Grendel rework Ideas

[Blocker306]

So, I see Grendel on the same wall that warframe was on when the concept was rejected by the publishers, and so I've decided to scratch my tiny brain to rack up some ideas for a possible rework. Here it is:

Suggestions to make grendel good:

Revamp the energy drain for his 1. Instead of the current one, we could have one that drains less and less energy for each enemy eaten, maxing out at 10 enemies in his gut. (Max amount of enemies scales with power strength.) Each enemy eaten reduces energy drain by half. This is the formula in words: Each enemy eaten adds a amount of energy drain. Each time a new enemy is eaten, the cost of the new enemy is half of the drain of the previous enemy. The standard drain for each enemy is 2 energy per second. This means that at the standard maximum amount of enemies in your gut, you would only be draining at 4 energy per second. Compared to the previous, it's not that bad.

Unlock his other abilities without needing to eat, make the amount he eats reduce the amount of energy needed to use his other abilities or just use eaten enemies as a substitute for energy, this would actually encourage grendel players to actually eat without needing to worry about the drain (see above) while also being able to cast his abilities more, as well as rewarding players for eating. That would also mean that players would stop being punished for eating too much via the energy drain.

A suggestion for his new 3 (since his 1 is just a better version of that for AOE) could be that he unloads a single enemy from his gut for free, hold to burst fire 3. The catch is that he can't eat what he just puked out. (Augment can let the unloaded enemies to carry a cloud of viral procs, scales with power Strength for proc chance.)

His new 4? Got no idea.

Leave a reply of what you think.

Edited May 15, 2020 by Blocker306

[Acersecomic]

Wukong had a use and something he was good at pre-rework. Grendel has nothing going for it really, it's pathetic beyond belief.

Agree with 1st.

Agree with 2nd.

3rd sounds useless still, maybe if it would release a cloud of viral or corrosive or magnetic that does no damage but expands in range the more enemies you eat, thus weakening the enemies without having a need to scale or turn into another broken as f Saryn.

Disagree with 4th, the meatball is horrendously bad and just turning into a bouncing meatball is no better, despite scaling because it will never scale enough. The existing meatball should handle A LOT BETTER! and move faster, the Catapult is what you're suggesting but it would need a Catapult rework so we can stop it when we want and not when it reaches the end of its range.

[Blocker306]

1 minute ago, Acersecomic said:

Wukong had a use and something he was good at pre-rework. Grendel has nothing going for it really, it's pathetic beyond belief.

Agree with 1st.

Agree with 2nd.

3rd sounds useless still, maybe if it would release a cloud of viral or corrosive or magnetic that does no damage but expands in range the more enemies you eat, thus weakening the enemies without having a need to scale or turn into another broken as f Saryn.

Disagree with 4th, the meatball is horrendously bad and just turning into a bouncing meatball is no better, despite scaling because it will never scale enough. The existing meatball should handle A LOT BETTER! and move faster, the Catapult is what you're suggesting but it would need a Catapult rework so we can stop it when we want and not when it reaches the end of its range.

Thx for the suggestions. Will be tweaked.

[Archwizard]

5 hours ago, Blocker306 said:

Remove the energy drain ramp up for his 1. Make it a constant, not a scaling variable .

I agree that the energy drain ramp up is a problem, but I don't think it should be a constant either — you'd just be encouraged to vacuum up every enemy on the map, which is little different from the problem with original flavor Undertow.

For a happy medium, I think it should have a geometric scale — each additional enemy still increases the cost over time, but it compounds less and less as you eat more.
So for some sample values I've pulled out of the aether, let's say each additional enemy only compounds the cost by ~83% of the previous instead of 100% — holding two enemies is only 183% of the drain of holding one enemy (down from 200%), three is 252% (down from 300%), four is 309% (down from 400%), five is 357% (down from 500%), and so on until about 500% at 10 enemies (up from 5), with a soft cap around ~600% of the original cost for an unlimited number of enemies (since eventually consuming one more enemy will be a fraction of a percent higher cost). 

And that's just a random value (one I picked to net a half result at 10 enemies, but hey).
You could have it be 95% for an 8x multiplier at 10 enemies and soft cap at 20x the base cost. (Okay, maybe still a little high.)
You could have it be 90% for a 6.5x multiplier at 10 enemies and soft cap at 10x the base cost. (The ideal is probably between here and the sample.)
You could have it be 80% for a 4.5x multiplier at 10 enemies and soft cap at 5x the base cost. (Although I'd say this one is probably too low.)

Point being, implement soft caps, so eventually you eat enough enemies that the cost of each additional enemy plateaus; that way the "sweet spot" cost on his 4 is at a high volume of enemies where the cost of eating one more is negligible, rather than at 1 invincible one.

5 hours ago, Blocker306 said:

A suggestion for his new 3 (since his 1 is just a better version of that) could be that he belches a cloud of viral damage with range scaling off of amount of enemies in his belly. (proc chance scales w/ power strength)

I understand that his 1 is a better version for the purposes of AoE, but his 3 is intended to be a means to eject a single enemy at a time when he already has all buffs up from his 2, so that you can modulate the cost if it's too high without having to eject everyone with his 1.
Granting that I did just suggest a pattern that would eventually massively diminish the cost of additional enemies, but the growth would (and should) still be there.

Part of the problem is that there's really no penalty for just ejecting every enemy with his 1 and swallowing a lower number back to control the cost; there should be more risk-reward to that aspect. Perhaps if manually ejecting also consumed a large amount of his remaining energy so that you couldn't consume them all back immediately (a fair offset to the cost reduction I suggested above), or he just couldn't re-eat enemies that were recently covered in his own bile; then it would be important to modulate with his 3 instead.

Then, if anything replaces his 3, it should still be something that plays into reducing the number of enemies he's holding by one at a time. And should probably be something he can actually use when he's channeling his 4.

Edited May 15, 2020 by Archwizard

[Mu_Gera]

his 4 could use a rebalance instead of a rework, mostly just better momentum against enemies/heavy landings and the damage not being capped at 10 enemies, since it's competing against his 1 for damage just like his 3.

[Xepthrichros]

I like Grendel right now already but he is maybe a few tweaks away from full potential. 

1) I do think uncoupling his first skill from the rest of his kit would be nice. Skill 2 and 3 and 4 should NOT require having someone in the tummy to work. They should just work regardless, but at the cost of energy. When enemies are in the tummy, then you get energy discounts... up to 100% discount if you have enough enemies stored.

2) Skill 2,3,4 function slightly differently when there are enemies stored vs when there are no enemies stored. With enemies stored, 2's buffs duration are longer. 3 shoots out actual enemies as projectiles and explosion radius bigger. 4's damage amplifed. With no enemies stored, 2's buff duration is reduced. 3 shoots out globules of toxin, corrosive and gas bile instead.  

3) Skill 1 requires zero nerfs whatsoever. I read some ideas above about putting some kind of trade-off or penalty to eating and spitting out enemies with 1. How about NO? Other frames can have all kinds of spammy powers and I see zero reason why Grendel has to singled out to being punished for spammy powers

4) His 4th skill needs better handling. The ball form absolutely must stay, as it is a mechanic that is quite different from the other things in the game and is part of what makes a frame unique. But it needs to handle better and be more responsive to direction inputs etc. 

Edited May 17, 2020 by Xepthrichros

[MonsterOfMyOwn]

the armor gain from his passive is quite bad because you should never keep ennemies inside your belly because consume + ball bounce + vomit (1st) to deal damage

the energy drain is quite high (not that bad with his 2nd and arcane energize and blue pizza in bulk, but still)

his 4th is fun, but unfortunately an eximus is needed to get full control of it

his 1st is his bread and butter, both CC and damage dealer, but cone + limited range make it useless if you have a mesa or a saryn (or khora, vauban, etc)

his 3rd is disappointing

high health pool, but no RD and average armor, so lvl100+ you rely on consume to keep your health up

-----

he doesn't need a full rework but just a few tweaks

passive : replace armor bonus by additionnal drop chance when ennemies are engulfed, so that at least he has a use for farming / survival (and it would also help with enery orbs)

3rd : perhaps change it so that it really deals damage, 1200*(1+ ability strength)*ennemylvl/10 toxin damage ain't enough. perhaps make it puke bile dealing that amount of damage for some energy cost when the belly is empty, and make it deal twice this damage at no energy cost when he pukes an ennemy

Edited May 17, 2020 by MonsterOfMyOwn

[doominator10]

1) Sure, lets go with that.

2) Yes, lets go with that.

3) I don't know. Maybe hold 3 to charge up the expulsion. Maxed charge expels every enemy in your gut. Expelling 10 enemies does thousands of damage to enemies in front of you that they hit.

4) Here's the pitch: While in his 4, Grendel can recast his 1 2 and 3 to do different effects, in addition to just rolling into people.

4+1) Launches forward like a Gauss boost. This just straight up deals hundreds of impact damage, scaling off the number of enemies eaten, armor, and power strength. He can jump in his 4 currently right? If not, then make it so he can at least do a single boop up with space.

4+2) Works as it does on live. In addition, base toxin damage is added to your meatball hits as well, regardless of whether you used nourish strike or not. Speed boost from here can stack with the 4+1, so Grendel in a straight line could 'almost' keep up with Gauss.

