(PC) Grendel & Masseter Feedback

[BrazilianJoe]

Problems in a nutshell: 

Energy efficiency is dismal

1 and 3 should be mechanics of a single ability

4 is just a gimmick.

 

Improvements: 

 

General

Consumed enemies should drop loot and life support when killed.

Live-loot abilities like Ivara should work on swallowed enemies.

1. Feast

3. Regurgitate

1+3 = Bulimia

Spoiler

(Calling it Bulimia would be accurate to mechanics, but criticized because it is a serious health issue which should not be trivialized, better name pending)

Both abilities should be merged into one, as they are part of a single mechanic and easy to merge.

Hold to swallow, can slowly walk around as he vacuums enemies and loot.

Click to regurgitate. Regurgitate should do an Aoe where it hits with stagger, splash damage, and taint the ground like the infested do. 

Energy Upkeep is way too much. Remove energy drain, replace with:

It costs energy only when Grendel takes damage and splits the damage with the swallowed enemies, proportional to number of enemies. Would not disable passive energy regeneration.

The removal of energy drain and replacement with energy cost on damaged should be balanced to improve its overall energy efficiency.

 

2. Nourish

It is healing based on base health. Should heal based on ability strength and a % of total modded health.

There is no way that stomp can't do anything to the enemies. It should at least to a radial stagger. 

 

3. Regurgitate (was merged with 1) - Mega Fart - Gaseous Emissions

A new ability should replace Regurgitate. It is thematic accurate with feasty boi to emanate a lingering poisonous gas cloud. 

Effects:  Enemies in the casting area or entering it will be staggered. 

Poison gas cloud will linger for a while, corroding armor, dealing gas damage, reducing enemy accuracy and periodically re-staggering them. 

 

4. Pulverize

It is overall too weak and gimmicky.

Instead of just being a rolly ball, the concept should be that of 'THE THING / THE BLOB / GELATINOUS MONSTER'.

Movement would be similar, but improved.

Visual Overhaul: 

The hitbox and mechanics could remain based on a simple hard sphere. 

Visually, his round body would would be covered with a metaball cluster / particle system, to be round-ish but deform with the environment and movement, and leave pieces behind as it moves. Bonus points if it goes full Katamari and shows up pieces of swallowed enemies on the surface. 

Grendel would be visually much larger, but intangible to allies, they would be able to pass through. Being large but gooey, grendel would not be restricted to move on narrow spaces. despite the apparent body size, because his actual body is still the hard sphere, and the visual goopy ball is pliable.

Mechanics:

Grendel should automatically swallow enemies it runs into. 

It would also constantly damage enemies swallowed. Allies shooting grendel will damage swallowed enemies. 

Melee quick and heavy attack should be available as alternate commands:

Melee attack (E on PC) - Propels Grendel's forward, damaging, capturing enemies on its path instantly. This should help picking up enemies, forward momentum and going uphill/upstairs.

Melee Heavy attack (mouse button 3 on PC) - Grendel's metaball body cover becomes MUCH larger, translucent and cubic-y instead of roundy, becomes unable to parkour, jump and moves slower, but can still move upstairs/uphill. It takes much less damage from incoming damage but is a bigger target, and can do more significant area denial and ally protection. Ally shooting from inside Grendel in this form go through him. Melee attack would still propel him forward, but a much smaller distance, and would not build momentum. Would be able to go on/over short objects like small crates/fallen tree stumps though.

 

Click Heavy Melee again to shrink and go back to round form.

Edited November 3, 2019 by BrazilianJoe

[Xepthrichros]

2 minutes ago, BrazilianJoe said:

Pulverize

It is overall too weak and gimmicky.

Instead of just being a rolly ball, the concept should be that of 'THE THING / THE BLOB / GELATINOUS MONSTER'.

Visual Overhaul: 

The hitbox and mechanics could remain based on a simple hard sphere. 

Visually, his round body would would be covered with a metaball cluster / particle system, to be round-ish but deform with the environment and movement, and leave pieces behind as it moves. Bonus points if it goes full Katamari and shows up pieces of swallowed enemies on the surface. 

Grendel would be visually much larger, but intangible to allies, they would be able to pass through. Being large but gooey, grendel would not be restricted to move on narrow spaces.

The eating ball was his original devstream preview some time ago.

