Saryn Ability - Info, Bugs & Review

[Solonavi]

HP - 150

Shield - 100

Armor - ???

Energy cap - 100

Venom (25 energy) - Does a small amount of damage over time; also puts 'sacs' on the target that if shot explode for AoE damage. These sacs are very hard to hit, especially in a situation where AoE damage would be useful; the damage isn't worth the effort.

Molt (25 energy) - Very quickly drops a Decoy. Draws attention away from you, seems to work well.

Contagion (50 energy) - Adds bonus poison damage to you melee attacks. Currently this is bugged from what I've seen. With a charge attack doing 400 damage it added 1 damage and with regular melee attacks it added 1 damage. Could be fun if it had a significant boost and added armor ignore.

Miasma (100 energy) - Small/Medium range AoE (seemed reasonable at rank 1 with 15% range increase) for massive damage. Looks great and the animation is quick, I like it a lot.

TL:DR

2 Abilities are working fine, 1 needs to be changed and 1 bugged.

(edit: fixed molt cost, ty Delsaber)

Edited March 22, 2013 by Solonavi

[Delsaber]

Venom has a lot of issues...first ranking up the power doesn't seem to increase damage or duration. Secondly the spores are indeed hard to hit, but also don't seem to be targetable with the bolt weapon types; including the Paris. The spores also don't always appear on the target. When you do manage to burst a spore the range for it to infect others is very small.

Molt only costs 25 energy; I only wish that it did a small splash damage either when I casted it or when the molt was destroyed.

Contagion I have a lot of issues with; first it's almost impossible to see if the effect is on you or how long it appears to last. The damage it adds is almost invisible. However, not sure if its a bug or not, Saryn is invulnrable while its active...which makes it great...just not for the reason its supposed to be lol.

Miasma is really fun to use; its radius is small even with mods and rank 3 but it makes up for it with a lot of damage to all the faction types.

[Askaris]

I've been able to hit the venom spore a few times, and I'm unconvinced that the aoe effect is actually working. Even when there have been grineer standing standing right next to the tagged target, no aoe damage is done to them upon the spores destruction.

That said, even if that's due to a bug, the spores are still too awkward to hit during combat; I would suggest both making them larger, and having multiple spores appearing on the target (so that retreating targets can still be tagged).

[CheeseThief]

The Saryn pack that you can buy comes with the braton and Afuris so the Venom ability is less about aiming at the spores and more to give some AoE damage when you spray the crap out of something. Still very much needs puncture mods to go off consistently, but it does give the excuse to go waste some ammo.

Venom is also utterly brilliant in killing shield ospreys that are hiding behind things.

Edit: Correct mod type.

Edited March 21, 2013 by CheeseThief

[Askaris]

The Saryn pack that you can buy comes with the braton and Afuris so the Venom ability is less about aiming at the spores and more to give some AoE damage when you spray the crap out of something. Still very much needs pierce mods to go off consistently, but it does give the excuse to go waste some ammo.

Venom is also utterly brilliant in killing shield ospreys that are hiding behind things.

Fair enough, I'll give that a shot once I'm back home; when you say pierce, do you mean armour piercing or puncture?

[CheeseThief]

Puncture.

Granted I've charged a puncture mod up to level 1 and it's still 0.1, but it's enough to pop the zit when the enemy is flaling around.

Also each spore does 50 damage so the damage does add up when you pop a few of them at once.

[Solonavi]

Here's something I can't find, how much armor does Saryn have (banshee too)?

[Minfduck]

Completely agree with all that's being said, I don't see the damage from puncture spreading at all and although it makes the enemies green lol, contagion doesn't seem to do anything :s oh and has anyone else had jumping troubles with sayrn? Sometimes for several seconds she just won't jump at all - and when wall running into the pipe on the grineer level you basically have to run around the hole you just came up, very annoying...

Edited March 21, 2013 by Minfduck

[Yg-Dosst]

I personally Hate Miasma.

We didn't need another "Press 4 to kill everything around you" power.

We have Volt, Mag, Ember, Ash already to fill those roles.

Something's wrong when the only power thats worth using in your ult.

Miasma should instead have been a Zoning tool like Ember's FireBlast.

Plus the most disappointing thing about Sayrn's powers

THEY DON'T PENETRATE SHIELDS!

What's the point of having a poison warframe, when the poison doesn't fucntion like poison, and everything she does is done by other warframes better.

[Solonavi]

I personally Hate Miasma.

We didn't need another "Press 4 to kill everything around you" power.

We have Volt, Mag, Ember, Ash already to fill those roles.

I agree that there are too many ultimates that are just mass damage in an area around the warframe, BUT it makes a lot of sense for Saryn.

