[22.20.5] Spores Revisited Feedback MEGATHREAD

[Sunslayer31]

Tested it on ESO zone 1-8 and regular exterminate, both solo.

ESO felt somewhat same as before, but I found myself frantically (more frantically than usual) running around, searching enemies to infect. Much more action consuming, but they throwing enough enemies for me to live without spread on death, and degrading damage usually gives me enough time to react and save good chunk of damage instead of losing it completely. (yes, 2-3 seconds is enough to react in ESO)
In Ext. (relatively low enemy count environment) spores felt better, since damage build up faster on few enemies, not dropped instantly, and you can keep pushing forward and creating new spores without need to find "that one last guy with spores" to keep damage going, often intentionally leaving 1 enemy alive so I can find next group of enemies without damage dropping.

Overall changes looks good to me, not all nice and buffs, but still good. And now I can say something like "spores ain't gonna spread themselves".

[-ODIN-Charizard_Prime]

The spore damage growth was severely hampered in comparison to the original release and for a trade-off of recast and decay, though I can see the trade-off and benefits, the Decay (in my opinion) is a tad too high. Having to upkeep the spores isn't very fun and I'd really like to see a change to the decay since there's already too many things decreasing your spore ramp up: Multi-cast, no enemies, over-time. Especially since the growth is so low and the decay is so high, it feels troublesome having an upkeep of the spore damage.

If the growth is to be kept currently, I'd really like to see the removal of the initial decay (20%) and a slight reduction to the decay overtime.

If the decay is to be kept, I'd like to see an increase to the growth rate, and hopefully a slight reduction to the decay.

Currently, the micro-managing of spores feels pretty off and makes Saryn, to be a pretty intensive micro Warframe, even more so than Harrow and his buffs (and personally I like his micro-management).

Edit: So far, it seems decent on lower tier missions and other public matches, as the decay is current and the damage to kill those enemies isn't very high to begin with. Higher tier missions tend to be a bit more tricky though.

Edited May 24, 2018 by -ODIN-Charizard_Prime
More Feedback

[TyrianMollusk]

10 minutes ago, Cibyllae said:

That said, recasting on infected enemies will put new Spores on a target with a 20% decrease to its damage per enemy

Yeah, that's what they said in the workshop, but if you look at the patch notes, you'll see they were just pulling our leg.  It's actually any re-cast.

[VexPrime]

An ability called SPORES not spreading on kill is an oxymoron. I suggest renaming it.

or you could just bring back Saryn that everybody liked

Edited May 24, 2018 by VexPrime

[P_Johann]

Tried few ESO runs and couple low level relic missions. Damage is fine but she feels incredibly clunky and i spent most of the time looking at the corner of my screen trying to keep spores active as watching "decaying" process is really frustrating. It is also feels very bad on low level missions where damage ramps up to a certain level just enough to oneshot enemy with spore and continue decaying process.

Not happy with update. Didn't really matter in ESO past first wave/room, but made her significantly worse everywhere else. Also being constantly worried about some counter in screen corner is not something i look for.

[zentora7]

After trying these changes, it definitely does feel like a step in the right direction to make Saryn more engaging in play style. However, these changes to spores definitely show that there are certain changes to other abilities required to make her play well. So, I had some thoughts and suggestions about the abilities miasma and molt following that note.

After these changes to spores, Miasma is definitely overall a weaker ability as it no longer helps the spreading of the spores in any way. The poison cloud should actually help to spread spores in some way to feel like a more useful ultimate ability. Perhaps enemies should spread spores on death if they died during the miasma maybe even for half the range or maybe even any enemy caught in the miasma should become infected if there are other infected enemies in the miasma. This will make it feel like a more interesting and engaging ability and give the sense that it is a deadly cloud of poison that can be a medium of spreading spores. 

With the more engaging play style of Saryn now, it is more evident that molt does not provide meaningful survivability other than with it's augment but it should. Perhaps it should actually draw enemy attention a bit more or have a higher aggro than the Warframe. Maybe it could force enemies in a certain radius to switch target to it during its invincibility period or at least cause enemies to drop their targetting on Saryn when it is cast like how enemies drop targetting when using blink on the Itzal. Where it stands right now, casting molt takes off no attention to Saryn as enemies will continue to target Saryn after molt is cast and attention is only given to it when Saryn is no longer around. Even if it was intended to be used as something to draw attention after Saryn slips away, it should perhaps have more or an escape utility to it like being able to cast it when hooked by enemy units such as grineer scorpions or infested ancients or even cancel a stun/stagger/knockdown by using it. This would make it feel more of an interesting ability as it would make Saryn feel a little bit more of a slippery character. 

