[Update 22.2.0] Saryn Revisted 2.0 Feedback MEGATHREAD

[Raisopod]

5 minutes ago, AEP8FlyBoy said:

Maybe make it a hold to explode, press to cast.

That's what I would like to see.

I second this. You should be able to cast spores as many times as you want, then press and hold to detonate. It would make spreading spores a lot less of a chore. This is probably my only gripe about the rework is that you can't spread spores in multiple directions without detonating the previous infection point.

For example, if you have a spawn of enemies coming from the north and you cast spore on one and spread them to the others while a secondary group is coming from the south, you either have to wait until the second mob comes in contact with the first in order to begin spreading them again, or you need to detonate your first set of spores prematurely in order to infect the new mob.

I have no issues with the proc type swap or anything else. Personally I hated the old playstyle where you basically stuck spores on your molt and hit it with your melee weapon and killed everything in a 10 mile radius, I found it extremely boring. However there's no denying that it was effective, at least. The ability to re-cast spores without having to detonate the previous instance would make the rework a LOT better in my honest opinion.

[Feuershark]

I believe that Spore should've stayed with its Viral proc instead of Corrosive. Worse, now it's her ult which has Viral ! People are gonna spam that 4 like it's P4TW all over again. Between what I see from the comments here, and my experience, this update to Saryn is horrible. The only thing I appreciate is the longer duration to Toxic Lash, but extending the buff to all "attacks" is a mistake. It's now just a standard buff like any other. I don't know the popularity of her augment, but if little people are using it, I'd suggest to make it an augment and not included in the ability. And now you can't use Spore on  her Molt ! 

I know that some people have been abusing the Spore + Molt to wipe rooms in defense/interception, but just adding simple limits would've been enough.

OK that was a bit of a rant but I loved Saryn before this change, I don't know if I'll play her again after this

 

Also, Spore is buggy as f*ck, I had max range and I only could affect 6 enemies top, on an interception mission. No one was geared to wip out tons of enemies at once, so the lack of enemies cannot be responsible for this.

[jestir256]

I normally fly to the defense of changes DE makes to Warframes in general, even when they weaken some aspect of the 'Frame's capabilities. As a DOTA enthusiast, I have a frankly painful notion of what changes constitute an actual unequivocal Nerf, and I can count on one hand the number of times this has actually happened. I certainly am prepared to defend the changes made to Saryn's 2, 3, and 4 abilities. 

The problem is that I... just... can't defend what has happened to Spores, and the ruining of this ability is so severe that it breaks the rest of the Warframe. And not for lack of trying, because I really like some of the changes:

-Corrosive type: I'm not a huge fan of the supremacy of the Armor Meta, but the ability to quickly and easily spread corrosive procs into clumps of enemies makes armor scaling much easier to deal with, which I assume was the point. It'll be nice to have the opportunity to use auras other than Corrosive Projection in endgame contexts.

-Damage scaling: This is a good IDEA, and I'm glad to see some implementation of it. It's probably mathematically unworkable (see below), but good scaling mechanics are key to maintaining relevance across multiple play levels, and I'm encouraged by how frequently and direct this is addressed.

-Comprehension: Saryn, has, at least for me, been very easy to understand intuitively, and almost impossible to explain procedural. The changes to Spore will make it much more accessible to new players puzzling over the Wiki.

Unfortunately, there are things about the changes to Saryn 1 that I don't like, and they so thoroughly defeat the ability that they erase most of the play value of the whole Warframe.

-Recastability: Casting Spore again now detonates all Spores, instead of applying them to a new target. The result is that players can only exert transient, oblique control over where their spores are, and even that control is obliterated by the presence and activity of other players. Sometimes, the spores DO propagate aggressively and effectively, but this now results from circumstances that players cannot foresee, predict, or control. Players who see a clump of uninfected enemies must make a miserable choice between resetting their spore damage and area progression and recasting the ability, or leaving the clump uninfected. This is the opposite of fun! I STRONGLY urge DE to consider making spores recastable, perhaps by making the spore detonation ability trigger from an ability hold (as with cycling arrow types on Ivara).

