Feedback Megathread: Saryn Revisited.

[Hybridon]

Toxic Lash should be a toggle ability. Having to recast it only slows down Saryn that is already a slow frame in need of getting up close and personal to melee enemies. Being able to toggle it on and off would be a welcome change.

[Rankii]

Here's hoping Trin isn't reworked before her skin comes out...or Oberon actually gets a look at for once. Or limbo. Dear god does limbo need EVERYTHING redone on him. I painted him white and gold and ran around pretneding to be Primed Disappointment for a while.

 

 

You are correct about miasma being nerfed hhorrifically and toxic lash being a joke.  And about a DoT frame being bad design in general in warframe unless they went really extreme with it, which they definitely didn't.

 

It's still better to use fleeting even without continuity, though.  As long as you're killing enemies spores will spread around even if they are at a 3 second duration, and it's got a fast cast animation so you can use it while firing.  Minimum Duration saryn still has the highest DPS with miasma, it's just energy inefficient since you have to recast basically as fast as possible to get more than a few thousand damage out of it.

 

If you really want to kill stuff with miasma it's still usually better to put continuity on over intensify or streamline, but honestly that's more of an issue of how confident you are in bringing down spore targets quickly.  Continuity + Fleeting + Transient Fortitude still puts you at 50% duration, which is enough for 6 seconds of spore time.

 

It's not great but it's still the only option saryn has right now.

 

I'm going to try this, but I don't have anything resembling high hopes; Saryn's in "a good place" and it'll take two miracles for DE to do anything close to say "We #*($%%@ up, and are listening to suggestions" and for a dozen forumites to not instantly chime in with salt about "kill stealing".

[Sonicbullitt]

Started to add feedback to the megathread and it turned into a three page monstrosity. I'll link it to the thread instead. :D

 

Let me preface with; I love the rework, it was badly needed, and most of the mechanics are great. Spore is quite useful and linking it off of Molt is brilliant. Melee Saryn is much more viable now as well. I have no problem with the slight ehp reduction (~10%) for the badly needed energy cap increase (+50%).

 

After a day of testing, solo missions, void missions in a group, discussions with other players in-game and on the forums, and a great deal of Simulacrum testing, I have come up with a number of 'problems' and potential solutions that would make Saryn much more userfriendly and effective, without losing the ability synergy or making her too powerful (Obviously implementing only some of them, not all, that would be quite OP).

 

 

#1 Energy costs

A full rotation of Molt, Spore and Miasma costs a base of 175 energy, or 7 energy orbs. If you use Toxic Lash as well you're looking at your entire 225 energy pool for a single rotation of abilities. Because players are wary of installing Fleeting Expertise (see #2) you end up with a rotation cost (at a minimum) of ~125 or 5 energy orbs; in order to have ~5 energy orbs drop from the enemies killed you need to have killed a group of 20-30 enemies, which is absurd.

 

Solutions;

a) Reduce the energy cost for Molt and/or Spore. Perhaps make Spore free when cast on Molt or targets affected by a Toxin proc. 

b) Add energy regeneration in some form; when Spores pop, or a tiny amount per second for each spore active. Energy generation should be for Saryn only, not the whole team.

c) See #5 b), add some way to generate energy from tanking damage (built in Rage, etc). 

 

#2 Modding/Duration

With your debuffs, DoTs, and combo timing all dependent on keeping high duration, modding becomes quite tricky. You need all of Strength, Range, Duration, and Efficiency and it's not really possible with Corrupted mods. Not everyone has access to Primed Continuity, especially newer players, and without it it's hard to get back to full duration while FE is installed (takes 2 slots or a range reduction). Meaning the best you can do with max efficiency is ~108% duration, 145% range, and 130% strength (takes 6 slots, which means no more rage+vit+RMolt), which is disappointing when non-duration dependent frames easily reach 185% strength or 235% range with similar stats. In order to make Miasma hit much harder and/or last longer, it is necessary to drop Fleeting Expertise, which makes energy costs unreasonable (see #1). Balancing Corrupted mods to get more of a stat boost results in no remaining slots for ehp mods, making Saryn rather fragile.

