This is a guide to give players tips and tricks, that will allow them to play hydroid to his fullest potential, and maybe allow some people to see that he is much more than a squishy caster frame with inconsistent cc, as the popular consensus seems to be. I have quite some time in the game, and hopefully me being a bit less biased will help some people see more clearly.
Keep in mind, this is a guide for high level, endurance run players (people that enjoy going 50+ minutes on MOT)
I will not be going over what his moves do, or how to acquire him. For that, I refer you to the wiki.
I will be going over my opinions on his moves, how to properly utilize them, and how to make them synergize with your own playstyle.
Abilities
Passive- Hydroid summons tentacles on slam attack.: A much better passive than people give credit. Honestly, I’d put this in top 5 passives in the game. One of the very few passives in game that actually synergizes with the rest of a warframes kit. If you’re playing the current iteration of hydroid and not utilizing melee, you’re missing out on a ton of damage.
Tempest Barrage– Buffed, then buffed again, then buffed again, This is now hydroids best move. Extremely hard to mod for, because all of its stats are so low, this provides hydroid with his primary cc, a way to amplify his damage, and a way to shred armor. This moves gives out what you put into it.
A static 10 meter radius where hydroid makes it rain, and each individual raindrop has a 5 meter radius and lasts for 5 seconds. For being his primary cc tool, its hard to make efficient, but its doable, and spammable.
Augment Corroding Barrage: My go to augment. Useless against corpus and infested, absolutely godlike against grineer and in the void. It scales with nothing except for how often it connects with the target, like any corrosive proc. I personally like it more than the other armor shredding augments, mostly because its an actual corrosive proc, rather than a temporary debuff that relies on power stats. Think of this augment like having corrosive+blast on your weapon, without wasting 4 weapon mod slots to accomplish it.
Tidal Surge – Hydroids survivability, mobility, panic button, and solid cc. 3 times wider than any other dash move in the game, and also capable of reversing movement momentum and completely making you invincible, this move gets better and better the more you play with hydroid, and mastering it is absolutely essential to surviving high-level survival missions. You will find ways to use this that you probably didn’t even initially think of if you put practice into using it. Find a duration that allows you to fit it into your own playstyle. I cannot stress enough how important you being able to use this move is.
Augment – Tidal impunity: I’m personally not a fan, should be built into his 2, but that’s only because I live on mot where its all 1-2 shot deaths, so being cc’ed is the least of my worries. This is decent if you like to use hydroid for speed runs though. It makes hydroid ignore all of the things that rhino’s iron skin does (well, except the damage lol). Problem there is, you could just be using rhino, who’s easier to acquire, has a dash that goes further, and has iron skin built in.
Undertow – Another survivability tool, only this time you get chokepoint management with your invincibility instead of mobility. Great for afk’ing for a quick bathroom break, or going to make a sammch. Also good for protecting your sentinel from getting killed by a bombards aoe damage There are tricks to this ability, which will be explained later.
Augment – Curative Undertow: Imo, this is hands down hydroids most useless augment. For some this is mandatory, especially in builds that use rage. But remember, I’m an endurance MOT player. So to me, if you’re relying on taking damage from anything on that stage, you will eventually get one shot. Also, dropping health restores and then going into undertow is equally as effective at healing both you and your team, if not more so. Save yourself the mod slot.
Tentacle Swarm
An inconsistent, sometimes unwieldy ultimate ability, unless running negative range. Sadly, negative range hurts the rest of hydroids abilities very badly. , but there is a way around this!. I will explain more in my tips section. If allowed to deal the full duration of its damage, it is also the highest flat damage ult in the game, so there’s that. Honestly not a bragging point though, non scaling power damage sucks, even if its finisher damage.
Augment – Pilfering swarm: Mostly what hydroid is known for, what all the popular builds for him contain, a mod that doubles your loot drop chance. Its a great mod on an admittedly “okay” ability. There are many ways to put this on a build, and even ways to squeeze it onto my main one. On a survival, double the drop chance is always a good thing, as it can result in more life support. It’s hydroids most well rounded mod, as it has no weakness to any enemy type, and scales as long as you play, because warframe is a game of loot, and well, this gives you more of it.