Molt attracts enemies to a spot where Miasma can clean them up and Contagion is a melee ability, giving the intention of Saryn being a close range Warframe, where Misasma is useful.

[NinaV]

A good post, OP.

In addtion would I say that Contagion got far too slow animation something that makes it bit tricky in a crowd where you want to use melee to keep things at bay (it isn't any slide attack or charge for the frame after all).

[Tollwut]

I'm either blind or stupid, but I have yet to see the Poison sacs. Used Venom several times, even knocked down the enemies to run around them and search for the sacs, but never really seen one. Maybe it's bugged, maybe I'm oblivious... *shrug*

Apart from that I agree with OP.

Molt works like a charm, Contagion seems bugged as hell (Poison applies to enemies I didn't even look at and other enemies I attacked wander about unharmed) and Miasma is unfortunately the same massive Dmg skill as before... Well, at least it looks nice.

[LazerusKI]

saryn is an interesting frame so far.

her first skill venom is a little bit...tricky, i would want to see a change for this.

if you kill an enemy with the venom on it, he wil lspread the poison instead of doing this with hitting the spore.

her second skill is nice, not as good as lokis decoy, but good for escaping.

her third skill...nah. th eimmortal bug is the only good pint about it^^

miasma is great, i personally like these killing ultis, most of the time in defense they are just needed.

i have not seen banshees ulti, but the information from the wiki sounds like an dot-aoe.

[Askaris]

So I decided to sit down and spend some time testing the Venom power, to see if CheeseThief's ideas were correct and what exactly it was that I was doing wrong.

1) Good news, it's not bugged, I just was being terrible and missing. I set myself up in a pipe overlooking a horde of infested on Mercury (i.e. low level), then took potshots at them with Venom and a Latron (sans puncture mods, but with assorted other damage mods). While I wasn't very consistent, I was able to score a few direct hits on the spores, causing the expected spread of disease. Still was awkward to pull off, and due to the weapon I was using, the infested tended to die before I could line up a shot at the spore.

2) I then decided to emulate the Saryn bundle and switch to automatic weaponry with relatively low damage per shot, and go up against some Grineer (still on Mercury). Even with no puncture mods, I had a lot more success with an Mk1-Braton than I had with the Latron, mostly because I wasn't one shotting enemies (and thus causing the spore to dissipate without detonating). The way in which the infection spreads is very satisfying; anyone within the radius of the initial target will get covered in their own set of spores, leading to a potential chain reaction with sufficient marksmanship. I also tried this with a fused puncture mod, but couldn't see a whole lot of difference; that might need more testing to confirm.

3) I then (more for the sake of completion than anything else) tried again against the Grineer, this time with my preferred weapon (that being an 80% multishot Kraken, with shock and AP damage). While I managed to score one or two spore hits, most of the time the sheer damage output of the weapon would lead to the target dying before the spore could be popped. The same would happen with the Lex, which I thought might be more appropriate given it's accuracy and not-firing-four-bullets-at-once; that said, that may have been due to poor marksmanship on my part.

4) Throughout all of this, I had noticed that quite often the spores (especially the large one) wouldn't appear visibly on the target; I am not sure if it simply wasn't present, or had materialised inside the target. Suffice to say, this made bursting spores rather difficult.

Conclusions;

The Venom power, when it works, is quite powerful and useful for dealing with crowds without blowing 100 energy on miasma. However, it's still very fiddly to operate; the spore doesn't always appear in a visible spot on the target, AI behaviour makes lining up a shot difficult, and ironicially, using high damage/accuracy weaponry makes the power harder to utilise to it's full potential.

Potential solutions;

-Leaving unburst spores on corpses until they despawn; this would negate the issues caused by killing the carrier when attempting to burst the spore, and would also allow the player to use the corpse as a trap, expanding strategic possibilities while still keeping with the theme of the frame (using disease ridden corpses as a form of crude biological warfare has a worrying amount of precedent).

-Spawn more and larger spores on the target, such that whatever angle they're at, there is a visible spore.

-Some kind of fix for the spores sometimes not appearing would be nice.

Also, as an aside, I do have to agree with the sentiments shown by Squidaga;

Miasma should instead have been a Zoning tool like Ember's FireBlast.

Plus the most disappointing thing about Sayrn's powers

THEY DON'T PENETRATE SHIELDS!

Saryn currently lacks a niche, and giving her some level of shield penetration would make her particularly useful against heavier targets; In addition, area denial is much more fun than a simple AoE, which we already have an abundance of. On top of that, given the running theme of poison, both of these would be thematically appropriate. +1.

Edited March 22, 2013 by Askaris

[YaoYao]

Another potential solution would be to just have the spores burst if a target is killed. Simple yes, but without the AoE her spores are pretty much the worst first skill in the game.

