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Dev Workshop: Spores Revisited (Saryn)


[DE]Danielle

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after playing alot of saryn lately, I more an more noticed how spores and lash work, on solo everything works like a clockwork, in team not so much if you have bad host or clients high damage weapons seem to kill enemy before lash triggers therefor not spreading, I fixed this by equiping an dragon extinguished key and my experience was improved my spore uptime was increased and spread worked in team settings more consistently

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On 2018-05-26 at 1:08 PM, feralknights said:

I'm all for experimentation but I think at this point y'all need to just wipe the slate and roll Saryn back to pre-rework.  I really like the idea of scaling damage over duration, but she's painfully obviously balanced around Elite Onslaught and nothing else.

There were things that were good in the rework and I think could stay, or be modified a bit to feel better -- Molt got a lot better, and I liked that Misama has more teeth.  Toxic Lash was a great change.  But as it stands right now she's presented as a high armor, high HP frame meant to be in the thick of it, but the only way you're going to get value out of Spores-- what her entire kit is balanced around now-- is to stay as far from the fight as possible and precision-shot enemies and pray a Nullifier doesn't mess up your combo chain and destroy the built-up damage.

Like I said, I really like the idea of upscaling powers and duration as high-end enemies in the game often end up becoming bullet sponges, but this second pass on the Spore rework just feels awful and un-intuitive to use.  I'm spending all my time and energy babysitting a meter-- and that is precisely why I also don't like playing as Nidus.

It tend to agree, I love the changes to Lash* and the change to Molt isn't bad but I just want to go back to old Spores cause New spores just aren't fun. Essentially removing the ability to cast spores on your own Molt pretty much solves the "non interactivity" issue.

The Flat damage Viral Spores where IMO more useful/fun the duration made sure you had to recast them and the spread wasn't bad. All the infinite scaling shtick seems to do is force them to make a bunch of other changes to try to counter it that make Saryn unfun to play. Theoretically the meter is cool but it ends up feeling like a chore. 

Edit:

*Technically my love of lash is half true, I do love that it now works with any weapon not just melee but the lack of the energy return synergy coupled with needing to frequently recast it and your spores is a bit of a problem. 

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I'd like to add a few more things, some thoughts i have.

I've played wow(warcraft) from vanilla and for many years and expansions, the key to why players massively abandoned it was 1st when they introduced rotations for every class, from a priest (healer) to a mage, to paladin and rogue etc, so freedom of movement and imagination replaced by macros and a specific order of moves/actions.

2nd when from a game that when released a player could select to play the features he liked (if he wanted pvp then he could play only the pvp games he liked and get rewarded) it forced the players to do everything in order to be competitive (dungeons, epic dungeons, all pvp types and arenas).

You guys are following the same steps, forcing players to play the way you like, not their way. To play an ember you have to turn wof on and off, you made her a.. buffer? you don't even know what she is now. To play saryn you have to chase a counter (rotation), etc. You also force players to go to plains if they want arcanes, or to unlock rivens that require some crazy conditions, farm like crazy elite onslaught with a 2% drop chance, split on an item pool of 15 items etc.
You should offer alternatives, more than 1 way to do the important things in game.

What I know about reworks is that they re not scheduled for monday, I have to main saryn for 1k hours or more, and by doing different mission types, trying weapon combinations, getting experience with her then I could see something, have an idea about how to improve her in a certain aspect, and for sure I wont erase everything to start from 0 cause it's a trademark frame, I d change only one thing. If i wanted to change the way all abilities work, i'd create a new frame. It's not like the number of frames is limited or something.

You may want to think about that focus ring, it s a lock in a different level that will keep players from nuking when they shouldn't, keep the fun in game and make them play with weapons too.

-And you could add some more amazing nukes that would ^open^ at the right time, instead of cutting the hands and legs of frames- 

You were so successful on ember that you wanted to repeat it.. : )

Fix operator hair, it s like they placed a dead ferret or a broom on their head.