Somewhere along the way, he got nerfed before release into what he is now. Just dealing non-scaling impact damage.

[Przemo8670]

The missions for acquiring Grendel are the worst thing that ever happened to Warframe since Conclave.

They are tedious with those stupid restricions. There's no matchmaking for them so either make them shorter for solo players or simply allow pubs. It could be a cool mode as part of conlave (with matchmaking) but locking a new frame behind it is ridiculous.

Those missons don't even need any specific team comps or any thinking whatsoever. A team of 4 Mirages with augments and simulor synoid did just fine.

After doing these missions I don't feel like playing this game for a while if I can't even use all my stuff I worked for so long to get

For anyone thinking that grendel farm was ok, we'll see if you have fun when against other factions, especially heavy units lol

[chaotea]

Played with Grendel for a few days. Like him in theory, but finding some parts of his kit quite counter intuitive.

 

The biggest issue is that the energy drain for his 1st ability is way too high. The point of Grendel as ive grasped it is to consume enemies to use as fuel for abilities, but having more than 2-4 enemies can drain his energy in seconds. This also makes his passive fairly pointless, as you'd only ever be gaining a small armour buff.

I also find that this makes his 3rd ability fairly pointless. You just cant afford to maintain the larger pool of enemies that this ability would demand, and its not strong enough to be worth loosing point of the limited stockpile.

His second ability is ok, but i find that juggling his buff indicator is confusing. Its hard to see what buff i have selected, and hard to know what type of enemy is still alive in my gut.

His 4th ability ive enjoyed. Though it does tend to do too much damage to units inside to the point that at lower levels i can destroy a stock of 15 enemies in no time.

 

Those are the issues ive found, but i do have possible suggestions.

For the 1st ability, remove the energy drain for holding enemies. Keep the casting cost and either shorten the cast time or fix it to the cast angle. Have a cap of enemies that can be held at one time. (note: maybe a multiplier on the cast cost could be introduced depending on how much is already stored)

For the 2nd ability, have a single cast give all 3 buffs, provided the correct enemies are devoured. This should provide less micro for the ability.

For the 3rd ability, add a casting cost that scales with enemies stored, but add damage that gains a bonus for each enemy stored. Firing still ejects one enemy.

For the 4th ability, have damage dealt to stored enemies still, but only have that damage applied after the ability ends, like mind controlled enemies, ect. Have energy drain over time during this ability.

 

Those are just the thoughts i have on making the warframe abit more enjoyable to use. I bought him with plat, so i cant comment on his part gathering.

Hope this makes sense.

[CerebrateJoe]

Overall, Grendel is pretty meh.

His passive, he doesn't have one.  The armor thing is defiantly part of feast.

Feast.  Its got a big bug/feature(?)  The energy drain/second seems to scale exponentially over time.  This means that eating 10 baddies for 10 seconds seems to have less drain than one baddie for several minutes.  This results in weird scenarios where I'm eating baddies a few at a time, but because I never completely hit empty the energy drain is enormous.  This absolutely has to go.  I'll come back to this problem more than once.

Nourish.  This is a fine/meh ability.  It needs one simple change.  When you activate it, it should just nom one of each type of baddie for all three buffs simultaneously.  This would make it good and give me a reason to eat more than one baddie at at time.  (Again, Feast bug is discouraging me from gluttony.)

Regurgitate.  Meh to bad.  Wiki says it uses enemy level to increase the damage.  Doesn't seem like it is, or if it is, its too little.  In short, it does very low damage.  Needs to be doubled, or tripled I think.  Also, it has no utility that I can see.  If I'm doing toxin proc's, then I'm just not seeing them or they're too little to matter.  I'm mostly using it to drain my Feast count down to 1, because of that bug, again.

Pulverize.  First of all, change the tips and description.  It took me ages to figure out I needed to have baddies in the belly to use it.  I just kept getting that "This ability is not ready" message.  The only hint is that in the description it says "Powered by feasting . . ."  I thought that was flavor text.  Then, there's a large dash between damage (500-4000).  I have no idea whether this is based on the number of baddies I'm carrying or on my speed at impact?  Please change the tips for this ability.  As for the ability.  Its fun when you get a good roll, but the controls are garbage.  It feels like I'm trying to push a bowling ball with a leaf blower.  Cosmetically, make the ball about twice the size it is now.  Its so tiny.