Builds
Building hydroid for high-level content requires a few mods in my opinion. The minimum is
Vitality/ Redirection-You’d be surprised how much further a health buffer takes you. Even against level 200+ enemies, these can save your butt.
Two power efficiency mods (be it streamline+fleeting expertise, or streamline+flow+zenurik if you value duration)
Either casting speed mod (natural talent or speed drift) The reasoning for this is how often you should be linking 1 into 2. And if you don’t have one of those mods on, you will do the cast animation for 1, both when you cast it, and at the end of 2. I don’t know why, but it happens. Any extra casting speed prevents that glitch from happening.
Everything else is up to you. Keep in mind, both range and duration scale his 1 horribly, so trying to maximize either will not give you the profit you’re looking for. Look for a nice middle ground between the two.
Efficiency>range>=duration>strength. Range is only better than duration because it makes his 2 and 3 better cc tools, Besides that, they’re of equal worth once you max out efficiency. Power strengths only purpose on an endgame hydroid build is to take out those drone bombs if against only the corpus, or to chip away at nullifier bubbles faster, if you REALLY value that utility. Outside of that, save power strength for low-level tentacle spam builds.
My personal build for my endurance runs is this
3 forma One dash 2 V’s
Energy siphon – With tempest barrage costing 6 energy, and lasting a little over that this mod helps it essentially pay for itself.
Vitality or Redirection, depending on mood and loadout. – Keep in mind, although armor mitigates damage, hydroid can ignore toxic and slash procs with 2 and 3, shields regenerate automatically, and also apply the damage reduction from blocking and rolling, so if you don’t feel like carrying a way to heal, Redirection is viable.
Streamline+fleeting expertise rank 4
Primed Continuity+Constitution I like constitution mostly because I don’t use handspring in the exilus slot, and the extra duration helps my 1, while not making my 2 unweildly.
Overextended – Only using overextended because by itself it pretty much guarantees each drop of tempest barrage hits the whole radius.
Corroding Barrage – I play on mot. This mod is godlike on endurance runs if you don’t have cp4
Natural talent – If you use more melee, natural talent is a better choice. If you use more ranged, speed drift works in the exilus slot.
Enemy Sense – always see enemies coming, so you know which chokepoints need managing. If you don’t care about that kind of thing, handspring is good in the exilus slot if you still used natural talent. If not, again, I’d suggest speed drift.
Replacing constitution with stretch is a viable option, esp if you prefer ranged play over melee. At that point your regular pattern is to just cast 1, empty your mag, then cast it more as you reload. You can also replace it with pilfering swarm, if an extra bit of life support/loot is more your thing.
- 133% Duration
- 175% Efficiency
- 190% range
- 40% strength
My build for non-endless missions is different, but not worth a large section to write about. Just go pilfering swarm with some combination of efficiency and power strength. You don’t really need range, and neutral duration is fine. That way you can speed through levels spamming your 4, gettin loot.
Primaries
Honestly, you can use anything that suits the playstyle you like playing. Just make it a good weapon (that can proc radiation if in the void or against infested). I will suggest a few.
The God Tier
Kohm – A constant stream of high damage ranged slash/viral/radiation procs, with innate punch through. Works on enemies with or without armor, destroys nullifier bubbles in no time. Suggest a way to convert ammo, be it carrier or ammo mutation mod. Requires either the nano applicator mod or a riven with +status chance to really shine, but once you get it to hit 100% status chance, its a monster.
Vaykor Hek – Doesn’t need 100% status chance to be effective, really high base damage, really high crit for a shotgun, and a tight pellet spread. Also, the blast proc from its justice effect also temporarily stuns enemies, allowing them to also take finisher damage. An easy pattern is to 1, empty clip, 1. And just keep doing that until the justice proc goes off, once that goes off, go in for the melee. Once the high levels start rolling in, this will proc every few seconds, leading to a ton of melee damage.
Mutalist Quanta – Use the bubble to both proc radiation and protect you from fire as you knock enemies down. Enables hydroids in and out melee gameplay easily. It covers all of the holes in his game. Also, the flat crit chance increase it gives anything that shoots through it is amazing. This weapon turns a lot of secondaries into absolute powerhouses, and your teammates weapons can become broken. Imagine a Tigris prime with 50% crit chance. Things can get dumb
Torid -Generally, you will be knocking enemies down in a 10 meter radius. This is perfect to just pepper that area with aoe status procs. Especially on mot, where ancients are always around a corner, waiting to protect allies from your knockdowns Since I have corrosive+blast on my 1, I put viral/radiation on my torid.
