HulkingElf

Okay I like many love our tentacly pirate boy but hes pretty terrible even though I can get him to not die on sp he doesn't do much else except tentacle spam and cleanse status with tidal impunity. Even with helminth swapping out his 1 or 3 with better abilities like gloom, shooting gallery, etc.. I come here to post some new ideas on reworks to him. ALL NUMBERS I GIVE ARE EXAMPLES AND UP FOR GIVE OR TAKE FOR BALANCING First off to talk about his very lack luster passive which makes a tentacle on slam. Scrap it, instead I personally like something like this: Pirates Code: Hydroid gains base crit chance and status chance to Cannons, (explosive weapons) Pistols (self explanatory) and Swords (also self explanatory) based on the number of enemies he has killed. Lets say 1 percent per enemy capping at 50 percent for balance reasons. Just some pirate themed flavor and a useful passive that fits the pirate feel (imo) pretty well. Now for his 1, while I like tempest barrage I have 2 main problems with it. 1. Tempest Barrage feels like it fires randomly in an area and although it has decent splash damage an knock back i think it should fire about 1 shot per enemy in the casting circle. Probably increasing with str range or duration and having a cap for balance 2. I believe this should be hydroids primary armor and shield stripping ability. For this id have the explosions do base blast and magnetic dmg then strip a percentage of shields to enemies in the explosion radius. this would allow you to rework Corroding Barrage to also strip armor as well as adding corrosive dmg and increasing the ability damage based on str. With these 2 changes I think it would make this ability useful into almost any level of play and not on the chopping block when I visit my helminth. For his 2 which I like I think we can do 2 things to it for qol as well as making it much more useful ability. 1. Make it a double cast ability, what I mean by this is on initial cast a wave of water will push forward starting from behind hydroid that will then, proceed to hit the enemies and push them away from him. If you double cast the ability hydroid will become invulnerable and ride the wave with the enemies to the abilities end point. This would give him both give him an i-frame ability, escape, stay-away, or just useful grouping tool. 2. Make his buff from Tidal Impunity have more visual clarity, atm you just get a buff on the top right which is easy to keep track off on solo or with other frames that don't buff a lot but sometimes it gets lost very easily. Simply giving it a countdown on the bottom right over the ability would help keep track in the chaos. Now for his 3, as much dumb fun as turning into a puddle is I think it should be completely gutted its a very lackluster defensive ability that doesn't contribute much do the insane speed of other frame combat. Now mulling it over Ive come up with 2 main ideas with the same name to replace it with 1 is a damage buff and 2 is more survivabilty. I call the ability Sea's Curse 1. its a damage buff with an aoe drain similar to gloom afflicting all nearby enemies with a debuff, that will either makes the enemies take more damage based on the amount of enemies hydroid kills afflicted by the curse, or gives hydroid a damage buff (similar to roar but personal) that scales with the number of enemies killed by hydroid while afflicted by the curse. Also their should be a hard or soft cap for balancing reasons, but numbers are all give and take. 2. as a survivability buff instead it would be that hydroid gains stacks of damage reduction based on the enemies he kills afflicted by the curse. this one is much more simple but still very effective. Also we would have to rework his augment for this ability so I give you: Curse's Reward: enemies killed while afflicted by the curse have an increase chance to drop energy and health orbs, scaling with 50 base chance scaling with str or duration. For his ultimate I have 2 variations in mind 1 keeps the tentacles as is with no change and 2 changes the way the tentacles function but makes them much more useful. Basically I love the floppy tentacles but I want them to be more consistent, but I have an idea on how to make them feel more impactful but removes the floppiness. 1. keep the floppy tentacles but instead of random placement they spawn under each enemy in cast zone and flop towards that enemy then flail around for more consistent tentacle cc, would also make Pilfering Swarm more useful as your more than guaranteed to have the tentacles smack the enemy. 2. loose the floppy tentacles instead we get a ability similar to Snare from khora's kit as each tentacle spawned under each enemy in cast zone is grappled and restricted in place. (thematically different you could have it hold them in the air at an angle instead if in place as khora's snare does) While grappled enemies are 'constricted' and will be afflicted by a DOT while I was rolling the dmg type around in my head I decided that at least 1 part should be impact (since they are being crushed). While this ability is a little less funny floppy tentacle its is functionally a much better cc tool that allows for follow up head shots on grappled enemies. Also keep Pilfering Swarm as is for loot farming. Anyways these are my big brain thoughts on Hydroid changes, let me know what you think.