Hydroid Alterations - Post Revisit

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

I love Hydroid, but he is far from perfect.

Implementing even half of these changes would be amazing, especially the changes to his third power which is my favorite. I've been begging for the option of using his other powers while it was active for a long time and would greatly improve his utility. 

Great post.

[Navarc]

14 hours ago, Azamagon said:

1) True, but imo, minimizing trolling possibilties is always good to have in mind (as long as the ability doesn't downright suffer from it). In this case, the trolling possibility wouldn't be particularly big, so I wouldn't think too much about it. More pointing it out that it COULD lead to unnecessary trolling possibilities (more so than now, at least).

2) First, about Undertow: Don't get me wrong here about the choking; It'd only be a DoT and slow (to help anti-trolling), nothing else (not literal choke-CC).

Second, the more important discussion: TB vs TS, in regards to which one should be the main damage dealer.

I wouldn't mind it all too much if TS became the main damage dealer. But in regards to ability+gameplay variety, I have a few reasons as to why I'd still recommend TB to be the main damagedealer:
---- 1) The "Kit Redundancy"-issue. TB is a #1 ability. These abilities tend to become forgotten for a lot of Warframes, and often near useless (or at least very situational), when your "widespread, easily applied ulti" does better damage and possibly also better CC. And very much so (especially with your suggestions), this would certainly be the case of TB vs TS. This becomes an even greater issue for Hydroid, since even an augmented TB wont help TS's damage all that much (since it deals mostly finisher damage).
---- 2) TB is much harder to get good use out of than TS (due to TB being random, while TS autospawns on enemies). Having TB as the damagedealer followed by having a kit which helps to increase the reliability of TB, means that TB won't be the only ability used either, since if it does a lot of damage, but has troubles hitting stuff, you're gonna have to use other abilities to kill with it. In contrast, due to how TS works with its autospawning (and even more so with suggested autoseeking after killing enemies), it would make TB feel almost entirely redundant as an ability.
---- 3) TB is imo a powerful-looking barrage of heavy and rapidly falling water drops, something that "seems" more weaponlike and destructive, and has quite a lot of oomph to it. TS feels more like the summoning of wild and cruel tentacles; Not necessarily weak in damage, but it gives more of a distraction / intimidation / CC-vibe, imo. Even more so if they actively seek out enemies (seriously, I'm liking that part of your ideas a lot, if it was combined with my "steadied CC" of it,  as I feel it would give him so much of that "evil Davy Jones"-pirate vibe).
---- 4) Similar to kit redundancy, but on another note: Imo, the "ultimate" should feel more like a panicbutton against big groups of enemies, a way to give breathing room to assess the situation a bit better. But if the panicbutton is not only CC, but also lots of damage, well, then why use anything other than that ability (possible also due to Power Efficiency's current state)? You'll just spam that + whatever survivability abilities you have (Surge and U-tow in Hydroid's case). Thus I feel that if TS becomes another one of those "powerful ultimates which totally trumps at least one your abilities (mostly the #1)", similar to Avalanche / World on Fire / Bladestorm, well, TB would also be one of those almost entirely neglected and highly situational #1 abilities.
If there was one thing DE did right with Oberon's rework, it was in regards to which ability got the role of the scaling damage, being his #1 ability. That while his ultimate remains as a good and easy-to-apply panicbutton. That way, both abilities see widespread useage

Now as for some of the UPSIDES of giving TS the scaling damage:
---- 1) Its energycost is higher, making it harder to spam. This is, unfortunately, almost entirely circumventable due to Power Efficiency, Energy Pads, Zenurik, EV Trinity etc. However, in the case of neither of those being used (rare as that may be), it would be harder to spam the ability, thus giving TB some added value (even if just a little).
---- 2) TS being both damage and CC could make way for an entirely new #1 ability (due to the redundancy), or at least having it heavily revamped. Something that helps him with something new? Surge is mobility + crowd gathering, Undertow is a "safe haven", Tentacle Swarm is damage and CC. Thus TB could become some kind of utility ability instead?
However, such big reworks are not very likely to happen, thus I think that seperating the main roles of damage vs CC between TS and TB seems like a wiser and easier choice (in whatever way that may be done).

So yeah, I'm generally way more for TB being the damagedealer here. Even if you still are firm on believing that you want TS to be the main damagedealing ability, I at least wanted to let you know why I personally prefer TB to be the ability getting the damagedealing role! :)

3) Oh, those are cool ideas too!
TB - Does it launch straight upwards and then fall down (like artillery?) or does it shoot straight out from the pool to the targetted point (like a "sideways barrage", akin to a ship's cannon bombardment, probably with some minor arcing still?). I would probably prefer the latter, since that would probably be the most functional + it would give the ability a true feeling of having had an interesting "modeshift" to it.
Surge - Nice! Then you have primary fire / TSwarm for pulling people to the pool, and Surge for pushing people from the pool. I like it! (Quick idea: If one only wants to pull enemies in a little bit with primary fire, how about a way to "cut" the tentacle off yourself, to stop the drag? Like, pushing the melee button stops the nearest tentacle's grip?)
TSwarm - Sounds good enough :)

4) Alright, sounds good!

5) I see your reasoning and can agreed with it.
I'm ok with that passive now since you said: "If there's nothing else to attack then the tentacle will attack the only enemy of course"
That was my only true concern, really (that it'd do nothing to a sole enemy).

6) Thanks! :)

 True, but imo, minimizing trolling possibilties is always good to have in mind (as long as the ability doesn't downright suffer from it). In this case, the trolling possibility wouldn't be particularly big, so I wouldn't think too much about it. More pointing it out that it COULD lead to unnecessary trolling possibilities (more so than now, at least).
Yeah I agree minimizing it when possible is good but if it's actually not that common just memorable when it does it feels wasteful. I understand the possibility but all in all I don't think it'll be an issue just as we're not 

