[22.20.5] Spores Revisited Feedback MEGATHREAD

[hexacypher]

Waiting for this hotfix:

On 2018-05-30 at 12:06 PM, [DE]Danielle said:

And more changes have arrived in PC Hotfix 22.20.8

Saryn

• Reverted to Pre-rework Saryn, the rework abilties will be released on a future Frame instead.

Spores still are unnecessarily clunky, convoluted and not as consistent as the old Viral ones. Saryn's definitely become a 'Press 4 to win' Frame on the Star Charts. I wasn't around for Saryn 1.0, but is this basically a reversion to that?

Also, after playing with her a bit more after this latest patch, in all honesty, she seems even more AFK than the old molt-spore combo that DE seems to have hated so much. There is the spore and hide strat now, and if you get on a team of Saryns, it's just let the strongest one do the work and go off and hide somewhere while you make a sandwich and brew some coffee.

[PersistentDevil]

So the conclusion, Saryn still a ggood DPS frame or they took it away?

[robbybe01234]

12 hours ago, LSG501 said:

Yes it is imo, if you start a rework you shouldn't leave it in a state that is 'worse' than before the rework, especially when most of the complaints revolve around the same issue(s), even more so when there were very few if any complaints about the old version. 

Also imo it's pretty clear when it's not 'good enough' because you'll still have lots of complaints...in some cases they just need to listen to the players BEFORE the rework (ember wof rework not fixing the issue it was intended to fix for example).

Now you're right in as much as you can't please everyone but you can please the majority and at present saryn isn't doing that. 

 

Reasonable.  I wouldn't want something worse than before.  It feels fine to me though.  Look, I didn't have a ton of experience with saryn 1.0 or 2.0.  On and off.  If saryn mains say she is worse then I'll have to take your word for it.  This is coming from me, an Ember main that would be a bit put off if some random person with little experience said, "oh, she's fine now"......but it isn't something I should start in a saryn thread though.  But I have a ton to say, haha.

As for the majority, if you can pull figures that show >50% of all saryn players dislike the rework then, yeah.  Really consider if the complaints are justified and fix the thing.  But I can't speak to that.  All I can say is that she works well enough for me from lvl's 10-65.  That's all I've done with her as of the 20.7 fix. 

Edited June 1, 2018 by robbybe01234

[feralknights]

3 minutes ago, robbybe01234 said:

Reasonable.  I wouldn't want something worse than before.  It feels fine to me though.  Look, I didn't have a ton of experience with saryn 1.0 or 2.0.  On and off.  If saryn mains say she is worse than I'll have to take your word for it.  This is coming from me, an Ember main that would be a bit put off if some random person with little experience said, "oh, she's fine now"......but it isn't something I should start in a saryn thread though.  But I have a ton to say, haha.

As for the majority, if you can pull figures that show >50% of all saryn players dislike the rework then, yeah.  Stop what you're doing and fix the thing.  But I can't speak to that.  All I can say is that she works well enough for me from lvl's 10-65.  That's all I've done with her as of the 20.7 fix. 

I wouldn't call myself a "main" but I can feel you on Ember.  A friend basically stopped playing after the nerfs, because he played her like a CC frame instead of a damage frame.

Bluntly, at this point, the fix is to act on the admission the rework was a mistake and roll it back instead of continuing to try to fit a square peg into a round hole with a sledgehammer.

She "works."  She's "powerful."  She's just an entirely different character now that plays entirely differently that a lot of us have sunk time, energy, lenses, Forma, and bought skins for, and feel really frustrated that the response is "we're not going back," especially since it was emphasized to us that this during the initial demonstration that this was an experiment that they were willing to backtrack on.

[SyBuhr]

13 hours ago, Rambit23Z said:

13 hours ago, SyBuhr said:

>Nullifiers are not really a problem.

They are when your stacks depend on spreads, so I don't know how you can say that.

Which is why you kill the Nullifiers. They are a challenge to overcome, and once you do spores can spread as usual.

13 hours ago, SyBuhr said:

You are not always going to have just one nullifier, you will likely have 2-3 on the field, sometimes more, as you go higher in levels.

