Saryn: What can she do that another can't do 10x better?

[CactiIsraphe]

You raise a good point, whether you meant to or not. The nature of Saryn as a frame that is based around status effects is too volatile. Multi-stacking status effects would make her super broken, as spore did early in her last rework because of that bug. However, with how easy it is to just build status proc weapons, having Saryn as a single layer status effect debuffer makes her terrible, especially given how much DE has changed different status effects since her release and even rework. She needs to be moved away from status effect dependence. A good fix might be for them to decide on a definite role for her, build abilities to suit that role, then add status effects and element damage on top of those abilities. Pure status effects are too weak to be a frame's only abilities now, especially given the usefulness of much of the others on the roster.

[ZodiacShinryu]

2 hours ago, Hellmaker2004 said:

A: Toxic does not carry over from overkill. Causing the most optimal build to be the one where you can deal 99.9% Of a mobs health, this is realistically impossible to do and yet required since she scales with the amount of damage you do.

I can see certain annoyances with this but with how some weapons output damage spore's effectiveness would snowball quickly. At this point if you are one hit killing enemies with your weapons you don't even need this extended effect of spores. With just a little management of killing, enemies will fall from spore explosions on their own. I constantly get through many mission types with just a handful of spore casts and watch as couple of shots just roll through the enemy ranks for several rooms. But when you get to higher levels and your weapons start falling off now you have an additional source of damage that will start scaling as they become more powerful. Saryn is the frame that grows in power as the enemy grows stronger and in presence.

Now the OP just reeks of of old Saryn vs new Saryn.  Old Saryn had a focus of her 4th. New Saryn has a focus on her 1st. Heavily basing your train of thought on the effort of using her synergy on new Saryn to increase her 4th's damage potential is detrimental. Yes it can take a lot of energy to set up a combo... it also is COMPLETELY UNECESSARY to set up the combo just to do damage. She was built so that her 4th is a bonus for to doing what she is suppose to be doing, spreading viral and toxin. Spore > use my toxin/gas weapon to inflect toxin > spread > 4 (if you really want to) is much simpler and more effective than forcing yourself to chain her skills together, with the bonus of being able to run into the next room and quickly Misama with enough range and enemies. When it comes down to it if new Saryn (scaling potential) is underperforming to old Saryn (non-scaling) I don't even know where to start. If this is simply about not being able to clear a room faster with Saryn's 4th than some other high damage aoe 4th frame then I will just boil it down to "why don't we use the top 4 frames for anything?" the dumbest of arguments. Saryn is not just her 4th.

What I would like for Saryn is more reason to use her 4th like corrosive procs and changes to toxic lash. Toxic lash can make her a melee brawler of sorts... if blocking wasn't pointless. Her blocking with her 3 can reach 90%DR which is only useful if everything is in front of you and you're not attacking. There are a handful of frames that get 90%DR buffs (like Mesa and Gara) that she might as well just be allowed to have it passively when her 3 is active. Otherwise the added toxin damage to melee weapon with melee counter combo only can further enhance her Spores the longer you go.

[CactiIsraphe]

I've spent much more time talking about her 1 than her 4, and when I seriously gave her another try I did the exact combo you listed in your second paragraph. My point still stands: while she may have scaling damage, there are others that scale better and assist teams better. The whole point of this thread is that there's no reason to pick her over someone else other than for aesthetic. She's too weak to fill any one role, and her broad spread of abilities are too weak to make her an effective multi-role.

I do appreciate that you've actually thought of where changes can be made. She absolutely does need a 4 that has a reason to be used, and right now she really doesn't. I like where you went with proposing damage reduction on her 3; I had thought about talking about maybe there needing to be a boost to her energy regen on it to make it viable to use over just toxic aoe weapons, but your idea is much better as it gives her a clear role. Her 1 and 3 combo needs to be fixed because as someone said a few times earlier, it doesn't spread as intended.

