[22.20.5] Spores Revisited Feedback MEGATHREAD

[malekas]

Not getting why everyone thinks Saryn is energy hungry now. The way I have her built now she's significantly less energy hungry than she used to be.

Her Spores build up damage and I don't need to worry about transferring toxin damage, that means I don't need Blind Rage anymore. I cast Toxic Lash when need be and just concentrate on keeping Spores spreading. In fact, I was able to drop Primed Flow in my build because I just didn't need the energy.

 

I'm not saying the current iteration of Saryn is prefect. The decay on her Spores is ridiculous, and the aggro draw on Molt is nowhere near enough for the new "3 seconds of invul that build up health" to be effective. She's more "stressful" to play now because of the decay speed, and it's still a disaster when more than one Saryn are in a group.

 

But Saryn scales better than she used to, she's less energy hungry than she used to be, and she requires a more active playstyle than the old Molt turrent. Personally I think the rework has been great, she just needs a few more tweaks.

 

[PikeOrShield]

Spores not spreading on death will take getting used to, but when my main issue is everything dying too fast, I guess it's not much of an issue.  I have noticed a bug that resets your spore counter if your target dies while you're casting spore on it and that really needs to be addressed.

[Konachibi]

1 hour ago, malekas said:

Not getting why everyone thinks Saryn is energy hungry now. The way I have her built now she's significantly less energy hungry than she used to be.

Her Spores build up damage and I don't need to worry about transferring toxin damage, that means I don't need Blind Rage anymore. I cast Toxic Lash when need be and just concentrate on keeping Spores spreading. In fact, I was able to drop Primed Flow in my build because I just didn't need the energy.

 

I'm not saying the current iteration of Saryn is prefect. The decay on her Spores is ridiculous, and the aggro draw on Molt is nowhere near enough for the new "3 seconds of invul that build up health" to be effective. She's more "stressful" to play now because of the decay speed, and it's still a disaster when more than one Saryn are in a group.

 

But Saryn scales better than she used to, she's less energy hungry than she used to be, and she requires a more active playstyle than the old Molt turrent. Personally I think the rework has been great, she just needs a few more tweaks.

 

In high level content yes I would agree with you, but when you go to lower levels in the starmap she becomes more and more energy starved due to having to keep spamming spores in the hope that one enemy will last long enough for you to shoot before the spore tick kills them.  Because of this it's nearly impossible to spread them at all below level 40.

This would seem fine, since she can't be acquired normally until a player reaches Sedna, which is a level 35-40 planet, but new players that take the time to farm Kela De Thaym and then spend the time crafting Saryn will find that she is useless on every planet except Sedna and higher level void missions, because her 1 simply will not work due to it killing enemies too rapidly and not spreading on enemy death, her 2 is an unreliable survival skill, her 3 is okish and her 4 is just a spam happy 'press 4 to win' button.  In comparison that same new player could have a variety of other frames that have 4 abilities that all work great everywhere and have a diversity to how they can be played. (Ember, Nova, Excalibur, Trinity, Frost, Oberon, Valkyr, Hydroid, Vauban, Nyx, Mag and Rhino are all frames that can be acquired earlier than Saryn without the need to be in a clan and they all function at any enemy level instead of feeling restricted to top-tier enemies.)

With that said I just ran a mobile defence mission on Phobos for some Nitain Extract and found that I hardly ever had any energy because the moment I spored an enemy it would drop dead.  In the end I simply used her 2 to keep enemies distracted while I shot at them because my abilities were unreliable at doing what they're meant to do and just wasted time and energy.

Edited May 29, 2018 by Konachibi

[robbybe01234]

I'll have to agree on the molt agro being unsatisfactory and the decay being a bit too fast and giving the perception of being really fast.  Also there is something to numbers going down.  I want numbers to go up but much of my time with her is spent seeing the "decaying" warning.  Also, in pathology sometimes biotic pathogens can mutate.  Sometimes spores could adjust to the environment and be allowed to spread without influence.

Please look at the following:

• Decay rate
• Ability to pause decay rate (a sort of incubation)
• Molt aggro effectiveness
• Spore's ability to spread on their own, sometimes.

[Tonberryc]

After a few more days of testing, here are some follow-up observations:

Positives:

• The damage decay when measured relatively against other caster-type warframes is not as bad as I originally thought. While I'd like to see a bit more tuning to prevent the almost instantaneous 36% loss on dropped spores, Saryn's damage is overall still in a good place when measured objectively instead of against her previous versions.
• Flat base spore spread range is just an overall improvement. No more guessing if enemies are going to get the spores based on range, and this helped (didn't fix, but helped) address the issue of inconsistent spore spread.
• Toxic Lash synergy with spore spread is great. It has indirectly caused other issues, but those issues are caused by other aspects of the frame and not this ability or its synergy with spores.
• Recasting spores instead of detonating is just plain better design mechanically and in terms of class fantasy. It feels good and works well to just re-apply the spores on cast.

