[Update 21.4.0] Hydroid Revisited Feedback

[MrRagez]

Update failed, stuck in a loop of getting timed out and launcher crashing. Tried to verify game files, launcher crashes. Nice update corrupting my files forcing me to reinstall the game completely...

[Brasten]

On Tentacle Swarm....

Can we get an animation change to a "Coil and Constrict" instead of "Madly Flailing". The Mad Flail was funny and technology appropriate for its time, but as enemies get into higher level and their Aura start making other units highly resistant to certain forms of damage (looking at you Healer and Toxic Ancients, and various Eximums), it becomes increasingly important to be able to eliminate those enemies quickly and selectively.

The mad flailing of Tentacle Swarm actively hinders this, keeping Hydroid in a "not team player" category when it comes to CC options. Almost all other CC frames and options leave enemies in vulnerable states that allow teammates easier shots/attacks. No so much Tentacle Swarm.

Maybe if it Flailed about for 4 seconds (with increased damage), then calmed down and Coiled up. That would be an appropriate compromise "looking cool" and a practical team supporting CC.

Edited August 10, 2017 by Brasten

[Autongnosis]

To be honest the change sounds interesting, the only qualm i have is the base stat buffs. Considering how energy intensive Hydroid already was, probably an energy pool buff would have made more sense. Will say something more as soon as i can play a bit with him. 

[Wevi]

You should be able to undertow enemies while you are moving with tidal surge or atleast for the very first tidal surge.

actually you should be able to drag anything you have in undertow even when you are moving slow
 

I can't edit my previous post for some reason

[PsiWarp]

First in-game impressions: this is amazing! The amount of synergies, extra functionalities, and tentacle improvements (they can grab multiple enemies like a wet noodle shishkabob!!!). More testing required to see just how far his powers reach the endgame.

My favorite change so far~ I really enjoy the Undertow grabbing. I can just sit snug in my puddle, surf around with Tidal Surge and yoink enemies into the pool for Tempest Barraging and feed my Tentacles. It's like a new mini-game!

Edit: Alright. After testing him out for a day, from casual low level to high end endurance runs to Sorties, here is my feedback on Hydroid Revisited~

Hydroid has improved in many areas, specifically stats, survivability, synergy, and interactivity. However, he still needs work on crowd control inconsistency, charged cast speed, energy restoration, and visual obstruction from his abilities.

Stats

Stats-wise I appreciate the buff to Shields and Armor, which now reflects the idea that Hydroid should be commanding the battlefield from afar, but can get his hands wet up close and personal when his enemies lose their footing.

However, with the Revisit, in order to cover a large area, Hydroid has a lot more casting to do, particularly 1 & 4's charged casts requiring up to double the energy cost for maximum benefit, and Undertow's pull function costing energy per target. As a Warframe with a 150 energy pool by default, with his heavy reliance on ability casting to stay safe and no way to restore energy aside from the normal methods (Orbs, Restores, teammates, Energy Overflow, Arcane Energize), it would be great if the energy pool was bumped up to 150/225 before the Prime variant.

Passive

Though I was a tad disappointed there were no changes to the passive, with the improvements to tentacle AI and functionality I can still see use in this passive.

However, tentacle AI in general still needs more tweaks. Tentacles often face toward me when I am nearby and slam against me, which leads me to believe that they perceive me as a potential enemy target. Often while they are doing this, they ignore nearby enemies coming into range, only snatching them up if they walk directly into the tentacle itself.

While the tentacle slapping me feels fun to watch, I would much rather they focus on enemies. Part of the inconsistency problem with Hydroid's CC is that tentacles are way too slow at capturing enemies, many times allowing enemies to walk pass them unaffected.

Tempest Barrage

As primarily a CC ability, its knockdown effect scales well into the high level. However, because the missiles rain from above and often scatter over the area randomly, and the explosion radius being smaller than the area radius, Tempest Barrage at best provides occasional area denial after setup. It would be great if at least several missiles are guaranteed to land in a formation (at the center, at the edges, etc).

Charged cast granting up to double damage and double duration, in exchange for double energy cost is a nice new mechanic. Since barrage has a 5 seconds base duration, being able to increase it via charge allows prolonged area denial and makes low duration builds a bit more viable. But, the charged cast is not apparent enough, since all we see is the watery area indicator and no progressive charging shown while the button is held down, it takes a bit of guesswork to ensure a charged cast is in progress. Combined with the post-casting delay before you can reuse Tempest Barrage, the charged cast feels really clunky to use.

Doubled damage is always nice, but for a low damage ability like Tempest Barrage, that leaves more to be desired. Perhaps explore options involving scaling damage? Especially now with the intention to use Undertow in combo with Tempest Barrage to pummel submerged enemies to death. If the player is directly involved in the killing process, then a case could be made for Tempest Barrage to deal scaling damage against submerged enemies rather than its usual flat low damage (which understandably should not be for every barrage when used by itself).