2) First, about Undertow: Don't get me wrong here about the choking; It'd only be a DoT and slow (to help anti-trolling), nothing else (not literal choke-CC).
Second, the more important discussion: TB vs TS, in regards to which one should be the main damage dealer.
I wouldn't mind it all too much if TS became the main damage dealer. But in regards to ability+gameplay variety, I have a few reasons as to why I'd still recommend TB to be the main damagedealer:
---- 1) The "Kit Redundancy"-issue. TB is a #1 ability. These abilities tend to become forgotten for a lot of Warframes, and often near useless (or at least very situational), when your "widespread, easily applied ulti" does better damage and possibly also better CC. And very much so (especially with your suggestions), this would certainly be the case of TB vs TS. This becomes an even greater issue for Hydroid, since even an augmented TB wont help TS's damage all that much (since it deals mostly finisher damage).
---- 2) TB is much harder to get good use out of than TS (due to TB being random, while TS autospawns on enemies). Having TB as the damagedealer followed by having a kit which helps to increase the reliability of TB, means that TB won't be the only ability used either, since if it does a lot of damage, but has troubles hitting stuff, you're gonna have to use other abilities to kill with it. In contrast, due to how TS works with its autospawning (and even more so with suggested autoseeking after killing enemies), it would make TB feel almost entirely redundant as an ability.
---- 3) TB is imo a powerful-looking barrage of heavy and rapidly falling water drops, something that "seems" more weaponlike and destructive, and has quite a lot of oomph to it. TS feels more like the summoning of wild and cruel tentacles; Not necessarily weak in damage, but it gives more of a distraction / intimidation / CC-vibe, imo. Even more so if they actively seek out enemies (seriously, I'm liking that part of your ideas a lot, if it was combined with my "steadied CC" of it,  as I feel it would give him so much of that "evil Davy Jones"-pirate vibe).
---- 4) Similar to kit redundancy, but on another note: Imo, the "ultimate" should feel more like a panicbutton against big groups of enemies, a way to give breathing room to assess the situation a bit better. But if the panicbutton is not only CC, but also lots of damage, well, then why use anything other than that ability (possible also due to Power Efficiency's current state)? You'll just spam that + whatever survivability abilities you have (Surge and U-tow in Hydroid's case). Thus I feel that if TS becomes another one of those "powerful ultimates which totally trumps at least one your abilities (mostly the #1)", similar to Avalanche / World on Fire / Bladestorm, well, TB would also be one of those almost entirely neglected and highly situational #1 abilities.
If there was one thing DE did right with Oberon's rework, it was in regards to which ability got the role of the scaling damage, being his #1 ability. That while his ultimate remains as a good and easy-to-apply panicbutton. That way, both abilities see widespread useage
So yeah, I'm generally way more for TB being the damagedealer here. Even if you still are firm on believing that you want TS to be the main damagedealing ability, I at least wanted to let you know why I personally prefer TB to be the ability getting the damagedealing role! :)
I think you're right, it makes more sense for Tempest Barrage to be the main damage dealer instead of just small extra control to keep Hydroid from becoming a "4 to win" Warframe that while popular like Excal, Nova, Ash, Valkyr, Ember they just get really dull really fast and don't encourage varities in builds. I'll probably be removing scaling from tentacles and figuring something out for TB, even thematically Tentacles are chaos and threat but not outright destruction like a broadside would be. It does make far more sense.
Adding scaling to the tentacles was to further encourage non-duration and non-range builds, since splitting off to whatever branch you prefer actually works on Hydroid but yeah, Tentacles don't have to be the damage dealing tool for this purpose.

3) Oh, those are cool ideas too!
TB - Does it launch straight upwards and then fall down (like artillery?) or does it shoot straight out from the pool to the targetted point (like a "sideways barrage", akin to a ship's cannon bombardment, probably with some minor arcing still?). I would probably prefer the latter, since that would probably be the most functional + it would give the ability a true feeling of having had an interesting "modeshift" to it.
Surge - Nice! Then you have primary fire / TSwarm for pulling people to the pool, and Surge for pushing people from the pool. I like it! (Quick idea: If one only wants to pull enemies in a little bit with primary fire, how about a way to "cut" the tentacle off yourself, to stop the drag? Like, pushing the melee button stops the nearest tentacle's grip?)
TSwarm - Sounds good enough :)
I intended it to be like a sideways barrage, it gives a new position from which they can be fired so if the enemy are in a place where they cannot be hit by a normal barrage because thick cover above them, then you can still strike them from the side and make them rely on taking cover behind grounded objects.
And yeah for the tidal surge you'll be able to both keep enemies from getting too close to an objective or sink them to keep them there in place.

6) Thanks! :)
Thank you for adding discussion, ideas and input to the thread, man. A good amount of things are being improved in it now! We do have things we disagree on but overall we seem to want the same changes for Hydroid to improve.

[Azamagon]

7 hours ago, Navarchus said:

1) I think you're right, it makes more sense for Tempest Barrage to be the main damage dealer instead of just small extra control to keep Hydroid from becoming a "4 to win" Warframe that while popular like Excal, Nova, Ash, Valkyr, Ember they just get really dull really fast and don't encourage varities in builds. I'll probably be removing scaling from tentacles and figuring something out for TB, even thematically Tentacles are chaos and threat but not outright destruction like a broadside would be. It does make far more sense.
Adding scaling to the tentacles was to further encourage non-duration and non-range builds, since splitting off to whatever branch you prefer actually works on Hydroid but yeah, Tentacles don't have to be the damage dealing tool for this purpose.

2) I intended it to be like a sideways barrage, it gives a new position from which they can be fired so if the enemy are in a place where they cannot be hit by a normal barrage because thick cover above them, then you can still strike them from the side and make them rely on taking cover behind grounded objects.
And yeah for the tidal surge you'll be able to both keep enemies from getting too close to an objective or sink them to keep them there in place.

3) Thank you for adding discussion, ideas and input to the thread, man. A good amount of things are being improved in it now! We do have things we disagree on but overall we seem to want the same changes for Hydroid to improve.

1) I'm glad you understood my reasoning! I'm surprised I even convinced you to swap hah! :D Now I almost feel bad about it, heh (since you put a lot of effort into your ideas, and now I've made you change your mind). At least I'm glad you understood what I was trying to say :)

As a slight sidenote/offtopic (sort of): The Warframes you mention all suffer in some way similar to Hydroid:
* Excal - His #1 is strong, but not very practical (I preferred the old style: Dash straight forward through enemies. It just needed the damageboost). It's not all that necessary either, due to the nature of his #4, not in its current state at least. To boot, his #3 doesn't have too much use against highlevel enemies.
* Nova - Her #1 is entirely useless. It used to stagger enemies in damage 1.0 which gave it a nice CC-survivability niche for her. If it got that back, I bet it would be used a lot.
* Ash - His #1, #3 and #4 all overlap in regards to being damagedealing abilities, his #1 being by far the weakest of the bunch (i.e. almost entirely useless). #3 at least provides mobility and unmatchable single target damage, while his #4 gives him some breathing room and decent multitarget killing potential. But his #1... it has no additional utility. It needs something more to it.
* Valkyr - All her abilities provide something different for her, but Ripline is generally her weakest ability. At least it provides mobility (which is unfortunately made somewhat redundant with the Hysteria augment...).
* Ember - Imo, Fireball has such incredibly niched uses that I call it a useless ability. Her 3 other skills all have constant uses though.

That said, I don't want that kit redundancy issue to be a thing for ANY Warframe anymore, thus my insistance here for Hydroid to make sure ALL of his abilities each have a useful and distinct role.