 

Solutions:

a) Increase the base range or damage of Miasma slightly (Patch notes say the base damage went up, when in fact it went from 375 to 350 per tick with 4 ticks instead of 5 ticks at base, went from 1875 to 1400, a 25% reduction in base damage). Increasing the base damage reduces the need for strength, while adding range would reduce the need for modding to increase range.

b) Make her passive +25% duration, to abilities as well as status procs. In addtion, make more than 100% duration unhelpful; either ticks stop doing damage (still apply status) or they reduce in damage/tick to make the same total. This would make ~75% duration a set goal, much more reasonable, instead of 'as much as you can'.

c) Increase the duration of the Viral status to 8 seconds (I toss this in here because it should be like this globally, imo)

d) Release Primed Streamline, or give us another mod to increase Efficiency without compromising other needed stats; a Nightmare mod that gives +20% efficiency (and some other small boost) would be sufficient

e) See #1 c), adding some form of built in Rage would remove the need for that mod to counter energy costs, freeing up a slot.

f) Bring back the duration scaling considered during testing, which made damage/tick go up when duration dropped. I personally don't like this option but it would be a solution to the modding troubles.

 

Those 2 are the biggest issues, but there's a few ability-specific troubles as well;

 

#3 Spore

The biggest problem with spreading Spores in a team, without the use of Molt, is teammates killing a Spore'd target before you are able to pop the spores (either through an AoE or not caring/noticing the spores), effectively wasting your cast entirely. The solution here is fairly obvious - make enemies with Spores active spread them upon death. If this is a little too powerful in a crowd, at least implement this on the *initial* target of the Spore ability. This would also help immensely with the 'stack toxin procs on an enemy and spread them with Spore' tactic, which currently struggles to make the actual detonation before the enemy is killed from the toxin procs. Finally, this would remove the currently near-overwhelming AoE weapons like the Ignis are getting for popping spores.

 

Spores often do not appear visually and cannot be popped for a second or so on some enemies. This occurred with the old Venom as well, and it feeds into the problem above. 

 

#4 Molt

This one's doing pretty good; I like the increased threat and explosion range a lot. All it really needs is a way to detonate it manually without spending more energy. If adding this to the ability is too tough, simply allowing us to shoot/hit it and kill it ourselves would help immensely, both with energy costs and making it more user friendly.

 

I ran into a bug today where the Molt would continually despawn as soon as I cast it, without detonating. Very frustrating, would only stay active like 1 in 5 cast attempts.

 

An augment to make Molt spawn with Spore already applied to it would be very helpful, reducing both the energy required and the time needed to set up Miasma. Might be too overused, but you would have the option of not using it to use the slot for more duration/range/strength instead. (See #5 d) for what would happen to Regenerative Molt)

 

While Molt's increased threat/aggro range is really nice, it does present some problems. The ability is quite easily 'killed' at higher levels, and the spawn location (right on top of you) means that nearby enemies turn and immediately fire *right at you*, which is a good way to get yourself killed. Molt would be immensely more helpful if it had a ~2 second absorption period similar to Snowglobe, and spawned a few steps in front of or beside you (in front would also make the 'Spore on Molt' combo easier/quicker).

 

#5 Toxic Lash

This is a much better concept for making melee Saryn pretty viable; it's a little buggy right now but fixed up it'll work well. Currently it's very inconsistent as to whether it will decide to spread Spore or not - it almost never spreads if the Spore was applied very recently (ie cast+hit and no spread, cast+wait+hit works[this is likely a problem with Spore rather than TL]). It also seems not to spread when using quick attacks (unconfirmed). The damage amplification feels very weak, tho. I'm not entirely sure it's working correctly.

 

There's a bit of a missed opportunity here to make TL an ability-weapon like EB/Hysteria/Landslide. It wouldn't need that level of damage and this is more of a personal desire to see Saryn wielding a glowing toxin whip than anything to do with balance. :D

 

The added blocking is very hit or miss. It's nice and effective on weapons that previously blocked only a small percentage of damage (~35%) but it's fairly negligible when using a weapon that would normally block 85% of incoming damage. Plus, when you're blocking you're not normally at risk of death, that occurs when attacking/knocked down etc.

 

Finally, the biggest problem with TL is the same thing that plagued Contagion; it has no role in caster/guns gameplay. It's not needed to burst spores, weapons/molt is much more efficient, and the blocking bonus to ehp is not helpful when not holding a sword.

