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Tentacle Swarm is a Useless Gimmick


YagoXiten
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It's the best it's ever been. It's still not good.

It doesn't deal relevant damage. It's CC still does more to hinder than help. I love Hydroid, but the vast majority of the time I cast Tentacle Swarm because it looks cool and I have Energy to burn, not because it actually does anything.

Instead of flailing around and slamming enemies to the ground, why can't the tentacles just coil around a target and hold them in place? Maybe even open them up to finishers? Or at the very least can it actually kill things?

Please give it an actual purpose.

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Nice opinion, but you'll find a lot of people actually have the opposite, or more biased towards favourable.

Tentacle Swarm is for Area Denial, not for killing things out-right. It gets used to lock down Defense objectives and hallways or prevent enemies reaching Interception points.

If you want to actually kill enemies, then you're far better off yanking them all into a puddle and hitting 1 on it.

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3 hours ago, Thaylien said:

Nice opinion, but you'll find a lot of people actually have the opposite, or more biased towards favourable.

Tentacle Swarm is for Area Denial, not for killing things out-right. It gets used to lock down Defense objectives and hallways or prevent enemies reaching Interception points.

If you want to actually kill enemies, then you're far better off yanking them all into a puddle and hitting 1 on it.

This.

Granted, as one of my top 5 main frames, I wouldn't mind further improvements but the ability itself isn't exactly a "killing" move. It's area denial and CC.

I'm not sure how difficult it would be for DE, but it would be more helpful if the tentacles that are holding enemies would slow to a crawl specifically when players are aimed in their direction. I like the idea of the ones holding enemies to just coil around them and stay in place ideally. Or more simply, just have any tentacles attached to enemies slow to a crawl all the time, only the free tentacles need to flail violently.

Both for thematic amusement, and practicality, I specifically use Phage with my Hydroid. Having variable spread on the weapon makes it easy to focus damage or spread it out as needed when tentacles are behaving facetiously.

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On 2018-11-13 at 5:37 AM, Thaylien said:

Nice opinion, but you'll find a lot of people actually have the opposite, or more biased towards favourable.

Tentacle Swarm is for Area Denial, not for killing things out-right. It gets used to lock down Defense objectives and hallways or prevent enemies reaching Interception points.

If you want to actually kill enemies, then you're far better off yanking them all into a puddle and hitting 1 on it.

I have played a lot of Hydroid, and even if I hadn't, it's blatantly obvious what its intended use is.

The problem is that it does the same thing as Tempest Barrage, only worse. It becomes less reliable with range and its only niche over Tempest Barrage is that it goes through an Ancient Healer's aura. Sadly, the flailing makes it harder to aim at priority targets, and its habit of hoarding corpses is visually confusing. In other words, its only function is being a worse version of Tempest Barrage when Tempest Barrage itself literally can't be used. Some 'ultimate', eh?

It can and should be better.

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Hydroid's 1 and 4 are like, "a random smattering of," their effect.

It's wild and unwieldy, and does it's own thing.
Sort of has a mind of it's own in subtle ways.

The mass of tentacles is about two doorways in height,
and can reach about 3 doorways in length all around it.
They noodle around blindly, snaring all enemies is comes in contact with,
and whips them about violently, all willy nilly.
Tiny ground enemies, flying enemies...
Everything except for bosses and special high class units.

Block paths with it.
 

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On 2018-11-13 at 6:12 AM, YagoXiten said:

It's the best it's ever been. It's still not good.

It doesn't deal relevant damage. It's CC still does more to hinder than help. I love Hydroid, but the vast majority of the time I cast Tentacle Swarm because it looks cool and I have Energy to burn, not because it actually does anything.

Instead of flailing around and slamming enemies to the ground, why can't the tentacles just coil around a target and hold them in place? Maybe even open them up to finishers? Or at the very least can it actually kill things?

Please give it an actual purpose.

In response to thousands of people begging for tentacles to hold enemies in place, Scott replied that it wouldn't look chaotic enough to fit the kit so that request did not make it into the revisit. The puddle of course is chaotic enough to fit his kit though!

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I mean the main reason I play hydroid is because I love how annoying he is for enemies.  Like tentacles are just big area denials.  Tempest barrage is even more area denial but it's also spammable.  tidal surge is fun for moving and also "stop shooting me and get in this corner" for making piles of annoying enemies.  And puddle is great for "oh heckie i'm dying LOL WAIT NAH"  And the whole thing is hilarious when an enemy just walks on you and disappears.  Like.  ugh.  I love hydroid so much.

