Developer Workshop: Saryn Revisited 2.0

[Khormalys]

I think adding a decay mechanic to the spore damage counter would be really nice for certains missions like onslaught, interception or defense

[Hixlysss]

5 minutes ago, khydhy said:

I think adding a decay mechanic to the spore damage counter would be really nice for certains missions like onslaught, interception or defense

Exactly. Or even normal missions, because the spores have to spread from enemy to enemy, and as soon as the last enemy is dead in that room and the spores haven't spread...you just lost your combo counter. Or as pablo mentioned, an enemy five rooms back still has spores on it and you have to 'pop' them with the power 1 in order to recast the spores on new enemies, but you lose all that damage you built up, it's just...bad, it really hurts her.

[Darkuhn]

vor 6 Minuten schrieb Hixlysss:

you lose all the damage you built up.

this how they keep it balanced, if there are no enemys left, you have no need for the damage.

Also as you can mod spore to have 3 corrosive procs/sec you can easily kill everything with a decent melee weapon 2-3 sec after recasting.

Also you can get free Toxin Procs from toxin lash which were spreading as well on the Dev Buildif I was seeing it correctly.

So no need to keep the stacked damage for more than a wave in Defense

[SneakyErvin]

Looks like straight up buffs even if "toxin transfer" from spores is a little unclear.

Just the change from viral to corrosive on her spores is a huge boost along with baseline 50% status chance (that increases with ability strength). She will have better sustained damage against everything since viral as a damage type is kinda weak but the debuff is great. We will still have the availability to get AoE viral debuff spreading through her miasma, which in turn will benefit greatly from the corrosive procs on her spores. So the switch in damage types between the two look good.

Now lets look at the "toxin transfer" on spores and if they are needed or not, if it is a nerf or a buff. Looking at it quickly it seems like a nerf, but when you actually think about it, it is a major buff. In low level content the toxin spread through spores isnt needed. In high level content where it is currently nice to be able to increase damage through toxin spreading the new infinite damage mechanic will outperform it by far. Toxin damage is static, the new infinite damage will scale to the content. So where you actually need the boost in damage you will get it. And with the high status chance possibilities on spores, armor wont be an issue so health will be taken down fast even without toxin from the spores.

[ThomasBrody]

4 hours ago, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

Hello @[DE]Aidan,

I know I'm not in the context of this message, but i will give something actually informative on it. I've been playing this game a long time and I'm a very visual and mathematical guy. So far, 99.99% of my predictions based on upon workshops of what will happen, have happened exactly as I predicted. So with my history in mind, I believe my post to be of large importance to you and the DE team.

 The molt change is really nice and probably the best part about this. I love the speed buff as it makes molt's purpose actually evident as a defensive procedure. Toxic lash being a closer second in approval as having it work on more weapons than melee is nice for using her in weapon restricted missions. Miasma getting viral damage makes sense and i am for this change because the viral spread is still there, while having miasma become a supportive dps power. I love the increase in duration as it makes mobility essential to her, which is good and viral spreading would not be hard.

The problem lies with the spores acting this way. I am very happy you have removed that spore turret molt combo, as not only was that too popular, it wasn't even her best use and because it "worked ok" players were wasting her better techniques as the reliance of molt and spore was all they needed. It was a tactic that was didn't do anything really unique except save energy, that wasn't really a problem. An enemy did exactly the same job as molt. If you walk around a bit and do the same thing on enemies, grab an ignis, hit up a defense and you'll notice your tactic will work just as good, if not better.

My problem is with 2 things. Firstly, the scaling is false because while it scales infinitely, the rate will be killed off by itself. It's the cascading effect. If the spore scales, then it will either scale too slowly to matter and will not do anything substantial and die off, or too quickly and kill itself out. What i mean is that if the scaling spore damage will overpower the enemy's health, it will kill the enemy itself, spreading that to others and killing them too with even higher damage, creating cascade of kills. While this is nice in idea, it will kill out the spores and with it the scaling, because this cascading effect will keep going until there's no more enemies for it to reach, in which case, the spore dies out due to a lack of enemies at the time of spread. Then, you'll have to build back up from scratch, which will eventually take too long to do, and then saryn becomes a wash with slow scaling. At 5 minutes in, which is very low levels, the enemies were still taking a little longer than needed to die. I can only imagine a level 100 heavy in action on this tileset.

