[Update 21.4.0] Hydroid Revisited Feedback

[Windy_Wind]

If they don't make hydroid viable or at least on the level of oberon, I don't see why people would bother to buy his prime access aside from maybe the accessory 

Edited August 14, 2017 by Windy_Wind

[AeneasofTroy]

I'm still levelling Hydroid but I have also played with another friend who has Hydroid. Considering how quickly I took to many other frames, Hydroid is a chore than a joy.

Quality of Life Comments:

• Tentacle Swarm infrequently causes framerate drops. I was running several missions with my friend and on a few occasions we suffered massive framerate drops. The worst of these however was during Tikal excavation on Earth and could have just been an Earth framerate drop compounded by the tentacles.
• Tentacle Swarm removes Hydroid's reticle while casting however the ability dots under the reticle remains. Please return the reticle. Seriously.
• There is no visual feedback to indicate how charged Hydroid's abilities are and it feels like a crapshot in the dark trying to use the abilities.

Other comments:

• Tempest Barrage is arguably the most reliable of Hydroid's abilities for CC, although it needs major visual help in casting/charging/locking on.
• Undertow is woefully underpowered to deal with large groups of enemies, leaving the puddle for any reason immediately makes Hydroid extremely vulnerable as he is then surrounded by enemies
• Undertow literally has a base max range of 4 meters and from my current gameplay experience it feels like that if I move too far away enemies pop out of my 4.82m (maxed normal stretch) puddle.
• Kraken buddy is visible for a very short duration compared to the tentacles, it visually doesn't make much sense
• Tempest Barrage's knockdown is a huge redeeming factor for Hydroid. The other abilities interfere with team synergy for efficient murder and force Hydroid to solo where unless puddled doesn't have the beef to go solo.
• Hydroid feels like a frame that tried to be both caster and brawler and failed to reach either. Either favor caster elements in more energy/lower costs or the brawler sort with more health and armor.

Potential ideas (ignore if currently present and I've just failed to notice):

• Something to help denote charge for abilities. Please. Also bring back the reticle.
• Lock enemies into the puddle
• Damage scaling for the quantity of enemies trapped in the puddle, similar to the damage scaling that Limbo has with Cataclysm based on the quantity of enemies.
• Tentacles drop the corpses, its too confusing trying to find and shoot the one last living one if a bunch of corpses are all being thrashed around
• Just keep the flying/primitive rocket science experiment corpses. It's enjoyable to see a corpse get launched into orbit.
• Tidal Surge should deliver impact damage to enemies within Undertow/hit by Tidal surge. Additional impact damage should be inflicted if the Surge hits terrain. Waves are brutal after all and it feels natural.

[Diponegoro]

How about add elemental damage based on energy color (like chroma).

which will affect all the Hydroid skill. it will be awesome to see toxic rain and poisonous puddle.

And his passive surely needs a change.

 

People hate hydroid because his skill based on RNG and disturb the fight. both his first and fourth are random.

[Vittek]

I think there's a bit of a lost opportunity in the Undertow rework - sure, a puddle is kinda cool, but not exactly ominous, menacing, or otherwise awesome. Given it pulls in enemies to be drowned, and and has a kraken in the bottom of it, shouldn't it be some kind of whirlpool/vortex of watery doom?

A whirlpool animation would explain how enemies can't get out/get pulled in, make it look much cooler, and tie in better with the whole nautical theme - whereas a puddle just kinda sits there.

 

[FoxFX]

23 minutes ago, Vittek said:

I think there's a bit of a lost opportunity in the Undertow rework - sure, a puddle is kinda cool, but not exactly ominous, menacing, or otherwise awesome. Given it pulls in enemies to be drowned, and and has a kraken in the bottom of it, shouldn't it be some kind of whirlpool/vortex of watery doom?

A whirlpool animation would explain how enemies can't get out/get pulled in, make it look much cooler, and tie in better with the whole nautical theme - whereas a puddle just kinda sits there.

 

There was also some idea to change the shape of Undertow from a puddle into a Water Dome. This was an idea proposed by me and @Trentiel:

 

[FoxFX]

I know there are a lot of support into allowing allies to attack the puddle of Undertow to damage enemies, however I do have a question about that

 

Let us say we do add in the effect of allies shooting inside the puddle of Undertow to damage the trapped enemies, how will players know which enemy they attacked? What if the situation calls for one of the trapped enemies to be a priority to kill for one enemy?

