Saryn Venom Popping- Broken Or Am I Doing It Wrong?

[TheLastZanerian]

I recently acquired Saryn, and have leveled her to lvl 15 with a potato. I've been trying to get some Venom awesomeness this whole time to no avail... any weapon I use is at best a crapshoot as to whether or not the spore will pop. Boltor, Flux, Grakata, Hek, Boar, Sobek, Akbolto, Dual Bronco... all had at best a scant chance to actually pop the spore.

 

My question is this: How the heck am I supposed to pop these spores? Is there some rain dance ritual I need to perform, or is there a reliable method for popping the spores? If there is indeed a method to it, shooting the spore seems to not be involved.

[W4RM4CHIN3]

You need puncture.

[TheLastZanerian]

So the ability to use Saryn's core skill is entirely reliant on posession of a highly rare mod? Would have been nice to know this before I farmed Saryn. DE needs to fix this crap.

 

Any idea where I may find a puncture mod?

[alchemistjkt]

So the ability to use Saryn's core skill is entirely reliant on posession of a highly rare mod? Would have been nice to know this before I farmed Saryn. DE needs to fix this crap.

 

Any idea where I may find a puncture mod?

its not required nor is it all that rare.

[Anatolius]

I normally aim for the feet/legs/forearm if the spore is there

otherwise yes puncture helps

or get a shotgun/something with a high rate of fire

it will eventually hit

[Darzk]

Yes, for some reason you will have more sucess with puncture.

 

However, its perfectly possible to pop spores without it. There's 2 'secrets'

 

1. A dead enemy cant spread venom. If you do enough damage with the shot to kill the mob, the spore wont pop. This makes heavy hitting weapons like snipers and the semi-auto shotguns poor choices. Conversely, a spore is more likely to pop when taking a larger amount of damage - pop chance / bullet impact is far higher on the braton than the grakata, for example. An accutrate, high RoF that hits harder than ~20/bullet seems to be most ideal, like the bratons or the flux, or a full auto shotgun.

 

2. LAG - Incredibly important. A poor connection to a host or even a poor connection to a client when hosting can prevent the spores from working correctly. Try out venom when playing offline and you'll see a huge increase in effectiveness. Playing on a laggy host can prevent the spores from popping, can make them pop in wierd locations irrelevant to the mob location, or can sometimes make the spores not even appear. Having a laggy client as a host can sometimes result in them killing your venom target, interfering with the way venom works.

 

-> you should be able to get Shred from nightmare missions now.

 

Edit: Also, use the Reach mod on Saryn, it'll increase the radius within which venom will spread to enemies.

Edited September 1, 2013 by Darzk

[Vulturion]

I noticed that when Ancients has spores on them, usually theres a spore on his foot (more like on the ground attached to nothing) this spore can be poped easily even without puncture

[Mercurialis]

Also Venom was just nerfed to the ground last patch, so it doesn't spread as much anymore.

[TheLastZanerian]

After a little more playing around, it looks like the only spores that won't need puncture are the ones on the enemy's limbs... Anyone know where Metal Auger is now that Droptables 2.0 is out?

[AlchemistMute]

After a little more playing around, it looks like the only spores that won't need puncture are the ones on the enemy's limbs... Anyone know where Metal Auger is now that Droptables 2.0 is out?

No, but Shred is a good mod that was once exclusive and is just better. For 11 points, it adds 1.2 puncture and 30% fire rate to rifles. Much better than 15 points for 0.6 puncture. There's a 1.01% chance to get it on nightmare missions, I believe. Rush through the low-level ones.

[IIPREDATORII]

You need puncture.

its not required nor is it all that rare.

Are you sure it's a nerf or a bug Mercurialis?bI have heard its a bug. Also heard that in the patch notes there was no mention of venom being altered in any way. So it could just be a bug that needs to be reported.

Also Venom was just nerfed to the ground last patch, so it doesn't spread as much anymore.

Flux rifle is the best popper IMO.

[Archon357]

Puncture mods are definitely the best chance for popping spores. I had serious issues with them and the best I had was Dual Broncos and Hek, but even they weren't the most reliable. Sobek was good too.

Latron and Braton couldn't pop for the life of 'em.

 

But, once I decided to try out Shred after the event, it became a breeze. I'm pretty sure the hitbox of the spores is much smaller than it should be, and it gets covered by the enemy hitbox.

 

I bet that even a non-fused Metal Auger can increase the chance of spreading Venom.

 

I don't know where it drops now, but I think I got mine on Jupiter at either Io or Callisto. However, it's really not worth it, in my opinion, as it's a real capacity hog for a minimal effect.

 

If you missed the event and don't have Shred - it has recently been added to the Nightmare mode loot table. Me and my friend ran Mantle, Earth a couple of days ago and got another one there. Probably doesn't matter where you play, though.

[TheLastZanerian]

I've gotten some proficiency popping with the Flux Rifle after a bit of practice in Solo mode. That being said, I'm not going to farm a rare mod to make a bug from DE tolerable. Before anyone tries to say its a feature, it's clearly not, as there is a chance to pop spores without puncture.

 

Bottom line for me is that this one's on DE.

Edited September 2, 2013 by Dobravolets

[Erusa]

The reason why puncture aids so well in popping spores is because some spore hitboxes appear inside those arms, limbs, wherever else. Negating almost all attempts to pop them with a non-puncture weapon. Usually what I do is if I can't pop a spore I want in two hits, I pick a different spore to pop. The spore on an Ancient's foot is the easiest to pop simply because the Ancient's legs have such small hitboxes in the first place and the spore's hitbox is bigger than those strange hitbox (I'd actually call it a hitline since it's so thin.)

You'll need at least R0 Puncture or Shred to make full use of spores, without it, you need to be a little luckier with the first spore you'll choose to pop. :(

Also as people said, the "performance fix" on Venom consequently weakened its ability to spread, still unclear if this is intended or a bug of the "performance fix".

[TheLastZanerian]

That's what I assumed... that being said, I'll be submitting a bug report, not farming for a puncture mod.