Saryn Nerf Proposal

[Teridax68]

3 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

Wouldn't that just make her better? It would prevent Spores from ever dropping, accelerate the damage scaling, and allow you to spread on command via Miasma.

Not that I am opposed to your suggestion, seems quite convenient actually.

Oh, quite likely, yes. I don't particularly care about buffing or nerfing frames so much as making them more fun to play, and play with: Saryn's definitely OP right now, but I'm not really concerned about that so much as I am with her ability to take the gameplay away from herself and her teammates by killing enemies more or less unconsciously. If preventing her Spores from auto-killing enemies would make her even stronger, I'd be perfectly okay with that if it also made playing with her as a teammate more interesting. Afterwards it would be a matter of seeing whether her sheer power is taking the spotlight away from other frames that would otherwise present viable alternative choices, but even in those situations, a nerf would only be needed if her power were detrimental to quality of play (which is arguably the case now, though mostly due to the fact that she can kill enemies she's not even aware of).

[Traumtulpe]

1 hour ago, Vharu said:

contagion cloud

I never actually used this mod, nor do I intend to, despite having it in my inventory. It just looks so much worse than anything it would replace.

Do you actually find it helpful, or did you just put it in and forgot about it?

[(XBOX)Vile Slanders]

13 hours ago, Xepthrichros said:

Hate to break to you buddy but railjack, aura forma, umbra forma, stance forma, kuva lich weapons, shield gating, and making all the high level enemies much more killable through armor scaling, say their position isn't whatever you are wishing it was either. Also, they have said they want us to still have this power fantasy. Not feel weak. 

And I can see they mean what they say to some degree. They are happy to make us more powerful and enable trivializing of content even more than before. If not through Saryn, then through enabling OP Tanking and near immortality of warframes, OP weapons. Content creators right now are casually putting out video after video of how shield gating has turned so many other nuker frames with overshield mechanics into tanks. And also how knockback immunity mechanics enable you to spam AOE explosions with 0 repurcussions. Seems "balanced". 

They also release new warframes that still can nuke a good radius, and in the hands of a decently competent player, that means 0 kills for rest of team. But you seem to ignore them to fit the anti-Saryn narrative.

Railjack is also another clear vertical progression system where when you reach its current end, after being done with all the avionics, and ranked up intrinsics significantly, you can even solo Veil Proxima missions. Or return to Earth Proxima to do 3-minute resource runs (for Titanium mainly), using Void Hole, and complete railjack missions in the same time it takes for a competent player to finish any star chart map (5 minutes or less). By the time other players connect to your session, you can see the "Mission Complete" pop up. The command intrinsic / NPC assistance isn't even needed at this point, until new content drops that challenges us further for railjack.

And they recently announced they are working on making Status Effects work on bosses (albeit differently from how they work on fodder). That sounds interesting, but also sounds like bosses are about to get even easier.

So in a game where there's several dozen areas (this is a low-ball estimate) where we are beyond OP and just getting more so, Saryn fits in with no need to be changed.

Side note: Releasing new content isn't idealism, it's pragmatism. It's how you build hype and excitement, get old players to return, and get new ones on board. If they didn't care about new content, warframe would still be star chart only today and probably have a quarter of its player base

 

Those are all fixes the community has been requesting for the last 5 years; Kuva Weapons could very well be getting nerfed in the future (The Bramma is definitely going to get nerfed), or everything else in the game could be getting buffed to close the gap on Kuva weapons (it's happened before); Aura/Umbral Formas are part of DE's balancing act, otherwise Umbral Polarities would be exclusive to Umbral Warframes. Power fantasy is the goal, which can be achieved without making one set of weapons/warframes completely outperform the other 300 options.

Saryn & the Bramma will always be strong candidates, they just won't be the be all end all that they are today.

[Traumtulpe]

7 hours ago, Vharu said:

it adds 61% toxin to attacks

No, Contagion Cloud is the augment that creates seemingly useless poison clouds. I guess you don't use it after all.

By the way, having innate poison damage on your Kuva weapon is undesirable as Saryn. Which is nice, since it gave me a reason to get one with cold damage.

[-AncientWarrior-]

Saryn is fine the way she is.. she has a task to do .. let her do it .. moving on..