Last thought, Feast'd enemies get their armor dissolved at 5%/second.  I'd increase this to 20%/second.  That way it has some strategic value at high levels.  You could just run around eating Grineer and spitting them out for your teammates to finish off.

I think with these tweeks he'll be a lot of fun, but right now, hes really underwhelming.  Especially when you consider what you have to do to get him.

[CerebrateJoe]

I wanted to write my review before reading others.  Seems a lot of people wrote reviews very similar to mine.  I saw a lot of comments about combining Feast and Regurgitate.  This is a great idea.  Also, howabout Regurgitate spitting all the baddies in your belly like a shotgun blast.

For Pulverize, I see people asking for a "Thing/Blob" style ultimate.  Would be a lot of fun, but it does seem to go against his lore/art style a bit.  Does sound like fun though . . .

[just-JC]

Grendel, the counterproductive frame. 

Feast: this is supposed to be his base ability, every other ability depends on this one. Yet we are punished if we gather too many enemies and without these enemies, Grendel is a frame that doesn't have abilities. Something should be done about this, either giving him a enemy cap and no energy drain or lowering his energy drain without a enemy cap. It should synergize with the rest of his kit, yet it doesn't because everything else depends on either the enemy type, how many enemies he has inside or the enemy level. These limitations end up being a nuisance because we need Feast to use the rest of his kit. 

Nourish: what everyone already said. The duration is too low as well if we build for duration and range the rest of his kit becomes weak since most of the abilities don't need duration. He should give all the buffs if we are going to stay with the same duration. Also, his animation is slow, which makes using the ability trying to find different buffs a pain. If this is supposed to be a team support ability then let us support our team. Titania buffs have a good range and duration which compensates having to cast in different enemies types, yet Grendel has a small duration and consuming enemies trying to find a different buff makes him weak and it also affects the rest of his kit. We literally can't choose the enemy we want to consume, with Titania you can hit the enemy you want without being punished. With Grendel trying to choose enemies is counterproductive because the rest of his kit depends on the number of enemies consumed not which type. 

Regurgitate: useless, change this asap. I honestly think a whole new ability should replace this one. Maybe an AoE ability that makes him consume all the enemies in an explosion damaging nearby enemies, it would work with his tankness since he can get inside large groups of enemies without dying. This is the weakest ability in his kit, you can only use after Feast and it's easy to miss the enemy. I honestly didn't see why would I use this ability if I can use my gun.

Pulverize: it's fun and I love the design. Would I use the ability? No. It's slow, doesn't do enough damage, everything blocks it, you want to roll over a Grineer and a pebble blocks your way. It's an ultimate that depends on ANOTHER ability yet we are heavily punished by everything. If you have too many enemies in our stomach, massive energy drain. If you have a couple of enemies you can't use the ability for very long and aren't able to achieve anything because it's a pain to move around while in ball form. Stairs? Nope, you can be almost a God, but no climbing stairs if you are in a ball form. Is this supposed to be a dps ability? Then let us kill stuff with the ability, don't put 100 obstacles and hurdles. While I'm trying to kill a single enemy rolling over him any Saryn out there can kill the whole room. Make us want to use the ability, make the ability HAVE a use. Just being a meme isn't enough for the long run, it's fun for a while, but not forever. 

Conclusion: too many obstacles and impediments for a frame with little to no usefulness for his abilities. His support ability fails to support, his dps ability is just a gimmick and his ultimate is more frustrating than useful during any fight. I have been playing Warframe for more than 2000 hours and this is the first time I'm seriously writing a feedback post because right now I can't see a single use for Grendel, yet I believe the frame can still be saved with some big changes. The only redeeming quality is that he is a fun tank to play with, but that ain't enough for his platinum price or for the pain that it is to farm him. Sorry for sounding like a annoying prick during the whole post because I love everything else in the game and I'm excited for the future, just not Grendel.  

[Arksun]

I'd like to point out a few points about the new Waframe that was released, Grendel, and also changes that could make it better if possible.

First of all Grendel is a great tank, having a good thematic and considerably an over power ability to consume his enemies and use them for his benefit, but there are things that leave a feeling of "something is missing there" in some of your following skills:

Nourish - The ability and its buffs perform well, but lacking an adequate indication of which buffs you can receive, many players find it totally random when they fail to read the full description of that ability, which often causes they cannot take full advantage of their uses.