[FoxFX]

I know there are a lot of support into allowing allies to attack the puddle of Undertow to damage enemies, however I do have a question about that

 

Let us say we do add in the effect of allies shooting inside the puddle of Undertow to damage the trapped enemies, how will players know which enemy they attacked? What if the situation calls for one of the trapped enemies to be a priority to kill for one enemy?

[(PSN)Spider_Enigma]

can we please keep the pasive but bump it to 100%? i love the pasive, and hydroid was known as a melee frame before the loss of stamina

with the sundering weave stance, the block combo always dose a slam, and if ur doing melee vs a hard target and the combo doesn't kill them, the passive would hit them

im just sad that the prime is cuming with nami skyla prime and not nami solo prime , no clam combo :C

[NightmareT12]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)Spider_Enigma said:

can we please keep the pasive but bump it to 100%? i love the pasive, and hydroid was known as a melee frame before the loss of stamina

with the sundering weave stance, the block combo always dose a slam, and if ur doing melee vs a hard target and the combo doesn't kill them, the passive would hit them

im just sad that the prime is cuming with nami skyla prime and not nami solo prime , no clam combo :C

I keep wondering why they didn't just make it so finishing a combo or something also has a chance to spawn tentacles too.

I mean, it's kind of forcing you to slam to have fun ;_;

[(PSN)Spider_Enigma]

Just now, NightmareT12 said:

I keep wondering why they didn't just make it so finishing a combo or something also has a chance to spawn tentacles too.

I mean, it's kind of forcing you to slam to have fun ;_;

that is a good point, finishing a combo to have a 100% chance of a tentacle, that is also effected by the augment would be hella nice 

[Navarc]

14 hours ago, Ominous_Strix said:

The problems many people had with Hydroid was unreliable CC and Damage, everything he is capable of could be done by other warframes better in every way. Take for instance Nidus, he does both CC and Damage 10x better than what Hydroid could ever be capable of, and do with half as much energy usage! Oberon has an auto aim 1st ability that does % enemy health as damage, Hydroid's barrage isn't even guaranteed to hit anything and does piss poor damage. I did not make this post to trash DE or Hydroid, but as it stands the rework only made him more fluid to play which is important, yet he is still unviable in most situations and is a easily replaced frame in your arsenal. I'm pretty sure Vauban's Tesla Grenades can output more damage than Barrage. Now what can we fix to make Hydroid fun to play? His 1st and 4th ability need to do less CC and more damage. Both should do % of enemy health as damage, and tentacles should just knock down enemies or pick them up and throw them, none of this holding them up in the air for a minute making them harder to shoot. His 2 is pretty much his only ability I'd leave alone, but I'd like to see something like Nidus's one where it has energy steal as Hydroid can be a very energy hungry caster. His 3 needs a lot of work so it doesn't just encourage afk play. Make it drain more energy, standing still for more then a few seconds forces you out of it. Make it move extremely fast with no energy drain per distance, just a flat drain. Make the speed on par with volt or nezha, nothing feels more bad &#! than zipping around the battlefield as you become one with water and popping up behind enemies to kill them. In order to suck a enemy under you have to click on them, it'll drain energy when you do this.

 

I really want Hydroid to be a very viable damage frame with a little CC. CC is not exactly what people think of when they imagine a space pirate, what comes to mind the most is a bad &#! running around fast shooting down everyone in his sight.

There have been many suggestions to improve build variety by making power strength viable, there's more ways to do this than damage.
In any case, he was never a damage warframe and probably will never be one, DE does not seem to have any interest in making him one.
He started as CC & Survivability, that's what he is now again instead of pure CC.
DE did address many issues and listen to a LOT of suggestions though I don't see where people are getting that this rework didn't listen to player suggestions come from.
You can see that for yourself:
 

 

By the way, between when he was in the works & this week they've said on stream that he's the Water/Sea warframe. Anyone saying his main focus is or should be a pirate should be focusing on making fan concepts, not reworks. Pirate theme isn't the only thing about him nor main thing. All warframes are mixed things, such as Atlas being geomancer & brawler. Loki being a trickster and a jester. 