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vor 2 Stunden schrieb Synduex:

Are spore spread not effected by power range?? When an ally kills an enemy effected with spore?

Yes they are 18m x range multi - but the Spreading by Allys don't work very well

It would help if I could share Toxic slash with Allys like Volt share speed 

 

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The biggest issue is that saryn is painfully obviously being balanced for void onslaught. Big surprise: its not the only game mode. In other game modes, even horde game modes she is just painful and dumb to use. Especially with all the bugs, like casting spores on someone who dies before the spore "manifests" removes all the ramped up damage. The decay rate is also way too fast. Again this is because they balanced her around void onslaught, or at least tried to. If you play with a decent team outside of that one game mode that serves NO purpose except exp, you barely get your spore damage over 200. In all the other game modes enemies dont spawn as much as in void onslaught, so you cant build up your spore damage. And even if you manage to, theres the bug that resets your build up damage, and that happens often.

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Since >>there seems to be no turning back<< on the form of this rework, allow me to share a couple of thoughts and ideas to make the best of what we have.

This new Saryn that offers high dps at the cost of high maintenance (a lot of resource management and constant movement) is not bad but can only perform well on Elite Sanctuary Onslaught and only if she is alone but, as far as I'm aware, this game is meant to be played in team with solo play as an option.
She has the same problem as Nidus has with building up his power, they are both "slow" burners and they have to compete with other team mates to get enemies first and hope that they won't be recently acquired subjects before they can actually gain any power boost but Saryn has the problem draining.
Nidus has to manage his stacks but he can choose when or if he is going to use his stacks.
Saryn, on the other hand, is forced to expend her venom dose either by the decay or because she constantly needs to recast her spores. No matter how anyone wants to sugar coat this you can't deny that your spores will hit a point where they kill enemies faster that you can get to them to pop them and keep the spread going and that's not even counting the fact that spawn rates and spawn points can also play against you by denying you new targets to keep on spreading spores. 
On ESO, this is somewhat manageable because of the increased spawn rates but it's a big problem everywhere else in the game. 
To this, I think we all agree that the venom dose decay and cost on recast needs to be revised and rebalanced to work all around in the game, not just ESO.
Energy wise, it's ok as is but if you increase it might create other issues with her energy economy.
Also, is there really a point for spores not spreading on death? The number of infected enemies contributing to venom dose is already capped and even at max infection, on low level missions, enemies will die in a couple of ticks regardless of build up and on high level missions you will get killed if you try to afk while your spores ramp up.

Casting spores is also an issue, you need a target and you have to actually point at a body part at the moment of casting which is an issue at long range, medium to close range is not that much of an issue to successfully cast it but in the process you become a sitting duck that get shot to death while you try to roll out of danger fast enough to then turn back and use your weapon of choice to pop the spores.
Would it be possible to make spores to work like Limbo's Banish? The animation remains the same but it acts as if Saryn is releasing a waft of her spores that infects anything in the direction of the cast up to a certain range. If too much range is an issue because it means infecting enemies that ar too far away, it can also be set to have a fixed range and extra range power affect the spread angle of the cast like Oberon's Hallowed Grounds.

On the matter of visual and audio cues for the decay starting, I think it would be better if the audio cue unique, or at least not just the same another audio cue.
I already have to keep track of the duration of Toxic Lash, how many infected units are still remaining, how high is venom dose, enemies distribution nearby on the map and how much energy I still have left to then have to be second guessing if what i've heard was the decay audio cue or something else.
I will also like to point out that the visual cue for decay dos not work if the decay process starts while you are in operator mode and decay seems runs at a normal rate while you go through portal on SO/ESO so you can't do anything but see your venom dose tank to almost zero while you wait for the transition animation to end.

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On ‎2018‎-‎05‎-‎23 at 11:15 PM, ZodiacShinryu said:

The 20% is the recast penalty for Spores being dropped off immediately so that the next cast is the correct value for the "first" cast when no spores are active.