[Hellmaker2004]

The thing is that Overkill being implemented nicely does not have to mean that it gets out of control.

Now there is no doubt that the first priority is to fix spore. As a reference i did several takes and in the control test the weapon i used dealt 1573 Toxic damage a tick and that transferred into 401 for everyone spore worked on. The problem is that almost guaranteed once you hit more than one foe(I mind you i still only had one with the initial spore/spored target, so i have no idea why it bugged out but it did so every time, the only question was who it bugged for.)

But Spore then decided that someone or even multiple should get a 56 toxic damage toxic tick. And this was not in addition of the 401 but instead of. So spore was overwriting itself on random enemies. And this is the bug that need to be fixed.

 

In addition however if overkill was simply calculated to for instance, and please this is by no way set in stone how it should work. But lets say that you dealt 100k damage, indeed way to much to transfer.

What if when a target died due to overkill it only calculated 100% of maximum health of the foe(I remind you that the target does have to have Spore on them aka Viral so it only calculate 50% of the foes initial health) Into the spore initial design?

 

This way overkill would still work, and yet you would only be able to insert maximum 50% of a foes health into spore even if you one shot them?

Edited October 30, 2017 by Hellmaker2004

[CactiIsraphe]

Idk, I think the way she was mean to be played when they reworked her was max out range and then molt>load molt w/ spores>miasma to burst molt and spread toxic and spores to boost miasma's damage while applying spores to everything. Everything's too weak to justify that setup, and molt will likely die before you get that combo off with meaningful effect at higher levels. If they want to keep her current setup, they need to seriously change the scaling of everything on her. She just too needlessly complicated for what she actually does.

[ZodiacShinryu]

39 minutes ago, Hellmaker2004 said:

This way overkill would still work, and yet you would only be able to insert maximum 50% of a foes health into spore even if you one shot them?

A step in the right direction though some more questions need to be answered such as: Would this work for AoE weapons? Does overkill damage instance count for each remaining spore on the target that is overkilled?

For instance does a launcher type weapon technically explode all spores before toxin absorption? Then if there are 3 spores on the target it burst for up to 50% of their max health of the damage absorbed 3 times? With understanding of theory to practicality, there are some pretty ridiculous sounding situations if you get AoE toxin kills on a relatively high max health targets (say 10 Bombards were having a tea party) to have 3 spores of their max overkill toxin damage burst 3 times each for kill (for 30 bursts) to all targets in burst range. I know you mean that overkill is not automatically a 50% max health toxin absorb, I am just assuming that it was enough damage to one shot them.

In some respects it doesn't really matter because it really just brings her base lethality to what ever level your weapons fall off realistically because otherwise she is just going to operate as she does now (if we assumed no bugs). But I'm sure gas ignis users would love to know.

[CactiIsraphe]

The fact that you have to build your weapons to complement her abilities is kinda stupid too. It all goes back to there being frames that can do the same thing, but better and at less cost. Why bother jumping through all the hoops to make saryn work when you could just pick nova and use her 4 and decent weapons to obliterate everything in one shot? It just seems stupid how much work you have to put in and you still get an underwhelming frame.

[Hellmaker2004]

8 minutes ago, ZodiacShinryu said:

A step in the right direction though some more questions need to be answered such as: Would this work for AoE weapons? Does overkill damage instance count for each remaining spore on the target that is overkilled?

For instance does a launcher type weapon technically explode all spores before toxin absorption? Then if there are 3 spores on the target it burst for up to 50% of their max health of the damage absorbed 3 times? With understanding of theory to practicality, there are some pretty ridiculous sounding situations if you get AoE toxin kills on a relatively high max health targets (say 10 Bombards were having a tea party) to have 3 spores of their max overkill toxin damage burst 3 times each for kill (for 30 bursts) to all targets in burst range. I know you mean that overkill is not automatically a 50% max health toxin absorb, I am just assuming that it was enough damage to one shot them.

