Saryn's Venom

[OldGodKing]

I've some questions regarding Venom. I'd like to test these out myself but I don't have access to my PC for the next few days so I'm hoping those with long personal experience with Saryn can help clarify some stuff for me.

 

Please keep your replies relevant to the topic and not nonsense like "Venom sucks, don't use it". That does not help me in any way whatsoever. I'm more interested in what it can / cannot do as opposed to personal opinions on whether it sucks to you or not.

 

 - When some of the spores appear inside of the enemy model, a weapon with sufficient punch-through like the Ignis, should be able to make contact with it and cause the spore to explode, right? But would a weapon with an AOE blast like the Embolist, Ogris, Torid and Penta be able to hit the spore that happens to spawn within the enemy's model with just the damage from the blast radius?

 

- Does Venom act like Banshee's Sonar where you can do double damage if you attack the spore? And attacking apore causes it to spread and create more spores?

 

- I read the wiki and it says that "Enemies that are infected with spores have a good chance to have 50% of their health reduced for most of Venom's duration".

 

How much of a "good chance" is that? Can I rely on it to more often than not reduce the enemies HP for me?

 

- And if I can simply rely on it, will it work like Miasma? As in having less ticks do more damage overall?

 

And lastly, exactly how reliable is it in higher leveled missions?

 

Thanks in advance.

[tveeggad]

I've played Saryn nonstop since her release. I think I can try to answer some of this.

 

- The mentioned AoE weapons will very likely kill the initial target quickly rather than popping the spores. People usually joke about MK1-Braton being the best weapon for a Venom popping playstyle. But I do believe the Ignis should be able to do such a thing, yes. Assuming you haven't fed it 73 formas and made it deal crazy damage.

 

- No typical damage increase is gained by popping the spore, I think. By popping a spore you in fact remove a spore that deals damage to the affected target, but also cause surrounding enemies to catch more spores, yes. It's pretty much what it does. 

 

- That is the effect of a Viral proc, which is the innane damage type of Venom. I would say it is a rather great chance, considering that each spore has its own separate tick every second, and its own chance to proc. So it is rather reliable in my opinion. And no, you will NOT want to decrease the duration, you will want to up it as much as possible, since as the wiki says "Venom has a special quality where increasing both Power Duration and Power Strength increases total damage."

 

So, Venom can be reliable in end-game content if enough effort is put into it. If you take use of said Duration/Strength effect, you get more ticks, higher chance to proc and decrease an enemy's health, Though it requires all enemies to stick close to eachother, unless you apply Stretch to increase Power Range too. 

 

Hope it helped!

EDIT: Text color went bananas, fixed that.

Edited April 4, 2014 by ConcretePie

[OldGodKing]

- So popping one spore just simply spreads it so that more spores can also be hit to cause even more DPS from Venom?

 

- How often do you happen to see the enemies HP be reduced due to Venom?

 

- Assuming that I'm going for a maxed - duration build because of Miasma, Venom would not be a good fit in the build and should be excluded entirely? Or should I just use Venom only as utility to reduce the enemies HP mostly on heavies and such?

[Darzk]

Popping a spore deals damage in an AoE (also to the originally spored target) and spreads; it reduces the damage done over time to the original target but I believe the AoE damage does about the same as 2-3 seconds of damage, so the target has to have a long lifespan (t+3) before popping the spores is a DPS loss.

 

Hard to quantify proc rate, its common enough that the effect seems not to expire, so it always seems to proc more than once per 6 seconds. It's likely far more than that but as I said, hard to quantify.

 

You actually want a minimized duration build to get the most damage out of Miasma. A Max duration build uses Miasma for the stun rather than the damage. OOH I see maxed "- duration" build, my bad. Yes, Venom is very terrible when it only lasts for 5.25 seconds - deals a base of only ~52.5 damage.

 

I have never considered using Venom purely for the viral proc tho, that's not a terrible idea. Teammates will shoot the spores tho, which will reduce the proc chance. Remember that Viral only applies once now, so its not stacking -50% hp, just a single -50%. No point using it if you or teammates have a viral equipped weapon.

Edited April 4, 2014 by Darzk

[OldGodKing]

Alright, good to know. I'll lay off the Venom until I make a build focusing on that. Thanks. =)

[Krymanol]

Here's some good info on saryn.  Might not answer all your questions but still really good info.

 

All about Saryn

[OldGodKing]

Great, that will come in handy in the future. Thank you. =)