Saryn Prime - What am I doing wrong?

[Diarist]

Hi guys.

So I'll be honest, I haven't touched Saryn since the old Xini days back in 2013. Didn't touch her during the Miasma spam days, didn't touch her after her rework, but I figured now that the prime's out and she's finally out of the oven (I said screw it and dropped plat on the Chassis after a week of 0 results from T3S), I'd play around with her. I'm a sucker for primes after all. And I don't like NOT liking a Warframe. I never liked Saryn all that much, even when she'd crash toasters with Venom spam in ye olde times. So, I wanted to like her and the only way to do that was to play around with her.

I looked around at some builds, and as I'm aware her typical combo is Molt -> Spores on Molt -> Miasma/Detonate Molt in order to spread damage fast.

But this... isn't happening? More often than not, even with her massive new energy pool, I'm finding myself low on energy. I tried Fleeting Expertise over Streamline, but I found my spores were disappearing too fast, and even then in some cases I was running out of energy. Since it made little of a difference I switched back to streamline. I'm finding my spores don't spread at all around half the time I do the combo despite having 235 range. Sometimes it feels like my abilities are just straight up doing nothing. It's been an unpleasant experience, but I chalked it up to me doing something wrong as opposed to blaming the Warframe since people have /apparently/ had successful results with her.

Here's my current build and stats with 3 forma. It's a build I've seen being passed around from a few sources, albeit with Regenerative Molt over Vitality:

I've seen builds that just ignore efficiency altogether and go for straight up power strength, but I'm really not a fan on just blowing my toxic load in 1 go and then having to sit on large energy restores for 15 seconds before doing it again, and damage wasn't so much the issue (though more wouldn't hurt, honestly).

I dunno. Any pointers/things I messed up on? Anything that can improve my experience? 

 

Edited February 25, 2016 by Diarist

[YasaiTsume]

This is my build.

High Efficiency, tighter range, damage near a sweet spot, and focuses more on Burst casting more than straight out damage or AoE Sporing.

If yu prefer high efficiency (Which I value alot in all of my builds) give it a go.

 

Spoiler

http://warframe-builder.com/Warframes/Builder/Saryn_Prime/t_30_0302040030_2-5-10-4-4-5-5-0-5-6-2-5-34-8-5-55-1-3-59-7-3-471-6-3-479-3-9-615-9-5_5-9-55-5-6-11-479-7-4-9-2-6-471-9-59-9-34-14-615-9_0/en/1-0-44

 

[Diarist]

10 minutes ago, YasaiTsume said:

This is my build.

High Efficiency, tighter range, damage near a sweet spot, and focuses more on Burst casting more than straight out damage or AoE Sporing.

If yu prefer high efficiency (Which I value alot in all of my builds) give it a go.

 

  Hide contents

http://warframe-builder.com/Warframes/Builder/Saryn_Prime/t_30_0302040030_2-5-10-4-4-5-5-0-5-6-2-5-34-8-5-55-1-3-59-7-3-471-6-3-479-3-9-615-9-5_5-9-55-5-6-11-479-7-4-9-2-6-471-9-59-9-34-14-615-9_0/en/1-0-44

 

I could try and give it a whirl yeah.

Just took my current build into today's Sortie 1 Defense and had successful results, granted it was with an EV Trin babysitting me:

[Buff00n]

I've been having a lot of success with mostly Spores and, to some extent, Toxic Lash.  You have to focus on popping spores with a high-range melee or gas Ignis.  I've had a single Spore cast last for several minutes, spreading across the whole map as I pop more spores.  It doesn't kill outright at higher levels, but the viral proc and slight stagger make things much easier for my squad.  It's also fun seeing damage ticks coming from four tiles over.

If I need an occasional damage boost I can pop off a Miasma and it does 3x the damage because everything around me is already viral/toxin proc'ed.  And I use molt mainly just to escape mobs or as an alternative source of toxin proc.  I'll occasionally use the Molt -> Spores -> Miasma combo, but just for kicks.  It's fun but not necessary.

But even at my usual 40-75% efficiency, just energy pickups with maybe some Zenurik energy regen is enough to keep pace with Spore's cost.

