Dev Workshop: Spores Revisited (Saryn)

[LuckyCharm]

Currently on live another saryn in the party can overwrite your spores with theirs causing yours to die out. Is there any planned changes for this or are we going to just have to play with only 1 saryn per squad?

[Borg1611]

I think these will be good changes overall. 

I do think maybe you should change it so that the first target you cast spores on spreads spores when they die regardless of how, including if they die to spores. That way in a situation where an enemy dies to one spore tick, you would still be able to spread them easily. By only having that manually cast first target spread on death to spores you still remove any type of "afk" playstyle as you still had to take an action to infect/kill that enemy.

Not having to start at 0 damage every time you lose all the targets will be nice and possibly end up just being an overall buff for those of us who soloed or didn't do things like use well of life to keep spores scaling even with the 10 target cap. Our spores wiped themselves out frequently in Onslaught so now we don't have to start at zero every time that was happening. 

I do wish you would have also addressed multiple Saryns in a group. I get that you want to limit spores per target for performance reasons, but it sucks entering a public game with multiple Saryns. You have no control over the group you end up with, so you can't plan for that. If you limited it to one spore per target per Saryn and changed the values to be just as strong with one as 3, you could then have room for at least 3 Saryns per group. It's not like it takes that long to get 3 up per target currently, so it's not a substantial DPS boost either. 

[megamino]

1. You guys removed the spread if the spore kills enemy, now how much of the kill data that every mission does if there is a squad and have saryn on it? And what cause Saryn to be such a high DPS? This is killing the nature of DPS that you guys build (also giving 10 max damage growth also it's being nerfed with this new behavior), yeah i know that somehow i can put toxic lash and just hit the guy but come on this is not the ideal situation you can put the spore up and keep being mistress of toxin.

2. Bring back the energy restoration, because spore is being recastable again

3. And if you guys want just nerf the additional spread that you guys make with saryn. While yes it will affect her performance on the other mission (just it seems like the feedback and you guys focusing on Onslaught) better than just removing the spread if the toxin kills the enemy

4. honestly, since the rework on spores, i don't want to use saryn except for endless mission because spores is functioning as the mass killer while the other are just helping (at least for me, miasma is great btw).

 

Hopefully we are not getting Saryn 3.2 

 

[Misgenesis]

Damage growth per second being capped is a pretty damn good change, hopefully it allows for more corrosive procs before outright killing enemies.

Damage decay is a good buff and im happy recasting is back. Your approach to Saryn has been really good @[DE]Pablo

[Zilotz]

How about making it a bit better for us?

like

Spoiler

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	8m

That will still let spores spread on edge of attack so they wont die off too fast.

[dan.io.wal]

I'm very happy now. Thank you for listening DE!!! ❤️

[MasterControl]

4 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. 

I'll have to play with this to see how it works. My initial impression is to first try it with an exceptionally small range (4 meters or less, no more) before removing it outright, so we don't have to micromanage QUITE as hard while still incentivizing being active and involved. However, I can entirely understand where these changes are coming from. That all said, Saryn is absolutely in a far better place than she once was, both thematically and in gameplay.

The decay does look a little quick, even after accounting for duration, especially with that sudden drop of 20% when you lose all targets. That gives you all of 8 seconds to try and find a new target, losing effectiveness all the while. Perhaps halving the decay over time (Immediate drop of 20%, followed by 5% each second) making it 16 seconds to find a new target base, would be more reasonable considering that, again, your spores are losing damage while you look.

Everything else looks fair to me. I hope the things you guys are learning from Saryn will be taken into consideration when you inevitably look at frames like Ember, Mag and Vauban again. (Vauban I realize likely has little to learn from a damage caster, but you know what I mean.)

[(PSN)solartorch81]

Since we will be recasting 1 a lot again, will the energy economic suffer? could we regain energy with toxic lash but less, maybe 1 per hit by toxic lash.

[Raisopod]

I think this'll fix a lot of the issues I had with Saryn's Spores with the rework, I'm glad we get the ability to re-cast spores back. These changes look very promising, can't wait to see them in action!

[(PSN)Silenceform]

Il y a 3 heures, [DE]Danielle a dit :

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.

 

Fair enough.

Il y a 2 heures, [DE]Danielle a dit :

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 keep the spread on enemies that die to a Spore's tick damage but cap it on how much enemies it can spread from nearby enemies.

Il y a 2 heures, [DE]Danielle a dit :

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.