-Damage Scaling: It feel that given its current or former propagation mechanics, attempts to make Spore a scaling damage ability are mathematically futile. Given the health spread from levels 1-100, I don't think there is any way* to tune Spores damage so that is at once effective in the late game and not massively overpowered in the early game. Moreover, I do think that this should even be a design objective; Spore's prechange value lay in the viral effects that it caused and its ability to transmit toxin damage, not in the damage that the spores themselves inflict.  After the rework, Spore brings an arguably MORE valuable status effect to the table, but because players cannot control what enemies are actually afflicted, the benefits of this change are neutralized. 

*It has been suggested by my peers that mathematically balanced damage scaling could be achieved by making the damage progression calculation relative to enemy level. This could probably be done elegantly, but it would defeat the objective of transparency.

[ZarakkiZenn]

21 minutes ago, NytemareRhosyn said:

i agree with all of this, tried several builds reforma'd once. just.. she fails. i cant keep her stacks going, or keep them spreading. teammates kill the mobs to fast. or the range is to short. Or from what i have seen, SPORES WILL NOT GO THROUGH WALLS. even if the enemy is within range. it seems los dependent. 

I noticed something along these lines too. Can't say if it's LoS or a cap on how many actually spread at any given time or if enemies dying from scaled damaged makes them not spread or something. What I can say, after testing in several defense tilesets, is that it's trash. I reverted to 4 spam because that seemed more efficient. Here's hoping that this is a bug and not as intended because, frankly, spore spread is the reason most of the people who liked Saryn liked Saryn. Taking away her molt-spore combo is enough for low level afk farms, but I fear a nerf to spores was always the intent, and, much like Ember, said nerf is being passed off as a buff in other regards.

Honestly, these nerf/buff reworks are worse than a straight up nerf through range, damage, whatever.

Edited May 17, 2018 by ZarakkiZenn

[ICUH]

Okay few things about Saryn rework

Spores
Bad spread 
Fix: either let us cast more spores (hold 1 to detonate) or let enemy death spread spores regardless who killed it
I often had to chase enemy with spores which could be anywhere in the map or simply give up detonate and recast.

Molt
Augment always needed
Fix: make enemy more prone to attack molt 

Toxic Lash
Nothing
But can you make this on/off skill rather than cast? It's NECESSARY to use it to spread spore more effectively

Miasma
Spam
I say this has almost no synergy with other skill. It's spammable nuke. At least make all spore to detonate to spread.

Overall, it's kinda lack luster. Feels rushed without testing or at least tested with just solo play in mind.

[Twilight053]

Miasma's 4 became a new press-4-to-win. Ran with her with maximum efficiency and strength, and, I got myself 1,250 damage per tick (2,500 since it's Viral).

[Jalhar]

So far the problem with spreading spores can be explained by 3 different points :

• popping a spore only creates one spore, as opposed to 3 before
• an enemy needs to die from spore damage or by the hand of the spores owning Saryn to spread spores (and at half range by that) : same as before
• you can only cast spore once, as opposed to as many times as you want before

These points  put together with the infinite duration change make spores clunky to use, as you rather often end up with a small cluster of spored ennemies on the other end of the map and you're unable to spread them again without resetting the stack. It also frequently happens that because ennemies are killed by someone else they all disappear, making you hate your allies ...

Changing at least one and more preferably two of the aforementioned points would make spores smooth again to use, in my opinion. The most important change is probably to be able to cast as many spores as you want, maybe at the cost of dividing the damage by 2 each time you recast it. The current "recast to explode" is clunky, not interesting at all and extremely punitive right now. I'd also make ennemies spread spores at half range when they die, whoever and whatever kills them. That would be coherent with the infinite duration as it would help keeping spores "alive".

Those changes together should allow for a much smoother distribution of spores over the whole map, the first point allowing to have more than one generation point and the other taking care of keeping them active on mobs far away from you, while still requiring an active play from the Saryn.

