Saryn: 7 months later

[Soulvengeance]

3 hours ago, NinjaTrainee117 said:

How do you actually use Toxic Lash? I personally feel that Saryn doesn't have enough survivability since Molt dies too quickly and Miasma is too energy expensive for crowd control. I prefer just sitting back and shooting with a Gas weapon to do some damage from a safe distance, until a Bombard comes along...

Toxic lash is your bread and butter once you set spores.  Every time you hit targets infected with spores causes one to always pop.  Every spore poped grants energy back to the frame.  So longer you keep spores going and toxic lash you actually make a net profit of energy.  As for survival, toxic lash increase damage reduction while blocking.  I have mine at 92% damage reduction and I stand in front of my molt.  Use long reach weapons like Orthos.  I do not use Mes almost ever, due to energy cost and lack of actual crowd control.

[Nyxxz]

18 hours ago, PikeOrShield said:

I think your calculations are a bit off.  While armor does reduce spore burst damage and carried toxin damage, the damage does not get mitigated as much as you described when it spreads to another armored target.  Spore's burst and DOT damage is calculated of the initial base damage that caused the toxin proc.  Initial base damage does not factor for armor values.  

The way it's calculated is: initial base damage -> armor reduction applied -> actual damage

Because of this, damage that will be factored over to a new target does not get mitigated by the previous units armor, since the damage is calculated off of a number that does not take into account the current unit's armor.  This also applies to spores that are carried along a chain of enemies since the burst damage is calculated by the initial base damage(s) of toxin procs afflicting the target.  The reason you see spores dealing reduced damage further down the chain is because the full initial base damage is not carried over (only a small percentage is) due to how spore damage is calculated, not because armor mitigates it repeatedly.

Important parts from the wiki:

• If an infected enemy is being damaged by a  Toxin proc, popping a spore on that enemy will also spread  Toxin damage to surrounding enemies. The spore will have 25% of the initial base damage that triggered the  Toxin proc added to its burst damage as  Viral damage with a 100% status chance for  Viral and  Toxin effects.
•  Toxin status effect deals 50% of the burst damage as  Toxin damage per tick over 11 ticks in 10 seconds. Duration-based status effects are prolonged due to Saryn's passive.

wiki:

  Reveal hidden contents

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Spores

 

Yeah, you are correct o_o I didn't expect DE to have such a good formula for it. 

I expected it to be Damage>Armor Reduction>Actual Damage then said gas proc having to use it's actual damage vs the surrounding mobs armor 

I only tried it in one mission to figure out how it worked and it turns out it was an Eximus mission where all the Eximi mobs are resistant to elemental attacks.

That does make high status weapon with corrosive on swap to reduce armor to 0 and using that target as a conduit for spreading spores rather powerful :o

I'm aware of the full damage not transfering, a 224% power STR spore Saryn will have 56% of intial damage moved over, which felt right in every other test I did except that Grineer Eximus Stronghold.   Thanks for the armor info!  managed to miss it on the wiki somehow D:

Edited June 13, 2016 by Nyxxz

[PikeOrShield]

4 hours ago, Nyxxz said:

Yeah, you are correct o_o I didn't expect DE to have such a good formula for it. 

I expected it to be Damage>Armor Reduction>Actual Damage then said gas proc having to use it's actual damage vs the surrounding mobs armor 

I only tried it in one mission to figure out how it worked and it turns out it was an Eximus mission where all the Eximi mobs are resistant to elemental attacks.

That does make high status weapon with corrosive on swap to reduce armor to 0 and using that target as a conduit for spreading spores rather powerful :o

I'm aware of the full damage not transfering, a 224% power STR spore Saryn will have 56% of intial damage moved over, which felt right in every other test I did except that Grineer Eximus Stronghold.   Thanks for the armor info!  managed to miss it on the wiki somehow D:

Glad I could be helpful.  Armor and eximus in this game are major pains though!  Rebecca said they were taking a look at enemy cheese after frame cheese and I hope they touch up on these things.

[Birdframe_Prime]

If I were to change anything, I'd look at the way Molt deals and takes damage.

The thing is, unlike an earlier commenter mentioned, Molt already takes preferential aggro, causing all enemies to re-target Molt instead of Saryn for its duration, unless Saryn draws aggro by attacking. The downside is that Molt spawns at Saryn's location meaning that any cross-fire or melee units already targeting her may still hit her, which is why I prefer to cast it while bullet jumping and aim gliding, where the targeting is already reduced.

So as far as a CC, it's actually on par with Loki's decoy since, despite the short-comings of where it spawns, it can actually be utilised for damage and spreading of Spores.

Currently Molt deals damage and spreads spores when it is dispelled/destroyed, the damage it deals is based on the percentage of HP the molt has lost over time, meaning that if the enemy destroys it, 100% of the damage is then dealt radially, at the same time as any Spores on it or in range of it are destroyed, spreading their damage and statuses for additional damage. Most important is the 100% status chance on both Molt's toxic damage and on the popped Spores viral damage. 

I'd change this so Molt deals damage based on the actual *number* of Health Points lost before destruction, so it becomes a fixed number equation rather than a percentage-based one. And I'd then make the order so Molt popped any spores on it and in range first, then does its own damage. Now, why would I do this?

Because you can then give it the temporary damage absorb of Iron Skin and Warding Halo! For the first few seconds it absorbs damage, gaining health as it goes and charging up the amount of damage it will deal. It therefore lasts that minimum few seconds while Saryn evades and then, when enemies manage to shred it, the increased amount of HP it has lost will deal vastly greater damage.

This brings Molt up to nearly (but not actually close to damage in) the same range as Mag's new Magnetise skill, and makes it a far more tactical cast at any point, making you want to wait until mobs are targeting Saryn, surrounding her, before casting, escaping, casting Spores on it a couple of times for bonus fun, and watching it go boom.

It makes a tactical cast of Miasma ever so much more important because the order of business is then; spores on Molt pop, Molt pops, each of those inflicting a 100% status chance of Viral and Toxin, anything that survives gets Miasma DoT.

To clear up another mis-conception, this one about Miasma, on the behalf of an earlier poster, too:

Spoiler

 

The base duration of Miasma is only three seconds, that's three ticks of your best damage, but boosting the duration makes more ticks of damage. If you use a strength, duration and range build (killing your efficiency, I know, but 45% efficiency is actually not all that bad once you get the spores going with Lash or cheese with Zenurik), the calculators say this: A build of 224% Strength, 127.5% Duration and 250% Range can have Miasma deal 784 Corrosive damage per tick, with 4.8 seconds duration giving a total of 3782.8 Damage over the five seconds. At +100% damage for enemies with a Viral Proc (guaranteed by popping a Spore in their range) and +100% damage for enemies with a Toxic Proc (guaranteed by popping Molt in their range), this deals... calculator... 2,352 damage per tick, or a total of 11,290 damage overall.

Add this to the damage from Molt, the reduction in health from a Viral proc, reduction in armour from the Toxic proc... this can do some insane harm to things.

 

What do you think? Just a little change to Molt on how it calculates its damage would allow for putting on something base-survivable on the Molt itself to be used as both a longer CC and as a potential damage increase if used correctly. The Spores popping first would just be icing on the cake to make sure that enemies took the most damage possible from Molt's destruction.

[hukurokuju5]

shes pretty good, aside from her survivability in very high level missions, but that is an issue of enemy damage scaling really

[(PSN)Trutenax89]

I really like Saryn's rework with the exception of miasma, it needs to have some other function or interaction outside of doing more damage.