Dev Workshop: Spores Revisited (Saryn)

[Zark_Manthra]

With Pablo clearing up the 'max enemies' confusion, I'm perfectly content, and dare I say, excited, for this rework. Keep up the great work DE, I know some people lose faith fairly quickly but I trust your judgment to stop the 'afk' playstyles without ruining the game in the process.

[Oranji]

15 minutes ago, [DE]Pablo said:

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

Good to know.
Any upcoming changes to press4towin Miasma?
 

[Malziel]

Spores being recastable is some nice QoL, but I'm worried about two things, the damage ramp up, and spores not spreading on enemy death.

If you want to lower the ceiling on spore damage, remove the ramp entirely and leave it at a base of twenty. I don't see why exactly you'd want to change this in the first place, but if this goes through I'd like to not be punished for not being able to spread spores in missions because enemies die too quickly... which brings us to the second issue. Having spores spread on death is one of the best things about saryn. Being able to watch your spores tear through a map is some of the most fun I've ever had in Warframe. I can understand wanting to reinforce a more active style of play, but I think that's already been achieved with the removal of the Spore Turret. Now that we can recast spore on uninfected enemies, there's even more incentive to be constantly casting and popping spores. Having the spread on death, with half the range, seems like a fair enough trade to me.

[seprent]

1 minute ago, Malziel said:

Spores being recastable is some nice QoL, but I'm worried about two things, the damage ramp up, and spores not spreading on enemy death.

If you want to lower the ceiling on spore damage, remove the ramp entirely and leave it at a base of twenty. I don't see why exactly you'd want to change this in the first place, but if this goes through I'd like to not be punished for not being able to spread spores in missions because enemies die too quickly... which brings us to the second issue. Having spores spread on death is one of the best things about saryn. Being able to watch your spores tear through a map is some of the most fun I've ever had in Warframe. I can understand wanting to reinforce a more active style of play, but I think that's already been achieved with the removal of the Spore Turret. Now that we can recast spore on uninfected enemies, there's even more incentive to be constantly casting and popping spores. Having the spread on death, with half the range, seems like a fair enough trade to me.

just at thoguht i had it could spread on enemy death but only when it would lower the ramp up hosts to below 10 so 10+ no spread on enemy death at 10 would turn into 9 it spreads to maintain itself and then needs to be spread manually again

[PhobosAnimus]

Having never really posted on the forums before but a couple of times,

This is one of the two things that's ever prompted me to take time out of my day to wander onto the warframe public forum,

I am not particularly happy (absolutely livid in fact) with the idea that enemies will no longer spread spores upon death from tick damage, This defeats a large portion of Saryn's staying power.

Perhaps it would be prudent, instead of removing the mechanic entirely and forcing people to spend a considerably large~ish portion of their attention span trying to garden their spores (and there by keeping their damage output healthy), to implement a diminishing returns mechanic in which the death-spread-range of spores would steadily decrease with each tick-damage related death? And perhaps you could, as a means to keep players still invested (but not utterly consumed with the task of gardening), reset the spread range on death by either re-casting a new batch of spores or spreading existing spores by manually popping them (or with toxic lash).

[[DE]Pablo]

2 minutes ago, Oranji said:

Good to know.
Any upcoming changes to press4towin Miasma?
 

Main focus was on Spores at the moment, once that settles down I might touch up other things.

 

3 minutes ago, Malziel said:

Being able to watch your spores tear through a map is some of the most fun I've ever had in Warframe.

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

[ScarredFist]

A quick note: within the first 45 seconds of an ESO round (when you get more focus for kills), you can only get up to 900 damage per second with her spores (with max power range and around 100% power strength). This effectively ruins Saryn for ESO runs.

[Syln]

à l’instant, [DE]Pablo a dit :

Main focus was on Spores at the moment, once that settles down I might touch up other things.

 

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

Just wanted to say that i like what you've done (and what you are doing) with Saryn, nice job.

[seprent]

1 minute ago, [DE]Pablo said:

Main focus was on Spores at the moment, once that settles down I might touch up other things.

 

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

just a thought i had it could spread on enemy death but only when it would lower the ramp up hosts to below 10 so 10+ no spread on enemy death at 10 would turn into 9 it spreads to maintain itself and alittle damage and then needs to be spread manually again im kinda repeating my self already but i wanted to pitch it to you 

[LSG501]

24 minutes ago, [DE]Pablo said:

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

Is there going to be any 'adjustment' or scaling with this after we've tried it. 

Now I might be reading it wrong but the '20' cap (before mods) might have issues with scaling for higher level without having to wait for a long time for it to propagate.  In all honesty this actually makes it feel that just spamming 4 (miasma) is still going to be easier..

