[Update 21.4.0] Hydroid Revisited Feedback

[(PSN)Tomplexthis]

THANK YOU OMG YES

its amazing, just amazing, 

 

T T thank you for listening DE

 

(cant wait for it to come to consoles)

Spoiler

 

 

Edited August 10, 2017 by (PS4)Tomplexthis

[ALEX_IV]

I am testing his abilities, and so far so good, looks like a good rework, except for his 4.

Before with his 4 with just a stretch mod I had 29m range. Now I have 7.25m. That's a quarter of what I had. To reach that extra range I need to charge it. That sounds more like a nerf more than anything, because before I just pressed 4 and had the full power and range of the ability, now I have to waste a couple seconds charging it to achieve the same effect. If you just want to spam his 4 (farming with pilfering swarm), now it is a chore to use because you have to charge it all the time.

I really don't see the point of the change to his 4, it makes it worse to use.

[kapn655321]

3+ year Hydroid main.
...I might be the eldest of the Hydroids? Might be..

This remake gets my Seal Of Approval!
Didn't expect casting 1 in puddle.

Moving puddle is something I always dreamed of.
More armor makes up for the stamina advantage he used to have.

Mmm, DE, you dun good. <3 I love you guys n' gals.

[leadwolf1]

Hydroids abilities

Is a glitch my self ,as hydroid, and another hydroid went to Ophelia and ran and both went into arcwing mode a couple times. 

 

From reading lot of others complaints they seem to want everything on the move and to travel. well harrows abilities do not work that way mesa 4th does not work that way, and stop with having an ability be a gun or cannon please Seems to me he is suppose to be a pirated to control the seas, so if you want a new ability have him create a water cyclone, water spouts. if you need the ability to move ,or a tidal wave not a surge and do devastation to all in its path. the base mechanics are already in the game.

Passive really needs to be changed into something useful. 

 tempest barrage, I believe that it is ok , I tried it with a quick tap and then with a hold does some extra damage. it is better than before, I also hit the target that I was aiming for this time. in less I was getting lucky, I believe it can now be used for more than a knock down, depending on level of course. I used the corrosive barrage mod and , well I do not know, I saw the corrosive proc but sometimes the armor went away and the red health bar showed up, sometimes with each splash it took a little bit away, and sometimes it seemed like the hit did DOT as I observed it in use. can you please make it do the same thing for the armored enemies. strip armor or dot and take armor and health or take armor and health with each splash from ability. is very confusing and not reliable to use in missions.

tidal surge :  I love the fact that it can be used to now pull enemies along, however should there not be a color change or something for the amount or if there is a cap and you reach it. this way you know and do not keep trying to spam the ability to gather up with pooling. unless there is no cap

Under tow: A WINNER love that I can use other abilities while in  this mode, I normally use it to reduce the health of the enemies , let them up and hit with tentacle swarm, for farming purposes. I can now see it viable for higher end where I can barrage the enemy and move out of a bad area and then come out of the under tow. and I still take no damage while in the mode which is a good thing, in higher end this is how I save myself and get at least shield back . I am OK with the puddle being smaller, for now we can use the other abilities to get out of a jam, if you still could not/ then I would agree with other player that state the puddle is small now.

Tentacle swarm: like it not much changed same ability great for farming and rag dolling enemies /// I think on this one it was just enough of a tweak. I did notice that a tentacle kept coming from where ever my sentinel was when I cast it and stayed in mid air when I moved around and out of the way of it.Only thing I would do is to have tentacles color change to energy color as well as the krakens head to go with the player.

Thank you

will add more when I run a few higher missions with frame

[(PSN)Tomplexthis]

AGGHGHHSDGDSGDHGDFHSGDFHG

 

hydroid, my dream has come true of my number 2 frame

its gonna be swell, or a swelling puddle i might add, Tip of the hat

[Xyhon]

14 minutes ago, Protomorph said:

First things first: the Hydroid "rework" isn't a rework. I can see it's called Hydroid "revisited", and the idea of a rework was taken off the table preemptively like it was with Oberon. As with Oberon, this was also a mistake. Both of these frames probably should have been reworked, instead we get tweaks to their abilities based on the assumption that the character and abilities are A-OK, it's just some numbers that need adjusting.

As far the actual performance of Hydroid "revisited" I would say it is overall slightly better, and (like Oberon) still not worth playing over other frames.He's better, but just no good reason to use him really. There are also multiple unresolved issues, and bugs with the new implementation of abilities.

