Saryn Nerf Proposal

[Traumtulpe]

Ever since her latest rework, I noticed a lot of people playing Warframes like Frost or Inaros complaining about Saryns damage output. Specifically "Spores" and "Miasma" are the abilities that draw jealousy.

It should be quite obvious to anyone, that simply tweaking the numbers will not satisfy these people (unless the numbers are literally to small to kill level 5 Corpus), seeing as the recent Miasma nerf went unnoticed by them, and did nothing to dissuade further complaints.

The only logical solution is then, to remove any damage from these abilities and replace it with utility. Thankfully there are several kinds of utility entirely absent from Saryns kit, making this undertaking quite easy. Two of my favorites:

• Damage reduction. Many Warframes can achieve 90% damage reduction, and possibly even confer this benefit to other Warframes and objectives. Of course Saryn is entirely incapable of anything comparable. A golden opportunity to replace damage - Miasma: Afflicts foes in a 20 m radius with the Viral status effect, while allies receive 70% damage reduction for 30 seconds.
• Slowing enemies, bonus resources. Quite valuable support, provided by a number of Warframes. Candidate for replacing Spores functionality. Spores: Plant fast growing spores on enemies, slowing them by 30%. After 3 seconds the spores bloom into an additional loot drop, and spread to targets within 16 m.

Of course there are many more possibilities. From healing allies, to dropping energy orbs, restoring shields, crowd control, providing status immunity, increases to attack/reload speed, blocking attacks and countless other examples of utility, brought to the table by other Warframes.

[Skaleek]

I mean, i hear you, but if i want to play a DR warframe i'll play a DR warframe. Saryn is a nuker through and through. I would like her to keep this role. Does she need nerfs? Maybe. Her usage statistics i think are the main concern of DE. It probably is a lot easier to nerf saryn than it is to buff all the other "nuker" frames. They could make it harder to keep up spores indefinitely, so that it takes more work than the current fire and forget.

Personally i think her other abilities are fine, if anything is needs a nerf it will be spores. Also with corrosive not permanently stripping armor spores did receive a nerf by proxy... it's just that spores scales so damn well its hard to keep it down regardless of what you change short of spores scaling itself.

Edited March 10, 2020 by Skaleek

[Chewarette]

She has already been nerfed with the changes made to Viral, Corrosive and Gas.

What you're proposing is not a nerf, it's a complete change. She's here to do damage. Not every Warframe has to provide utility. And that's great, otherwise just create 1 Warframe and that's it.

[lukinu_u]

When you play Frost, Inaros or whatever warframe, you CAN'T (Corrected) complain about Saryn's damage output when you clearly choosed tankiness over damage. Saryn is damage oriented and has many drawbacks : she isn't really tanky, don't have efficient crowd control, can't protect a defense objective, etc...

There, what you suggest is to reducing a little bit her pros and increase her cons, to make her a plain design with no good or bad points. Overall this would be a buff since most of her strength come from the tick number from spore (not damage), her 1st augment, here 3rd power and the viral procs from 4th (not the damage again).
 

Il y a 5 heures, Chewarette a dit :

She has already been nerfed with the changes made to Viral, Corrosive and Gas.

Also this. Even if viral was more a buff and gas could change in the near future.

Edited March 10, 2020 by lukinu_u
Corrected a "can" to "can't", yes it make a lot of difference...

[Traumtulpe]

5 minutes ago, Dark_Lugia said:

1. April is next month you are a bit to early...

No, I am dead half serious.

All she has got is damage. If you reduce her damage to the point of satisfying the complainers there is nothing left.

^{I put 2 Umbral Forma into her, and she is definitely getting nerfed.}

[selig_fay]

I think that only 3 edits are needed. And they are all about 4 ability. This is: a) completely remove damage. b) reduce the duration of the auto-spread of spores, up to 2 seconds. c) increase the duration of the stun. That is all.

Edited March 10, 2020 by zhellon

[Gailus]

1 hour ago, Traumtulpe said:

 Specifically "Spores" and "Miasma" are the abilities that draw jealousy.

I'd like to point out that it's not really jealousy that gets people annoyed about Saryn. It's that there isn't a game to play when she exists in a mission. A lot of frames have this problem, and nerfing Saryn won't fix it, but she is the flavor of the month.

Others have proposed buffing the other nukes, but that just moves the problem to them as well. Frankly, the more capable a frame is of simply deleting an entire tileset, the more boring it is to play with on a team. I personally would prefer that every nuke ability received changes to be more restrictive and targeted, or more utility focused. As opposed to being an outright replacement for all of the rest of a kit and gameplay.

Saryn spreads the two strongest status effects in the game across entire tilesets. She really doesn't need the damage to go along with it, but she has it all the same. Why can't her kit just revolve around stripping armor, halving hp, and then shooting things with her guaranteed Toxin procs? It would make enemies weaker, but not remove them from the field and let the rest of the players in a group actually have something to do.

Then again, people would just switch to the Venom Dose + Toxic Lash + Acid Shells combo with the Sobek and continue nuking that way. It's straight up stronger in normal missions and some tiles of ESO. Doing roughly 164% of every enemy's max health in Corrosive and Toxin will do that.