Edit : ninjaed by @ICUH by 2 minutes who basically have the same ideas as me for spores 😛

Edited May 18, 2018 by Jalhar

[ThrakazogZ]

I had noticed in the Prime Time demo that they didn't spread to mobs a couple arm lengths from the group, and that was after stretch had been added for that quick solo mission demo. It was also a clue that the button that applied spores would remove them on second press, which would prevent people from running around the map applying spores to everything, bypassing the range nerf.

Hopefully, they take another look at things.

As it is now, I'm reminded of Disney's Aladdin:

Genie - Phenomenal Cosmic Power.......Itty Bitty Living Space

Saryn - Infinite Duration and Escalating Damage! ..........on 2-5 mobs at a time, if you're lucky

EDIT: After playing with Saryn many hours tonight, I'm unsure what is intended with spore spread. At one point I was convinced it used LOS, because of how inconsistent it is, but I think I saw it go through walls once or twice. I'm not really sure. Inconsistency may also be a factor when other people kill mods and spread doesn't happen. What I can say after hours of messing with the new Saryn, is that if it's not intended, then (1) make sure LOS is not an issue (or whatever is causing spread problems), (2) allow spores to spread when ANYTHING kills a spored mob (you really can't politely ask your fellow teammates not to kill "your" mobs), and (3) resolve issues when multiple Saryn's are in the group. 

I think addressing these 3 things would resolve most people's issues with the new system.

Edited May 18, 2018 by ThrakazogZ

[Buttaface]

2 hours ago, Alanthier said:

Molt is still as useless as ever.  it literally never tricks the enemy into firing at it.  You always maintain aggro.

No idea what's different in your game than mine, but the above is not the case in my game, either in live missions or the simulacrum. Molt sops off just as much aggro as Decoy, and suspect the programming is exactly the same.

[(PSN)WeeMalk5]

Well done DE peeps

Really enjoying the changes, spores are brilliant.

Been playing for six hours or more just testing stuff and having fun.

Just did a sanctuary onslaught run to zone 9 and had 2300 kills. (thats an improvement for me) on this run i was trying out high range and low strength of only 40%, was using only spores and spreading with a sonicor, well, damage numbers were around me 360 degrees.

Awesome.

Oh and the feedback, the UI couldnt keep up with what was going, sometimes saying 5 infected when it was more like dozens and sometimes not showing at all.

[Raisopod]

1 minute ago, Buttaface said:

No idea what's different in your game than mine, but the above is not the case in my game, either in live missions or the simulacrum. Molt sops off just as much aggro as Decoy, and suspect the programming is exactly the same.

Agreed, I can always get aggro off of me whenever I use molt, the only time molt fails to save me is if there's AoE damage going off in the viscinity of my molt (IE a Nox is trying to attack me mid-molt). I just really wish the augment was integrated into the skill itself, they made Saryn more involved in combat, but she still gets shredded and has no method of self-preservation besides molt and spoiler mode.

[VoidFlux]

Not sure if this was intended or not, but when spores spread, they no long go through walls. Tested in mot, wave of bad guys coming down a curved stair case. 2-3 every 5 secs.  hit one with spore and spread it, kill the guys, two more come around the corner with no spores on them.  wasn't sure if it was just a weird glitch, went to a long hallway with a door 1 guy came through the door other ran by door and door closed. first guy was hit by spore and popped other guy wasn't effected.   this happened a few times where a wall or door was in the way and protected the mobs from the spread.  Open areas spread works well, but when you get in to maps that have alot of walls and obstacles spread is dwarfed.  

[HidesHisFace]

49 minutes ago, jestir256 said:

The changes to Spore will make it much more accessible to new players puzzling over the Wiki.

This is the second time I see this and I wonder HOW is reworked Spores easier to understand?