2) Alright, sounds very cool and adaptable! I like that a lot! I'd be all for those suggestions, for sure.

3) Likewise, thanks for having such a calm and civil discussion!
Indeed, I just wanna help out here (well, to be frank, I wanna help ALL Warframes to be perfectly polished). And this felt like a great thread to help out with Hydroid's improvements, considering seeing how thorough and reasonable you are :)

 

Edited May 23, 2017 by Azamagon

[Navarc]

On 5/23/2017 at 4:33 PM, Azamagon said:

1) I'm glad you understood my reasoning! I'm surprised I even convinced you to swap hah! :D Now I almost feel bad about it, heh (since you put a lot of effort into your ideas, and now I've made you change your mind). At least I'm glad you understood what I was trying to say :)

As a slight sidenote/offtopic (sort of): The Warframes you mention all suffer in some way similar to Hydroid:
* Excal - His #1 is strong, but not very practical (I preferred the old style: Dash straight forward through enemies. It just needed the damageboost). It's not all that necessary either, due to the nature of his #4, not in its current state at least. To boot, his #3 doesn't have too much use against highlevel enemies.
* Nova - Her #1 is entirely useless. It used to stagger enemies in damage 1.0 which gave it a nice CC-survivability niche for her. If it got that back, I bet it would be used a lot.
* Ash - His #1, #3 and #4 all overlap in regards to being damagedealing abilities, his #1 being by far the weakest of the bunch (i.e. almost entirely useless). #3 at least provides mobility and unmatchable single target damage, while his #4 gives him some breathing room and decent multitarget killing potential. But his #1... it has no additional utility. It needs something more to it.
* Valkyr - All her abilities provide something different for her, but Ripline is generally her weakest ability. At least it provides mobility (which is unfortunately made somewhat redundant with the Hysteria augment...).
* Ember - Imo, Fireball has such incredibly niched uses that I call it a useless ability. Her 3 other skills all have constant uses though.

That said, I don't want that kit redundancy issue to be a thing for ANY Warframe anymore, thus my insistance here for Hydroid to make sure ALL of his abilities each have a useful and distinct role.

2) Alright, sounds very cool and adaptable! I like that a lot! I'd be all for those suggestions, for sure.

3) Likewise, thanks for having such a calm and civil discussion!
Indeed, I just wanna help out here (well, to be frank, I wanna help ALL Warframes to be perfectly polished). And this felt like a great thread to help out with Hydroid's improvements, considering seeing how thorough and reasonable you are :)

 

Now we just have to hope a dev takes a look in here, I think he's pretty close to being as good as he can be with a good combination of these changes listed.

[Navarc]

• Fixed (for real this time) interrupting Hydroid’s Tempest Barrage animation causing the FX to repeat.

Feels pre-emptive, especially with the one-handed cast being added from a previous patch. They're doing more QOL & more bugfixes for him like they're playtesting him more nowadays. Definitely more updates than he has received in years even if they're small. Here's to being hopeful of them considering an update now!

[Noabettiet]

On 5/26/2017 at 6:39 AM, Navarchus said:

• Fixed (for real this time) interrupting Hydroid’s Tempest Barrage animation causing the FX to repeat.

Feels pre-emptive, especially with the one-handed cast being added from a previous patch. They're doing more QOL & more bugfixes for him like they're playtesting him more nowadays. Definitely more updates than he has received in years even if they're small. Here's to being hopeful of them considering an update now!

It feels rather that DE is catching up to the veteran mind set.
There has been a substantial halt to new weapons and an increase in QOL and warframe reworks/ weapon buffs&nerfs.

Wouldn't be surprising to see an hydroid change down the line, but considering DE history in reworks, i think they won't follow the suggestion at all and if anything are likely to do something based on this and other suggestions to keep the professional developer forehead tag they've been cultivating.

Can't wait for both tho, i love hydroid as much as any of you guys. Any change, despite how weird, as long as it works and is fun, is fine by me.

[Navarc]

1 hour ago, Noabettiet said:

It feels rather that DE is catching up to the veteran mind set.
There has been a substantial halt to new weapons and an increase in QOL and warframe reworks/ weapon buffs&nerfs.

Wouldn't be surprising to see an hydroid change down the line, but considering DE history in reworks, i think they won't follow the suggestion at all and if anything are likely to do something based on this and other suggestions to keep the professional developer forehead tag they've been cultivating.

Can't wait for both tho, i love hydroid as much as any of you guys. Any change, despite how weird, as long as it works and is fun, is fine by me.

They did take the riot shield idea for Volt from the forums so I'm going to try to stay hopeful, although they didn't listen to ideas for Oberon.

[Grinmeister]

Hydroid was always one of those frames I just didn't have fun playing with. Especially when the laggy, waving tentacles would stop me from killing enemies and spread the loot everywhere. Not only that, but even when I used him myself he felt rather underwhelming. And this comes from the guy who loves Banshee.

 

Some of my favorite suggestions here are:

• Evasion. I used to play a lot of Payday 2, and while it got out of hand eventually, at first it was a very fun "high risk, high reward" system. I believe it could work in a similar fashion in WF.
• When incapacitated, casts 3 but doesn't deal damage with it?  A very fun idea, with some limited usage in perhaps higher level voids.
• I'm a big fan of the Water Pollution passive suggestion. It has some creative possibilities with certain mobs.

 

[Skaleek]

All good suggestions, no need for a new stat though, just increase hydroids EHP. He was meant to be a tank he deserves the stats for it. CC tanks can't be as fragile as Hydroid is. Also i really like the idea of tentacles grasping enemies instead of making enemies impossible to track and fire at.

For barrage, aside from your proposed changes i think its base duration should be doubled anyways. It's incredibly short as is. His puddle i think it would be cool if you could use his 2 to move around while you're a puddle. Some synergy in that. Other then that, yeah, +1.

Also I'm not sure how many of you know this, but his most powerful CC ability is his 1. Don't believe me? build max range max duration and spam it. Go ahead, give it a try.

Edited June 2, 2017 by Skaleek

[Navarc]

On 6/1/2017 at 2:47 PM, Grinmeister said:

Hydroid was always one of those frames I just didn't have fun playing with. Especially when the laggy, waving tentacles would stop me from killing enemies and spread the loot everywhere. Not only that, but even when I used him myself he felt rather underwhelming. And this comes from the guy who loves Banshee.

 

Some of my favorite suggestions here are:

• Evasion. I used to play a lot of Payday 2, and while it got out of hand eventually, at first it was a very fun "high risk, high reward" system. I believe it could work in a similar fashion in WF.
• When incapacitated, casts 3 but doesn't deal damage with it?  A very fun idea, with some limited usage in perhaps higher level voids.
• I'm a big fan of the Water Pollution passive suggestion. It has some creative possibilities with certain mobs.

