Dev Workshop: Spores Revisited (Saryn)

[NINE_IRON_08]

I'm not sure about these changes

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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 periodic damage for 50% of the Energy cost.

I dont know why people were complaining about her 1's detonation. Only being able to cast spores once made Saryn feel different in my opinion. It made people ignore other enemies that didn't have spores and only attack the ones who had so the spores could be spread. The reverting back to enabling multiple casts would make this method a "why bother" for spreading spores that way and go back to "spam 1".

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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. 

A better idea to combat spread from spores damage tick killing an enemy would be a application of diminishing returns. for example when spore damage kills an enemy, the spore still spreads but will only do 50% of the damage, and if that one kills the enemy then when it spreads it will do 50% of the 50% damage. This of course would be overridden if spores spread to the enemy from the other spread methods to still encourage spore spreading via player action.

Quote

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. 

The Diminishing returns mentioned above would mitigate the "set it and forget it" play style that you are trying to mitigate while still keeping to core functionality of the spores (essentially it starts becoming more about spreading the corrosive status effect vs damage dealing if someone isn't actively popping spores themselves)

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Damage per second will “decay” (decrease over time) instead of vanishing once no infected enemies remain: 

• 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).
• Decaying can be observed in the periodic damage meter located above Saryn’s ability icons. 
• Nullifying effects (including Data-Conduits) increases the decay by 30% per second. 

This is the main part i like from what I see right now in my opinion. I do feel that the 20% instant drop may be a bit much but that will be best determined by gameplay.

[Cat_Driver_0930]

In my opinion, it is good to see that “set it and forget it” play style will be removed. However, since we will rely on killing enemies by ourselves in order to spread the spore in this change, it is necessary to show which enemies is being infested(or at least showing some of them). As spore will not spread anymore by themeslves, a tracker is useful to find the spore which had been spread to somewhere we don't know(those enemies who stuck). Or help us to find the one infested in a group of enemies.

[Nockd]

Instead of recasting on targets with spores I would rather get an invalid target message, with your allies potentially spreading spores to your target a moment before you cast, well you just blew your energy and cut your damage by 1/5th. Due to players needing to run 200%+ range this will probably be pretty common.

 

The scaling nerf in combination with removal of spread on death seems pretty heavy handed.

 

I'd prefer non scaling, weaker spores that spread toxin procs.

 

[MasaJin]

The spore decay is pretty high considering the big slow down on damg ramp coming with that cap. also with spores not spreading on death if u do get that damg up there and everything dies on 1 tick spores becomes useless that is probably why the decay is so high but that makes her 1 less fun to use being the infection of the map felt good seeing all those numbers and chasing down whose infected to spread her babies. while on that subject can we get some indicator to where the infect are like seeing them on the map or through walls? keep up the good work i like most of the changes so far ive enjoyed my self more than i thought with these changes.

[Khlamydia]

Spores spreading on death was the one interesting thing Saryn did. It let you target a dude, blast it to spread everywhere, then watch it go a bit and hit a group around a wall or corner... then the damage would tick away for long enough and eventually find more people to hit because that original group died so you didn't have to check every single room one at a time to slowly clear an area. I cant even describe how many times spawns will show up 2-3 rooms away and never walk towards the party so your just sitting there looking in circles wondering if the code for the game broke, watching the wave progress bar that cant move forward till you clear them all out and it turns out the enemies are spawned hiding around all of the corners of the map behind walls. Basically, I see Warframes pathing AI is just too poor and or slow to justify removing this spread on death feature. It's keeping the wave based missions fun and fast without making them into a tedious chore to complete. Tedium isnt fun.

If you have to hunt down every single dude to spread the power around, why am i not just killing the enemy with the gun in the first place?

[ZodiacShinryu]

32 minutes ago, NINE_IRON_08 said:

I do feel that the 20% instant drop may be a bit much but that will be best determined by gameplay.

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.

38 minutes ago, NINE_IRON_08 said:

I dont know why people were complaining about her 1's detonation. Only being able to cast spores once made Saryn feel different in my opinion. It made people ignore other enemies that didn't have spores and only attack the ones who had so the spores could be spread. The reverting back to enabling multiple casts would make this method a "why bother" for spreading spores that way and go back to "spam 1".

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.

[Thesiobhan]

15 minutes ago, Khlamydia said:

 Basically, I see Warframes pathing AI is just too poor and or slow to justify removing this spread on death feature. It's keeping the wave based missions fun and fast without making them into a tedious chore to complete. Tedium isnt fun.

If you have to hunt down every single dude to spread the power around, why am i not just killing the enemy with the gun in the first place?