I honestly don't know where you stand based on what you said. Detonations were indeed different playstyle to Spores but ignoring enemies that were not Spored to attack the ones that are to spread them isn't necessarily good either. However multi-casts lowers the damage of Spores which is the counter to "spam 1". Though I suppose the wording is vague and that was my interpretation, but it doesn't make sense to have two different values of Spores running around.

( I dont know how I missed this reply, I apologize)

I dont know what you mean by your first point. If the point was to make the cast after no spores are active the same as (I assume) a first cast in the mission then why do we even have the damage decay instead of immediately loosing all the build up damage?

On your second point:

- I thought the problem with turret saryn WAS the spore spam combined with staying in one spot being boring too ( the reduction in damage is... not the best way to mitigate this because your screwed either way if you recast spores when 1 enemy is effected, or when no enemies are effected, you get just as punished for trying to keep the spores spread where your spread range cant reach as you are for not spreading those spores in time.)
- why is ignoring enemies that aren't spored to attack the ones that are a bad thing? Nidus doesn't cast his 2 and then use his 1 on enemies not in his 2, you dont cast inaros' 1 then (generally) ignore them while they are blinded and attack other enemies. I'm sure some other instances apply here.
- im not sure how it would be 2 different values of spores without the damage reduction on subsequent casts while one is active?

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1 hour ago, NINE_IRON_08 said:

I dont know what you mean by your first point. If the point was to make the cast after no spores are active the same as (I assume) a first cast in the mission then why do we even have the damage decay instead of immediately loosing all the build up damage?

I was saying there is a 20% penalty in damage for the recast. If all active Spores are for any reason are removed from play but you still have "growth stacks", DE decided to just remove the 20% immediately to satisfy the recast condition because if you cast it any time after it is technically still a recast.

The decay is to make Spores more consistent around all the game modes. We already had all the damage build up (growth) disappear in the Spore iteration before this and it made Spores really rigid and awkward to use when you are fighting not only the game spawns but other players to keep your Spores up. The decay lets you save that damage and a few seconds downtime wont matter much. Most all the pertinent numbers in this case are also affected by modding.

1 hour ago, NINE_IRON_08 said:

I thought the problem with turret saryn WAS the spore spam combined with staying in one spot being boring too ( the reduction in damage is... not the best way to mitigate this because your screwed either way if you recast spores when 1 enemy is effected, or when no enemies are effected, you get just as punished for trying to keep the spores spread where your spread range cant reach as you are for not spreading those spores in time.)

Well it is situational. It is 20% of your current total so multicasting early to get the infection count up doesn't matter as much as after time passes and the "growth" is much higher. The key is that the decay and penalty is always related to your current amount at the time meaning that the loss of stacks slows slightly (stacks per second loss). Also "Turret" Saryn was a product of the burst damage of Spore popping and the overuse of the Molt synergy where casting Molt could hold a cast of Spores (and lack of need for LoS of course). Removing these functions stopped the main functions of this method.

1 hour ago, NINE_IRON_08 said:

why is ignoring enemies that aren't spored to attack the ones that are a bad thing? Nidus doesn't cast his 2 and then use his 1 on enemies not in his 2, you dont cast inaros' 1 then (generally) ignore them while they are blinded and attack other enemies. I'm sure some other instances apply here.

Again it is situational, if your Spore target is within your immediate field of view ignoring the non-spored enemies isn't a big deal. But what if that Spored enemy is a room or two away from you or maybe it is hiding behind something? Having to reposition yourself (and taking on all the added risk for doing so especially if you are just ignoring everything) just to benefit from your own ability isn't a good thing. You should just be able to activate your ability again and go about what you were doing in the first place which is what multi-casts achieves. A 20% loss is no big deal in comparison to 100% loss in the version before.