Edited August 14, 2017 by Navarchus

[Lyravain]

3 hours ago, DeathGold said:

it's not "exactly" what he was before it is a low range low efficiency variant when i said i liked the old one i meant i liked the mechanics and all but not the results you get like the low damage numbers for me they didn't solve anything with this rework some people say he is more "fun" but having fun in a farming game really get hard when you do the same thing over and over for me having fun in warframe is doing random stuff and getting results like huge nukes or high single target damage ... hydroid have none of these the old one was good at cc the post rework version is just too low range to do anything like "oh use your puddle to trap a group ".... your 5meters puddle yeah nice idea "use your 1 to knock down an area and stunlock them .... yeah with 5meters range and random targeting oh and a big number of the community tried hydroid they didn't like it coz he was weak so they said "meh nvm i'll go back to any other frame" coz every frame is better than him that why he needed a rework to make him more usable vs the other frames to make you get results from using his abilitys not the "10damage /sec increase" on his undertow this is not scaling i'm pretty sure DE don't know if they want to make him a damage dealer or cc frame they tried to mix both but for "balance issues" set the values too low so he can't deal damage or cc enemies

On 12/8/2017 at 1:39 PM, (Xbox One)Knight Raime said:

He literally has the exact same powers, with the exact same effects. The only exception being; you can now charge some up for a marginally better result and a little bit of QoL changes. He lost NOTHING, gained a bit. There's NO ability he lost or any effect. Matter of fact, you can still play him EXACTLY like before the re-touch (I refuse to call that a rework). My disagreement isn't whether or not Hydrod's a 'Top Tier' frame or if he's enjoyable. My annoyance comes from people saying 'old Hydroid was better than new Hydroid' despite the fact that they removed NOTHING.

Also, for gods' sakes; would it KILL you to separate sentences or use at least a bit of punctuation? You gave me a headache!

[Lyravain]

2 hours ago, DeathGold said:

"mag" isn't better post rework it's useless and only good with the "lanka" by usebuging so people that say "oh look at the damage you get from magnetize now" ........ you have weapons and a bullet attractor  the damage you see is your weapon damage the damage of magnetize is the little 1 and 10 you see at the bottom so they changed the focus of the people from her polarize to her magnetize ..... same thing overall

Mag is actually MUCH better post-rework. Frankly, she was the single most BORING frame ever. Sit in once place and spam one ability to win. Kinda like Saryn -in fact, EXACTLY like Saryn. She was only usable against Corpus and even then... meh, unless it was excavation farming, she was ignored. Now, she's a much more active and involved frame, her polarize is useful, Magnetize has some cool interactions with different weapons (beams for example supercharge the detonation while not dealing that much instant damage, while projectiles do the opposite, which is really cool). She strips armor, CCs like a boss, creates areas of safety for her team and can hold down the entire map for an extended period of time if she so desires. Mag is cool now.

[Graazy]

Uhh..ok, where to start.
First of all i am not impresed with this revisit. I was hoping to get better warframe like we did with all other reworks (mag,excal,limbo,oberon), but we got slight buff/nerf in general. I aprieciat that you guys made his abilitys more interactive but they still feel useless/pointless. I will go one by one.
1) Overall stats (armor,health and other) - now he feels more solid so on this point - thank you. But i would like to see better since he is very energy hungry warframe even with base stats.
2) Passive - i am disapointed that you didnt changed it. It always felt out of place and random. On top oh that is was forsing us to use graund attacks that are not the best melee aspect. In my opinion his passive should base around he fact that he is water warframe. For example something like this - his abilities get status effect that is currently affecting him (or been affected last): let say bombard hit him with rocket (striked with blast) = next ability cast will have blast proc. Ofcousre this sounds op thats why i would also add timer on passive.
3)Tempest barage - good on paper ability, but have barely any use even with augment. This ability should be changed with new one or get a good effect. For example - when target is affected with status effect deal % of max health isntead. This will give some scaling and will be used more often.
4)Tidal surge - too be honest this one is good in current stage, bugged but good. Only thing i would change in it are - how wide it is affected by range but how much distance it will go affected by durration.
5)Undertow - both good and bad ability. This ability even with changes dont give any instant effect - feeling that you done something after using it. IF you want to leave this ability only thing i can suggest is that if you soaking in unsuspected enemy you perfome finishing move inside it. But as i said thins ability should be changed completly. I not very good at inventing ablilitys but since i went for form where i give examples i will try to come up with something (dont take this one serious). So only thing that come in my head is give him supportive/stealth improving ability and thats how in my opinion it can be achieved - on cast put water cover both on enemies and alies, blinding enemies and giving status imunity or weaopon based buff (reload speed or something) to alies. Visuals example - water buble on enemy head/water coat on alies hands.
6)Tentacle swarm - only feedback i can give is improve tentacle colusion a little more. I like is after changes it still can be onetapped to kill specific enemies in regular run, and now it can get better if you hold it up - this one gives it healthier usability in longterm/camp runs.
As you can see this revisit is far from being good but it was in right way.
Thank you if you read this all and i hope to get some of share/discusion about my replie.
TL:DR - current revisit isnt enought to revive Hydroid.
Sincerly yours space ninja - Graazy.

[Marthrym]

Interesting stuff. I'm not sure it would make sense for a giant bubble of water to be considered "stealthy" though. I mean Hydroid himself would be invisible yes, but the bigass bubble of water would hardly go unnoticed... Also the bubble would be a lot like Nyx's Assimilate in some regards, I'm not sure I like that. Hydroid is Hydroid, not Nyx with a water theme, I want the pirate dude to keep his identity.

I'd rework the puddle and make it an actual "sea" of sort, much larger than what we have had until now (basically not a kiddie pool). Only this time, it's the players who would choose to trap enemies inside when they walk on the surface, using the mechanics introduced with this patch. With the possibility to choose to either engulf all enemies walking on the surface by keeping the key pressed for a second, or to clic on a specific enemy to drag only them below the surface, where Hydroid would roam freely like an underwater predator, able to kill the floating enemies with melee attacks. Allies could of course choose to dive into the puddle to hide, kill the drowning enemies the same way Hydroid would, or to instead shoot the surface from above to add to its DoT. Hydroid and allies could choose to resurface anywhere on the "sea" he created, allowing them to get past enemies unnoticed if they so desire.

Undertow would drain more and more energy as time passes, with a set cap, much like Hysteria for instance. Hydroid could loot energy orbs too, but only from enemies dying on the surface or below the ability's range.

Of course this would mean a lot of work, since it would require the creation of said "below", with all the mechanics it entails. Maybe it's a bit too much to ask, and maybe people will prefer the bubble idea, I do believe it's a good idea myself. It's just too similar to Nyx's Assimilate for me, I'd rather Hydroid keep his own identity than "pilfer" another.^^

17 hours ago, Trentiel said:

I integrated your idea into this little sketch I did to illustrate my ideal Hydroid ability set.

This looks actually really good! ^^

Edited August 14, 2017 by Marthrym

[FoxFX]

1 hour ago, FoxFX said:

I know there are a lot of support into allowing allies to attack the puddle of Undertow to damage enemies, however I do have a question about that

 

Let us say we do add in the effect of allies shooting inside the puddle of Undertow to damage the trapped enemies, how will players know which enemy they attacked? What if the situation calls for one of the trapped enemies to be a priority to kill for one enemy?

 

Has anyone thought about this question yet?

[Azamagon]

15 hours ago, Chipputer said:

I'll give you a relatively logical viewpoint on it:

Think of it like taking a bath versus taking a shower. When you submerge in a bath and you wash off all of the dirt on your body, you're still sitting in that dirt, for the most part. Sure, it has soap on it, but you wouldn't want someone sitting in the water with you and you wouldn't want to continue to sit in that water for a long time, nor would you want to leave the water in that tub long after you're done washing it off of yourself.

Taking a shower, however, rinses the stuff off of you and takes it somewhere else away from you.

Or, better yet, think of it like soaking your dishes versus actively rinsing them off and taking them out of the sink. I shouldn't have to explain why the first one isn't going to actually get them clean.

