Dev Workshop: Spores Revisited (Saryn)

[Rivv0]

7 minutes ago, Leqesai said:

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. 

And thats fine, with the way spores are now it would make more sense to have viral on miasma. Which is why I would rather see Miasma changed to make it a little more like the viral spreading machine she was before, there are many different ways Miasma could be changed, if they wanted to change it. I had an idea of making is a toggle that would release a viral gas from from the frame, as an AOE, but I saw the same problem with ember in that toggle. So I didn't make the edit to my original post. I like Saryn as a frame, and I only want whats best.

[TyrianMollusk]

18 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

Spores’ damage growth over time per Spore is now determined per enemy infected.

Is this the only way spore damage grows, or is this specifically just about spore growth from passive spore ticks?  I'm not clear what all grows spores.  I thought they grew from spreading and from damage ticks, but that could just have been an illusion from ticking as they attach to a target.

Can we get spore damage growth from a spore attaching to a target specifically, outside of the new cap from ticks?  It would let us participate again in the new dumbed-down--sorry, I mean simplified--Saryn ,since we can work to burst and spread spores like we are the warframe and have some contribution to our own damage, instead of just herding spores around under a cap like we're just some kind of spore attachment.

We still really need energy after the rework.  Please restore the toxic lash 2 energy on melee spore-burst only.   You balanced taking out that little energy regen with us not needing to keep casting spores, but now we need to keep casting spores again.  Now nothing at all has changed about the energy economy except to remove the minor melee spore popping energy.  Please put it back.  Just for the melee, like it was.

The weird effect for casting spores on a spored target seems really arbitrary and like it's only there to penalize mistakes or accidental recasts.  You could make a spored enemy an invalid target and drop this trap side-effect, especially since spore reductions are all the worse with our newly limited spore damage rate.  Another problem with penalizing an accidental recast is it forces Saryns to limit themselves to energy colors that will keep spores easy to see.

Also, I saw nothing there about the utterly needed fix so any Saryn's miasma and lash will work properly on any other Saryn's spores.  You already screwed multiple Saryns, but that at least lets a second Saryn have a fair chance to play instead of it being a competition just to be allowed to use the other abilities.  On the issue of multiple Saryns, @[DE]Pablo, please change spores so when a spread happens, the spores always take a slot on eligible enemies even if they have three spores already (or "always take a slot if the owning Saryn doesn't have a spore there already" for a very co-op friendly version that plays really nicely with the above suggestion to grow spore damage on spread).  You can keep the 3-spore cap and almost completely restore Saryn's ability to cooperate just with that simple little switch.  Now that spores have a cap on how many enemies contribute to ticks, a second Saryn can carve out her own spore space and play the game without destroying the first Saryn's damage increase rate.

As I said last thread, to say I am extremely dissatisfied with this rework would be an understatement, because you set out to just take away one of our complex and interesting frames.  It's not about damage.  My partner and I (who both enjoy Saryn) find every aspect of this rework boring and unengaging.  It' s just not fun.  Molt isn't fun.  Lash isn't fun.  Miasma isn't fun.  Spores make us play them instead of being our tool and power, and they don't even reward anything we do besides keeping them around.  Simple and boring is not what I come to Warframe for, so this aggressive rework has been extremely disappointing.  You took something away here, and you gave nothing to replace it.  I don't like what this says about the game.

[Konachibi]

37 minutes ago, Leqesai said:

The salt is real.

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

It's hardly salty that I can't believe the devs don't know the mechanics that they put in themselves.

I agree that the spore + molt combo did suck, and it really trivialised missions like defence, mobile defence and any missions that involved standing in one area for prolonged periods of time, but at the same time some of the new changes have been either underwhelming or negative to Saryn's overall playability. 

The way spores work right now (since the rework), they're completely useless in any missions that are level 40 or under, because they'll wipe out whatever tiny group of enemies are affected by it in an eyeblink, forcing the player to have to constantly spam it on new enemies if the player's intention was to kill using spores, where as before the rework you could often get a good spread going for a long duration, even on missions as low level as Earth or Venus, but also working great on high level missions like Sedna and Eris, using it to weaken enemies so that your guns or melee weapons could finish them off.  The old version of spores was great for newer players because even without maxed out power mods on Saryn for range and efficiency she could still contribute nicely to a team and do good damage, where as now she's so energy hungry from spores wiping out a tiny handful of enemies and having to constantly be recast that newer players cannot rely on spores as a means of dealing damage because they'd rapidly run out of energy, and the problem only becomes worse for veterans that have boosted spores damage output through power mods. 