 

Solutions (apart from bugfixes, damage amp):

a) Make the damage reduction granted by TL the same for any melee weapon, and the same when using ranged weapons. Instead of (increases ehp by 50% for hammers, 650% for daggers, 0% for guns), maybe make it a straight ~10-25% damage resistance while active.

b) Help with energy generation - ~2-5% of damage taken while TL is active is removed and converted to energy.

c) Replace the blocking buff with a movement speed increase (getting there sooner is the same as taking less damage while getting there).

d) Switch the Regenerative Molt augment to Regenerative Lash, and allow TL to cause either healing or Life Strike (without needing to pull out the weapon). If you were to swap the Regenerative Molt augment to TL, I have the perfect idea for the Molt augment - Molt spawns with Spore already cast upon it. This helps with both the energy costs and helps reduce the setup time for Miasma.

e) Make the toxin proc caused by meleeing to be based on the ability damage, or the entire toxin damage on the weapon, or something to make it deal significantly more damage/tick than it does now. Amplifying the damage of the DoT would give us a reason to prefer breaking Spores using TL than Molt or a weapon.

 

#6 Miasma

I just want to reiterate something from earlier - pre-rework Miasma dealt 1875 damage totally unmodded. Post rework it deals 1400 damage. I'm okay with you feeling the need to reduce the damage of the ability now that it can be buffed, but a 25% reduction in base damage is a bit harsh. I'm especially irritated by this line in the patch/change notes:

 

Please. I could understand a statement like 'with the 3x damage from Toxin and Viral procs present on the target, Miasma now deals more damage than before' or something like that. But base damage implies unbuffed, unmodified, and it was reduced by 25%.

 

I suspect that someone at DE goofed, or was unaware that pre-rework unmodded Miasma dealt 5 ticks of damage, while post-rework only deals 4. I could understand the drop from 1500 to 1400 damage as a ~7% reduction, but the 25% number just seems like way too much.

 

If the 3x damage from synergy was intended to make up for the ~2.4x damage previously possible from reduction duration pre-rework, than there doesn't seem to be a need to reduce the base damage so drastically as well, when setting up the toxin+viral statuses costs additional energy and time.

 

Solution

a) Give Miasma it's 5th tick back, or increase the damage per tick to ~400.

b) Alternatively, buff the range so we can use that range slot to make up the lost damage - see #2 a).

 

Conclusion:

I really like the rework so far, but there's a lot of little tweaks that could make her far more engaging, effective, and attractive to players. I don't think I've suggested anything here too excessive, overpowered, or difficult to implement.

 On point man , was gonna make a post about this myself but you pointed out all the flaws there were with this rework. I agree with everything you said, as of right instead of one overpowered skill ( which did need a nerf mind you) we have 4 mediocre ones that cost too much energy and do too little damage to be effective with.

Edited November 6, 2015 by Sonicbullitt

[uncreativeray]

I reckon they need to buff the damage of miasma a bit. As of right now I don't think it warrants the energy cost, circumstance and setting up to be worth it.

 

idk though... 

 

If you nerf a rifle and make it only better in certain specific circumstances but buff the pistol, overall have you been buffed?

[DameDameNingen]

A few further changes I would suggest:

 

* Enemies infected by spore have a chance to panic (as with fire procs).

 

* Molt scales with defensive mods.

 

* Toxic lash needs at least some of its defensive potential separated from blocking. It also has an extremely high energy cost for what it does.

 

* Miasma: reduce damage bonus from toxic and viral procs to around 25%. Massively increase duration (e.g. 6/7/9/12 seconds). Add some sort of cc or damage mitigation, such as a slow or reduced enemy accuracy.

 

 

I painted him white and gold and ran around pretneding to be Primed Disappointment for a while.

 

I gave mine an incredibly purple cape and called him Lord Cadbury.

[Darealslenderman]

I believe she was buffed. before the rework it was press 4 to win with corrosive damage as miasma, but is that really good, it eventually reaches a point where you cant use any of her abilties but molt. 

 

Now after the recent hotfix, shes OP, and can actually scale, spores do viral procs every second, contagion on melee allows you to deflect damage and have a stronger melee, molt is still good old molt, but you can use it to spread spores now, and finally Miasma isnt nessarly the best thing now, but it isnt press 4 to win, its active rework, its press 1 kill things shoot the spores, press 4, and now you win, i rather have the spores spreading to a horde of enemies and killing them off, then waste 25 energy on a build that doesnt scale, now she does scale, the amount of viral procs you can set off will instantly kill almost anything, not to mention you can stack spores and each spore explodes. Not to mention they spread on death. If theres enough enemies you can denonate one spore, and a bunch more appear. Just gradually gets stronger. 