The damage growth is too slow. Please make it so half of the enemies infected by Spores contribute to the damage growth. If 30 enemies are affected by Spores, 15 enemies will make the damage grow. Reward the players who can spread Spores to the most enemies as possible.

Il y a 2 heures, [DE]Danielle a dit :

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.

 

The decay is too important. Please reduce the values to keep the damage high enough when searching for new enemies so it doesn't break Saryn's damage momentum too quickly.

[KaeinX2]

Huh this seems like an interesting change. 

The damage growth being affected by only 10 enemies would decrease the ridiculousnous on onslaught but the recastable spores and decay in damage rather than instantly gone would allow Saryn to be more reliable in normal missions.

So the growth rate is now heavily dependant on power strength I suppose.

Still kinda worried on how this will affect her in game as at 100% power strength maximum growth of spores will be 20 per tick.

Though I can definitely see a bug involving damage growth not occuring due to first 10 enemies being dead despite spores still spreading lel.

[seprent]

2 minutes ago, KaeinX2 said:

Huh this seems like an interesting change. 

The damage growth being affected by only 10 enemies would decrease the ridiculousnous on onslaught but the recastable spores and decay in damage rather than instantly gone would allow Saryn to be more reliable in normal missions.

So the growth rate is now heavily dependant on power strength I suppose.

Still kinda worried on how this will affect her in game as at 100% power strength maximum growth of spores will be 20 per tick.

Though I can definitely see a bug involving damage growth not occuring due to first 10 enemies being dead despite spores still spreading lel.

isnt the changes 2 damage per spore 3 spores max on a enemy up to 10 enemies count on the ramp so wouldnt it be 60? 2 x 3=6 x 10= 60 (so you can see my math thinking )

[--RV--Waltz]

3 hours ago, UNeaK1502 said:

One thing that should change is (looking at your efforts to nerf her), that if the spores kill an enemy, it should still spread, otherwise, she will be a caster frame as she used to be

 

This please.

[Chroia]

Again, 'first reaction' post, writing as I read. Edits will be kept minimal.

Speaking of edits:
Since I forgot my manners before -
Thanks for the info. It's good to have.

Onward.

 

13 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

Can be re-cast while active and will no longer detonate all active Spores:

Wonderful.
This both removes the 'start, stop' of constantly (and sometimes accidentally) having to kill off a ramped infection because there's a bigger group of enemies elsewhere.
Might even be able to divert some mods from absolute max range, which'd be nice. We'll see.

 

13 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

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.

Not entirely sure what you mean by the first line, but if it's a preface for the second line - I'm fine with that.
I'd honestly be fine with simply being unable to cast Spores on already-infected enemies at all and calling it a day.

I've got no problem with needing to spread Spores primarily via Toxic Lash rather than recasts. My issue was the no recast impacted coverage in any context where enemies spawned in widely spread groups - meaning everything that isn't E/SO.

If that first line doesn't refer to the second, could you clarify, please?

 

13 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

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

Ah, so I'm not crazy. Good to know.
And even better, seeing it be fixed.

 

13 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

When a Spore’s tick damage kills an enemy

8m -> NA*

Ooh, ouch.
I guess I'll have to wait and see, but this feels like it's really going to hurt.

13 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.

Tone of voice doesn't carry over text, so I'll do the HK-50 thing:
Interrogatively questioning - do you see this as having actually been a problem in any context that wasn't E/SO?

 

13 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

Spores’ damage growth over time per Spore is now determined per enemy infected. And with it, a max limit of 10 infected enemies to maintain a max damage growth limit over time.

Whaaa~?!
Spores' problem, imo, was that it ramped up too slowly for being unable to be seeded elsewhere.

Between the 'no spread on tick damage kill and this, how does this not effectively kill Spores as a damaging ability, turning it primarily into an armor stripping tool?

13 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

To better explain this change and how it all breaks down, let’s explore it further by comparing its current state to its changed state:

How about, instead, we compare the 'maximum growth' between new and current? Seems it'd be a more enlightening comparison.

New Spores has double the tick damage, 10 enemies (*3 spores per).
Maximum growth is 60 damage/sec.

Under the current Spores, that'd translate into (60 dps, divided among 3 spores = ) 20 currently infected enemies.

Hm, given the concurrent spawn cap, this is not as terrible as I expected as first glance, as long as you're not staying in any mission past the first rot C, solo.
Rather bad for any kind of longer run or a squad situation (let alone both) though.

Also, absolute murder on her ramping in SO, but I expect that was the point.

Hold up. It was pointed out to me that I read that wrong: There's no mention of 'per spore' in the new ramping.