[Traumtulpe]

18 minutes ago, Gailus said:

there isn't a game to play when she exists in a mission. [...] Acid Shells

Kinda like a Limbo in a defense mission. I mean, there isn't a game to play since the target can't be destroyed anyway.

Exaggerations aside, didn't Acid Shells get 90% damage falloff?

[TheGrimCorsair]

I mean, casting Miasma should just burn its energy cost for each enemy affected by it and no longer propagate spores.

No nuker should have the ability to render the team's existence or makeup a non-factor.

The "nerf Saryn's damage output" like the ""nerf Mesa's Peacemakers" is not actually a call to nerf their killing ability, so much as their ability to suppress enemies to the point of rendering any other play pointless.

Edited March 10, 2020 by TheGrimCorsair

[zorgy]

2 hours ago, lukinu_u said:

 she isn't really tanky

She has more armor than the majority of frames, an ability that literally restores her to full health (with the augment) AND almost 1000 health with maxed vitality. she is literally a tank.

2 hours ago, lukinu_u said:

don't have efficient crowd control, can't protect a defense objective

just press 1 and 4. no need for CC if everything in the map is dead, including sortie 3 level.

 

[CopperBezel]

4 hours ago, Chewarette said:

She has already been nerfed with the changes made to Viral, Corrosive and Gas.

What you're proposing is not a nerf, it's a complete change. She's here to do damage. Not every Warframe has to provide utility. And that's great, otherwise just create 1 Warframe and that's it.

4 hours ago, Chewarette said:

Viral

Um

Miasma stacks like Spores now. That's not a nerf.

[waterboytkd]

I feel like this is the first Nerf Saryn post I've seen that isn't just salty jealousy.

When I think of Saryn, I come to one of two conclusions: she is either A) fine as she is, as it's a PvE game, or B) in possession of a broken kit that can't be balanced--there's no number tweaking that could happen that leaves her "effective" but incapable of "wiping whole tilesets". 

Personally, I'm in the "A" camp. But if that viewpoint is somehow objectively wrong, then proposals like yours are the only way to address it. You would have to just pull the damage out of the kit and make her all about utility (including status effects). 

But, if you do that, I suspect the people who complain would just move on to the next nuker and whine about that Frame.

[lukinu_u]

Il y a 1 heure, zorgy a dit :

She has more armor than the majority of frames, an ability that literally restores her to full health (with the augment) AND almost 1000 health with maxed vitality. she is literally a tank.

She has decent survivability, but is still squishy compared to real tank oriented frames like Inaros, Chroma, Valkyr or Frost (less tanky but has a tank oriented kit).
About healing, litterally all warframe can get access to it : healing weapons mods, operators arcanes, health packs, etc...
 

Il y a 1 heure, zorgy a dit :

just press 1 and 4. no need for CC if everything in the map is dead, including sortie 3 level.

What I'm saying is the damage of her spores are definitely not the strongest part of her kit, so replacing them with other abilities would be a straight buff if you actually play. I wouldn't be for people just pressing 1 and 4 and wait, but it's an afk playstyle that isn't the strongest way to use her, so why consider it at all ?

[SocialFox]

4 hours ago, lukinu_u said:

When you play Frost, Inaros or whatever warframe, you can complain about Saryn's damage output when you clearly choosed tankiness over damage. Saryn is damage oriented and has many drawbacks : she isn't really tanky, don't have efficient crowd control, can't protect a defense objective, etc...

I play as Nezha and do manage to outDPS the occasional Saryn due to me dealing enough damage to kill an enemy 200 times over due to overkill damage with my melee setup, I often end up with 1/5 of the kills but 92% of the damage dealt due to that, and if a saryn is in the group, we're either Tied (or saryn has slightly higher damage dealt if I can't find anything to kill by the time the mission is over) or I still have most of the damage done with a lot less of the kills

So really, the problem isn't Saryn, or any frame, it's those kind of people's attitude regarding the end-of-mission results screen.
They probably get a virtual boner when looking at their stats or something, otherwise I can't really understand what the problem is.

Edited March 10, 2020 by SocialFox

[CopperBezel]

Wow, overkill damage should not be counted there, that's a mess. It can't be doing so consistently, though, else my Khora would always have 99% of damage in Sanctuary. Are you sure you're weren't just a really amazingly good Nezha playing against a terrible Saryn?

On the main topic, there's a continuum from Saryn to Ember to Nova in terms of DPS vs. debuffer with defense. Saryn doesn't need to move along that line. Her survivability is fine for her role. 

[lukinu_u]

il y a 5 minutes, SocialFox a dit :

I play as Nezha and do manage to outDPS the occasional Saryn due to me dealing enough damage to kill an enemy 200 times over due to overkill damage with my melee setup, I often end up with 1/5 of the kills but 92% of the damage dealt due to that, and if a saryn is in the group, we're either Tied (or saryn has slightly higher damage dealt if I can't find anything to kill by the time the mission is over) or I still have most of the damage done with a lot less of the kills

So really, the problem isn't Saryn, or any frame, it's those kind of people's attitude regarding the end-of-mission results screen.
They probably get a virtual boner when looking at their stats or something, otherwise I can't really understand what the problem is.

