Saryn's DPS

[Rambit23Z]

2 minutes ago, ThatOddDeer said:

Are you using a weapon with slash procs and/or corrosive? That might botch your results. I suggest testing vs a favorable enemy as well, like a corpus tech, and using a weapon that won't proc slash mostly.

Damage type doesn't matter though. Because Toxic Lash guarantees one popped spore per hit while active, regardless of where you hit with what damage.

[ThatOddDeer]

Just now, Rambit23Z said:

Damage type doesn't matter though. Because Toxic Lash guarantees one popped spore per hit while active, regardless of where you hit with what damage.

I mean for how many hits to kill the target. slash procs can drastically reduce the number of hits to kill a heavy gunner. i'm just worried about sample purity.

[Rambit23Z]

Just now, ThatOddDeer said:

I mean for how many hits to kill the target. slash procs can drastically reduce the number of hits to kill a heavy gunner. i'm just worried about sample purity.

Oh, I'm not testing that in terms of Saryn. I'm just trying to kill the Gunner in as few hits as possible. Which is where this anti-synergy come in, because to reduce hits even further, I need to let the DOT's finish them off but when the viral proc runs out, she gets a bunch of health back. But if one Spore always remained on the target, it would be very unlikely or straight up impossible for the viral proc to run out as long as the spore is present. Killing a Heavy Gunner within those 10 seconds of the Viral proc is no problem, but then I can't truly see low I can go, since I'm testing number of hits to kill as opposed to number of seconds.

[ThatOddDeer]

2 minutes ago, Rambit23Z said:

Oh, I'm not testing that in terms of Saryn. I'm just trying to kill the Gunner in as few hits as possible. Which is where this anti-synergy come in, because to reduce hits even further, I need to let the DOT's finish them off but when the viral proc runs out, she gets a bunch of health back. But if one Spore always remained on the target, it would be very unlikely or straight up impossible for the viral proc to run out as long as the spore is present. Killing a Heavy Gunner within those 10 seconds of the Viral proc is no problem, but then I can't truly see low I can go, since I'm testing number of hits to kill as opposed to number of seconds.

Ah I get what you mean now. yea it bugs me that saryn has a hard time debuffing a target sufficiently with toxic lash. The only solid weapon I've found so far is lanka for armored units and concealed explosives for trash mobs

[Djego27]

All right I did bite the bullet and did add another D to actually do a reasonable non shadow step melee run.

I did actually screw up with the life support, while 80 minutes where probably to optimistic, 70 might have been possible with my bad luck on life support drops(had to activate 2 capsules in the first 5 minutes already because of it).

Overall melee frames are good at melee because of 3 things:

- having good EHP or good CC(saryn got non of both), Ember for example got a lot less EHP, however you can always count on accelerant, where the long cast animation on miasma did kill me once and it comes at a massive energy cost in a melee build on top of that

- having damage buffs to allow high scaling(saryn does ok, like Ember ish, it is not super dps outside of shadow step and the ability to drop all defence mods with that)

- having a certain specific thing to handle the EHP bricks at high levels, like Ember with fire scaling, Inaros/Excalibur/Ash with instant death CL dagger finishers, double the damage with the viral proc on a completely different elemental weapon setup with the extra toxic procs actually does qualify Saryn here in my opinion, while it is not game breaking cheese like many of the other melee frames, it does work, similar as it does on Ember

Overall like posted some pages ago, scalability of molt and some sort of CC on spores would really help, not just normal builds but melee builds even more.

As for the argument that Saryn is a caster AOE debuff melee frame. It is absolute not. If you set up for melee your AOE abilities and spam ability is massively limited, if you build for casting you are paper thin even compared to frame like Ember(that got less EHP) with the lack of suitable CC for that outside of dedicated team compositions. The only thing that changes this is shadow step(what is just as bad for melee as god mode frames, since it removes nearly all limitations).

As team support caster frame again, lack of CC and having toxic lash as non AOE range weapon buff(no spore popping, spreading, just extra toxin damage and the proc) to actually be viable single target at higher levels.