 

Also think I kind of still want the 'pop to spread' mechanic of spores, maybe that can be a long press mechanic like some others suggested. While it was a little hit and miss due to the poor spread I think the idea was sound to have the spores pop and spread.

[Enigmatisty]

I don't really have qualms about Spores no longer spreading if it kills an enemy since it's removing another aspect of the "sit and wait" playstyle that you guys wanted to get rid of. This change indeed sounds like it's making Spores more reliant on ramping its damage up on at least a few targets as opposed to relying on a mob of enemies.

Would be nice to see if Molt at least gets looked it. It's nice and all for it to receive the Rhino treatment but it's not stopping enemies from completely ignoring it and continue to attack me. 

[seprent]

3 minutes ago, ScarredFist said:

A quick note: within the first 45 seconds of an ESO round (when you get more focus for kills), you can only get up to 900 damage per second with her spores (with max power range and around 100% power strength). This effectively ruins Saryn for ESO runs.

I had trouble ramping up at round one too but after that i had no problem with my friends 

i say hold judgement at least a little till we get our mitts on it

[Interdictor-V]

3 minutes ago, ScarredFist said:

A quick note: within the first 45 seconds of an ESO round (when you get more focus for kills), you can only get up to 900 damage per second with her spores (with max power range and around 100% power strength). This effectively ruins Saryn for ESO runs.

Thank you for putting some of the concerns here into numbers, this is very illustrative.

[Pixelsummoner]

50 minutes ago, [DE]Danielle said:

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

2c on that one. By removing that element you might unintentionally force a reset to the strain in certain cases. For example, if I player has built enough damage that that light units die instantly, attempting to recast the skill before it decays too much becomes much more difficult since there would be no time to manually pop them and spread. When combined with the 20% decay once no spores remain, that could cause the ramp to take an unintentional dive even when modded to minimize the decay speed.

I would suggest having it back on, at a reduced 4m range - possibly even locked to not scaling up with range mods. That way it's not a very reliable way to grow the strain, but at high stacks it can provide a suitable way to keep the strain going at high levels by offering a way to infect tight clusters of light enemies.

[Zark_Manthra]

1 minute ago, Enigmatisty said:

Would be nice to see if Molt at least gets looked it. It's nice and all for it to receive the Rhino treatment but it's not stopping enemies from completely ignoring it and continue to attack me. 

This. It needs to have an aggro draw, or else it's just worthless without the augment

[amadeusgrim]

was expecting major nerfs i was disappointed 

[SumBoady]

Just now, amadeusgrim said:

was expecting major nerfs i was disappointed 

Are we reading the same notes?

[Soup2504]

yup, knew people were freaking out over pablo's tweet for nothing. Great changes.

[IfritKajiTora]

49 minutes ago, [DE]Danielle said:

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

Please don't forget that there is a huge problem with 2 or 3 saryns on the same mission.
If one Saryn spread spores, other saryns can't spread spores on these enemies. So each Saryn block each other.
If enemies can have 3 spores then why not make that each other replaces one spore, so that each Saryn can have at least one spore on all enemies.

[ZyloWolfzan]

A couple points.

 

1. Spores should still spread on death. Simply put having them never spread on death means that in lower level content once the spore damage hits a certain level then the second you cast it on an enemy, they die and you get no chance to spread it. I can understand wanting the spread lowered to avoid things like AFKing maps (Even though honestly this really isn't anywhere close to as big a deal as people make it out to be. The spores almost always eventually burn themselves out in short order) but you need to consider the other side of the coin as well. I'd suggest lowering the base spread range from the current 8 meters, to something like 2 meters perhaps. Close enough that if you drop your 1 in a mob, even if it instant-kills that target, it will at least spread slightly to the nearest foes. This also will make it so that it burns out much faster than the current live build, since its spread radius will be heavily reduced.

2. Setting the ramp-up speed cap at 10 enemies is going to be extremely clunky, frustrating, and make good spreads feel less rewarding. I'd say cap it around 20 at least, so that when facing big mobs you are rewarded for effectively spreading the spores across large groups. 10 is just an extremely small number in a game where you can kill hundreds upon hundreds of enemies in many missions.

 

3. The decay rate of Saryn's damage should be like, half of what you've suggested. The entire point of stacking mechanics is to make sure you can keep up the stacks, but in Warframe there are times when enemies just stop spawning for no reason for a while and can screw you over with decaying things. This is already an issue with melee combo counter, try not to cause the same issue here. Either lower the decay RATE, or extend the decay TIMER before it begins. Consider that in things like Defense and Interception there will be LARGE gaps in enemy spawns. Please don't force Saryn to reset her stacks every new wave of Defense.