Yes, and? Not seeing the problem here. Maybe it's a playstyle issue or a build issue but the first thing I did when Nullifiers were added was to figure out the best ways do get rid of them, they've been in the game for quite a while now and have been nerfed several times.

13 hours ago, SyBuhr said:

I can't imagine how you would think that, I am sure you have had at least one instance where the nullifier spawned in the walls, and still had a massive bubble, or the bubble-blower was in the wall, preventing it from being one-shot. I have had both those things happen to me, but if you haven't, I am glad for you.

It has happened to me a few times. Either I just shoot the bubble when it appears or kill it with punchthrough when possible. This is less of a problem with Nullifiers and more general enemy spawning issue.

13 hours ago, SyBuhr said:

Sorties are high-level missions. I mentioned it before, but the majority of Star-Chart is not the same as Sorties.

Yes, and low level content can be cleared by pressing 4. You wouldn't bring 2 metric tons of planks to build a shed, likewise, there's no need to cast spores at that level.

13 hours ago, SyBuhr said:

I should also mention you played her Solo, so you aren't hindered by your team, only by the tile and spawns, which ultimately helps you, because the entire new design of Saryn, as I've stated before in this topic, is to be selfish.

I am a bit biased because my network is not well suited for online play, especially if the game gives me host. Therefore I only really go Public for Fissures and maybe interceptions. And as for the selfishness of Saryn, doesn't that go for all dps frames? A Mesa can easily hog all the kills, So can an Ash, Nidus, Excalibur, etc. And she does work well with allies that can kill. Remember spores are supposed to spread when an ally kills  a spore host.

i've found that it's best not to get too attached to spore stacks, which is why my build sacrifices duration for strength.

13 hours ago, SyBuhr said:

 Also, I should go on note, that the Mission Variant Elemental Enhancement, probably actually aided you, since it allowed you to get off more stacks earlier because spores were not the cause of death, and subsequently allowed you to pop those spores.

Fair point.

13 hours ago, SyBuhr said:

Consider that Warframe is a multiplayer game for a moment, take her through all those mission types again with a Pick-up-Group of some randoms. You are either going to get all the kills, or get frustrated with your team for making you waste energy. Conversely, your team of randoms may be entirely sick of how Saryn is currently forced to play in a selfish manner now, and do everything in their power to prevent you from utilizing spores (which has happened to me four times now). She doesn't excel in Spy (obviously, never really did), doesn't do fantastic in Mobile Defense. The only modes I've had staggering success with her, are Defense (Stationary), Survival (Depends on enemy spawn rates, and locations), and occasionally Exterminate. Mind you, I've done all of those with PUGs, a bunch of random people who either hate the new Saryn or work with her.

Again, I was never a fan of PUG squads in the first place, no matter what frame I or others play. And that's the thing with PUGs, they're a gamble.

13 hours ago, SyBuhr said:

No one Disputes her Power; She is strong. It isn't the cause of why I think the rework is bad, and I dislike her. She was already strong in 2.0.

Saryn 2.0 wasn't that strong. She had utility and one really good interaction with the Lanka. Before Saryn was a weapon-centric frame with abilities that debuffed. (And some buff with old Toxic Lash)

Whereas now Saryn the actual frame is strong, similiar to Nidus.

13 hours ago, SyBuhr said:

Bad Tile Set? Too bad. Bad enemy Spawns? Too bad. A bunch of Nullifiers Spawned and killed off your spore spreads? Too bad. A nullifier bursa just shot out a bunch of those mini Nullifier bubbles, and you just stepped into one?

All of these were fixed when we got the ability to recast.

13 hours ago, SyBuhr said:

A nullifier bursa just shot out a bunch of those mini Nullifier bubbles, and you just stepped into one? Too bad, there goes some of your stacks. A Scrambus used his ability, and you didn't notice? Too bad.

And these are honestly player mistakes. if you got hit by the ability countering attack, your abilities will suffer.