Tempest Barrage: this ability is both good & bad simultaneously. It's great to have an aoe in the "1" slot, especially one with cc. The bad part is that most projectiles from tempest barrage miss all targets and do nothing. Which means this ability is probably (still) overcosted. Yes it will do some damage and knock things down... eventually... and it's good that you can charge it up now. But none of that changes the fact that most of it's effect is wasted in almost every cast, and the two things it does do are random and happen slowly over a period of time. At the end of the day it's an unreliable dot that can be charged, but is still unreliable and slow.I think if it had a few more projectiles or if they were a little more accurate it would be in a great spot.

Tidal Surge: it's ok I guess. It's good for crossing terrain quickly, but not really better than parkour. If Hydroid was reworked this should have been the abiility to be removed. You can deal some damage with it. That's ok I guess. In all the time I've played Hydroid I don't ever recall using this ability much (outside of just testing it) because there's never really been a situation where I've needed to use it. I guess that says more about the ability than anything else. It's a good idea, a great concept of turning into a wave and plowing through enemies. It's just the implementation is lacking in being useful enough to actually use. It's also pretty difficult to estimate how much it synergizes with Undertow (although it seems only marginally helpful so far) due to the new version of Undertow having multiple bugs and issues. See next.

Undertow: Undertow is my favorite ability of Hydroid as it does things no other frame does. The new version has some improvements, some things that are worse, and some bugs. I'll just try to list them.

• Water visual on undertow: it's both good and bad. The good is that it looks amazing, as in the graphics are impressive. The bad is that I can't see the puddle or tell what area is covered by it in 90% of situations. If there was a slider or an option to "tint" the puddle towards my energy color to make it more visible instead of completely transparent that would solve this problem. This issue is exacerbated by the next point.
• The area covered by the puddle is not covered by the puddle. In the rare cases where you're actually able to see the pool and the area it covers you quickly discover that the actual area where enemies will be sucked into the pool is about half of the visual effect. In some cases it doesn't work at all, in any part of the pool. I played on Hieracon earlier and had hordes (groups of 15-20 at a time, multiple times) of enemies run directly through the center of the pool with no effect at all. Make the visual size of the pool match the area of effect, or make the area effected match the size of the pool. Also, make sure it works correctly and enemies actually fall into it.
• As with most things in Warframe, Undertow cannot handle any deviations in elevation and doesn't work properly at all if enemies are more than a few inches above or below the "level" of the pool. You can't hit enemies one foot above your center of mass with melee attacks, melee attack vs. enemies stationary at your feet will miss 90% of the time, trying to get a finisher attack on enemies that are even a few inches above or below you is next to impossible, and Undertow doesn't work on enemies that aren't exactly level with it. This has always been a problem in Warframe and it's a problem that continues with Undertow. You see this if you try to use Undertow on an incline. Any incline. Which is a frequent feature in terrain. From what I can tell basically half of the pool extends into and under the ground, where it does nothing, thus reducing the already small size of the pool by half. The bottom half works normally, and what's really frustrating is the enemies seem to know exactly where that line is, and avoid it. Which brings us to the next point.
• The new damage on Undertow is great, it works wonderfully and actually kills things now. Except enemies avoid it and refuse to enter the pool, rendering this change and the damage superfluous. "But you can move now..." Yes, I know. For a hefty, exorbitant energy cost (see next point). I realize that enemies avoiding the pool is a "thing", but I have to question it's necessity. If this is a good thing for the AI, shouldn't it be universal for other threats as well? Shouldn't enemies avoid walking into Embers World on Fire ability? If they will avoid a puddle, shouldn't they avoid walking into a wall of flames that will incinerate them? Shouldn't they avoid going near mines from the Penta, or Vaubans traps? How good would Embers World on Fire actually be if enemies refused to enter it? Not very good, right? This too. I'm not sure Hydroid is powerful enough in the scale of things to justify having the AI specifically constructed to negate this ability.
• The cost to move in Undertow is too high. As far as I can estimate it's about one energy per foot of movement. Moving around while in Undertow (either normally or via Tidal Surge) is a viable option for players with a maxed Primed Flow equipped and/or and active Zenurik focus. Viable for very short distances, over a long period of tiem. Otherwise it's an option, but not really a viable one. So end-game, high-rank players can use it, but early & mid game players really can't. Not viably. So if that's the restriction you want on the ability that's fine, but just be aware that's how it is.

