On Having Your One Final Use Being Made Redundant
On the Larunda relay, everyone is minding their own business, wondering when Baro Ki’Teer is going to arrive, when they suddenly hear a large bang. Most of the relay ignores the bang, since explosions are a common occurrence in most of the Origin System, but a couple of people go outside, to the ships, to see what it was.
Standing in the middle of the hangar is a Hydroid. This Hydroid is sporting a complete Grineer look, complete with Tennogen Graxx skin, the Saturn Six Grineer armour, a Zarr and some Twin Grakatas. Even his landing craft has a Kuva style on it, and it’s currently crashed into a rather plain, yellow Liset. The only thing missing from the Hydroid’s Grineer look is his melee weapon, a Falcor. This Corpus Glaive is for some reason attached to the Hydroid’s crotch.
After a long silence, someone finally approaches the Hydroid.
“So, uh, what’s up with the Grineer getup?”
The Hydroid gargles drunkenly. “I like it!”
“And what about the Falcor? That doesn’t fit!”
Again, the Hydroid slurs his words. “Argh, my hearties, it’s drivin’ me nuts!”
It’s the 19th of September again and that means it’s Talk Like A Pirate Day! While I won’t hurt you all with an article written completely in drunken pirate phrases, I will take the time to talk about something vaguely Pirate-y. And just like last year, I’m going to talk about poor old Hydroid. Because Hydroid no longer has any use.
You see, Hydroid had one very niche ability. The ability to create extra loot, the same way Nekros does. But Hydroid requires an augment to do so, Pilfering Swarm. As long as an enemy is hit by tentacles, they have a chance to drop more loot. It’s a bit of a tedious ability because Tentacle Swarm is a tentative ability that sends enemies flying.
But that one niche has been ruined by the fact that Khora has a pilfering augment. Pilfering Strangle Dome does exactly what Hydroid’s Pilfering Swarm does except way better and with far more range. Enemies are also a little more predictable with Strangle Dome unless you send them swinging about via abilities like Nekros’s Soul Punch. Strangle Dome also does better damage.
Khora also comes with more useful abilities in general. Not only can she have a lot of crowd control, she can also deal good damage with Whipclaw and heal people with Venari. Hydroid doesn’t really have any of that. His abilities are far more self-serving and also don’t offer that much in a fight. After all, being a puddle and drowning enemies is pretty fun but it’s slow and tedious.
But to add insult to injury, the Pilfering abilities no longer stack. Hydroid did have some niche in bringing yet another source of extra loot into loot-heavy missions, but that’s not the case any more. If you have multiple people with Pilfering abilities, whether it’s Hydroids, Khoras or a mixture of both, only one of them will apply. So when you can only take one Warframe with pilfering abilities, you’ll probably end up taking a Warframe that has more than one useful ability. And that Warframe is not going to be Hydroid, is it? Not when Nekros and Khora are so much more useful.
Heck, there is even a dog that is as useful as Hydroid. And a Kubrow can be taken alongside any Warframe.
Poor fucker.
