[Update 21.4.0] Hydroid Revisited Feedback

[Archwizard]

Having not played the rework yet, here's a list of what to look out for that I wrote a month ago for Reddit, shortly after the Hydroid Prime hype began:

Quote

1. Your allies can't hit enemies affected by his abilities. Undertow not only CCs enemies, but makes them literally invulnerable to damage without disabling their auras - so if you catch a Parasite Eximus, you're basically just shielding it from allies; unlike with Limbo, teammates can't fire abilities at it or jump in after it. Tentacle Swarm causes enemies to not only be ragdolled, but flailed around in random directions, making it that much harder to aim at victims. Tidal Surge is only barely better in this regard, since the ragdoll can toss enemies any which way.

2. Half of his skills are completely unreliable. Tentacle Swarm and Tempest Barrage dole out their effects over a fixed area, but only in randomly-selected positions throughout that area. Ostensibly Swarm will form under enemy targets, but just as often you'll find that the game didn't register enough enemies in that area and decided to spawn 4-5 tentacles at exactly the same point on the wall, rather than somewhere a future enemy would reasonably move to.

3. Half of his abilities are redundant of each other. Tempest Barrage and Tentacle Swarm are both ranged area-denial attacks, just with different stat values and opposing priorities; you only use one when you can't use the other.
   Hell, you can take it one step further and throw Undertow on the list too as far as area-denial, but at least you know how reliable it is.

4. Parkour 2.0 made Tidal Surge redundant. It shares the same issues as Zephyr's Tail Wind, because it's literally Tail Wind with a ragdoll (so I guess more like a worse Rhino Charge) and a higher cost. Unless you build specifically for heavy Duration, Tidal Surge is actually slower than regular parkour due to animation time. It doesn't even drag enemies all the way to the end.

5. Every one of his abilities uses all three power stats. The only reason this doesn't make his kit hard to maximize, is because...

6. All of his abilities deal damage; none scale. Sure he deals Finisher damage, but only in flat amounts; Undertow doles out incredibly low amounts while Tentacle Swarm isn't reliable in that regard. In fact, his only scaling benefits are toggled invulnerability with Undertow (which takes time to deploy, locks him out of fighting back, and actively impedes the rest of his team), and CC - speaking of which...

7. Without augments, his only contribution to the team is CC. Bear in mind that there are dozens of frames that bring less problematic CC to the table with the equivalent effectiveness of Hydroid's entire kit in one button - on top of other utilities like scaling damage, buffs, or healing for those other three buttons. Sure he can take over an Interception if you play him well... but so can Limbo, or if loot caves have taught us anything, a well-modded Banshee or Mirage.

8. Because they all compete for the same role, none of his abilities have any synergy with each other - they just overlap. Most of them appear to exist just to cover each others' weaknesses, rather than to stand up on their own. And honestly, aside from maybe being able to move Undertow using Tidal Surge, I can't imagine any intuitive synergies that could be added to his current kit.
   (Sure they could do what they did with Oberon or Ash and just have hidden tertiary effects for rubbing two abilities together, but they still haven't added Oberon's armor buff to his Codex entry and I've met a ton of people who still don't realize you can pop Snow Globe with Freeze. It's only an effective system for people who never miss streams or patch notes, and even to those who do, the devs are just forcing interaction and increasing energy requirements.)

9. Pilfering Swarm exists to literally bribe us to play him.

Now, from what I've seen of the patch notes, it looks like 4 and 8 in this list have been covered, and toes have been dipped into 6, but nothing else.

I worry that the focus on allowing him to use all of his powers during Undertow may be an issue so long as allies can't target enemies caught inside of the puddle (especially now that the puddle encourages you to drown enemies for as long as possible).

[-N7-Leonhart]

Well, it's good that he received heavy buffs, since I don't see him being overused anyway as part of the meta.

[tocorro]

On paper sounds good. When playing it's more fun than it was... but tbh I counted on rework of Oberon magnitude and I feel it's more like Ash rework one.

It's cool that skills can be used together (well in Undertow) and can be charged.
But - 1st skill is still RNG based, and 4th skill has it's range greatly reduced at base.

Propostions:
1st skill - instead of random shots, hitting (or not hitting) a random target, I'd go with Cannon Volleys, all phantom water cannons shooting at once and covering whole skill range, let's say 3 volleys in a base time (few seconds 3-4 for a reload and another volley);
Charge - expands range and prolongs duration 

2nd skill - @mogamu had a nice idea, it should proc Cold on enemies that do get hit by it (also some control on direction would be cool)

3rd skill - it's fine 

4th skill - increase BASE range, 
Charge - will bump up DMG and quantity of tentacles, but the range will stay as is (only changeable with mods)

[-FV-Metheria]

Could we roll/jump out of Tidal Surge if we just want to cancel it and not go into Undertow?