Negatives:

• Energy efficiency is a mess. There are way too many ways for spores to drop, many of which are completely out of the player's control. The 50% cost reduction on recast helps, but it wasn't enough considering spores are being cast 4-5 times as often and frequently at the full cost due to no active spores. This constantly recasting along with maintaining Toxic Lash and much more frequent use of Molt leaves very little room or energy for Miasma. It also makes spores the sole focus of the warframe again, which doesn't seem to match the intent of the full class rework preceding it.
• The none-prime version of Saryn has suffered tremendously in this change. Her lower armor and lower base energy went from being a minor disadvantage to a massive weakness due to Saryn having to expose herself to more damage and being instantly energy starved after initially casting Toxic Lash and Spores on the first target without a (primed) Flow mod and high efficiency.
• The defensive weaknesses of Saryn have been made very apparent by the newly required play style. Regenerative Molt feels like a mandatory augment, and Molt has to be cast much more often due to Saryn needing to expose herself to enemies for a majority of the mission.
• Infinite duration spores with scaling damage over time will never be balanced. The decay helps keep it in check, but the fundamental nature of the design means it will always be overpowered or trapped in a balancing act where it's only effective within a certain damage range due to not spreading on spore death. I can't see this ever working without going back to a duration on spore damage. It also means that the "cast once, then afk" play style was not fully removed from the frame, which feels like we gave up a fun design only to fail at the reason for doing so.
• Spores spreading on spore death is just too important for fun and class fantasy. No amount of active play styles, ability synergy, or other compensating mechanics will change this. I've tried changing builds, changing weapons, and changing play styles to match everyone's suggestions. The simple fact of the matter is all of them are just trying to make the class as close as possible to automatically spreading spores on spore death, which defeats the purpose of the active play style rework. There should have been several options between a "1 button kills the map" build and what we have now. Deciding to go with such an extreme change given the range of options in between seems overly aggressive and unnecessary.

Suggestions:

• Changing spore death from "on last hit" to requiring that the enemy "die solely from spore damage" would drastically improve the inconsistent spore spread and actually reward the "active play style" this rework wants to create. Emptying an entire clip into an enemy and actively doing 80% of the damage only to be negated by a last-hit, MOBA-style spore kill steal is frustrating to say the least. Suggesting alternative weapons with AoE and punch-through to pop spores more easily is a band-aid, not a solution, and Toxic Lash is great until you run into Nullifiers, energy drain, or any other situation where it can't be easily recast.
• A small delay between spore application and the first damage tick feels necessary at this point. If I actively refresh my spores by recasting and running around the map, enemy spawns line up just right, and I do everything the mechanics of the warframe indicate I should be doing, then I'm punished by enemies dying so fast that I'm not even using an AoE ability anymore. And, no, "all the enemies dying" is not a good thing because there's no version of this scenario where enemies outside your initial cast target are all dead and gone, and it makes the warframe geometrically less efficient the better you play.
• Limited spore duration needs to come back. Keep the damage decay, improve the scaling per target, and let us manage the spore damage by popping spores and recasting instead of rushing around the map chasing DoTs.
• Give Molt the healing from Regenerative Molt, and rework the Regenerative Molt augment to popping nearby spores when running near/through enemies during the speed buff or stunning nearby enemies when casting Molt.
• Better armor and base energy for the non-prime version. Better health and/or shields for both versions. If you want a warframe to be active, then that means they have to be in the thick of things. Requiring support frames and a (nearly) mandatory defensive augment does not feel like a good solution to pushing a squishy warframe into the middle of the fray.
• The 20% damage loss when recasting spores on infected targets needs to be removed. The entire point of limited energy pools and regen is to prevent spamming abilities. Those features already do their job quite well and do not require help.

Edited May 30, 2018 by Tonberryc
More suggestions. Wording clarifications.

[Reclaimer2448]

I feel that Saryn's latest Spores change results in something somewhat odd, because although my tests in Elite Onslaught indicate that I'm generating an increased amount of Focus compared to what I was generating when Saryn 3.0 happened, I'm having a less enjoyable time in the process and dying more frequently. Because I love Saryn so much, I want to share some ideas I've thought of to make her as fun as she was when Saryn 3.0 came out (because I loved that so much) as well as saying what I thought was done right.

I thought the new decay element was quite clever, and since I never found detonating Spores useful, I was glad to see that replaced with recasting. The only thing I honestly didn't like was the change where Spores killing enemies no longer causes Spores to spread. This change seems to render Spores useless in lower level missions as the host of Spores dies before you can spread it, and it also changes the overall feel of Spores. Instead of being a ravaging disease that consumes everything until it has nothing to feast on and simply dies, it's like a weird plague that's powerful and somehow so uncontagious that it needs monitored and manually distributed.

