Dev Workshop: Spores Revisited (Saryn)

[SneakyErvin]

1 minute ago, BiatrizLP said:

well need more buff in 2 skill is useless

Not really, it removes all status effects, speeds you up and draws fire as you get away. It is also a perfect distraction if you want mobs to go a certain way.

[BiatrizLP]

il y a 25 minutes, BiatrizLP a dit :

2 skill needs more reasons to use, more synergy. How about a buff reach on it? Your melee weapon gains spores slash, would be visually amazing 

 

il y a 1 minute, SneakyErvin a dit :

Not really, it removes all status effects, speeds you up and draws fire as you get away. It is also a perfect distraction if you want mobs to go a certain way.

distraction need more work , speed is blee . well I dont like

[den2k]

14 hours ago, [DE]Pablo said:

Unfortunately this led to people casting Spore once and hiding while Spores played the game for them, so that couldn't really stay.

Which has been fairly good to level her up 😄 Spore, Molt and dash away. To be honest I am forced to do it, since my Ignis Wraith usually takes care of enemies in a fraction of Spore time.

[yakri]

Quote

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”).

 

 

So is unintended mechanic the new code word for an official mechanic added in the official patch notes after it was requested by the community almost 3 years ago?

 

 

Because that's a weird way to refer to a definitely intended mechanic.

[Vicious_Raptor]

Everything seems nice to me, except for the "Spores don't spread on enemy death anymore" part. I mean, Spores do a large amount of damage, so they often happen to get the final tick on enemies' healthbars; having to cast, then shoot to spread them, then, once the damage goes up, have Spores kill a few enemies nearby and having to rinse and repeat sounds A LOT more clunky than she ever was.. how is this helping her gameplay feel more fun/consistent? She's gonna go back in to oblivion if that change goes through, at least for me..

[Nilat]

Love the tuning of the ability but ->

this is too complex mumbo jumbo.  The Re Design helped Saryn to simplify the abilities like the hidden Energy back on Toxic Lash.  Now The Spores are too complex. A new player has to learn about how and when it spreads, growth rate of damage and limit, decay of damage and so on.

I Like the new Idea of the spores but please make clear documenations in the litte explanation tab of the abilities.

[Rahlgrim]

I hope that the dev team takes another look at some of the parameters of ESO. Right now we are deep into some rigid min-maxing to grind out really rare (and not great) drops, leaving alot of potentially high damage frames on the table, because of how ESO is set up.

I think the Energy reset (where it is reduced to Mission start levels of energy) should occur every 2 waves, instead of every 1. Since these waves are paired off and culminate in a loot drop, this makes sense to me.. and will help with pacing alot.

I also think the Ability lockout (I've gather enough data on that ability!) occurs a little too frequently. I understand why it exists, but sometimes it is a bit too jarring and inconsistently punishes frames.

I see trouble with this mode at the moment.. as we have really lackluster rewards, and a setup that is pretty much meta or bust.

Right now, the meta is either map-clear Equinox, Saryn, and maybe 2-3 other frames. The objective of the mode is to grind out 2% drops that are either Peculiars (novelty that gimps weapons) or 2 re-released weapons (one of which is fodder).

There could be alot more potential, and still the same challenges, if the framework of ESO was worked out a little bit more. And, if we could get some legitimately new weapons in there (Sobek or Kohm Wraith anyone?) there would be more sense of accomplishment out of the intensely long grind it presents.

[Orison28]

Does the damage cap scale with ability strength?

 

[ReDRoS]

When a Spore’s tick damage kills an enemy

8m

NA*

 

 

bad very bad low lvl the game will die from such a balance of argument

[Vanrythzx]

i like these changes, we are getting there, boys&grills!

[(XBOX)PhilfyRatBagZ]

We don't have the rework on consoles yet, but I'd like to join the feedback.

