Hunter's grenade needs a rework.

As far as I understand it's meant to help you gather more blueprints after you get all the basic ones from the first few levels, and a means to mitigate bad RNG.

So what's the problem?

The way it works is essentially a death sentence for many cases. You need to throw it at an enemy and turn them into an Elite. Then you need to fight this Elite. So far so good. Then you need to go and pick it up again, STAND STILL and keep using it on the Elite when he's at 40% health or lower. Meanwhile the Elite is more than happy to keep hitting you. Being hit will interrupt the beam and you need to start all over again. You can't go climb a ledge or something to use the beam without the Elite reaching you. He will teleport behind you. The only way to use this is to have some sort of long stun, which is rare by itself. A lure or magnetic grenade does not keep the enemy away long enough for you to manage and finish transforming him into a Blueprint.

Couple that with how expensive it is and the fact you need to sacrifice a utility slot to keep it on you until you find a suitable enemy. Depending on your progression that can mean several levels.

I suggest that just using it on someone and turning them into an Elite should be enough. Then just killing that Elite should guarantee you a blueprint. i.e. remove the beam phase.

Having similar troubles, I agree that just killing a grenaded elite would be a better approach than to replacing one RNG element with another.

The only practical advice I can offer you right now is this: Elites only gain the ability to teleport after about 20% of their HP have been shaved off. So you can first grab the Blueprint Extractor, get onto higher ground and take a potion to top off HP, if needed. If you happen to have a weapon or shield that throws a grenade, you can use/abuse it to whittle down the first 20% of elites. Also the additional monsters that elites spawn don't get to teleport. Always clear out a big enough usable area around the monster you will grenade beforehand, so you get kind of an arena area around the elite where you can move to without having to worry about running into even more trouble.
Doing all this is only a way to conserve HP, which might or might not make no difference in the end.

Another thing you can do is to look out for a Ygdar Orus Li Ox (the heart) in the Prisoners' Cells. This amulet will not only bring you back to life upon death but will also freeze everything on the screen when it does so - including elites and bosses. It costs 3,000 gold, so getting the purse upgrade that holds 10,000 gold or more would be required to get this one.

And try to not burn yourself out on Dead Cells right now. I've been playing regularly ever since it got released on GOG and I'm beginning to feel the fatigue. It's a great game with some annoying issues, but it's also still in development. Motion Twin might upgrade the grenade to work more straightforward with the very next update. It would be a shame if we had quitted the game by then.

Hope you guys are giving your suggestion and feedback on the steam forums cause I'm not sure if the devs check the GOG Dead Cells forums.

I also agree that the grenade needs a rework but I reckon it's not supposed to be easy to get those blueprints so you need to work your butt off to acquire them.

I would presume the lovely people at Motion Twin do read the GOG forums, because they sell the game here as well... I am a customer on gog.com. As such, it would only make sense that I wouldn't have to register to some third party services when GOG is already offering a dedicated forum for Dead Cells.

That being said: If you are concerned about this and happen to have an account on steam, you are welcome to post a link to this thread to raise or increase awareness.

I wholeheartedly would love that to be the case since I'm a GOG fanboy and don't really use steam except for dedicated game forums since they are very active compared to GOG but as is with some devs that never respond here, there is a very high chance that any input here very often goes unnoticed.

Well, as I already mentioned: If you have a steam account (like it seems you have) I have no objections to you plastering the steam forums with relevant(!) links to the GOG forums or opening "At the same time at GOG... [insert thread title here]" threads simply containing a link. Within reason of course.

I couldn't do it myself, even if I wanted to, because I distrust the steam marketplace to a degree that I wouldn't give them as much as my browser's fingerprint. Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't wish any harm to Valve's employees or something along those lines - having competition in any field is important. I just don't trust them at all.
To be fair: Ever since I delved into the intricacies of GOG, I learned that the grass is not that much greener here. It's greener alright, but not by much.
Sorry for the tangent and thank you for sharing your concerns.