I'm assuming the spread was changed because it was considered too spreadable or because some Saryn players probably hid somewhere and let the Spores do all the work, but I think there are better ways to fix these thing. Maybe a Spores duration, but instead of a duration for each, spore, a shared duration across all of them, much like the damage. The duration could be reset each time a spore is spread or Spores is cast, and when and if the duration hits zero, the spores don't just disappear; instead, they start to decay. They still do damage as they decay, but growth is halted. Once the duration is reset by spreading or casting spores again, the decaying halts and growth resumes. I know this would still make it spread crazily in public, but to be honest, I think the fact that her Spores have the limiting factor of her enemies basically being food for spores helps balance it out. If that still is too powerful or spready, maybe up the decay rate or something. As for the extra efficiency when recasting on infected enemies: I'll take any advantage I can get, but it's not generally useful. When I'm recasting Spores, it's usually to put it on someone who isn't infected because the infected people are too far from the not infected people. Also, as a final note, it's incredibly annoying that enemies being corrupted in fissures suddenly become uninfected. In addition to this, I found that in a Sortie where enemies were being given superior elemental damage resistance, they were immune to spores. It wouldn't even let me cast Spores on them. It kept saying "Invalid target."

I've loved Saryn since the first time I used her, so if any DE person reads this and likes the idea I'm proposing but sees some issues it would cause, please do tell me. I would be very happy to help in any way, and I'm good at coming up with new ideas due to thinking way too much about everything.

Edited May 29, 2018 by Reclaimer2448
I forgot to mention a vital part of my idea on a spores solution, so I came back and edited it in.

[Dr.Wuzzah]

Have to disagree with spores not being energy efficient or not being playable in lower levels. I get most damage and kills most of the time when I play her. I have no energy problems either. I think the problem is people stack too much strength.

Its simple, if damage scales too fast everything will die and you will have no time to help the spread of spores. Strength is equivalent to the time it takes damage to scale. You should aim for low, base or even slightly negative strength. This way you don't have to panic everytime you have no spores active (which is constant with high power strength).

TLDR: If your spores drain to often you should scale down power strength (and don't run blind rage... ever)

[Threa]

Please, please, please let spores spread upon enemy death. Saryn doesn't feel complete without that. 

[LSG501]

Playing with another saryn is really starting to get annoying... if the whole intent of the rework is for saryn to be more 'hands on' with her abilities the fact that another saryn can basically prevent this from being the case is an incredibly poor design choice.  

EDIT: can the spore 'target zone' be slightly enlarged too, seems a little small when things are moving fast.

Edited May 30, 2018 by LSG501

[-Raith]

Suggestion : Pocket Spore: Aiming the spore cast while running with molt and trying to kill stuff often feels clunky. You're super speedy but you have to either lower your dpi or slow down a bit to hit her one. So my suggestion is keeping it as is, but changing the cast to a cone in front of her like Inaros's Pocket sand. It allows for ease of casting, and if you think about it thats sort of what you're already doing. The typical way to spore is to cast spore then smack that enemy to spread. So remaking it into a cone cast would optimize the process slightly. 

I would specify that I think it would all work exactly how it does now, it just wouldn't require a target to cast. So it'd cast the first time like normal. Recasting would still be 50% energy cost and losing 20% of your tick damage. I think it bring a lot of versatility to the ability. You can play the current super active playstyle and cast it more often which would bring her dps down a bit but also allow for the spores to be more useful instead of tedious to spread. There could also be some interesting ways to just cast spore a couple of times to lower your tick damage but keep an amount of enemies alive so that you can avoid total decay between packs (Haven't thought about this much just off the top of my head.)
 

I would like to express that I think her damage and usability are great as is. I'm really enjoying 3.5 and she's basically my main now, but I do think making the casting of spores feel better would really go a long way.

[[DE]Danielle]

And more changes have arrived in PC Hotfix 22.20.7 (with an added Miasma changes bonus)!

Spores

• Drain occurs once per half second instead of continuous.
• Targets you cast Spores on directly will always spread on death.
• Targets affected by Miasma will always spread on death.
• Spores won't be removed by enemies going temporarily invulnerable because of void tears corrupting them.
• Tone down Spore decaying blinking warning
• Fixed Saryn’s Spore damage being removed when casting Spores on a target that is being simultaneously killed by a teammate. 
• Fixed Saryn’s Spore damage decay drain discrepancies when entering a Nullifier bubble. Damage was decaying slower the second time entering a Nullifier bubble.
• Fixed Saryn's Spores and Contagion cloud not using custom Energy colors on cast/burst.
   

Miasma

• Increased sickness Duration by 1 second. 
• Lowered Energy cost to 75. 
• Decreased damage tick to 300.

Thank you all for your thorough testing and constructive feedback.

[Jakizu]

On 2018-05-24 at 10:26 AM, [DE]Danielle said:

And more changes have arrived in PC Hotfix 22.20.7 (with an added Miasma changes bonus)!

Spores

• Drain occurs once per half second instead of continuous.
• Targets you cast Spores on directly will always spread on death.
• Targets affected by Miasma will always spread on death.
• Spores won't be removed by enemies going temporarily invulnerable because of void tears corrupting them.
• Tone down Spore decaying blinking warning
• Fixed Saryn’s Spore damage being removed when casting Spores on a target that is being simultaneously killed by a teammate. 
• Fixed Saryn’s Spore damage decay drain discrepancies when entering a Nullifier bubble. Damage was decaying slower the second time entering a Nullifier bubble.
• Fixed Saryn's Spores and Contagion cloud not using custom Energy colors on cast/burst.
   