 

Glad you agree!

On 6/2/2017 at 5:04 PM, Skaleek said:

All good suggestions, no need for a new stat though, just increase hydroids EHP. He was meant to be a tank he deserves the stats for it. CC tanks can't be as fragile as Hydroid is. Also i really like the idea of tentacles grasping enemies instead of making enemies impossible to track and fire at.

For barrage, aside from your proposed changes i think its base duration should be doubled anyways. It's incredibly short as is. His puddle i think it would be cool if you could use his 2 to move around while you're a puddle. Some synergy in that. Other then that, yeah, +1.

Also I'm not sure how many of you know this, but his most powerful CC ability is his 1. Don't believe me? build max range max duration and spam it. Go ahead, give it a try.

What stats do you see fit if evasion is no option? I've seen some say 100 armour is plenty, some say he should be at around the average of 125 - 175 but most people do agree that 65% just isn't enough, not with how the game has developed and his type of gameplay has only become weaker with the more difficult content released since his release.

Also I'd love to try some of the recommended builds in this thread but being limited to 3 loadouts no matter your mastery rank and no way to pay for more with plat does make it pretty hard having to take screenshots of previous builds and all that.

Edited June 4, 2017 by Navarchus

[T.Y.Huff]

Yeah, it actually makes more sense to change Hydroid's drop location to Uranus assassination.

[Navarc]

On 6/5/2017 at 8:18 AM, T.Y.Huff said:

Yeah, it actually makes more sense to change Hydroid's drop location to Uranus assassination.

I'm glad you agree, I think Equinox would really benefit from it as well since it would make her accessible earlier on & you'd just have to time when you're playing. RNG for 4 parts rather than 8 parts is a lot more inviting.

[DrNOS]

@Navarchus Some pretty cool ideas there, i just thought the other day of some Hydroid tinkering and then I found this thread :)).

I would also say some cosmetic/texture improvement/changes. I was thinking of a Hydroid prime too. Hydroid's face could have a dark gloomy visage where his tentacles comes out with glowing eyes that pierces through the dark gloominess, to give a chill and sudden revelation to anyone who sees him he comes from the deep deep sea. And can someone please give Hydroid a golden crown, he is master of the seas for crying out loud! Or is prime the master and normal Hydroid the prince or lacky?

Enough about visual changes/additions...  

I was thinking that there should be synergy bonuses between Hydroid and his abilities that will let him gain a nice flow on the battlefield as he brings along with him the wrath of the seas to the battleground

For tempest barrage, the ability could be changed to have a scroll thing like Vauban's mineflayer ability. In this case you can change it to activate tempest barrage so the x amount of waves comes down like it normally works, or you could switch it so it works like a toggle ability so the barrage follows your mouse pointer but not further than the max range set in the ability until you de activate the ability again. The will have a reduced energy cost but then consumes energy per sec. Also the ability should be influenced by the flight mod equipped by Hydroid, remember when I mentioned synergy bonuses between him and his abilities. For instance a toxic flight will give a chance for toxic proc, firewalker fire proc etc. Enemies should also be able to get knocked down due to the force of tempest barrage. I don't know if there is already something like that to this ability, but to add a % chance for knockdown and then a knockdown strength. Knockdown chance wont be affected by mods but knockdown strength will. Enemies who are able to resist the knockdown only have their accuracy reduced. 

For tidal surge, the ability should be changed to a toggle ability, you will then be able to use your direction keys to turn left and right but forward or backwards should let you change the shape of the tidal wave to make it higher and narrower or lower and wider. You would want to change your shape at times as solid obstacles in the way can hamper your speed, or your enemies might be spread out wide. It should also be influenced by mods affecting your sprint speed. Working this ability as a toggle might need the ability damage to be a bit nerved. This abilities will be more to control the flow of battle than direct destruction. So with tidal surge enemies will be tumbled and rag-dolled out of the wave so they can be tumbled again or be vulnerable as they try getting back up. If you have active shields on your warframe at the cast of this ability you will have a chance to zap with static discharge at enemies that just misses the wave. The zap strength/damage should be calculated from your available shield when casting of the ability took place.  Then when using this ability with tentacle swarm the energy cost per second should be lower due to a synergy effect between the 2 abilities; I'll get more to this when I am at that ability.

For Undertow, I had a similar thing in mind, tentacles should strike at targets within range and dragged in to be drowned. The last victim that gets dragged down should be dealt extra damage as the tentacle will hold onto him and crush him as it is being drowned.This ability should also be affected by your flight mod. Elemental flight mods should be able to proc/damage enemies being drowned and physical flight mods should add damage to what the tentacle can inflict when the tentacle grabs the enemy and crushes it underneath if its the only/last enemy. The damage type added will be the type depicted in the mod, piercing etc. 

For tentacle swarm, I also have similar thoughts. The tentacle swarm should act as a singular sea monster as the description says '' summon a creature from the deep to wreak havoc''. The tentacles shouldn't aimlessly wobble around but actually track targets in range. When it grabs a target it can do a number of things to it, like bashing it to the ground or obstacles for extra impact damage, or shake it hard for the tentacle to deal slash damage to it or if theres more tentacles than enemies it can double team 1 target for mega damage or fatalities. The tentacle swarm should also follow Hydroid around as a whole. When you summon tentacle swarm it should create extra effects by adding layers of water in the area, maybe like knee high so when Hydroid uses tidal surge Hydroid can do it with less energy costs. The tentacles should be able to soak up weapon fire if they get in the way of weapon fire. Thus its only fair for the tentacles to have each their own health pool. If destroyed they grow back again. Enemies can also get knocked down by the tentacles if they get in the way as the tentacles moves around on the battlefield.

Then an added thing to tentacle swarm, don't know if this might make it too OP, tentacle swarm should also be influenced by your flight mod. This effect only happens with the initial grab of the target enemy. Grab the enemy with a fiery explosion, or a shivering cold, or a piercing strike etc.

Well this is about all I have to say. Hydroid is pretty fun but he got left out and needs some TLC!

Have fun all of you fellow Tenno!

 

[Hammahness808]

I think a perfect change to Tempest Barrage would be to give it an ability option to toggle a specific area and lay it down (on it's timer/duration) in another area. A toggled Tempest Barrage would be a great area CC, by itself though - without the ability to switch between toggle and non-toggle, you wouldn't be able to lay it down in multiple areas. However, it would let you lockdown an area permanently, as long as you had energy. I'm not sure I've seen that suggested before.