Nidus's 2 is in his immediate field of view and will always be that way unless he makes the conscience decision to just ignore them on purpose (maybe he just needs to run through). His 2 was also specifically built to combo with his 1 where the intention of using the 2 was likely to clump the nearby enemies to take them out together (by any means after that) or a small breathing room with it's limited CC. The restriction that he can only have one of his 2 active at a time and it has a set duration as long as it has an enemy also pressures him to deal with it immediately if he wants to use it again.

Inaros casting 1 and ignoring them is fairly common. It is a CC skill first and foremost. Unless he needs to kill them or needs health just CCing them is enough to do want ever he needs to do. Being that his 1 has no other restrictions means he can use it to remove some immediate threats while focusing on something else and he can do it when ever and where ever. It is a very powerful skill in that regard.

2 hours ago, NINE_IRON_08 said:

im not sure how it would be 2 different values of spores without the damage reduction on subsequent casts while one is active?

Yes. That is why I said it was my interpretation of DE's statement. The way it was worded was that a recasted Spore would be 20% weaker per enemy meaning that if your first Spore was still active you would have 2 different Spore damages active at the same time. It didn't make sense because they would be working against each other which is why I assumed that it would just remove 20% of the growth damage.

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I simple had to answer to this thread as I really love the new Saryn, my only gripe is that spores are hard to keep up in low level missions, in High level missions like sorties I can easily keep my spores going past 3000 damage for almost the entire run.

Efficiency is also no problem for me, I was worried at first because of the removal of the energy gain on toxic leash, but so far I had no energy troubles with my 100% efficiency build.

I always loved Saryn, but I wasn't this much of a killing machine since the old press 4 to melt room days.

I really hope they keep her like this for a while, I finally feel great playing saryn again.

EDIT:

After reading through more pages of this thread, what kind of builds are you people using that you can't manage your energy?

Seriously, I feel like most people having difficulty with her now have a 45% efficiency and >200% strength build, which doesn't really work well with her now (at least for me and probably for the ones complaining).

Recasting spores is also the way to go, the damage malus is neglectable in the long run.

Since the rework I have seldom been in a group where my damage was >70% at the end and I'm having tons of fun.

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Saryn still needs a lot of work. 

-Decay is too fast

-Damage cap needs to be increased from 10 to 20 (or 25)

-Death by spores should be 2-3 meters

-Energy from kills with lash should return.. Saryn is not an energy hog.

-Return Cast on molt

 

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1 hour ago, Krhymez said:

Saryn still needs a lot of work. 

-Decay is too fast

-Damage cap needs to be increased from 10 to 20 (or 25)

decay is only too fast because current damage growth is so slow. with a faster growth, the decay wouldn't be a problem.

Increasing the cap on number of enemies contributing to the growth isn't a solution, as you would still have the problem when there are low numbers of enemies. We need a manual ramp up for that (for instance, when hitting an infected enemy, toxic lash contributing 1% damage to spore pool (so if you hit for 300, toxic lash hit the enemy for 90 dmg and adds 3 dmg to spores pool))

1 hour ago, Krhymez said:

-Death by spores should be 2-3 meters

-Energy from kills with lash should return.. Saryn is not an energy hog.

-Return Cast on molt

I don't think those are good ideas.

Death by spore - spreading brings too many problems of player activity. Energy isn't that necessary, for low level stuff you just need efficiency and/or zenurik, for high level stuff rage will give you plenty. Cast on molt would in effect be a negation of the decay, and they don't want the spore turret anymore anyway.

What we really need at this point is a way to manually ramp up spores damage.

 

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On 2018-05-25 at 10:28 PM, Azrael said:

Oh boy, this should be interesting.

 

Huh? No really, what? This is... um.... not really true at all in any way? Does it take you 30 seconds at a time to bullet jump and keep situational awareness? Have you tried actually playing her? Because it's nothing like this, you cast spore, spread them, jump around, spread again, etc... You don't have to just aim and shoot 100% of the time.