What I would consider applying to address this situation would be an indicator on the skill bar, similar to what we have with Wisp and its Reservoir or Ivara and its tactical arrows, which would clearly indicate that you can rotate to pick up buffs. according to the types of enemies within Grendel's belly.

Regurgitate - In my honest opinion this is a skill that although it seems "fun" at first glance, it really lacks a sense of "unique" if we compare it with Feast's second form of use (freeing enemies contained in the belly) it really doesn't have a specification other than turning something into a projectile that doesn't have much effect, making it look like it should be a continuation of that first skill.

To address this skill personality crisis, I would suggest adding the effect that the more enemies within the belly the more damage it would inflict, firing a cannonball made of melted flesh with volatile stomach acids, which on impact would explode or preferably cause a similar effect to Nova's Molecular Prime, but on a smaller but still effective scale. It would also consider making available the ability to use this ability without the need to consume enemies, but in this state the ability would cost energy to use and would have a much smaller effect, possibly just creating an acid ball that causes corrosive procs and knocks down enemies.

Pulverize - I don't have much to talk about, this skill sounds good to me and its concept of "fun" is well applied, but it really does seem a bit difficult to control, often making the character feel stuck or hard to redirect, the damage to me seems ok, but if possible it would be nice to make the generated shockwaves do true damage if a certain number of enemies consumed are hit before activating it or if it leaves a trail of acids / gases that would stun enemies making it easier to hit them.

Well those were my thoughts on Grendel, I just wanted to say that I really liked the concept, I like frames that deviate from the "humanoid" pattern, especially with him having a mouth in the belly. In the end, I hope my criticism can help in any future decision, I apologize for any English errors you may find in this message, sorry for that, it is not my main language.

Edited November 3, 2019 by Arksun

[OptimusJ]

On 2019-10-31 at 10:39 PM, CerebrateJoe said:

In regards to how Grendel is acquired, what the hell?!  This is a common, non-prime regular everyday warframe.  I've got a stressful job and I come home looking forward to playing Warframe and having a good time, then you throw this at me?  I'll try to be constructive.

First and foremost THIS IS NOT FUN.  I want to really emphasis that.  I played tons of arbitration because I really enjoyed the challenge.  Part of why I find arbitration entertaining is because I find myself using tactics and thinking differently than when I play a survival against level 20 enemies.  You don't really need to worry about bringing one weapon for armor and one for flesh when you're dealing with those common opponents.  It really encouraged me to try new things and tweak my mods like crazy.  That brings me to point 2.

I like to use my stuff.  I've fully leveled my operator and arcwing gun for a reason.  I've collected rare mods I didn't really 'get' in case I find a neat use later on or I have an 'ah-ha!' moment and see something old, but in a brand-new way.  Taking away my stuff isn't 'raising the challenge' its telling me my investment didn't matter.  Its breaking my toys and telling me not to care.

I'm fine with challenge, but why do this for a common warframe?  It just feels like punishment.  I know you don't mean it that way.  I really hope you'll change this.

Yeah, feels like DE hired Rian Johson just to "subvert our expectations" with missions that are the complete opposite we have been taught until now.
And just like Star Wars it's failing miserably.

[OptimusJ]

On 2019-11-02 at 5:25 PM, Sibernetika said:

yes DE forced you to think.. everyone running with Damage is king frames has a really hard time with these missions, but with a proper team composition, the damage dealer now actually has breathing space to do damage instead of everyone lying on the ground the whole time

Fine keep pushing DE into horrible design as long as you feel you kissed enough feet. What are you expecting in exchange? A date? A gift? 

[just-JC]

30 minutes ago, OptimusJ said:

Fine keep pushing DE into horrible design as long as you feel you kissed enough feet. What are you expecting in exchange? A date? A gift? 

Yeah, I understand that people feel the need to defend this and maybe they had fun playing like that. But complains are just as valid. If 12 people are enjoying not playing with any mods while 112 aren't guess who DE should listen...I didn't even bother trying to farm him, when I saw that I needed to stay 15 rounds of defense without any mods I was like "I ain't getting Grendel". I only got him because I was able to sell a riven mod, otherwise I wouldn't attempt. 