 

1. Still doesn't change the fact that if a Nullifier spawns on the spores, or on you, that you will either lose your stacks, or lose the spores entirely. There is no counter to something you have no perception over when it will appear or where it will appear.
2. The problem here is that, given how her spores are gimped in terms of spreading, either due to team-mates or spawns, if multiple Nullifiers spawn and are spread out, their bubbles will remove the spores on your spread victims, Curing a lot of spored enemies. That's the problem, and that's just how Nullifiers work. The key with this point, and point number one is to address how you felt Nullifiers were not an issue to Spores, and they obviously are.
3. Yes, you can do that (I've had to do that, and some other janky stuff to kill them). It doesn't change the fact that the bubble still went out and potentially cured your enemies. This is more of a problem with the strange enemy spawns, more than anything else, but it is definitely more exacerbated with spores, and other AOE abilities.
4. That's the difference between her 2.0 days and now. Before, I didn't need to cast a 75 energy (100 back then, if I recall right) ability for trash. I could cast her spores, have them spread viral, get the energy back if I wanted with Toxic Lash. Her one felt good at every stage of the game, where-as now you will only potentially find it useful at high-level content. Remember, I love damage! But I don't think that is what Saryn is all about. Before she filled the Viral-Debuff niche, was excellent at doing that while remaining relevant at any stage of the game. Now, she has a one that essentially does a Localized Corrosive Projection with Damage, of which you will not really see the benefit of stripping armor if your team-mates bring in Corrosive Projection. The spores no longer spread on death, something they should not have done at all, but had to in order to control the insane spread these monsters now have, and even that is going to fall flat on its head.
5. I personally go full range Saryn, just to be consistent. But no, I haven't had much enjoyment with her in Teams either. I play in teams a lot, because this is a team-based game more than anything else. "But aren't all DPS frames?" Well yes, but that was not the intended design direction for Saryn. If you look at her 2.0 Days, she filled the role of Debuff frame, with Corrosive on Miasma, and Viral on Spores. Why was this great? Because it would be incredibly rare for your spores to out-right kill, but it was practically a given for them to afflict Viral on enemies, which was great because you have nothing else, other than weapons, to apply a viral debuff to a large group of enemies. The changes now made it more costly to apply that viral on a large group of enemies, and for maximum benefit, you need to be at the epicenter of all the enemies around with Miasma, and not die. While yes, during this 2.0 time-frame, she could be a DPS/Burst Damage Monster, you could also fill in the role of Support/Debuff exceedingly well, and this is what I miss the most about her. She just feels like another forced-DPS frame balanced around one single game-mode, rather than the all-rounder she used to be. Also, the entire concept of having stacks is to be attached to them, that's the point of farming them up. If you feel it is best not to be attached, then there is something wrong with how they implemented, in my opinion.
6. (Elemental Enhancement Quote) - I am actually concerned about elemental enhancement actually being a positive thing for players, rather than a hindrance... Sort of ironic, isn't it? The thing that is supposed to stop you, actually helps you. I'll have to actually make a serious go of it at some point.
7. Yes, PUGs are always a gamble. However, with most other frames, and Saryn during her 2.0 days, they still felt effective at what they did. Again, you either steal the kills with her now, or you don't do anything of importance, because 9 times out of 10, there are 2 other players who are also playing high-DPS frames like Equinox and killing everything around you before you can do anything yourself, and that is the problem that goes back to the Design-Direction change she has received. Before, she was primarily a Debuff frame, with DPS. Now she is just DPS, and trying to even consider using her Miasma, at 75 base energy a pop to spread viral, is just a bad call on their part. 
8. "Saryn wasn't that Strong", I think we'll have to disagree on that point unfortunately. I never used Gas-Lanka with her (although I should have, since I had a riven for it at the time). I never utilized her Molt-Tower Combo either. I built her purely for spreading viral spores, and at the end of the game, I would do well. Saryn was always strong, because it isn't about the damage number at that point, it's about how much health the enemy has left over from the viral procs, which was always half, and considering most people at that time were still running Corrosive Projection (because why wouldn't you remove a ton of armor from an enemy for nothing?) she was really great. Mind you, that Viral is effective against nearly all factions, where-as her spores are not as effective now against Corpus and Infested (unless the infested get armor from a mutalist or something). Saryn didn't necessarily need the damage numbers (although you could easily get them then, too), and that's what made her strong. You could play her, debuff everything, and feel like you were an asset to the team, where-as now you will be combatting between 1-2 other players who may have thought, "Hey, you know what, I'm going to relieve some stress and kill everything around me with my 4th ability on Equinox".
9. "All of these were fixed when the ability got to be recast", no, that's not even valid for me at this point. They took away her ability to recast and spore spread on death, and then give back the ability to recast, and you think it is fixed? Well, that's fine, but I have to disagree. Here is why: Had they not gone with the insane idea to have scaling corrosive damage, there would have never been a need to remove the Recast or the Spore spread function. Why? Because the spores were a primarily a debuff tool. You mean to tell me that, recasting a 25 energy ability (12.5 after subsequent cast), that might not even spread because of a bad tile-set, is a fix? I've never been that fortunate, but if you have, then I am glad for you. They needed a means to control the flood-gates of her spores, and it didn't work. Bad enemy spawns don't fix her energy-hunger issues now. Bad Tiles do not fix her energy issues now. And both those issues will still always impose a risk of losing damage that you worked hard to get, because each recast reduces your stacks by 20% (plus an added -10%/s, if you fail to do so before your team kills the enemies), which becomes more punishing the more stacks you get. So no, that is not a fix for me, considering her spores always spread out fine in her 2.0 days. Why? Because she didn't have the ludicrous Damage design she has now, due to how Viral innately scaled.
10. So if a Bursa spawns behind you, and you can't react quick enough, "Too bad, that's on you", right? Yeah, no. I don't buy that either. Sure, if you see a Scrambus in your view, I'd agree. But I'd wager that more often than not, enemies spawn in your blind spots, and they always know what you are doing. You can't dodge everything, that's just how it is in this game, but to pin that solely on the player is heavy-handed, and you must agree, that at some point, you get pulled in by a bursa, and lost your stacks (and thus, your utility to the team). There are cases where, yes, I agree, if you see that Napalm in front of you, shooting a giant ball of death into your face, you should get out of there. But the spawns rarely, if ever, work like that, you will generally be surrounded by enemies. I can't say I've had an issue with Scrambuses (since I have PTSD from their roller-skating around), but Bursas have more than once dragged me into their play-pens and given me the what for, or alternatively shot a Nullifier field onto the back of my Frame (which is always great).