Previously:

- spam spores, shoot them or hit with toxic lash to spread - spreading creates three spores, so you can spread as long as there are enemies nearby

- spores spread as long as there is viable target in range

- viral proc icon makes it easy to see how many are infected

 

Now:

- cast spores, but only once, if you cast again, they go boom

- spread by shooting spores, but only spread single spore, which limits the spreading by shooting 

- spreading got wonky and supposedly works by checking line of sight (?) - which is never explained

- spread by toxic lash

- killing apparently doesn't spread

- multiple saryns CAN cancel each other out

- no indication which targets are "infected" other than spore itself, which may be difficult to see - without viral proc visible

 

HOW is this easier to understand? Like... really, HOW?

 

Edited May 18, 2018 by HidesHisFace

[AtrusStrix]

Spores are very hard to build stacks with in groups so the damage output is very difficult to actually get to a reasonable level. Before, I could cast one spore every few minutes and be fine, now I have to cast spores every few seconds because it's so terrible at spreading, and the enemies it does spread to die quickly because they're so close to all the enemy fire. So contrary to what the dev-notes say, it's actually a huge increase in energy cost.

Because it's so difficult to actually keep the spores spreading before the enemies die, the stack never actually gets to any reasonable amount of damage. This is how it was before but before they at least did something useful, by spreading viral procs. Now all they do is spread corrosive procs. Factor in the fact you can't spread additional toxin damage makes it even less damage that before.

Corrosive damage is a huge nerf to spores over the previous viral. The only people who will benefit from corrosive procs are new players who don't know any better.

So to sum up the new spores. It now does worse damage on average than before, spreads much worse, has no utility and cost much more energy to keep up.

The changes to Saryn's molt gaining HP seem nice on paper, but the aggro effect is so bad that enemies almost never actually shoot at the molt and just continue to fire at you instead. It's still useful for the regenerative molt but that's about it.

Toxic lash is an okay change. The duration and fact that it spreads to all weapons are nice but countered by the lack of energy regeneration which makes the new Saryn even more energy hungry that she used to be.

Miasma, I don't really have any strong feelings about. It's your only source of viral now so you're forced to use it, but otherwise it's a pretty bland skill that's a decent cc, a viral proc and mediocre damage.

Suggestions:

• Most of the issues would be fixed if the spores just spread more reliably. So I'd suggest taking the line of sight requirement on spreading off.
• If you're not going to fix the spread problems, give use some way to save the damage stacks or increase the base damage, so that we can get to a reasonable amount of damage within a few ticks on 5 or unde enemies because that's pretty much all you're going to get on average.
• Fix molt's aggro effect to properly take all your current aggro or give it a stronger effect and/or more range.
• Make miasma give enemies spores as well

Edited May 18, 2018 by AtrusStrix

[Eagerninja]

Spores kept bugging out and would not let me cast them after a few rounds in Hydron. It just looked like the skill was active, saw a counter, unable to press the 1 ability...

[Ozamchist]

Just got a taste of the new Saryn, holy cow it's good. So far the only thing I would change is maybe holding spore to burst them, and give it back it's recastabilty. Early game enemies die way to fast for you to get an effective spread going, but using Saryn to kill things early game always felt like using an atomic bomb to kill an ant, now it feels like that but twice over.

Do not switch spores back to viral or miasma to corrosive though the element types are really good on the powers they are on now. That is if you actually have a good handle on the elements their damage against multiple factions, status effects, how they are applied, and so on and so fourth.

Toxic lash is the same death dealer it's always been, but now you can use it on guns, and it's melee version is on steroids. The duration is super nice, but like just about everything in this rework it feels like dialed up to a point where it feels a little overkill. 

The changes to molt are superb. The speed buff covers one of the few weakness her kit has which was her relatively low base movement speed (which made it troublesome to close gaps during melee) and the guaranteed invuln on the molt plus it scaling health through damage means it lasts longer and distracts more.

Miasma like I though meshes great with a 100% status and a viral proc which just chunks (and by chunks I mean deletes) enemies within its range, I haven't used it much so far, but I can see myself maybe using it for once.