Even if you change the mechanic of enemy deaths spreading the spores, the spore will still kill itself out by over powering the enemies faster than you can spread it yourself. While star chart levels won't see the effects of this, in higher levels, this will become all too evident. The time required to get her to the levels needed will be deemed too slow. In lower levels, she'll become the super nuke because the cascade will be very very quick. This was evident in your stream, that even at solo play, which had no more than 8 enemies, the ball couldn't be kept rolling because the deaths were too fast and far in between, thus the kills were there, but the scaling was not. I think the highest you got to was 500 and it took all the enemies present to get there, then the spore killed itself off.

Plus, since it scales off of ticks and enemies hit, enemies will eventually out scale the spore, which will happen very quickly and stop saryn entirely. Her kps wouldn't even match up to endgame missions, mainly onslaught. If you reduce the scaling according to one faction, it won't stack up for the rest. If you make it too little, it won't get the job done. In missions with breaks in between, like interception or defense, she also loses her scaling every round, making it harder to maintain.

Secondly, by removing the toxin spread of spores, you have removed the saving grace of this possible change and taken away the entire purpose of using toxin with her, which is part of her theme. Now with this, what's the point of Toxin? It's nothing more than a small damage boost and a theme trick. Miasma doesn't need Toxin, spore doesn't carry it, and the sources don't do a substantial amount of it. There's really nothing in her kit that needs or benefits from toxin other than a small damage boost and neat effect to pass the time. Maybe condition overload lad, but that's it.

Toxin spreading spores was good in that it scaled off of damage done by toxin dot at the time of the spore being popped, which spread partially to other enemies. This didn't scale any more than the weapon you were using, but it was consistent, at least for those that understood it, which is not something to be ashamed of. Complex mechanics are not bad. Any mag main knows this to be true. Just needs some decent explaining.

The toxin spread means that you have 2 methods of the spores dealing their damage, which is your damage input and saryn's damage input. This means you get more dps towards your spore which is a plus to help push the scaling mechanic of the spore without it killing itself, because in lower levels, the spore's damage will be most prominent because the toxin will not be there to get, but in higher levels, the toxin damage is gonna help get your spore the kills to spread even with a spore damage less than the enemy's health, which stops it from overpowering the enemy, thus it prevents the cascading effect and prevents it from killing itself off, because the toxin itself is taking up some of the dps required to kill, so when it spreads, it won't be too strong for the enemy, and when the higher level enemy does come that starts out scaling the spore, you'll have the toxin effect in to help.

It's a win win.

Also, I'm not a fan of the venom dose getting changed to corrosive, as its buff is made useless when armor is stripped with the exception of infested, but if the teammate wanted corrosive, he would've built for corrosive, which a toxin based venom dose would help all the same, while also helping the guy using viral and the guy using toxin.

Just my critique and prediction from an old vet with a mind solely focused on warframe. Thank you very much for reading.

almost no abilities scaled the way saryn did, it was unique, but an outlier. Toxin is still toxin, its a DoT that kills non armour foes and bypasses shields complete.

As long as the range of the spread wasnt lowered, and the damage ramp up isnt too slow ( hard to judge based on only 8 enemies shown in demo), Im okay with it, even though my riven mutacyst cernos is meh now.

 The toxin spread calculations were a little inconsistent regardless. And wwith this change, a level 30 saryn with good mods  wont need to also have a maxed weapon with good mods to make spores viable.

And for my playstyle, I like the corrosive part of it. 

Now the screen wont instantly die at low and mid levels, and I get end game scaling versus that armor in pubs.

 The only problem I really see is that if the enemies are being killed by myself or my team mates too quickly and the damage doesnt ramp up before that spore line is killed off.

And just waiting around waiting for a new pack of enemies while the first pack slowly die isnt going to be fun. 

