The captain of the seas has been in the depths for far too long. The goal of this proposed rework is to hopefully bring hydroid back up and out of the dark depths of the current meta, back to sailing the high tides, and crashing through the hordes of enemies with the rage of the seas behind his strength. Additional goals are to increase his kit's mobility to bring him up to date with current gameplay, and allow for synergies between certain Helminth abilities, but to also make the abilities a hard choice for what to remove.
Proposed Reworked Ability and Augment:
Remove the charge mechanic entirely as it slows gameplay, but keep the effects of the previous abilities full charge. Maybe adjust energy costs and reduce range. Increase the stagger to allow for ground finishers with increased duration for enemies on the ground during the barrage.
As for the Augment:
Polluted Barrage: Each projectile procs three* single* stacks of a random status, except for heat, gas, radiation, and blast because Hydroid is wet and heat and its subsidiary procs don't make sense.
*counts affected by strength potentially, could be more or less.
Tidal Surge and Undertow:
I think these abilities need to be combined in order to add in a new ability to his 2 or 3. My idea for the combo ability is to increase the mobility of undertow and increase its damage potential with synergy to proc weapons and the 1's new augment.
Being in Undertow will have status clearing for self and allies on cast. Buff the general movement speed. We're already stuck to the ground, and being slow is boring. As for the invincibility, change it to invisibility and potentially have Hydroid still be on the surface to grab enemies.
Tidal Surge will be triggered by bullet jumping in Undertow, costing 5 energy to pull enemies grouped into the Tow.
Enemies within Undertow take 3% of their health taken per second so that it takes
30 seconds at base to drown them. Most of the time it's better to kill enemies with a weapon anyways, but with viral and a strength effect this has potential to be a strong ability late game.
My ideas for a new ability that I think should be a buff of sorts.
Torrential Rage: a buff that increases damage by five percent per status applied, scales with strength and duration, while range affects how far allies have to be to get the buff.
The Currents Tear: a buff to increase slash proc damage and increase gore chance where water bursts from slain enemies.
Rouge of the Depths: A wave of slashing torrent that pushes enemies back and applies slash.
My Idea for Hydroids 4th ability is to change the tentacles from a swarm that locks down an area to an area of effect around the player in order to increase the kit’s mobility, as well as add a defense strip. Make the ability duration based, but act like gloom in the sense that it follows you. Instead of tentacles grabbing enemies and flailing them around, have the kraken follow Hydroid and grab enemies and crush defenses while holding them for a short time to make them vulnerable to headshots. This I believe would help Hydroid to be a lot more current with the pace of the game, and hopefully bring him up to the surface of the usage charts for the game.
Keep the extra loot augment. Extra loot is extra good. Maybe make the armor strip an augment and add the loot chance to the ability innately since he's a pirate.
Back in the day it was cool to have just the stalker do it, but now with kuva larvlings, sisters, and kill squads its just irritating on the eyes with how much its happening. Can a way to turn it off or better yet, a different effect be added for each assassin to make it easier to tell who or what is showing up.