[Ceryk]

I think part of the reasoning behind the reduction, aside from the grab, is because you can move now. But unfortunately that works on paper better than in practice. IF the ability to move actually felt like it was worth using and you sucked enemies into the puddle when you used Tidal Surge, I would argue that it made sense. But as it stands now, his ability to move is so lack luster that it's just a waste of energy compared to grabbing enemies.

I don't think they should allow it to go to a ridiculous range that's further than the grab, but unless they make his ability to move worthwhile, they do need to increase the range of both the puddle and the grab.

Edited August 10, 2017 by Ceryk

[heisthex]

Skill 1 need tracking, the RNG randomly hit or miss is worst with the gutted range. Energy cost too much and charge is even worst case of more miss and hit with bad tracking and tiny explosion range. Doesn't seem to work when enemies are undertowed.

Skill 2 is okay, but would like to see an explosion water fountain when stopped so enemies got dragged within got ragdolled for extra damage.

Skill 3 is horrible tiny pool, why the range is cut down so much, why adding more range mod only add a tiny pool size of 5-7m?

Skill 4 also got range nerfed...why?

[Chimiasai]

With Tempest barrage: 

Can you increase the base duration of the 1 OR get rid of the little cooldown we have after each cast? With the charge system, we can't spam our 1 while he's our best way to control our targets and scrap their armor.

[Baterial]

[Ryme]

They should just roll Tidal Surge into Undertow and replace it with a new skill. The mobility function of Tidal Surge could easily just be added into Undertow, so that the Jump key would initiate a "surge" in a given direction, at a cost of energy. 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.

[epicfailure0121]

When playing on Ophelia with 2 hydroids we came in to a bug where we changed info arcwing mode and in some rooms and couldn't go back to the normal mode unless you managed to find water to hop in and come back out it happened so much we ran out of life support before 30min I have screen shots but and too dumb to know how to post it happened to me and one other friend I was running with over all I do like the update.

 

[aligatorno]

After trying the rework both in the simulacrum and in missions, I`m very, very disappointed with it. Instead of listening to the feedback and remove or at least puddle an AoE Cast, you made the rework almost fully centered around it.  Let's start from the top.

#1 Tempest Barrage : It's still as chaotic as ever and as unreliable, it still doesn't have a proper homing script and it tends to hit way away from enemies. The knockdown is till to short, they get back up almost immedietly and the damage is just as bad past Tier 2 Planets. The charging mechanic doesn't really help, the bonus damage it adds is not that great and the bonus duration is laughably low [on my build I went from 8 to 12 seconds iirc] for the incredibly long time and extra energy it requires to charge.

Solution : Add homing script so that the missles go towards the enemies. Add a crippling status effect so that they get up slower and are disoriented for a few seconds once they do. 

#2 Tidal Surge While a tad better with the new pulling mechanic, just like #1 its CC is way too short and doesn't benefit the frame that much. A bulletjump can get the same result as far as movement goes without energy cost. I`ll mention the Undertow synergy below

Solution : Either increase the duration of the CC, either add a status effect/proc to the wave like cold or blast. As a bonus, for every enemy hit, Hydroid recovers a certain % of his health. This will help with his survivability and not having to rely on augments. 

#3 Undertow aka Puddle. I really hoped that with his rework, I`ll finally get to see Hydroid getting rid of this ability or at least, have it be an AoE cast that doesn't have to involve him. With the new changes, the damage is decent at start chart levels, but at sortie 2-3 level you`ll have to stay long while before even the weakest of the enemies dies. The fact that we can now pull enemies in it and move help, but if you want to move faster than a snail, you`ll have to use lots of energy from Tidal surge. It's a really limited and niche ability that I just can't get to like. 

Solution : Since you don't want to remove it, at least turn it into an AoE cast on its own with the possibility of jumping into it and pulling enemies in it. Allow multiple casts of course, a la snow globe. 

#4 Tentacle Swarm  I`m really grateful that you finally made them spawn under enemies and actually make them try to target them, the damage simply doesn't scale up, even with a  max strength build it barely scratches sortie 2-3 levels. Also, it doesn't even have synergies with his other abilities, you focused so much on adding synergy between the puddle and the rest that it seems you forgot to do it for his main ability. 

