New Strain - Saryn

[Revlid]

Hello, everyone! This is actually the first post I've made on these forums, and I'm relatively new to Warframe as a whole - only started playing a little after Update 11. I was persuaded to start basically entirely by the existence of the Saryn - I have a strange fixation on biowarfare/corruption-themed classes, in whatever game I end up playing. As such, I started out as Excalibur, and ground my way to Sedna as directly as possible before grabbing Saryn as my second frame.

 

Unfortunately, she's a bit crap - something I came to recognize as I ploughed into higher-level content and compared her to other frames - using Rhino was a revelation, for example. Granted, she's not pre-update Valkyr tier, but she really isn't great - and since I love her theme, my solution is to work out how to change that rather than just benching the poor dear.

 

Saryn's issues mainly stem from the fact that when considered individually, her Abilities are pretty weak, and they're even worse when taken as a whole, as they overlap or outright clash rather than having any synergy.

 

Compare her to, say, the Rhino. His Abilities do not particularly support each other, but they all do distinctly different things, and are individually strong, so he's a lovely frame to play with. Saryn, by contrast, has Abilities that can be summarized as "ranged damage over time", "melee damage booster", "area of effect damage" and "escape". With the exception of Moult (I'm British, damn you, and I'll put "u" where it belongs), her Abilities not only do the same thing, they each do it in ways that make using her other Abilities less useful. If you're getting use out of Contagion, Venom isn't great, and if you're using Venom, Miasma is counterproductive, and so on.

 

So even if you were to just buff the numbers involved in each Ability to a useful level, she'd be badly set up.

 

I'd still just be taking whatever single "damage" Ability was most effective (currently Miasma) and Moult, because it does something different and useful.

 

So I'll go through some suggestions - I hope those of you who've been playing longer will be able to correct any false assumptions and generally improve my understanding of what needs to be done to fix my favourite frame.

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Starting at the most general point - Saryn's inarguably an Elemental Warframe, specializing in poison and disease and so on. Unlike her peers, however, she isn't actually tied to one particular kind of damage. Frost's damaging Abilities all do Cold damage, Volt's all do Electrical damage, Ember's all do Heat damage, Mag's all do Mag damage... and if we're counting him, Oberon's do Radiation damage.

 

Instead of focusing on one shade of the green-element spectrum, Saryn's Abilities run the gamut. Venom does Viral damage (despite the name), Contagion does Toxin damage (despite the name), Miasma does Corrosive damage, and Moult's new function does Gas damage. She literally has a bit of everything, which makes her much less useful in a specialized sense - Gas is great against Infested, but Viral is bad. Corrosive and Viral are great against Grineer, but you don't want Gas.

 

Give her one kind of damage - two at most - and she becomes easier to direct. I'd recommend Viral, with Corrosive as an aside if you want one. This makes her a lovely anti-Grineer frame, and suits the only genuinely unique Ability that she's got - the bizarrely misnamed Venom.

 

Plus, look at it this way - if the other green elements get opened up instead of Saryn hoarding them, we might get a Gas-focused Warframe with a WWI-trench-soldier inspired getup, or something.

..................................

 

Moving on to look at her actual Abilities...

 

Venom is her big draw, as a frame. Her other tricks are a melee buff, a knock-off decoy, and a standard aoe bomb - a Viral power that is literally contagious is really cool, and fairly unique. Unfortunately, it's also really weak. My first suggestion would be to remove the finnicky "shoot spores to end dot and spread to nearby enemies" function. The goal of any game mode is to kill enemies as quickly as possible, so a power that discourages you from doing so and requires precision aiming at close range is doomed to mediocrity.

 

Just make it a Viral dot that spreads to nearby enemies when the infected enemy dies (and so on, and so forth). Either give it a high proc rate, so it's straightforwardly useful, or give it an obscenely long (or even indefinite, though that might be a bit much) duration, so it can spread to more enemies.

 

Oh, and rename it. It's got nothing to do with venom. It feels like it and Contagion were swapped at birth.

 

Moult is one of her currently mostly-functional Abilities. Get in close, use one or more of Saryn's relatively mid-range Abilities, then run away and leave an agg-drawing bomb behind. Fine in theory. In practice, it doesn't work out quite so well, because setting up a "Shoot This" flag isn't very clever when it's planted directly on top of you. Plus, if you're using it as a pure escape tool (on, say, a Capture) you don't care much about whether or not your enemies take damage when you've left them behind.

 

If you want it to keep its current function, then have it absorb damage from attacks that hit the Saryn - either all of it or a percentage - as well as just drawing enemy fire. This makes it more useful as a defensive/escape tool, and reduces the "drop Moult in the middle of a hoard, it gets shot to bits, I'm in the way, thanks Moult" issue.