Good point! Makes a lot of sense, thanks for convincing me with that :)

[Kyrios64]

Hi i was thinking of some ideas for his abilities ( I apologize for spelling errors, every body now that french people are very bad with English )

- his first ability create rain from above the marked area dealing low constant damage and afflicting puncture.

- his second ability cast a wave of water that stay on the ground, enemy who step on it can't move but can shot. If a enemy is directly it when cast it get knock down. Can be link to each other 

- his third ability stay the same. But enemy who got trap in it lose over time their shield and armor then their heath.

- his fourth ability summon tentacles in a circle form, enemy who got hit by them are knock down. Can hit every enemy caught in the cast area. (reducing it's range but gain consistency, damage per second and enemy are more easy to shot for teammate due to the knock down)

When i was thinking of these abilities i wanted to make them synergies with each other.  

• when his first ability his cast when his third ability is active, it augment the size of his third ability for every seconds that his first is active with a limit off double the size, augment his damage per second. 
• his second ability allow his third ability to move in it without consuming extra energies and with more speed. Enemy who got caught in his second ability are transported when link to his third ability. 
• when his fourth ability is cast when his third ability is active, enemies who got caught are impale with tentacle damage is spread up to all enemies hit.    
• when his fourth ability is cast on the area of effect of his first ability, the enemies find themselves sucked in the middle of the invocation area of the creature, they then undergo a big attack (bite), enemies survive are projected in the air with slash proc.

I was thinking of changing his passive to reduce the cost of his ability when use in combo with each other.

 

[leadwolf1]

14 hours ago, Ominous_Strix said:

The problems many people had with Hydroid was unreliable CC and Damage, everything he is capable of could be done by other warframes better in every way. Take for instance Nidus, he does both CC and Damage 10x better than what Hydroid could ever be capable of, and do with half as much energy usage! Oberon has an auto aim 1st ability that does % enemy health as damage, Hydroid's barrage isn't even guaranteed to hit anything and does piss poor damage. I did not make this post to trash DE or Hydroid, but as it stands the rework only made him more fluid to play which is important, yet he is still unviable in most situations and is a easily replaced frame in your arsenal. I'm pretty sure Vauban's Tesla Grenades can output more damage than Barrage. Now what can we fix to make Hydroid fun to play? His 1st and 4th ability need to do less CC and more damage. Both should do % of enemy health as damage, and tentacles should just knock down enemies or pick them up and throw them, none of this holding them up in the air for a minute making them harder to shoot. His 2 is pretty much his only ability I'd leave alone, but I'd like to see something like Nidus's one where it has energy steal as Hydroid can be a very energy hungry caster. His 3 needs a lot of work so it doesn't just encourage afk play. Make it drain more energy, standing still for more then a few seconds forces you out of it. Make it move extremely fast with no energy drain per distance, just a flat drain. Make the speed on par with volt or nezha, nothing feels more bad &#! than zipping around the battlefield as you become one with water and popping up behind enemies to kill them. In order to suck a enemy under you have to click on them, it'll drain energy when you do this.

 

I really want Hydroid to be a very viable damage frame with a little CC. CC is not exactly what people think of when they imagine a space pirate, what comes to mind the most is a bad &#! running around fast shooting down everyone in his sight.

Please read the wiki he is a water frame in the form of a pirate, I so do not understand why players can not comprehend this, all his abilities are water no cannons or flintlock pistols . we are not making a new warframe we are trying to make this frame better and they chose to go into having the prime look more like a pirate.

[leadwolf1]

8 hours ago, RikerWatts said:

I have been saying hydroid is awful for a year. He still is and DE refuses to make the pirate a contender with vauban, the current best area denial frame in the game.

Please read the wiki he is a water frame in the form of a pirate, I so do not understand why players can not comprehend this, all his abilities are water no cannons or flintlock pistols . we are not making a new warframe we are trying to make this frame better and they chose to go into having the prime look more like a pirate.

[leadwolf1]

SO everyone who wants a pirate frame go to page 35 a  little less than half way down and you will see pirate abilities for you, its in red can not miss it. look a new frame  :) leave hydroid maintain his water ability status.

Edited August 14, 2017 by leadwolf1
to add more text for explanation

[Cyadic.]

hello

So since the last updates, i've got some trouble with the color  of hydroid all of my spell litteraly loose all color they look like water (which is logical but that not the point ).