Everything Else
Ferrox – Its alt fire is really good on a camping hydroid. A clustered ball of knocked down enemies with no armor, viral and radiation procced. It’s good. Once the armor on enemies is fully shredded, the damage this thing does is nearly unparalleled
Ogris – Since the update 20 patch, this is a legit status weapon. Even moreso with its nightwatch napalm augment. Any enemy that isn’t knocked down by tempest barrage will get heat procced by nightwatch napalm, all the while proccing w/e you mod it for. Think of this as a zarr alternative if you enjoy a more support oriented playstyle.
Ignis – Same thing as the torid, only you have a stream of status instead of little patches of them. Ignis doesn’t have the killing power later on, so only use it if supplementing, with a strong melee weapon, or you are the teams designated support. But if your only concern is making sure that ancients cant do their job, so that you can smoothly do yours, bring this weapon.
Zarr – Stronger damage than the torid, also a wider aoe to spread the status, but doesn’t stick around to keep applying status when you aren’t shooting it. Still, almost everyone would call this the best launcher in the game. I don’t agree, but it is fantastic.
Boar Prime – its the ignis of shotguns. Used more to spread status in an aoe than deal the damage. If you have a good kohm riven that gives status chance, this thing is essentially obsolete
Panthera – Newly buffed, constant critting slash procs do well against all those enemies with low-no armor you will be fighting, destroys nulli bubbles very fast in either mode as well.
Sobek – Has enough status chance to be reliably modded for viral/radiation, and the low armor of enemies means that it can really put in work. The combination of the acid shells mod, this weapons high enough status chance, and the same justice proc available to the vaykor hek, this thing enables really high levels of aoe damage
Paracyst – Another support weapon. Spread viral/radiation so that enemies receive their knockdowns, then cherry pick enemies out of the tempest barrage for safer ground finishers.
Secondaries
No god tier here except staticor and sonicor
Furis – Throw on that winds of purity mod and always have a ranged heal. As a gun, its trash, but its syndicate mod is op
Staticor – Built in radiation damage with a high status and crit chance? ♥♥♥♥ negro, that’s all you had to say.
Sonicor – Mod for radiation/toxic. Then you’ll have a knockdown/ a way to turn off ancients, and a way to instagib nullies.
Pox – Its the secondary version of the torid, only with no crit, and way faster damage ticks
Synoid gammacor – Ammo inefficient, but I still like it. Excellent for taking out nullie bubbles, esp if modded for radiation/toxic.
Vaykor marelok – High crit, high status, high base damage, and an aoe justice proc. The only downsides to this weapon are that it has an impact based ips, and low crit damage.
Lex prime – It is the same as a vaykor marelok only it has no syndicate proc, more crit damage, a much harder kick, and puncture based ips instead of impact.
Acrid – Very ammo efficient, has a sequence mod that essentially triples its damage, status can reach high enough for it to proc radiation/viral consistently, and the innate toxin dot is fantastic against the low-no armored targets you’ll be fighting.
Azima – Actually not that bad if you want to go the melee route. Mod for radiation/viral and just throw the whole mag out. Will chip away at nullie bubbles, throw around status procs, and allow you to worry about the important things like casting abilities and melee.
Melee
Pretty much anything with long range and high status chance works here. Dual swords work as well because of hydroids ability to do a ground finisher from any of his abilities. If I don’t mention it, I just didn’t feel like typing about it, there are alot of good melee weapons because melee is so powerful right now.
Serro – Super long range quick attack and very long range slam attack right up there with the jat kittag in slam attack range. Mod for gas (even after the nerf, it still works well) and status
Lesion – Shorter range than the serro which affects the ease stealth multipliers go off, but has the advantage of having a high status chance and slash based ips. This will scale better, simply because it has higher base damage and can use a viral/slash build, which scales better than gas now.
Galatine prime – High crit, high status, high base damage, high range and slam attacks built into some of its combos if you are going the full melee route. Slash based ips is the cherry on top. DE didn’t give two ♥♥♥♥♥ about power creep when they released this weapon lol.