The new Saryn works great for end-game and super high level content because spores can last a good amount of time, but for low level stuff she's completely useless because spores will last about 2 or 3 seconds before they kill everything within range and dissipate.  She's the flip side of Ember's coin, only working well if used against enemies of a particular level.

So here's an idea for an alteration to Spores to make it more... 'universally friendly'.

Spores can be cast with or without a target.  If cast without a target, a visual effect such as a poisonous flower or pustule erupts from the ground that has spores on it, it then aggros enemies to attack it (similar to how Mallet and Molt work right now).  When it receives damage, a spore is applied to the enemy that dealt the damage, with the damage of the spore starting at the amount of damage the enemy dealt (e.g/ if the enemy deals 10 damage to the spore flower, then the enemy gets a spore that deals 10 damage a second).  The spores can then be spread the normal way from that enemy, increasing it's damage for each newly spored enemy for the same amount of the initial spawn (if initial damage was 10, then the next spored enemy would make it 20, then 30, and so on).  Likewise if Spore is cast on an enemy, that enemy has spores appear on it that does not initially do any damage, but other enemies will attack them and subsequently get spores applied to them when they deal damage.  This means that even on low level missions Spores will be usable as they'll scale relevant to the amount of damage enemies can output, giving them chance to spread properly instead of flickering out in a heartbeat.

This, subsequently, would make Molt somewhat redundant, as instead of using Molt we could just create a spore flower that would do a similar job but with a spreading damage effect, which in turn means that Saryn's second ability can be changed to something better than a bulletsponge statue.  Perhaps it could be altered to a kind of 'absorb' ability, where she sucks in the spores on enemies around her to heal herself, and maybe any overhealing could create an absorption shield or a percentage of increased armour for a duration, and if used with no spores around her then it just devours a small portion of nearby enemies health for a decreased effect... and then if used with Toxic Lash active it also applies a Toxic proc with a stacking effect equal to the amount of spores absorbed or the amount of enemies affected.  Holy hell I just made some amazing ability synergy!

[CuteFoxyFox]

Well it is nice but I would leave spread after Spores kills an enemy.

True it was a "Cast and forget" but remember that not everybody plays that way. Being able to recast spores is the best thing, I just wanted it to stay.

But in my opinion Spore spreding via enemies diying from spores should stay. This was part of her theme. This Viruses spreading around enemies, numbers in the distance which were very satysfing. So I wouldn't go that way.

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Let me try to give everybody some ideas that we can come up with something.

- Spores relocated on another enemy that died from spores have its damage reseted. It means when having a room full of sapawning enemies it would not be so much pain.

- Spores spread from death from spores could be lower 4m? 2m?

- Spores spread from death from spores would be restricted to 4 or less. It means when enemy dies from spores, they go on, but for limited numer of enemies. This idea would keep Saryn some energy since she isnt so much "Not energy hungry"

- Spores spreading via death by spores consume energy per spread but do not consume if enemy is killed via player means.

- If enemy is effected by poison or viral damage spores spread even via Death from spores

---------------------------------------------------------

 

Those are just my ideas of how to make it work. I know you are making those changes becouse of Onslaught and people playing afks in the background. But do not punish all of the players for some people doing that. In my opinion no spread from death by spores is a terrible change in comparison to other you showed us in this workshop. Other changes are very welcome but taking away Spore by Spore spreading would make it a bit frustrating to play and make some problems with her energy drain.

 

To Sum up

Leaving spreading spores by spores should stay with one of (or even some of) ideas I wrote above or maybe you may have another cool ideas for it. I know DE always comes up with good ideas for everyone.

Let me say that while talking about Ember changes you did some days ago.

Ember drains more energy with time - which helps to keep out of AFK gameplay - BUT damage increses with time.

This change was really good becouse it gave something in return. When change that spore by spore spread is getting removed gives us nothing in return. Damage changes and spread fixes are only fixes not the return I would say.

 

Please take my ideas under consideration.