I've try to change the color again and again but i still get the same thing i would like to know if i miss something in the last patchlog or if it's a bug that could be fix.

Before the updates i had this 

 

now i have this 

 

Edited August 14, 2017 by Cyadic.

[sulusdacor]

before going into his current stae i thought about why i did not use hydroid much and why most of my attemps to making him work failed. i think this is really important to notice when going over the recent changes to him.

a while back i watched fenrusharks unabridged series, where he goes over some "underused" frames. this kinda inspried me to go back to them and give them a 2nd/3rd/4th/... chance. same i did with hydroid. i was very motivated to make these frames work. i tried all the augments. put one forma in him and played around in different missions. trying to find the situations or mission or builds that make me say "yes i will use hydroid for this in the future". sad to say that in the end he still ended up in the closet and as a one time farming choice for me. so the question is why?

old problems before the revisited:

squishnes/survivability: in low level mission this does barely matter for any frame. but once you got higher enemy levels having some sort of surviability is key. either armor, vitality, cc, invisibilty, invulnerability. you name it. anything really is needed. yes you can run around and dodge and this works up to a point. the problem for me personaly he was neither tanky nor had the build in abilitys to stand his ground. i could get one shot very very easily early on like other squishy frame. his cc (4th/1st) needed some short setup time and was usally only a smaller area. so if enemys came from multiple angles you had some problems. or stand in your 4th and hope to not get hit from outside. you could use the puddle. but the gameplay as that was very unstatisfying. so i felt he missed out there. if i wanted to stay alive which is the key point to play a mission/ have fun in the game he was not the way to go. getting shot down every few meters is not fun. (i tried the augment for his 2 to help out with that. the status immunity helps, but you usally die 1hit anyway. so if you use that or not does not matter as much.)

unreliability: mostly in terms of his cc. ability hitting enemys to either do the damage or pin them down. this goes for his 1st and 4th mainly. if i wanted to cc with his 1st. i wanted the heavy gunner or bombard to get knocked down now. not maybe and not probably. i casted it to get him down, because other wise hydroid usally dies. similar problems with his 4th. the target finding was usally not on the best side. and to get the most damage out of his 4th you stand there and recast it every 2 secounds. while this might be fun to farm this way from time to time as a general gameplay style it is not.if you dont recast the cc basicly not existent form his 4th, sicne most enemys would either not get grabed or just shoot you anyway. so the whole maybe/probably thing to get your damage/cc down hurt him for me. i usally feel in the fast paced gameplay like warframe i want things down reliable over time or simply now. but i need to be sure it works. either way i'm usally dead. hydroid does none of these things.

fun/interactive gameplay: this point comes a bit down to the satisfaction of the gameplay he had. meaning overall summoing a powerfull kraken sounds very appealing, but the damage the target finding and the visuals did not really deliver on this fanatsy in my opinion here. the other thing with his whole kit was that you put his abilitys down and usally are useless. meaning if you are in your 2. you just dash, you can do nothing more. in your 3 u can do notihng more. if you cast your 4th usally you have the augment, meaning you do not want to kill the enemys anyway. meaning you do nothing. to that comes the enemys get kicked around so much they are hard to target anyway. so you do nothing. the only ability you can still target/interact with the enemys in a decent way was his 1st. so in most of his kit the interaction with the actual game is missing. in terms of the enemys or the mission objective (which is usally carried by interacting with the enemys). while it might be okay to have one ability like this in a kit. having all designed this way feels not fun or interactive to play. as a note here you do not feel useful as a player, at least that was my experience most of the time due to that desgn.

targeting/teamplay/visability: this is linked a bit to my point to unreliability, but touches a bit on it from another direction. since you play most of the time in a team as hydroid or with him your goal is to play with him. meaning if he uses his abilites first of all you as another player want to see what he does and what area is affected. this was even not clear for hydroid itself when he casts his abilities all the time. as a teammate you want to see the target area his kit works on. this you do not see either. the next point comes down to targeting. what is he aiming at. do the tentacles hit this enemy or do you have to kill it since it will not get cc'ed. to that comes that his 3rd and 4th will make enemys basicly untargetable for other players. meaning in his 3rd you can literally not damage them. in his 4th they get thrown around so much that if you do not have an aoe weapon you are screwed. all these things made playing with hydroid in the team a pain for his teammates and even for himself.