Dark Split Sword – Great weapon, strictly because of its innate radiation damage and good status chance.
Twin Basolk – Probably as good as it gets if you are going the ground finisher route. Can be modded for straight gas damage, and is a dual sword class weapon, meaning that it automatically gets slash procs on ground finishers. That means that you get two dots in one move, with both stealth and ground finisher multipliers. Too lazy to find out if that’s 12x damage or 32x damage though. Either way, its a lot. Esp for enemies with no/low armor
Prisma Dual Cleavers – Same as above, only now you get high crit chance.
Atterax – Its op, quick with long reach, high damage, good status and easy to use. This is the 0 risk, all reward weapon
Secura lecta – Like the serro and atterax had a baby. Use this if you prefer an innate elemental weapon with long reach, but don’t care about slam attacks.
Sarpa – With weeping wounds, the status chance of this gets pretty damn high, and those slash procs with stealth multipliers can get dumb.
Venka Prime – That passive that just automatically makes it stronger than other melees, plus slash based ips and a good ground attack make this one very viable.
Zenistar – Mod this however you want, and just sit in your 3 for stealth damage. I’m not usually into cheesing content, so I don’t use it, but it works no matter how you mod it, as long as there’s status there. It’s like a good version of the azima that can get stealth multipliers. I personally like radiation/toxic, as radiation turns off ancients, and I still get those tasty dots.
Telos boltace – With a gas build and his corrosive barrage augment, I went to the simulacrum and killed a group of 8 heavy gunners in 3 seconds, with no forma or potato. A neat trick is to just cast the tempest barrage on yourself, and then pull enemies in, puddle, and then tentacles. Very good weapon that unlocks a new playstyle.
Literally all of these weapons are god tier on hydroid except the sarpa. Maybe that is too, but its not my playstyle. He enables stupidly high amounts of damage on all of them. Some tip the scale more toward extra utility, some for damage, but they’re all equally useful.
Companions
Honestly, you just want something that compliments your playstyle.
Do you like shooting at range and primarily use your sights? Go wyrm or diriga so that you always have that instant cc for anyone that might sneak up behind you
Do you shoot at range, but fire from the hip? That’s usually an ammo ineficient playstyle, I’d go with carrier
Do you like to do melee? Go helios, so that you can use his deconstructor to radiate enemies before you initiate. But once he dies, you’re gonna have a bad time. Hydroid needs to shut down ancient auras, or none of his cc works except his ult
Do you do a combination of them all? I’d suggest Djinn. Djinn can watch your back and make lining up shots easier with his charm, and unlike wyrm, his cc doesn’t screw with enemy placement while they’re already knocked down, but the cooldown is twice as long.
The cool thing about shade is, it only seems to kick in when you’re in danger. Whereas, the other ones seem to kick in on during any kind of engagement, making their proc less available when you need it badly. Shade is essentially a get out of jail free card when you mess up.
If all you care about is doing damage, pick helios, as deconstructor is the strongest, damage wise, since its technically a melee weapon. And melee can easily get stealth multipliers.
I personally don’t like kavats or kubrows, since they’re more trouble than they’re worth to keep alive. Come endgame, its nothing more than an animal instinct that I have to revive every half a minute or so anyway. Once again though, these are only guidelines. Do what you want.
Focus Schools
Unairu – Just don’t. I guess there’s a trick that you can use every 3 damn minutes where you get off a bunch of stealth multiplied gas procs on a single group, and then activate unairu to freeze them for tons of dot damage… but that’s one single group… every 3 minutes.
Madurai – I wouldn’t suggest it, but in all fairness, its passives are nice for your damage output
Vazarin- Probably my personal favorite. There’s something special about this school. Its passive lets you stack instant revives every time you cast it. The ability to do this not only lets you get away with doing dumb ♥♥♥♥ in a team setting, it also entices pugs to stick around even if they didn’t show up to do an endurance run.
Naramon – Don’t be that guy. Get good at the game. Its definitely the best school for its shadow step, no doubt about that…. but just dont.. please… git gud. I don’t know how people really try to defend the school for being balanced. You are removing the one thing that makes the game a challenge: Enemies actually fighting back. It’s dumb. And you’re dumb if you use it.
Zenurik – Still op, but I can at least forgive this one, because powers take more skill to use than just not being shot at. With this, your efficiency only matters so much, but if you run max efficiency, you can spam to your heart’s content providing your team with endless cc.