 

Edited April 8, 2016 by Djego27

[ThatOddDeer]

2 hours ago, Djego27 said:

-snip-

 

 

I did actually screw up with the life support, while 80 minutes where probably to optimistic, 70 might have been possible with my bad luck on life support drops(had to activate 2 capsules in the first 5 minutes already because of it).

Overall melee frames are good at melee because of 3 things:

- having good EHP or good CC(saryn got non of both), Ember for example got a lot less EHP, however you can always count on accelerant, where the long cast animation on miasma did kill me once and it comes at a massive energy cost in a melee build on top of that

- having damage buffs to allow high scaling(saryn does ok, like Ember ish, it is not super dps outside of shadow step and the ability to drop all defence mods with that)

- having a certain specific thing to handle the EHP bricks at high levels, like Ember with fire scaling, Inaros/Excalibur/Ash with instant death CL dagger finishers, double the damage with the viral proc on a completely different elemental weapon setup with the extra toxic procs actually does qualify Saryn here in my opinion, while it is not game breaking cheese like many of the other melee frames, it does work, similar as it does on Ember

Overall like posted some pages ago, scalability of molt and some sort of CC on spores would really help, not just normal builds but melee builds even more.

As for the argument that Saryn is a caster AOE debuff melee frame. It is absolute not. If you set up for melee your AOE abilities and spam ability is massively limited, if you build for casting you are paper thin even compared to frame like Ember(that got less EHP) with the lack of suitable CC for that outside of dedicated team compositions. The only thing that changes this is shadow step(what is just as bad for melee as god mode frames, since it removes nearly all limitations).

As team support caster frame again, lack of CC and having toxic lash as non AOE range weapon buff(no spore popping, spreading, just extra toxin damage and the proc) to actually be viable single target at higher levels.

 

Thanks for proving my point about all the band-aids saryn needs to be viable and reiterating many of the problems in her kit.

However, you did miss that fact that spore and toxin procs do not properly spread with her and prevent her from scaling in her intended way and the fact that you think she is supposed to be a support caster frame.

People have always hated toxic lash and yet [DE] chose to keep it because they firmly believe in her role as the melee debuffer caster hybrid. Asking for a change in direction for what Saryn's theme is, is most likely not going to ever happen.

 At one point in time saryn's 4 used to shred armor, which made thematic sense, and its current absence is weird. By fixing most of the bugs with saryn, removing some of her anti-synergy between certain abilities and adding some QoL tweaks to molt and adding an armor shred to miasma, as I have detailed in a recent post on this thread, saryn's multitude of problems would go away.

Edited April 8, 2016 by ThatOddDeer

[Shuuro]

On topic though. we had a run with Saryn in T4D. 4x Corrosive Projection, no enemy armor. Gas Lanka. Even with this set up, around the general level of ~90 give or take, the spores weren't really doing much damage wise. Everything came from the Lanka, nothing was really affected by the DoTs of spores, which in theory, the toxin procs should have combined, into a deadly DoT spread through the spores, but it was not the case.

[ThatOddDeer]

21 minutes ago, Shuuro said:

On topic though. we had a run with Saryn in T4D. 4x Corrosive Projection, no enemy armor. Gas Lanka. Even with this set up, around the general level of ~90 give or take, the spores weren't really doing much damage wise. Everything came from the Lanka, nothing was really affected by the DoTs of spores, which in theory, the toxin procs should have combined, into a deadly DoT spread through the spores, but it was not the case.

As the saryn in question I can confirm this was the case. It mirrors the studies I have done in the simulacrum, the lanka is providing all the power in this case and my spores, which should be helping, are proving little more than ineffective. 

[ThatOddDeer]

@akira_him

What do you think of the proposed changes I listed on the previous pages

[Djego27]

9 minutes ago, ThatOddDeer said:

 

However, you did miss that fact that spore and toxin procs do not properly spread with her and prevent her from scaling in her intended way and the fact that you think she is supposed to be a support caster frame.