Have a good day
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Please look at my ideas, think what Saryn was before and how much of a change would be to take away spores by spores spread. I would be gratefull if you can think of adding one of my ideas to the spores. Just do not take away spores by spores spread please ^_^
@[DE]Pablo

[Starbunnies]

18 hours ago, Huanthus said:

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

Not likely, at least for a long while. They already got their reworks last year. I kinda feel that given how players abuse them (and Saryn), as in minimal effort for maximum payout, these changes are deserved and the frames are right where they should be.

Kinda a general rule of thumb that no body is going to listen to: If you latch on to something and ridiculassly abuse it, whether it be a mechanic, an exploit, bug, class/ character, weapon etc., then you can expect that something to get nerfed. That's kinda just how it is. If you mistreat something to the point that it effects the health of the game to where it's no longer fun for other players that you're with, then the devs will take notice. This is true in almost every game. 

[NytemareRhosyn]

woot better direction

[Naneel]

The changes sound good, I am happy to test them when the update is out.

Please stay with "no spread on death" as it seems to be the only way to get rid of the AFK problem And thanks for equalizing the spread ranges, so I don't have to worry about poping them myself.

[Kayen]

I love the toxic slash and molt rework (even if i would like a armor boost instead of speed), but i don't really get why they reworked the old spore, and making it kinda op, in my opinion (don't get angry please 😢 ), spore should deal damage (viral or gaz) only when you pop them, so it wouldn't be an issue for the other players who want to have fun killing some grineers and stuff, and the spore damage would still be there^^

[Helmed]

I guess its not completely destroyed like ember revisited so yaaaayyyyy

I would still love for DE to listen to the community for a better balance change, i mean LOOK AT THESE COMMENTS these people put in a lot of effort, calculations, and love

But nowadays it seems like were all talking to the ether/void/brickwall (look at that kuva scaling thread go...how many pages?)

[Leqesai]

49 minutes ago, Konachibi said:

It's hardly salty that I can't believe the devs don't know the mechanics that they put in themselves.

I agree that the spore + molt combo did suck, and it really trivialised missions like defence, mobile defence and any missions that involved standing in one area for prolonged periods of time, but at the same time some of the new changes have been either underwhelming or negative to Saryn's overall playability. 

The way spores work right now (since the rework), they're completely useless in any missions that are level 40 or under, because they'll wipe out whatever tiny group of enemies are affected by it in an eyeblink, forcing the player to have to constantly spam it on new enemies if the player's intention was to kill using spores, where as before the rework you could often get a good spread going for a long duration, even on missions as low level as Earth or Venus, but also working great on high level missions like Sedna and Eris, using it to weaken enemies so that your guns or melee weapons could finish them off.  The old version of spores was great for newer players because even without maxed out power mods on Saryn for range and efficiency she could still contribute nicely to a team and do good damage, where as now she's so energy hungry from spores wiping out a tiny handful of enemies and having to constantly be recast that newer players cannot rely on spores as a means of dealing damage because they'd rapidly run out of energy, and the problem only becomes worse for veterans that have boosted spores damage output through power mods. 

The new Saryn works great for end-game and super high level content because spores can last a good amount of time, but for low level stuff she's completely useless because spores will last about 2 or 3 seconds before they kill everything within range and dissipate.  She's the flip side of Ember's coin, only working well if used against enemies of a particular level.

So here's an idea for an alteration to Spores to make it more... 'universally friendly'.

Spores can be cast with or without a target.  If cast without a target, a visual effect such as a poisonous flower or pustule erupts from the ground that has spores on it, it then aggros enemies to attack it (similar to how Mallet and Molt work right now).  When it receives damage, a spore is applied to the enemy that dealt the damage, with the damage of the spore starting at the amount of damage the enemy dealt (e.g/ if the enemy deals 10 damage to the spore flower, then the enemy gets a spore that deals 10 damage a second).  The spores can then be spread the normal way from that enemy, increasing it's damage for each newly spored enemy for the same amount of the initial spawn (if initial damage was 10, then the next spored enemy would make it 20, then 30, and so on).  Likewise if Spore is cast on an enemy, that enemy has spores appear on it that does not initially do any damage, but other enemies will attack them and subsequently get spores applied to them when they deal damage.  This means that even on low level missions Spores will be usable as they'll scale relevant to the amount of damage enemies can output, giving them chance to spread properly instead of flickering out in a heartbeat.