[Navarc]

44 minutes ago, TGKazein said:

I think a perfect change to Tempest Barrage would be to give it an ability option to toggle a specific area and lay it down (on it's timer/duration) in another area. A toggled Tempest Barrage would be a great area CC, by itself though - without the ability to switch between toggle and non-toggle, you wouldn't be able to lay it down in multiple areas. However, it would let you lockdown an area permanently, as long as you had energy. I'm not sure I've seen that suggested before.

It hasn't, Tempest Barrage used to have doubled duration but you could only cast one. Due to it having to be lead and relying on RNG as much as it does, just having a single one wasn't enough to stop most enemies passing the area no matter your range and duration.

That's the reason why it has such a weirdly short duration but is recastable. DE couldn't think of a more suitable number and just halved it to take something from it if they were going to make it usable (multiple casts). The issue is also, how would a toggled version be cast? Holding 1 is occupied by the aiming. So would you like to see it as an augment? As an augment I think many would pass on it considering it takes a mod slot unless it does something else as well.
Turning it into a toggle rather than relying on duration is also a fairly big hit to duration builds.

 

5 hours ago, DrNOS said:

@Navarchus Some pretty cool ideas there, i just thought the other day of some Hydroid tinkering and then I found this thread :)).

I would also say some cosmetic/texture improvement/changes. I was thinking of a Hydroid prime too. Hydroid's face could have a dark gloomy visage where his tentacles comes out with glowing eyes that pierces through the dark gloominess, to give a chill and sudden revelation to anyone who sees him he comes from the deep deep sea. And can someone please give Hydroid a golden crown, he is master of the seas for crying out loud! Or is prime the master and normal Hydroid the prince or lacky?

Enough about visual changes/additions...  

I was thinking that there should be synergy bonuses between Hydroid and his abilities that will let him gain a nice flow on the battlefield as he brings along with him the wrath of the seas to the battleground

For tempest barrage, the ability could be changed to have a scroll thing like Vauban's mineflayer ability. In this case you can change it to activate tempest barrage so the x amount of waves comes down like it normally works, or you could switch it so it works like a toggle ability so the barrage follows your mouse pointer but not further than the max range set in the ability until you de activate the ability again. The will have a reduced energy cost but then consumes energy per sec. Also the ability should be influenced by the flight mod equipped by Hydroid, remember when I mentioned synergy bonuses between him and his abilities. For instance a toxic flight will give a chance for toxic proc, firewalker fire proc etc. Enemies should also be able to get knocked down due to the force of tempest barrage. I don't know if there is already something like that to this ability, but to add a % chance for knockdown and then a knockdown strength. Knockdown chance wont be affected by mods but knockdown strength will. Enemies who are able to resist the knockdown only have their accuracy reduced. 

For tidal surge, the ability should be changed to a toggle ability, you will then be able to use your direction keys to turn left and right but forward or backwards should let you change the shape of the tidal wave to make it higher and narrower or lower and wider. You would want to change your shape at times as solid obstacles in the way can hamper your speed, or your enemies might be spread out wide. It should also be influenced by mods affecting your sprint speed. Working this ability as a toggle might need the ability damage to be a bit nerved. This abilities will be more to control the flow of battle than direct destruction. So with tidal surge enemies will be tumbled and rag-dolled out of the wave so they can be tumbled again or be vulnerable as they try getting back up. If you have active shields on your warframe at the cast of this ability you will have a chance to zap with static discharge at enemies that just misses the wave. The zap strength/damage should be calculated from your available shield when casting of the ability took place.  Then when using this ability with tentacle swarm the energy cost per second should be lower due to a synergy effect between the 2 abilities; I'll get more to this when I am at that ability.

For Undertow, I had a similar thing in mind, tentacles should strike at targets within range and dragged in to be drowned. The last victim that gets dragged down should be dealt extra damage as the tentacle will hold onto him and crush him as it is being drowned.This ability should also be affected by your flight mod. Elemental flight mods should be able to proc/damage enemies being drowned and physical flight mods should add damage to what the tentacle can inflict when the tentacle grabs the enemy and crushes it underneath if its the only/last enemy. The damage type added will be the type depicted in the mod, piercing etc. 

For tentacle swarm, I also have similar thoughts. The tentacle swarm should act as a singular sea monster as the description says '' summon a creature from the deep to wreak havoc''. The tentacles shouldn't aimlessly wobble around but actually track targets in range. When it grabs a target it can do a number of things to it, like bashing it to the ground or obstacles for extra impact damage, or shake it hard for the tentacle to deal slash damage to it or if theres more tentacles than enemies it can double team 1 target for mega damage or fatalities. The tentacle swarm should also follow Hydroid around as a whole. When you summon tentacle swarm it should create extra effects by adding layers of water in the area, maybe like knee high so when Hydroid uses tidal surge Hydroid can do it with less energy costs. The tentacles should be able to soak up weapon fire if they get in the way of weapon fire. Thus its only fair for the tentacles to have each their own health pool. If destroyed they grow back again. Enemies can also get knocked down by the tentacles if they get in the way as the tentacles moves around on the battlefield.

Then an added thing to tentacle swarm, don't know if this might make it too OP, tentacle swarm should also be influenced by your flight mod. This effect only happens with the initial grab of the target enemy. Grab the enemy with a fiery explosion, or a shivering cold, or a piercing strike etc.

Well this is about all I have to say. Hydroid is pretty fun but he got left out and needs some TLC!

Have fun all of you fellow Tenno!

 

Again, holding 1 is occupied, so turning it into a swapping ability would remove some of its use by removing its aim, I feel like that's a pretty big nerf for a minority that want to toggle his 1. I think that now that we can cast 1 while moving, reloading and so on it's a lot more usable since you don't stand still in place getting shot at while casting it and that really does make a difference. If it's going to be a toggle, reducing the use of duration builds it's going to have to be an augment I think.

I think it's really interesting making an ability change depending on the shield but overall Tidal Surge is used as a movement or emergency CC ability, I think at the velocity it normally has it wouldn't make much difference in changing its size. Range mods already make it knock enemies into the air in quite a distance and if you were able to just increase its range a significant amount without using a range build I feel that kind of lowers build diversity. Making other casts cheaper for a short duration after having cast his 2 I think is really interesting though, since it is a very expensive "charge" ability. Atlas charge is on 1, Excaliburs charge is on 1, Rhinos charge is on 1 and so on, causing them to be really cheap in comparison to Hydroids charge which is on 2. Having an additional thing such as granting energy efficiency would be really interesting. Did you have any numbers in mind for duration and how significant it would be? I would probably write that into the list if you want it.