[ThomasBrody]

20 minutes ago, Darkuhn said:

this how they keep it balanced, if there are no enemys left, you have no need for the damage.

Also as you can mod spore to have 3 corrosive procs/sec you can easily kill everything with a decent melee weapon 2-3 sec after recasting.

Also you can get free Toxin Procs from toxin lash which were spreading as well on the Dev Buildif I was seeing it correctly.

So no need to keep the stacked damage for more than a wave in Defense

They dont spread toxin anymore. thats why it scales dmage by itself now.

[Hixlysss]

14 minutes ago, Darkuhn said:

this how they keep it balanced, if there are no enemys left, you have no need for the damage.

Also as you can mod spore to have 3 corrosive procs/sec you can easily kill everything with a decent melee weapon 2-3 sec after recasting.

Also you can get free Toxin Procs from toxin lash which were spreading as well on the Dev Buildif I was seeing it correctly.

So no need to keep the stacked damage for more than a wave in Defense

But the purpose of these changes is to make her better for longer missions, they used level 1k enemies as an example. If you can't keep that damage up and have to sit and wait for it to tick up in order for the power to be useful...I mean if it's just for corrosive procs and such why even give it scaling damage?

Being able to keep at least some of the damage you built up is needed, or else the idea of making Saryn for higher level gameplay doesn't exactly work. I mean having to tick the counter up every single time? That's just...annoying. Imagine if you had to do that with Nidus.

[ThomasBrody]

23 minutes ago, Hixlysss said:

Exactly. Or even normal missions, because the spores have to spread from enemy to enemy, and as soon as the last enemy is dead in that room and the spores haven't spread...you just lost your combo counter. Or as pablo mentioned, an enemy five rooms back still has spores on it and you have to 'pop' them with the power 1 in order to recast the spores on new enemies, but you lose all that damage you built up, it's just...bad, it really hurts her.

It hurts in round based modes at the start of the rounds,

Thats why you use toxic lash and your ult instead of just sporing on low level/mid level enemies. Which is fine with me. Saryn crushed mid level and below too fast and easily. Viral proc and scaling with ur weapon with huge aoe with no LoS issues.

[ThomasBrody]

1 minute ago, Hixlysss said:

But the purpose of these changes is to make her better for longer missions, they used level 1k enemies as an example. If you can't keep that damage up and have to sit and wait for it to tick up in order for the power to be useful...I mean if it's just for corrosive procs and such why even give it scaling damage?

Being able to keep at least some of the damage you built up is needed, or else the idea of making Saryn for higher level gameplay doesn't exactly work. I mean having to tick the counter up every single time? That's just...annoying. Imagine if you had to do that with Nidus.

Its needed only if you use her for spores and refuse to use other abilities.

Okay lets imagine nidus. The maggots were infinite duration and spread infinite times, increased in damage the same way. And passively gave you stacks, and stacks were infinite.

Doesnt seem bad at all.

Even if the spores did not maintain damage, they will strip armor and allow for the units that usually have teh most damage to die way faster (pubs with no CP aura)

 

[petrinosg3]

19 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

 

reduce miasma energy cost from 100 down to 70-75 energy because of the ability having very poor amount of damage even with 200% power strength . also increase miasma range to 25 meters so it can spread spores more effectively and deal more overall damage in a better area . make regenerative molt a part of molt and give a miasma augment instead that will do 200 gas damage when an enemy has been killed from miasma and add gas damage to the miasma status procs damage increase !

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Darkuhn]

vor 11 Minuten schrieb Hixlysss:

But the purpose of these changes is to make her better for longer missions, they used level 1k enemies as an example. If you can't keep that damage up and have to sit and wait for it to tick up in order for the power to be useful...I mean if it's just for corrosive procs and such why even give it scaling damage?

Being able to keep at least some of the damage you built up is needed, or else the idea of making Saryn for higher level gameplay doesn't exactly work. I mean having to tick the counter up every single time? That's just...annoying. Imagine if you had to do that with Nidus.

