Dev Workshop: Spores Revisited (Saryn)

[[DE]Danielle]

And more changes have arrived in PC Hotfix 22.20.7 (with an added Miasma changes bonus)!

Spores

• Drain occurs once per half second instead of continuous.
• Targets you cast Spores on directly will always spread on death.
• Targets affected by Miasma will always spread on death.
• Spores won't be removed by enemies going temporarily invulnerable because of void tears corrupting them.
• Tone down Spore decaying blinking warning
• Fixed Saryn’s Spore damage being removed when casting Spores on a target that is being simultaneously killed by a teammate. 
• Fixed Saryn’s Spore damage decay drain discrepancies when entering a Nullifier bubble. Damage was decaying slower the second time entering a Nullifier bubble.
• Fixed Saryn's Spores and Contagion cloud not using custom Energy colors on cast/burst.
   

Miasma

• Increased sickness Duration by 1 second. 
• Lowered Energy cost to 75. 
• Decreased damage tick to 300.

Thank you all for your thorough testing and constructive feedback.

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Spores changes are live in Hotfix 22.20.5!

We'll be moving feedback to the dedicated Spores Revisited Feedback MEGATHREAD - cya there!

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(If you’re just learning about Saryn’s “Revisiting”, this is a follow up of the original workshop changes that went live in update 22.20.0)

If you’re a frequent workshop peruser, you might recall this bold 16 font-size section in the original Saryn Revisited 2.0 dev workshop thread:

Quote

“Please keep in mind that everything you read in this Dev Workshop is subject to change from the posting time right up to the day/time it launches and beyond.”

Well, here we are! We’re coming up on a week of having reworked Saryn on PC, and it’s clear from what we’ve been reading in your feedback that you’ve all been busy testing her new kit. At the forefront of this workshop is Saryn’s Spores - Being the more drastically modified ability in the first iteration, change was to be anticipated!

In this workshop we’ll aim to break down the changes to Spores coming in a future PC update. Feedback is welcomed and encouraged as long as it comes in its most constructive of forms. And yup, you guessed it! Everything you read below is subject to change prior to and after launch. 

So let’s get into it! Here’s what we’re looking at changing with Spores.

• Can be re-cast while active and will no longer detonate all active Spores:
   
  • Based on feedback, detonating on recast felt like an unnatural transition from Saryn’s original makeup. So in an effort to maintain her roots, we’ve removed the detonate mechanic on recast so that Spores can be cast onto multiple targets.
    
    With this came the need to find a space where Spores’ escalating damage and its reinstated recast “sans detonation” can live harmoniously together. That said, recasting on infected enemies will put new Spores on a target with a 20% decrease to its damage per enemy (scales with Power Strength) for 50% of the Energy cost.

• Fixed inconsistent spreading ranges:

  • The most common report we received requested we look the seemingly inconsistent spreading nature of Spores. After rummaging around in the code for an answer, we discovered an unintended mechanic that determined range based on the specific action taken (we’ll call this “spread condition”).
    
    Currently, if you do anything other than directly shoot a Spore or hit (but not kill) an enemy while Toxic Lash is active, the range is half of its intended value. In order to fix these inconsistencies, we’ve removed this mechanic and established a new standard base range across the board regardless of spread condition: 

  • Spread Condition	Old Base Range	New Base Range
    When shooting a Spore	16m	16m
    When hitting (but not killing) an enemy with Toxic Lash active	16m	16m
    When killing an enemy with or without Toxic Lash on	8m	16m
    When an ally kills an enemy	8m	16m
    When a Spore’s tick damage kills an enemy	8m	NA*

    *We’ve outright removed spread on enemies that die to a Spore’s tick damage. Being the only wholly passive way to spread Spores, it allowed for that “set it and forget it” play style we were trying combat with Saryn in the original workshop. 