[Hawk197]

Grendel needs some massive buffs... And I don't mean upgrading to the all you can eat buffet either.

First, why does his 1 need to vomit up enemies, when his 3 does that already?

Second, why does his 2 need to have random buffs?

Third, why does his 3 have like no damage or utility?

Fourth, why is his 4 so weak and useless?

Fifth, if 2-4 require his 1 to activate, why not make them synergize more?

 

I'd suggest changing his hold 1 from vomitting to a small self heal based on the amount of enemies in his stomach. Something like 5 health per enemy. I don't really think having 10 enemies in your stomach to heal 50 health would be worth it, but it would be better than what it is now. I'd also make his 2 give buffs based on the amount of enemies in his stomach. Something like 3 enemies gives buff A, 6 enemies will give buffs A and B, 9+ enemies will give buffs A, B, and C, that way you're rewarded for eating more than one enemy. I'd also make his 3 leave a bile patch on impact, that way his 3 can have more utility and be used for more than yeeting enemies off the map. His 4, I've no idea how to make it decent. Right now it's just a meme. Maybe instead of a meatball of moderate annoyance, it could be a stomp similar to Rhinos, but instead of suspending stuff in the air Grendel could knock enemies over and open them up to ground finishers?

[Agayek]

So I've been playing a lot of Grendel, and I've gotta say, he really is an excellent Warframe.  I've done everything from random rifts to sorties to kuva floods, and even used him for a full level 5 lich hunt, with 90+ grineer for days, and I never once had any problems either surviving or killing things.  Grendel is, in all honesty, a fantastic frame.  I had a bit of a rocky start, I was not enjoying him much at first, as I was constantly running out of energy and most of his abilities seemed worthless, but then I revamped the build, with a focus on power and efficiency, and it totally revamped how I play him, how much fun I have, and how effective he is.

However, Grendel is not perfect, and this seems like the place for feedback, so I'm just gonna go through his abilities and list out what works and what doesn't, along with a couple suggestions for improvements.

Feast (and this Passive)
General feedback: This ability is basically perfect.  It's beautifully thematic and incredibly effective, and the range is honestly breathtaking.  It makes Grendel able to deal with arbitrarily large crowds with ease, and just feels fantastic.  Not a whole lot more to say about it.

Suggested improvements: Nothing really.  There's an argument to be had about potentially making the targeting cone for it wider, but I don't think it's particularly necessary, and either way it's not a huge deal.

Nourish
General feedback: This ability is pretty good, but it's not quite "there" yet.  The core of the ability is good, with a strong heal (~20% of my grendel's max HP in my build) and interesting buffs.  However, the way the buff is determined (not to mention how similar the symbols for each buff look when covered by a timer) and how that whole loop functions makes it so that, frankly, I only ever hit 2 for a heal, or to finish off the last enemy in my gut after a fight.  And a core part of the frame's kit going ignored is not good.

Suggested improvements: This ability needs to trigger every buff with each activation, with none of the hold to cycle thing.  Nourish should hit the first of each 'type' of enemy, if present, in Grendel's gut and give out the corresponding buff.  In my head, this would involve a damage share, where the ability does X damage, but if you have all three types of enemies, then each one hit takes X/3 damage, and then the buff and heal goes out, but there's a number of other ways to handle it.  In addition, I'd overhaul the UI so that instead of the ability icon changing, there'd be a larger indicator above the abilities that showed what buffs are available in Grendel's stomach.

Alternatively, simply remove the buffs entirely.  Change the ability so that instead of hitting one enemy and giving a buff to Grendel and friends, instead make it so that Nourish damages all enemies in Grendel's stomach and heals him (and allies in range, if the support element is desired) based on the number of enemies hit by it.

Regurgitate
General feedback: This ability is... not good, to put it mildly.  I pretty much never hit it except when I'm memeing, and there's really no point.  At the most basic design level, this ability is designed to give Grendel a way to hit things at range, and that's a problem.  Because every Warframe also has this thing called a gun, which is a substantially faster, more accurate, and more effective means of hitting things at range.  Which means that this ability is rendered entirely worthless.  It's just bad, built on a bad design foundation, and just doesn't fit in the game at all.  The only really positive thing to say about it is that it doesn't cost energy, but even then, it costs 50 armor for however long the enemy would have survived in the stomach, and that's not nothing.  This ability desperately needs some measure of overhaul, either a complete rework to change its underlying design philosophy, or a supercharging of the numbers to make it more effective than a gun to use.

