Hydroid Ideas

[Denosaurus813]

Hi, so first of all let me just say, I am different from most of you in that I like Undertow and hate Tentacle Swarm.

However, in my attempts to do things with Hydroid I have found that Undertow is probably the worst ability to attempt to work with other abilities. Breach Surge? Nope. Calm & Frenzy? Nope. And the list goes on.

So ideas!

PASSIVE

First of all his passive is just so awkward to attempt to make do anything and is just not very good. It also just doesn’t mesh with practically any of his abilities.

So! What if we gave him the Nidus treatment? His passive could be a gauge displaying the level of Hydroid’s storm. Enemies affected by his abilities would grow this level (don’t entirely have how exactly yet)

Now…

TEMPEST BARRAGE

Currently this ability is about as unreliable as it gets, with practically it’s only use being undertow doing a little better damage. 

With the new passive, this ability is the one that is going to see the greatest improvement.
First of all, just general improvements to the targeting of this ability, instead of it’s seemingly random barrage.

The new version of this ability when you first cast it would appear similar to it’s current form (perhaps weaker), however, as the ability hits enemies, it increases the level of the storm. This would mean exponentially increasing projectile count and effective radius, increased “splash” radius on hit, and eventually an evolution of the ability into a thunderstorm. 
When the storm has become a thunderstorm, some of the projectiles will be replaced with lightning strikes. These will do greatly increased damage, proc electricity on enemies, and temporarily light fires if hitting the ground. (To make it less random you can potentially cast the ability in some way to just summon a lightning strike when at thunderstorm level)

Augment for this ability could make enemies lose the will to fight and run to take shelter.

TIDAL SURGE + UNDERTOW

As you could guess by the title, I feel these abilities should be put together. It could be as simple as tap to cast tidal surge, hold for undertow.

Other than that, these abilities function similar at base, with tidal surge being updated to control like Revenant’s reave or Wukong’s cloud walker. (I feel like that’s just obvious at this point) Undertow should STOP CLEARING STATUS EFFECTS ON AFFECTED ENEMIES and instead of scaling in damage per second, scale in how deep the enemies sink in Undertow. This is effectively the same thing, with pressure buildup meaning an increase in damage but also it means that more heavily armored/shielded targets will actually die faster than less armored/shielded targets. (Have damage scale based on armor/shield values while bypassing it entirely)

As the gauge levels up, tidal surge becomes a stronger and larger wave, pushing enemies deeper into undertow if active, moving faster and farther, and increasing in length and width. (Potentially could also stop taking hydroid with the wave at higher storm levels to avoid the stupidity of having to move like 50m every time you cast the ability) Undertow would increase in water pressure (damage and further damage scaling with armor and shields), and radius. (cap this so you can’t just cover an entire room and afk please) At higher gauge levels, undertow could evolve into a whirlpool, pulling enemies into the center of the pool, and accelerating the enemies’ descent.

Finally, lightning strikes hitting undertow are dispersed through out undertow, hitting enemies with increased damage, decreasing based on how deep the enemy is. If undertow has reached the whirlpool stage, lightning will be directed to the center, further heightening it’s damage, as it will be directly hitting all enemies congregated there.

NEW ABILITY - DEPTH CHARGE

So my ideas for this ability are actually almost entirely in synergy, and not on the ability’s function alone. Could use ideas on what exactly it could do normally. (Potentially just a cannon shot? Idk) 

What I do know, however, is what this ability does when you cast it with undertow active. Essentially, it creates an explosive entity that sinks into undertow like an enemy would. While deployed, they accumulate damage dealt to them, which can then be dealt out when detonated by holding to cast the ability. There should probably be a low cap on the amount of depth charges allowed in undertow?

Detonating a charge while underwater will cause turbulence, adding to the storm level gauge. (Again, don’t exactly know based on what parameters)
If undertow is uncasted, the depth charges, like all corpses and living enemies, will be brought to the surface. While surfaced, depth charges will no longer accumulate damage, but can be detonated to deal all accumulated damage in a radius.

