I know it hasn’t been a week yet (TBH it almost, has) but I thought this would be a good place to discuss the new Hydroid rework. I’ll leave my thoughts, as usual, in the comment!
Release date: 2014-04-09
Abilities (the wiki wasn’t updated with the new descriptions yet so I’ll do my best and write them myself when applicable):
(New!) Passive: Enemies damaged by Hydroid are more vulnerable to Corrosion Status, with initial status reducing armor by 50%.
Tempest Barrage - Target an area and call down a barrage of liquid fury.
Tidal Surge - Crash through enemies in a ferocious wall of water.
(Old)Undertow - Become a water trap and drown unsuspecting enemies.
(New!) Plunder - All enemies in range affected by Corrosive procs will have their armor reduced permanently while providing armor to Hydroid as well as adding bonus Corrosive damage to your weapons.
Tentacle Swarm - Spawn a Kraken that grabs and holds enemies while applying Corrosive damage and status.
Acquisition: Blueprint purchasable from the market, components drop from Councilor Vay Hek on Oro, Earth.
Seems interesting so far, and the augments seem kind of useful for various things.
Tempest Barrage + Viral Tempest- provides moderate CC, armor strip and priming enemies with Viral. This is a pretty useful combination since it frees up the related elemental mods to be used for other combinations. Enemies to tend to flail around a lot making it harder to land shots on a weak point.
Tidal Surge + Tidal Impunity - An okay grouping ability but is somewhat tileset dependant, it’s more usable on a map with few obstructions like the Void than it is on Earth. Impunity for some timed status immunity/cleanse, this is pretty niche, but not a terrible mod for missions with frequent status effects going on like the ones from sortie modifiers.
Plunder + Rousing Plunder - as a damage buff, it’s a bit of a feedback loop with corrosive, and helps to mitigate enemies taking less damage from Corrosive once they’re fully armor stripped. Defensively, this ability seems reasonably good, although it does not keep the highest armor value when recasting.
Tentacle Swarm + Pilfering Swarm - It’s now a lot easier to hit enemies captured by the tentacles. Not much else has changed other than it now deals Corrosive damage instead of Magnetic. The tentacles do tend to spawn outside of the room you’re in when cast near a wall now, instead of just spawning extra tentacles on the wall.