Tentacle Swarm: This is also improved, but isn't fixed. It's great you can charge it up. The visuals are really cool, it has a neat monster in it now. I'm not totally sure the tentacles are seeking enemies out perfectly but it does seem to be very improved. The main problem with Tentacle Swarm is one that has existed since its creation, which is tentacle distribution. Tentacles need to have a minimum distance to spawn from each other. There are still cases where I cast it and wind up with 11 tentacles clustered on one enemy, while another a few feet away (but within the aoe) is completely untouched. It's not a damage problem, it's not an area affected problem, it's a distribution problem. They need to be spread out around the cast area to provide good coverage. In most cases it seems to work pretty well, but this is still happening. It also seems like since the changes the aiming of this ability is a little "off", and doesn't seem to quite go exactly where you're aiming it. Not as well as it used to. I could be wrong about this though, it's hard to gauge in some situations.

That's all I can think of for now. There are some improvements here, both visually and in gameplay and power. There are also some issues that continue to be unresolved, and some new issues as well. If all of the issues mentioned here were fixed Hydroid would be better, and improved, but would honestly still be a frame that I played only when... well, when I felt like playing Hydroid. There's no niche or role or identity or mission he fills particularly well, or a compelling reason to use him. You play Hydroid if that just something you feel like doing, not because there's a good reason for it. So most of the time, he sits in the dugout.

Thanks for reading, if anyone did.

P.S. I'd also like to take this opportunity to mention that when the time comes around to rework Zephyr you are going to actually need to rework Zephyr. A "revisit" won't work. Let's not kid around on that one. Her 1 and 2 have got to go, or at bare minimum combined into one ability, and here ult doesn't do much except slow down missions, prevent people from killing enemies, and frustrate your teammates.

Well, pit Oberon against 100+ enemies, and do same with Hydroid. Oberon wins, anytime - anyplace. Hydroid will just rely on his guns and CC to "hope" to actually CC enemies, or just stay in puddle for eternity (or energy drain out), because eximus will be too much. Oberon strips armor, disorients, blinds, etc. Hydroid? Makes kills even harder, by flailing enemies around or just making them unkillable for the team.

[sulusdacor]

(only played one mission so far, so still a lot more to test out)

he feels really fun to play. i like the rework overall. so far things i noticed:

- some visual feedback is missing with the 1 and 4 charge mechanics. the idea and results are good, but it is hard to see sometimes in the heat of the battle. for the 4th u still have the arm animation, the 1st has nothing. an icon or some effect on the ability bar would be nice to show you that u charge.

- the range/aim area of the 1 is really hard to see. before the rework when it first got change it seemed to be much clearer to see. could be that now usally undertow is in the mox. but some indicator would be nice.

- maybe give his 4th the same water textures/effects as his 2 and 3 have. they look really great and feel like water.

- does puddle speed scale with something? if not,why not with power str?

- played in the underwater uranus tileset and his 1st did not hit all the time in small areas. due to it coming a bit from an angle above. intended? or would it not be better that it hits all the time? but again a bit of an issue,with the target areas being hard to see. so not sure here, but from my past experience it seemed to hit even in small places and corridors like in akkad form what i remember.

so yeah still have to play around a bit more.

one thing i m wondering with his 3rd+4th. do enemys in undertow get targted/attacked by his 4 and if yes do kills by his 4 with augment give the loot? or do the tentacles have to touch them? does the pull of undertow count as a tentacle for extra loot if u use the augment? if thats not already the case it would be nice to have that interaction. since the gameplay seems to be goin towards sitting in the puddle and pulling stuff in.

thx for reading.

fight on tenno.

[DrBorris]

Guess I'll throw in my thoughts even though they are going to be drowned out...

 

1. Eh... Tempest barrage was fine before hand, charging does not make it worse, this is all okay.
2. Takes enemies with you... THANK GOD. The synergy though? Why half range? You can't possibly think it would be OP... All in all, fine though (FX could use a rework though)
3. Sigh... range nerf? But... why? This NEEDS to have the range be reverted. It NEEDS to carry enemies with you when you move. And it NEEDS to move faster (Ivara Speed).
4. ... More sigh, the tease of an actual monster then getting the same jello tentacles feels like a bad joke. The problem with this ability was not addressed, at all. Here's an idea. Tentacles pick up enemies, throw them on the ground, THEN LEAVE THEM ON THE GROUND until they stand back up where they can be thrown again. Oh, and here's a synergy, how about have the tentacles drop enemies into Undertow and have the Tentacles MOVE WITH YOU. For Pete's sake it is not that hard. And most importantly, give Tentacles the same esthetic as the monster head, please. 

 

Okay, that's it from me for now. Please [DE]Scott, give Hydroid the rework he deserves. 

[(PSN)azul86sapphire]

Ok, so, I realize I am on PS4, and cannot test this, but as probably a rare person who likes Hydroid in his pre-rework form, I felt like I had to say something when someone linked this thread from the Wiki.