One more synergy for these things is with tidal surge. Again while surfaced, charges can be launched when tidal surge moves through them. When launched, they’ll explode on impact instead of having to separately detonating them after launch. If undertow is active, the charges are thrown back into the depths, further accumulating more damage. 

Like enemies, charges are pulled toward the center if in a whirlpool, and if lightning strikes them, they will detonate.

TENTACLE SWARM

This ability currently is my absolute least favorite of Hydroid’s current abilities. Tentacles are currently a quite annoying cc for the rest of the squad and practically it’s only purpose is Pilfering Swarm. (woooo an augment incentivizing just staying in one area so you can get more loot wooooooooo!) BORING

So anyway, proposed changes:

 1. Making the tentacles actually have a useful function!
Tentacles will, rather than flail around and do tiny amounts of damage, constrict and restrain enemies, dragging them towards the center of where the ability was cast. 

2. Any actual synergy with other abilities! 

While undertow is active (god I’m a broken record at this point) or if undertow is cast while this is active, the tentacles will pull enemies down into the depths, greatly accelerating their descent. 
 
In addition, tentacles will grab depth charges (prioritizing surfaced charges) and throw them into enemies, detonating on impact. They can also embed the charges into enemies grouped by the tentacles and crush them to detonate there.

3. An actually interesting augment! 
The center of the swarm is veiled in black ink that blinds and disorients enemies, allowing for stealth kills. In addition, enemies can see neither inside nor outside of the ink, so tenno can use it as a blindspot in order to not be detected.

Almost forgot to mention, I wanted to make this start off as a really expensive ability on energy that declines in cost the higher level your gauge is. In exchange, the ability doesn’t ever change with the gauge, it just is powerful.(wanted to embrace a god damn kraken instead of some random tentacles) Don’t really know how to make it powerful without making it just deal a lot of damage, but all of the other abilities here have a focus on damage and I wanted this to be something different. Any ideas here would be appreciated.

and I don’t know if you really wanted to you can give him some kind of plundering  ability bc pirate gets more loot just please make it not stupid.

So yeah! That’s everything I had for this really upsetting warframe that I really want to like but hate the current state of. I feel like all of this together is probably way too much of an ask this was mostly just proposing everything I could think of to make the frame more interesting, feel better to play and also be better.

[Drasiel]

I can agree with Undertow and Tidal surge being put into one ability but tempest barrage and tentacles actually work really well when you do need CC. The only problem I've ever found with those two is the delay between casting them and their effects taking place, especially if you want to charge them up. Tempest barrage is the worst of offender of this weird casting lag. By the time tempest barrage starts to rain down on enemies they've often moved out of it's initial casting location. Tentacles could be improved for teammates just by giving them the zephyr tornado treatment: shoot the tentacles to damage the enemies held by them.

[Denosaurus813]

1 hour ago, Drasiel said:

I can agree with Undertow and Tidal surge being put into one ability but tempest barrage and tentacles actually work really well when you do need CC.

so i understand that tempest barrage can technically function as cc, but i think this is kinda just flat wrong in most cases? tempest barrage can usually stagger some of the people in it's radius. tentacle swarm could actually be fiiiine if it didn't flail it's #*!%ing targets around be about as annoying to the rest of the squad as a limbo, considering you basically can't shoot the targets. (this is a game where we have S#&$ like chaos, radial disarm, bastille, vortex, ensnare, larva, petrify, the list goes ON with better cc abilities)

1 hour ago, Drasiel said:

 Tentacles could be improved for teammates just by giving them the zephyr tornado treatment: shoot the tentacles to damage the enemies held by them.

this is kinda just flat uninteresting and i really don't feel like it fixes my problems with the ability. you can now hit the enemies semi-reliably. ok. it's fine on zephyr's tornadoes bc tornadoes can each have a decent amount enemies caught up in them (also funnel clouds makes the damage potential insane), this is shoot every single tentacle (and you're not getting headshots)

tidal surge is probably one of his better abilities right now as it is the best at serving it's purpose: it moves.

[kapn655321]

I'd like to share something here for thoughts to chew on while thinking of Hydroid updates.