I don't see any problem with it, as we rarely encounter enemys with lv 300+

also this:

vor 3 Minuten schrieb Thep10xer:

Even if the spores did not maintain damage, they will strip armor and allow for the units that usually have teh most damage to die way faster (pubs with no CP aura)

and you always have weapons that deal tons and tons of damage.

Saryn won't be press 1 and afk, you will have to work to get the most out of her.

Edited May 11, 2018 by Darkuhn

[Hixlysss]

Just now, Darkuhn said:

I don't see any problem with it, as we rarely encounter enemys with lv 300+

also this:

and you always have weapons that deals tons and tons of damage.

Saryn won't be press 1 and afk, you will have to work to get the most out of her.

Sanctuary Onslaught, goes up to 280. Beyond that keep in mind "Endurance Runners" are a thing, people who play and go up to level 5k.

There is a difference between an AFK machine as she was, and then being forced to wait for it to build up again to be useful. As an example, let's use SO. Each new level you've lost all previous damage you built up, and so you have to spend time in the level building up the damage again to be useful, as you have to kill the enemies quickly. Or let's use the accident issue, if you tap 1 again the spores pop and you lose ALL damage you built up and have to do it all over again.

It's not too hard to add in a function to make it work like melee, where you have X amount of time to hit an enemy before it resets the counter(Which I still find stupid) or just have the damage tick down when it's not on enemies.

[kyori]

Is the 'forced synergy' refer to spore & molt combo? I don't think that is forced synergy, it's just a convenience for players to spread spores through her molt.

A better forced synergy will be Nidus 1 & 2, as his 2 has the only function of drawing enemies together so his 1 can hit them as his 1 goes in a straight line. Ok, some also use his 2 to temporary cc enemies when reviving fallen teammates.

Just starting to watch yesterday's prime time and Pablo said he did Saryn, Nidus and Harrow, also said he felt about Saryn's forced synergy, and that reminds me of Nidus' forced synergy. So hopefully Pablo will rework on Nidus next, according to that 'forced synergy' logic.

[Darkuhn]

Gerade eben schrieb Hixlysss:

keep in mind "Endurance Runners" are a thing, people who play and go up to level 5k

yes they are a very small part of the community and DE stated many times that "Endurance Runs" won't be where they balance the Game.

vor 3 Minuten schrieb Hixlysss:

Or let's use the accident issue, if you tap 1 again the spores pop and you lose ALL damage you built up and have to do it all over again.

then its your mistake and you have to live with that.

 

[Gui_Hyperion]

Good changes at all, BUT spores dealing corrosive sounds like a bad idea...

Viral works in every faction, but why change to something that focus in just one of the 4 factions? How the proc of corrosive can works so fine against the infested? "Oh nice, but nows it has infinite duration... And who already think that a Bombard Lvl 200 will just stand still until we can strip all his armor? Lvl 1000? It you just shot you one time and it's over. Viral is more powerful because it's works just fine and yet, some enemies can resist a lot even affected with it. Spores is/was a ability that aim all the enemies in game, but after this rework...? Why not come back to talk about a Armor Rework overall?

The other changes seems really relevant, I can see synergy now and it looks cool. Sounds, details, minor changes...

[Dregster]

Thematically this change really just flips the weirdness that a miasma causes corrosive damage to a spore now doing it. Not a big deal.

Miasma really needs more though. The ability to selectively cause a viral proc is cool but it does not really work in a way that supports the name. It should linger more. Spread more. Mechanically I suggest this work in a way where, when miasma is triggered it has a certain size but over its duration it grows. Initial size should be tied to power range but the the growth should be a fixed amount per second making the final size tied to duration. The Damage of this ability is less important than a reliable way to spread Viral procs (especially after losing it on spores, maybe) so the size and duration especially should be increased. Having enemies, hit by the initial activations, carry around a miasma cloud would also be cool. That cloud should also grow but be much smaller than the primary cloud. This would make the power much more reliable in moving fights. Also should be cast faster or at least have the stagger trigger as soon as the ability is triggered so it covers your getaway and you don't get minced instantly.

