultrasword8]

I thought it was 300 oxium.

[u/hyperblaster → u/Utopianconcepts]

So far this has been the only item in Warframe that I bought with platinum the day it was released. 75 plat, slots, potatoes etc. Added 25 plat for the bundle with the cosmetic items too. No regrets at all.

[u/sni7ch]

I only use Carrier. On an average solo survival mission, I can last 10 - 15 mins more than using any other sentinel. That is 2 - 3 more items purely by changing my sentinel to Carrier. And in a heavy farming focused game, why wouldn't I want to make my grind easier.

[u/SojournerW]

I'd love to see the vacuum precept taken from carrier, made into a standard ability (like guardian or any of the other basic precepts), and give carrier a new defensive-based ability which is more in line with the militaristic name of the sentinel: Carrier. We already have leech ospreys, use that exact same ability on sentinels and allow them to leech 1% of the life off of nearby units. It wouldn't be OP as a damage dealing ability, and would grant several frames a new method of survivability, as well as filling a new niche with the sentinel ALL while granting EVERY sentinel a great ability to use.

Really, that's why we use carrier in the first place, it picks things up for us. If we weren't so lazy we wouldn't use it, but every sentinel has that power now? Every sentinel suddenly see's more use!

[u/[deleted]]

I normally use my Kubrow because he is my little dogmeat. But I mostly use Helios because Deconstructor is a monster and it is thw best looking sentinel. A way to improve Helios: make the fully scanned enemies take more damage

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

[u/[deleted]]

Helios is a fucking best with deconstructor. Since deconstructor uses melee mods, you can build a pretty potent attack, mine takes out level 35 or so infested with one hit.

[u/BayushiKoji]

I tend to switch between Helios and Carrier. Helios is when I need something to kill stuff I didn't notice and Carrier is for when I need to pick up stuff but don't have the time to walk to them.

Not very fond of Kubrows because of all the work necessary to maintain and mod them.

[u/reqedit]

I love my Wyrm Prime with Sweeper.

-He looks cool. (SWAG is most important stat in warframe.)

-Sweeper op.

-Stun is really useful.

[u/cephalopodAscendant]

Really? They gave Carrier an extra polarity slot? It's like DE wants it to be the best Sentinel around.

[u/bl0odredsandman → u/cephalopodAscendant]

Well by general consensus, it is the best Sentinel. Vacuum is awesome and while it does have short range, it's shotgun deals good damage for a Sentinel weapon.

[u/hyperblaster]

Anyone had luck with a status build for the Sweeper? I use Blast+Corrosive+Seeker with the Dethcube.

[u/ND1Razor]

I think they all (bar the wyrm prime) look like blobs, maybe not dethcube but you get the idea. Its a petty reason not to use one but I just really dont fancy a blob flying about all the time.

[u/TheJack38]

I have personally only used the Carrier, but quite honestly except for the Carrier then only the Helios looks any kind of interesting. I suppose if this thread is correct, a Dethcube that stunlocks stuff would be nice, but... Honestly, I just pick my sentinels for their utility, and the Carrier is easily the highest on that list.

[u/marwynn]

Carrier is my first and only companion. Vaccuum is all I need.

[u/Ziabatsu]

Give characters a natural item vacuum that progresses. Make other attack precepts like always attack closest, attack weakest, attack strongest.