Lastly, please make the water splashes from missile impact transparent. I can't see through the white wash when trying to kill enemies knocked down or those being blocked from view behind the barrage.

Tidal Surge

I greatly appreciate the ability to interrupt this during travel by using Undertow, as it is very easy to overshoot with Tidal Surge when using high Ability Duration builds. Being able to use this to move Undertow is also a great addition.

However, its pull on enemies that it washes over is not consistent enough. Sometimes it can pile up a lot of enemies where you stop, but mostly it just pushes them far away when they get ragdolled by the wave. Also, leaving behind enemies that were submerged in Undertow, rather than pushing them with Hydroid as he surfs to a new location inside his pool, feels counterproductive; I know that with Tempest Barrage and Tentacle Swarm, those abilities are meant to hold submerged enemies in place when Hydroid Tidal-Tows away to a new spot, as that is what the combos are supposed to do.

But you would expect Tidal Surge to also carry submerged enemies along since it's what it does normally, which is catching enemies in the wave and pulling them along (supposedly).

Undertow

This ability has received a lot of great buffs and feels like an Exalted form exclusive to Hydroid. The tendril grabbing, the moving, the power to cast all other abilities, the quick activation and deactivation methods via jump and roll, all feels very fluid!

That said, the reduction in range is a hard hit in exchange for being able to grab enemies. Because of its low range and encourages the player to cast abilities and grab enemies, Undertow has become a big energy sink for Hydroid. I really like that you guys made it more interactive, because before it really is just a passive stealth/invulnerability panic button. However, because of the new synergies, it has become apparent that Hydroid needs a built-in way to restore energy to keep himself from going down the drain. I am not sure which ability or even the passive should have this energy restoration, but it is quite necessary to be included as Hydroid is even more reliant on abilities and combos than before.

The accumulating Finisher damage for drowning enemies is a nice addition, but it seems too low a value at the moment to really dent high level enemies quickly enough.

Please consider allowing allied players to hit enemies inside Undertow with abilities and/or gunfire. Now that Hydroid is encouraged to grab enemies in sight and stay in Undertow for longer periods of time, it is vital that teammates can kill enemies in the pool for mission progression as many gamemodes depend on enemies being able to be killed (Survival, Exterminate, etc).

Finally, please do something about Vacuum causing Pickups to gather and float on top of Undertow and blocking my view. I cannot see, therefore I cannot use Undertow's grab effectively (and trust me, I really like grabbing enemies). It is frustrating to have to deactivate Undertow to clear out the loot so I can see only to repeat this cycle of blindness again.

Tentacle Swarm

I LOVE the look of the Kraken. Great job on the water visuals for the tentacle model.

But, like Tempest Barrage, the water splashes coming off of each tentacle are not transparent enough, and I cannot see through the visual obstructions to shoot enemies effectively. Please make the splashes transparent!

The Kraken is great, but too bad it goes away so quickly and is purely a cosmetic addition. You guys made something great, there's still lots of potential in it, and it would be a waste of a good model if that's all the Kraken does is pop up and creepily sink away. Please consider integrating it as an actual summoned unit for Hydroid with gameplay functions involving its tentacles.

As mentioned in the passive section of my feedback, tentacle AI needs more tweaks to become fast reacting, enemy targeting sources of damage and effective crowd control. I understand that the range reduction for the spawn radius is to accommodate the tentacles actually picking targets where they spawn, but it is still a big negative change that was not outweighed by the positives.

One of the biggest issues with tentacles in general is that they flail enemies all over the place. I have seen tentacles after Hydroid Revisited to stay static and not move, and while I don't understand why they sometimes do that, I feel that we can turn it into one of the biggest advantages for Hydroid and his teammates. Please consider allowing tentacles to pause and not move when players look directly at them, similar to Anti-Matter Drop slowing when Nova is looking at it, so that players can actually aim and shoot the enemies stuck on the tentacles with precision weapons.

Unlike Tempest Barrage, the charged cast for Tentacle Swarm is done well with visual response letting the player know the charge is in progress. Props for this new mechanic.

My Verdict:

Overall, Hydroid has improved greatly since his initial release.

• The flow of his abilities mostly feels good, with the charged cast for 1 & 4 needing more feedback to the player.
• The addition of synergies and combos demands a lot of energy, so I believe Hydroid should gain an innate method to earn/restore energy, as well as an increase in his energy pool.
• Abilities 1, 2, & 4 can really use consistent and reliable crowd control to solidify Hydroid's role as area denial and controller dictating where enemies gather.

Thank you for the wonderful surprise Revisit, DE. I look forward to seeing more changes to make our Space Pirate the scourge of the seven stars!