In some respects it doesn't really matter because it really just brings her base lethality to what ever level your weapons fall off realistically because otherwise she is just going to operate as she does now (if we assumed no bugs). But I'm sure gas ignis users would love to know.

I understand that you are worried and rightfully so, it may get out of hand quickly and it is simply a idea so that she still can spread toxic whiteout having to mod your weapon and purposefully gimping yourself to the specific foes you want to fight. However i think the first thing that needs to be fixed before anyone is worried about QoL change, and that is what the previously mentioned thing is, a QoL change.

 

Is to get DE's attention that spore is currently bugged and transfering incorrect values. 

[Hellmaker2004]

4 minutes ago, CactiIsraphe said:

The fact that you have to build your weapons to complement her abilities is kinda stupid too. It all goes back to there being frames that can do the same thing, but better and at less cost. Why bother jumping through all the hoops to make saryn work when you could just pick nova and use her 4 and decent weapons to obliterate everything in one shot? It just seems stupid how much work you have to put in and you still get an underwhelming frame.

Indeed, Currently this is pretty much true.

 

Want to play Saryn? Play Nova instead, you get the same group wide effect that even affect more foes than Saryn currently, with crowd control and explosions. You also get added damage resistance although a bit hard to control and team movement utility.

 

Whats that, you want to spread Toxic dots and are not as interested in Viral. Well play Exalted Blade Excalibur, you get better toxic spreading and frontal damage resistance. With better crowd control ability's.

[CactiIsraphe]

2 minutes ago, Hellmaker2004 said:

Want to play Saryn? Play Nova instead, you get the same group wide effect that even affect more foes than Saryn currently, with crowd control and explosions.

and that's on just one ability too. the only downside is that it takes time to expand the aoe, but that's a non-issue when you get it's effect and just how big of an aow it can be if you stack duration.

[Misgenesis]

19 minutes ago, Hellmaker2004 said:

Want to play Saryn? Play Nova instead, you get the same group wide effect that even affect more foes than Saryn currently

Mprime is more consistent but Spore has the potential to spread far longer. It also costs more, is slower, isnt a one handed cast and needs more mods dedicated to it. You can just leave out the rest of her kit and stats out either, Nova is significantly more squishy.

This why the ''others do it better'' argument holds little ground here.

[Hellmaker2004]

10 minutes ago, Misgenesis said:

Mprime is more consistent but Spore has the potential to spread far longer. It also costs more, is slower, isnt a one handed cast and needs more mods dedicated to it. You can just leave out the rest of her kit and stats out either, Nova is significantly more squishy.

This why the ''others do it better'' argument holds little ground here.

 

Nova is actually not as squishy as you believe, she has less armor yes. But at least she have damage resistance ability that does not force her into blocking / only work frontal. Of course Nova has her own drawback and it only stacks up to 80% DR compared to Saryns 90%.

 

Also Spore has a 16m default spread range, while Molecule prime has a default 35m. Now i agree that costing 100 energy compared to 25 is a much larger amount, but considering that 100 energy ability not only does a similar effect on a wider area, it also work on more foes than Spore does, it also lowers hostiles movement and attack speed and the explode when they die for a base damage of 800. At that point i am pretty sure that it justifies the 100 energy cost.

Edited October 30, 2017 by Hellmaker2004

[Ivan_Rid]

13 minutes ago, Misgenesis said:

Mprime is more consistent but Spore has the potential to spread far longer. It also costs more, is slower, isnt a one handed cast and needs more mods dedicated to it. You can just leave out the rest of her kit and stats out either, Nova is significantly more squishy.

This why the ''others do it better'' argument holds little ground here.

Sadly Novas 1st ability, backed up by augment, is pretty much 1000+ armour all the time. She also does casually drop 200k damage Radiation nukes. Nova is OP a f.