That puts us at:

New Spores having a max growth of 2 damage (average of 1-3, I assume) per Infected enemy, cap of 10.
That's a maximum damage growth of 20 per second, as per

13 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

• • Reaching 10 infected enemies would set the maximum damage growth at 20 every second.

Under the current Spores, that'd translate into (20 dps, divided among 3 pores = ) 6.667 currently infected.

On the bright side, that's reasonable in any non-respawning, star-chart-level solo mission.

On the dark side, wow. That's terrible in any endless past the around first rot B if you're solo; terrible from the get-go if you're in a squad.
It's absolutely nothing in E/SO.

 

13 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

Sitting back and watching Spores destroy a map didn’t fall in line with that fun factor we were looking for

tbf, while I'm not sure what kind of 'fun factor' you're looking for, it was fun, in a "I have sown; I have toiled. And now I reap. Behold the fruits of my labor!" gratification sort of way.

While counterbalanced by the fact that a ramped Infection burned itself out, it felt like 'payoff' rather than 'going out with a whimper'.
This was literally one of a handful of places you can get that in current-iteration Warframe.
And it was satisfying.

So much for that.
Thanks Obama Simaris ESO.
(To be fair, I shouldn't be surprised. Experience shows that this is pretty standard DE MO - balance things around the best, mixmaxed farming scenarios, ignore that-and-how said changes will impact any other context.
"This is why we can't have nice things - they're too good for farming in edge cases, so they can't exist at all".)

 

13 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

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

Oh.

Ohhhhh.

Hm.

13 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).
• 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.

So, on the one hand you can carry 50% of your current Infection between E/SO rounds, assuming instant transition. That paints things in a somewhat different light for E/SO.
On the other hand, Nullifiers go from 'they dispel your Toxic Lash' to ' really going to fk you over'.

Back to having to snipe bubbles from the outside.
Thanks ESO.

 

But, you know, outside of SO, what's your time to 50% damage, 20% damage, dieoff in a 'general use' case?
3 seconds, 6 and 8 seconds?
That's pretty rough. It will let you 'carry over' an infection between spread out spawn groups, which is certainly nice.
But if you've got a hiccough in spawns, that's not going to be enough to save your Infection.
Nor is it enough to carry you between waves of Defence or Interception. (And that's ignoring the added ~15 seconds in the two tiles with a moving defense objective.)

So I'm not entirely sure what the intent here is, in any context that isn't ESO (assuming that there is one)?

 

-----

tl;dr - 
On the plus side,
* Spores gets faster rampup,
* can be recast at different locales, and
* you get a bit of carry-over if you can re-seed it fast enough when it dies out.
This is amazing.

On the negative side,
* Spores got capped max growth (not an issue for short runs and solo, detrimental outside that),
* no longer spreads passively - meaning you're limited to things you can directly kill, meaning you're constrained by spawn logic and tile LoS lines, which I expect will kill your ability to sustain an Infection outside of Ext and SO (don't even think about trying a surv in the Kuva Fortress).

Between the two of them, these two nerfs look like they'd limit your ability to actually use Spores anywhere that isn't SO, and the 'die-off delay' I estimated isn't going to be enough to counter that.

And, as if that weren't enough:
* -as a new addition- Nullifiers can zero out your infection, disincentivizing the simplest and most direct method of handling them.
 

I'll have to try it out, but for all that the positive changes look amazing, the nerfs look like they invalidate them completely - practically speaking - and now you need to fear Nullifiers.
That honestly doesn't feel like a worthwhile tradeoff.

[seprent]

19 minutes ago, (PS4)solartorch81 said:

Since we will be recasting 1 a lot again, will the energy economic suffer? could we regain energy with toxic lash but less, maybe 1 per hit by toxic lash.

recasting spores you will suffer a 20% decreased damage on that spore but it will cost 50% of the energy 

EX: spore does 100 damage and cost 50 energy you recast it on someone that spore's starting damage is now 80 ( if my math is right) but costs 25 energy

[sixmille]

We're making progress and I like it. However keeping the damage up is going to be absolutely trivial with the ability to recast. Maybe recasting should provide a drop in the damage of all spores to really reward skill play and good planning?

[DerpenDalek]

Make it so that when spores kill, the range of the spread is reduced instead of outright getting it!

[Vengerz]

Removing spore spread on death is a mistake imo, and with the other changes Saryn is going to be straight up less fun.

First off, by being able to spore completely on demand you lose the enjoyment of finding a fat group and using your spore there, growing its damage and kiting other groups into spreading range. Now you'll just spore whoever you want mindlessly.