 

Um.... okay so, maybe you're not aware. You see, Virulence is in a straight line and is mostly LoS, and does spike damage only. Spores is NLoS in a large radius, does DoT, and strips armor. Saryn can corrode and kill enemies in the next room, but has to keep her damage up. Virulence only works in the room you're in, requires less baby sitting, but has a maximum theoretical damage. Also Virulence requires repeated Larva casts, sometimes 1 cast for every cast of virulence, while Spores only requires Toxic Lash to be cast once in a while (it has pretty good base duration).

 

When did larva get the ability to buff your speed and heal you? Can Nidus do that now?

 

You're not even trying to make these sound the same. I thought her kit was just a bad version of Nidus's? Also you might not realize it but Toxic Lash gives a very good damage buff, and I believe even adds a free status proc, which works great with CO and healing return. These are just not the same in any way, I'm not sure how you're claiming they are.

 

So once again these are not the same and you don't even try to make it sound like they are. Miasma is not a worse version of Ravenous, they don't do similar things at all. Ravenous doesn't viral proc enemies or do instant spike damage, Miasma doesn't heal you. Maggots are nothing like spores, and they're slow and limited by that slowness. Spores are NLoS damage and corrosive procs that travel instantly. Once again they are not comparable. Tell me, is Inaros also a "worse version of Nidus" since they both have 4 abilities? Inaros even has a healing 4 and a 2 that makes you temporarily invincible! What about Rhino? Is he a worse version of Nidus since they both have a buffing ability? Trin can heal and link to enemies just like Nidus can, is she a worse version of NIdus too? This comparison just isn't convincing to me at all.

Also, I'm pretty sure she uses LESS energy now than she did not long ago. Now you can cast Spores once and spread over and over again, instead of having to cast over and over again. I've been running Hunter Adrenaline and double Guardian, works great. I take her to elite onslaught and don't even need Zenurik. You should try it. I'll bet it would be more fun than... whatever it is you're doing in this thread,

So I am not sure if you can see what he or she quoted but the other person was comparing saryn to nidus and you did a good response. So thank you blaes.

 

(FYI: It is fun to have idiots shown up like this)

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8 minutes ago, (PS4)Timmy_642 said:

So I am not sure if you can see what he or she quoted but the other person was comparing saryn to nidus and you did a good response. So thank you blaes.

 

(FYI: It is fun to have idiots shown up like this)

So are you pro 3.5 spores or pro 2.0 spores

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9 hours ago, Krhymez said:

Saryn still needs a lot of work. 

-Decay is too fast

-Damage cap needs to be increased from 10 to 20 (or 25)

-Death by spores should be 2-3 meters

-Energy from kills with lash should return.. Saryn is not an energy hog.

-Return Cast on molt

 

The decay is lowered with power strength, and is reasonable. The decay is there so you don't keep insane damage easily. 

The cap is there because they upped the rate per infected. If they increased it it would be a huge buff to what it was before. It's so you don't need so many enemies infected to get a decent rate up.

I do want it to stack with more enemies still, maybe with huge diminishing returns after 10 but something .

Death by spores back to a small radius I would like as well . (They did it this way though because the thing that kept super high damage numbers and instant killing is that damage went back to 0 when the spores got strong enough to kill everything almost instantly, but now it just decays and its possible to get up to that peak numbers right away instead of the strain dying off and they dont want the strain to spread when its strong enough to kill almost instantly)

Wait, if saryn isnt an energy hog, then why do you need energy on lash ?

The removal of cast on molt is almost the entire reason for the initial changes, adding it back would promote the stationary turret play, and it would be a little too easy to keep high damage strains of spore going, which is what they want to also avoid as well. 

What you are suggesting is basically making saryn even easier to play, with no down sides and even higher damage and up time ... She doesn't need all of that.

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On 2018-05-26 at 9:15 PM, blaes said:

It's not about disagreeing, it's about nitpicking while showing blatant ignorance on the subject.