 

Otherwise, I might suggest making it an Iron Skin-alike rather than a Decoy-alike. The Saryn shrouds herself in an ablative layer of hardened skin, which can soak up less damage than Iron Skin, but upon being broken detonates into a small cloud of Viral dots. This avoids the problem described above, and also encourages you to stay up close rather than running up, Moult-ing and running away, which works better with Contagion as described, if you want to keep it.

 

Speaking of... Contagion. Name issue is as described in Venom - no relation to its effect, and better suited to its fellow Ability. In terms of its actual effect... well, currently it's so utterly underwhelming that it's hard to say how fundamentally suited to Saryn the ability is. Personally, I'd be in favour of replacing it entirely with a utility power, preferably one that works well with the Viral/dot focus of Saryn - perhaps an aura that nerfs enemies with Viral dots on them, slowing or paralyzing them, or something to accelerating the intervals of all dots.

 

Alternatively, if you're going to keep it, remove its casting time, change its damage to suit the elemental specialization (Viral or Corrosive, I'd say) and then make it powerful enough to matter by giving it something interesting to do. Have it multiply damage against enemies with Viral dots on them, or have it grant an absurd proc chance, or give it a vampiric effect, or something. Make it interesting, and if you can't, at least make it useful.

 

As I said earlier, I think Iron-Skin-alike Moult would work better with a (different) melee buff, while Decoy-alike Moult would probably serve better with a utility-type.

 

Lastly, Miasma, currently the only really usable one of Saryn's Abilities. Assuming it's fixed to remove the bug (it's a bug, right?) where reducing the duration of what is ostensibly a dot actually makes it do more damage and faster... You might even consider just turning it into a straightforward aoe bomb, actually, given it currently lasts 4 seconds - it's not as though you'd be losing much.

 

To make it more interesting and give it some synergy with Saryn's other powers, have it do less damage to normal enemies, but a ton more to those with Viral dots on them, as supplied by your other powers. Effectively "detonate" them. Hell, maybe do something with procs - if you're clean, you pick up a Viral dot and take damage from Miasma. If you've got a Viral dot, you suffer a Viral proc and take damage from Miasma. If you've got a Viral proc, your health is halved again and you take damage from Miasma.

 

There, now you've got a model - run in, tag a guy with spores, kill him and spread the disease, using Moult to help spread it and keep yourself alive, and then detonate them all with Miasma. Choice of Moult-model and whether you go for a revamped Contagion or a new utility power change whether you wade in cackling madly as your enemies infect themselves or run around being slippery as the plague spreads.

 

Thoughts?

[noneuklid]

Ability synergy is terra incognito for Warframe.  Actually, that's not true -- it would be better to say that it's been a disastrous, shredded terrain covered in horrible mutant sharks.

 

Your post is quite a bit to digest.  Hm.

[AttackNitro]

Molt doesn't need to do damage, it needs to remove status effects from saryn when cast. It would be simple and effective and wouldn't clash with her other skills.... which is why it won't happen (because DE scott is in charge)

[noneuklid]

Okay, so the issues with Saryn's abilities are pretty well known.  However, the development team is reluctant to alter things based on conflicted player feedback (but they will alter things based on internal decisions).  This works out well for us a lot of the time, but it does mean that getting changes to controversial frames like Banshee, Saryn, or Ash has proven a bit of a challenge.  Perhaps Rebecca will champion one soon...

 

I think you're underselling Molt.  It's still in a rough spot, but the essential idea of the decoy is excellent; it provides an escape power with a kicker.  The main problem with it is that it's got hit points, honestly; it ought to work a bit more like Nyx's ultimate, and absorb damage for a fixed period of time before exploding into a cloud.  (Although you present a viable alternative -- it could have a ton of HP and emit damage each time it itself is damaged.)

 

It should also probably shift to the side or behind Saryn when she casts it.

I think spores spreading automatically from corpses is a much better idea than shooting spores, which has proven... problematic.

 

Miasma should deal base damage whether or not spores are present.  But dealing bonus damage by detonating all spores present is a pretty cool synergy.

 

And I freaking love the idea of Contagion becoming an AoE that slows or weakens enemies that are spored, but again, abilities completely relying on other abilities hasn't worked out well for Warframe in the past.  I do think that making a twofer wouldn't be terribly OP, though -- an aura that 1) causes Saryn's melee attacks and those of her allies to afflict enemies with spores and 2) weakens the armor and/or damage of spored enemies could be a potent ability but a worthwhile "field-control" third slot effect.  Since the effects are both limited (allies must use melee attacks to gain the buff; enemies must be spored to be debuffed) I think they add up to one whole effect.

 

...But of course, this is all kind of a pipe dream.  As I said, it's much more likely we'll see an internally-designed Saryn rebuild when someone gets around to it, rather than a "well, maybe" player-designed rebuild.

[DoomFruit]

Plus, look at it this way - if the other green elements get opened up instead of Saryn hoarding them, we might get a Gas-focused Warframe with a WWI-trench-soldier inspired getup, or something.

I WANT.

Completely off-topic, but the first thing I thought of when seeing the thread title was this: