Grendel suggestions (Revision 4)

[superhbman]

Revision 4 (17 November)

Cleaning up my suggestions and adding more.

 

Goals

I have 2 goals for my Grendel suggestions, dealing with energy issues and making Grendel less dependent on eating enemies.

 

Playstyle

Personally, I don't like Grendel keeping enemies in his belly for extended periods of time because it prevents anyone from killing them. You can play however you want solo, but my suggestions are to make Grendel more group friendly. Also in a group, you can't guarantee that you will eat enemies so I would like Grendel's abilities to be less dependent on eating enemies.

 

Passive

Credit to ProbablyNotLoki. His suggestion is to make his passive armour buff last for some time after removing enemies from Grendel's belly.

On 2021-05-04 at 8:10 PM, DrivaMain said:

I don’t like passives to be rely on 1 ability to function. Grendel needs a new passive without relying on one ability to be able to function correctly. I suggest this instead :

Due to his gluttonous nature, Energy Orbs, Ammo, and Health Orbs worth double the amount when picked up by Grendel.

 

Feast

Feast will now apply it's armour reduction by a set percentage on enemies in Grendel's belly, scales by Ability Strength. I'm thinking of base value of 50%

Either in-built or augment mod: hold-cast Feast with no enemies in Grendel's belly to refund a percentage of energy drained from keeping enemies in belly. Either make the percentage an amount less than 100% scaling with Ability Strength or just 100%. Grendel slaps his belly when using this ability.

 

Nourish

Able to cast with no enemies in Grendel's belly. If there are enemies in Grendel's belly, casting Nourish will reduce or pause the energy drain from keeping enemies in Grendel's belly for a few seconds. If reduce, make it scale with Ability Strength and maybe the duration of the pause scale with Ability Duration. I'm thinking of making the base duration quite short, maybe like 2 seconds.

Maybe reduce the energy cost of Nourish if Grendel has at least 1 enemy in his belly to 25 energy.

 

Nourished Armour

Buffs self and allies that increases incoming healing scaling with Ability Strength. Can consider applying a heal over time. Applies a base armour multiplier buff on self and allies.

Applies a Stagger effect on self. Stagger turns all incoming damage into a 10 second DoT on self. If you want Stagger to scale with stats, percentage damage conversion scales with Ability Strength and duration of Stagger DoT scale with Ability Duration.

 

Regurgitate

Regurgitate will now gain the ability to cast with no enemies inside Grendel's belly at the cost of energy. I think 25 should be reasonable. Also, Regurgitate will now apply armour reduction equal to Feast's armour reduction on enemies hit by Regurgitate.

Regurgitate will cancel the Stagger DoT and adds its remaining damage to Regurgitate.

Also, Regurgitate can be cast in Pulverise ball form which will deal damage in an AoE around Grendel. Not sure about the AoE size, maybe 10m base.

 

Pulverise

On 2021-04-25 at 8:51 PM, SECURATYYY said:

The augment is essentially mandatory. It is a shame we have to sacrifice a mod slot to make the 4th ability more usable. It isn't adding damage or anything, just base functionality of the ability.

 

On 2021-05-11 at 6:01 PM, SECURATYYY said:

We should be able to turn into the ball with no enemies in our gut. It can be a great mobility tool, but sometimes the enemies are already dead or cannot be found. (Catching up to the team in exterminate, capture, etc).

 

Also, could we make his 4th more nimble? I get the whole "inertia" and "mass" thing, but this is a fast paced game. Getting stuck on stairs isn't fun. Having your momentum stopped by the smallest of bumps in the tileset isn't fun. Ricocheting off some infested plant root, and taking 5 seconds to get going again isn't fun. If he was a highly mobile, speedy ball of death it would be so much more fun.

 

Right now if you're rolling in one direction, and want to go the opposite way, it takes way too long. Just more initial boost to get moving, and easier to stop.

Able to cast Pulverise with no enemies in Grendel's belly. Remove energy drain from Pulverise. Costs 25 energy if cast with no enemies in Grendel's belly. If Grendel has no enemies in his belly, ball form will deal no damage.