[3nk1]

15 minutes ago, VexPrime said:

An ability called SPORES not spreading on kill is an oxymoron. I suggest renaming it.

or you could just bring back Saryn that everybody liked

ain't this the truth, you'd think if they didn't want people to play the frame they would at least have the decency to just remove it.  Not nerf it into obscurity in the name of the "players" when public opinion sure doesn't seem to like the direction.

[Drador-An]

I think Saryn is in a great spot now. Don't know why people are so upset. Have been doing multiple runs of different missions and she feels great.

The only things that might need a change is the damage decay is a little fast and the damage block on Toxic Lash

needs to be something that helps both melee and ranged. Damage block increase doesn't really help as much anymore.

(Maybe 20-25% Damage Reduction (Power Strength), then doubled in melee to a max of 80% to keep with the theme.)

Thats just an example, but otherwise I think they balanced her quite well. 

[Asher74]

I'm just not enjoying the play style of saryn since this last hotfix.  Cast spores shoot it, and repeat till you (quickly) run out of energy and feel bad/stressed that you can't keep the spore counter from from plummeting.  I really enjoyed the last iteration where you were running around the map trying to spread your spores out, it became like a minigame.  Now I just really regret buying that tennogen skin for her.  Lesson learned i guess.

[Disbelief]

Some decay suggestions: 

- Delay the start of damage decay by a few seconds

This is so it doesn't feel like you are punished for killing enemies

 

- Start decay off slowly

This also gives some time to find new enemies, feels more rewarding and doesn't build up as much pressure

 

- Maybe slow the decay with falling damage

 

Personally I find spreading spores by reusing 1 very helpful but also a bit clunky. My idea would be giving Toxic Leash the ability to infest on melee attacks.

 

Edit: Also with 55 Efficiency I can keep my build working but it still seems to lack duration for the decay, range for spreading and strength to get decent damage without dragging myself over the map just focusing on one skill. It's fine that Saryn is not one button and everything dies but the extra work should in return be rewarded.

Edited May 24, 2018 by Disbelief

[Savra]

I personally feel very rushed chasing around my spores with these new changes, saryn is associated with high range for her spores to spread efficiently, but with the removal of the spread on death you get punished for not reaching the enemy in time, and once your damage is high enough (this often takes mere seconds) recasting the spore on a new enemy kills them instantly, deriving you of the opportunity to spread them that way, I love my spore saryn, I will keep loving my spore saryn, but I'm not having fun playing her like this

with her previous method for spreading spores, maybe it's an idea to have a delay for the damage counter reset? keep the ability to recast, decrease the tick damage for every recast, and have a reset delay of 3-5 seconds, and inflict a more severe tick damage penalty for the first recast during this delay?

that way, it's easier to maintain the spores, easier to carry over the spore damage to other groups in normal missions at the cost of damage

to combat the set-and-forget playstyle, would it be an option to increase tick damage only on initial spread to new enemies? you would have to pop spores or kill enemies to ramp up your damage but still have the option to let them carry on for themselves for a while

another option would be to only increase tick damage for every X amount of damage from an outside source, for example:1.000 damage increases tick damage by one stage, this way rapid fire weapons would be able to ramp up damage consistently, and high-damage sniper rifles would increase the damage in large but slow bursts

 

[kyori]

8 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

Recasting on enemies will put new Spores on a target with a 20% decrease to its damage per second (scales with Ability Strength) for 50% of the Energy cost.

I recast my spore and I noticed a drop in the accumulated damage (eg.2240 --> 2200) every time. From my understanding the above sentence is about recasted spores having 20% less damage per second than the original first cast which shouldn't affect the accumulated damage... so what I have been experiencing must be a bug.

Edit: ah... the wiki has better clarification. I understand now.

Quote

Recasting the Spores ability (default 1 ) with active spores will apply new spores and use 50% less energy, but decays the damage scaling by 20%.

• Damage decay is affected by Ability Strength.

 

But then that will mean no matter whether I wait out for the last spore to kill an enemy before recasting or recasting to continue a new spread, will have me punished with a 20%* drop in accumulated damage. That... seems weird.

Edited May 24, 2018 by kyori

[Rankii]

After testing saryn's kit for like the tenth time this week I can say without a doubt that it's some hot garbage. And since saryn is more than just spore I'm just going to go over the whole kit.