Spores, I think, would need to be a modal ability. Being able to pop the spores is cool, but it is restrictive to only let you have one activation running at a time. It would simply lead to too many cases of annoyance when you have to pop the spores to move them to a new target. This makes it annoying to use in situations where enemies are spread out (you ran into it in your presentation). If you made it so popping the spores was done by holding down the power button, and otherwise letting the Saryn place as many spores as she likes, this problem would be avoided and play for the Saryn would be more fluid and less restrictive. It would also allow the Saryn greater control over her damage scaling. Letting Spores also spread both viral and toxic effects on the target also really needs to stay. It is just feels like to much a part of Saryns kit and theme to be removed.

It would really be nice if Molt kept at least some interaction with the other abilities. Personally I like idea of having miasma also being triggered from an active Molt. It works thematically and will add some nice consideration to where you place the Molt. It becomes not just an escape but an active offensive ability.

 

[Darkuhn]

vor 9 Minuten schrieb Hixlysss:

Sanctuary Onslaught, goes up to 280.

and in this mode everything gets reset to 0 in EVERY Zone (except Nidus stacks, the get reduced by 5) so even a counter wouldn't help in that mode.

[Callback]

If spore keeps the interaction of spreading toxin procs this could be ok, especially with the new lash.

If the toxin interaction is trashed then Saryn gets basically trashed with it.  The toxin spread is her main form of scaling.  It's a way to transfer weapon power into ability power, and the proposed lash changes make sense with it.  Do not remove toxin spread if you want her to remain viable.

At least work it into the new system.  Make toxin proc damage on spore targets feed into the scaling ticks.So if I hit an enemy and apply a 500 damage per tick toxin proc, and the enemy has spores, immediately increase the spore scaling by 500 as well.

Ideally this could work in a way that the old spread was bugged.  If the hit that applies the proc kills the target, it used to just not carry over.  But if it's the spore ability itself that is duplicating/absorbing the proc, it might be able to still work.

Edited May 11, 2018 by Callback

[(XBOX)Jes9119]

Could we instead of changing arguably the best frame around, not? The complaint of no one knowing how to actually synergize with her existing setup is solely because new players(less than 50hrs) don’t actually take the time to really learn anything about what they have and what it’s capable of. I would love to point the finger at power leveling but I’ll also point the finger at making the prime easier to get than the normal. If something is easy to get and easy to max to the point where they use the frame for all of an hour, to don’t get the chance to get to understand the nuances of her. If you use her abilities in order and actually look at them she’s perfectly well rounded as she was. This, this change is going to throw off long time Saryn mains. And the logic of making her the queen of toxin? Making her corrosive instead of her signature toxin kind of defeats that purpose...

As for the issue of “Set it and forget it” if done properly you should only have to cast it on Molt once, and use her four on it to increase its range. She has amazing utility in large areas. As long as she’s used to the best way she can. 

Now I will say I have no complaint about the infinite scaling damage on her one. This to me sounds like the only benefit coming to it. Why make it something that can be spammed and abused? Then a weapon nerf will ultimately happen because people aren’t using status based weapons to strip armor...

Molt’s damage absorption after cast seems a little ridiculous to me. If you need to cast it, then do it, stack her one on it then get far away and hit your four. Stunning/killing everything to give you a slight breather.

Toxic lash looks great going forward. Keep that.

Miasma, why? Why change what works? If the room is sufficiently coated in viral proccing enemies then a single miasma should kill them off. It’s a high cost ability that shouldn’t be used to exclusively strip armor, use weapons for that. Like I said with the one. 

I am in every way defending Saryn as she is. Please don’t kill Saryn. Don’t change the frame, change the players...

[CF_HoneyBadger]

I like it! Looking forward to testing these out.

I recently (2 days ago, actually) decided to dust off my Saryn and try her at Elite Onslaught, and have been having a huge amount of fun with her. My "1" button may be getting a bit overused,  but the more I user her in this mode, the more I like her.

My feedback is please don't remove the energy regen from her 3 when bursting spores. It helps her recoup her massive energy costs, if even slightly. Having a caster frame that can't cast [due to lack of energy] is really blah.