 

I wont mind Misama getting changed, personally i think that was nerfed, but Sayrn as a whole is more usefull and OP, she just consumes more energy, I feel like people are mad that its not press 4 to win now, its press a few buttons and not be lazy to win. Just takes time to adjust too, and those people who left their old Press 4 to win builds, have to change it completetly to get her to work correctly.

[taiiat]

as of 17.10.1 - along with the other 'Ocean of DoT' stuff that's been working well, Toxic Slash all by itself stacking Toxin Status - oh boy. i had to switch from lv100 Infested to lv100 Corrupted because without Armor the DoT despite being resisted by Infested was just Killing them too quickly to do any testing! hah.

 

with that in mind, perhaps Toxic Slash can have separate attributes for Melee and for Guns, plus some globals.

so that way both Melee and Guns get some interesting results out of it.

 

make  spore castable on the ground like a land mine

quite interesting.

Edited November 6, 2015 by theclinton

[Kaotyke]

Ok, I just went to an Uranus Survival for Tints and stayed for 30 mins (Ballistas almost dont spawn there, btw), used only Aterax (the Grineer whip, did I write it right?), conclusion:

 

I never used 3 powers as much as I used Saryn's. Really, I didnt stay 10 seconds without putting up a Molt or a Spore on someone... Mostly Spores.

 

Spore and Toxic Lash started to really shine when enemies started to cluster my position (and I needed to cast Spore less), I had more Power kills than I had melee, the enemies either killed themselves by shoting the Viral Molt and spreading the Spore many times over or when I hit the a cluster of enemies with Spores and those I didnt hit got Spored to death.

 

Molt still died too fast when the 30min mark was nearing, almost didnt have the time to turn around and Spore it, DE take a look at this shameless self promotion: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/556871-solutiondecoy-and-molt-die-too-fast-at-high-levels/

 

Miasma... I used it sporadically, by the time I though of pressing the button, most enemies were already dead, so I suppose it will become necessary when enemies are really high level and the enemies survive the Molt+Spore+Toxic Lash combo, it truly became an "OH CRAP!" button.

 

Someone is going to say to "Do X hours of T4S, if you cant she is useless." isnt it?

 

I have a life out there, you know? Shocking, I know.

Edited November 6, 2015 by Kao-Snake

[rawr1254]

Rework in a nutshell: Went from Corrosive Nuker --> Viral proccer. This is very meh imo I mean the viral procs is VERY helpful late game but that's all shes worth is the viral procs after the viral procs everything else becomes just little bits of nothing. The explosion from the molt + the spores place on the molt when exploded with miasma proc BEFORE the miasma proc BUT for whatever reason the procs seem to not register because if I got after a bombard place spores on him then whack him once with TOxic lash THEN it kills him instantly. If I just do molt>spore>miasma the procs seem to register late and then becomes a huge waste of 100 energy.

[GallyYum]

Here are my suggestions.  here

[(PSN)Aryonas]

These changes are very awesome. They make gameplay far more active and remove the "press 4 to win" thing.  Before, with the short duration builds, it took a big toll on the other abilities. But this is very creative and setting a great tone for future changes and warframes!   Love it, 100%

[(PSN)wonderwoman814]

dear lord i'm gone for two days and pres R1 to people are going all out lol. in my opinion with what I've seen its not so bad. if you really liked the frame then you will still love it if you loved her for the numbers then..well move on lol.

[Rankii]

These changes are very awesome. They make gameplay far more active and remove the "press 4 to win" thing.  Before, with the short duration builds, it took a big toll on the other abilities. But this is very creative and setting a great tone for future changes and warframes!   Love it, 100%

Not really. It hurt venom and contagion, turning venom into a short DoT burst (best used with a shotgun before firing), and nobody used contagion even without negative duration. Molt turned into a miniature bomb that left poison over time, and obviously miasma worked well. Let's be honest here; the only reason not-contagion is part of saryn's "combo" is because they couldn't work out a "better" ability like when they got rid of Overheat on ember.

[MumblesMcphatty]

Personally I'm loving these changes - Saryn was a snoozefest before - this is much more fun. 

 

I realise the Miasma-spammers won't have anything good to say about it - no matter how its tweaked - but them's the breaks I guess. 