Changes in this rework look better than 3.0 and I can see the +/- trade-offs too, I like it so far....even if just by the numbers..good work Pablo

My question thou are:

1. Will base damage (on spores) still be 10 and effected by power strength?

2. Is having 2 or more Saryns in a squad blocking each other's spores being addressed?

3. Now we can maintain spores with recasts (resulting in a constant higher number of enemies effected) Will this effect Saryn players in lower level missions dominating games and coming back to bite you in the #um like "Ember" did? I can see it now,  new/low MR players crying about how Saryn steals all the kills blah nerf blah blah nerf (I liked how 3.0 spore changes burnt out quickly on low level missions) That was smart!

 

On a side note, I know this is about spores but

Can Molt be changed so health regen is part of Molt and the speed boost be on the Augment instead? I hate volt speed buff and I'm fast enough already.

[Huanthus]

6 hours ago, Konachibi said:

You simply cannot stop frames from doing what they do best.  Saryn passively kills everything with Spores, Ember passively kills everything with World On Fire, Equinox passively kills everything with Maim, Mirage passively kills everything with Prism, Nova passively kills everything with Molecular Prime... it's just what they're meant to do.

And i agree with you on that,  heck even myself have shamesly sensed accomplishment on doing that,  but,  it gets old.  Let me phrase it this way Veterans often complain about having nothing to do and a non existing endgame, these kinds of mechanics of passively killing anything dont help with that its more like an instant gratification that gets old quickly  and you end up needing harder and harder content but when you get it then you find ways to trivialize it and begin the complaint cycle anew,  let me summarize it like this:

I dont want to lose the ability to kill everything fast,  but also i dont want it to be so easy that i can yawn  presing 1,3 then shotting an spored enemy and then wait for it to do all the work for the next of the round, overall it hurts the game that's all about shooting,  movement and usage of awesome abilities

[blaes]

@[DE]Pablo : So we're taking the marathonian approach to saryn heh? Build it slow (even slower now with the cap to enemies contributing to damage growth), and loose it slow (decay instead of just disappearing) though at 10% per second it won't be too slow (and will force duration builds which you mentioned wanting to leave it as a choice in the prime time).

Not my preferred style, but i can work with that.

You might have to revise the damage value though, because with a 200% power strength build (or rather, 194% in my case to be precise) the base tick is ~20damage. That's a 200 damage growth per second max with a cap at 10 enemies contributing. Even if you double the base damage, that's still only 400 damage growth per second. That is very slow. More like a stroll in the park than a marathon. As a reminder, with toxin proc spreading, we could easily get tens of thousands of damage per tic, literally in seconds (30902 damage per tic in less than 10s in this video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HSEqyMRk7M). And even that pales in comparison of spores first iteration, when it was called venom and there was no cap to the amount of spores that could be stacked on one enemy, enabling exponential progression. No need to go back to such silly stuff, but yeah, a 200 (300 at best with a 300% power strength) growth rate is really slow, and just doubling the base damage on that (to reach 400-600) won't be nearly enough.

As for enemy death not spreading spores, i'm fine with it, mostly, though i do feel like toxic lash could provide damage reduction instead of blocking bonus, at least when your selected weapon is your melee, since we can't attack (and thus spread spores) while we're blocking, and vice-versa. At least with ranged weapons you can pop spores while mainly behind cover. Not so much with melee.

[HidesHisFace]

So far, sounds good, I'd say.

I'm only worried a little about the lack of spread when enemy is killed by a spore, although it should balance out with return of actual recast and more consistent range on everything else. We will see how it works when delivered, I guess.

[BL4CKN0ISE]

@[DE]Pablo I'm liking the sound of the new changes, but I ask that you please consider giving us the ability to increase the scaling damage by inflicting toxin damage on infected enemies. This will really help Saryn at the highest levels like long endurance runs. 

The damage scaling is just too slow for 200lvl, 500lvl, 1000lvl, etc. enemies. It wouldn't make her OP at lower levels, but would allow her to be great at really high levels like she use to be. It would also add back the loadout aspect that's missing now. She use to work really well with specific weapons, but now anything is good because of Toxic Lash. I like the buff to Toxic Lash, but I still would like to see her being great with high damage Gas/Toxin weapons again. Thank you. 

