Gauss’ best friend, the meatball man, the vore frame - Grendel!
Release date: 2019-10-31
Passive: Devouring his prey whole, Grendel slowly digests the enemies he swallows via Feast. Each enemy still alive in Grendel’s belly passively grants him 250 Armor, to a maximum of 1,250 bonus armor at the 5 enemy cap.
Feast - Swallow an enemy whole and store it in Grendel’s gut. Hold to vomit out stored enemies covering them in toxic bile.
Nourish - Regenerate health as Grendel absorbs nourishment from enemies in his gut. While he digests, enemies that attack or are attacked by Grendel suffer Viral Damage and energy sources provide more energy. These buffs extend to squad mates.
Pulverize - Grendel curls into a ball. He heals over time as he rolls, knocking over anyone in his path. Jumping slams Grendel into the ground and generates a damaging shockwave.
Regurgitate - Violently puke out a bile soaked enemy from Grendel’s gut, turning the consumed into a toxic projectile.
Acquisition: Main blueprint can be purchased from the Market. Component blueprints are awarded by completing certain missions on Europa using Locators, which can be purchased from the Arbitration Honors vendor found in any Relay.
Very fun pinball frame, great since his re-work but DE seem to have a hard time hitting the mark with how quickly consumed enemies die. If they died really quickly you could use eating as a direct form of killing but its not quite fast enough for that, but its too fast to easily maintain charges for your abilities and to stop his 3 from draining exponentially. It ends up with him being a very active and still fun frame but one that doesn’t quite hit the mark for either power fantasy.
I really like Grendel since his most recent rework! He’s got the general good package of things: survivability, damage, armor strip and even weapon buffs + effortless energy economy. He’s also deceptively fast with the Catapult augment, when his Prime came out and I used him a lot in the Entrati tileset I often outraced other speed-focused frames to extraction. My one complaint is that his stomach deals too much damage to things, especially during Pulverize. Keeping your belly full is nearly impossible during any non-Steel Path mission, enemies just die too fast while you’re just bouncing around. His Feast can be a bit hit-or-miss too, some enemies cannon be devoured (especially prevalent against the Murmur) and some just disintegrate but don’t actually go to your stomach.
UWU
I was surprised with how much I liked Grendel after finally toughing out his acquisition missions. I still tossed him into the helminth immediately though for that sweet sweet viral install. He’s definitely on the list of warframes I’m potatoing up when I finally get his last prime component.
The only thing I don’t like about him is his 1st ability’s functionality. Why does his 1 throw enemies out than when his 4 can do that and is better? Why can I not reverse the tap/hold controls? I have to sperg out aiming the ability to be able to ‘hit’ them and registers. By the time I get max stacks of bodies sucked, there is only a few seconds left until I have to press 1 again to suck more enemies. Other than that, his other abilities are great, but really depend on his crappy 1.