I did notice it myself, mostly in excavation above L140. As it looks like it only transfers the highest toxic proc when you pop the spore instead of the full stack. This might be actually intended, given how high you can scale it with melee. The melee procs are a lot stronger then any ranged weapon ones for the simply reason that everything counts towards the strength of your proc, combo counter, stance multiplier, ground finisher bonus, stealth bonus with shadow step towards and so on, while on ranged weapons it is just base damage mods, head shots and crits. Given how effective Hiku prime and Ignis would be with this it might be intended.

I do  agree on the corrosive procs on miasma, since this would make it still useful at high levels if you get some CC with spores. Currently the only reason to use miasma is the stun at high levels. It is to expansive for that, while nearly all frames have her quick CC at her 1 or 2, cast time is far to long as CC tool and the damage benefit is as negotiable as WoF in L100 content.

[achromos]

Saryn can most definately be a Caster DoT/Debuff Frame. 

Simple Steps...

1.) Grab a Ignis.

2.) Forma the Ignis 6 times, and then set it to Gas...

3.) Grab a decent melee weapon.

4.) for survivability?  Get Arcane Grace, and make sure you have the molt augment.  Between molt and that augment I rarely if ever go down in anything but the absolute worst situations (even against level 100+ enemies which you face in the sorties), if you want to survive past 80 minutes solo in T4 or something then safest route IS the melee Focus school but that's optional. holding RMB + toxic lash for most cases can help.

You can either spread one of three ways...

Use your Molt, cast spore on your molt once and if you have enough enemies nearby cast miasma.  For most purposes it will get the job done.

or

use your molt, spam spore on it, then cast Toxic lash and finally hit it like a loot pinyata

oooor

you can cast spore from a range and use your ignis to pop the spores and in a group of enemies you are popping a lot of them at one time and dealing decent burst damage.

Edited April 9, 2016 by achromos

[ThatOddDeer]

1 minute ago, Djego27 said:

I did notice it myself, mostly in excavation above L140. As it looks like it only transfers the highest toxic proc when you pop the spore instead of the full stack. This might be actually intended, given how high you can scale it with melee. The melee procs are a lot stronger then any ranged weapon ones for the simply reason that everything counts towards the strength of your proc, combo counter, stance multiplier, ground finisher bonus, stealth bonus with shadow step towards and so on, while on ranged weapons it is just base damage mods, head shots and crits. Given how effective Hiku prime and Ignis would be with this it might be intended.

I do  agree on the corrosive procs on miasma, since this would make it still useful at high levels if you get some CC with spores. Currently the only reason to use miasma is the stun at high levels. It is to expansive for that, while nearly all frames have her quick CC at her 1 or 2, cast time is far to long as CC tool and the damage benefit is as negotiable as WoF in L100 content.

Toxic lash, being a power, I am note entirely sure benefits from crits. When i used a scindo prime at 2.5x multiplier against level 135 heavy gunners I was hitting for about 12-20k on a body shot yet my Toxin dot was 391, I thought it would be decently higher at a 51% ratio. At the moment the only effective spore spreader is the gas lanka or gas tonkor due to their massive overkill damage, that's not good for balance because a frame shouldn't be limited to 2 specific weapons to do their job. 

I'd rather miasma get % max armor shred rather than corrosive procs because it can take 25+ procs to 100% remove armor and a frost, banshee, ash, nekros, trin and mag can all do it with a single press.

[ThatOddDeer]

9 minutes ago, achromos said:

Saryn can most definately be a Caster DoT/Debuff Frame. 

Simple Steps...

1.) Grab a Ignis.

2.) Forma the Ignis 6 times, and then set it to Gas...

3.) Grab a decent melee weapon.

4.) for survivability?  Get Arcane Grace, and make sure you have the molt augment.  Between molt and that augment I rarely if ever go down in anything but the absolute worst situations (even against level 100+ enemies which you face in the sorties), if you want to survive past 80 minutes solo in T4 or something then safest route IS the melee Focus school but that's optional. holding RMB + toxic lash for most cases can help.

You can either spread one of three ways...

Use your Molt, cast spore on your molt once and if you have enough enemies nearby cast miasma.  For most purposes it will get the job done.

or

use your molt, spam spore on it, then cast Toxic lash and finally hit it like a loot pinyata

oooor

you can cast spore from a range and use your ignis to pop the spores and in a group of enemies you are popping a lot of them at one time and dealing decent burst damage.