[taiiat]

less silly to use, but this won't change a single thing about that Spores is an AFK Ability (and the entire Warframe is).

your one and only use of Spores is to Cast it on anything you see, and spray indiscrimminate AoE towards the Enemies to make sure it's hitting most of the Enemies. after that you have literally no interaction with Spores. literally nothing. it's a completely Automated Ability after you've Casted it.

 

you don't like Players using the minimum effective methods of using Saryn to clear Trash Units that have no Health, but all you've done is remove everything BUT the AFK parts of Spores (and Saryn as a whole). there are zero active ways to use the Warframe, everything is passive, something you just throw randomly and forget about.

so uh, when do i get my Warframe back? when can i have active synergy that gives me strategy to apply to using the Warframe? because i don't like idling and yet now Saryn is a complete AFK Warframe. some other Warframes have no Synergy either and you just keep the Abilities active the entire Mission and don't think about them at all - but i don't play those Warframes constantly. i play Saryn constantly. because it's the theme i like and because it had a lot of complex Synergy that gave you something NOT AFK to do, instead being a very involved Warframe to use, if your goal was to be effective at Killing relevant Enemies, rather than just farming Trash Units that don't have any Health.

which as aforementioned, affects all of the Abilities - there are NO mechanics to work with in Spores, you just cover the map and watch (or ignore them as if you don't have an Abilities).
Molt you cast it whenever you feel like without thought because it has Iron Skin now, instead of giving it some synergistic mechanics to increase its durability, and also telling Players to just learn how to place a Decoy (which isn't placing it in the middle of the room, both Decoy and Molt can be placed basically anywhere you want, every Tile has a million places you can strategically place it in, try some of those.). but you give it Iron Skin instead of making it ACTUALLY SCALE WITH MODS CORRECTLY. the Ability has 4 EHP related Stats, but only 1 of them scales with Strength. gee, i wonder why it might be kinda weak for some Players when it doesn't scale with Mods correctly.
Toxic Lash is like Chroma, a set and forget Ability. when you Spawn in the Mission, Cast it, and just keep Casting it periodically. no reason to not just always significantly increase your Damage. but you don't get any mechanics to work with anymore either, since those were deleted. nah it's just automatic.
Miasma is still a terrible Ability in a game that has better Abilities than everything being generic AoE Blasts. and Spores is more effective at Killing than Miasma is anyways. and you have to spam it on Enemies to get Viral Status? and its already weak CC that Saryn has little to none of got nerfed?

so uh, yeah just lemme know when i get my Warframe back. a passive AFK bot isn't a Warframe.

[kyori]

So from what I understand is:

1) Spore is back to recastable, QoL is back.

2) Damage is capped so it will take longer for high level enemies to get killed by spores alone , a nerf to spore's damage.

3) Requires Saryn to run around actively to hit enemies to spread spore as spore won't spread on enemy death. No difference to me as I'm not camper but might promote back a melee-mostly saryn.

4) Slowly decaying damage when no enemy is around... that means a new infected enemy thereafter will straight away get the total remaining damage from the decaying damage instead of having to ramp up from 0.

[amadeusgrim]

2 minutes ago, SumBoady said:

Are we reading the same notes? 

first of i like the name. has a nice notification. second. im not sure what im supposed to be complaining about. toxic lash is still fine and the spores still deal corrosive in an aoe. granted the damage growth is going to be reduced and spores wont spread from enemy thats dead. the latter of which is painful as #*!%. but all in all i think im okay. for the most part. unless this is more serious than ive seen so please enlighten me. tag me so i can see it

[-JT-_-R3W1ND]

Well, looks healthy.

43 minutes ago, [DE]Danielle said:

When a Spore’s tick damage kills an enemy no fun allowed

But i want to know, you actually test it this time. Couse spores lasthit pretty ez. For a best solution, i want to have a bit more clear state, like "no other damage was taken". Or, at least half damage was made by a spore.

And, now we (you) need to think about energy managment. Maybe a toxic lash return some energy after destroing spore?

[SumBoady]

2 minutes ago, amadeusgrim said:

first of i like the name. has a nice notification. second. im not sure what im supposed to be complaining about. toxic lash is still fine and the spores still deal corrosive in an aoe. granted the damage growth is going to be reduced and spores wont spread from enemy thats dead. the latter of which is painful as #*!%. but all in all i think im okay. for the most part. unless this is more serious than ive seen so please enlighten me. tag me so i can see it

I mean I could be wrong, but with the massive damage reduction, the capped damage ramping, the huge reduction in the ability for spores to spread I think she's gonna be in a poor place compared to many frames.

We'll see when the patch hits.