I only read the first page of comments, and I will admit tying Tidal Surge and Undertow into one ability makes sense. I have a thought for a replacement - but not detailed. Just something to glue enemies in place. Best way I can explain that, is my Hydroid build currently relies on the Penta's Tether Grenades. Hold a small group of enemies in place for my 4 cast, and then more Penta grenades to pull incoming enemies right into the tentacles. If he had an ability that did that, chains or something, my build would not have to rely on a specific weapon for effectiveness. The build I have works very well for looting, but still falls off damage-wise once enemies reach a certain level.

[Darkvramp]

1. his one needs to target enemies.

2. his 2 needs to not be buggy and pull enemies like it says it is supposed to do.

3. his 3 needs halve the energy cost for both the ability and for his movement and casting his other abilities while in his puddle

4. his 3 should drag enemies with you when casting his 2 to move

5. he needs to move 4 times faster as a puddle

6. the puddle range should be restored back to what it was

7. you should be able to drag your tentacle swarm with you as you move around with your 3 or your 2

8. all of his augments should just be rolled into his base abilities. with the exception of curative undertow, as that should still be a part of the base ability, but it should change so that it only pull down allies that want it, and that they are healed on top if they do not want to be pulled under.

9. tentacle swarm should not be magnetic based

10. shooting the kraken transfers damage up the tentacles

11. his passive needs to be 100 percent spawning of tentacles on slam attack with a cap of 6, or it needs to be changed (i like the reduced status duration someone suggested)

12. the charge time needs a visual indicator like harrows thurible and and it needs to drain energy constantly while holding it.

13. the charge ratio of time to damage and duration needs to be increased while also decreasing energy for charging

14. the tentacle pull from his 3 needs 3x the range at base.

15.  it would be nice but if we could have something like melee mods effecting the tentacle swarms damage and rifle mods effecting barrages damage as well. (or something like having the mods on launcher weapons grant the mods to the abilities)

16. HE NEEEDS a way to generate his own energy.

As hydroid stands now, he is better, but you changed very little, gave him a fresh coat of paint, and made him more energy hungry without any real significant changes to what his underlying problems were. He still is bad, but now he looks better that's all.

[--BIG--Doug-Desu]

Look this [DE] :v
WTF

 

My reaction:

Spoiler

 

 

 

Edited August 10, 2017 by --SKZ--Doug-Desu

[Issxi]

Can the Kraken (or unnamed beast) in his 4 emit some kind of deep bellowing yet haunting groan or something? I think it should feel like a massive creature. I always thought his 4 should litter the area with watery wormholes that let some tentacles creature decimate and smash everyone.

 

Ooo, an augment that makes the Kraken slowly follow you around?

[PsychicWarlock]

10/10 on visual changes ;)

[DashingDevil303]

I THINK, so this is just my OPINION, that tempest should be toggle low cost ability that is fixed around hydroid. If not then just make it target enemies, like embers WOF. Also, while I'm still on tempest, maybe add some cool cannon sounds? That be neat. Also, I think the charge on his 4 should just increase the tentacles, and the range should be reverted. His passive should be changed, perhaps just make it a higher chance, but idk. That's all I got.

[Meneliki]

1 hour ago, The_Quantum_X said:

1 While in Undertow all enemys get released from drowning when you use tidal surge (dont know if it was intentional) 

Must be, moving releases them too. They stay in place, and don't come with the puddle.

1 hour ago, The_Quantum_X said:

2 Tidal surge doesnt really drag enemys with you, its more of a fling and some times they dont get carried along just knocked down

Yeah.. same issue, see 1.

1 hour ago, The_Quantum_X said:

3 And Tentacle Swarm is pretty wierd because enemys can just walk right over / through it at times and not be damaged or affected in anyway

That's not new, it's not a true AoE, they have to actually be targeted by a tentacle.

1 hour ago, The_Quantum_X said:

(Just a side note "Hydroid also Guzzles energy like a alcoholic" it would be Very helpful if his undertow could restor some energy for enemys that drown in it or somthing

This is one of my bigger beefs with the rework. He has terrible energy economy now. Worse than before.