1.) spore is bugged and only transfers the highest proc, rapid fire weapons like the ignis are poor choices while lanka and tonkor are merely acceptable

2.) see point 1

3.) see point 2

4.) you just listed two bandaids, one of which i use because otherwise I would never use molt and the other is hyper endgame and optional. A frame should not be balanced around optional content

5.) miasma is a trap skill, without viral procs essentially double damage it has one of the worst energy to damage ratios in the game even with both viral and toxin proc boosting damage and is hard countered by every enemy faction in some sort of way.

6.) toxic lash does not gaurentee spore pops on molt

7.) see point 3.

Edited April 9, 2016 by ThatOddDeer

[Ivan_Rid]

6 minutes ago, achromos said:

1.) Grab a Ignis.

Ignis drops in effectiveness very fast, low base damage + proc/sec mechanic limits its potential.

[ThatOddDeer]

1 minute ago, Ivan_Rid said:

Ignis drops in effectiveness very fast, low base damage + proc/sec mechanic limits its potential.

In theory it should be excellent. Our tests prove otherwise.

[achromos]

20 minutes ago, ThatOddDeer said:

1.) spore is bugged and only transfers the highest proc, rapid fire weapons like the ignis are poor choices while lanka and tonkor are merely acceptable

2.) see point 1

3.) see point 2

4.) you just listed two bandaids, one of which i use because otherwise I would never use molt and the other is hyper endgame and optional. A frame should not be balanced around optional content

5.) miasma is a trap skill, without viral procs essentially double damage it has one of the worst energy to damage ratios in the game even with both viral and toxin proc boosting damage and is hard countered by every enemy faction in some sort of way.

6.) toxic lash does not gaurentee spore pops on molt

7.) see point 3.

 

1.) When you get a group of enemies coated in that, even that highest proc transfer still counts and it will shift between each enemy individually over and over until they are dead.

2/3.) A 6 forma'd gas Ignis is definitely good enough for all relevant content, aka Sorties for end-game non raid style content and 80 minutes and below in even T4 Survival.

4.) "Bandaids" as you call them, are just features, options.  Like a Weapon, they are there for you to use or not and yes the Melee focus tree is as you call it "Hyper End-game" Material but they are there for a reason, to use them.

5.) When will you ever use Miasma without first at least using spore on a enemy?

6.) The issue is to get a fast melee weapon.  Then SPAM spore on said molt, THEN you will see. (Edit: don't know if there is a cap, but you can get more then one set of spores on it)

7.) If you have to rely on the tonkor to deal damage as a saryn, then by the time you kill one group of enemies I'll already have killed them and be hosing down other spored enemies before your next shot goes off or explodes if you miss with the tonkor. 

Edited April 9, 2016 by achromos

[ThatOddDeer]

7 minutes ago, achromos said:

 

1.) When you get a group of enemies coated in that, even that highest proc transfer still counts and it will shift between each enemy individually over and over until they are dead.

2/3.) Ignis is definitely good enough for all relevant content, aka Sorties for end-game non raid style content and 80 minutes and below in even T4 Survival.

4.) "Bandaids" as you call them, are just features, options.  Like a Weapon, they are there for you to use or not and yes the Melee focus tree is as you call it "Hyper End-game" Material but they are there for a reason, to use them.

5.) When will you ever use Miasma without first at least using spore on a enemy?

6.) The issue is to get a fast melee weapon.  Then SPAM spore on said molt, THEN you will see.

7.) If you have to rely on the tonkor to deal damage as a saryn, then by the time you kill one group of enemies I'll already have killed them and be hosing down other spored enemies before your next shot goes off or explodes if you miss with the tonkor. 

1.) it doesn't do that. you think it would and the wiki says so but it does not. Melee toxin stack doesn't work either because all those multiple hits are ignored for whatever was your highest it.

2. ) It's not that good of a choice. Although fun there are so many weapons  that outclass even for spore popppin.