You failed to show that ignorance, made several mistakes yourself such as misrepresenting the difference between virulence and spores, and overall contributed nothing since you were arguing with my claim that Saryn and Nidus are not the same and you stated that you agree with that position. Then you claimed I had never played pre-rework saryn. Perhaps you should find a way to make arguments that A) don't misrepresent the subject and B) don't try to poison the well with unsubstantiated claims?

Look, it's not nitpicking to point out that those two frames are totally different. What YOU did was nitpicking, and you STATED it was, but "spores is totally different from virulence" and "miasma is nothing like ravenous" are not nitpicking. So what are you even trying to accomplish?

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8 hours ago, (PS4)Timmy_642 said:

So I am not sure if you can see what he or she quoted but the other person was comparing saryn to nidus and you did a good response. So thank you blaes.

But you quoted me, not blaes.... 😄

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So after doing more work I'm gaining a little better of an understanding on this tweak.

The reason I'm liking the swap of corrosive and viral is bc with the damage climb, and our control now over status chance now, enemies would literally drop like flies if spores still did viral. That not only is very inconsiderate in a team setting but would also make miasma to an extent pointless in my opinion. Where now u can tear someone's armor down, helping the team too, and then [for bosses] stick them with a guaranteed viral proc that u can keep reseting if need be while spores keeps breaking down armor. It lets us kill with more intent where before u had to go cast happy and more or less wait for death to come. 

One issue I think a lot of us are having. I feel, in all honesty, this rework is hard to "perfect" test. I understand the changes for onslaught 100% however these changes make elite onslaught the only real testing ground for her spores. 

To go into a high level survival [ie. Mot or Taveuni], in order to fully test her, is vey hard. Before I'll admit nothing really could survive spores bc of how infinite and fast it would stack. But now once u get to enemies high level to kill, there's so many and they're killing you faster than u can kill them. And that's with a maxed steel fiber and arcane guardian. 

I do like how now you're lethality isn't purely determined by range like the initial revisit bc it made 2 of my 3 configs more or less useless. But in all honesty having range is what helps lessen this "chasing" feel when dealing with large groups of high level enemies. 

I still really feel strongly that the infected enemy max for climbing damage should be increased. At least to 20 maybe 30 tops. That way we can keep the reset decay and decay rate, but also have a less rushed play experience. I don't want to be able to click and walk away but now I have to stalk that spore counter. If I lol away for a second or stop moving I'm dead. 

If not, maybe lower the decay rate and/or reset decay. Or even maybe just have the decay rate without the initial reset. If we're being encouraged to recast maybe give more a incentive than reduced casting cost on uninfected enemy while spores is active. In practice it comes off more a degradation. Yay to reduced energy but then there's the damage cut on recast, as well as a dual decay system.

I feel like I'm being punished. You either have to just suck it up and deal with the "chase" or stop trying to be so effective. And I dont find that to be exactly fair. Before all the of my configs did different things and required different play styles.  [Gas chamber, Sludge bomber, and plague] now all play the exact same way and the only difference in results is how spores spread bc of the difference in range. I'm feel like I'm required to stick to a set flow now. 

Also don't think we need the 2 energy gain with toxic lash. Yes it technically "helped" when there are leeches but with the need to cast greatly reduced a basic rage pays out much more than before. If you're having as issue with energy I personally feel you're over casting by choice. Plenty of warframes come across the same energy theft issue and that 2 gain per melee kill honestly didn't do as much to combat it anyway. I do like toxic lash but I've shot at spores numerous times and it never popped. May be a bug [someone please let me know if it is] but being able to pop spores with our other skills would be great again. Maybe not molt as that would cause the same issue as casing spore on molt. But miasma detonating spores I think should be a thing. . I also think we need the old spore detonation with Miasma back.

Typically if you're modding for strength you lack efficiency. And if u have high efficiency you'd power strength is lower. So using miasma to detonate spores with all that's been done would still contribute to the idea of an active play style. 