Synergies with other Frames
Atlas – His rumblers do draw aggro, though they can make funneling enemies into chokepoints more difficult. Using his 3 can make enemies take longer to get up, as long as he doesn’t fully petrify them. You can provide atlas with exponentially more damage by shredding armor, and also putting enemies in an unalert state. By providing him with the cc and armor shredding he needs, you enable his stupidly high levels of damage, while he himself, is a nice diversion to keep the heat off of you.
Banshee – Banshee can shred armor with one augment, she can also enable stealth damage with another. But she has no duration based cc. You aren’t the best match for each other, but you both provide such good things for the team that you don’t need to synergize. She provides damage. You provide constant cc to keep her safe.
Ember – You shredding armor(and hopefully having a viral/radiation aoe weapon) makes her damage scale pretty damn far into endurance runs. All of her augments also help you in some way. She can buff your damage with her 1 augment, she can buff your cast speed and damage with her 2 augment (really useful, allows you to take natural talent out of build), her 3 augment allows her to cover potential holes in your chokepoints, and her 4, well that’s just extra cc, which never hurts. Who woulda thought. Fire and water going so well together.
Frost – If you both play well, your team is basically untouchable. granted, frost enables this anyway, but you two compliment each other well. You can knock enemies down and shred armor, as he slows them down and makes them getting up take forever. When camp time starts, his bubble will protect you, and allow you to cast your barrage from safety. Once enemies are in unalert state, his freeze can keep them there. You both are cc frames, so you both work well together.
Ivara – She can keep you stealthed and keep enemies taking stealth damage. She’s mostly useful for herself, but in her being useful for herself, she becomes useful for a team. She’s what ash should have been Selfish, but helpful for surviving and dealing stealth damage/finishers
Limbo – Limbo doesn’t need anything from anyone. He’s op in his current state. I guess if I wanted to be fair, I could say that he could essentially turn you into your teams own walking corrosive projection. If he chose to banish you, and you stayed in the rift, you could just be an armor stripping, cc bot for your team. If he can time his stasis in time with your knockdowns, damage can get pretty dumb as well… but limbo is dumb in her current state anyway.
Loki – The master race. I feel that he too is overpowered in the endgame. His 4 is all you need. As enemies chase you, they’ll run directly into easy tempest barrages. If you both play well, I could imagine the run going for as long as you wanted, really.
Mag – Your knockdowns make it impossible for enemies to escape her magnetize, and clumped into a nice little ball. Nullifiers will be the bane of both of your existence though, as is the nature of mag. If you can find a way to take out nullifier bubbles, these two make a potent endgame combination
Nekros – He can keep a survival going, and if you chose to use pilfering swarm along with him, your team will almost never need to get life support. If he brings his creeping terrify augment, not only will enemies not be shooting at you, they will get up that much more slowly from your knockdowns. Plus his shadows take a lot of heat off of the team.. I personally hate being around one, but can acknowledge these two work well together.
Nidus – He does ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ly high amounts of damage, and also brings enemies into a cluster. You just so happen to shred armor and cc enemies in a cluster. You two are bros. You enable his damage, he makes your cc job easier.
Nova – There is literally no other frame I’d rather have on my team. Prime and knockdowns are like peanut butter and jelly. Enemies slowed, taking twice the damage, with no armor, open to stealth melee damage. its a beautiful thing. Even better if she brings along her 2 augment to both protect you guys, as well as do even more damage.
Nyx – You can use her as bait at a chokepoint, where she just sits in her ult as enemies focus her and you cc them and shred their armor. Then she can unleash her charged ult and nuke them. She also turns off ancients, which seems to be a big thing that people overlook
Oberon – He provides you with the radiation procs that keep your knockdowns going. He also can use the augment to his one, to give you radiation damage on your weapon. Potentially freeing up two mod slots in some weapon builds.
Octavia – She does everything. Damage, CC, Stealth. I don’t have her, and her moves are eye cancer, but when i play with a good one, the mission always goes way smoother.
Saryn – These two go together so well, another damage frame that appreciates enemies having low-no armor. On top of that, tempest barrage pops every spore in its area, dealing massive damage and making sure that the spores keep spreading, also, with there already being constant viral procs, you can mod your weapon for either radiation/toxic or radiation/cold, both of which have obvious advantages.