4.) Saryn was stated to be balanced around regen molt being always in the build, that is not a fair balancing approach

5.) for the CC, it's only semi-effective use whose duration depends on enemy body type and doesn't scale. spore even with improper weapons will do leagues more damage than what is supposed to be saryn's finisher move

6.) that's just blind luck that the animations match the hit zones and could be done with any variety of melee, not anything to do with toxic lash.

7.) i don't use the tonkor, I use the lanka for it's superior stopping power with gas procs and because its one of 2 viable weapons with spore due to the bug and anti-synergy in the kit. 

Edited April 9, 2016 by ThatOddDeer

[RealPandemonium]

2 hours ago, Ivan_Rid said:

1)Proceed to Simulacrum

2)Grab Ceramic Dagger, either modless or with Fury only

3)Spawn 9 enemies of your choice, so there is a clump of 8 and one loner right of them.

4)Stack a few dozen Toxin procs on loner using Toxic lash an unmodded Ceramic Dagger (or pump him full of Toxin with unmodded Embolist)

5)Try to spread and (somehow combine) those procs to other 8 test targets.

Funny, this is pretty much exactly what I ended up doing to test spore's spread inconsistencies.  

[ThatOddDeer]

3 minutes ago, RealPandemonium said:

Funny, this is pretty much exactly what I ended up doing to test spore's spread inconsistencies.  

I tried heavy crit weapons and charge attacks, AoE weapons like the mios and everything in between. When I didn't see the procs doing any meaningful combining using war and the jat kittag is when I first started to notice all the anti-synergies and inconsistencies. The effectiveness of my slash proc builds hid that from me. 

[RealPandemonium]

1 minute ago, ThatOddDeer said:

I tried heavy crit weapons and charge attacks, AoE weapons like the mios and everything in between. When I didn't see the procs doing any meaningful combining using war and the jat kittag is when I first started to notice all the anti-synergies and inconsistencies. The effectiveness of my slash proc builds hid that from me. 

Despite how frustrating the current behavior is, I did notice that the damage output of the Toxin spreads is appropriate for level 30-50 or so.  It's only once you start going into sortie territory that it starts to become inadequate against Grineer (though the other two factions go down well enough when you use strong or outlier weapons.)  Maybe Damage 3.0 will solve the balance issue for us, though the mechanics would remain unsatisfying.  

[ThatOddDeer]

2 minutes ago, RealPandemonium said:

Despite how frustrating the current behavior is, I did notice that the damage output of the Toxin spreads is appropriate for level 30-50 or so.  It's only once you start going into sortie territory that it starts to become inadequate against Grineer (though the other two factions go down well enough when you use strong or outlier weapons.)  Maybe Damage 3.0 will solve the balance issue for us, though the mechanics would remain unsatisfying.  

Especially because saryn has the fantasy of building up a deadly plague and unleashing it. However she is hampered incredibly by armor her corrosive blast wave should thematically eradicate. Then come infested with the ancient disruptor and healer auras and corpus with nullfiers, bursas and modulars and void with nullfiers and armor. Every faction has something that makes miasma a very lack luster finisher. If toxin procs stacked as advertised saryn's choice of weapon could be expanded greatly rather than be so shoehorned into a small subset; even ember can use mostly anything as long as it has fire on it through mods.

Even if damage 3.0 brings back toxin ignoring armor or doing something else. Miasma will still be just a tiny weakling compared to the massive potential of spore, buggy or not. 

Then you still have the unsatisfying molt and the anti-synergistic toxic lash that punishes you for killing targets and has an undesirable defensive buff which is so tied to melee that it's useless without it. Not even speed, warcry or the exalted melees are affected so harshly by lack of a weapon or desire not to use one.

[Djego27]

15 minutes ago, ThatOddDeer said:

Toxic lash, being a power, I am note entirely sure benefits from crits. When i used a scindo prime at 2.5x multiplier against level 135 heavy gunners I was hitting for about 12-20k on a body shot yet my Toxin dot was 391, I thought it would be decently higher at a 51% ratio. At the moment the only effective spore spreader is the gas lanka or gas tonkor due to their massive overkill damage, that's not good for balance because a frame shouldn't be limited to 2 specific weapons to do their job. 