Solution: Change the damage to be finisher and each hit from a tentacle takes a certain % of the total health of the enemy. This will improve its scalability by a lot, while not making it incredibly op.  For example : once a tentacle catches an enemy, the power strength will determine the % of the health taken and the power duration will determine the number of times the tentacle will slam the enemy. With 100% power strength, each slam will take 10-15% health of the total pool, and with 100% power duration it will slam him 5 times. Cap the damage per slam at 25% and the duration at 10 slams. 

Add synergy with his other powers.

 

Last but not least, increase his base energy pool, since he is a caster and with his new changes he needs tons more energy, it is only fair to increase it to 500-600 with a maxed primed flow. 

[Flameslicer]

My issue with the rework is how none of his abilities are worth using. While you can pull enemies into undertow, the range was gimped to only 4 metres at base and a whopping 6 with max range build. The movement during his 3 is meh since enemies are released from undertow if they exit its range while you move. His 4th had its range reduced and in exchange for more energy, you get the exact same range as before! There's little reason to use undertow for damage since it takes 20 seconds (yes I timed it) to kill anything at sortie 3, and it's much easier to just shoot enemies. Trying to say it's CC based doesn't work when you have to click on every single enemy over 5 metres away to get CC, and in that event, why nerf the range on his 4? If hydroid is to be a CC frame, he needs to be more reliable. If he's a DOT frame, he needs more to get it. Overall, while slight improvement on what he used to be, he's still not worth using over other frames. If I want DOTs, Saryn works better. If I want CC, almost every other frame that does it is better. 

[ClockworkDragon5]

How does coloration work for his new ability appearances? cause from what I've seen it's just plain water.... Maybe make it work like oberon's hallowed ground, where it takes from accents and/or energy colors? Cause as much as his abilities look nice, they look a bit plain too.

[Einsig_SV]

The charge times are way, way too long. Even with natural talent the charge times feel like they take an eternity and the result of all that waiting having to hold down my power keys (which takes away finger I need to MOVE) is not worth all of the frustrating wasted time.

His 1 also has no charge animation, just a vaguely visisble shimmering effect on the ground that's often barely noticable.

Moving in Undertow is TOO SLOW. Being able to Tital Surge doesn't help, and is too clunky. You can't get yourself into a correct position most of the time.

Edited August 10, 2017 by Ion_Sig

[Felupi]

Hold 4.
Get shot.
Die.

Double the water coming from my tears.

[Xyhon]

So, what happened to making puddle not from yourself, to CC enemies, making tentacles dmg utility, without annoying squad with this lift and slam routine which does zero to none dmg. What happened to barrage actually HITTING something, and doing anything than 0 dmg (yep, today on sortie, 0 dmg on higher enemies with resistances, and somewhat about 50-60 pts per explosion on 80+, with 200% Power) The only good thing about this changes is his Tidal Surge, which actually can be used as short CC/movement skill more consistent. Moving in Undertow... Yeah... wow. Just what we need.
In overall: his abilities are still to clunky/too low on actual dmg to build for them, and his abilities in CC are inconsistent, since they rely on actually hitting things by "forces which you control in a fracture".

For comparison, lately we had:
arrow: CC/dmg res/dmg boost/heal/energy restore
Octavia: Insane combo of invi/dmg boost/dmg/energy restore/armor buff/etc
Nidus: dmg/cc/more dmg/dmg reduction/heal with even more cc and dmg
And, for example, Oberon after rework is almost unkillable, healing, ccing and armor buffing machine.
Hydroid. Flashy translucent animations. Yay.

 

[WingleBingle]

Since people think Undertow still delays the round by making enemies invulnerable except to a slow building DoT, what if all the drowning enemies created little splashes where they are (or maybe flailing animations if it's not too much work) people could shoot to kill them?

[ScytodiDaedalus]

It would be great to having something to tell you the charge times, since the 1 ability is really uncomfortable for so atm.

[Derkyll]

There's no indicator for the charge abillities, maybe get a charge symbol like Harrow, displaying when barrage or tentacle swarm is fully charged. ALSO the charging abillities seem to take a very long time.

I know you're not gonna do massive changes but rather tweaks. Something i personally wish for is that his 4th ability would rather be a ship-sinker like seen on movies, Pulling enemies down and held down for X amount of time, opening them for finishers. The slapping tentacles are comedic but doesn't yield much use if you want to kill stuff.

Also kinda wish that undertow would've gone away. But that's my opinion.