Miasma

• Increased sickness Duration by 1 second. 
• Lowered Energy cost to 75. 
• Decreased damage tick to 300.

Thank you all for your thorough testing and constructive feedback.

---

The bulbous pockets of corrosive popping goodness have been through the devs’ workshop and are here with some new changes! After you've had a chance to thoroughly test all of the changes to Spores below, we'd love to hear what you think! 

As always, please keep your feedback constructive and provide videos/images where possible.

• Spores can be re-cast while active and will no longer detonate all active Spores. 
  • 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. 
• Fixed inconsistent spreading ranges with Spores when killing an infected enemy by establishing a new base range of 16m across all spreading conditions. 
• Removed spread on enemies that die to a Spore’s tick damage. 
• 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. To better explain this change and how it all breaks down, let’s compare:
  • Was: Damage growth is determined per Spore, so 1 damage per Spore every second. For example, let’s say there are 5 enemies. You cast Spores on one of the enemies in that group. 3 Spores are now active on that enemy. Damaging that enemy with Toxic Lash disperses a single Spore to the surrounding 4 enemies for a grand total of 7 Spores (4 enemies with a single Spore + the 3 original Spores on cast). This maintains a damage growth of 7 damage every second. 
  • Now: 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 number of infected enemies is uncapped! You can infect more than 10 enemies, but the damage growth is dependent on that max. 
• Damage per second will now “decay” (decrease over time) when no infected enemies remain. 
  • The damage per second you’ve accumulated will first instantly drop by 20%, which will then commence the decay of the remaining damage by 10% per second (scales with Duration mods).
  • Decaying can be observed in the damage per second meter located above Saryn’s ability icons. 
  • Nullifying effects (including Data-Conduits) increases the decay by 30% per second.

Curious about the details on how and why? Check out the Spores Revisited dev workshop!

Known issues: 

• Casting Spores on a target that is getting killed by a teammate removes all Spore damage. 

So after doing more work I'm gaining a little better of an understanding on this tweak.

The reason I'm liking the swap of corrosive and viral is bc with the damage climb, and our control now over status chance now, enemies would literally drop like flies if spores still did viral. That not only is very inconsiderate in a team setting but would also make miasma to an extent pointless in my opinion. Where now u can tear someone's armor down, helping the team too, and then [for bosses] stick them with a guaranteed viral proc that u can keep reseting if need be while spores keeps breaking down armor. It lets us kill with more intent where before u had to go cast happy and more or less wait for death to come. 

One issue I think a lot of us are having. I feel, in all honesty, this rework is hard to "perfect" test. I understand the changes for onslaught 100% however these changes make elite onslaught the only real testing ground for her spores. 

To go into a high level survival [ie. Mot or Taveuni], in order to fully test her, is vey hard. Before I'll admit nothing really could survive spores bc of how infinite and fast it would stack. But now once u get to enemies high level to kill, there's so many and they're killing you faster than u can kill them. And that's with a maxed steel fiber and arcane guardian. 

I do like how now you're lethality isn't purely determined by range like the initial revisit bc it made 2 of my 3 configs more or less useless. But in all honesty having range is what helps lessen this "chasing" feel when dealing with large groups of high level enemies. 

I still really feel strongly that the infected enemy max for climbing damage should be increased. At least to 20 maybe 30 tops. That way we can keep the reset decay and decay rate, but also have a less rushed play experience. I don't want to be able to click and walk away but now I have to stalk that spore counter. If I lol away for a second or stop moving I'm dead. 

If not, maybe lower the decay rate and/or reset decay. Or even maybe just have the decay rate without the initial reset. If we're being encouraged to recast maybe give more a incentive than reduced casting cost on uninfected enemy while spores is active. In practice it comes off more a degradation. Yay to reduced energy but then there's the damage cut on recast, as well as a dual decay system.

I feel like I'm being punished. You either have to just suck it up and deal with the "chase" or stop trying to be so effective. And I dont find that to be exactly fair. Before all the of my configs did different things and required different play styles.  [Gas chamber, Sludge bomber, and plague] now all play the exact same way and the only difference in results is how spores spread bc of the difference in range. I'm feel like I'm required to stick to a set flow now. 

Also don't think we need the 2 energy gain with toxic lash. Yes it technically "helped" when there are leeches but with the need to cast greatly reduced a basic rage pays out much more than before. If you're having as issue with energy I personally feel you're over casting by choice. Plenty of warframes come across the same energy theft issue and that 2 gain per melee kill honestly didn't do as much to combat it anyway. I do like toxic lash but I've shot at spores numerous times and it never popped. May be a bug [someone please let me know if it is] but being able to pop spores with our other skills would be great again. Maybe not molt as that would cause the same issue as casing spore on molt. But miasma detonating spores I think should be a thing. . I also think we need the old spore detonation with Miasma back.