• Spores’ damage growth over time per Spore is now determined per enemy infected. And with it, a max limit of 10 infected enemies to maintain a max damage growth limit over time. To better explain this change and how it all breaks down, let’s explore it further by comparing its current state to its changed state:
   
  • Current: Damage growth is determined per Spore, so 1 damage per Spore every second. For example, let’s say there are 5 enemies. You cast Spores on one of the enemies in that group. 3 Spores are now active on that enemy. Damaging that enemy with Toxic Lash disperses a single Spore to the surrounding 4 enemies for a grand total of 7 Spores (4 enemies with a single Spore + the 3 original Spores on cast). This maintains a damage growth of 7 damage every second. 
     
  • Changed: Damage growth is determined per enemy infected, so 2 damage (can be modded with Ability Strength) per enemy infected by Spores every second up to a maximum of 10 enemies. So, using that same example, 5 infected enemies would set the damage growth to 10 damage every second (Modded damage growth of x * # of enemies infected up to 10). Reaching 10 infected enemies would set the maximum damage growth at 20 every second.
    • Edit: To clarify, the number of infected enemies is uncapped! You can infect more than 10 enemies, but the damage growth is dependent on that max. 
    • For the sake of best describing the intent of this change, we’d like to point out some of the unexpected irony between both workshops. While work on Saryn began very early on this year, the first assumption was that change was amidst her performance in Elite Sanctuary Onslaught. What actually ended up transpiring (post rework) was quite the opposite. Saryn as she is now continues to take charge in Onslaught (more so now than before). However, she’s a bit of a “one cast wonder” in Simaris’ realm. Sitting back and watching Spores destroy a map didn’t fall in line with that fun factor we were looking for with Saryn, and especially not for the other members in Saryn squads.
• Damage per second will “decay” (decrease over time) instead of vanishing once no infected enemies remain: 
  • First, the damage per enemy you’ve accumulated will instantly drop by 20%, which will then commence the decay of the remaining damage by 10% per second (can be modded with Duration).
  • Decaying can be observed in the damage per enemy meter located above Saryn’s ability icons. 
  • Nullifying effects (including Data-Conduits) increases the decay by 30% per second.

We’ll be updating the workshop with new information and changes to Spores as they come up. Thank you for your feedback!

[Nidaria]

I love these changes, thank you so much

[Dualstar]

Seems alright.

[DarkerererDoge]

This seems like a very nice change, well done 😁

[UNeaK1502]

One thing that should change is (looking at your efforts to nerf her), that if the spores kill an enemy, it should still spread, otherwise, she will be a caster frame as she used to be

 

[NotWhoItSeems]

so now saryn is moving to a more casting build type? that sounds great,

though I would keep the spread on death from spore maybe at 4m or something like a melee range,

I would have to feel how it behave in game to know for sure if I would like or dislike those changes, it does look on paper to grant saryn some great potential

edit: after playing around with it in game, the decay rate feels too fast, the fact that it scales off both power strength and duration makes it hard to build around, and due to the limition by the number of mods I lose out on range and some of the recastablity, I really wish this change would be tweeked to were the decay rate isnt just you blink and its gone, otherwise theres no point in it been there in the first place

[AuroraSonicBoom]

12 minutes ago, [DE]Danielle said:

*We’ve outright removed spread on enemies that die to a Spore’s tick damage. Being the only wholly passive way to spread Spores, it allowed for that “set it and forget it” play style we were trying combat with Saryn in the original workshop. 

And people keep asking what the points of these rebalances/nerfs are. This right here.

[ReyGanso]

oh rngesus have mercy

[Weepin]

The max number of infected being at 10 is going to hurt.

other changes are all really nice.

will have to see how it plays out.

Edit: after reading it over again, it's a bit ambiguous as to what this means. Is it 10 enemies can have spores on them or that 10 enemies is all that will affect growth? Would like some clarity on this.

Another edit: just saw the post from pablo

thank you based pablo

[Revanx]

o boi. who saw this coming? 😂

[seprent]

1 minute ago, AuroraSonicBoom said:

And people keep asking what the points of these rebalances/nerfs are. This right here.

Dont play sayrn much hell dont know how to build but hey maybe my range duration build will hold water better now XD 

[Kylo.]

Seems like she will be more interactive, sounds good.