Edited August 11, 2017 by PsiWarp

[Wevi]

You should be able to undertow enemies while you are moving with tidal surge or atleast for the very first tidal surge.

actually you should be able to drag anything you have in undertow even when you are moving slow
 

I can't edit my previous post for some reason
WHY ARE MY POSTS DUPLICATED

Edited August 10, 2017 by Wevi

[Raptor1jdan]

All of these changes look great but I'm disappointed there has been basically no change to his passive, it's usefulness (what little it had) has been completely removed now that his tentacles are more proactive in their carnage...

That being said I have a suggestion for a new passive: give him an increased base finisher speed, this would work both mechanically by letting him take more advantage of all of the knockdowns in his kit and thematically by making him feel more like a *cut-throat* pirate

[CHIEF-117]

His 4's range is horrible, hes even more useless now.

[AperoBeltaTwo]

Invincible puddle simulator.

[Clem2-TheClemening]

We need some indication of the charging. Right now it feels like nothing is happening. 

[Doxorn]

Tempest Barrage - is this ability still around? No one used it and no one will. All the change is just you can charge it. That didn't fixed it. Should be replaced completely.

Tidal Surge - still unimpressive, it's uncontrollable, no reason to use it. My suggestion would be: make us able to control our direction (like Exca's 1st) and if we are in Undertow then enemies who are inside the puddle would dragged alongside us (then Tidal Surge would have some use)

Undertow - movement speed should be a faster (it's painfully slow atm)

Tentacle Swarm - energy cost is doubled if charged to full, remove the increased energy cost (it's a bad idea and no-one will like it) and give us more tentacles with the charging (for example 15 at max charge)

 

This update feels like a nerf. ATM

Edited August 10, 2017 by Doxorn

[Alcoholism]

Liking it so far - just a small visual piece of feedback for undertow.
I really like the water physics you guys have gone to the effort of doing - but it feels a little too metallic, like the T1000 from Terminator 2.
I was also wondering about colouring. I know you guys are going for like a clear water effect, but maybe just a little bit of colour we can add to it to make it our own? If there's more than one Hydroid it's hard to see who's puddle is where.

EDIT: Noticed a small glitch where some enemies were being dragged under the floor with the tentacle swarm - this mainly occurred when you got multiple enemies stuck in the one place with undertow but you come out of undertow. Also when you use tentacle swarm the enemies go flying up into the air at crazy velocities (tentacles will be floating up in the air sometimes too).

Edited August 10, 2017 by Alcoholism

[CHIEF-117]

Just now, Doxorn said:

Tempest Barrage - is this ability still around? No one used it and no one will. All the change is just you can charge it. That didn't fixed it. Should be replaced completely.

Tidal Surge - still unimpressive, it's uncontrollable, no reason to use it.

Undertow - movement speed should be a faster (it's painfully slow atm)

Tentacle Swarm - energy cost is doubled if charged to full, remove the increased energy cost (it's a bad idea and no-one will like it) and give us more tentacles with the charging (for example 15 at max charge)

 

I call this a nerf.

His ability used to be spammable , its a major nerf. Hes completetly useless now.I always thought nothing was wrong with him untill this upadte nerfed him.

[berapp]

He feels slow. His 1 has a long charge time to try and be good, his 3 is a damn puddle that crawls along the floor, his 4 is still the same thing, no changes whatsoever. This was about 40-60% of what he needed. Make his undertow move faster, make the charging times charge faster, make his tidal surge less expensive to use.

Other than that, visuals look great. Except that if you pull an Oxium Osprey into the puddle and it blows up on you, the tentacle bugs out and sticks forevermore out of the ground.

If you want to make Hydroid feel like that "horror of the deep" then increase the number of tentacles by about 30% and make his undertow about twice as fast to move around. His energy efficiency also should be buffed, discard the slam passive and give him some "fluid nature" nonsense where he has a passive energy regen or something, maybe he generates energy while in undertow?

If you want to go the pirate route then scrap the tentacles and add a pirate ship, turret-like ability much like the Xiphos' where he dunks a ship down and it starts sailing and shooting stuff in the head.

No matter what you do, I think the range on his undertow should be twice as big, and the speed twice as fast. Hope this helps.

Love and goodluck <3

[CHIEF-117]

3 minutes ago, Clem2-TheClemening said:

We need some indication of the charging. Right now it feels like nothing is happening. 

We also need it to be spammable  and way more range and make it so his first ability makes enemies drop more credits because of the whole pirate idea.

[BlazenFury]

8 minutes ago, CHIEF-117 said:

His 4's range is horrible, hes even more useless now.

the lower the range the better for pilfering swarm tho so whatever

[Defion]

Just to update my previous post.