As a replacement, I'd suggest making the augment mod Slipstream. Give Grendel the ability to match his speed to an ally he is following.

 

Revision 3 (1 May)

Spoiler

Getting a lot of feedback not liking a secondary resource, so I'm going to flesh out a non secondary resource suggestion. Moving the original suggestion to the bottom.

Goals

I have 3 goals for my Grendel suggestions: energy consumption, making Grendel less dependent on eating enemies, and easier buff management.

Playstyle

Personally, I don't like Grendel keeping enemies in his belly for extended periods of time because it prevents anyone from killing them thus slowing the mission down. You can play however you want solo, but my suggestions are to make Grendel more group friendly. Also in a group, you can't guarantee that you will eat enemies so I would like Grendel's abilities to be less dependent on eating enemies.

Passive

Credit to ProbablyNotLoki. His suggestion is to make his passive armour buff last for some time after removing enemies from Grendel's belly.

Feast

On 2021-04-30 at 6:37 AM, Alpheus said:

I don't have any energy problems on Grendel, but the ramping cost should definitely be removed and replaced with a flat energy/sec cost.

On 2021-05-01 at 2:03 AM, Maggy said:

Simply lower the energy cost to be flat per unit and not scale in the ridiculous way it currently does. Static value per enemy, linear scaling per enemy, no more energy cost over time.

I'll work with the current Feast energy cost for now, though you can pick any of these as well.

Feast will now reduce the armour of enemies inside Grendel's belly by a specific amount, scaling with Ability Strength.

Nourish

If there are enemies in Grendel's belly, casting any Nourish ability will reduce or pause Feast's energy drain for a few seconds. Maybe scale with Ability Duration. If using cost reduction, cost reduction scales with Ability Efficiency. Nourish will now gain the ability to cast while no enemies in Grendel's belly.

Nourished Armour

I would like it to increase self and allies' armour and increased self and ally's incoming healing. I'm considering making Nourished Armour also apply a small heal-over-time, but I'm not sure.

Regurgitate

Regurgitate will now gain the ability to cast with no enemies inside Grendel's belly at the cost of energy. I think 25 should be reasonable. Also, Regurgitate will now apply armour reduction equal to Feast's armour reduction on enemies hit by Regurgitate.

Pulverise

On 2021-04-25 at 8:51 PM, SECURATYYY said:

The augment is essentially mandatory. It is a shame we have to sacrifice a mod slot to make the 4th ability more usable. It isn't adding damage or anything, just base functionality of the ability.

Add the augment mod's functionality to base Pulverise.

Would be a cool / funny feature to add a Slipstream ability to Pulverise. While in ball form, if Grendel is rolling behind an ally with a faster movement speed, Grendel will speed up to match their movement speed.

 

Original post

Spoiler

 

Original post on Reddit

Revised and posting here for more eyes.

Goals

I have 3 goals for my Grendel suggestions: energy consumption, making Grendel less dependent on eating enemies, and easier buff management.

Playstyle

Personally, I don't like Grendel keeping enemies in his belly for extended periods of time because it prevents anyone from killing them thus slowing the mission down. You can play however you want solo, but my suggestions are to make Grendel more group friendly. Also in a group, you can't guarantee that you will eat enemies so I would like Grendel's abilities to be less dependent on eating enemies.

Passive

Credit to ProbablyNotLoki. His suggestion is to make his passive armour buff last for some time after removing enemies from Grendel's belly.

Secondary resource

I would suggest implementing a secondary resource for Grendel. I call it Gastric juices. Gastric juices is generated by Nourish and a Feast (more on this later). Gastric juices are spent by keeping enemies in Grendel's belly and by casting Nourish and Regurgitate with no enemies in Grendel's belly. The goal here is to relegate some of Grendel's energy consumption to a secondary resource, give Grendel a way to generate that resource, as well as making Nourish and Regurgitate less dependent on having enemies in Grendel's belly.

Feast

The upkeep cost of keeping enemies in Grendel's belly is taken from Gastric juices instead. Enemies in his belly will immediately be inflicted with a static percent of armour reduction which can be increased with Ability Strength. I would also suggest an augment mod (or built in) to give Feast the option to hold while there are no enemies in Grendel's belly to consume some energy to generate Gastric juices. Energy cost reduced and Gastric juices gained increased by increasing Ability Efficiency. I would also like Grendel to slap his belly by doing this because he has a big belly.