P.s. Sorry if my explanation is all over the place. I just have a lot of different tweak ideas and they sometimes start to smear together in my head. 

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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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10 minutes ago, [DE]Danielle said:

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.

YESSSSS!!! [DE]Danielle will u marry me?!?! Somebody marry damnit!!! 😍

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15 minutes ago, [DE]Danielle said:

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.

Thanks for being awesome as well! These changes are unexpectedly good to have, who doesnt like more spreads am i right? Great fix on colors too and the new synergy between miasma and spore spread is godlike! Thank you so much for keeping up with the fixes and balances ❤️

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I haven't done much play-testing with the new Saryn (so take with many grains of salt!) but here are some musings I've had on her Spores. The latest changes sound great, but there are some underlying issues with the ability that have become more obvious over this period of increased attention.

Problem: Multiple Saryns on a single team don't function properly due to the limited number of Spores able to attach to a single enemy. Team-mates reduce Spore effectiveness because they don't spread it as well as a Saryn with Toxic Lash and/or Area-of-effect weapons.

Solution: While an interesting mechanic (shoot a specific body-location for a one-time benefit), it doesn't fit here due to heavily restricting team-play by multiple Saryns. The solution to this is to move from spore-based to something like Sonar visually (ie located at a random position on enemies) and limit one body location per Saryn. This would be a visual indicator of infection and not be removed on damage to that location. Spores from multiple Saryns could then coexist on the same enemy without limit. To promote team-play, Spore spreading from damage would occur no matter the body location hit, allowing Spores to spread without requiring any particular change in targeting behavior by the other squad-members. On the technical side, there would be an internal cool-down per enemy on spreading the infection to reduce CPU cost. Something like 0.5 seconds would probably work. Toxic Lash would increase the spread radius and have a separate internal cool-down to prevent enemies under heavy fire from never seeing the spread radius increase.

Problem: Current stack decay mechanics are considered 'unfun' by some Tenno because they penalize common circumstances due to enemy spawn patterns.

Solution: Remove recast and final-host-death penalties to stacks, as these promote 'shepherding' your current infection. This behavior reduces capacity for team-play and has anti-synergy with Tenno who've entered a 'murder-zen' state and kill your last infected enemy with no enemies in spread radius. With these penalties gone, the promoted play-style is to constantly seek out new enemies to infect, which feels more applicable to the current game-state (spawn-pattern-wise), and is more 'active'.

 



Thoughts on stack gathering:
One stated goal of these changes was to eliminate 'passive play', so I don't understand why damage stacks are generated simply by having enemies infected. Changing damage stack generation to only occur on kills of infected enemies that didn't die of Spore-damage would (along with the above changes) further enhance the team-play benefits of Spores by giving incentive to priming enemy groups with corrosion before your squad-members clean up and get you some damage stacks at the same time. Under this model, Miasma would allow Spore-kills to also contribute damage stacks instead of, or in addition to, its current benefit to Spores.

Thoughts on Spread-on-Spore-Kill:
If the model for damage stack gathering was changed to be based upon non-Spore-kills, allowing spread on death by Spore damage would be much easier to re-introduce. Personally, this kind of spread was part of the appeal and 'creeping death' feeling of playing Saryn 2.0, and I'd like to see it return in some form (reduced range or not). At low levels, it may be easy to get run-away spore kills going, but Miasma with high range would have a similar effect (and Reso-Quake is even better). In ESO, any kills your Spores get wouldn't contribute to damage stacks, which would make them more manageable. If tuned properly, one would need to actively kill enemies for most of the zone before kicking back and watching the Spores work.

 


TL;DR Current Spores make effective team-play nearly impossible for fellow Saryns. Current stack decay policy encourages behavior that is easily disrupted by squad-members in the course of normal play. I proposed fixes and then spouted some opinions, but I may not be seeing these issues correctly due to staying away from Saryn since the beginning of these reworks.

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11 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

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.

I like every one of these changes

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