Regurgitate is also anti-synergistic with the rest of his kit.  After all, Feast and Pulverize are all about Grendel getting up in the enemy's face, and Nourish is all about surviving being there, while Regurgitate is all about long range attacks.  It's the odd man out, and just doesn't fit very well.

Suggested improvements: The ideal solution here, I feel, is a design overhaul, rip out the range ideas by the roots and replace it with something that synergizes more with the rest of his kit.  My suggestion is that, instead of puking out enemies as projectiles, Regurgitate should be exactly what it says; Grendel flops onto his back and vomits bile into the air.  The bile spreads out over a wide area centered on him that deals corrosive damage over time (possibly with an automatic armor strip, depending on balance concerns) and "primes" enemies hit by it.  If a bile-covered enemy is then caught in Feast, Nourish is automatically cast on it for a large chunk of damage right off the bat before it gets in Grendel's belly.

That said, I have the feeling dev resources aren't going to be put toward overhauling a newly released frame's abilities quite this thoroughly.  If so, a less ideal but still workable solution would be just to bump the numbers way up.  Increase the AOE of the explosion on impact, and make it do significantly more damage, and it'll be at least situationally useful, instead of the total meme that it is right now.

Pulverize
General feedback: This is another basically perfect ability.  The rolling is great fun, and it does a ton of damage to enemies on the ground and especially in the belly.  It takes a bit of time to learn how to navigate properly while in meatball mode, but once you get the hang of double jumping to change directions and the like, it feels really good to play.  My only real complaint with it is that there are some tiles that make getting through doors a pain, especially if you have to take a 90* turn in the process.

Suggested improvements: Only real suggestion here is perhaps a better way to control the meatball's momentum.  Perhaps adding the ability to use Grendel's 3 while in meatball mode as a kind of booster; spit out a bunch of crap and/or an enemy for a quick burst of momentum in whatever direction you're aiming.  It'd go a long way to mitigating the minor annoyances from navigating maps while at the mercy of the physics engine.

Also, jesus we need a fix for the "meatball mode Grendel tries to grab a ledge" bug.  Being stuck in Pulverize until you run out of energy, unable to jump, interact with anything, or even pick up items, is just awful and desperately needs to be fixed.

 

Conclusion: Grendel is a great warframe, and I'm going to thoroughly enjoy playing as him for a good while to come.  But there's a few issues, and one really aggravating bug, that need addressing to elevate him to truly fantastic level.  Good work on the whole, DE, and I hope you find the time and will to polish him up, cuz he's a lot of fun, and could be even better.

[Xepthrichros]

8 hours ago, CerebrateJoe said:

I wanted to write my review before reading others.  Seems a lot of people wrote reviews very similar to mine.  I saw a lot of comments about combining Feast and Regurgitate.  This is a great idea.  Also, howabout Regurgitate spitting all the baddies in your belly like a shotgun blast.

For Pulverize, I see people asking for a "Thing/Blob" style ultimate.  Would be a lot of fun, but it does seem to go against his lore/art style a bit.  Does sound like fun though . . .

If they can make the regurgitate projectile damage be affected by secondary or primary weapon mods, and the damage and rolling speed in his ball form to be affected by sprint speed and melee mods...

I think he will be a lot better.

Edited November 4, 2019 by Xepthrichros

[-AncientWarrior-]

On 2019-11-01 at 4:46 PM, N64Gamefreak said:

I can't remember hating anything in this game as much as I hated the Grendel missions.

yeah really this says it for me .. terrible waste of possibility there, from super hype ... to no mods, no operator, ..  not the greatest work sorry DE

[EinheriarJudith]

16 minutes ago, -AncientWarrior- said:

yeah really this says it for me .. terrible waste of possibility there, from super hype ... to no mods, no operator, ..  not the greatest work sorry DE

he is not even worth the hassle they put people through to get him.

[Syln]

Just a few ideas for the second and fourth skill : the buff type should work the same way as mine layer does, switching between them by tapping and activating by holding regardless of what's in your belly.