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

On 2020-03-16 at 9:59 AM, Teridax68 said:

I don't quite agree with the assessment that Saryn is primarily a damage-dealer frame, as she's also known for being the queen of debuffs with her ability to apply Corrosive and Viral procs in copious amounts. However, I also don't think her utility needs to be CC or defenses, and I don't think changing her to apply that would satisfy anyone. Really, I'd say the one change to Saryn should be to prevent her Spores from dealing fatal damage on their own, and instead just bring enemies down to 1 health: not only would this prevent her from AFK murdering enemies, which is the main part of her that gets complained about, it would ultimately not affect her kill potential by much given that she already uses weapons, and would make it a lot easier for her to maintain her plague too.

I personally don't believe she needs to be changed.  But if she were to be changed your idea of non fatal damage on spores is probably the one i'd be most comfortable with.  As she'd still have the ability to "nuke" by using her 4.  She just couldn't continually nuke.

On 2020-03-16 at 10:57 AM, Vharu said:

Was just playing around in simulacrum with a MR 28 Vet. 

He was using Mag, throws the bubbled down, shoots his lanka... boom, one shot a crapload of lvl 160 bombards under 2 seconds.

I was playing Saryn... proced venom dose, contagion cloud, had em all ticking with spores... shot my apparently OP bramma that is a +60% toxin... still didnt kill em as fast as he did. 

I go "geez, and people think Saryn should be nerfed"

His reply... (and from a Vet)

"Mag is absolutely broken, all the Vets know this but most players haven't seemed to catch on yet, Saryn is nothing compared to Mag"

So can we finally put these Saryn threads to rest now? Maybe you noobs can start paying more attention to Mag instead.

The lanka thing has been brought up before.  It's far more on the Lanka doing the heavy lifting than Mag actually doing something.  And the comparison doesn't really make sense to begin with.  Mag cannot effect the same area Saryn can.  The actual power level of Saryn has never been the point of contention.  As the one area she's actually amazing in (ESO) there are plenty of other frames that can keep up and out pace her.  The issue with Saryn has always been her interaction with enemies in conjunction with allies.  It's also a bit sad that you had to down talk people here.  When you yourself admitted to not even having a Mag.  Do you know how she actually works?

[CopperBezel]

Also, ATM, Khora has the greatest raw "delete enemies in a small space" power, not Saryn or Mag, thanks to being able to deal millions of damage on a button press as long as she has a very specific but none too restrictive build and a full melee combo counter.

[George_PPS]

So Saryn should be nerfed. What next? List all current meta frames, weapons, and whatever is the best and nerf them all. 

[blackovercoat]

so what is the point of nerfed a Warframe in a PVE game, instead of buffing other weak warframe ??

[Teridax68]

1 hour ago, blackovercoat said:

so what is the point of nerfed a Warframe in a PVE game, instead of buffing other weak warframe ??

The problem with this kind of reasoning is that it operates in a vacuum from the actual game being discussed. There are not one, but two points of comparison to be made here when deciding how to balance a warframe:

• How strong that frame is relative to its competitors.
• How strong that frame is relative to the game environment itself.

If a frame were to be too strong relative to others with a similar niche, but were otherwise fine in actual gameplay, you'd be right that one wouldn't need to nerf the frame, only buff the competition. However, if the frame happens to be too strong to produce healthy gameplay, then they need a nerf regardless of how they hold up to competitors. Saryn arguably falls into the latter camp, because her ability to kill enemies more or less automatically is such that she can often deprive her allies of gameplay in certain situations. Thus, buffing other nuke frames wouldn't solve this problem, and the only way to fix it would be to change her.

[freeformline]

I'd like to see Saryn's spores changed to something like their previous iteration, where they had finite durations, but could be popped to deal extra damage, reapply in an AoE, and share damage from toxin procs. Actively popping spores and trying to max out on the toxin-sharing part of the ability was a big part of why I grew to like Saryn, and it's been one of the biggest things I miss about the new version of her. By comparison, the current iteration of Spores, while definitely stronger than the old version, is very boring to me because every spore is a death sentence that I can drop on an enemy and forget about, as they infinitely scale and never expire.

I realize that the old Spores was changed because a lot of people started playing Saryn as an AFK frame, so the ability would need some tweaks to promote interactivity. I would suggest reducing the direct DoT from the spores and increasing their capacity to carry cumulative toxin procs, as by making the toxin accumulation uncapped (as the old ability description incorrectly suggested it was). This would allow her to keep her infinitely scaling multitarget DPS so long as she can maintain her spore culture and consistently apply toxin procs, while significantly reducing her ability to kill enemies with Spores without interaction, as the spores would simply wear off after a short duration if not refreshed, and would not do significant damage without toxin accumulation. If that isn't enough to drive Saryn players to actually fight their targets, then the transmission or accumulation of toxin procs could be made to apply only to spores popped with Toxic Lash, so she wouldn't be able to scale her spore damage without using weapons.