[Periselene]

The only reason I played him in the first place was for max range Undertow. If they got rid of that and meant it, I guess I don't play Hydroid at all now. Well done, rework.

[Hixlysss]

At this point, all I can really say is his undertow ability should "tow" enemies. Currently if you go into undertow and it eats some enemies, if you move from that location the enemies are "freed" rather than dragged along with you.

Other than that...yeah he is fairly solid frame now. Great synergy with his powers...his power 1 still has the terrain issue with certain larger maps...

[failedtodiet]

Charged casting feel clunky on his 1, no real impact. I'd rather cast 2 times and get more corrosive proc.

Also, need more confirmation: i got randomly pulled/teleported back to the place where i start charging skills in 4 different missions, not sure it's bad ping or some kind of glitch.

 

[FoxFX]

UPSIDES FOR HYDROID'S REWORK

• A great effort in focusing on Hydroid's Undertow and creating some synergy with it and the rest of Hydroid's abilities
• Adding more Armor to increase Hydroid's sustainability
• Tempest Barrage and Tentacle Swarm's attempt to make them stronger by charging them
• Dragging enemies farther away in Undertow by using a Tentacle drag effect

DOWNSIDES FOR HYDROID'S REWORK

• Hydroid's Passive still serves little to no use
• There appears to be no reason to use Tentacle Swarm while in Undertow
• Still can see the CC effect of Tentacle Swarm to be a major issue when playing with a Hydroid
• Can see some issues with the "Holding Down" mechanic
• Tempest Barrage's Augment not affecting Undertow enemies
• Energy can be an issue playing as Hydroid

SUGGESTIONS

• TEMPEST BARRAGE
  • Make Tempest Barrage a toggle ability where the player inputs the ability which allows the player to charge Tempest Barrage for more power/explosion. This would allow the Hydroid user to focus less in charging by having a toggle ability which drains energy and allows the Hydroid to combat normally until he/she releases the ability again to cast the barrages
  • Allow enemies in Undertow be affected by Tempest Barrage's Augment
• UNDERTOW
  • Allow enemies killed in Undertow give Hydroid some energy
  • (OPTIONAL) Give Undertow a new effect where while Hydroid stays in Undertow, each second gives Hydroid a buff increasing the damage of Hydroid's next Barrage/Undertow {Something similar to Volt's Passive where the player must maneuver to gain a damage buff for the next attack)
  • (OPTIONAL) Allow Hydroid to also drag in items in Undertow
• TENTACLE SWARM
  • Give the above suggested change to Tempest Barrage to Tentacle Swarm as well
  • Just make the Tentacles slam enemies WITHOUT picking them up
  • (OPTIONAL) Perhaps amp up the damage of Tentacle Swarm
  • (OPTIONAL) Casting Tentacle Swarm allows another damage over time to enemies in Undertow (perhaps make it feel that there is some Underwater Monster inside Undertow choking enemies underwater)
• PASSIVE
  • Hydroid's abilities seem to stem on turning part of his body into water. Perhaps gear a new passive with this in mind.
    • A Liquid Body making statuses on Hydroid last less (Status Duration reduction to Hydroid)
    • (OPTIONAL)A Liquid Body allows Hydroid to negate some damage done to him (Perhaps have a chance to ignore some instance of damage but with some other cost?)

[shyguyk]

Tempest Barrage should have a better indication of how it s charged. That being said, for how it is now it takes too long to reach max charge. I would prefer being able to channel it like harrow's Thurible, giving more damage and duration based on how much energy you dump into it

Tidal surge ought to bring enemies along when used in undertow. That would allow for hydroid to be a enemy vacuum cleaner if you so choose.

Undertow's DoT is lacking. You gain like 25 damage a second. Try it in a sortie and you will see that its not all that useful.

New tentacle swarm is pretty ok. It could probably use the DoT treatment that undertow got so enemies arent flailing for the whole duration while taking minimal damage

[TheGodofWiFi]

Unfortunately I cannot say this "rework" has changed much. These are merely QoL changes. Tempest Barrage is still RNG based only now it takes longer to charge up. Tidal Surge has barely changed at all. Undertow wasn't removed like it should have been. Tentacle Swarm seems exactly the same only now a scary looking head occasionally pops up for about three seconds.

Very disappointed. I thought you guys were going to do a full rework like maybe make it so that Undertow was combined with Tidal Surge so he leaves a trail of water behind that enemies fall into, moved his Swarm down a slot and given him a new ultimate. 

I hope you guys take an actual look at him in the immediate future.