This. infinity this. The ENTIRE point of saryn and how the spores spread was that I did not have to shoot every enemy. If I need to shoot enemies to spread spores, then I don't need spores because... WHY WOULD I BRING GUNS THAT DON'T KILL ENEMIES?

I'll be perfectly honest, if you are going through with the change where I NEED to shoot enemies to spread spores, then there needs to be some incentive to do so beyond spreading spores, as currently with how spores ramp and everything it doesn't seem that even using spores will be worthwhile. Saryn will become a frame that is basically a 3, and a 2 for a speed boost. I'd suggest that if you are going through this change, bring back Spores ability to spread toxin procs. (and actually make it work consistantly) This would actually give you an incentive to USE spores, and a benefit from spreading spores by shooting.

[I.V.A.R.A]

I did see 20/sec unmodded. So if we had 400% power strength that would be 80/sec. So it's like getting one bullet from a soma prime every second. Because power strength can't even hit 400%. Am I reading that right?

 

Really, I could care less and don't want enemies to die from it. I want it to strip the armor quickly because the unfathomable amount of people that don't use Corrosive Projection and thus make every single thing you do in game 70% harder (because my CP will take off 30%). These same people... "my killer-machine-extra-prime does 15,000,000 per shot". No... as soon as the enemy level is over 110, that'll be 15 damage, bud.

 

Can we look into that, maybe? Cause scaling is never going to change obviously. So there should be plenty of frames that can adequately strip armor (in case you wanted to level weapons so they, too, could strip armor) and especially ones that don't require an ULT because Simaris and the "always lose your energy" DE-meta that is Warframe.

[Top_Kekkonen]

Please no, revert her back to 2.0, this will put her in the ground, like the energy drain increase to valkyrs 4 did.

[Top_Kekkonen]

5 hours ago, Eurobenzin said:

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.

Perfectly said. I feel like this is an "overkill" nerf by removing it outright.

[ICA-970326-47]

None of the changes I want is listed, but I'm ok with these. They seem like in a right direction, thanks for your hard working.

Edit: Unfortunately, after playing Saryn today, I can say I am still not a fan of Spore's damage type been changed to Corrosive. It's just not good in many ways including modding, team synergy, fighting different factions, etc. I do have suggestions about how to make old viral spore together with the infinite scaling idea works without becoming overpowered or not playing actively. The suggestions are posted below.

@[DE]Danielle

@[DE]Pablo

My idea is that the scaling damage number would not affect Spore's DOT but can be used to enhance other abilities that Saryn has as I posted in the feedback megathread. In the original post, I also did a lof of analysization centered around the reason why new Saryn is not Fun.

Part of the original post is below:

Spore:

Basically change it back to what it was. However, remove the viral explosion damage when a spore is popped. Hence the 2-111111 spammer is banned forever since there is no burst damage but pure Viral Debuff. In addition, allow the Spore to carry the Toxin proc again. By combining this with the new Toxin Lash, it could do some not-so-crazy AOE damage and create a more clever, active playstyle.

Then, add in a new mechanic（Which is based on the idea of infinite scaling.）. When the spore is infecting an enemy, a damage number is shown by the new UI meter that would infinitely scale. The more enemies are infected, the longer the spore is infecting, the damage number scaling faster. (Or any other scaling mechanic you think it will suit.) Considering the old Spore has an internal CD of spreading to an infected enemy, the scaling speed would not be broken.

This scaling damage number would NOT affect the viral DOT damage that spore deals during its existing duration. Spore act only as a tool to spread Viral and Toxin proc, while generating this scaling damage number. 

The scaling damage number could be used as an additional resource to enhance other abilities, just like Nidus' Mutation Stack.

There are several ways I can think of here:

1. The damage number would be added as additional damage to your next Miasma cast. After this cast, the damage number is refreshed or consumed partially.

This would solve the problem that Miasma is basically untouched after the rework and still not very worthy to use besides as a CC.

If the player wants to deal more damage by Miasma, he needs to play actively to keep more spore infecting more enemies for a longer duration. The player will have an AOE nuke similar to Day Form Equinox's 4. By carefully playing the number, this strong AOE that could deal corrosive damage would be very rewarding but not broken. It can absolutely nuke the map but need time and effort to build the damage up.

2. The damage number would be added as additional damage to the Toxin proc created by Toxin Lash on its next casting(Or some similar enhancing effect). After this cast of Toxin Lash, the scaling damage number is refreshed.

