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LysanderasD

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Everything posted by LysanderasD

  1. This has been a long discussion, and I do not have time or inclination to read multiple pages, so it's quite possible that my thoughts have been voiced, but as long as the floor is open, my thoughts to do with Hydroid are less to do with Undertow and more to do with his intended role as an anti-armor unit. Much can and has been said about the problem of enemy armor, and how the design paradigm of the game has been shifting ever gradually toward "just remove armor so you can kill enemies"; I find this personally to be a deeply unsatisfying change and it highlights an apparent refusal or inability to address the problem of Warframe's power curve in general (and armor's DR curve specifically), but there's no need to beat a dead kaithe on that subject. The issue I see is that the proposed changes to Hydroid's abilities (and thus his role in a squad) mean that he joins the ranks of warframes like Styanax, Grendel, Caliban, and Hildryn, whose main focus at high levels is foremost the removal of armor. However, Hydroid is the only warframe in this niche who must do so through an intermediary (i.e., Corrosion). All other defense-stripping warframes simply activate a power, and it is the power itself that removes armor. Hydroid's process is more complex; it necessitates a specific damage type (which he at least innately provides) and requires him to "solidify" the armor reduction by casting a third power. This is essentially a multi-step process, wherein he must attack an enemy, then apply ten stacks of corrosion, then cast Plunder to "make it count." In any content where the removal of armor matters, this means Hydroid must perform two to three times as many actions and wait an indefinitely longer amount of time for his armor stripping to work compared to any of the other defense-removal warframes (by which point, even on Steel Path, other warframes can and will have killed the enemy in question). And this is to say nothing of the fact that many high level enemies cannot even suffer the necessary ten stacks in order to fully remove armor. Styanax can press two and totally remove an acolyte's defenses; Hydroid, because of the nature of his armor removal, cannot ever permanently remove all armor from such targets. (EDIT: as an aside, has it been specified whether Hydroid's passive works retroactively? e.g., if an enemy already has ten stacks of Corrosion and Hydroid damages them, does this retroactively make the first stack powerful enough for the entire stack to strip all armor?) I am not one who normally argues for efficiency over fun or thematic purity, but the simple fact of the matter is that Hydroid (at least as he is presented here) cannot compete in the niche he's being moved to, and the removal of his intangibility in Undertow is a severe blow to his survivability even accounting for the fact that Plunder can give you armor (and then only if the enemy has armor to plunder).
  2. As at least one other person has mentioned: Kahl still loses ADS functionality after accessing cameras. This isn't game-breaking, but as someone who likes to be precise (even with something as wild as the Grakata), it is deeply annoying. That said, I am extremely grateful for the other Kahl fixes; I was unsure whether I'd be able to complete the mission with the loss of functionality. Thank you, as always, DE staff.
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