[Milinko]

Ok so all that needs to be done now is bring back the energy gain She had because she is a heavy caster again and then this will be the very first rework that I think was implemented and balanced perfectly. She has no useless abilities no useless augments and scales without being overpowered.

Now my only question is why can't ember get this kind of love, like having her 3 reduce incoming damage or just not nerfing her 4 so it can actually be used for more than 2 seconds, and have it scale per enemy killed by heat damage.

[Rivv0]

I miss viral on spore, I really do. Miasma isn't cutting it for what it is. I suggest for Miasma, for those that would like their Viral Queen back, you put a duration spread on it, like Nova's 4. Or even make it based off of range. Maybe some new animation effects like the Infested swarm clouds you see floating about on Infested Tilesets based off of energy color, that would look super sick. These clouds would rapidly seek out enemies and consume them. Just a personal thought on what Miasma could be. 

As for what spore is now and what they're suggesting in this revisited workshop, I have the same general complaint about not having spore spread on spore related deaths, if anything I agree with lowering the range to 3 or 4 (preferably 4) instead. Don't hurt muh baby! On top of that I don't like the sound of the 10 enemy cap for damage.

I feel like Molt is still a little underwhelming, it doesn't protect you enough to keep you in the line of fire. She needs some damage resistance. Something more than just a decoy that kind of works. Either the decoy has a stronger aggro pull or Molt becomes something like shattershield or Iron Skin.

With Recastable spores making a return I think it might be wise to allow some energy regen back on toxic lash, not as much as before, maybe .5 or  .25 instead of the full 2. With the change to toxic lash buffing all your weapons we have more options for how we damage crowds and pop spores and a toned down version of energy return would give Saryn back what she had before, I think.

I hope a few things from the comment section are seriously considered, and that you all take your time with Saryn, don't rush. Don't kill her please :c

[Huggalump]

Saryn main here, and this is a better fix than anything I had imagined. Well done.

[Leqesai]

There is so much confusion in this thread.

These changes are largely gains to functionality and when this goes live hopefully people will realize this.

 

[Konachibi]

2 hours ago, yakri said:

So is unintended mechanic the new code word for an official mechanic added in the official patch notes after it was requested by the community almost 3 years ago?

Because that's a weird way to refer to a definitely intended mechanic.

Yes, the very same 'unintentional mechanic' that's been in Spore's ability description for those same 3 years so people could SEE that spores would 'unintentionally' spread further if the player took the time to manually pop them instead of letting it automate.  It's not just that the information was in the game, it's been in the wiki since forever too, and they updated the description for the ability with the spread differences right after the update for her came out, so the wiki people knew more about how Saryn worked than the devs did!: http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Saryn/Abilities

Why are we trusting a dev who doesn't even know how Saryn works mess with her abilities again?  So far the only genuinely good changes we've seen to Saryn is Toxic Lash and some visual and audio improvements, but the speed bonus from Molt is kinda useless, changing Spores from Viral to Corrosive makes it useless against all Infested Ancients (seriously, those things just tank spores like they aren't even there) and Miasma is as 'meh' as it's always been.  Saryn is swiftly straying further away from being 'the queen of poisons' and turning in to some formless mass of damage dealing with no identity.  Next thing you know they'll be giving Molt a radiation cloud AoE or letting Toxic Lash change element depending on your colour choices.

[Leqesai]

5 minutes ago, Rivv0 said:

I miss viral on spore, I really do. Miasma isn't cutting it for what it is. I suggest for Miasma, for those that would like their Viral Queen back, you put a duration spread on it, like Nova's 4. Or even make it based off of range. Maybe some new animation effects like the Infested swarm clouds you see floating about on Infested Tilesets based off of energy color, that would look super sick. These clouds would rapidly seek out enemies and consume them. Just a personal thought on what Miasma could be.

I completely disagree about the viral on spores vs miasma. Viral on miasma is awesome and provides an extra layer of utility to the ability.

Corrosive on spores is also great. 

 

Viral on spores wouldn't work with the new infinite duration thing. That basically cuts enemies hp by half until death, which is ridiculously overpowered. 

