[Update 21.4.0] Hydroid Revisited Feedback

[PsiWarp]

While the drowning damage is nice, I feel it's a bit too much for Undertow to do all that alone. It's already an escape ability to keep Hydroid safe so he can strategically place his area denial, while able to gather enemies to himself. Allies being able to shoot into the pool already ensures submerged enemies suffer a swift death.

Meanwhile, tentacles spawned from Undertow do nothing against enemies inside the pool. Maybe if the scaling stacking damage was moved to Tentacle Swarm, allowing tentacles to hit enemies inside Undertow, then 3 + 4 combo would be better.

[Subteram]

SUMMARY

1. Vastly improved, needs just a bit more 2. Needs a new passive 3. Another energy max boost from 188 to 200/215 4. Another increase of Tempest Barrage accuracy and base range from 10m to 12m 5. Increase base range of Undertow from 4m to 6m, Undertow needs to keep captives when used with Tidal Surge as a previous forum post said it would 6.Tentacle Swarm tentacles without a target need to spread out evenly and not cluster up, base range increase from 5m to 7m 7. Hydroid deserves to have people excited for Hydroid Prime and not the items the Access pack comes with 8. Keep up the amazing work DE and have a good day

As of 21.5.0 Hydroid is in a good state, vastly improved from pre rework and immidiately post rework. Just a couple of tweeks and I believe he will be able to run with the best. The biggest thing for me right now is he needs a new passive. The passive didn't get touched and isn't a true passive in the first place because it has to be manually actived by ground slams and there is only a chance of it activating on said ground slam. Something that could be good I think is 1. Fire DoT immunity and 2. Each time he kills an enemy with an ability he gets wetter increasing his armor for a duration Ex. 5 armor per kill for 5 seconds with maximum of 10 stacks. Another increase of max energy from 188 to 200 (maybe 215). The targeting on Tempest Barrage is better than before but if it could be improved just a bit more that would be amazing as well as an increase of range from 10m to 12m. Increase base range of Undertow from 4m to 6m, even at a power range of 190% it is still a tiny 5.51m. In an earlier update post it was said that Undertow would keep captives if used with Tidal Surge but does not. If it would be possible to have Tentacle Swarm spawn the tentacles that don't have an individual target to spread apart that would be fantastic, it's not fun to see groups of 3-5 tentacles without a target to spawn 3m apart most of the time and have to recast hoping for better spread. Finally a increase the base range of Tentacle Swarm from 5m to 7m. Hydroid is in a solid enough state to be played but just needs one last push to make people *WANT* to play him. As he his he is usable but there is still better options. My hope is that Hydroid will get one last push before he primes that make people want to buy the Access for Hydroid and not be like Oberon Prime Access where most people have told me they got it either for weapons or cosmetics and not Oberon Prime. It want it to be Hydroid's Prime Access and not a cosmetic or the Ballistica Prime pack that happens to have Hydroid Prime in it. Thank you SO much for the work you put into Warframe. I am excited to see what the future holds for this game. -Subteram

[Vali]

My issue with Hydroid has to be with how his Undertow removes you from combat, locking out your weapons and reducing your mobility massively. I think what would make Undertow more fun to play with would be adding even more mobility and methods of re-positioning the pool, or perhaps separating the pool and the player completely with an option to submerge into it. 

[YUNoJump]

So I like the rework and I like the reworked rework even more (3 guys laying down suppressive fire into a puddle might be the most ingenious military strategy the system has ever seen), but my main issue is with items in Undertow. They aren't sucked into a pile on your camera anymore, but they still hover a bit off the ground a bit, right at eye level, which makes it annoying to grab people.

My primary solution to this: if an item touches Undertow, it is picked up like a normal item. If Hydroid is apparently the whole puddle, this makes sense, and it gets the items out of the way. It also isn't really some super-vacuum, because you're super slow in Undertow. 

Another solution might be to just make items non-solid objects which can't be hit, so that we can target through them. This doesn't solve the problem of them getting in the way of sight, but it does solve the aiming problem. This feels like something that would be annoying to change at a deep engine level.

In any case, I love the rework other than this. Thanks DE!