This, subsequently, would make Molt somewhat redundant, as instead of using Molt we could just create a spore flower that would do a similar job but with a spreading damage effect, which in turn means that Saryn's second ability can be changed to something better than a bulletsponge statue.  Perhaps it could be altered to a kind of 'absorb' ability, where she sucks in the spores on enemies around her to heal herself, and maybe any overhealing could create an absorption shield or a percentage of increased armour for a duration, and if used with no spores around her then it just devours a small portion of nearby enemies health for a decreased effect... and then if used with Toxic Lash active it also applies a Toxic proc with a stacking effect equal to the amount of spores absorbed or the amount of enemies affected.  Holy hell I just made some amazing ability synergy!

 

I think spore being cast without a target is very interesting. 

[shadowOFshadows]

hmm sounds good to me . i never enjoyed afk play style  anyway . but i'll have to wait and see how it plays out .

[TyrianMollusk]

16 hours ago, Neofaucheur said:

Please, make sure that, if an enemy is killed by a spore within a few (or even one) seconds of being damaged by any other source (like a play weapon, proc or Saryn's 4, for instance), it still propagate the spores to other enemies. I believe it wouldn't go against the design of not allowing a "fire and forget" play style and help alleviate the frustration of having spore not spreading because of an unfortunate timing in damaging them.

Yeah, I feel like they missed how this makes you compete with your own kill-stealing spores, which is a horrible thing to include, but since Saryns have to run lash like it's a passive now anyway, you should see some spread on every hit, at least.

[lennieplop60]

8 hours ago, seprent said:

20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 = 600 total damage dealt to at-least 10 people and each of those ticks has the 50% corrosive proc chance 

and toss in power strength well hmm going about in pure just doubling it so we go to 200% it be 1200 with if my memory is correct 100% chance to proc corrosive per tick 

armor gonna go poof then if you do run out of hosts for spores you got a grace period (effected by duration) to get a new host for spores and start up again so you dont lose ALL your built up damage

doesn't sound like much damage on paper but your spreading it to a on average 20-30 people

Ah, I see. I didn't know those were level 1 values 😛

[hexacypher]

Aside from the lack of spreading upon death, this is an improvement on the rework probably, but seriously still a major step back from the previous Saryn Viral Spores. It's overwrought and clunky, but not as clunky as the denotation version.

I'm shocked and amazed at the serious waste of man hours (weeks?) and effort on a rework that no player asked for. How much forma on Saryns and Weapons have been lost to this utter waste of Players' valuable time? Why should any player learn a Frame and invest time and effort in doing so when you can just go and wreck it whenever you guys feel? When can we end this quixotic farce and get our Saryn Classic back? As has been pointed out Old Saryn had real synergies between abilities and thematically and lore-wise fit so much better.

The only thing good so far to come out of this farce has been Toxic Lash, but then you guys had to go and take the passive energy gain away.

[(XBOX)P1nstripe]

Looking forward to testing, however, as of this moment, these changes seem like they will make Sayrn much worse than she originally was. Not being able to spread her spores as they kill mobs is going to make them much less viable. Unless they perform some form of CC, I can't ever see myself using these. I can understand why Sayrn will be getting this nerf, but it seems too strong. If you gave her a damage cap with Corrosive still being intact, then her spores could easily kill and spread, without having the mass slaughter we currently have. If you gave the players the ability to swap between Viral and Corrosive damage during mission, like you can with Vauban or Ivara, that could add further possibilities.

Overall, a high damage cap seems like the best way to nerf her without murdering her playability. 

Also, I personally would LOVE to have the ability to build for Viral or Corrosive with her Spores, simply because of the variety, and also because Corrosive isn't that useful against many Corpus enemies, and having the ability to switch between Viral and Corrosive would go a long ways towards Sayrn's playability in Onslaught.

[TyrianMollusk]

13 hours ago, Sasuda said:

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.

It was a) a play style control issue, and b) because the rework was designed around spores dying out which you could have trivially prevented by storing them on your molt.

[Foxbat40]

19 hours ago, Huanthus said:

How will spores interact with Toxic Lash's Contagion Cloud?  Will they also pop spores? 