This is just another way to utilize this infinite scaling resource. The player would have to think that if he wants to deal more damage by the Toxin Lash, but have to spend the time to build up damage. Considering how enemy Armor and Hp scales, the Toxin damage type, and Toxin Lash has a limited duration, this would not be a broken ability. The player can let the damage number scale to a very very high level after a long duration, and do some really insane AOE damage since Spores can carry Toxin Proc. But he would only able to do this like 5 minutes once.

 

However, besides Spore, a few other tweaks are still required.

1. Please allow Toxin Lash to regen 2 energy back again, but limit it to melee strike.

Firstly, right now Saryn is back to her casting playstyle which is what I love.

Secondly, spore is never the true energy-hungry ability that Saryn has. You will need to constantly cast Molt to do distraction and self-healing in the tough face to face combat, and frequently cast Miasma as an emergency CC. 

Finally, able to self-regen energy means melee Saryn can leave a free mod slot on the frame or the melee weapon. It would allow her to constantly channelling melee and utilize Life Strike without Rage, or maintain alive by Regenerative Molt and build melee weapon for more damage, speed, range, etc. It's just a fantastic feature that has a lot of potentials.

2. Please allow us to cast Spore on Molt again.

Considering the brainless 211111 spamming is gone, this would not be a game-breaking mechanic anymore. However, cast Molt--Evade/Roll--put Spore on it is just a fantastic way to engage battle safely in a high lv combat since Saryn can be easily 2 shotted. Also, this is just a cool skill chain that players can have. It makes you feel like you are a skilled player and acting like an awesome space ninja.

 

All in all, still a big thanks to your hard work. May you have a nice day.

Here is just a player who spent 280 hours playing Saryn in almost every mission type crying to make her interesting while not overpowered.

[GreyEnneract]

So are you going to give her more survivability through Molt somehow or nah?
Miasma still isn't actual Miasma as well you know.
Lingering AoEs in the visual form of a cloud can't be that hard to code.

[Skyguard1]

I don't feel so good about the maximum limit on total enemies effected by spores. How about we make 10 the maximum it can spread to in a hit using toxic lash and 5 for the spore popping on its own.

[GreyEnneract]

3 minutes ago, Skyguard1 said:

I don't feel so good about the maximum limit on total enemies effected by spores. How about we make 10 the maximum it can spread to in a hit using toxic lash and 5 for the spore popping on its own.

Read the post again.
There is no "total enemies affected*" limit.

[Sasuda]

8 hours 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).

Long enough it would total reset on Defense and interception missions every wave then. The 10 enemy max damage ramp will probably also mean that it's especially bad on those mission types. Depends on how much the Duration and strength will affect it. Might be ok for Exterminate at least now, should be ok for Mobile Defense but Miasma will probably still be the go to.

Quote

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. 

EDIT: So after some time to think and reading some comments I also agree that the cap should be a soft cap of some sort. Ideas range from halve the damage growth after 10, or diminishing returns beyond 10 of something like 2 * x^{-#of enemies infected}+#of enemi(... and so on, math), or to have it's growth in sets of 5 so at 5: (3 * #Enmy up to 5 = 15dps), at 10: (3 * #Enmy up to 5 + 1.5Enmy above 5 = 22.5dps -> round up 23dps), at 15 (3 * #Enmy up to 5 + 1.5 * #Enmy above 5 + 0.75 * #Enmy above 10 = 26.25dps round up 27dps). You get the idea. Have its growth continue but not to the same extent personally I prefer the last model the most since it makes the Spores more usable with fewer enemies while remaining beneficial to target as many as possible. Obviously numbers can be tweaked accordingly.

Synergy issues & thoughts
Unfortunately this still seems like Saryn won't be all that interesting still. No synergies really. Sure some synergies were forced and abilities relied on them too much but now we don't really have any. I mean passively Miasma and Toxic Lash do damage which can spread Spores but that's like anything that does damage spreads spores. It's just like Synergy was all the first rework focused on at all, and this has focused on throwing all of those away again.

If you want a suggestion for one that could work without backtracking on what you set out to accomplish (namely Molt + Spores turret). Just make it so players and teammates can't pop Spores placed on Molt. Molt becomes a landmine tactic. So it still has synergy and isn't a defense/emergency run only tactic.
Why the Molt + Miasma bomb was removed I'm not entirely sure other than it removing Molt as a Defensive tool, but if that's the issue just apply the Viral status to the Molt instead of it completely blowing up.
Toxic Lash + Molt while the Toxic Lash + Spores regen may have allowed energy regen too easily or something or just didn't get melee applying regen separated from guns applying the regen for whatever reason, Toxic Lash on Molt could regen with the limit of Molt not being under Toxic status applied from Lash (to be clear I'm not suggesting Molt should receive damage from Toxic status from Toxic Lash just a status effect for timing purposes. Doesn't have to be Toxic proc). It could even be any of Saryn's abilities hitting Molt refunds 2 Energy once per ability until the 8s timer for each wears off. Any ally within range also gets the 2 Energy. Numbers are up for balancing and tweaking.
I gave 3 for Molt since it's the least important of her abilities atm. Other ideas & suggestions are welcome and encouraged.

