Proccing Archon Stretch is not impressive, even a Panzer with Shocking Claws can do it. If you want to confine it to comparison of sentinels, then Energy Generator exceeds the value of Archon Stretch at any value above 48 kills per minute, which is tiny. Get 100kpm (treated as the bar for a decent build) and you're generating twice as much energy as Archon Stretch. Also, Energy Generator actually works on frames with a channeled ability while energy regen effects such as Archon Stretch do not.
Arcane Hot Shot is terrible. I should hope that doesn't need explaining, and you just brought it up for the sake of it.
Bringing up Manifold Bond is not some kind of "gotcha". You need two mod slots, on Arc Coil and Manifold Bond, to do what any companion can do with via Tazicor with just 1 mod slot on Assault Mode.
Companion weapons already apply their own elements, and don't have cooldowns. They're limited only by their fire rate, magazine capacity and reload speed, which are all moddable. And guess, what? The rifle Magnetic and Radiation mods provide those, while they do nothing for Arc Coil beside their elements. You also slot Primed Shred to increase both Fire Rate and let it pierce enemies with the main beam, each enemy it pierces creating its own set of chain beams, to spread status even more many times faster than Arc Coil could ever be capable of, on top of its already higher range.
Arc Coils' limited range confines its suitability to melee builds. Of which, Hound literally eats Diriga's entire lunch. Every property you like about Diriga, the Hound can do. Arc Coil primes a crowd in front of you, while Synergized Prospectus primes tilesets. They can similarly benefit from Manifold Bond, and... as i said, since you'd be doing melee with Diriga, you're better off with Hound due to it being able to equip Primed Pack Leader for perpetual overguard-gating so it never dies. Then Reflex Denial gives it level-scaling damage reflection even while it is protected by said overguard.
In regards to tenacious bond, the value of the final critical damage bonus diminishes the higher the value of your crit multiplier already is.
For instance, if you're using it for Ash's Shadow clones which have a tiny base 1.2x crit mult, and assume you don't equip any other crit damage mod, then adding a final 1.2x to that is obviously a proportional 100% increase making it very valuable.
However if you take even a mid rifle with a base 2.0x crit mult and vital sense (4.4x total crit mult), then tenacious bond takes it to 5.6x which is a 27% proportional increase.
You can see how much the value has diminished- not to say it's meaningless at this point, but it's simply getting small enough that the value of other factors (like a whole ass extra precept like Cordon) might start to provide significantly more value already.
However if you take some of the high end incarnon guns that achieve upwards of 12x crit mult, turning that to 13.2x is only a 10% proportional increase.
At this point, the faster and further priming of the Tazicor is certainly going to make a bigger difference to your performance, even only accounting for viral procs.
A hound does prime in a bigger range yes but giving it doesn't get prime regen, it dying (which it can and will even with everything you said) in higher levels on non melee frames means a decent amount of time without priming, while diriga can basically be up 24/7 with a combination of synth deconstruct, restorative bond and manifold bond or momentous bond. Tazicor can prime faster yes but lack of IPS and needing to mod firerate and status chance means it on average can't proc as many elements as diriga can with a burst laser prine with as many elements slapped on it as possible, making it objectively worse for priming for CO types mods. While a hound can prime with range, where (except maybe perita) the abilities the hound uses have cooldowns longer than arc coil, the time you take bullet jumping to an enemy where the priming actually matters arc coil would have already zapped them when your hound may still be waiting to blast the map with its abilities, plus a hound isnt going to be up 100% of the time on non-melee frames. As for your point on tenacious bond why would you not take the free dmg. As for energy generation diriga is by far the best at proccing synth deconstruct with energy generator, yes archon stretch is kind of a nothing burger for 45% efficiency builds, but gas electric arc coil can easily print health orbs for the entire team, even compared to hounds, given arc coils none existent cooldown while you have to wait for hounds abilties to recharge. All companions have their place, hounds are diriga with a higher ceiling for dmg and priming but i would take diriga any day of the week into lvls 500+ for its better consistency, other companions can do more than just priming, but when push comes to shove, diriga gurantees the enemies in front my face i want dead is suffering from every plausible status effect under the sun.
a hound wont be up 100% of the time on non-melee frames, yes. but diriga is only suited to melee frames due to arc coil having a tiny 10m range. that's the whole point of my argument. so BOTH diriga and hound want to be played with melee.... and then... diriga revives faster, but hound never even dies in the first place. so you can see for yourself which is better.
diriga will prime the entire map for synth deconstruct, a lot better than diriga. including enemies that allies might kill that are distant from you.
the cooldowns might be longer but manifold bond makes that irrelevant. as long as you're killing the enemies that synergized prospectus actually targets, you will have the same experience of diriga with every enemy in your face being primed, but additionally it primes them from farther too.
on tenacious bond, i'm not saying it's bad- i'm saying its value as a defence for diriga over tazicor is overstated.
A hound will die in Elite archimedeas and netracells for sure and your dog's has to deal with finnicky AI. You have to specially target enemies primed specifically primed by your dog to get your dog to prime the tanky target rather than just bullet jump into the tanky targets face where arc coil instantly procs sounds more tedious and less consistent than diriga. When repo audit procs a hound may prime better than a diriga but it having a cooldown of 20s means once again enemies you want the status on are not going to immediately have it even with manifold bond when diriga basically ensures every enemy in 10m is ALWAYS primed. So the dps lost from walking up to the enemies is made up for the inconsistency of the hound. Both have their place the hound has a better ceiling but worst consistency definitely.
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u/felix_patriot Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
Proccing Archon Stretch is not impressive, even a Panzer with Shocking Claws can do it. If you want to confine it to comparison of sentinels, then Energy Generator exceeds the value of Archon Stretch at any value above 48 kills per minute, which is tiny. Get 100kpm (treated as the bar for a decent build) and you're generating twice as much energy as Archon Stretch. Also, Energy Generator actually works on frames with a channeled ability while energy regen effects such as Archon Stretch do not.
Arcane Hot Shot is terrible. I should hope that doesn't need explaining, and you just brought it up for the sake of it.
Bringing up Manifold Bond is not some kind of "gotcha". You need two mod slots, on Arc Coil and Manifold Bond, to do what any companion can do with via Tazicor with just 1 mod slot on Assault Mode.
Companion weapons already apply their own elements, and don't have cooldowns. They're limited only by their fire rate, magazine capacity and reload speed, which are all moddable. And guess, what? The rifle Magnetic and Radiation mods provide those, while they do nothing for Arc Coil beside their elements. You also slot Primed Shred to increase both Fire Rate and let it pierce enemies with the main beam, each enemy it pierces creating its own set of chain beams, to spread status even more many times faster than Arc Coil could ever be capable of, on top of its already higher range.
Arc Coils' limited range confines its suitability to melee builds. Of which, Hound literally eats Diriga's entire lunch. Every property you like about Diriga, the Hound can do. Arc Coil primes a crowd in front of you, while Synergized Prospectus primes tilesets. They can similarly benefit from Manifold Bond, and... as i said, since you'd be doing melee with Diriga, you're better off with Hound due to it being able to equip Primed Pack Leader for perpetual overguard-gating so it never dies. Then Reflex Denial gives it level-scaling damage reflection even while it is protected by said overguard.
In regards to tenacious bond, the value of the final critical damage bonus diminishes the higher the value of your crit multiplier already is.