Nourish

Casting any Nourish ability will generate Gastric juices. Gastric juices gained is increased by increasing Ability Efficiency. Able to cast any Nourish ability with no enemies in Grendel's belly but will cost Gastric juices instead of energy. Gastric juice cost is reduced by increasing Energy Efficiency.

Nourished Armour

I would like it to increase ally armour and increased self and ally's incoming healing. I'm considering making Nourished Armour also apply a small heal-over-time, but I'm not sure. To clarify, the armour buff only applies to all friendly units except Grendel himself but I'm willing to consider having Grendel gain the buff as well.

Regurgitate

I would like to give Regurgitate the ability to be cast with no enemies in Grendel's belly but will cost Gastric juices. Also, I would like Regurgitate to apply armour reduction equal to Feast's armour reduction on all enemies hit by Regurgitate. This would give Regurgitate utility outside of just damage and allows Grendel more ways to apply armour reduction on enemies.

No suggestions for Pulverise. I find it a little difficult to control.

 

I'm looking forward to feedback and I hope I had help to improve Grendel.

 

 

[SECURATYYY]

The Catapult augment should be part of the base ability. Hold LMB to boost in a direction.

 

The augment is essentially mandatory. It is a shame we have to sacrifice a mod slot to make the 4th ability more usable. It isn't adding damage or anything, just base functionality of the ability.

[superhbman]

Yea, I also think making Catapult built-in to Pulverise would be good.

Revision 2

On a second thought, maybe making Gastric juice generation scale with Ability Strength might be better. Efficiency for energy and Strength for Gastric juices.

No Gastric juices version

I've thought of implementing my suggestions without Gastric juices as an alternative, though I don't like it because it involves using Nourish to generate energy directly. Anyway:

First, no Feast augment mod.

Casting any Nourish ability with at least 1 enemy in Grendel's belly will generate energy instead of costing energy. Casting any Nourish with no enemies in Grendel's belly will cost energy.

Casting Regurgitate with no enemies in Grendel's belly will cost energy. I think 25 should be reasonable.

Pulverise

New passive, Slipstream. While in ball form, if Grendel runs behind an ally with a faster movement speed, Grendel will speed up to match their movement speed. This way, he can keep up with his good friend Gauss. Not sure how to implement this in game though,

[Alpheus]

On 2021-04-24 at 8:26 AM, superhbman said:

Playstyle

Personally, I don't like Grendel keeping enemies in his belly for extended periods of time because it prevents anyone from killing them thus slowing the mission down. You can play however you want solo, but my suggestions are to make Grendel more group friendly. Also in a group, you can't guarantee that you will eat enemies so I would like Grendel's abilities to be less dependent on eating enemies.

It depends on the mission. When you eat enemies it removes them from the spawn cap, so in something like a survival mission you can keep ingesting things to let more things spawn and end up with a massive stockpile of enemies in one location after you spit them out. I do this all the time in SP Selkie, and in infested missions I can sometimes have 60 things in my stomach at once.

On 2021-04-24 at 8:26 AM, superhbman said:

Secondary resource

I would suggest implementing a secondary resource for Grendel. I call it Gastric juices. Gastric juices is generated by Nourish and a Feast (more on this later). Gastric juices are spent by keeping enemies in Grendel's belly and by casting Nourish and Regurgitate with no enemies in Grendel's belly. The goal here is to relegate some of Grendel's energy consumption to a secondary resource, give Grendel a way to generate that resource, as well as making Nourish and Regurgitate less dependent on having enemies in Grendel's belly.

The reliance on enemies being alive to use any of your other abilities has been a bother, but I don't think the solution is with a secondary resource. This sounds like too much micro-management. I was always of the opinion that Feast should also absorb frontal gunfire while it's channeling, and the absorbed damage is released when vomiting or using Regurgitate (with or without an enemy). Nourish should scale with the number of enemies in your gut so it at least has some functionality without enemies, but still remain beneficial to use it when full.