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On 2018-11-13 at 5:37 AM, Thaylien said:

If you want to actually kill enemies, then you're far better off yanking them all into a puddle and hitting 1 on it. 

You know starting the swarm after you enter the puddle adds it damage to the swarm right?

Also the tentacles deal true damage which bypasses armor and i believe they bypass shields

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5 hours ago, Dabnician said:

You know starting the swarm after you enter the puddle adds it damage to the swarm right?

Also the tentacles deal true damage which bypasses armor and i believe they bypass shields

Yes, actually, I do.

There is a problem with that, however; unless it has changed since I tested it after the rework, the True Damage that Tentacle Swarm deals, gets added to your puddle as Impact. In which situation, the damage from Barrage is far more consistent at adding to the puddle, because the tentacles randomly bash outside it more than they do inside. Even the higher base damage numbers that could add to puddle from each tentacle slap doesn't add up, especially as the tentacles sometimes can completely block your ability to pull in new enemies by capturing them and flailing them instead.

Also, if you're worried about enemy Armour, then even Tentacle Swarm's True Damage isn't much. Unless you're at the point where Armour matters, which is only at the higher levels since our modded weapons can take care of everything up to and including sortie level with complete ease... a couple of thousand initial damage and then a few hundred per second doesn't kill enemies with scaled health of tens of thousands (before armour calculations) very effectively. The interaction between Undertow and Corroding Barrage functioned last I played Hydroid (I haven't heard that it's been patched out yet) and combining damage compounding with that status makes for a much faster and more consistent tool for that too.

Edited by Thaylien
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On 2018-11-14 at 11:08 PM, Navarchus said:

In response to thousands of people begging for tentacles to hold enemies in place, Scott replied that it wouldn't look chaotic enough to fit the kit so that request did not make it into the revisit. The puddle of course is chaotic enough to fit his kit though!

Then perhaps a useful compromise would be expanded hitboxes on enemies affected.

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On 2018-11-14 at 11:08 PM, Navarchus said:

In response to thousands of people begging for tentacles to hold enemies in place, Scott replied that it wouldn't look chaotic enough to fit the kit so that request did not make it into the revisit. The puddle of course is chaotic enough to fit his kit though!

It's not chaotic at all anyways since it's just some non threatening looking tentacles slapping around slowly and even slower when it catches enemies. This feels like one of those abilities where either form or functionality would need to be sacrificed unless it's completely overhauled in both respects.

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On 2018-11-16 at 3:44 PM, -Bv-Concarne said:

It's not chaotic at all anyways since it's just some non threatening looking tentacles slapping around slowly and even slower when it catches enemies. This feels like one of those abilities where either form or functionality would need to be sacrificed unless it's completely overhauled in both respects.

DE seems to care a lot about form, but I think most players care more about function. I understand the appeal of making an ability chaotic and whimsical, but once the novelty wears off you're left with a button you never press. I just want it to be useful AND unique.
 

Edited by YagoXiten
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Might just be an engine limitation but tentacles actively seeking enemies would be helpful. While it looks like a summon, it's more of a random cast, should be: press 4 -> summon kraken head at aim point + tentacles on enemies -> if a tentacled enemy dies, the kraken casts tentacles on new foes. Individual enemies should be attacked by more tentacles at a time (three or four), with bigger groups spreading the tentacles around.

More reliability in shooting down tentacled enemies would be another, maybe even damage sharing.

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Pretty much. I have suggested before that the tentacles should hold enemies in place like Nezha spears or Bastille. The interaction Hydroid's ult has is the exact same problem that impact procs have -- in most cases it makes enemies more troublesome to hit and thus harder to kill, not easier.

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LOL... tentacle swarm is useless...I respectfully disagree with that, my cc build which works happily enough in conjunction with corroding barrage and imo my pilfering swarm build is better than nekros when based in one location (although it's always better to have one of each obviously). 

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it looks useless and boring because its not moving around or attached to the warframe, it would be good to just  have the ability be reusable with fewer tentacles and other benefits when deployed off in non-combat areas, i like to think that the hydro-warframe should at least be able to float over water areas, and become more of a better team mate in levels where water or rain is apparent, gaining some free MP regen AND other special passive or secret traits; when trying different planets areas and environments, as well as day/cycles and enemy types.

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On 2018-11-18 at 2:48 PM, LSG501 said:

LOL... tentacle swarm is useless...I respectfully disagree with that, my cc build which works happily enough in conjunction with corroding barrage and imo my pilfering swarm build is better than nekros when based in one location (although it's always better to have one of each obviously). 

It isn't unusable. It's just not good. It wouldn't be good even if it weren't redundant, but, you know, it is what it is.

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