I'd rather miasma get % max armor shred rather than corrosive procs because it can take 25+ procs to 100% remove armor and a frost, banshee, ash, nekros, trin and mag can all do it with a single press.

The proc does not scale with the damage numbers you do, since this is affected by all mods. It only takes into account base damage of the weapon and base damage mods like pressure point and spoiled strike as well as steel charge. The 391 are also affected by armor, what is more or less a 98% damage reduction at L135. So the 391 are 50% of the base value the proc uses, against L135 heavy gunners you would face like a 98% damage reduction, adding the 25% armor ignore from that it is most likely in the 95% region. So that would be 630,4 as base value(removing the 25% bonus damage and since the proc does only 50% of the based off value as tick) and multiply it by 20 that would be 12608 as base when the proc got calculated for a total of 138688 damage after the 11 ticks without taking armor into account. I am not 100% sure if it does add toxic lash bonus damage as base damage for the calculation or if it is handled like a extra elemental mod.

Frost or necros do not have 100% armor removal in any practical build. On Ash with a CL dagger and armor ignore on bladestrom there are little reasons to use the augment. Mag in particular does not have it at all, since it is 50% and does not take into account power strength. Given the healer changes in the void halve a year ago it is also not really a frame you would use as dps in void defence. Even back then you run a corrosive status weapon anyway, what makes it kind of pointless.

Given that you run max range(overextended + stretch and cunning drift) in any kind of spore build anyway so you can cover halve the map at once and the duration would be to low for a only during the duration armor reduction effect(like all the augments work) having 3-4 corrosive procs would probably the best solution. You can still recast it and while you do need 28 corrosive procs to reach red bar(been a while since I did do the maths on my status weapons), the first 10 will have the biggest impact on your dps.

 

 

[Djego27]

Looking at a few screen shots I took, it does indeed look strange with the toxic proc values:

You can see a 1(most likely direct damage), a 157(most likely from a ground finisher after a few corrosive procs) and 627 that I imagine is a transferred toxic proc from a unit without armor to the bombard in range.

[ThatOddDeer]

4 minutes ago, Djego27 said:

Looking at a few screen shots I took, it does indeed look strange with the toxic proc values:

You can see a 1(most likely direct damage), a 157(most likely from a ground finisher after a few corrosive procs) and 627 that I imagine is a transferred toxic proc from a unit without armor to the bombard in range.

These type of inconsistencies are what drive me crazy. The thing about a transfered proc is that it should likewise be reduced by armor, is that another inconsistency?

[ThatOddDeer]

26 minutes ago, Djego27 said:

-snip-

1.) Frost or necros do not have 100% armor removal in any practical build. On Ash with a CL dagger and armor ignore on bladestrom there are little reasons to use the augment. Mag in particular does not have it at all, since it is 50% and does not take into account power strength. Given the healer changes in the void halve a year ago it is also not really a frame you would use as dps in void defence. Even back then you run a corrosive status weapon anyway, what makes it kind of pointless.

2.) Given that you run max range(overextended + stretch and cunning drift) in any kind of spore build anyway so you can cover halve the map at once and the duration would be to low for a only during the duration armor reduction effect(like all the augments work) having 3-4 corrosive procs would probably the best solution. You can still recast it and while you do need 28 corrosive procs to reach red bar(been a while since I did do the maths on my status weapons), the first 10 will have the biggest impact on your dps.

 

 

1.) Max power frost and max power nekros both exist in the form of CC frost and Shadows of the dead nekros. Both are viable endgame builds that are less tradtional. Ash can ignore armor but if we're truly mix-maxing you wouldn't even use bladestorm, CL dagger is enough. Mag's reworked shield polarize will shred armor and will likely be able to be modded for 100% armor shred and that is what I meant by mag. Not everyone brings corrosive status oriented weapons or 4x cp so being able to help out the team in a deficient area is a good option to have as a build choice

 

2.) I would rather not have to cast miasma 7 times to achieve what many frames can do in 1. For the sake of balance between frames I would shy away from corrosive procs unless miasma was changed to tick half as hard with twice as many ticks or a 3rd as hard with 3 times many ticks.