Spore spread is inconsistent and the arbitrary limits on range of spread for conditions only hamstrings the mechanic in any realistic setting. With the exception of Onslaught enemy spread is too varied and far away for any spore spread to be worth a damn. I'm running 230% range on my saryn and I'm still having to run around and spam spore to not lose damage. Verses before where spreading spores was quick, painless, and had the added bonus of being a wide-range viral debuff. It was useful for something other than damage which always falls off in higher-level missions. This has and probably will keep being said, but the on-death spread was just plain useful and removing it is a huge nerf to spore. They can tick for six million, but if it doesn't reach anyone then spores are useless. And that ramped up damage will just kill any low-level mook you might try to cast spore on to save the damage. Just get rid of the infection cap. A disease doesn't just infect a few people and think "yeah that's fine. Just these couple dozen randos is enough in this huge room of people" and neither should spores.

Molt doesn't need a speed buff, it needs regeneration to be part of the kit. It actually benefited from interaction with her other abilities because by itself it's a weak skill. Without the mod it just KIND OF draws fire and bursts into a weak burst of poison. That's not a good thing at all but since you can't cheese anything with just molt who cares right?

Venom lash actually has gotten a straight upgrade, but not giving back energy when saryn's back to spamming 1 every possible second only hurts things overall.

Miasma is  back to being another spam-to-win ability so "Good Job". But since nobody spams miasma anymore who cares right?

 

Basically saryn's kit is still needlessly complex, but instead of doing the Hokey Pokey to be useful you just flail around and hope it works. 

[TyrianMollusk]

2 minutes ago, kyori said:

I recast my spore and I noticed a drop in the accumulated damage (eg.2240 --> 2200) every time. From my understanding the above sentence is about recasted spores having 20% less damage per second than the original first cast which shouldn't affect the accumulated damage... so what I have been experiencing must be a bug.

There is no "original cast".  There is always only one Spores running.  You drop it by 20% when you cast again, like you're paying the energy cost with spore virulence.

Edited May 24, 2018 by TyrianMollusk

[Xarteros]

The issue with Saryn was never her spores. They were her greatest asset, as a debuffing tool, and as an area damage dealer.

Spores:

The way it is now:

• Targets die too quickly when damage has scaled up enough, reducing your window to spread them
• No more spread-on-death, targets that die effectively force you to recast yet again
• No more transfer of procs; reduced diversity of damage and effect types
• Replacing Viral with Corrosive impacts significantly on her debuffing kit
• Corrosive procs take much longer to give significant effect than Viral procs do, making them less useful than Viral was
• Can't control damage scaling effectively, making it really hard to maintain

The way it was before:

• Damage would start low, and take a while to ramp up. Damage could be boosted with Toxin/Viral weapons, allowing both early and late-game play
• Reduced range spread-on-death penalised players for being lazy, and rewarded players for being active
• Transfer of procs allowed teammates to contribute to spore damage
• Saryn could boost teammate contribution to spore damage with Venom Dose build
• Starting out with low damage allows Saryn to 'seed' multiple groups and then focus on spreading within and between them, making her less 'locked in' as a spam caster
• Viral procs are a valuable debuffing tool, making even a low-strength Saryn decent on a team

I never found duration to be an issue, and every other recent change to spores has effectively reduced their benefit both solo or in a team. It's impossible to get the same sort of effect we had before, and it's just outright bad. I was going to title the second portion 'Changes left to make', but the whole thing just needs to be backpedaled. I know DE put time and effort into the change, but it's a complete nerf and takes away her fun, with nothing to compensate it with.

Now, I know this is the Spores Revisited thread, but in order to understand why spores were just fine, we have to look at her other abilities.

Molt:

The way it is now:

• Molt now scales in health! Woo! We've been asking for this for ages, and it's just great to have it. Better late than never
• Molt can no longer be used as a voodoo doll of spores
• Molt now grants an awkward speed boost upon casting

Changes yet to make:

• Remove speed boost. It feels awkward, doesn't actually help you survive much, and ends up distracting more than helping.
• Replace speed boost with decaying damage reduction (thematically, the last shedding pieces absorbing the blows). Damage negated by damage reduction contributes to Molt's health. Make damage reduction last a flat 3-4 seconds (not affected by duration), scale up to 100% with enough strength (since it's decaying rapidly, it wouldn't stay at 100% for long), and make duration affect the percentage it decays by per tick
• Alternatively: Replace with in-built Regenerative Molt, as some people suggest. Change Regenerative Molt to something else
• Don't allow Spores to be cast on Molt directly, but allow them to be spread onto Molt, as if she were a target. This lets players 'incubate' the damage for short periods of time, without making her into a 'turret' caster

Molt took a step in the right direction in regards to scaling health, but the speed bonus gives her nothing valuable to her kit. It's not like Volt speed, which grants him AoE CC, faster reloading and increased Melee attack speed, and the short duration feels awkward. A decaying Damage Reduction, or an inbuilt regeneration would turn it into a much more useful escape mechanism for late-game, without reverting to its old 'turret'/voodoo doll ways. Allowing it to act as a target/vector for spores lets players build their stacks of Toxin/Viral and have a safe little stash saved in her Molt, awaiting further spread.