I don't have any energy problems on Grendel, but the ramping cost should definitely be removed and replaced with a flat energy/sec cost. Even holding 2 things in your belly for too long will eventually start causing your energy to drain faster than you can ever hope to replenish it. You'd think that for a frame meant to be eating things we'd be given the ability hold down our food to actually process it to completion. If we overeat then sure we should be punished for it with a higher drain, but to me the ramping cost just seems like a balance excuse to not allow the removal of enemies from the fight for long durations, even though a bunch of other frames can already do basically the same thing.

Pulverize without the augment just isn't fun to use, and the augment is so bare-bones that it reads like they wanted to address criticism to the ability without actually modifying it in any meaningful way. "Look, we solved the mobility problem! It's even an exilus mod so you don't have to take out any important mods for it!" Nourish is apparently supposed to give a speed boost but it must be miniscule because I never notice it. Catapult desperately needs to be a base function. An actually useful augment would be one that gives him a slight pull at maximum size (you're so massive you have your own gravity well) or one that lets the ability scale up to 20 enemies in your gut instead of 10.

[superhbman]

28 minutes ago, Alpheus said:

It depends on the mission. When you eat enemies it removes them from the spawn cap, so in something like a survival mission you can keep ingesting things to let more things spawn and end up with a massive stockpile of enemies in one location after you spit them out. I do this all the time in SP Selkie, and in infested missions I can sometimes have 60 things in my stomach at once.

I did say that, but I also designed Grendel to still be able to do it. With my changes, you will need to keep casting Nourish to generate Gastric juices to keep the enemies in Grendel's belly.

 

30 minutes ago, Alpheus said:

The reliance on enemies being alive to use any of your other abilities has been a bother, but I don't think the solution is with a secondary resource. This sounds like too much micro-management.

My secondary goal here is to give Grendel the ability to cast Nourish buffs and my suggested Regurgitate armour shred without needing to eat enemies.

 

33 minutes ago, Alpheus said:

I don't have any energy problems on Grendel, but the ramping cost should definitely be removed and replaced with a flat energy/sec cost.

Yea, I'd like DE's explanation on this. My interpretation is that increasing the maintenance cost seems to be dissuading Grendel from keeping enemies in his belly for too long, yet his passive needs Grendel to keep enemies in his belly for the armour buff. It's a contradictory design element and one of these needs changing.

As for energy, what gear do you need to keep up with Grendel's energy consumption? I want to redesign Grendel to be more playable with less energy regen gear.

[Alpheus]

7 minutes ago, superhbman said:

My secondary goal here is to give Grendel the ability to cast Nourish buffs and my suggested Regurgitate armour shred without needing to eat enemies.

That's why I suggested having Nourish's effects scale with the number of enemies rather than being unusable without them, and adding bullet absorption to Feast to be used with Regurgitate. Or convert absorbed bullets into corrosive acid instead of shooting the bullets back out, idk.

 

11 minutes ago, superhbman said:

As for energy, what gear do you need to keep up with Grendel's energy consumption? I want to redesign Grendel to be more playable with less energy regen gear.

Energize and HA is enough when the levels get high enough. His main problem is it's paradoxically harder to maintain him in lower level content. Things just don't do enough damage to keep your energy levels up, or most things are too weak to keep in your stomach for more than a few seconds, and by extension remove your ability to use his skills. Both things are immediately solved by changing his abilities to flat energy drain, so you don't feel obligated to spit out the one Bombard surviving in your gut and single-handedly destroying your energy pool because you ate it 3 minutes ago.

[superhbman]

4 minutes ago, Alpheus said:

That's why I suggested having Nourish's effects scale with the number of enemies rather than being unusable without them, and adding bullet absorption to Feast to be used with Regurgitate. Or convert absorbed bullets into corrosive acid instead of shooting the bullets back out, idk.

Scale how exactly? Also, having Feast eat bullets would mean that it's unusable against Infested and most Sentients. I'd rather have Grendel use resources that he can control like energy and Gastric juices rather than be enemy-dependent.