Oh yeah her armor! It's good. I mean I didn't have trouble staying alive as Saryn but the additional armor is really noticeable.

I only slightly miss the 2 energy gain toxic lash spore combo, but her energy economy is much better, and I say this using a Saryn using negative efficiency.

[Oranji]

About 2 and a half years ago you reworked Saryn for being "press 4 to win heavy" but with this recent tweak I feel like we're kinda going back on that.
Miasma is at it again nuking rooms esp at low levels with a single touch.
(I would assume that this isn't your intention hence the World on Fire range reduction)
Old Saryn gameplay for reference

I honestly can't think of any good fix other than really lowering it's damage.
I mean it already procs "Viral" w/c is *probably the best status effect in the game alongside Slash.
(OKay...yes if we pretend that armor scaling is fine and corrosive is no longer near mandatory for now. 🙂 )
So really sort of make it more of a debuff instead of another cream on top of Spores.
Also not sure if appropriate or overkill but making it work like *Banshee's Silence* so you can't spam/recast it gives it more of a "tactical" purpose.

Other than that just a bit more consistency on the Spore spread would help but really Molt and Toxic Lash changes were super solid. Thank you for that.

 

[blazinvire]

• Spores - The detonation on recast is driving me insane, sometimes I don't know if I actually hit them so I cast a second time and realize too late, sometimes I hit the button by accident, sometimes I'm staring at a giant Spore Count that's really only killing a handful of enemies when there's another pod I'm dealing with and I can't feasible spread the spores onto them.
  The spores not spreading when team mates kill them is also irritating, because that makes me want to try and hog the killing blows just so I can keep my damage relevant, and it effectively means team mates are actually interfering with my abilities as opposed to having synergy with them, benefiting them.
  Haven't really found the detonation that useful, compared to keeping the spores alive longer so they can scale their damage up, kind of wish the nuking aspect was moved elsewhere or removed.
  Spore Propagation needs more options, namely I think perhaps some sort of persistence after enemies are killed it leaves spores in the air, that drains the spore count if there are no hosts, making the resource a bit more dynamic and easier to maintain between waves and enemy pods.  That or perhaps making it cheaper to cast while there are already Spores up, as long as Detonation is dealt with.
• Molt - Nothing but good things really, the move speed is kinda random but ultimately doesn't change much; maybe if it was more like how Operators are launched from their Warframes and less of a speed buff, but I could see that being annoying in some circumstances.
• Toxic Lash - Also nothing but good things, it's nice to have options but also keep Saryn's 'Fangs'.  Blocking boost is still kinda random... Snakes don't really block with their fangs...
• Miasma - Sad to say it's still boring -several times more dangerous now, given the Viral proc on top of the damage asplosion produces quite a shocking nuke, but a nuke is still a nuke: boring.
  Give us some more Miasma-like, something to flesh out Saryn's theme a bit better, something else for us to play with like managing Spore Count.
  Maybe an actual Miasma, giving it obscuring properties making it harder to hit Saryn, or a Hold-to-Trigger-an-Epic-Nuke and Press-to-Do-Something-Else.

[Edzhang]

Another post here, made to a point where i can mantain up to 6k spore damage on zone 12 normal sanctuary onslaught.. she’s a beast right now, though i do hope that we can get opt to cast another spore by pressing the button and hold to pop spores..

[Aeryes]

For me almost everything about this rework is stellar, there are only three things I'd like to see improved.

The first is spore spreading. After a lot of testing I'm convinced they're being affected by LoS. This is bad given how spore is supposed to work and gives very inconsistent results in regards to spreading, sometimes so bad that an enemy just a few meters away from a huge group of afflicted enemies wasn't being hit because he was at a SLIGHTLY different elevation. The spreading was particularly terrible in the void.