Toxic Lash:

The way it is now:

• Now applies to all weapons, instead of Melee. Double bonus for Melee
• With how spores are now, it's the ONLY way to effectively spread spores without having to focus on each and every single spore with an accurate or scatter weapon. This makes Saryn much more energy hungry, and forces use of Toxic Lash just to get effectiveness from Spores
• Still has near-useless blocking bonus on equipped melee
• Lack of energy return really hurts now that Spores have to be spammed just to keep them going, and Toxic Lash has to always be active just to make sure they don't die out completely.

Changes yet to make:

• With my above suggestion to make Molt grant a decaying Damage Reduction value instead of a speed boost, there would be no need for Toxic Lash to retain its near-useless block bonus for melee. This simplifies both abilities, as Molt becomes a clearer escape tool, and Toxic Lash becomes a clearer damage buff
• Lack of energy return would be acceptable if Spores returned to how they were. Alternatively, make it only return energy on Melee hits
• Could spice up the ability by combining the very sub-par Contagion Cloud augment into the base ability. Then, make a more interesting/better augment (like sharing buff with allies, making her more useful as a buff frame)

Miasma:

The way it is now:

• Miasma is a joke. It has been left behind for so long ever since her nuking days ended. Don't bring those back, but it feels so useless in her kit.
• Does Viral instead of Corrosive
• A bit more range on cast
• Still very low duration

Changes yet to make:

• Swap back to Corrosive, since Spores need to go back to Viral in order to keep Saryn as an effective debuff caster
• Make Miasma create a static cloud, instead of a once-off effect
• Miasma clouds not duration-based, but have scaling damage (and possibly status chance) based on spores popped within. Damage scaling decays over time, like recent spore change
• Damage scaling decay affected by power duration
• Up to 4 Miasma clouds at once, like Snow Globe
• Make Miasma pop one spore per enemy per 5 seconds, with a 3 second stun on spore popped.

Miasma needs change. Making it into a static cloud that you can deploy allows Saryn to move about the battlefield, focusing on spreading and maintaining her spore plagues. Leaving the Miasma clouds unattended means their damage scales down over time and becomes less useful. Becomes a valuable CC tool, with synergy for her spores (but not confusing synergy) and actually has a decent chance for use, rather than the occasional poke for the stun

Edited May 25, 2018 by Xarteros

[seprent]

58 minutes ago, 3nk1 said:

ain't this the truth, you'd think if they didn't want people to play the frame they would at least have the decency to just remove it.  Not nerf it into obscurity in the name of the "players" when public opinion sure doesn't seem to like the direction.

"I dont like how they are changing a thing so they should just out right remove it so no one gets to have it"

Thats pretty much what you said if i dont like it no one gets to have it just dont use her if its that bad for you or better yet use her to spite me 

[seprent]

1 hour ago, Asher74 said:

I'm just not enjoying the play style of saryn since this last hotfix.  Cast spores shoot it, and repeat till you (quickly) run out of energy and feel bad/stressed that you can't keep the spore counter from from plummeting.  I really enjoyed the last iteration where you were running around the map trying to spread your spores out, it became like a minigame.  Now I just really regret buying that tennogen skin for her.  Lesson learned i guess.

Recasting it makes you lose damage just be cause you have the option to recast it doesn't mean you have it so some of your damage lose is on you if you going the pattern as you said of cast spore shoot spore cast spore -20% of your current spore damage shoot spore ect.  

edit: advice turn on lash before spreading so you dont have to aim at spores and just hit them to spread it 

Edited May 24, 2018 by seprent

[3nk1]

Just now, seprent said:

"I dont like how they are changing a thing so they should just out right remove it so no one gets to have it"

Thats pretty much what you said if i dont like it no one gets to have it just dont use her if its that bad for you or better yet use her to spite me 

that's pretty much NOT what I said, good job on reading.

[seprent]

1 minute ago, 3nk1 said:

that's pretty much NOT what I said, good job on reading.