Typically if you're modding for strength you lack efficiency. And if u have high efficiency you'd power strength is lower. So using miasma to detonate spores with all that's been done would still contribute to the idea of an active play style. 

P.s. Sorry if my explanation is all over the place. I just have a lot of different tweak ideas and they sometimes start to smear together in my head. 

[--RV--arm4geddon-117]

@[DE]Danielle @[DE]Pablo

Why don't you want to aknowledge that the problem isn't the spores doing dmg or whatever, but it's a kind of dmg many many players could care less to have ( according to the miriads of posts), and CP's make the status effect redundant at best, you fixed already the molt/spores turret that was so concerning, but no matter what you keep doing with spores, the previous Viral + Toxin dots carriage was and will always be far better vs everything rather than more oriented vs 2 factions ( grineers/corrupted ).

Those who knew how to play saryn never had issues with dmg dealing even without going crazy with toxic lash + slide spam.

Bloody hell, even higher tier infested units which are strong vs toxin died like poof when you knew how to work your guns with your spores thanks to the very high dmg toxin dots and the viral status.

All i see is a stubborn obsession with these god da:mn corrosive spores which i personally could care less about even if they did Millions dmg, the viral+toxin infinitely spread ( since toxin stacks ) was far superior, smoother and more fun to play with, not to mention high burst dmg peaks which were both nice in starchart content and long runs. ( and i'm not talking about the molt spores thing )

And cherry on top it fitted saryn theme so well.

Casual pubs on the starchart or short survivals can't care less about those corrosive spores when a semi modded frame with a semi decent load out can wipe up anything in that area and pre made groups going for hours long runs will run Cp's and would benefit way more from the old viral spores.

Sad truth

Miasma as a way to propagate the former spores viral status will NEVER be as efficient and as energy worthy plain and simple and will never be as smooth unless it becomes a 1 handed action and even then there would be needed too many casts when with spores you could cast so little to keep a map perma viral'ed.

But whatever, it's your game do what you want at this point , but keeping the spores as they were woulda saved alot of working hours when you could just fix the molt/spores turret problem, improve molt as you did, toxic lash and just give Miasma armor stripping capabilities on each tick.

Ps: on a personal note playing with another Saryn in a group is pure cancer, and i swear to God i NEVER had that nuisance before this chain of reworks when i happened to be paired with more saryins in my group

 

Pps: at 100% duration Miasma is still listed with a 5 secs duration not 6 ( according to the +1 second "boost" )

 

 

Edited May 30, 2018 by arm4geddon-117

[Mach25]

18 minutes ago, [DE]Danielle said:

And more changes have arrived in PC Hotfix 22.20.7 (with an added Miasma changes bonus)!

Spores

• Drain occurs once per half second instead of continuous.
• Targets you cast Spores on directly will always spread on death.
• Targets affected by Miasma will always spread on death.
• Spores won't be removed by enemies going temporarily invulnerable because of void tears corrupting them.
• Tone down Spore decaying blinking warning
• Fixed Saryn’s Spore damage being removed when casting Spores on a target that is being simultaneously killed by a teammate. 
• Fixed Saryn’s Spore damage decay drain discrepancies when entering a Nullifier bubble. Damage was decaying slower the second time entering a Nullifier bubble.
• Fixed Saryn's Spores and Contagion cloud not using custom Energy colors on cast/burst.
   

Miasma

• Increased sickness Duration by 1 second. 
• Lowered Energy cost to 75. 
• Decreased damage tick to 300.

Thank you all for your thorough testing and constructive feedback.

I can all but see the Missus jumping for joy. Her spores are going to be very fun to use now. 🙂

[LSG501]

26 minutes ago, [DE]Danielle said:

Miasma

• Increased sickness Duration by 1 second.  
• Lowered Energy cost to 75. 
• Decreased damage tick to 300. 

Thank you all for your thorough testing and constructive feedback.

Um... why?

Doesn't that just make it 300x6 instead of 350x5 which gains us a grand total of 50 damage over the full duration which is now an entire second longer, there's no scaling or anything to help at higher levels so it's going to hit a brick wall. 

Kind of feels like a pointless change to miasma in all honesty. 

 

Oh and still no 'fix' for when there are two or more saryn's in a group interfering with one another...that REALLY needs to be looked at no matter the reasons you give on your twitter Pablo. 

Edited May 30, 2018 by LSG501

[leirynot]

46 minutes ago, LSG501 said:

Um... why?

Doesn't that just make it 300x6 instead of 350x5 which gains us a grand total of 50 damage over the full duration which is now an entire second longer, there's no scaling or anything to help at higher levels so it's going to hit a brick wall.  

Kind of feels like a pointless change to miasma in all honesty. 

 

Oh and still no 'fix' for when there are two or more saryn's in a group interfering with one another...that REALLY needs to be looked at no matter the reasons you give on your twitter Pablo. 