[LuckyCharm]

Nullifiers still seem to be the bane of his existance, even if you pull one into the puddle without its shield up, your puddle immediately is released as soon as its shield would come back. It's rather annoying, since to get their shields down to begin with while in puddle you need to use barrage or tentacle swarm which is unreliable for the job

[Aenris]

It's looking great so far! I'd love to see two more changes:

1) The slow moving pace at cost of energy from the puddle is kinda.... overkill. If we're going to move that slow, don't drain energy. Either remove/reduce the cost, or improve the speed a little. Perhaps it could be related to Hydroid's sprint speed?

2)Still wondering why enemies are left out if i move the puddle? Why? I think he'll be super mega great at cc if he could move around in puddle form "eating" enemies and dragging them along with him. I could sweep entire defense waves and bring them together for my team to easily dispatch (Specially with Corroding Barrage being a thing now)

Please reconsider a way to make Hydroid a Ground shark that devours everything in his puddle without losing enemies in the way :D

Edited August 17, 2017 by Arandabido

[K3T7U]

heres an idea... how about changing Hydroids passive into mod slot which only uses augment mods?

Edited August 17, 2017 by K3T7U

[LeadMonkey]

Hey, major bugs with Hydroid undertow atm. Undertow damage having no affect, Curative Undertow inactive, can be damaged while in undertow, trapped enemies can still fire, 1st and 4th ability self damage while in undertow 

[Wolfchild07]

Some problems I've noticed post-patch:

Vacuum partially still tries to pick things up, leaving them floating mid-air, but not collecting them.

Tempest Barrage is very difficult to aim accurately. Eg. Through the wide "windows" in Kuva Fortress missions. Instead of going where I'm aiming, it just hits the area I'm standing in. Tentacles are fine for aiming, though. Much more accurate.

Tidal Surge (while in Undertow) is now costing more energy the longer it goes on. It costs me about 100 energy with 130% efficiency. It completely counteracts the base energy increase.

[Mudfam]

4 hours ago, (PS4)Fenrushak said:

You seem to be really upset about your perception of Hydroids powers for a person that doesnt rely on powers. 

The whole 1 second or gtfo mentality makes it clear. And yes I was referring to you. I believe I said as much in a few different comments. 

Did you even read my OP or other posts? I created this thread, my suggestion was all about mobility. I'm just not interested in waiting around in a puddle, and you come along telling me about how many seconds I need to stay in a puddle to kill something. I'm just not interested, get it? I don't know how else to say it lol. I want to do parkour and shoot stuff, I thought Hydroid with some changes could enhance that playstyle rather than work against it.

At this point I don't even know what it is you disagree with, or whether you completely ignored or just misinterpreted what I said. Whatever it is you disagree with, I don't see why you should resort to trying to insult me. I didn't pay attention to your earlier comments because it was just so much repetitive angry blah blah that didn't have any bearing on what I was trying to talk about. Yet here you still are still tryng to insult me for things that have absolutely zero to do with my actual posts.

[Nazrel]

Undertow IS NOT fun. I wanna play Hydroid, not a puddle. Why play Hydroid when Vauban can do it better, and uses his guns ? The only reason to play Hydroid is for Pilfering swarm, and even there, Nekros is slightly better.

Edited August 17, 2017 by Nazrel

[h4r1m40]

On 14.8.2017 at 11:09 PM, h4r1m40 said:

First of all, this thread is not meant to be a smear job on the „Hydroid-rework“. If you are reading this and you have the urge to start trash-talking and insulting DE-employees or the company itself for the rework please leave because it is not helping anyone, most certainly not Hydroid himself because I can understand that people do not want to read insulting comments in thread that aims to be constructive criticism.

 

There are plenty of other threads which point out there are still some damage-scaling issues and the introduction of charged “tentacle-swarm”, to get to get the range pre-reworke power range, were kind of a nerf on his 4^th ability “tentacle-swarm”. So I am not the only one seeing this.

Yes, Hydroid is more fun to play but this can hardly be called a “rework” or as it had been called “revisit”. He still needs attention and due to the fact that he is not popular, I fear that he will remain as he is. I hope that Hydroid gets the same treatment as Oberon, hence this thread.

 

Should DE read this and consider scaling his damage to make him more viable late-game, by all means please do not overscale him because I believe many Hydroid-mains like me want him to be a CC-warframe and not a DPS-warframe.