 

8 minutes ago, Alpheus said:

Energize and HA is enough when the levels get high enough. His main problem is it's paradoxically harder to maintain him in lower level content. Things just don't do enough damage to keep your energy levels up, or most things are too weak to keep in your stomach for more than a few seconds, and by extension remove your ability to use his skills. Both things are immediately solved by changing his abilities to flat energy drain, so you don't feel obligated to spit out the one Bombard surviving in your gut and single-handedly destroying your energy pool because you ate it 3 minutes ago.

What do you mean by too weak to keep in Grendel's stomach? For me, the problem is Nourish and spitting enemies out deals too much damage to low level enemies.

[Alpheus]

16 hours ago, superhbman said:

What do you mean by too weak to keep in Grendel's stomach? For me, the problem is Nourish and spitting enemies out deals too much damage to low level enemies.

That's what I'm talking about. When you're contending with your squadmates for food it's hard to accumulate 10 things for Pulverize because things die inside you before you get the chance to eat more.

[bnuy]

Good post addressing Grendel's issues, I just have a few bits to add.

Reducing energy cost is great, and while having secondary resources is fine and dandy, I don't think we need to fit one into Grendel's kit here. Simply lower the energy cost to be flat per unit and not scale in the ridiculous way it currently does. Static value per enemy, linear scaling per enemy, no more energy cost over time.

The armour strip on Feast, armour is a separate issue entirely, DE needs to address the armour mechanic as a whole rather than slap arbitrary armour removal onto every new frame. So for this part I disagree, could be looked into after armour receives some tweaks (like the removal of scaling) but I think in that case the way it currently removes a percent per second would be quite fine and balanced.

• Nourish: Now gives a small percentage of around 3% of it's healing as a regenerative effect for X seconds. (Heal 100 on cast, 3 health per second for X seconds)
  • Armour: now gives a small additive boost to armour.

 

[superhbman]

6 hours ago, Alpheus said:

That's what I'm talking about. When you're contending with your squadmates for food it's hard to accumulate 10 things for Pulverize because things die inside you before you get the chance to eat more.

My solution here is to make Grendel less dependent on enemies to use his abilities. Or if you really want to eat enemies before team mates kill them, maybe consider stacking ability range and make Feast eat through walls or something I guess.

 

5 hours ago, Maggy said:

Reducing energy cost is great, and while having secondary resources is fine and dandy, I don't think we need to fit one into Grendel's kit here.

I added a Gastric juice-less suggestion 2 posts below the thread starter. I would like to hear your feedback on that if you don't like Gastric juices.

 

5 hours ago, Maggy said:

The armour strip on Feast, armour is a separate issue entirely, DE needs to address the armour mechanic as a whole rather than slap arbitrary armour removal onto every new frame. So for this part I disagree, could be looked into after armour receives some tweaks (like the removal of scaling) but I think in that case the way it currently removes a percent per second would be quite fine and balanced.

If or when DE decides to revamp armour, then I will look back at my Grendel suggestions. Other than that, I'd prefer if armour reduction be instant instead of over time because I want to kill the enemies quickly. Making armour reduction over time would mean that Grendel will have to keep enemies in his belly for a period of time to remove most or all of their armour first in order to maximum damage to them, thus slowing down the kill speed and mission.

 

5 hours ago, Maggy said:

• Nourish: Now gives a small percentage of around 3% of it's healing as a regenerative effect for X seconds. (Heal 100 on cast, 3 health per second for X seconds)
  • Armour: now gives a small additive boost to armour.

Would this also apply to all friendly targets? Personally I'd like more people's input on this though. I'm okay either way.

[bnuy]

1 hour ago, superhbman said:

snip

Making him less reliant on having enemies, okay, right, that makes sense! I actually like this, probably just make it have an energy cost then when no enemy is in belly?

Juiceless post... lemme see... Oh, that also mentions the energy cost when no enemies inside, perfect! Love it love it love it.

Armour rework, absolutely fair, until it's reworked it would still pose a significant issue so it makes sense for the strip to apply instantly.

Yes, the buffs would also apply to allies.

[superhbman]

Revision 3. Valuable responses plus time to think equals update. Keeping Revision 2 for archive purposes in case anyone is interested in Gastric juices as a secondary resource.