Other thoughts on the rework that unlike the above I expect will be ignored:

Spoiler

Still not a fan of switching Spores & miasma from Corrosive & Viral damage types & statuses. It's fine in the end and will work, Miasma just gets really spammy, armor stripping is a lot less interesting and commonplace, and actual synergy for Miasma gets much harder to make work. It just makes a lot of sense for Miasma to do the armor stripping and Spores to be the general Viral applicator with Miasma synergies making big armor strips and damage possible.
Toxic Lash being a bit generic as more damage, at least it is oriented to apply status as well.
Spores damage ramp will still probably be pretty limited and will be a use in very specific scenario ability.
Saryn is still Starved for Energy for every use except Toxic Lash. (and no longer is spores an exception to that) Prepare for Spore spam to be added to the drain.

 

[UncaIroh]

What about needing punch through to hit some of the spores? I've experienced this that without lash on it's hard to pop spores even as saryn. This is why weapons like ignis and plasmor are great for spreading spores but it does limit our options.

[Finedaible]

Hmm, this may just work. Will need to test before i can make any conclusions of course.

[Thesiobhan]

3 minutes ago, Finedaible said:

Hmm, this may just work. Will need to test before i can make any conclusions of course.

you really don't. If you have an understanding of how the game works it's pretty easy to see how they'll work with these changes. It ain't good.Saryn will become wukong that doesn't survive. just another frame that holds guns and makes the gun do toxin damage.

[Mr.SpookSpook]

Looks legit, but when spores kill an enemy, they should still spread, just at a short range.

[meshmerah]

Yes.

[tifanator]

7 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

And with it, a max limit of 10 infected enemies to maintain a max damage growth limit over time

Please don't do this, knock the damage increase down or something

[Evanescent]

7 hours ago, [DE]Pablo said:

Number of infected is uncapped, only the damage increase per second is capped.

What if we rewarded players for optimal spore spreading and placement by increasing the cap every time the number of infected enemies? Like for every 5 more enemies infected the cap is increased by 1.

10 enemies affected: 10 contribute to dmg increase.

15 enemies affected: 11 contribute to dmg increase.

20 enemies affected: 12 contribute to dmg increase

and so on, tweaking the number of enemies needed for the bonus and the bonus itself.

In normal tiles on average I find 5-9 enemies infected per spore cast. 

[Syasob]

7 hours 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. 

Don't know how complicated the code is, but may the enemies who die to a Spore but took some damage from other sources in, for example, last second of their lives still spread spores? Please?

[Konachibi]

7 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

 

• 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: 

Ok, soooooo..... this 'unintended mechanic' was actually an intentional mechanic that Saryn has had in her kit since the day she was made.  The mechanic was "If you pop a spore, it's spread range is double what it would be if you simply killed the enemy with the spores on it.".  This meant that players either had to use Toxic Lash or aim accurately at enemies in order to efficiently spread Spores.  What?  You just FORGOT it did that or something?  This doesn't bode well if you don't even know the mechanics of the warframe you're messing with.

7 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

• • 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. 

And are you going to do something about how Saryn is now going to be energy starved like she used to be from having to spam Spores because targets keep dieing from the tick damage instead of from any other source?  Because this is going to annihilate her energy pool in survival missions faster than an Energy Leech Eximus ever could.  Sure this nerf will stop her dominating in Sanctuary Onslaught, but it's going to hurt her in every other mission type in the game where enemy spawns aren't consistant, and even more so in lower level missions where Spores will kill targets incredibly quickly and prevent the player from being able to spread them to more than a handful of enemies at a time.  Don't just look at what Saryn does in Sanctuary Onslaught, look at what she does in the entire mission roster.

[ShadowFel]

Sounds good, largely.  I would like the Spore kills to still spread the Spores, though, as otherwise it could get really ugly fighting your own Spores for kills.  It doesn't have to be the same range (in fact, it's probably best that it's smaller), but the idea that allowing Spores to build up to impressive damage would essentially restrict it to a single target ability (because everything would die after one tick) seems counter to the goals of the ability.  Giving it a smaller range (4-8m) would allow Spore kills to still spread Spores, but also make it more rewarding to actively kill Spore victims because they'd get a larger range of spreading.  I really, REALLY appreciate being able to recast while active, though, and the 20% cost seems fair.