[Stardrinker]

Unfortunately, Saryn is just not as strong as most people would like. Her biggest draw is Spore for widespread viral procs, which is nice on enemies that don't die in a few seconds. Halving health has very similar effects to Nova's Molecular Prime, except it doesn't work on shields, has no explosion for extra damage and can't be modded to slow or speed enemies for utility, basically a worse version of MP, but at least they stack which has a similar effect of enemies having 75% hp reduction. For that build, you aim for high power range and decent duration. Honestly I feel that this is the best build for her because that's her only redeeming feature.

Toxic Lash. Poor damage bonus. Can get up to 90% block damage reduction, but that only works in front of you and you can't attack with it up.Poor defense bonus. Other frames can have up to 95% damage reduction from all angles and are free to attack while it's up (Shatter Shield).

Molt. Poor damage. Won't always aggro enemies so it's not going to work all the time. Low health. Can be nice for healing if you have Regenerative Molt, but that means you have to pay a mod slot for it. Should have been baked in to the ability, but since it's not, it's poor.

Miasma. Poor damage unless you spend time and energy setting it up. Very few instances where the setup will pay off, (you need to have a constant stream of enemies so your spores can keep propogating). Impractical for most missions.

So really, her abilities are just not that good. Remember when DE held off buffing the Rakta Ballistica for so long because they felt the viral proc of the explosion was very strong? I have a feeling that they are still overvaluing viral procs and that might be the reason why Saryn other abilities aren't stronger.

[ThorienKELL]

Saryn, melee, 3 forma

This is good and balanced approach to melee saryn. Why melee? Because than saryn plays very naturally and lacks no energy. I don't thing that you have build problem thou, new saryn does not play like old one - you don't spam your skills. Your main skill is not miasma any more - but spores. Keep enemies covered in them, occasionally clear with ult. 

 

 

[Diarist]

1 hour ago, Stardrinker said:

Unfortunately, Saryn is just not as strong as most people would like. Her biggest draw is Spore for widespread viral procs, which is nice on enemies that don't die in a few seconds. Halving health has very similar effects to Nova's Molecular Prime, except it doesn't work on shields, has no explosion for extra damage and can't be modded to slow or speed enemies for utility, basically a worse version of MP, but at least they stack which has a similar effect of enemies having 75% hp reduction. For that build, you aim for high power range and decent duration. Honestly I feel that this is the best build for her because that's her only redeeming feature.

Toxic Lash. Poor damage bonus. Can get up to 90% block damage reduction, but that only works in front of you and you can't attack with it up.Poor defense bonus. Other frames can have up to 95% damage reduction from all angles and are free to attack while it's up (Shatter Shield).

Molt. Poor damage. Won't always aggro enemies so it's not going to work all the time. Low health. Can be nice for healing if you have Regenerative Molt, but that means you have to pay a mod slot for it. Should have been baked in to the ability, but since it's not, it's poor.

Miasma. Poor damage unless you spend time and energy setting it up. Very few instances where the setup will pay off, (you need to have a constant stream of enemies so your spores can keep propogating). Impractical for most missions.

So really, her abilities are just not that good. Remember when DE held off buffing the Rakta Ballistica for so long because they felt the viral proc of the explosion was very strong? I have a feeling that they are still overvaluing viral procs and that might be the reason why Saryn other abilities aren't stronger.

Yeah she's definitely not in a good spot right now.

I'm having success on some fronts (mostly DEAC) but overall I'm finding things to be lackluster. Currently forma'ing an Ignis and Hikou Prime due to the synergy they have with Spore popping. I dunno though, I can at least see myself pulling her out every now and again for certain content or boredom. So I guess forma'ing her and playing around with her kit and these weapons currently is not a total waste.

But yeah, I think that her new kit is a good skeleton, but it needs more looking into in terms of damage and scaling overall. Perhaps the whole scaling rework in general (plus I remember Scott mentioning he wants to look into Damage warframe ability scaling in Devstream 69) will give her some love.

Glad to know my build isn't godawful wrong though. 

[-CdG-Zilchy]

I'm no expert but from what I'm reading it sounds like you're not spreading the spores before triggering them all. Toxic lash spreads them quickly with a melee built for toxin and status eg Mios. That might help you to affect the battlefield a bit more.