[Leqesai]

4 minutes ago, Konachibi said:

Yes, the very same 'unintentional mechanic' that's been in Spore's ability description for those same 3 years so people could SEE that spores would 'unintentionally' spread further if the player took the time to manually pop them instead of letting it automate.  It's not just that the information was in the game, it's been in the wiki since forever too, and they updated the description for the ability with the spread differences right after the update for her came out, so the wiki people knew more about how Saryn worked than the devs did!: http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Saryn/Abilities

Why are we trusting a dev who doesn't even know how Saryn works mess with her abilities again?  So far the only genuinely good changes we've seen to Saryn is Toxic Lash and some visual and audio improvements, but the speed bonus from Molt is kinda useless, changing Spores from Viral to Corrosive makes it useless against all Infested Ancients (seriously, those things just tank spores like they aren't even there) and Miasma is as 'meh' as it's always been.  Saryn is swiftly straying further away from being 'the queen of poisons' and turning in to some formless mass of damage dealing with no identity.

The salt is real.

 

Personally I love the changes to saryn. Spam spores on molt sucked and I hope it never comes back.

 

 

[Arrari]

All changes to Saryn from start looked so unbalanced and overpowered. Growing damage, spreading by killing... And now she will be just where it was. At "2worhtless2use" category. Why bother with some "spreading" mechanic, when it work exacly as nidus? Except he is better in all. Yeah, i know that spores will spread through walls, but come on. With new capped damage growing i don't see any point at this 500-600 damage per second, when enemies have 10-20k at ESO. 

Thanks for the first rework. It was fun.

[P_Johann]

Can we just go back to pre-rework spores with ability to carry toxin damage? Just keep them corrosive and no molt turret :V

[(XBOX)Sexy Paydaybar]

I have read at least 10 pages of comments post before me. I like the ideas and concerns that were mentioned. I think I am pretty good at learning about people ideas, improving them and finding possible solutions.

I know this thread is centered around spores and will focus on that specifically in this post but, I must say that Saryn's abilities do not synergize too well and want to help with improving this function. None the less, her spores are the most important ability in her kit and other abilities should synergize with it more effectively. I want to change the perspective of how we may view the spore with its new growing mechanic. As we imagine, think of the spore as a living poison that thrives off of toxin and viral elements. Feeding the spore with toxin and viral elements increases its growth physically and becoming larger the damage dealt is increased. I want to promote a more active playstyle when welding this warframe by facilitating her growth and spread of these spores.

The new spore mechanic with infinite duration is perfect but the automatic infinite damage scaling with time has created a problem of set and forget it playstyles which I don't like. I understand that there were measures put in place to lessen the rate of damage scaling which I am content with but there may be a further solution to the problem.

One of these measures was to address the escalating damage of spores. I think that the damage should not increase or ramp up over time by itself with no aid. Remove the infinite scaling up by time factor completely. This will directly address the afk set it and forget it playstyle. Instead, have a spore only ramp up and spread when the player or players feed it to grow by using viral and toxin elements. This encourages a more active and fun playstyle.

A great synergy with one ability that would go along with this feeding of the spores is Toxic lash. Side note I love the changes and direction with TL its great and I do have some ideas that may help improve this ability synergy and snake shedding theme but will save for later. Currently, Toxic Lash adds toxin pocs to all weapons the warframe is using and burst spores on an enemy when it is hit . TL would be very effective at increasing the growth of these spores giving its toxin nature.  With that being said, I would rather have the spore not burst but, with every hit a % of the damage increases the growth of the spore. A major change from what we are used to but, a change that would address peoples concerns about maintaining stacks on enemies to a certain degree, and other teammates blowing up the spores too early for spores to do there armor striping work with the corrosive nature of spores. (Side note I did not like the idea of the viral and corrosive change between the 1st and 4th abilities but after reading the feedback I can see how the armor striping is mechanically better on spores) To push the idea and security even further is the spores will only increase growth when fed toxin or viral elements and nothing else and nothing pops the spores because that kills Saryn's DPS/power/functionality. Next I will address the decaying to death of these growing spores.