Dealing bonus damage to a single random enemy when casting 4 from his 3 feels like it's over complicating the already fairly good CC & invulnerability provided, provided DE would actually make it possible for us to cast his 4 from his 3. It's hard to find good use in it when so unreliable & if the tentacle ends up killing the target due to bonus damage that would reduce the damage the enemies in the pool could take which does feel counteractive, since his 3 is meant to scale up with the quantity of enemies you're sinking & capturing into the undertow. It sounds pretty cool but I really feel this damage bonus to a tentacle would lower the overall damage, and at that point is it even a damage bonus?
    Undertow (3) - Scaling damage:  Deals 100 Finisher damage for each enemy submerged. Scales with power strength
Having abilities scale with weapon mods has been suggested in a lot of Hydroid threads but in this one I've focused on build variety in making different aspect scale from different stats rather than making a single stat the indisputably best one, which is a theme with most warframes whose abilities scale with weaponry since the weapons mods can make up for the negatives. I wouldn't want that happening to Hydroid as well where it's only worth casting a single ability, so I've avoided adding that.
But also, what does elemental flight mod mean? Can you show me an example?

I don't think the tentacles should be following Hydroid but keep on re-emerging upon new enemies in the cast area, so you can lock an area down. I definitely like when abilities encourage melee combat but making it act like an aura kind of forces Hydroids with swarm builds into melee combat whether they enjoy it or not. I don't believe that's good.
As for multiple tentacles doing new animations and performing finishers, it has been suggested before but I'm not sure how DE would manage to pull it off. I mean, how would a finisher with 12 tentacles end up looking if there's just an enemy left? How would they even add new finisher animations to all models for tentacles? That's a LOT of animation work, DE won't even add new finishers for new stances only weapon categories. I don't think they'd be up for doing that for an ability.
And while sounding pretty brutal and chaotic his 4 isn't the main damage dealer if you're doing a power strength build with this Hydroid idea, it's his due to the scaling that has been added to it. Also I still don't know what flight mod means so I can't really say if I agree or disagree, could you show me one?

[DrNOS]

what I tried to explain with the toggle on his first ability is to just press 1 till you get to the deployment method, then holding 1 in for a second activates the selected deployment method. While active as a toggle the barrage follows your mouse cursor. I agree this makes you a little less mobile because to concentrate on where you want the barrage to go while running around doing your moves can only be tricky! You make a good to have the ability being used as a toggle be only made available through an augment mod. But with only 8 mod slots and 1 exiles it can be precious to start having cast methods to scroll through as well for some abilities.

for his second ability to make it toggle can help with energy efficiency, speed can increase knockback or damage or recovery time for enemies to get back up. Being able to control the direction can give it more use and make it more fun. But yes, the shape shouldn't need to change! I was think now, why not change into a tidal wave and have it drain energy per second no matter if u stand still or not. But in tidal wave form prevents u from doing certain actions like jumping or interacting with doors and so on. The other way i thought of making it more energy efficient is to have his energy cost reduced while ability 4 is active as ability 4 should spawn layers of water. I don't have an idea of exact number for the energy reduction. 20% perhaps? Giving the player a chance to reduce energy cost for this charge ability without making an energy build sounds like a super idea!

As for undertow, I wasn't really meaning that u should be able to cast ability 4 with it. I'm thinking that enemies can fall in by touching the pool but when outside the pool range, rather let tentacles grab them and pull them In instead of curiosity let them lead to their doom.

For tentacle swarm you have a good point for it not to follow you. And a finisher on one enemy being done by 12 tentacles sounds like a 21 age restriction!! It will give me nightmares! Just more like combo animation of 2 tentacles on 1 enemy ripping it apart or something if there's not enough enemies to attack.

what I meant about flight mods or elemental flight mods, 2 examples is toxic flight and firewalker. Toxic give toxic damage/proc on bullet jump and firewalker fire damage/proc. Then there is mods that gives physical damage/proc on bullet jump, I think one of them is called battering maneuver which I think gives it impact damage/proc

if abilities like nr 4 and ability 1 can be influenced by this it can be helpful but should not be implemented to the extend that hydroid's abilities becomes OP in comparison to the other warframes. The physical damage of hydroids abilities isnt that great on lets say level 80 enemies, then its only use is the current secondary effects like the enemies getting tumbled etc. Having these so called "flight mods" being able to enhance/alter Hydroids abilities can be very helpful.

[Navarc]

11 minutes ago, DrNOS said:

what I tried to explain with the toggle on his first ability is to just press 1 till you get to the deployment method, then holding 1 in for a second activates the selected deployment method. While active as a toggle the barrage follows your mouse cursor. I agree this makes you a little less mobile because to concentrate on where you want the barrage to go while running around doing your moves can only be tricky! You make a good to have the ability being used as a toggle be only made available through an augment mod. But with only 8 mod slots and 1 exiles it can be precious to start having cast methods to scroll through as well for some abilities.

for his second ability to make it toggle can help with energy efficiency, speed can increase knockback or damage or recovery time for enemies to get back up. Being able to control the direction can give it more use and make it more fun. But yes, the shape shouldn't need to change! I was think now, why not change into a tidal wave and have it drain energy per second no matter if u stand still or not. But in tidal wave form prevents u from doing certain actions like jumping or interacting with doors and so on. The other way i thought of making it more energy efficient is to have his energy cost reduced while ability 4 is active as ability 4 should spawn layers of water. I don't have an idea of exact number for the energy reduction. 20% perhaps? Giving the player a chance to reduce energy cost for this charge ability without making an energy build sounds like a super idea!

As for undertow, I wasn't really meaning that u should be able to cast ability 4 with it. I'm thinking that enemies can fall in by touching the pool but when outside the pool range, rather let tentacles grab them and pull them In instead of curiosity let them lead to their doom.

For tentacle swarm you have a good point for it not to follow you. And a finisher on one enemy being done by 12 tentacles sounds like a 21 age restriction!! It will give me nightmares! Just more like combo animation of 2 tentacles on 1 enemy ripping it apart or something if there's not enough enemies to attack.

what I meant about flight mods or elemental flight mods, 2 examples is toxic flight and firewalker. Toxic give toxic damage/proc on bullet jump and firewalker fire damage/proc. Then there is mods that gives physical damage/proc on bullet jump, I think one of them is called battering maneuver which I think gives it impact damage/proc

if abilities like nr 4 and ability 1 can be influenced by this it can be helpful but should not be implemented to the extend that hydroid's abilities becomes OP in comparison to the other warframes. The physical damage of hydroids abilities isnt that great on lets say level 80 enemies, then its only use is the current secondary effects like the enemies getting tumbled etc. Having these so called "flight mods" being able to enhance/alter Hydroids abilities can be very helpful.

I think we're not understanding eachother on Tempest Barrage. Currently if you click Tempest Barrage it casts the ability - but if you HOLD Tempest Barrage it aims it. So that means if Tempest Barrage could be swapped from instant cast to toggle like Vaubans minelayer ability, you lose your ability to Hold to Aim tempest barrage.
So yeah, an augment outright replacing how tempest barrages functions would be better than letting you switch between the 2 versions because it'll nerf how it currently is if you use duration builds.