[UnderYourBed]

Venom is pretty usefull against bosees, especially if you don't have a full team; keeps their shields down.

Also, what would be a good shotgun for Saryn, Boar or Strun?

[sternguard]

venom's dot does 4 dmg each tick on rank 0 and rank 1

then it goes up to 6 on rank2

still working on max rank but I'm guessing it would be 8

[UnderYourBed]

It does 8 dmg at max, yes.

[shoudra]

Another note about Saryn's Miasma, If you have the "Killer" Objective (kill 30) Miasma kills are not counted

[Solonavi]

Another potential solution would be to just have the spores burst if a target is killed. Simple yes, but without the AoE her spores are pretty much the worst first skill in the game.

I would love that, it could lead to some pretty awesome chain reactions (if they left it with the ability to spread).

[Faith666cz]

Another note about Saryn's Miasma, If you have the "Killer" Objective (kill 30) Miasma kills are not counted

In fact Miasma kills arent counted anywhere :/

[shoudra]

I made that post about an hour of playing and mostly killer and headshot challenges, but yes it doesn't count for any kill challenge at all since I tried to use it for a speed kill challenge as well.

[Matsushiro]

Speaking of that, I've never seen the xp values popping up after using miasma. So, it doesn't count for any of the challenges and I'm not sure it actually gives you anything at all. Is it supposed to be like that?

[Alienami]

Saryn needs some love for sure.

Her 1 ability sucks. The damage is crap, hitting the spores is hard to impossible.I've tried sitting on boxes and shooting the spores, even when I did it was barely noticable if at all.

Be nice if the spore burst on death and / or you could place it on the ground and shoot it as a trap. Also, be nice if the damage was worth even using it, because I am wholly unimpressed.

I use a Boltor, and if I have to "change weapons" to make it worthwhile, then its badly in need of a re-design.

Her 2 is amazing. I do agree it may be better if it did poison damage on death, use it more as a trap than tank. Perhaps a damage over time cloud like killing Toxic Infected?

Her 3, feels like her 1, can't tell if its even working. I wonder if its converting all damage to poison or something? Regardless, I don't feel any usefulness out of the damage and I rely on her 2 to not take damage so no point exploiting the shield component of it.

Her 4, works very nicely with her 2. The range does feel short, but the animation feels nice and fast to me, compared to a Mag (but her 4 is also crowd control as well as damage). But, a Coil helm Mag with +Power Range seems like a much better nuker in general. I would like to see changes made to Saryn's 4 to be more competitive and unique. Perhaps leave a damage over time component, pools of acid/poison, on the ground for more damage after her 4 has ended? Again, much like killing Toxic Infested enemy types.

Edited March 28, 2013 by Alienami

[WildMan]

Saryn seems pretty underdeveloped right now.

1 - Venom: The idea is... interesting... but when compared to so many other options from other frames, it's not worth the effort. I think I'd rather have this ability "infect" an enemy and have them become a plague carrier. The infection would do medium damage over time, but if the enemy came near another enemy, he woud automatically spread the disease. If you killed the original plague carrier, they would emit a large poison cloud on death, and infect a whole bunch of enemies around them. I think this method would be more intuitive for spreading disease in a fast-paced game, and would be easier for the player to see in all the chaos.

2 - Moult: Quite a good skill, but boy oh boy the art asset needs some work.

3 - Contagion: I think somebody missed a decimal point when programming the damage for this one. I was originally really excited when I saw that saryn had this ability. I wanted to see gooey venom flying off my blades whenever I swung!! instead, I just see some pathetically low numbers floating off the enemy, as they sort of turn some green-ish color. I'd rather see it work more similarly to my 1st ability suggestion. I'd like to see every strike infect an enemy, and poison damage would completely ignore shields. Killing ANY enemy that has been infected would maybe make them explde in a green cloud of toxic gas, or have them melt away and leave a pool of acid behind. Imagine fighting a whole mob of infested enemies, turning this ability on, and seeing so many of them melt away and turn into green gas.

4 - Miasma: pretty good on its own, i really like how the enemies dissolve away. But I feel it lacks a certain sort of pizzazz that other level 4's have, like Volt's, or Frost's, or Ember's, and so on. I'd like to see a bit of a longer animation, and more obnoxious green light effects.

I'm not a game developer, and my idea's most likely wouldnt be perfect if they were implemented how I just said, but the core spirit remains: Venom (1) is too wonky in a fast-paced game, and needs to be more simple and effective. Moult (2) is good, but looks bizarre. Contagion (3) is lack luster on every level, and should be re-worked so that I feel i'm actually a poison-spreading, venomous, toxic warframe. Miasma (4) is s functional as other frame's level 4's, but I want my entire team to know: I AM SARYN, FEAR MY TOXIC GREEN POWERS!!