[Keltik0ne]

3 hours ago, TermiteFrame said:

She still has viral in her kit, if you actually had a deeper understanding of her kit you would know that she's going to be just as effective onslaught if not more so (and we'll pretend this wasn't in the works since February 16th) viral is still in her kit and attached to burst damage where viral actually shines, while a new corrosive proc is attached to a multi tick infinite ticking dot which is where corrosive shines. This is a buff. You can pretend otherwise like the people with the last rework did, but it's a buff.

You seem to have missed the point of my post, that corrosive spores will be less useful on onslaught than the current viral, easier spread and recastable version. 

Guess what, they will be less useful, even with miasma being viral, since you can currently spread viral goodness around the whole map with a few casts, using toxic lash and a long ranged melee to maintain energy (and health if you use the right melee build).

Taking away the recast and swapping to corrosive is a nerf, straight up, to the mode I was talking about and while it's probably needed (sporeyn is devastating in it) it is in no way a buff.

In onslaught, you know, what I mentioned. 

Edit: however, having just reread the new lash ability, it has insane damage potential, miasma and molt are not going to be greatly useful, but lash, that;s scary if it makes it to live. 

In fact, it has to potential to be really, really game breakingly OP, I admit I missed it totally in the spore change, I mean, dear god, it has the potential to be by far her most damaging ability.

Edited May 11, 2018 by Keltik0ne
rereading ftw.

[Knight_Ex]

Wait, so spores are no longer required to be popped with a primary weapon and scale on the damage? Cause if thats the case thats a MAJOR nerf to Saryn's kit, and sounds like the changes are made because of recent onslaught and the massive number of Saryn players, I understand the majority of people use the tired and true method of Molt+spore+spray and pray to deal damage, however there are some of us who prefer a more hands on approach like with manually casting spores on enemies taking out your most powerful weapon and landing a headshot, a Lanka with a crit riven combined with saryns spores ment the map would die quickly,  it sounds like DE is once again dumbing down mechanics on a frame while at the same time nerfing them to the ground damage wise, now granted this might not be the case, if I can still pop spores with my primary weapon and scale my damage off that then thats fine, however if I can only deal spore damage by recasting the ability or scaling off my power strength then I'm done with the frame altogether and will chalk it up to another Frame that DE dumbed down with a nerf cause they couldn't handle the scaling the players could achieve.

[Camato]

4 minutes ago, (XB1)residentevilpro said:

Miasma, why? Why change what works? If the room is sufficiently coated in viral proccing enemies then a single miasma should kill them off. It’s a high cost ability that shouldn’t be used to exclusively strip armor, use weapons for that. Like I said with the one. 

I am in every way defending Saryn as she is. Please don’t kill Saryn. Don’t change the frame, change the players...

I think you are missunterstanding something here.

Miasma is going to proc a viral damage, and spores are doing the corrosive damage.

 

Maybe it got already covered in anther post.

But i wonder, since it says, spores are getting spread when a enemy dies by them.  Does this also count for enemys killed by your teammembers or yourself with any weapon?

IF this is not the case, it seems pretty useless, unless your team wants to wait till the spores kill a target. (good luck against corpus)

Another thing i would like to know, maybe from another experienced Saryn player,

is it intended that the viral damage from your current spores hit the shield of corpus instead of the life itself?

[Darkuhn]

vor 2 Minuten schrieb CF_HoneyBadger:

My feedback is please don't remove the energy regen from her 3 when bursting spores. It helps her recoup her massive energy costs, if even slightly. Having a caster frame that can't cast [due to lack of energy] is really blah.

you wont have to constantly recast her Abilitys with the upcoming changes, the 1st explodes when recast and has infinite duration and her 3rd and 4th will have longer base durations.

[Jakizu]

I've been playing since the original beta launch and have been using Saryn literally since her release. She also consistently holds a primary place of use with me. Her first rework was amazing and in my eyes perfect compared to other warframe rework, but this proposal doings way to good to be true. Anyone who understands Saryn like me would be mire than excited but with this being time 2 I'm extremely afraid of what you're taking to compensate for all you're "giving". When can we get more information about that? I'd hate for her to end up stifled just to appease a community of complaints from players who don't even identify with her as a frame.