I think what you want for Hydroids 2 turning it into a toggled form instead of a mobility ability also sounds more fitting for an augment because that change would really screw over people who rely on his 2 in their current builds.

I don't know about the tentacles ripping enemies in half, it would be pretty tricky if the enemy didn't actually die from the damage but now is two pieces.
I'm not sure how the filling the map with water would work, especially not on some tilesets where you're outdoors or in Jupiter where you're in a floating outpost. It would be cool but I don't think it works with how warframe is designed and asking the devs to remake maps just for a single warframe feels like a huge request.

I think I got what you mean by changing damage type by using bulletjump mods, although I believe this would actually lower the damage of his 4. Hydroids 4 deals finisher damage, meaning it ignores armour & shields - if you happen to have an Impact mod equipped you're actually weaknening your 4 by quite a lot especially against enemies above level 80. As for changing the damage on his 1, there's an augment that lets you change it into the most powerful element currently in the game. against most factions so I feel that's already covered to an extent, right?

[DrNOS]

OMW!! I did not know you could do that aim thing with tempest barrage😲😲😲😲. Im gonna try it out, not sure why someone would want to. I have no problem casting it where i want it to be cast, or now that you mention, i think it has happened before that i wanted it cast on a group away from me and then it ends up falling on the enemies right in front of me hehehe.... I checked that augment mod for tempest barrage. Does it actually deals corrosive damage or only ads the proc to reduce enemy armor? That part is fairly covered but concidering the different types of bullet jumps there is you can have more variety of procs to modify this ability with. The 2 tentacles ripping an enemy in half would be like a fatality move, the enemy shouldn't be alive afterwards.... But it will have to have limitations because this might be get manipulated to get tough enemies sorted out with ease... another flaw in my suggestion. We are brainstorming here 😜 .

adding effects from your installed bullet jump shouldnt decrease the strength of tentacle swarm but add to its effects, visual effects or damage effects, but the thing that finisher attacks bypasses armor and shields , it might not need damage buffs, though the tentacles can benefit by applying your bullet jump effects to enemies that get hit by the tentacles which isnt being held by it. Spawining water on the tileset where the tentacle swarm is shouldnt be a problem too, it doesnt need to be deep and doesnt need to look natural as this is all caused by a warframe, not some druidlike creature with magic/godlike inhereted superpowers hehe.

[Navarc]

14 minutes ago, DrNOS said:

OMW!! I did not know you could do that aim thing with tempest barrage😲😲😲😲. Im gonna try it out, not sure why someone would want to. I have no problem casting it where i want it to be cast, or now that you mention, i think it has happened before that i wanted it cast on a group away from me and then it ends up falling on the enemies right in front of me hehehe.... I checked that augment mod for tempest barrage. Does it actually deals corrosive damage or only ads the proc to reduce enemy armor? That part is fairly covered but concidering the different types of bullet jumps there is you can have more variety of procs to modify this ability with. The 2 tentacles ripping an enemy in half would be like a fatality move, the enemy shouldn't be alive afterwards.... But it will have to have limitations because this might be get manipulated to get tough enemies sorted out with ease... another flaw in my suggestion. We are brainstorming here 😜 .

adding effects from your installed bullet jump shouldnt decrease the strength of tentacle swarm but add to its effects, visual effects or damage effects, but the thing that finisher attacks bypasses armor and shields , it might not need damage buffs, though the tentacles can benefit by applying your bullet jump effects to enemies that get hit by the tentacles which isnt being held by it. Spawining water on the tileset where the tentacle swarm is shouldnt be a problem too, it doesnt need to be deep and doesnt need to look natural as this is all caused by a warframe, not some druidlike creature with magic/godlike inhereted superpowers hehe.

Yeah, tempest barrage easily gets caught on too large hitboxes of props, things like boxes and wires so by holding it you can make sure it's actually going to land where you're aiming it, in case you're on an unreliable tileset like Eris. 
The tempest barrage augment does deal corrosive damage & procs corrosive, removing armour off of enemies. But at the point you're wanting to be able to add all 4 base elements to the 1st ability you might as well give him what Chroma has which is changing the damage type depending on energy colour, which is an augment Excalibur is already getting for his Exalted Blade and it feels like that's already covered by two other warframes then, right? 

So you want the status effects from the bulletjumps to apply to his 4 then, not the actual damage to be replaced since it would weaken the tentacles. That sounds pretty alright but yeah I think that it sounds better off as an augment if Excalibur is getting it for his Exalted blade as an augment. It would also free up an exilus slot so you can put the Lua drift mods in there rather than a bulletjump mod if you prefer power over mobility.

[DrNOS]

cool sounds pretty cool about Excalibur. But last time i checked his exalted blade can already be very deadly. Is this adjustment just to keep the game interesting? XOXO. Warframes shouldn't copy cat certain stuff from other warframes as to not remove uniqueness from the warframes. My idea for the bullet jumps musnt be a 100% proc chance from your bullet jump. It must be random for each "drop" that falls. This way its not like it fully inherits chroma's uniqueness and doesn't make the augment mod for tempest storm like redundant. The same for letting the bullet jump effect your nr 4 ability or any other ability. It must be random or like specific % chance. It can be nice revamp addition for Hydroids abilities. I agree it can also work as an augment mod for the tentacle swarm, hopefully DE wouldn't mind making multiple augment mods for the same ability:)). But for tempest barrage I don't think it should have procs from bullet jump as an augment. It must be added to the ability. " if bullet jump is applied on warframe exilus adapter it gives 30% chance for each drop to apply said status effect of the bullet jump" for example.

The way comments flying in about this, it will be nice if some of these suggestions gets used in some way XD!

[Navarc]

18 hours ago, DrNOS said:

cool sounds pretty cool about Excalibur. But last time i checked his exalted blade can already be very deadly. Is this adjustment just to keep the game interesting? XOXO. Warframes shouldn't copy cat certain stuff from other warframes as to not remove uniqueness from the warframes. My idea for the bullet jumps musnt be a 100% proc chance from your bullet jump. It must be random for each "drop" that falls. This way its not like it fully inherits chroma's uniqueness and doesn't make the augment mod for tempest storm like redundant. The same for letting the bullet jump effect your nr 4 ability or any other ability. It must be random or like specific % chance. It can be nice revamp addition for Hydroids abilities. I agree it can also work as an augment mod for the tentacle swarm, hopefully DE wouldn't mind making multiple augment mods for the same ability:)). But for tempest barrage I don't think it should have procs from bullet jump as an augment. It must be added to the ability. " if bullet jump is applied on warframe exilus adapter it gives 30% chance for each drop to apply said status effect of the bullet jump" for example.