[CactiIsraphe]

5 minutes ago, Misgenesis said:

Mprime is more consistent but Spore has the potential to spread far longer. It also costs more, is slower, isnt a one handed cast and needs more mods dedicated to it. You can just leave out the rest of her kit and stats out either, Nova is significantly more squishy.

This why the ''others do it better'' argument holds little ground here.

you just don't know how to build nova. nova's 4 is by far the largest aoe in the game, people just don't understand it scales with duration, only the explosive effect scales w/ power range. base nova's not that much more squishy than saryn, especially when you consider that nova with primed flow and quick thinking doesn't take nearly the hit to ability stats that saryn would if she slotted those mods. even then, to say saryn's slightly higher than average hp/armor/energy makes her a good pick purely from survivability would mean that all of her wf abilities would have to suffer to the point of uselessness.

[Misgenesis]

3 minutes ago, Hellmaker2004 said:

 

Nova is actually not as squishy as you believe, she has less armor yes. But at least she have damage resistance ability that does not force her into blocking / only work frontal. Of course Nova has her own drawback only stacks up to 80% DR compared to Saryns 90%.

 

Also Spore has a 16m default spread range, while Molecule prime has a default 35m. Now i agree that costing 100 energy compared to 25 is a much larger amount, but considering that 100 energy ability not only does a similar effect on a wider area, it also work on more foes than Spore does, it also lowers hostiles movement and attack speed and the explode when they die for a base damage of 800. At that point i am pretty sure that it justifies the 100 energy cost.

80% damage resistance falls off quickly when she doesnt have the armor or health to back it up. Youre also limited to slower and riskier ways of restoring that lost health.

Stretch alone is enough to spread Spore just as far and wide and arguably faster. MPrime does have its CC ill give it that.

[CactiIsraphe]

3 minutes ago, Ivan_Rid said:

Sadly Novas 1st ability, backed up by augment, is pretty much 1000+ armour all the time. She also does casually drop 200k damage Radiation nukes. Nova is OP a f.

it's a primarily pve game, there's nothing wrong with being that strong when enemies are made to scale (supposedly) infinitely. frames like nova should be the standard. level 60 enemies should not be considered endgame.

[CactiIsraphe]

The more i think about it, having Saryn able to run through all the ticks on her 4 and just 4 spam was much more viable than spores and her new setup will ever be. She filled a role as a pure wrecking ball, and now she is just a wimpy imitation of other frames. There's no way you could possibly build her to be viable in the face of other frames or weapons. She just doesn't work, and I'm honestly sorry if you fool yourself into thinking she does.

[Misgenesis]

8 minutes ago, CactiIsraphe said:

you just don't know how to build nova. nova's 4 is by far the largest aoe in the game, people just don't understand it scales with duration, only the explosive effect scales w/ power range. base nova's not that much more squishy than saryn, especially when you consider that nova with primed flow and quick thinking doesn't take nearly the hit to ability stats that saryn would if she slotted those mods. even then, to say saryn's slightly higher than average hp/armor/energy makes her a good pick purely from survivability would mean that all of her wf abilities would have to suffer to the point of uselessness.

And you ''just dont know how to build Saryn''. See it doesnt work like that. You optimize for MPrime which gimps her survivability. PFlow and QT are occupying 2 slots better used for something else. That combo also loses its effective use fast because of her low armor and HP while leaving her with no energy.

Saryn is the self sustain option to Nova.

20 minutes ago, CactiIsraphe said:

it's a primarily pve game, there's nothing wrong with being that strong when enemies are made to scale (supposedly) infinitely. frames like nova should be the standard. level 60 enemies should not be considered endgame.

This tells me all i need to know

[CactiIsraphe]

1 minute ago, Misgenesis said:

And you ''just dont know how to build Saryn''. See it doesnt work like that. You optimize for MPrime which gimps her survivability. PFlow and QT are occupying 2 slots better used for something else. That combo also loses its effective use fast because of her low armor and HP while leaving her with no energy.