Vauban – CC bros. You two can just throw your stuff out everywhere for profit. Granted, his cc trumps yours, but you still shred armor on top of his cc, and his concussion grenades still open up enemies to stealth melee damage. He essentially makes your job WAAAY easier if he knows what he’s doing. And since his are deployables, and yours has infinite casting range, you two can really get some chokepoint management done.
Avoid being on a team with a volt and mesa if it can be helped. Volts Discharge and Mesas Shooting Gallery both prevent knockdowns on enemies, and volts shield directly interferes with the aim on your tempest barrage. If you try to shoot a tempest barrage from behind a volt shield, the center point of your barrage will be directly where the shield is. The game treats it like a wall. It sucks because volt probably is one of the top 5 best frames, and the single best defensive frame in the game for survivals, but unless he doesn’t mind straight up carrying you, or you don’t mind doing some gymnastics to cast your 1 over or around his shield, you two really shouldn’t be on the same team. At least not if you want to feel useful, or not be mildly inconvenienced.
How to play Hydroid in high levels and not die
How to use Hydroids passive – Its free cc. Knock enemies down, do a very low bullet jump towards them, and slam attack. Seeing as hydroid is always in and out of melee combat, slam attacks are extremely easy to weave into his gameplay. If you’re against grineer this passive is even better, because then you can go full melee with your weapon out, and proc the passive even more with certain parts of certain melee stance combos. But on the whole, the way I play, a very low bullet jump is the best way to initiate a slam attack.
How to use Tempest Barrage
If you have free time, cast it. Mine is bound to my scroll wheel for maximum spam. The repeated knockdowns put enemies into an unalert state, giving stealth multipliers to anyone who chooses to melee those enemies. This can be used to initiate on a group, and if you’re practiced with your chosen duration enough, you can close the gap with your 2 You may also use this as an escape tool, to throw out and run away, leaving knocked down enemies as you go. This is also your primary chokepoint management move, where if your team chooses to camp can provide constant cc and armor shredding.
If you chose not to run with natural talent or speed drift in your build, it makes linking your 1 into 2, or 1 into 4 more sloppy, as hydroid performs the casting animation for his 1 both during its casting, and after the casting of his follow up move.
Make sure to take into account that this move takes about half a second from the moment you cast it, to the moment the first salvo hits the ground. Don’t think just because you pressed 1 enemies will immediately be off their feet. Try planning slightly ahead, and if you don’t, use 2 or 3 directly afterwards to give it time to begin its cc.
If you chose to run a negative/range max duration build, this is strictly supplementary cc not to be counted on, and can mostly only hold one chokepoint with your ult. Negative range, in removing its ability to consistently knock down enemies, also removes its utility as a way to activate stealth multipliers. Choose Wisely
How to use Tidal Surge
The best tip I can give you with this move is, if you can actually see an enemy aiming at you, use it. You should be so accustomed to enemies being off their feet, that if they arent, you should be uncomfortable, because you very well can be shot when those one shots start coming. Problems arise, in that sometimes even if you connect with an enemy, it won’t knock them down. If this happens, either reuse 2, or link it to hydroids 3.
With natural talent this move connects seamlessly to both 1 and 3.
Use this move if you see a bombard rocket flying at you, as you will catch it safely, knock the bombard down, you are flying so fast that you should be able to catch the rocket and tank it before it hits your companion who should be playing catch up.
If you choose not to use radiation on your weapon builds (and don’t have an oberon or nyx on your team) then this can also be used to drag an ancient away from the group that it’s buffing. A good, but risky way to isolate it.
Using this for mobility also helps a ton. Say that you are taking cover, you can then bullet jump out of cover, cast your 1, and then use this at a 90 degree angle while still in mid air, or can be used to dart you directly back into cover. There are many applications for this move. Don’t underestimate it.
How to use Undertow
Another way to put enemies in unalert state, only this doesn’t require multiple knockdowns, just that enemies be touched by the puddle. A good way to collect a large group of enemies at a chokepoint.
My primary use for this move is that it can be used to concentrate your 4, even if you modded for range, due to the nature of 4’s semi-auto targetting. If you cluster a bunch of enemies in one place, and aim 4 directly at that group, the tentacles will mostly spawn all in the same place. allowing you to emulate having a negative range 4, while still having your other 3 moves be usable.
