Plunder + the new passive is insane.
That's the tl;dr version, at east. Tempest Barrage is absolutely worthless for it's damage, nothing changed there, but it's absolutely amazing at applying tons of Corrosive and (with the augument) Viral procs to everything in an area. Todal Surge is still very much worthless, it's too fast to reliably control and I found myself crashing into walls all the time and just never bothering to waste 50 energy on it. It does grab enemies very well now, though! Here comes the star of the show, Plunder! This ability is crazy good, but ONLY because of Hydroid's new passive. The armor buff was enough to make me able to survive rather comfortable with
this janky no forma build I slapped together for testing on Steel Path Taveuni, Kuva Fortress with the exception of Slash procs forcing me to heal through them with my Operator. The Corrosive damage buff is straight up insane on anything with decent status chance. I brought my Incarnon Torid and proceeded to melt everything, including the Acolyte like it was a lvl 20 mission. Tentacle Swarm is a lot more useful now, but I still only used it once for testing purposes. It's an OK CC, but it still makes it hard to shoot at enemies and I would rather have Larva in it's place instead (or other grouping ability).
Overall Hydroid seems really good now, he's a classic weapon's platform frame, with tools to help him survive and buff his weapon damage
vastly! Will forma him when I have some time to play during weekend and try him out on a tougher Steel Path mission, like a 20min Circulus run to stress test him some more.