[SECURATYYY]

Oh, and remove the requirement for his 4th that you have to have an enemy in your tummy to turn it on. It's a great mobility tool, and if that hot single saryn in your local area nuked them all, you can't become the ball.

 

Also, Feast does not prevent new waves from spawning or anything. They removed that a long time ago. In fact, you can speed up defense missions by eating the last 20 enemies or whatnot. When he eats them they're considered 'dead', and the next wave will start.

[superhbman]

16 hours ago, SECURATYYY said:

Oh, and remove the requirement for his 4th that you have to have an enemy in your tummy to turn it on. It's a great mobility tool, and if that hot single saryn in your local area nuked them all, you can't become the ball.

Oh that's nice. My suggestion, make Pulverise's damage values with no enemies in Grendel's belly either as though he has 1 enemy in his belly or half that value or something I guess.

 

----

To clarify, Nourished Armor would be a percentage multiplier of base armour. Making it give static armour would be too strong imo.

Also, thought of a Feast augment. Hold Feast with no enemies in Grendel's belly to refund a percentage of energy drained from keeping enemies in Grendel's belly up to the last few second until Grendel empties his belly. Percentage is either 100% or static percent increased by Ability Efficiency and duration increased by Ability Duration. Grendel slaps his belly while casting.

[DrivaMain]

I don’t like passives to be rely on 1 ability to function. Grendel needs a new passive without relying on one ability to be able to function correctly. I suggest this instead :

Due to his gluttonous nature, Energy Orbs, Ammo, and Health Orbs worth double the amount when picked up by Grendel.

[SECURATYYY]

We should be able to turn into the ball with no enemies in our gut. It can be a great mobility tool, but sometimes the enemies are already dead or cannot be found. (Catching up to the team in exterminate, capture, etc).

 

Also, could we make his 4th more nimble? I get the whole "inertia" and "mass" thing, but this is a fast paced game. Getting stuck on stairs isn't fun. Having your momentum stopped by the smallest of bumps in the tileset isn't fun. Ricocheting off some infested plant root, and taking 5 seconds to get going again isn't fun. If he was a highly mobile, speedy ball of death it would be so much more fun.

 

Right now if you're rolling in one direction, and want to go the opposite way, it takes way too long. Just more initial boost to get moving, and easier to stop.

[superhbman]

Thought of new ideas and also want to polish up some old ones. I hope you guys don't mind.

 

On 2021-05-04 at 8:10 PM, DrivaMain said:

I don’t like passives to be rely on 1 ability to function. Grendel needs a new passive without relying on one ability to be able to function correctly. I suggest this instead :

Due to his gluttonous nature, Energy Orbs, Ammo, and Health Orbs worth double the amount when picked up by Grendel.

If we use this, I've thought of a new way for Grendel to be tanky. Give him an effect like Stagger from Brewmaster Monks in World of Warcraft. All damage taken by Grendel will instead be turned into a 10 second DoT on him. I'm thinking of making Nourished Armour apply this effect on Grendel. Then let's say casting Regurgitate will cancel that DoT and the damage be added into Regurgitate's damage.

Also, Regurgitate can now be cast in Pulverise ball form which will be dealt in an AoE around Grendel. I'm not sure about the AoE size though.

 

On 2021-05-11 at 6:01 PM, SECURATYYY said:

We should be able to turn into the ball with no enemies in our gut. It can be a great mobility tool, but sometimes the enemies are already dead or cannot be found. (Catching up to the team in exterminate, capture, etc).

 

Also, could we make his 4th more nimble? I get the whole "inertia" and "mass" thing, but this is a fast paced game. Getting stuck on stairs isn't fun. Having your momentum stopped by the smallest of bumps in the tileset isn't fun. Ricocheting off some infested plant root, and taking 5 seconds to get going again isn't fun. If he was a highly mobile, speedy ball of death it would be so much more fun.

 

Right now if you're rolling in one direction, and want to go the opposite way, it takes way too long. Just more initial boost to get moving, and easier to stop.

Yea I forgot about Pulverise ball form. Please add that too.