Note that half of the enemys turned at the door (I know my random teammate was coming, but they were turning away even befor he got there but the F6 key didnt work proper for some oddly reason as it kicked me out to desktop a few times). ill try to get a better screenshot if I can or have the time to do so, this problem still exsist.

2ns screenshot: I would upload but for some reason no site allows me upload the next screenshot where i tried to pull enemys in by left clicking on them but my god... so many invalid targets even when they stand right on the egde of the puddle, making them just clustering up like they did befor the rework.

3th: Please hold on for 5 minutes (it feels like 5 minutes) while i stand still being attcked, go to bleed out, die probably, just to cast a slightly more improved 4th..... #4thabilityworthdieingfor?

 

After 4+years give or take these things just makes me so so so so so so so so sad Does anyone wanna kiss and hold hands with me? Cause im into that if you are and I clearly need some loving, heck I might even need a rework since they work so good.

 

PS. let me be the first to say, I bloody hell miss my yellow piss puddle. Dang it!!

Edited August 10, 2017 by Defion

[CHIEF-117]

2 minutes ago, berapp said:

He feels slow. His 1 has a long charge time to try and be good, his 3 is a damn puddle that crawls along the floor, his 4 is still the same thing, no changes whatsoever. This was about 40-60% of what he needed. Make his undertow move faster, make the charging times charge faster, make his tidal surge less expensive to use.

Other than that, visuals look great. Except that if you pull an Oxium Osprey into the puddle and it blows up on you, the tentacle bugs out and sticks forevermore out of the ground.

If you want to make Hydroid feel like that "horror of the deep" then increase the number of tentacles by about 30% and make his undertow about twice as fast to move around. His energy efficiency also should be buffed, discard the slam passive and give him some "fluid nature" nonsense where he has a passive energy regen or something, maybe he generates energy while in undertow?

If you want to go the pirate route then scrap the tentacles and add a pirate ship, turret-like ability much like the Xiphos' where he dunks a ship down and it starts sailing and shooting stuff in the head.

No matter what you do, I think the range on his undertow should be twice as big, and the speed twice as fast. Hope this helps.

Love and goodluck <3

Get rid of the charge would be nice , its holding back his potential alot.

[Darkvramp]

Why  are you making us spend soo much energy for sooo little effect? he has trouble trying to kill lvl 50 arid grineer units, like it takes alot of energy to kill a varied amount of them

 

[CHIEF-117]

2 minutes ago, BlazenFury said:

the lower the range the better for pilfering swarm tho so whatever

No , it was better with more tentacles around the map. This sucks because he has like no coverage.

[Kierlak]

Damage is still incredibly poor, his 1 and 4 are still highly RNG, and his energy pool is still far too small. And having to charge things for them to be barely better than they were before is laughable.

 

EXTREMELY POOR REWORK.

[Darkvramp]

the range of his undertow tentacle pull needs to be tripled

 

[Nurmetya]

So it sounds like he's just become the new..... wait he was already the I'll just hide in my puddle and afk frame..... only difference now is he can cast from his puddle.....

 

This is a sad rework no wonder why DE didn't want to say anything about til it got released. Literally nothing has changed aside from some visuals.

Edited August 10, 2017 by Nurmetya

[Natitimo]

I'm so sad now :P

He sorta sucks still. Barely a rework in my opinion.

 

[clemza]

Hello ~

 

Its pretty good. I really like it for now.

 

The only things:

 

Tidal surge:

- You can have curved trajectory or even being able to go in the direction your aiming at. (if you keep aiming at 90° on your left you will do circles for exemple)

So its more easy to move around and more fun to use, i don't see myself moving in linear way all of the time.

 

Undertow:

- Pick up orbs, ammo, ressources, anything in the water range.

 

His passive:

- Health regen while under water or while having mobs under water with you (using undertow)

 

Because his passive is pretty bad, even more now since you wanna play under water, there is no way to use melee and smash the ground and nobody does that anyways.

 

Also the energy cost is way too much for what it does. He should have a cost reduction the more he use his abilities (maybe a passive, or like rhino charges with a longer timer until the reduction cost buff disapear 10 - 15s, at lesat for tidal surge) and some of his actual skills should have a lower base cost as well (1 and 2).

 

42 minutes ago, Ryme said:

What is the point of having both Tidal Surge and Undertow? It seems like Undertow is the same as Tidal Surge, now that you can move while in puddle form. The mobility bonus of Tidal Surge could easily just be rolled into Undertow, so that the Jump key would initiate a "surge" in a given direction, at a cost of energy.

I'd like for Tidal Surge to just be rolled into Undertow and replaced with a new skill. It would admittedly be more work with having to create a new skill and changing the existing Augment Mod, but I think it would be better for the frame overall.

I agree since you can go out of undertow with a jump or a roll.

 

 

Thanks for the good work :)

 

Edited August 10, 2017 by clemza