Saryn is the self sustain option to Nova.

This tells me all i need to know

this tells me all i need to know. you're not someone who cares about endgame content. that's fair, the majority of players in most games aren't. patching the viability of a character to go from being able to duo 200+ enemies without a healer to struggling to be effective with the same group comp beyond level 30 is a joke.

you've obviously never played nova right if you think she's squishy. you don't need to make other stats suffer to have a god-tier mprime, and there's ability based survivablity on nova. you've obviously never run pflow and qt if you think that armor beats it in terms of effective hp. maybe you just don't even know that armor is an effective hp modifier. there's also the fact that if you're killing things you'll likely get energy back faster than you could get hp back from drops, and if you want to bring along a healer you just bring trinity and she heals both energy and hp, completely making armor sans flow+qt completely irrelevant.

Saryn needs her hand to be held so much just to get up to par, there's no role for her to fill that can't be done better by somebody else, and I'd strongly recommend researching other frames if you honestly thing she can stand up to their abilities. In most cases, she doesn't even come close.

[Hellmaker2004]

46 minutes ago, Misgenesis said:

80% damage resistance falls off quickly when she doesnt have the armor or health to back it up. Youre also limited to slower and riskier ways of restoring that lost health.

Stretch alone is enough to spread Spore just as far and wide and arguably faster. MPrime does have its CC ill give it that.

16*1.45 is not equal 35.

35/16 = 2.1875 So you need 218.75% Power range to reach the same as a unmodded MPrime

 

Also i think you underestimate how survivable Nova is and how tanky Saryn is her 225 armor only equals 42.8% DR and with Steel fiber it only stacks up to 56.5%, now if we add there default values we have

SarynP: 375/(1-(225/(225+300)))+300 = 956.25 EHP before we consider hostile damage types.

NovaP: 300/(1-(65/(65+300)))+300 = 665 EHP before we consider hostile damage types.

 

So far it looks like Saryn is the clear winner right. However Saryn lack Null Star but here is where the calculation would be much harder to start to calculate since are we considering a Nova who builds for survival? Max Duration minimum range? Probably not, However.

We know it cap out at 80% DR we could add that in and call it even but that would actually be unfair since i doubt most people will run that sort of build. however lets see how much DR null star need to give in order to break even. 

1-(665/955) = 0.304 = at slightly above 30% DR on Null Star you gain about the same survivability as Saryn, 30% DR on null star is achieved at 6 stars. And any more stars you scale better than Saryn with health mods and Nova already scales better at one null star with shield mods.

 

However i am not here to say that Saryn is worthless. IF spore worked as is intended she would be in a pretty decent state as a damage dealing frame. Her problem is that Spore is not working as intended it is actually behaving extremely erratic. Spore is currently overwriting itself with extremely low damage values something i have tested a bit, not a lot but in at the very least a amount where i dare to say there is something iffy going on.

[Epsik-kun]

52 minutes ago, CactiIsraphe said:

you've obviously never run pflow and qt

Your overall credibility seems quite questionable after reading this, to be honest.

Anyway, comparing other frames to Nova is generally a bad idea, as Nova is pretty much the best universal frame in the game, while still being one of the best CC frames, one of the best buff frames, the best utility frame, one of the best farm frames, one of the best Sortie-level nuke frames, and the best speed-runner in the game.

It's just all these are quite finicky, don't come in a single package requiring altering the build, and require a considerable level of practice to use efficiently (aside from "cast and forget" MP builds)
All of the above makes her actually very balanced, but the bottom line is there is no other frame as overall useful as Nova in the game.