The extended Miasma duration is probably to give it a longer time for enemies to die to it or spores so the spores will spread.

 

I still wish we could just go back to 2.0 spores, but these ones are slowly improving. I still would prefer viral over corrosive and reduce the damage they do to like 1/4 of what it is, maybe even remove the scaling completely since 1/2 of HP scales. Armor only being useful against Grineer and at most 1/2 of Corrupted units, the fact that it is so easily bypassed between Mag, Frost, Corrosive Projection, Slash Procs, etc. that it is much less useful as a debuff than Viral, and personally I prefer spores as a debuff than a source of damage.

 

Edit: Tried her out with the new changes and the slow decay ticks feels much, much nicer and less panicked. I still think old Spore was better, but overall the new Saryn feels okay now. Not as great as she once was, but still good to play. It's nice being able to cast Miasma without having to worry about all the enemies dying to spore tick damage and not spreading. I do still feel like decay was a bit slower, since I'm currently running as much strength and duration as possible without corrupted mods and can barely hold on to any stacks between waves of defense.

Edited May 30, 2018 by leirynot

[SSI_Seraph]

Post 22.20.7 Feedback:

the decay is still stupidly high and the spread on miasma is near useless as soon as miasma can't kill them.

the spored enemies spread is also useless since those enemies are already in the area that's spored by lash.

All these "tweaks" are made to look good on paper when they are near useless in practice.

The only real thing she got out of this is +1sec to miasma and the energy reduction on the ability.

[Konachibi]

@[DE]Danielle @[DE]Pablo

I had an idea for Spores you may be interested in and it may appease some people's concerns regarding Spore spread and balancing.  Here it is:

When an enemy dies from spore damage, they leave behind a 'spore cloud', it's duration determined by the Power Duration of Saryn (and thus making power duration somewhat relevant to the ability again).  Any enemy running in to the spore cloud will become spored.  This would mean instead of it spreading like wildfire, it would only spread so long as the enemy are moving in that direction.  It would (read as: should) stop Spores running rampant across a Sanctuary Onslaught map like the current version does, while still allowing it to stay active and spread well in other missions like survival, mobile defence etc.  This way the game will not punish Saryn players if they were unable to find and shoot the spored enemy in time before they died from spore damage, as it still has a chance to spread, albeit in a significantly reduced range and with lower chance as it relies on an enemy passing through the cloud to become infected.

Spore decay will not begin while a spore cloud is active, so the decay would only begin if no enemies have spores on them and there are no spore clouds remaining from enemies that died from spore damage.  This would help players better manage the decay of Spores as the decay would not start instantly when the last spored enemy dies (provided it died to spore damage).  If the player however killed the last enemy with their weapons they 'should' (in theory) be aware that it is the final enemy and that decay will start when it dies (thanks to the new display in the user interface), so that should not be an issue.

 

Alternatively, if you don't like the idea of Spores being able to do this by default, you could change Toxic Lash's augment 'Contagion Cloud' to do it instead, so any enemy killed by Toxic Lash that has Spores on them will leave a spore cloud behind that will apply Spores to any enemy that runs in to it.  That would make the augment much more appealing to Saryn players as the current toxic cloud that Contagion Cloud leaves behind feels somewhat pointless, and this would somewhat keep the original 'spread on death' mechanic we enjoyed without making it overwhelming.

As a bonus side effect, this would also mean that players wouldn't feel so hard-pressed to build purely for Power Range, as they'd be able to keep Spores active in a more 'localised' area where they would be able to find an shoot Spored enemies instead of the ability running off across the map never to be seen again, allowing for more diversity with their Saryn builds such as more duration, efficiency and strength to benefit her other 3 abilities instead of feeling like they need to focus entirely on 1 in order to get the most out of her.

 

I would greatly appreciate if you could consider one of these two suggestions and hope that it helps put Saryn back in to the fun state she was in before the Spore rework.

Edited May 30, 2018 by Konachibi

[Borg1611]

Just wanted to say thanks for the 22.20.7 spore spreading changes with Miasma and always spreading from targets you cast on. I think that will be a huge QoL improvement that was suggested after the last batch of changes. 

Multiple Saryn's is still annoying, but we've seen a lot more attention on getting this re-work right than I think we've seen on any other frame which is appreciated.

A longer Miasma duration and lower cost will also make it easier to keep viral procs up as well as improve the new synergy between spores always spreading when Miasma is up. I haven't logged in yet, but I hope the Miasma duration will be made obvious on the UI if it isn't currently. 

edit: I guess the reason Miasma duration isn't on the UI is because it puts a DoT on enemies in range when you cast it rather than having a persistent AoE in the area you cast it in that would affect enemies that enter it after you cast (while the duration is still up). The way it's worded kind of makes it seem like it should just be an AoE over the duration that would affect any enemies that enter the area after you cast it since you're releasing this poisonous mist into the air. It works fine the way it is if there's a technical reason why you implemented it as a DoT that's applied only once in an AoE rather than a persistent AoE for the duration. It would mostly only be a buff in places like ESO if it was an AoE that lasted for the duration and infected enemies that entered/spawned after the initial cast. 