The way comments flying in about this, it will be nice if some of these suggestions gets used in some way XD!

Well, looks like DE wouldn't have a problem making an augment that lowers damage to make it visually look cool, Chromatic blade came out and it removes your slash procs, so your damage is significantly lower but your sword looks pretty so I guess the finisher damage reasoning I had before with Tentacle Swarm was faulty.

[DrNOS]

dont take it up the wrong way, all i can say is "ha ha ha ha". So long the game stays fun right...

i hope some of our ideas gets noticed by DE for Hydroid.

[Navarc]

I don't know if it's actually possible but I've added a buff to corroding barrage, figured if you're doing a barrage build then the salvo are a whole lot more interesting to you and tentacles can actually save enemies from being hit by the barrage in which case Hydroids Deep Tendril passive works against the build his augment promotes - so the augment should be slightly altering his passive.

Corroding Barrage: Tempest Barrage (1) BUFF: Tentacles in Deep Tendril are replaced with salvo.

[Somb3rBivalve]

While I understand where @Buddhakingpen is coming from where he doesn't want to be handed easy kills on a plate like with many of the other new frames (to be clear, I don't like the idea of making the game too easy either), at the same time, I can't see how hydroid, under ANY circumstance, no matter how good/skilled/experienced the player, should not get improvements over and above simple QoL stuff. There's quite a lot of pointless and clunky stuff in his kit.

Let's look at a prime example: undertow. While, yes, it grants you invulnerability (which is very useful), but the damage it does is literally pointless at anything past level 15-20. The damage is so bad it may as well not even exist

Even if I compare him to a comparatively high skill-cap frame like banshee, banshee can throw people around and CC them with 1 and 3 (as well her 4, although she must stay stationary for that, which is very dangerous); however, she can also cause insane scaling damage with sonar/resonance. Hydroid can cause CC, but well, that's about it, and unlike banshee's CC his is much more random in nature. Adding some more damage into his kit in general would diversify his role, and you can see this reflected in @Navarchus's rework in the tempest barrage section and undertow section.

To be clear, in order to be, in my eyes, a good frame, he doesn't need everything that @Navarchus has written, but I think he needs some of it.

[Buddhakingpen]

3 hours ago, Somb3rBivalve said:

While I understand where @Buddhakingpen is coming from where he doesn't want to be handed easy kills on a plate like with many of the other new frames (to be clear, I don't like the idea of making the game too easy either), at the same time, I can't see how hydroid, under ANY circumstance, no matter how good/skilled/experienced the player, should not get improvements over and above simple QoL stuff. There's quite a lot of pointless and clunky stuff in his kit.

Let's look at a prime example: undertow. While, yes, it grants you invulnerability (which is very useful), but the damage it does is literally pointless at anything past level 15-20. The damage is so bad it may as well not even exist

Even if I compare him to a comparatively high skill-cap frame like banshee, banshee can throw people around and CC them with 1 and 3 (as well her 4, although she must stay stationary for that, which is very dangerous); however, she can also cause insane scaling damage with sonar/resonance. Hydroid can cause CC, but well, that's about it, and unlike banshee's CC his is much more random in nature. Adding some more damage into his kit in general would diversify his role, and you can see this reflected in @Navarchus's rework in the tempest barrage section and undertow section.

To be clear, in order to be, in my eyes, a good frame, he doesn't need everything that @Navarchus has written, but I think he needs some of it.

Most of what you are saying are fair statements. I think you're ill informed on hydroid though.  With his corrosive barrage augment, he's essentially the only frame in the game that has an on hand spammable corrosive+blast combo. Not only that, repeated knockdowns trigger unalert state. So he's cc'ing, shredding armor, and opening enemies to stealth multipliers and ground finishers. Not to mention tempest barrage cuts down nullifier bubbles pretty damn fast. His 3 isnt meant for damage. Its meant to either hold off chokepoints, or to auto proc unalert state, because of the way stealth mechanics work. 

The longer enemies see you, their awareness state gets higher and higher. If they JUST saw you, and you knock them down, you get stealth multipliers from that. If they've been aware of you for some time, you need to knock them down repeatedly. Thats where hydroids move synergy comes. Toss out a tempest barrage, and just go in and out of undertow real quick. You instantly reset enemies alert state, and since they are recovering from a knockdown, you get instant stealth multipliers.

Adding to that, tentacle swarm and his passive treats unalert enemies the same as a move like rhinos iron stomp. So if you make them unalert, and then snag them in a tentacle, they will become unalert for the entire duration they're grabbed until they get up again. 

Now my argument isnt that hydroid is a top tier op god frame. Just that he's in a much better spot than people will give him credit, because they havent taken the time to learn how to exploit the mechanics he's capable of abusing. 

I say these things, then ppl start the arbitrary comparisons to other frames, so i'll just cover those now. 

Ash-To accomplish both teamwide stealth multipliers and armor shred (mind you, based on duration) he needs two separate augments, enough range for his smoke bomb augment to tag teammates, enough power strength to fully strip the armor, while also not providing cc at all

Banshee- Banshee is in my top 3 frames along with hydroid, but she's in a weird space where if she mods for range, its much harder to use her skills to keep herself alive. Her augment for armor stripping is also has a hard range and is based on duration, whereas hydroid has infinite cast range and his armor stripping, while it takes longer to fully strip, cc's longer. Her savage silence augment does make enemies take stealth melee damage, so, once again, you need two augments to do what hydroid is doing with a single move. Her saving grace from me not saying hydroid is outright better than her is of course sonar. But isnt that always banshees trump card over everything?

Inaros, ivara,Equinox-cant shred armor, cant be invincible in any capacity.

Excal- Only comperable now that he has his chromatic blade augment. But still, that augment makes his scaling damn legit. 

Frost-Duration based armor shredding that disables status procs, no stealth multipliers

Vauban-Too clunky with a smaller aoe to do the same thing hydroid can, plus consumes way more energy by having to cast bastille for cc, concuss grenades for the stealth multipliers, and multiple shred grenades for armor shredding. 

Maybe you dont think so, but the combination of stealth multipliers and armor shredding= A LOT OF DAMAGE in the endgame. If you put scaling damage on his tempest barrage, guarantee he'd be the single strongest frame in the game. Not even being hyperbolic.  An armor shredding, duration based cc skill that does the same amount of damage regardless of enemy level? That can be cast for 6 energy?  Even the new oberon needs 63 energy minimum to shred armor permanently, and he doesnt get duration based cc on his scaling damage.

I do agree that some of those changes would be nice. But 80% of them are overkill.

Edited June 10, 2017 by Buddhakingpen