However, while other frames may not have such a wide specialization as Nova, they compensate it by being better suited for streamlining some specific tasks.
In case of Saryn, for example, she excels at applying incredible total damage spread over a huge group of enemies. In the mid-levels (30~50), Saryn will clear whatever comes into range of her spores save for Nox units because of great game design decisions. Other frames will not out-damage nor out-kill a properly built and played Saryn.
Aside from pure damage, Saryn provides team-wide utility as a permanent omnipresent Viral proc provides far more utility people usually give it credit for. For more organized squads Toxin proc is also very powerful.
Saryn is also a great affinity farmer for dedicated squads. People commonly use Banshee for the purpose and Saryn is about 3-4 times more effective.
Saryn also breezes through Sorties. Melee Saryn, in fact, has one of the best melee damage scalings in the game. Because CO is a thing and getting access to IPS + Corrosive + Blast + Viral + Toxic results in the damage multiplier going up to x85(while preserving the armor stripping/bypassing ability) and is considerably higher than what other frames can squeeze out of CO (mainly because they can't run Viral for effective double-damage and Blast for two procs in one) and melee as a whole.

Honestly, the main point here is "you don't know how to play Saryn".

Edited October 30, 2017 by Epsik-kun

[CactiIsraphe]

17 minutes ago, Hellmaker2004 said:

So far it looks like Saryn is the clear winner right. However Saryn lack Null Star but here is where the calculation would be much harder to start to calculate since are we considering a Nova who builds for survival? Max Duration minimum range? Probably not, However.

Her survivability ferom her 1 and the range of her 4 are both affected by duration. Her 4 spreads at 5m/s for the duration, so more duration means a larger aoe. Duration is her primary stat.

[(PSN)BlitzKeir]

19 hours ago, Kirinketsu said:

Also this idea people have she is a melee Frame? why or how, what makes her a top or good melee Frame, why play her over, Ash, Chroma, Loki, Volt, Titania, Wukong or Zephyr, each of these Frames are leagues better than Saryn when it comes to Melee

Here. This guy actually knows what he's talking about. We also have similar ideas on how to improve her.

Also, the only frames you mentioned that can out-melee Saryn are Loki and Chroma. Ash too, but only while invisible.

Also, please stop comparing things to Chroma and Tigris. They should never be referenced in any metric.

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

4 hours ago, CactiIsraphe said:

 early in her last rework because of that bug. 

Pretty sure that was how it was intendet and her current state is buggy.

[CactiIsraphe]

3 minutes ago, (PS4)BlitzKeir said:

Here. This guy actually knows what he's talking about. We also have similar ideas on how to improve her.

Also, the only frames you mentioned that can out-melee Saryn are Loki and Chroma. Ash too, but only while invisible.

Also, please stop comparing things to Chroma and Tigris. They should never be referenced in any metric.

pretty sure he listed those frames because they have things that have actual viability at close range for one reason or another. Zephyr's up there for her 3. People love to say Saryn is a melee frame because of her 3, but there's no way to build up the effect of her 3 to be viable over using someone else. Saryn needs a stat adjustment if she's to stay the same. The reason why Nova is mentions so much is that she has most of the things people say they use Saryn for, but better, only thing she lacks is a 30% buff to her melee weapon's base damage. Which is something people seem to not understand about Saryn, her 3's damage buff applies only to base weapon damage, i.e. slash, impact, puncture. Straight from the wiki:

• The additional  Toxin damage is treated as a separate instance of damage and does not combine with elemental damage on the melee weapon.

Whether that means the dot or the entire effect of the skill is a little vague, but even the stronger of the two is still weak once actually in world. It's also affected by power strength, so you need to decide between having wide range for spores, or enough power strength and efficiency for her 3 to work better than just meh melee mods. She also doesn't have the survivability to go face to face with higher level mobs to the degree that her 3 would require to be useful over something else. People don't seem to want to recognize that her numbers are all around low. She's a frame that only sounds good on paper, her actual effects are very limited and any role she can fill can be filled better elsewhere for lower cost.

She has compounding issues that people fail to recognize because they tend to favor one aspect of her or another, and likely ignore their actual numbers. She needs at the very least a scaling fix so she's not so stat hungry and can have builds that are single ability dump stat builds.