 

My only real concerns are the same as they always were - Molt's aggro draw is absolute panties.

 

. 

Edited November 6, 2015 by theclinton

[blazinvire]

I get the oddest feeling this rework was built a little ahead of its time, considering the setup, its niche is very hard to find in the game in its current state.  I love the theory behind it all, but I'm having trouble finding that sweet spot where she properly shines.  Like she'd be good for endgame, if only endgame wasn't about cheese.

 

She seems to require time now, and time has always been something this game had a sporadic relationship with; everything seems to be all about going fast, killing fast, dying fast, bouncing all over the room like a crazy ninjawizard pinball.

Saryn either kills everything before she properly picks up momentum, or everything kills her before she's gotten her combos going, and due to the enemy scaling, there's probably a very tiny level gap where she has the ability to survive long enough to utterly decimate everything.

 

So I think she's okay barring the need for a few tweaks like is always the case, but I think the rest of the game's updates needs to catch up before she'll get her time to shine.

[MumblesMcphatty]

Worst of it all is that you won't survive making a molt and aiming spores at it and then using Miasma. Your energy is all spent to do that for once and second you need to be close and have enemies close to do all of this which you can't... cause she will die on lack of HP.

 

If you can't handle that little combo and make it out alive then you're just bad at the game. 

[Davoodoo]

Actually ill use OP as example of person who asks for nerfs out of spite.

 

Thats how it looks like and forums try to say everyone acts that way.

[(PSN)wonderwoman814]

She's always had a flower/fungus theme to her. Really if you've ever seen some forms of fungus they very much match the design of her "collar" like this one for example:

 

 

Not to mention the fact that she fights by spreading poisonous spores like some mushrooms.To further bolster this argument with regards to the flower part, you have her Hemlock alt helmet that's named after Hemlock (Obviously) which is a flowering plant and her second alternate helmet, Chlora, is also a genus (It's a taxonomical term) of flowers.

but..shes so pretty now :D

[HalfDarkShadow]

dear lord i'm gone for two days and pres R1 to people are going all out lol. in my opinion with what I've seen its not so bad. if you really liked the frame then you will still love it if you loved her for the numbers then..well move on lol.

 

I also question if the majority would even touch her beyond the first two weeks even if the forums had a better reception of her? I don't know. I just know quite a bit of people in a group I'm in going a bit overboard with the negativity when most of them don't even own her to begin with.

Being critical is all well and good, but to loathe one change just because doesn't really get us anywhere lol. Worse when they're jumping the gun right away without sitting down with her first and check out the numbers in practice for a day or so~

 

Ehh, it's whatever. I'm having fun with it and so are plenty of others. I just hope the ones who are taking the time to write out well-thought complaints and worries about her and took the time to do the math and whatnot don't get drowned out with the rest of the...."other" posts regarding her.

Edited November 6, 2015 by HalfDarkShadow

[rewt]

have Molt give her invisibility for 3 seconds, voila gameplay much better

[MattmanTheComet]

Saryn should have a Combo Window like what Atlas has with landslide, only the reduction is on all abilities

[(PSN)wonderwoman814]

I also question if the majority would even touch her beyond the first two weeks even if the forums had a better reception of her? I don't know. I just know quite a bit of people in a group I'm in going a bit overboard with the negativity when most of them don't even own her to begin with.

Being critical is all well and good, but to loathe one change just because doesn't really get us anywhere lol. Worse when they're jumping the gun right away without sitting down with her first and check out the numbers in practice for a day or so~

 

Ehh, it's whatever. I'm having fun with it and so are plenty of others. I just hope the ones who are taking the time to write out well-thought complaints and worries about her and took the time to do the math and whatnot don't get drowned out with the rest of the...."other" posts regarding her.

its the nerf mentality sadly. people who complain about this are probably the people who NEVER complain about a weapon being too over powered.

[Acos]

It's a buff in the sense that she was really boring to play, and now I can tolerate her. 

[1N33DM0N3Y]

ATM she is great agains flesh units, but Amored units are just laughing at those poisons & spores. Miasa needed a guaranteed Corrosive proc or better would be guaranteed corosive spread on destoyed molt.

[blazinvire]

I've been charging around in the Void and seem to be able to wreck everything, my only problem is remembering to recast Toxic Lash xD

T'would be amazing if they turned it into a toggle... I could focus on melee and targeting better without having to glance at my ability bar every two seconds like a twitchy ferret.