Given the massive power increase of spores and incredible armor stripping capability I would be totally fine with a small nerf to the range of spore, however if it is affected by LoS that is something I'm not okay with as it makes the frame very frustrating to play and seriously limits her effectiveness on certain maps to the point where you just cant keep your spores rolling and it gets reset constantly. Please look into this and if its intentional this absolutely needs to be clarified.

Oh one more thing regarding spore, not a problem just a suggestion. It would be nice if detonating spore had a casting animation. It feels totally impact-less right now and sometimes you have to look at the UI just to check it did actually detonate. It'd also be cool if you could charge up the detonation. Two times the damage of your current ticks isn't that fancy and not a lot of incentive to detonate them unless you have to but if you could charge it up to maybe 4 or 6x it would feel great.

The second thing is the energy return on her lash. This is a very noticeable nerf at times especially since Miasma is a much more actively used ability (which feels great). I do think the energy return applying to guns would be too much but I'd really like to see the effect return as something applied only to your melee. It has the bonus of further encouraging people to play her as a melee frame and if you haven't you should because she's incredibly good at it now.

And lastly something which isn't really a big deal. Her new sound FX. It's not great. I was hyped for her voice but its barely an audible whisper let alone a voice. The overall sounds also seem very muted which is fine for her 1-2-3 but I feel like Miasma in particular is lacking the impact it had previously, which feels awful considering you not only have a higher incentive to cast it but also because its just a more deadly ability in general now and should have that power reflected in it's audio. I was expecting Valkyr meets Nidus, instead it sounds more like creepy ambient sounds from an infested map.

Overall she's great, more fun, more active, more ways to build her, better augments and less cheese. It's a big win for everyone involved, except the lazy people who just used her for molt spore spam.

Edited May 18, 2018 by Aeryes

[Jimmy_TheBear]

Hey so I have been messing around with a lot of S#&$

and

It seems that you have to actually HIT to spore to spread it (no more concealed explosives/gas procs).

When you spread spores by hitting the spore, 3 spores will spread to the guys around the area.... BUT if the enemy dies from just having spore's on him, only 1 spore will spread to the other guys around, so now inorder to spread spores further you have to aim for one single spore on the enemy instead of three... 

I don't know if its a bug or something but just go into simcraft and count how many spores spread from someone just dying from one (don't pop it) and you will see what i am talking about.  

[Keltik0ne]

She's good solo, since you can game the new crappier spore mechanics without worry about team mates stopping the spread.

In teams, not so good, at least with spores (assuming dps team mates rather than a whole team of buff bots to pad your damage)

Damage shift to corrosive not as bad as I expected, mostly because spores don't spread as well as they used to for me.

 

Molt, not great, but hey, it was only really useful in spore propagation since like decoy, it has an erratic aggro mechanic.

 

Lash, pretty great, with ignis solo, you can get about half as good a propagation rate as the old spores, with much greater damage (less so in teams or tight maps) 

 

Miasma.Well, you can 4 spam again, although its not really energy efficient to do so thanks to range issues.

 

Overall, at least you didn't Ember her., but she isn't  as usable (for me) as the last rework was.

[Casardis]

SOUND DESIGN FEEDBACK

Miasma seems to lack a bit of punch when Saryn "spreads" it. It makes a nice "babump" sound that reminds me of a heartbeat, but I think an added/stronger reverb and distortion to the "babump" could really give a better feel of power from that, especially to give a more visceral feel.

[Ice_Peck]

Just now, Casardis said:

SOUND DESIGN FEEDBACK

Miasma seems to lack a bit of punch when Saryn "spreads" it. It makes a nice "babump" sound that reminds me of a heartbeat, but I think an added/stronger reverb and distortion to the "babump" could really give a better feel of power from that, especially to give a more visceral feel.

They need to give us an option to turn down or mute the new voice files to.

[Mu_Gera]

The energy regen for toxic lash could've been kept for melee only, and molts explosion could be strengthened by damage absorbed. As for contagion cloud, it could also have a status chance that scales with strength and/or have the cloud damage be strengthened by enemy health or weapon damage, cause it does not scale well compared to the other saryn augments.