Changing Spores so that the bulk of its damage comes from toxin procs tracked on each enemy independently rather than infinitely scaling damage that applies the same to all afflicted enemies would have the added benefit of reducing Saryn's damage to enemies who are afflicted with Spores but who are not in the area she is actively managing, which would make her a better team player. If allies can pop and spread her spores but not spread the spore-borne toxin procs, then her allies can gain the benefits of the debuffs and slight DoT that Spores would provide without dealing with the frustration of her killing all of their targets before they can get to them.

[taiiat]

On 2020-03-10 at 11:05 PM, CopperBezel said:

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. 

i am Damage v1 all over again, maximum Rainbow Damage
Frienship is m- death despair and pain, signed, my bullets.

On 2020-03-11 at 2:51 AM, Vharu said:

and Saryn cant

oh?
:)

 

 

26 minutes ago, freeformline said:

I realize that the old Spores was changed because a lot of people started playing Saryn as an AFK frame, so the ability would need some tweaks to promote interactivity.

literally only one would've been needed, reduced Spread Range for Spores spreading from Molt. that's it. heh.

Edited March 18, 2020 by taiiat

[freeformline]

3 hours ago, taiiat said:

literally only one would've been needed, reduced Spread Range for Spores spreading from Molt. that's it. heh.

I'd like to think so too, but I don't think anti-interaction strats die that easily. I'd honestly have been fine with just making Saryn incapable of casting Spores on Molt. It sucked to lose that functionality, but it probably would have mostly solved the problem without requiring a total overhaul of Spores. In fact, I would have considered it a win if we had received the Molt invincibility period and movespeed buff along with losing the ability to cast Spores on Molt without the rest of her kit changes.

[taiiat]

54 minutes ago, freeformline said:

I'd like to think so too, but I don't think anti-interaction strats die that easily. I'd honestly have been fine with just making Saryn incapable of casting Spores on Molt. It sucked to lose that functionality, but it probably would have mostly solved the problem without requiring a total overhaul of Spores. In fact, I would have considered it a win if we had received the Molt invincibility period and movespeed buff along with losing the ability to cast Spores on Molt without the rest of her kit changes.

i wanted to go the other way, and make Spores on Molt into a real feature rather than just an ancillary thing - Molt getting buffs by having Spores on it, Spores being able to Spread TO Molt so it could serve as a Totem, Et Cetera.

all the Players that saw Saryn as an AFK turret (as if Saryn isn't built to be one now, omegalul) was just their own fault, if they wanted to rely on spraying low Damage radially to Kill low Level Enemies that was fine with me really, since it was only useful for Killing low Level Enemies anyways. meanwhile i used the mechanics to have a fun time playing Survival for Hours, while those same Players complained that Enemies above like lv60 were really hard to Kill.
game hurts itself by not letting zero effort apathetic people be zero effort apathetic people and pay the price for not learning stuff about the game.

[LoneWolveYoutube]

please dont touch her

[Ikyr0]

On 2020-03-17 at 3:54 PM, CopperBezel said:

Also, ATM, Khora has the greatest raw "delete enemies in a small space" power, not Saryn or Mag, thanks to being able to deal millions of damage on a button press as long as she has a very specific but none too restrictive build and a full melee combo counter.

Khora operates in a much smaller area.

Mesa has to move sometimes for line of sight and press a button.

Octavia's ball has to move around a bit.

Gara operates in a much smaller area like Khora. 

 

I can play Baruuk (for example) and still compete for kills and damage done, if I play well.

But Saryn just CC's and deletes the entire map. She is some of the dumbest PvE content created in a video game. I've been playing this game for 1300 hours, and I will never stop complaining about this brain-dead frame. It's not your guys' fault for using her. It's just bad game design.

She takes away MY fun. She is anti-fun. WF isn't a co-op game, it's a parallel play game. Meaning, we are all just trying to get kills while playing alongside 3 other people. It's not like you need a tank, a healer, and a buffer to support Saryn while she dps's. No, that would be sensible design. Not exactly DE's cup of tea back in the day.

They are dragging their feet on this (and let's be honest Mesa isn't far behind) because they know what poop storm the nerfs would cause. In the meantime, they've created new frames with actual drawbacks, with actual parallel play in mind. Garuda, Baruuk, Rev, Gauss, Wisp, etc. You will never see broken stuff like Saryn and Mesa again. DE just needs to bite the bullet and deliver the nerf. 