Edited May 30, 2018 by Borg1611

[leirynot]

30 minutes ago, SSI_Seraph said:

Post 22.20.7 Feedback:

the decay is still stupidly high and the spread on miasma is near useless as soon as miasma can't kill them.

the spored enemies spread is also useless since those enemies are already in the area that's spored by lash.

All these "tweaks" are made to look good on paper when they are near useless in practice.

The only real thing she got out of this is +1sec to miasma and the energy reduction on the ability.

I found the spread on Miasma very useful. The Miasma itself doesn't have to kill them. If they die to spores while Miasma is hurting them, spores will still spread.

[SSI_Seraph]

il y a 22 minutes, leirynot a dit :

I found the spread on Miasma very useful. The Miasma itself doesn't have to kill them. If they die to spores while Miasma is hurting them, spores will still spread.

You have 5sec*duration window for that to happen. It might be good on low level stuff but as soon as thy start tanking you're gonna need to predict when they'll die or spam a 75 cost ability.

[LSG501]

Had a play with the latest rework...

Didn't really notice much of a change with spores if I'm entirely honest, still had my points randomly disappear for no obvious reason..  Cool down timer is still too fast.

Miasma, on low levels it will still kill them outright and then it doesn't seem to spread many spores afterwards, usually because we've built for range because of how spores work.... at higher levels it's not strong enough to kill stuff to spread spores because there is no scaling (why can't saryn get some of that scaling that was given to oberon during his rework?  Without any sort of scaling for high level enemies it ends up being a 'wasted' 75 energy (realistically higher as spore builds will likely sacrifice a bit of efficiency now).

The current change to miasma seems like it might actually be better suited to the older viral spores and corrosive miasma rather than the current corrosive spores and viral miasma...

Pretty sure it doesn't do this at present (never noticed if it does do it) but I kind of feel miasma should at the very least now leave behind spores if it doesn't kill an enemy that doesn't have spores on it already.  We're hitting them with 'viral' damage which is in reality infectious.

Edited May 30, 2018 by LSG501

[Amazerath]

22.20.7:

Spore's mechanics still feel like they only belong in Onslaught and are pain in the butt to use almost everywhere else in the game. The tweaks have made them slightly less of a pain in the butt to use but they are still not enjoyable. The infinite duration/scaling design is flawed and I would like to see it dropped. I respect and appreciate the attempt to do something new and different with Saryn but in this case I simply don't think it has payed off. I had more fun playing the old Saryn.

[robbybe01234]

After a couple missions, I'd say she is fine.  I would like molt to draw more aggro but as she is right now...I'll take it.  Thanks DE, my tennogen skin purchase did not go to waste. haha

[SyBuhr]

5 hours ago, arm4geddon-117 said:

@[DE]Danielle @[DE]Pablo

Why don't you want to aknowledge that the problem isn't the spores doing dmg or whatever, but it's a kind of dmg many many players could care less to have ( according to the miriads of posts), and CP's make the status effect redundant at best, you fixed already the molt/spores turret that was so concerning, but no matter what you keep doing with spores, the previous Viral + Toxin dots carriage was and will always be far better vs everything rather than more oriented vs 2 factions ( grineers/corrupted ).

Those who knew how to play saryn never had issues with dmg dealing even without going crazy with toxic lash + slide spam.

Bloody hell, even higher tier infested units which are strong vs toxin died like poof when you knew how to work your guns with your spores thanks to the very high dmg toxin dots and the viral status.

All i see is a stubborn obsession with these god da:mn corrosive spores which i personally could care less about even if they did Millions dmg, the viral+toxin infinitely spread ( since toxin stacks ) was far superior, smoother and more fun to play with, not to mention high burst dmg peaks which were both nice in starchart content and long runs. ( and i'm not talking about the molt spores thing )

And cherry on top it fitted saryn theme so well.

Casual pubs on the starchart or short survivals can't care less about those corrosive spores when a semi modded frame with a semi decent load out can wipe up anything in that area and pre made groups going for hours long runs will run Cp's and would benefit way more from the old viral spores.

Sad truth

Miasma as a way to propagate the former spores viral status will NEVER be as efficient and as energy worthy plain and simple and will never be as smooth unless it becomes a 1 handed action and even then there would be needed too many casts when with spores you could cast so little to keep a map perma viral'ed.

But whatever, it's your game do what you want at this point , but keeping the spores as they were woulda saved alot of working hours when you could just fix the molt/spores turret problem, improve molt as you did, toxic lash and just give Miasma armor stripping capabilities on each tick.