effectivness/scaling: his kit had not good damage/cc or scaling in it that made it worth to use. combined with all the downsides you not only are staying around passivly waiting for his abilites to finish, the enemys released after it are not even dead. you still have to kill them. so in a fastpaced game stuff takes longer with hydroid. he does not help the mission objective at all  in fact he mostly slows stuff down. and yes you could build max range to go into higher levels, but this did not mean he scaled. his cc stayed unreliable like in the lower levels and his damage was non existent. so you gained nothing really here.

theme of the frame: this might be a minor thing for some, but what was the theme of the old hydroid DE? was it water? some say it was pirate finishers to kill enemys when they are down. but whatever it was it did not fit all abilities. most of his abilities or his playstyle is not really fitted to do much melee. if you say water the passive does not fit into that really. ground slam and spawning tentacles is hardly the first thing that comes to peoples mind if you ask for suggestions with that theme. so i personaly felt there was always a bit of one part missing when it came to his theme. what was it or better what is it? same with oberon there no real line drawn, which makes his kit seem disconnected. it makes the frame design feel a bit off and the gameplay too in my opinion.

------------------------------------

so whats with him now did the problems or issues get fixed?

------------------------------------

i musst say in part. since i feel some definilty got ironed out a bit, but on the other hand others got worse. that said most things in core stayed the same. the old problems are still there.

in terms of survivability the shield+armor helps and being able to move a bit in undertow while being invincible does a lot for him in that sense. that being said i feel the undertow playstyle is way to passive to be fun in the long term (meaning more then the 1st minute into the mission...). so i feel this issuse of him etting one shot got adressed, but still stays. +25 shield is nothing, sicne shields are worthless at the moment. the 200 armor is nice, but really does not healp much if you go into a bit of higher levels (even later into the starchart). his abilities are stil basilcy the same, in fact mostly need him to stay inactive while channeling. making him even more vulernable. his ranges got nerved by a lot. so survivablity better in terms of armor+shield, but way worse in terms of ability support. so i feel this stayxed the same or even got worse for me.

the unreliability is still the same or even worse. yes targeting got improved. but the problem as many pointed out is more in terms of tentacles spawning clustered. the new "let them spawn in the puddle" mechanic does not help that at all. the range nerves do not help either. the 1st is still massive rng.

the fun part got definilty a plus in my eyes. since pullling enemys into the puddle is pretty cool. that said it is no the most interactive gameplay. and i feel due to other factors like low damage, low moveability, range nerfes it does not make for a got interactive gamplaystyle long term. his gameplay which seems to be focused now to stay in the puddle seems in fact even more stale. since you can not set up your stuff fast and do other stuff. you need to channel, stay as a puddle, cast your 1 in there to kill even soem enemies anbd so on. so you are not more active.

the targeting/teamplay/visibility factor got even much worse i feel with the new rework. the whole channeling things does not help at all. target areas are not properly shown. channeling is not properly displayed. old problems in this category still exist. new problems came in to them. so this got much wrse and does not help him.

effectiveness and scaling still sit at the same point. witht he range nerfes and channeling one might say even worse. undertow can save you sometimes good inot ihgiher levels, but it does not mean his kit scales well...

the theme of the frame is still a questionmark to me and like it seems to many other players as well.

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what i actually would like to see is a proper rework scrap his abilites; give him a proper theme be it what you want; then develop his kit around that. no revisited with some quality of life changes he should have gotten some time ago.... please DE

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since we are being realistic here and this will not happen:

channeling overall: i do not really like it. if this at all stays in. (the channeling mechanic does not add much to hid kit in terms of fixing or helping him with his problems.) it should be a bonus. meaning an ability just goes longer. maybe the 1st could fire faster or the 4th could spawn1-3 tentacles more depending on the channel time. so it would be a bonus, but not needed (like it currently sadly is to get anything out of his abilites...).

in general: this should go without saying, but reverse the range nerfes. they do not help him at all...

passive: anything but what he currently has. really anything. there are countless options: some water/liquid like shield that recharges and behaves a bit like irionskin in terms of having some capability to absorb damage. some charge timer that allows you to cast abilites for free with the might of the water. some buff when he touches his watrer abilites, since he is in his element. the ability to absorb x damage since he is water that could scale with warframe mods (so a threshold must be met to disturb his liquid form).

so many players have suggested countles other great options to choose from. really aynthing, but what he has now...

