On Giving Guns to Sentinels
I forget that Sentinels have weapons. I always do, up until I get Riven Mods for them from sorties. My Riven luck has petered out completely, gifting me a perfect mod for the Glaxion that only shoots 10% of the time and three shitty Sentinel weapon Rivens. Almost no one wants a Riven Mod for a Sentinel. In fact, not everyone wants guns on Sentinels in general.
But why?
Well firstly, giving weapons to Sentinels causes them to draw aggro. Which often means they get killed. Unlike Kubrows and Kavats, Sentinels can’t be revived unless you use the Regen or Primed Regen mods, and even then, they can only be revived up to three times. In places where enemies can one-hit kill Warframes, Sentinels really don’t fare well. Things are worse when you switch to your Operator or are downed, as enemies will ignore your Warframe in both situations (“it’s just standing there” and “it’s dead don’t bother shooting” are clearly what enemies are thinking) but if your Sentinel is still attacking anything that runs by, then anything that runs by will shoot back. Unless you have a really strong weapon on your Sentinel, it probably won’t last long.
But that brings us onto the next problem. Sentinel weapons aren’t that strong. Even Deconstructor Prime, the weapon with which the Helios Sentinel throws pointy knowledge stars at things, isn’t that good. Not without a lot of Forma. And a potato. Most Sentinel weapons come with only one polarity, if you’re lucky, and their stats are insanely low, with status or critical chances both being insanely low, often under 10%. Meaning that often, not even a Riven Mod can save some of those stats. Damage and critical chance can be made better (especially on Helios’s Deconstructor, which is a melee weapon for some reason) but you need a lot of Forma to stick all those mods in.
That’s on top of all the Forma and the potato one would also stick into the Sentinel proper. You’ve already spent time leveling up your Sentinel, then you need to do it again with your Sentinel’s gun. Luckily, Sentinel weapons level up at the same speed as normal weapons, but at the same time one’s probably leveling up other things as well. The Forma and Orokin Catalysts and Reactors start to cost quite a lot.
But ON TOP OF THAT, you need a whole second set of mods! You can’t use your standard, maxed out Serration, Point Blank, Hornet Strike or Pressure Point on both your Sentinel’s weapon and your own weapon. You need duplicates! Which is fine with Point Blank and Pressure Point, which are silver and bronze mods that have way better Primed versions you’ll use on your guns, but Hornet Strike and Serration are mods with 10 ranks, costing a million credits nearly to get to the last rank! You need double the credits and double the endo if you want a strong weapon and a strong Sentinel weapon!
That applies to every mod on your Sentinel weapon. Vital Sense (+critical damage), Point Strike (+critical chance), the Elemental and Dual Elemental mods (+90% elemental damage and +60% status chance and elemental damage respectively) plus your Split Chambers and your Hell’s Chambers and Lethal Torrents and all that (+multishot). You need duplicates of all of those for your Sentinel weapon. Some of them, like dual electric and status chance mods High Voltage and Voltaic Strike, are hard to get as it is.
And that’s before you even stick a Riven Mod in there. Luckily Riven Mods for Sentinel weapons are pretty cheap and their dispositions are pretty high, meaning that you can get great stats on them.
But even if you do all of that, there’s still one more issue.
Your Sentinel might not be able to hit anything at all. Because it turns out Heavy Caliber (+damage, -accuracy) will fuck your Sentinel’s aim up big time. Something a poor Tenno found out when he randomly asked me for help with a build for his Wyrm Prime and its laser rifle.
What’s the point of giving a gun to your Sentinel if it can’t even aim?
At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself whether it’s worth giving a floating pet a gun or not…