The second and third measure addressing this set it and forget it playstyle was the spore tick that kills an enemy not spreading to other enemies and the reduction of the ramping up in damage. Removing the damage increasing over time factor lessen the lethality of spores by themselves giving the third measure for decay of the spore to be refocused on each spore directly. I am okay with the spore not spreading to other enemies but an addition to change should be that when the spore successfully kills an enemy, the spore plops to the ground devouring the enemy that died. Logically, when it plops to the ground it has no host left so the spore begins to decay over time. I am cool with the current decay rates and the immediate decay drop and reduction in decay rate do to duration mods all those tweaks can apply to this spore idea. While the spore decays, enemies that come in contact with this decaying spore will become infected with a new spore that will need to grow. There is a possibility that the decaying spore can will continue to decay to its death while infecting multiple enemies that may come in contact with it; each contact creating a brand new spore on each enemy. Or the decaying spore can attach itself to the first host it comes in contact with resuming growth from its current decayed health. With that being said a spore function like this could resolve problems with the current spore design. 

Other ideas for the spore is each enemy has one spore and recasting additional spores on an enemy makes the current spore stack its base up to three times being a three times multiplier affecting the growth when feeding viral and toxin procs to stacked spores. Another main idea with this non busting spore when spreading is that it does not transfer the original spore health and size but spreads in either two ways. Relative to the original spore's current position any enemy unaffected by a spore and/or non fully stacked spore will become infected with a brand new spore or two the original spore divides itself in two smaller spores that spread to each unaffected enemy. With the nature of toxic proc being able to DoT on an enemy this could allow a temporary auto growth in a spore's health as long as the toxin proc is active on an enemy.

Other ability synergies with growth of spores

As the definition of miasma suggest an oppressive or unpleasant atmosphere which surrounds or emanates from something. or a highly unpleasant or unhealthy smell or vapor. Miasma would double the current state of all spore's health in the radius and spores that enter the radius of where it was casted.  Repeated cast can increase the health of spores but could have dimensioning returns. Or the density of miasma cloud is greater near the center and dissipates the further away from the center thus the spore growth would have a greater multiplier near Saryn and less of a multiplier the further the spores are away from Saryn's initial cast. 

Molt: when it explodes releasing toxin, the spores affected by toxin should have a multiplier on spore's growth and/or temporarily increase the health of spores for spored enemies affected by toxin procs.

This doesn't have to do with spores directly so you can pass over these ideas for now but its on my mind as I think on Saryn's abilities as a whole and the types of playstyles and synergies I would like to use her in I feel like I should mention it. Toxin Lash is an ability I like the changes so far with but would like in addition to the changes a full straight built in damage reduction % while the ability is active. This damage reduction I would like to resemble the shedding of a snakes skin. As Saryn takes damage from enemies while toxin lash is active it builds up a damage reduction in the form of old skin\pre-molt. As the damage reduction approaches (by every 100 damage points taken is 10% DR gained)  90% capped damage reduction, her movement speed is reduce to 50% but attack speed would stay same. I could understand this would inconsistent with the full body shedding snake skin restriction to all aspects of movement, logically, but prefer it not to effect all aspects of movement  This would give her the survivability she would need to be a melee tanking Saryn while she sacrifices movement speed.  side note yea this could really suck with a hobbled key 😄 This old skin\pre-molt should maintain its existence regardless of toxic lash being renewed or expiring. In consideration, Activating molt will free Saryn of her old skin\pre-molt losing the DR buff and speed debuff. the old skin\pre molt can act as a bonus multiplier to the molt's health gain in the three seconds of invulnerability to include synergy between the two abilities. This may or may not help with the dislikes of the speed buff after leaving molt in its current stat by giving a speed debuff 😋.

I hope you enjoy the read I probably could explain things in more detail but I strongly recommend take the non busting spore idea into consideration for future improvements. feel free to bounce off these ideas I would really like to see this in action.

I love you [DE]Pablo Great Job