As for the fourth, holding the key while being a meat ball should allow you to sacrifice half of your remaining health and burst into a massive corrosive+blast AOE  with both status proc and damage calculation being as follow : base damage (2000 ?) + the sum of the remaining enemies's health inside grendel belly.

 

[IAmPhase]

Hi DE, I've been playing Grendel for a bit now and I wanted to give my feedback on him after trying him out in ESO and facing high level enemies.

I've noticed 3 main issues with playing Grendel.

The energy drain on his 1 scales up as time goes on. Grendels 2, 3, and 4 all rely on having enemies in his belly to work. Increasing the amount of energy it takes to hold enemies in seems counter intuitive to the design of his other 3 abilities. I want to have enemies in my belly to spit them out, give out buffs, and be a rolling meatball. Increasing the energy drain over time on his 1 makes it hard to eat multiple enemies and still have energy to keep them in my belly (and thus use the rest of my kit). On top of that, since it's a constant energy drain, he has a hard time benefiting from any form of energy regeneration, or his personal energy buff from his 2. I think it would be beneficial to either remove the increasing energy drain, or lower it to a more manageable amount. On top of that, this effect isn't mentioned anywhere in Grendels tool tips. Adding it somewhere on his 1s tool tip would help with gameplay clarity.

Second, his 3 seems kind of pointless. I say this in the most respectful way possible. Spitting out an enemy at high speeds feels fun and amusing, but it isn't really practical from a game play stand point. It does what holding his 1 does but I guess it deals a bit more damage? It feels like it should be a part of or variant of his 1, like his other regurgitate effect is. If it had additional effects or utility compared to his 1, like a high % armor strip for example, then I could see why he'd have this ability. Without any additional changes or buffs, there isn't really much reason to use this ability.

Finally, his 4 (meatball form!) damages enemies inside his belly. This is arguably the biggest issue I've had with Grendel. I want to eat enemies so I can roll around as a meatball and jump and slam into enemies. I find it extremely fun and a very effective way to kill enemies. I have had little issue killing higher level enemies with his 4 because it deals respectable damage with my build (183% Power Strength with Umbral Intensify, Augur Secrets, and Power Drift). The problem is when I'm rolling around as a meatball, I damage the enemies I've eaten. Since I damage them, I end up killing them and prematurely leave my 4. I would sincerely appreciate it if you guys took a look at this interaction. I want to eat enemies and roll around damaging everything else as a meatball. The act of using his 4 and rolling around kills the enemies inside my belly, which takes me out of my 4. It can get very frustrating. I end up having to re-cast my 4 so much so quickly that Simaris locks me out of the ability in ESO. If the enemies took significantly less damage, or ideally no damage at all while I'm in my 4, I wouldn't have to recast it nearly as often and I could continue having fun as a rolling meatball. Another possible suggestion I thought of was having the 4s damage (not the 1s damage over time) get stored while Grendels 4 is active, that way you can roll around in his 4 and when you're finished, ending the ability deals all of the stored damage to the enemies in your belly. This lets his 4 still damage eaten enemies (which seems like the intended effect, and I understand why), while also allowing Grendel players to roll around as a tanky meatball of destruction without having to stop and recast the ability along with his 1 constantly.

Thank you guys so much for Grendel. I never thought I'd have so much fun eating up enemies and rolling around as a meatball like I have. If changes could be made to Grendel that make him more useful and less frustrating/conflicting, I think he would end up in a much better place.

 

 

[Slayer_OfLight]

Nourish should get a special HUD to be able to actually see the kind of enemy we have selected, since right now the remaining time covers the skill icon almost entirely and you just have to guess or spam.

Also, feast should have regurgitate as held action, since they are complementary, and 3 could be the held action of 1 right now, where he pukes all enemies at one place, and makes them unable to move for a limited time while armor degradation is still on.

[DebrisFlow]

The no-mods missions to acquire Grendel -> nice! Took me some time to re-evaluate warframe abilities and weapons original stats/mechanics for the specific purpose, was a funny experiment of lateral thinking, especially because i wanted to do them solo. I'll re-try with a team too, i think that way is more fun than solo (in solo mode, when i understood how to cheese, it was just a matter of repeating the cheese over and over, though). And the difficulty was nicely recompensed with the direct drop (no rng at all) of the warframe part.

[AreeSoothsayer]

I'll leave this feedback here. 