Edited March 19, 2020 by Ikyr0

[Ikyr0]

22 hours ago, George_PPS said:

So Saryn should be nerfed. What next? List all current meta frames, weapons, and whatever is the best and nerf them all. 

Not true. As I discussed in the post above, she is the most anti-fun frame in the game, with maybe Mesa being a close second. Neither of them was designed with either parallel play or coop in mind. They were designed to provide the ultimate power fantasy in a solo environment. Screw the other 3 people in the squad, right? 

There are plenty of A-tier frames, but only Saryn (and to an extent Mesa) has this selfish, brain-dead, anti-fun playstyle that really has no business in a "co-op" game. In other words, it's really easy to draw the line where nerfs are warranted vs. unwarranted. If you can take a B-tier frame, and compete with an A-tier frame for kills and damage while playing your little heart out, that means it's just a usability issue that can be remedied by increased effort and skill.

Saryn (and to an extent Mesa) simply leave the rest of the roster in the dust and this creates an anti-fun, oppressive environment for those not using those frames. 

The fact that both newer players and vets keep coming back asking for these two to get nerfed communicates that there is a real problem here. Whether DE wants to do a balance pass on the old S-tier frames is up to them. But it's easily the right thing to do.

Edited March 19, 2020 by Ikyr0

[Scar.brother.help.me]

I'd want Saryn to stay as she is if I was a full-time farmer and my main point was to farm as effective as possible. 

But if her 4 gets nerfed as a nuke and be instead turned into a viral status + some other effect, I'll finally play her.

[Ikyr0]

6 hours ago, moostar95 said:

 I'm ok with the game becoming more coop driven. im also ok with DE making up their minds for once. instead of being scared of their player base eating them alive for making a choice .

Preach.

[CopperBezel]

13 hours ago, Ikyr0 said:

Khora operates in a much smaller area.

Oh, I know. My only point was, so does Mag, so it doesn't make sense to use what Mag can do to a single target with the right exploit as an illustration that Saryn isn't OP because she can't herself do that specific thing. Because, you know, Khora can do even better at that anyway.

[George_PPS]

On 2020-03-18 at 1:13 AM, blackovercoat said:

so what is the point of nerfed a Warframe in a PVE game, instead of buffing other weak warframe ??

This is the question asked by so many disappointing players over the years. It’s a PvE game yet it’s constantly nerfed and builds reset to waste players’ time and investment. 

[Robolaser]

Yes nerf Saryn, clearly that's what the community wants, and for good reasons.

Edited March 19, 2020 by Robolaser

[freeformline]

3 hours ago, moostar95 said:

If you get the chance, go give melee saryn a shot. I've picked her back up after the melee changes a long with being away after 6 months. Playing tank frames all of the time, I'm thinking of maining  melee saryn. So much fun. A perfect feeling of risk vs reward when doing high level missions. A rush I've felt I've lost with this game for years. I dont care what happens to her nukes. But please DE, don't destory her 2 and 3. Melee saryn is underrated. 

I've always enjoyed melee bruiser Saryn, but since her latest rework and the introduction of Adaptation, it's now my go-to style. I only actually play high-range Saryn builds anymore when I'm in tryhard mode.

[Scar.brother.help.me]

7 hours ago, moostar95 said:

If you get the chance, go give melee saryn a shot. I've picked her back up after the melee changes a long with being away after 6 months. Playing tank frames all of the time, I'm thinking of maining  melee saryn. So much fun. A perfect feeling of risk vs reward when doing high level missions. A rush I've felt I've lost with this game for years. I dont care what happens to her nukes. But please DE, don't destory her 2 and 3. Melee saryn is underrated. 

I know that, I've tried, it feels good, +corrosive buff augment, but still you can always just push 4 and clear the map. But if her 4 keeps viral debuff and let's say, get a slow/speed effect like Nova has, that would be so sweet.

 

[freeformline]

1 hour ago, Scar.brother.help.me said:

But if her 4 keeps viral debuff and let's say, get a slow/speed effect like Nova has, that would be so sweet.

Lowering accuracy would also be good. It would lower enemy threat without making the ability be just another slow. That, or maybe it would double the effect of all status ailments on affected enemies for the duration of the ability, so it's only strong if you're working on them with weapons or other abilities? Enhancing status ailments would also add some synergy with allies who apply status at high rates.