Secondly, Spore not spreading on death is going to cause random behavior when your using high fire rate weapons with low damage, as mobs may either die from a spore tick or your next ignis/synapse w/e shot.

Lastly, the ONLY real problem with current Saryn is in high level onslaught where spore can be spread pretty much indefinitely and the unlimited scaling actually is just too powerful. The simple fix is lowering the scaling in those infinite spread situations. That's all that was needed, add % based decay, or have it start a little higher but grow much slower.

Once spore doesn't autokill high level enemies on its own you can't be passive anymore in those situations, and in all other situations you can't be passive as it is anyway because enemies in other game modes aren't sufficiently stacked together to keep the disease going on its own. 

 

[(PSN)big_eviljak]

4 hours ago, UNeaK1502 said:

One thing that should change is (looking at your efforts to nerf her), that if the spores kill an enemy, it should still spread, otherwise, she will be a caster frame as she used to be

 

I agree, this is a must

[FollowTheFaceless]

4 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

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.

You missed 2 BUTs:

1. Saryn is not the only damager in Onslaught - some Equinox or (who would guess) Trinity can spoil her "fun" with the same one button push.

2. Enemy flow, that allows Saryn to do what you nerfed exists ONLY in Onslaught. Are you even thought about the balance between ALL game modes, huh?

[Chroia]

12 hours 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.

Except that you'll carry over ~70-50% of your ramp-up between rounds now.

 

12 hours ago, LSG501 said:

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.

Could you clarify what you're talking about here?

Granted that I haven't read much on the forums recently, recasting currently does not spread spores, just removes them for an extra tick of damage to infected enemies,
so I assume you're not talking about that?

 

12 hours ago, amadeusgrim said:

well asuming we have capped dmage and im doing like 10 damage ramp per tick on 3 spores for 10 enemies per second that is say an increase of 300 damage per second asusuming my math isnt off.

2 damage per sec per spore, before Strength modifier.
3 spores per enemy, 10 enemies max. That's 60 damage per sec at base, nowhere near 300.

 

10 hours ago, Misgenesis said:

Damage growth per second being capped is a pretty damn good change, hopefully it allows for more corrosive procs before outright killing enemies.

I'd argue that the higher damage mitigated the need for more corrosive procs where applicable.
Where no armor exists, it's just a damage nerf, obviously.
That said, it does give DE control over how quickly Spores can ramp.

The rest, I agree with.

[Amazerath]

I don't like the idea of having to go through build-up phases in order to make a power useful. That suits Nidus just fine but not Saryn. Saryn has always been about casting Spores, shooting the target, and always keep moving. Parkour was very important and Viral procs took care of all the scaling automatically.

I do not understand the desire to sacrifice so much of what made old Saryn good just for the sake of changing Viral damage to Corrosive and adding what feels like a very artificial scaling mechanic. Give Spores Viral procs, re-establish the relationship between weapon damage and Spore damage and you're on the right track. If the whole "carry the Toxin proc" thing was too complicated then just make a simplified version.

Saryn doesn't need to be reinvented. She already offered an incredibly active play style for those who sought it. This rework is trying too hard to throw that away for no good reason.

 

[Cibyllae]

5 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

Can be re-cast while active and will no longer detonate all active Spores:

Yes

5 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”).

Yes!

5 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

Spores’ damage growth over time per Spore is now determined per enemy infected. And with it, a max limit of 10 infected enemies to maintain a max damage growth limit over time. 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.

YES!

5 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

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). 

 

Spoiler

 

[AtomicNuclearZarkiel]

Please add SOME sort of synergy to/with Molt. Right now it feels lonely and out of place.

[Thesiobhan]

The change to scaling is pretty not good. It'll scale too slowly to truly be effective, honestly even as it currently is unless you get lucky with spawns it scales very slowly as enemies will either die before it can be spread, from various sources. Or given the wonky spread distances you could end up with it being messed up from that too.

I like the consistency of the changes for the spread range. I do not like that they no longer spread when spores themselves kill something. Especially given the new incredibly slower ramp damage. It was already somewhat difficult to keep spores up on anything that wasn't so high level that they didn't just die to various AOEs. now we're going to have to recast which lowers our already slowly scaling damage... ehh.

 

The above 2 changes together are not good. They compound the effects of each other. It will be harder to spread spores and they will ramp slower, and when you spread them you decrease their damage. I mean, at this point they're just going to be an active corrosive projection, but you won't really be able to get them on as much stuff sooo... just I guess be like yay toxic lash?