4+3) Consumes a dude inside the gut to slam the ground and create a massive gas toxin cloud that lingers after it's initial explosion. Think a min-saryn 4 but with toxin. Range, and initial burst damage increase if Grendel is in the air before he uses this ability. (I want to name it flatulate but that might be a bit risque) 

 

Thoughts?

[Blocker306]

On 2020-05-18 at 3:34 PM, doominator10 said:

1) Sure, lets go with that.

2) Yes, lets go with that.

3) I don't know. Maybe hold 3 to charge up the expulsion. Maxed charge expels every enemy in your gut. Expelling 10 enemies does thousands of damage to enemies in front of you that they hit.

4) Here's the pitch: While in his 4, Grendel can recast his 1 2 and 3 to do different effects, in addition to just rolling into people.

4+1) Launches forward like a Gauss boost. This just straight up deals hundreds of impact damage, scaling off the number of enemies eaten, armor, and power strength. He can jump in his 4 currently right? If not, then make it so he can at least do a single boop up with space.

4+2) Works as it does on live. In addition, base toxin damage is added to your meatball hits as well, regardless of whether you used nourish strike or not. Speed boost from here can stack with the 4+1, so Grendel in a straight line could 'almost' keep up with Gauss.

4+3) Consumes a dude inside the gut to slam the ground and create a massive gas toxin cloud that lingers after it's initial explosion. Think a min-saryn 4 but with toxin. Range, and initial burst damage increase if Grendel is in the air before he uses this ability. (I want to name it flatulate but that might be a bit risque) 

 

Thoughts?

Nice, this feels balanced.

[Camilus_Prime]

Reading those Grendel tweaks as a man who loves playing him and mains him this is what grendel needs now we need DE to make those tweaks into real thing.

[(PSN)ninpy]

On 2020-05-15 at 3:05 PM, Blocker306 said:

So, I see Grendel on the same wall that warframe was on when the concept was rejected by the publishers, and so I've decided to scratch my tiny brain to rack up some ideas for a possible rework. Here it is:

Suggestions to make grendel good:

Revamp the energy drain for his 1. Instead of the current one, we could have one that drains less and less energy for each enemy eaten, maxing out at 10 enemies in his gut. (Max amount of enemies scales with power strength.) Each enemy eaten reduces energy drain by half. This is the formula in words: Each enemy eaten adds a amount of energy drain. Each time a new enemy is eaten, the cost of the new enemy is half of the drain of the previous enemy. The standard drain for each enemy is 2 energy per second. This means that at the standard maximum amount of enemies in your gut, you would only be draining at 4 energy per second. Compared to the previous, it's not that bad.

Unlock his other abilities without needing to eat, make the amount he eats reduce the amount of energy needed to use his other abilities or just use eaten enemies as a substitute for energy, this would actually encourage grendel players to actually eat without needing to worry about the drain (see above) while also being able to cast his abilities more, as well as rewarding players for eating. That would also mean that players would stop being punished for eating too much via the energy drain.

A suggestion for his new 3 (since his 1 is just a better version of that for AOE) could be that he unloads a single enemy from his gut for free, hold to burst fire 3. The catch is that he can't eat what he just puked out. (Augment can let the unloaded enemies to carry a cloud of viral procs, scales with power Strength for proc chance.)

His new 4? Got no idea.

Leave a reply of what you think.

I just want to go into the ball without having anything in the gut you know?

[Nira]

Energy consumption definitely needs tweaking.

I dumped some umbra forma on him just 'cause and whilst he is a blast to play, it's hard to see where exactly his current kit fits in the grand scheme of things. Though I do love being able to chomp enemies strip their armour then use them as projectiles against their kin.

I'm all for giving him another pass.

[Shadedraxe]

On 2020-05-15 at 9:05 AM, Blocker306 said:

Leave a reply of what you think.

I really love your ideas. The change to grendel’s 1 is exactly what I’m looking for in a gameplay change with grendel. Encouraging grendel to keep eating and constantly have enemeis stewing in his gut to be able to rely on the rest of his kit more is perfect!!!

Any other changes I would suggest is to make nourish armor actually give you some additional armor.

I think that his 3 should really do more damage and possibly some form of status aoe. How about some aoe toxic/corrosive/gas damage that scales based on the hp of the enemy being upchucked. And the damage type toxic/corrosive/gas (corpus/grineer/infested) depending on enemy faction?

as for pulverize. I really wish DE allowed it to swallow up enemies like it did in the devstreams pre-release. Most of Grendel’s damage comes from burning up enemies in his gut and spewing them out. Not from impact damage.