[Weltraumfred]

well that looks nice

Edited to add:

I am not sure if you can infect max 10 enemies at a time, OR if the growth maxes out at 10 enemies, and you can infect more enemies. Could you clarify that?

[GA-Bulletproof]

Please reintroduce casting Spore on Molt (without the ability for us to pop the spores) so we can place a "hive" for enemies to get infected. 

With these changes it also would make sense to change damage types on Spores to Toxin instead Corrsovie. And make Toxic Lash corrosive. 

[seprent]

Just now, Revanx said:

o boi. who saw this coming?

Saw what coming a how can i word with with sounding like a prick A balanced re-balance? does that make sense?

[--RV--arm4geddon-117]

By the looks of it , i definitely like the option to recast without detonation so as to hit multiple mobs/groups in different areas and ranges.

The range changes are very welcome too

@[DE]Danielle

The damage growth capped at 10 enemies infected means we can have even 50 enemies infected but only 10 are going to contribute to the ramp up damage right ? Not that we'll also have MAX 10 enemies spored right ?

PS: some other frames abilities happen to destroy the spores as well as the corruption process during fissures, neither frames abilities nor fissure corruptions should erase the spores , might want to fix that while you're at it xD

[Synpai]

I hope I'm reading that "only 10 enemies count in the scaling of damage" and not "only 10 enemies can be infected"

[wichaden]

I hope these changes do not break her, or we will continue this cycle of buff and nerf indefinitely. good luck DE.

[Huanthus]

Seems ok to me,  will this kind of changes be applied to other frames such as Ember &  banshee? 

[cittran]

3 minutes ago, Weepin said:

The max number of infected being at 10 is going to hurt.

other changes are all really nice.

will have to see how it plays out.

That's not quite what it says, though that was my first interpretation too -- it clarifies further down that only the first 10 enemies are counted in the 'increasing damage's calculations -- not that only 20 enemies can be affected by Spores at any given time.

It should really make that clear the first time it mentions it, though.

[Eurobenzin]

Instead of changing the spread of spores altogether from 8m to none altogether, why not change it to an even smaller number, maybe 4m?

That way even with max 280% range, the range on it is not big enough for the "Set it and forget it" playstyle, but you are also not removing a mechanic from the spore.

In my opinion, Spores are in a great shape as it is, except for the Set it and forget part, but removing that type of spread altogether is not the fix. Changing that range to something which with a max range build will disable that playstyle you mentioned, but still keep that spread relevant, to something like a Melee Toxic Lash build, is important.

Edit: Just for some numbers, for example, with a 4m base range, the max range it could have is 11.2m which is not big enough in my opinion for this set and forget build, but if you still consider that too high, a 3m base range would equal to 8.4m which is still good for a melee build, but nowhere near close to enough for the set and forget build.

Edit 2: Either that, or making that range not scale with Power Range could also work, at or around 8m.

[AuroraSonicBoom]

Just now, Synpai said:

I hope I'm reading that "only 10 enemies count in the scaling of damage" and not "only 10 enemies can be infected"

Yes. 10+ enemies result in the maximum amount of damage growth per second. Has nothing to do with the limit on how many enemies can get infected at once.

[UNeaK1502]

2 minutes ago, seprent said:

Dont play sayrn much hell dont know how to build but hey maybe my range duration build will hold water better now XD 

Range, str, survivability (if u need it) and maybe some duration. You dont need efficiency

[chigie]

17 minutes ago, [DE]Danielle said:

First, the periodic damage you’ve accumulated will instantly drop by 20%, which will then commence the decay of the remaining damage by 10% per second (can be modded with Duration).

Is this based on Total ammount or current of the damage? if we had 1000 damage it gets lowered by 20% we would have 800 damage. next its 10% would it be either 700 damage or 720?

[seprent]

Just now, UNeaK1502 said:

Range, str, survivability (if u need it) and maybe some duration. You dont need efficiency

Primed vigor primed flow Vitality steel fiber Streach Augur reach Primed continuity and uh constitution i dont remember i know my stats are 175 duration  174 range