 

I think these tiny changes would make Hydroid definitely more useful:

 

1. change his augment “Corroding barrage” from dealing corrosive procs into viral-procs which viral damage scales with his power strength. People are mostly running Corrosive Projection in late-game builds anyway. This makes “corroding barrage” obsolete and the ability without the augment is completely useless against armored high level enemies from the get go. It would be nice to do at least some mediocore damage even for an CC-ability. He already has a 4^th ability that is a defacto CC ability due to its pitifull damage output.

    

2. Increase the damage scaling of his 4^th ability and try to look into reverting its range-nerf. If a Hydroid wants to cast a “Pilfering-swarm” on the same range as pre-rework, he cannot do it in puddle because then, at least the way I have tested it in-game is that the tentacles are limited in the puddle's vicinity.
   On top of that standing still for a charged 4^th ability for about 4 seconds, I am not sure on the exact time because I never counted the seconds during charging, while being under enemy fire is suicide. I do not believe that people are willing to go for “Natural Talent” for an ability that is lacklusting.
   And to use several 1^st abilities to suppress enemy fire, just to cast a charged 4^th ability, is simply energy-consumption wise not reasonable.

   This could be fixed easily by letting his charged 4^th ability being freely casted like his 1^st ability while being in undertow.

    

3. His augment “curative undertow” should either be an integral part of undertow itself or make my proposal at point 1 an integral part of his ability. The only instances where I as Hydroid-main use undertow is during spy-mission to stealth-kill patrols without raising the alarm. One of augments should be integral because they are not usable late-game.

I do welcome the changes that I would summarize as “visual-changes” but the problems regarding Hydroid have not been dealt with.

 

More importantly!

Why is it no longer possible to reload weapons while being submerged in “undertow”?

Is this a bug, I just tried it several times in-game but Hydroid no longer reloads while in “undertow”?

 

Hydroid relies so much on firearms as his damage, as he should as a CC-warframe but only to a bearable degree. Hydroid is a mediocore CC-warframe that desperately needs damage mods in his weapons to inflict at least some damage late-game. Switching out damage mods for a reload mod because he can no longer reload in safety anymore is just too much.

No matter what happens, I will keep on playing Hydroid because I really like him and according to my taste, playing him is so much fun over other frames.

 

I hope for the best, that game-playing changes to this warframe will be made instead of mostly pure visual-changes,but I fear for the worst that Hydroid will remain as he is because he has so few die-hard fans like me.

 

I friggin knew it that his damage will be overbuffed. The nerf bat will come and Hydroid will be back to the way he has been.

I was just hoping they would make his ultimate damage moderately scalable and his 1^st a bit more useful than just armor stripping, due to that most players go with corrosive projection anyway in late-game. This way and the changes to his stat he would have been viable end game.

 

But now undertow provides damage and invincibility. But what is worst is that playing as a puddle is boring as hell.

 

And those players on this forum and other websites that argue Hydroid-mains like me are bigots that we do not like if a frame has a stationary ability and that when it comes to Hydroid we start labeling it as boring game-play but not when it comes to those Frames, I say: “No, I never like these abilities to boot with because they are just as boring.”. What is worse that for instance that one of these stationary abilities Banshees “Sound Quake” might be still boring but has a large are of CC. Hydroid's puddle has little CC range but damage. But in order to execute the damage you have to remain as a boring puddle.

 

I wanted Hydroid to be a reliable CC warframe with an ult that has some purpose. If the ult had some scalable damage that is useful during late-game, then the whole part of puddle-afking could be negated. As of now u can say:

 

1. Do you want reliable CC: Tempest Barrage > Pilfering swarm

2. Do you want to deal damage late-game: Puddle > Pilfering swarm [not to mention boring as hell]

 

The CC of his 1^st has always been more reliable, cheaper and u could use finishers melee attacks compared to his useless ult.

Get the scaling damage on his ult. That way the pilfering swarm augment has some purpose because in late-game looting with its tiny damage output has always been such a chore. Now his tentacles are more team friendly and putting a not overpowered scalable damage on it would ensure that Hydroid does not have to played as a boring puddle-afk.

I dub this rework as "puddle gate".

Edited August 17, 2017 by h4r1m40

[Netzwerkfehler]

Yeah probably. I could change the element to oil.

 

The thing that annoys me is that we were promised a rework. We only got tweaks and QoL changes.

IMO a rework is replacing abilities that don't have use for the better.