Once I max Grendel he will be the first warframe I have deleted. Dunno how strong he is. Dunno much because I don't want to think about a Warframe whose powers are based in the act of tossing your cookies. It's hard enough for me on those infested. 

I sincerely dread having to do this years from now with his primed version.

[DLOArceus]

19 hours ago, OptimusJ said:

Fine keep pushing DE into horrible design as long as you feel you kissed enough feet. What are you expecting in exchange? A date? A gift? 

Maybe he just thinks that people need to actually get good at the game or at least try to cheese them instead of doing yet another mission with no changes? Maybe he thinks people can actually play the game properly instead of relying on the cheat codes that are mods? The suggestions in this thread are mostly cool, the people bawling their eyes out because they can't press 1 button to win in one-time mission really aren't(not mentioning you can still do it, too). "the things i've worked for" is one of the dumbest things i've read. So you can't win without them? Pathetic. 5 bucks you're complaining about Maiming Strike and Zenistar too?

 

 Also while it doesn't work against infested and generally lower level enemies, Rage and Hunter Adrenaline almost completely negate energy issues, working better the higher leveled the enemies are.

Regurgitate is bad, period. Not only because of the damage but also because the explosion radius is extremely small. Bad damage on a toxic projectile i wouldn't have minded, but the projectile has to actually hit stuff.

I don't mind the Pulverize issue presented by IAmPhase, what i have an issue with is its damage. While it can hit many enemies and doesn't stop while it hits one, its damage is simply too low. Let's take the usual Corrupted Heavy Gunners. Knocking myself over a lv155 one, i do around 900 damage. This is nothing of course, and the worst thing is that the other 5 gunners i've eaten, by comparison, die super fast. Why? Not only because they're constantly losing health and armor, but because each time i bounce i do 8-9 times that damage. I'm talking about 8000-9000 each bounce. It seems Grendel never wants enemies before him, but always inside him.

[Zalanore]

On 2019-11-03 at 12:03 AM, (PS4)DoctorWho_90250 said:

At what point did DE ever say it would be a puzzle? I watched the pre-release prime time the week prior and both Rebecca and Megan said the missions would have, essentially, modifiers and gave a hint that power would be reduced. When were puzzles ever eluded to?

During the live streams Steve talked about how the missions would be a hidden puzzle, and that completing the mission wasn't going to be what have you the parts, completing the puzzle would.

The also talked about how you would have to find hints inside the leverion to solve the puzzle.

 

One of the official press releases even stated you would have to search the leverion for hints on how to get him.

 

I'm on my phone and Google is flooded with recent posts on how to mod Grendel so I can't find the original right now. I'll try to get a link later.

[Cephalon_Baphoma]

So I had a bit of a different experience with the Grenddo farm and all the content. 

 

I just bought it all. Now before people call me a pay to winner, i save up from trades and prime access plat in order to afford the new stuff. I dont have time to farm the normal way because of life and work so I buy the packs. That being said, I dont like how the Kuva hunter pack doesnt have a seperate pack for just the armor and color pallets. Those colors are awesome and the armor is so unique and bulky but the price of 835p is rediculous. Even with the What Stalker pack and Hunhows Gift those items ( apart from the armor) are farmable in game. The armor and pallets should be purchasable separately. 

Grendle is a very fun and tanky frame, but his energy consumption seems to spike at some point, making him very energy hungry. His 2 is kinda... Useless. Not enough duration to build for, and the buffs feel too random. His 3 is fine, and his 4 is super fun and effective at killing things both in and out of his gut. 

His weapon kinda feels run of the mill. Nothing really to help it stand out. Overall, grendel just needs help with energy consumption and hes a good frame. His grind... Well i need to experience that. But im sure its just about picking thebright frame. 

[PsiWarp]

Nourished Armor could use a bit more oomph. The Toxin damage it releases doesn't scale nor proc status, making it a minor damage source against nearby enemies that won't flinch from it. I would suggest making it Viral damage with a decent proc chance.

Regurgitate's damage does scale with enemy levels, but up front it still is lacking much to be occupying a whole ability slot. I would suggest making it deal its damage to enemies that the launched enemy hits on the way, splashing bile in the modded radius every time a hit happens doing area damage. Enemies hit by Regurgitate suffer a knockdown. Enemies in the impact area have a chance to proc Corrosive.