Ps: on a personal note playing with another Saryn in a group is pure cancer, and i swear to God i NEVER had that nuisance before this chain of reworks when i happened to be paired with more saryins in my group

 

Pps: at 100% duration Miasma is still listed with a 5 secs duration not 6 ( according to the +1 second "boost" )

 

 

There's a ton of problems with the current rework. Here are the three big ones that players have seemed to have mentioned:

1. Issues with multiple Saryns in a group, competing for spores in order to be useful (A more egregious issue in PUGs; Forces a selfish style of play).
2. Issues with conditional or circumstantial requirements, such as spawn rates and areas for her to be effective (A more egregious issue in Star-Chart missions, where spawns are more varied, and in waves, limiting her abilities effectiveness over-all, when compared to her 2.0 status; Team-mates utilizing Auras that reduce the effectiveness of your abilities, or team-mates out-burst-damaging enemies before you can get to them).
3. Removal of Spread-on-Death in lieu of this new patient-zero-spread-on-death, which makes doesn't truly fix her current energy issues (A more egregious issue when that enemy is left on its own, or if team-mates kill everything around it, essentially wasting your energy for naught).

Personally, I don't care if she has viral, corrosive, or magnetic (Yeah, I went there) as her Abilities Element, as long as they give it some form of scaling that works. I do agree with your point though, the changes they made have lead Saryn into a state of either stealing all the kills, or being gimped entirely by her team, making her a wasted slot. She relies too heavily on circumstances out of the player's control in a game that is design for 4-versus-Everything. She relies on spawn mechanics, relies on her team's cooperation, relies on what tile-set you get. All these things can make or break your experience playing her, where-as before she only had concerns with her augments. Now you have several more issues instead of that one issue you had before the re-work.

Don't mistake me though, I like that she is strong, I like that a lot. But she was also strong in her 2.0 days. 

I agree with the quoted post, I think the change from viral to corrosive is the first problem. Viral lent itself better to the game in general, and had pre-built scaling due to how it functioned. The way spores worked during her 2.0 time-frame was fantastic, and I don't think I saw many instances of the "Selfish Saryn" play-style that is now practically a requirement to player her. You were always be certain the spores would work, and would spread, and would still be somewhat effective, regardless of the tile-set, the spawns, and your team regardless of how you played (Spore once, pop, let the team enjoy the debuff, Spore and Melee tank Saryn, Spore Range Saryn, etc.). Basically, you felt that even if the spores died out, you were effective in what they achieved: Debuffing a slew of enemies, not necessarily killing them. Now it is a requirement to practically face-tank level 100's to spread the spores, either by standing in Line-Of-Sight to pop them, or going in to melee, now it is a requirement to kill everything that spore touches in order to be effective. This is a massive change in game-play direction, that doesn't achieve what the frame was originally meant to do: Debuff the enemies around you. Again, it relies on team-mates coordinating well with the Saryn, not having another Saryn, a decent tile-set, and decent enemy spawns, and all of these things are NOT guaranteed in PUG's.

She doesn't function as well as she used to because of the removal of the Spore-Spread-on-Death mechanic, which has made her more aggressive in play-style and more energy hungry as a result. Re-casting spores does not help with her energy efficiency, even if the cost of it is halved, because if you cast spores once, chances are you also cast Toxic Lash to spread the spores, and if things go awry (I.E.: your team-mates killing the enemies, not allowing them to spread), you've wasted 75 energy (assuming no efficiency changes). And if there is more than one Saryn, then the two will compete due to the now aggressive and selfish design of her abilities.

These issues were non-existent before due to how Viral worked, allowing more versatility with her kit, with the exception of the molt-tower, which was removed entirely with this update. Removal of the Spore-Spread on death was probably the biggest issue, because at some-point, you will still be required to face-tank a level 120 enemy to get those spores to spread, and Saryn's over-all design isn't cut for that. She doesn't have anything in her kit that allows her to do this, aside from Molt, which let's be frank here, is still flaky to use at best. (See what I did there? Molting puns.)

You can't have it both ways though, you can't eliminate the main appeals of her kit which allowed her to be super energy efficient and effective in the role she fulfilled that many players appreciated her for (The two energy back for popping spores, the Spores spreading when they killed), and expect it to not be taken critically. Over-all this re-work (in my opinion) has been a nerf to her energy efficiency, due to the removal of Spore Spread on death, a gameplay nerf in the sense that she is now a more selfishly designed frame to play, and a nerf to gameplay in the sense that she is only truly at her prime when in onslaught, a game-mode that only accounts for a fraction of what the game has to offer. She isn't effective in the Plains of Eidolon (and hypothetically won't be effective in the new Open-World coming up), she isn't effective in a majority of the tile-sets.

The damage, the quality of life changes? All great, things that players (mainly the Quality of Life changes to Molt and Toxic lash) have been asking for, for a while now.

The new design direction she is heading in? If you like to play selfishly, she's great. If you have a 24/7 squad ready to roll out with you, and coordinate with you? She's great. If you only play 1% of what the game offers you? She's great (kind of).

But if you don't like any of that, you don't enjoy playing with it or as it, then this is not a good change. You'll either be at the top, or at the bottom, useful or useless, in your team. With the rework, there's no middle ground to fill with her departure from a Debuff frame to a pure damage frame.