Yeah I mean "can't complain" not "can complain", just corrected that, thanks.
I totally agree with you. And if those people are really annoyed by Saryn, just play solo or in premade groups.

However overkill damage shouldn't count, it's just meaningless.

Edited March 10, 2020 by lukinu_u

[Aesthier]

11 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

No, I am dead half serious.

All she has got is damage. If you reduce her damage to the point of satisfying the complainers there is nothing left.

^ And that is precisely why she should remain as is and not be nerfed further.

[Traumtulpe]

8 hours ago, zorgy said:

She has more armor than the majority of frames, an ability that literally restores her to full health (with the augment) AND almost 1000 health with maxed vitality. she is literally a tank.

She is not a tank, the only thing she has going for her in terms of durability is 300 armor. Which isn't nothing, but it also isn't anything comparable to damage reduction or Arcanes.

7 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

Miasma stacks like Spores now. That's not a nerf.

Miasmas Viral status lasts half as long as before, that is a nerf. It's Viral status is also less relevant now, since you put Viral on all your weapons anyway.

[CopperBezel]

Yeah, the 300 armor makes up for depending entirely on Molt CC.

But good point on Miasma and Viral. Venom Dose is pretty mad now, though, since it now means getting Corrosive and Viral on the same pokeystick. 

[Hellmaker2004]

13 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

• Damage reduction. Many Warframes can achieve 90% damage reduction, and possibly even confer this benefit to other Warframes and objectives. Of course Saryn is entirely incapable of anything comparable. A golden opportunity to replace damage - Miasma: Afflicts foes in a 20 m radius with the Viral status effect, while allies receive 70% damage reduction for 30 seconds.
• Slowing enemies, bonus resources. Quite valuable support, provided by a number of Warframes. Candidate for replacing Spores functionality. Spores: Plant fast growing spores on enemies, slowing them by 30%. After 3 seconds the spores bloom into an additional loot drop, and spread to targets within 16 m.

So you want to remove what she is good at, and replace it with Nova's skills, with a hint of Nekros. But worse in every way.

Ah yes, it is all coming together.

 

Or, and hear me out here.
She is fine, her damage output is much worse than a lot of frames, and despite people still crying for nerfs after she once again got indirect nerfs. They probably will keep doing so until there is no frame called Saryn in the game anymore.

And yes, they are allowed to do so, but at a certain point it kinda becomes more sad than funny. And we are far past funny now.

[Tiltskillet]

8 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

Wow, overkill damage should not be counted there, that's a mess. It can't be doing so consistently, though, else my Khora would always have 99% of damage in Sanctuary. Are you sure you're weren't just a really amazingly good Nezha playing against a terrible Saryn?

I don't know about "consistently" but it sure does seem to count overkill damage sometimes.  I regularly see a summary screen like SocialFox describes when Im teamed up with a Saryn  and get a few headshots with a sniper or daikyu.

It wouldn't surprise me at all though if overkill damage was treated differently depending on source, target, mission, barometric pressure, or whatever.

[Chewarette]

9 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

Um

Miasma stacks like Spores now. That's not a nerf.

Miasma applies Viral for half its previous duration though.

[Traumtulpe]

55 minutes ago, Hellmaker2004 said:

Nova's skills, with a hint of Nekros

Those proposals are modeled after 1/2 Splinter Storm + 1/2 Miasma, and 1/2 Molecular Prime + 1/2 Prowl.

[CopperBezel]

Yeah, I think we're recognizing the Nova influence there. It's just ... Ember's rework involved moving her a step away from pure DPS with some DR and defense. That was a good choice in her case and made her a viable frame. I also happen to play a lot of Nova, a bit of Ember, and very little Saryn, so I'm not the best authority on the subject. But I'm wary of making these three DPS/debuffer casters too similar. It's very likely that Saryn's room-clearing abilities are going to be further reduced in the future, and I can understand the balance reasons for that, so I'm not going to counter the argument for that here. But I think it's a bad idea to replace them with things like damage reduction. We'd end up with toxic, firy, and plasma flavors of the same thing.

[(XBOX)Vile Slanders]

2 minutes ago, Vharu said:

Do you see any Saryn doing lvl 9,999 content? 

But I do see other frames doing so. 

So very very few Warframes can remain relevant in lvl 9,999 content; those that can are generally 1-shot wonders; they deal an obscene amount of damage to a single target.

The vast majority of players will never see lvl 9,999 content; to point that such niche builds are justly considered irrelevant to the meta. Most players will cap their experience out in lvl 100 content, where Saryn is OP AF. Because of this, Saryn becomes all too relevant to the meta; to the point that she ousts other Warframes as contenders, and can perform so well as to decimate mobs before teammates can even encounter them.

If Saryn is the de facto best mob killer in meta content by a ludicrous margin, she needs to be rebalanced; if she's so good at killing mobs at their spawnpoints that it cripples the experience for other players, then she needs to get nerfed.

That "Saryn is no good at lvl 9,999 content; therefore she's balanced" is a baseless and ridiculous argument, and you know it as well as I do.