A while back I wrote up an extensive rework, and revised it with community feedback. It's... long and convoluted, with a lot of nested details and shift states.. but among that were many excellent ideas. If you feel like poking around through it for ideas, help yourself to any you find interesting.

 

[Drasiel]

8 hours ago, Denosaurus813 said:

so i understand that tempest barrage can technically function as cc, but i think this is kinda just flat wrong in most cases? tempest barrage can usually stagger some of the people in it's radius. tentacle swarm could actually be fiiiine if it didn't flail it's #*!%ing targets around be about as annoying to the rest of the squad as a limbo, considering you basically can't shoot the targets. (this is a game where we have S#&$ like chaos, radial disarm, bastille, vortex, ensnare, larva, petrify, the list goes ON with better cc abilities)

this is kinda just flat uninteresting and i really don't feel like it fixes my problems with the ability. you can now hit the enemies semi-reliably. ok. it's fine on zephyr's tornadoes bc tornadoes can each have a decent amount enemies caught up in them (also funnel clouds makes the damage potential insane), this is shoot every single tentacle (and you're not getting headshots)

tidal surge is probably one of his better abilities right now as it is the best at serving it's purpose: it moves.

Tidal surge is awful, it gets stuck on corners and small edges constantly, it's range is tied to duration, and you can't even steer it in the slight way you can steer gauss.

Tempest barrage doesn't "technically" function as cc it functions as cc, it can stagger and full knockdown enemies it hits and it's one of only a handful of warframe powers that can remove nullifier bubbles.

The intent with tentacle swarm was not that you shoot one tentacle and only hurt what it's grabbed but you shoot one tentacle and it hits everything every tentacle has grabbed. Not getting headshots doesn't really come into it, most of the CC powers prevent you from getting headshots or make it much harder to do so anyways.

[Grav_Starstrider]

I love several of your thoughts @Denosaurus813, though I'm not sure about adding more "meters" or "ability currencies" in the way that Ember, Gauss, and Baruuk do. It's kinda problematic, imo, that DE is now operating with the expectation of infinite energy for each frame, so that people micromanage a secondary meter rather than just rationing energy that should do approximately the same thing every time.

In general though, I think the SIMPLEST solution is to upgrade the ability nearly everyone feels is the most lackluster. I definitely feel like Hydroid's Undertow needs some major tweaking in order for it to be a fun/engaging ability to play with, because right now, it's either an AFK button (invincibility with low energy drain) that other players will shoot or run right over in order to kill enemies faster than you are, or it's exhaustively energy-inefficient, as none of his kit innately restores energy, and as a channeled ability, Undertow blocks all potential sources of energy recovery/regen, and none of your other abilities are cheaper while in this form (unlike Ash's Bladestorm being halved during ANY form of invisibility, including his Smoke Bomb, or Zephyr's abilities being cheaper when cast in midair). It's neither fun nor effective for gameplay, unfortunately, between either sit-and-wait or burn-your-energy-like-crazy being the only options.

There's a few ways to I can see myself (or have seen y'all think of)  to improve ALL of his abilities, I genuinely hope DE listens to at least one of us and gives at least one of his abilities, ideally his poor Undertow, at least a bit of a buff, but other kit improvements are welcome as well.

To summarize: Not dissimilar to @kapn655321 proposed "wet" resource/energy alternative, simply have Puddles made by Hydroid's abilities (and occasional ground-slams) slightly buff his abilities effectiveness when cast from, and when cast upon enemies standing on them. Give Hydroid back some Tenno "Ninja" theming with small tuneups to his kit to allow greater tactical ability usage and stealth elimination options.

Passive

Spoiler

Instead of meters or other "ability currency" like Ember, Gauss, Baruuk, etc utilize, simply have Hydroid's various abilities leave wet spots/Puddles behind that increase power strength, duration, range, and efficiency by 10% (channeled abilities such as Undertow should have its drain paused and movement speed buffed), enough to appreciate, but not obsess over. Have Puddles have an even greater chance of tentacle spawns on slam attacks, that last longer and do more damage. Have enemies standing in wet areas simply take more damage from Tempest Barrage, Tidal Surge, and Tentacle Swarm. Hydroid should also automatically shift into Undertow rather than resetting when making contact with deep water, which should also function as a Puddle. Any existing Puddles should have their duration reset and range/area slightly expanded if contacted by one of Hydroid's abilities.

Tempest Barrage

Spoiler

I do like @kapn655321's alternate Tempest Barrage ability, however I'd suggest that the Silence-like "Rainstorm" functionality should only replace the current hold-cast, as currently it seems time-ineffective and cost-ineffective to hold-cast Hydroid's current Tempest Barrage, or alternatively is the stage beyond the hold-cast, triggered by continuing to hold and "build the storm", justifying a larger tactical-oriented AoE effect with greater range and duration, but with no direct damage.
Thematically/lorewise, by all rights, in any atmosphere or closed space, Acid Rain or chemically-polluted sprinkler systems are believable occurrences for enemies to be subjected to Corrosive procs from. This allows Hydroid the option to either play as he currently does with his combat barrage, or to bring more Stealth and Tactical options into Warframe. Have the Rainstorm refresh the duration of any existing puddles it touches, and over several seconds increase their range by 20%. To avoid stepping on Banshee's toes too badly (which the long cast time, no stagger/finisher-exposure, and greater cost already reduces), it would be appropriate to make the noise-cancelling less complete (like a 50-75% ranked Hush/Suppress mod) and make it only reduce the responsiveness of enemies, or visibility of, Hydroid's Tempest Barrage or Tidal Surge. Banshee potentially needs more work herself, so please don't consider her the basis for comparison.

Tidal Surge

Spoiler

I like @kapn655321's suggestion of allowing a hold-cast to send a wave out. Enemies can remain YEETED when used this way, but on a tap-cast I'd wish for Tidal Surge to be a mobility ability as usual, but ending with the wave swelling up, and crashing down with all of the enemies crashing onto the floor, to be killed by gun, blade or other abilities. I'd like the mobility to be shifted to function similarly to Gauss' Mach Rush or Lavos' Vial Rush, it's bizarre for a speedster to have more fluidity and flexibility than water.

Undertow

Spoiler

This should be Hydroid's ninja "stealth" ability, akin to Wukong's Cloudwalker, and have the energy drain per meter toned WAAAAY down, and the movement speed turned WAAAAY up. Allow him to him to quickly sneak by unnoticed unless he's using his other abilities in conjunction. Let enemies he's captured in his Undertow be dragged along with him, so that he can sneakily swoop through a group of enemies, and deposit them in a side room where he can execute them with other abilities or weapons. If he has used other abilities, have them leave wet spaces in the area where he moves even more quickly, cheaply, and extends the reach of his Undertow's enemy-collecting. Undertow should leave puddles behind. Possible modification to his augment would be to have all Puddles count as Undertow for the purpose of Curative Undertow.

Tentacle Swarm

Spoiler

Either improve the CC (as the quantity and spread of tentacles is pitiful for reliable CC) or damage (also pitiful) or both. And/or allow synergy with other offensive abilities (1 and 2), or adopt Zephyr's Tornado's logic, where shooting the stationary base of the tentacle propogates to the victim held in that tentacle, or all victims held in tentacles. We could also have tentacles less-constantly wave victims around in the air, but rather first grab (prioritizing Heavy, then Medium class units) and squeeze the enemy, swing into any nearby enemies to knock them over/down, then lift/wind up in the air, and smash/throw the victim into the ground or at a nearby foe, making a splash and leaving a Puddle, stunning them. Have the tentacle seek out a new upright victim, and repeat. Being able to grab bundles of extremely-clumped enemies would also be ideal. The tentacles (and the Kraken head itself) should leave Puddles behind after their departure.

If there's to be a more expensive hold-cast for Tentacle Swarm, that further-expands the range for tentacles to spawn, scale up the quantity of tentacles as well, so that it's increasing the range of CC/Damage, not diluting the reliability of it.

Several of these thoughts were altered or directly taken from or inspired by the mentioned users and other items in this thread, let me know if you have any thoughts!