But as a longtime Hydroid "main", my biggest beefs with this rework are:

a) I was hoping we would be given proper control over Tidal Surge to make it more useful.. i.e. tapping 2 again to immediately stop, and tap again to go again so you could zip back and forth, knocking people down, spending energy based on distance traveled. Instead, we need to go into puddle mode to stop? (which of course, costs energy to cast.. oh and now we're stopped, so bye bye mobility) Maybe in a future augment, DE? I don't see them re-working the re-work so here's hopin...

b) I just don't recognize these changes from any of the tons of interesting suggestions I've seen over the months (years?) on this forum.

c) I was hoping I could bring Hydroid into a long survival mission after this rework but I'm really not seeing it. (his abilities just knock things around and don't do any noteworthy damage - by the time you've killed something with Undertow, you've run out of life support.)

I hate to come across as negative, always loved Hydroid and I guess I just had high hopes for his MUCH needed rework. I'm going to give it more time and trials, see if I can come up with some tactics. If I can figure anything out, I'll make a post about it.

Edited August 10, 2017 by Meneliki

[(PSN)Tomplexthis]

25 minutes ago, kapn655321 said:

3+ year Hydroid main.
...I might be the eldest of the Hydroids? Might be..

This remake gets my Seal Of Approval!
Didn't expect casting 1 in puddle.

Moving puddle is something I always dreamed of.
More armor makes up for the stamina advantage he used to have.

Mmm, DE, you dun good. <3 I love you guys n' gals.

THEY DID DO GREAT

my top 5 warframes are Zephyr, Hydroid, Volt, Frost, Octavia

and my gosh, it looks awesome

 

iam even downloading ye olde pc warframe again, just to try it, since i main ps4 now

i love hydroids passive, even if people dont get why its so awesome

you can use a scindo with tempo royale, and make many tentacles, for free, so duh

 

[Urlan]

Not really feeling it so far with this revisit, range has been gutted for a charged increase to damage/range with increased energy cost. As is, this doesn't really address Hydroid's problems of filling a role, while also increasing his energy dependencies. Do like additional armor and shields of course. I still feel that Hydroid's augments being merged into his base moves would give Hydroid more niches he could fill out of the box so to speak.

[Tesseract7777]

"It doesn't meet my personal expectations, so it clearly won't sell well". 

Warframe forums in a nutshell. Le sigh. 

[Soldier1312]

Okay, I'm back after little bit of testing. I'll keep it short: being able to combine abilities is great but the skills are lacking in terms of stats. Mostly 4th one. Neither range nor damage is great. I'd pump these numbers up a little bit so our waterman would be desired teammate.

[thegreatersea]

5 minutes ago, (PS4)Tomplexthis said:

you can use a scindo with tempo royale, and make many tentacles, for free, so duh

while this sounds fun, I don't think a passive ability should require a single weapon type to be viable

[DashingDevil303]

9 minutes ago, DashingDevil303 said:

I THINK, so this is just my OPINION, that tempest should be toggle low cost ability that is fixed around hydroid. If not then just make it target enemies, like embers WOF. Also, while I'm still on tempest, maybe add some cool cannon sounds? That be neat. Also, I think the charge on his 4 should just increase the tentacles, and the range should be reverted. His passive should be changed, perhaps just make it a higher chance, but idk. That's all I got.

Also, I feel like his barrage should leave tiny puddles behind that cause the enemies to trip, and strip armor with his augment.

[DarkOvion]

So how come Hydroid can get such huge, well done buffs, while retaining what its core concept and feel was, as well as an *insane* armour buff....

While Limbo got *completely* changed, became generic and boring and can't even synergise its powers properly anymore?

[chofranc]

Hydroid charge mechanics should have an UI indicator like a bar over the skill or something, like ivara quiver or vauban mines, the indicator in floor isn't too visible specially for certain energy color.

The rework is good enough, he is in god tier now.

Edited August 10, 2017 by chofranc

[thegreatersea]

1 minute ago, chofranc said:

Hydroid charge mechanics should have an UI indicator like a bar over the skill or something, like ivara quiver or vauban mines, the indicator in floor isn't too visible specially for certain energy color.

they added an indicator in the hotfix

[koorinosekai]

As of 21.4.1 hotfix
No longer I see a visual hint of Tempest Barrage being fully charged to me, and that is with particle effects on High. Before I could see a very subtle texture layer added on top of the tileset's on Medium and High, but not on Low, that reminded me of the ones present on Equinox's powers.
A Charge-up hint on either the reticule or a outliner like the expanding one from Polarize or Resonating Quake would be better and simpler to implement for expanding powers, even if its not a progressively one, if the Charge-up has Steps (much like how Daikyu and Lenz cant fire unless they are fully charged, characterizing the Charge-up level required to function), fading out and back in to show the change of said Step and maybe a marker somewhere in the UI pointing out the increase in damage/objects summoned would also be welcome for both powers currently affected by the mechanic changes.