It is AOE damage it will pop all spores in it.

[Cibyllae]

20 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

Can be re-cast while active

20 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

20 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

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

• First, the damage per enemy you’ve accumulated will instantly drop by 20%, which will then commence the decay of the remaining damage by 10% per second (can be modded with Duration  Updated to scale with Power Strength!).

 

People are forgetting about the first change, if you can always keep an enemy in your sights there should be no reason for your spore count to go out.

[Foxbat40]

23 minutes ago, (XB1)P1nstripe said:

Looking forward to testing, however, as of this moment, these changes seem like they will make Sayrn much worse than she originally was. Not being able to spread her spores as they kill mobs is going to make them much less viable. Unless they perform some form of CC, I can't ever see myself using these. I can understand why Sayrn will be getting this nerf, but it seems too strong. If you gave her a damage cap with Corrosive still being intact, then her spores could easily kill and spread, without having the mass slaughter we currently have. If you gave the players the ability to swap between Viral and Corrosive damage during mission, like you can with Vauban or Ivara, that could add further possibilities.

Overall, a high damage cap seems like the best way to nerf her without murdering her playability. 

Also, I personally would LOVE to have the ability to build for Viral or Corrosive with her Spores, simply because of the variety, and also because Corrosive isn't that useful against many Corpus enemies, and having the ability to switch between Viral and Corrosive would go a long ways towards Sayrn's playability in Onslaught.

The new mechanic causes her spores to spread stripping armor and damaging mobs so long as those mobs are killed by other means. If they start to 1 shot the mobs then it falls off and reduces in strength by 20% plus 10% per second until you recast it. So you recast it and it is half or 40% as strong as before. It spreads again until it instant kills and falls off. This is a cycle of self balancing damage. You no longer need to tailor your toxin proc weapon specifically for the content you are playing. The ability now scales automatically. Pablo is a genius!!

[Cibyllae]

2 minutes ago, Foxbat40 said:

So you recast it and it is half or 40% as strong as before.

20 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

That said, recasting on infected enemies will put new Spores on a target with a 20% decrease to its damage per enemy for 50% of the Energy cost.

[seprent]

3 minutes ago, Foxbat40 said:

The new mechanic causes her spores to spread stripping armor and damaging mobs so long as those mobs are killed by other means. If they start to 1 shot the mobs then it falls off and reduces in strength by 20% plus 10% per second until you recast it. So you recast it and it is half or 40% as strong as before. It spreads again until it instant kills and falls off. This is a cycle of self balancing damage. You no longer need to tailor your toxin proc weapon specifically for the content you are playing. The ability now scales automatically. Pablo is a genius!!

Yes it is quite clever method of self balance 

[seprent]

1 minute ago, Cibyllae said:

 

I believe he meant that it will get hit with the decay and you burnt 2 seconds to find a host going off base numbers that would be a 40% drop in spore damage

[(PSN)Syntactycal]

I have to add my $.02

Everything sounds amazing here. Though I will agree with some counter points.

No spread on death seems like overkill to me. I'll have to try it first if that stays in but it seems to me that competing with your own spores for kills is going to be a point of contention. I would like to see maybe a reduced spread on spore death, like 6m but no lower than 4m. Alternatively, I also kinda liked that one persons Idea where the spore would drop to the ground and decay. Any baddies walk near it get reinfected. Give it like an 8sec decay?

I understand the whole anti set it and forget it but the whole letting them spread on their own is like 1/2 the fun of saryn.

I agree we should probably get that energy regen passive back for TL melee.

Can we get an invalid target on recast on an enemy with spores already on it so we dont get -%20 dmg for accidentally casting on an already infected target? (ie accidental double cast?)

I had one more but now I cant remember it. FML.

 

[Cibyllae]

13 minutes ago, seprent said:

I believe he meant that it will get hit with the decay and you burnt 2 seconds to find a host going off base numbers that would be a 40% drop in spore damage

ah ah ah

[Cibyllae]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)Syntactycal said:

No spread on death seems like overkill to me. I'll have to try it first if that stays in but it seems to me that competing with your own spores for kills is going to be a point of contention.

Its recast able, so as long as you have an enemy in your sights there should be no reason for your spore counter to decay.