How to use Tentacle Swarm
Just use it on cooldown because you can. Its extra cc to slow down the waves of enemies just a bit. And if you want to use it as another chokepoint management tool, use the same trick I mentioned in the undertow section
Another thing to note is, once an enemy is put in an unalert state, if they are grabbed with a tentacle, they will remain susceptible to stealth damage until they get up after the tentacle grabs them.
If you’re not doing any of these moves, shooting or melee’ing a knocked down enemy, then make sure to ROLL. Its 75% damage reduction and increased mobility. Rolling is equally as important as using any of your moves. Maybe moreso, because its free defense, stronger than any amount of ehp otherwise.
Good spots to camp on mot specifically for Hydroid
Hydroids specialty is not constantly fighting on the move. He CAN, but it’s not optimal, and his “on the move” playstyle still involves hiding behind cover and taking advantage of various camping mechanics. I will show you some of my favorite spots to do exactly that.
Avoid this entire room. its a death trap for any frame, let alone hydroid. Too many entrances, too many points of cover for enemies to utilize, too many blind spots no matter where you would be trying to camp, and the consistency of enemies jumping between the first and second floors makes predicting shots difficult. There are really no upsides to this room except that you get a constant flow of enemies.
This little area is always a nice spot as long as the room connecting to it has enough points of entry for enemies to enter. Thing with this room, the moment you leave it, past about five meters from the opening, enemies can begin spawning there. So take care with that. But there’s nice points of cover you can hide behind and only one single chokepoint to manage.
Pretty much the same as the other room, be careful of the turrets that can randomly turn on sometimes, outside of that, just keep a steady stream of tempest barrage and bullets flowing at the single point of entry. You have tons of cover, and plenty of room to move.
This is the tree room, a lot of people like it, however, hydroids skillset does not involve just sitting in the middle of a room being fired at from any random side, but if your team insists on being in this room, use the following spot.
The point if you take the right path in the tree room, this little space guarantees nothing will spawn behind you and it becomes two hallways that are easy to lock down with barrages and tidal surge. Cool thing is, if you take a weapon with punch through, or a long range melee weapon, You can hit enemies that are arriving from the hallway connecting this space and the tree room to your left, so you rarely even need to truly find them a threat. The same strategy works on the identical hall on that’s on the left side of the tree room, but you’ll probably want to look over your other shoulder (H key I think). You also aren’t trapping yourself, because you always have a way out directly behind you.
Imo, this is the god room. If I find this room, 9/10 I camp here, no matter what my team is doing, or how far away they are. For no real reason outside of sentimental value. Its the first room I was able to hit over 2 hours with, so I stick with it. .. Notable points of this room include…
This is a lot of peoples favorite camping spot. Your back is protected, and there are only 2 points you need to worry about enemies come from. The downsides being energy leeches. Once they start coming in droves, a lot of the time, they’ll be cc’ed under the stairs, draining your energy from beneath you, forcing you to either leave the safety of your position to kill them, or stop churning out cc so that they can make it up the stairs.
A BIG no-no, that I see a lot of less knowledgable players doing, is using this as the chokepoint.
Facing the hallway dead on will get you shot at from cc blindspots (so much is affected by LOS now) or enemies just entering from the door directly ahead of you. It also forces you to be more cognizant of the enemies coming from the hallway to your left, rather than them just immediately entering your LOS. Don’t be that guy. Or do. Just know after the first warning, I’m not picking you up.
My designated bathroom/sammich break spot. Just go there and puddle. Leeches won’t get to you, nullies won’t make you leave undertow.
There are certainly other good chokepoints you can hold up in on mot, but these are just a few examples of the types of things you should be looking for when its time to settle in place.
In closing
Hydroid is NOT the best frame in the game. He’s not even top 5. But he’s certainly a nice mid-tier frame, and not bottom tier like people make it sound like. He can play any mission type will with different builds, he can scale his teams damage against armor, and provide constant cc for a cheap price.
I hope that some of my tips helped you, if you have any questions, or want to argue about how wrong I am, and how trash hydroid is, see me in the comments! I’ll probably respond to everyone.
Thanks for reading!
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