1st tempest barrage: give this a firing pattern. this alone would make this a relliable cc ability that is usefull. adjsut the augment that the armor strip does not occur after 1mil casts. maybe get back the scaling of the aoe damage with range. overall make it reliable, predictable. something you can count on.

2nd tidal surge: i would personaly like to see this as a disconnected ability from the frame. some sort of shield like water wall that moves forward and expands the further it goes. fan like (expand in height and width). the epic waves that his description describes. not the puddle of water racing through a corridor it currently is. it woudl be a mix of frosts 2 and volts shield moving forward. it speed could scale with duration or strength. if it hits enemys it would knock them down. it would add a ton to his surviability and it would be epic and fun ;)

if this stays as is: at least make the enmies pile in one place and not randomly fling through the leve. so you could potentialy "pick them up with udnertow".

3nd undertow: make enmies caught inside just lay on the ground. allies could still damage them additionaly and kill them fast. it would more be a cc trap. disconnect this ability from the frame again. let him make 3 instances of this. it would make his gameplay muhc more active. and having 3 reliable cc traps would  add to his surviablilty.

if this stays as is: make the damage scaling better, since you seem to shoudl sit in/as the puddle to kill stuff. and with the current "not taking" loot mechanic as a puddle you have to reset now and again. so make this currently reachable cap somewhat decent so you can kill stuff. give other the option to shoot the puddle to get extra damage on the enmies inside.damage from allies is take by each enemies in the underthow equally.

4th pilfering swarm: make the tentacles spawn with a minimum disctacne to each other. so they are spread out. then either make them not pick up enemies and jsut hit them hard. or if they still pick them up let the damage scale up. either with percentage health. or the enemies the kraken has already killed like a bit of a passive, since you "feed the kraken". he could become a bit bigger and more glowy to signal this to the player when cast. the damage could go up if enemies traped in undertow puddles get hit or enemies dying in these puddles could add to the counter. so it would be more a "drowning" counter thing. idk many options again here to make this viable. but at the end. if enemies get picked up and therefor untargetable they should be killed. since you can interact with them. if the damge is not scalled up probperly then do not let them get picked up. if this should be more of a "visual" ability. this makes or breaks him a lot.

if this stays as is: the damage must be able to kill enemies. the really really big empahsis here is on must. because removing enemies from the player interaction is not fun. limbo already shows this. so if you take there away they must die. bring scaling in here.

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so in the end i currently do not see him getting more play from me if he only gets very minor touch ups. his old problems stayed the same. althought they did not get so much worse like limbo with his rework, they are still there in a way that make him not an option to pick. in terms of how oberon and limbo went concerning changes after the inital release of the abilities rework/revisit, i do not see this going well and his status changing. i'm sad to say this but there needs to be much more happening to make him a good frame and i do not see this done. the changes are currently only quality of life things. they do not adress the issues he has at his core. this needs to happens to lift him up into the top tier or even higher categories. visual touch up and texture updates are good and look nice, but in the end they do nothing for the gameplay and the mechanics. so please DE go back to the drawing table. take some steps back and then take a leap. this can go well if you have the courage to go further ;) we all know you can do it, so show us, please. we the players are waiting.

thx for reading.

swim on tenno.

[Cyadic.]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1110509427

[FoxFX]

3 hours ago, FoxFX said:

I know there are a lot of support into allowing allies to attack the puddle of Undertow to damage enemies, however I do have a question about that

 

Let us say we do add in the effect of allies shooting inside the puddle of Undertow to damage the trapped enemies, how will players know which enemy they attacked? What if the situation calls for one of the trapped enemies to be a priority to kill for one enemy?

 

I guess I'll start my thought on this:

 

If we would want Puddle Undertow to have the ability to let allies shoot enemies inside of the puddle, I would guess that enemies targeted would be in order from who was last to enter to who was first to enter.