Hydroid doesn't excel at anything. That's a trade that all the popular frames have. Being good at something. Most frames also have a theme attached to them, with abilities that match it. Hydroid is this weird water, pirate, tentacle thing. When I think of water I think about calm water that heals and buffs. There's also the harsh waters that can smack you.

When I look at Hydroid I don't see any of that

[FoxFX]

I've been hearing some rumor that the changes Hydroud undergone with Undertow were not the true intended changes. If this option for Undertow is still viable, please share your thoughts.

[FoxFX]

I have long posted this suggestion for Hydroid's Undertow in question of what to do with the puddle ability. This was merely a backup idea in case the recent Undertow change will turn sideways:

As for Tentacle Swarm, I still have one last thread to make to thoroughly go over how it could be done.

[trusyren]

BUG REPORT

Today (08/17/2017) i played two survival missions and about 10 minutes undertow of my hydroid loses his invulnerability.
Hypothesis about what trigger this bug:
- fall in a abyss using undertow
- get kicked from undertow by the bubble man
- something related to the second ability
- something related to a rift buff (10 pieces of radiant stuff)
- Or maybe something else. Please, search for this and fix it. Is really annoying when you see enemies shooting you inside the puddle.

 

Edited August 17, 2017 by trusyren

[Aeryes]

So the damage undertow is doing at the moment apparently isn't intended. To be honest I dont think the damage itself is all that crazy, a few other frames can do the same sort of thing with less effort like Mallet on Octavia for example. It's more the fact that you're untouchable while doing it which puts it in the realm of OP.

That said DE I want to urge you, if a nerf is on the cards for this please dont just take all the power away from undertow and make him dependent on this whole shoot into the puddle mechanic to do any real damage. I'm fine with toning it down a bit but Undertow needs to carry some major heat without this new gimmick mechanic. He needs to have good scaling damage which ramps up quickly enough to not feel too slow and immobile. And he definitely doesn't need to be dependent on allies to do any notable damage.

Lets be honest he's not even close to how OP the cataclysm build for Limbo was after that rework.

Edited August 17, 2017 by Aeryes

[BrazilianJoe]

Shooting the puddle damages enemies yay! THANKS

Now, complete it: 

Shooting the puddle/tentacles/Kraken shares damage with puddle/tentacles/Kraken.

Moving with undertow moves undertowed enemies

Tidal Surge carries undertowed enemies

Tidal Surge while undertowed swallows enemies

If player aims while undertowed, Tentacle Swarm is cast as if it was not undertowed - i.e. at the reticule target - instead of around the puddle. 

[IFHQ]

Please Please Please Keep His Damage numbers at least Close,if not the same, to what they are at in Update 21.5, I love where hydroid is at right now, its an amazing place filled with amazing puddle powers

[(XBOX)Papa Requiem]

I hope this is the right spot to process. Please keep the way Hydroids puddle works, it's only a 8m ability that requires two abilities for the damage to be high and requires a specific augment mod. It is also a mainly stationary ability. Personally I do not think it's OP like Limbo revisited's cataclysm was. 

Ps. Yes I'm on xbox but I don't think that invalidates what I said. 

Edited August 17, 2017 by (XB1)RevenantRequiem

[(PSN)samppaH]

I just want to give a though to the idea, how about.. Combining Tidal Surge and Undertow into One power? Since most of the Hydroid reworked skills have charge. How about Charge the power to Perform the Tidal Surge and tap to go into undertow Mode?

[El_Chino]

Maybe reducing the channel energy cost to 1 per second base (halve it), then add another 1 per enemy on the pool?, affected by mods.

[AcedFox]

Playing with Hydroid now to get time to understand he new mechanics. and i came just to one conclusion.

The 1st and 4th skill charge maybe needs to be lowered with 25%-40%.

The rest is fine and playable to me.

I still rarely use undertow simply kinda boring, but i do not mind using it now to stay alive longer and yet be useful (I did not had a real moment yet to use undertow that badly, Hydroids new armor and shield does help a lot!) and of course for the giggles pulling enemies in.

Before the whole revisit, undertow was just, not there? at least the times i used it was like 0.00001%?

Edited August 17, 2017 by AcedFox
typos

[AcceptYourDeath]

His new home is going to be Akaad and that`s about it! He is a typical "one-shot" caster frame at the moment. 

Edited August 17, 2017 by AcceptYourDeath

[(PSN)abbacephas]