Sounds like it though

4 minutes ago, seprent said:

you'd think if they didn't want people to play the frame they would at least have the decency to just remove it.  Not nerf it into obscurity in the name of the "players" when public opinion sure doesn't seem to like the direction

Re reading still sounds of " i dont like remove it so no one else has to deal with it "

[Nez-Kal]

DE, I love you, I do.....but we gotta talk about your "Fun Factor" for a second.

Now, I know spamming an Ability and sitting in a corner isn't fun, trust me, and I understand wanting to change a Frame's ability around to fit into a "Fun Factor" and away from AFK-ing...

But this.....This is Stress Inducing. This is ticking so many boxes in my Anxiety Meter that after just a short time trying to play new Saryn....I HAD to stop. I was shaking, I was screaming at my screen (on the verge of stress induced tears, seriously) and the Decay Warning/RAPIDLY shrinking number I put so much time and effort into building, I was tensing up in all the Wrong ways....I just can't do this. I like a Challenge, I do, but this.....this just all feels so Wrong to me. (I've played Dark Souls games that didn't stress me out to this level.)

One, I feel like Saryn's Spores, even if they're not spreading on Spore Damage Death on a Target, they should at least do Something. Maybe throw a Toxin Proc on Nearby Enemies? Something that doesn't make a target dying out of your reach feel like "failure Failure FAILURE" on Player's Nerves. Second...that Decay Speed....it's just so stress inducing, the speed of that number plummeting down, even with a Balanced out Build.....it feels so wrong, like no matter how hard I try everything will in moments fall from my hands and spiral out of control, and I feel like I can't risk casting any other ability at any time, or risk NOT having that precious energy pool available to potentially save my Spore progress should the sudden plummet begin. (She went from 1.5 Cast Frame....to 1.5 Cast Frame, just for different reasons)

 

For now, I'm not shelving Saryn for "Ugh, Nerfed!" reasons, I'm putting her down because this Gal is going to literally kill me if I keep trying.

 

EDIT: Got some advice, tried some different Builds. Still VERY painful Decay Speed, but with extremely High Power Strength and Range builds, it makes building back what was lost a little less painful. Just a little. That being said, now I have a Constant Spore Cast energy problem (even with the build that doesn't have Blind Rage), so could we maybe get the Spore+Toxin Lash Energy regen perk back now that's she's a multi-caster again?

Edited May 26, 2018 by Tangent-Valley
Got back on the horse, Tried some more builds and playstyles...

[3nk1]

1 minute ago, seprent said:

Sounds like it though

Re reading still sounds of " i dont like remove it so no one else has to deal with it "

I understand now... you don't know what sarcasm is.  I feel for you I really do.  you see what I ACTUALLY alluded to, was the fact that they're making changes "for the community" when it would seem most of the community doesn't like the changes.  So THAT leads one to believe that maybe the changes have a different motive, thus the sarcasm.  That help, or do I need to get out some crayons?

[seprent]

1 minute ago, 3nk1 said:

I understand now... you don't know what sarcasm is.  I feel for you I really do.  you see what I ACTUALLY alluded to, was the fact that they're making changes "for the community" when it would seem most of the community doesn't like the changes.  So THAT leads one to believe that maybe the changes have a different motive, thus the sarcasm.  That help, or do I need to get out some crayons?

Your funny if we took your logic of if your just gunna nerf it remove it how many warframes would we have? and tell me lad how many things have the devs done that no matter how good the intentions are or how well it turned did someone go and say this is bad? go on ill wait

[Seinra]

Goodbye to my beloved Saryn.

You had a lot of feedback about the spores and this is your great "solution"? Give me back the Saryn Revisited 1.0 please, or the 2.0 but without the changes on Spores and Miasma because this last change is way more annoying than 2.0, I'll not waste more time writing, you have my feedback in the previous megathread.

[3nk1]

5 minutes ago, seprent said:

Your funny if we took your logic of if your just gunna nerf it remove it how many warframes would we have? and tell me lad how many things have the devs done that no matter how good the intentions are or how well it turned did someone go and say this is bad? go on ill wait

ohhh no!!! they pulled the passive aggressive age comment to try and discount my view point because i'm, apparently, young (as if my age would change the validity of my opinion on a game) and to imply they're my elder so automatically more wise.  Seems you're still struggling with sarcasm, I get it, it's hard when there's no body language to go along with the words.  Never said or implied that any nerf should be a complete removal from the game, never said that "someone" said it was bad, but the VAST majority seems to feel that way.

[leirynot]

Played around with her some more and spore spread seems really inconsistent. I'll turn on toxic lash, spore a guy, then start shooting everything with a braton. A few seconds later it starts decaying even though there are guys still standing around, sometimes even with the glow of corrosive procs.