I think the only points we unfortunately disagree on are truly points 9 and 10, and a couple of the Design Choices. I respect that you think she is good as a DPS frame, but as a Saryn 1.0, 2.0, and now 3.0/3.5 player, I can't agree on it. They've taken her design in a totally different direction than what really clicked with me when I played her. When I played her, I didn't feel the need to spread spores, because they would always spread on their own and be effective, even if I didn't use a Gas-Lanka, or Atterax. Now, I am micromanaging energy, stacks to remain relevant, where enemies are constantly, what my team is doing, and it all just doesn't feel right. Saryn, in my head, wasn't required to be this selfish horde-killing monstrosity she is now, but could always fulfill it if needed. She was supposed to be this frame that, could debuff the enemy's health, do some damage if built right, and offer support to the team. She could do all of those things. Now, you only have one style of play, micromanage spores, and compete with your other DPS frames in your team to actually be useful, and that to me was a mistake. You can like it, there is nothing wrong with that. But I feel it was an awful idea now to have touched her spores and Miasma in such a strange way.

30 minutes ago, robbybe01234 said:

Reasonable.  I wouldn't want something worse than before.  It feels fine to me though.  Look, I didn't have a ton of experience with saryn 1.0 or 2.0.  On and off.  If saryn mains say she is worse than I'll have to take your word for it.  This is coming from me, an Ember main that would be a bit put off if some random person with little experience said, "oh, she's fine now"......but it isn't something I should start in a saryn thread though.  But I have a ton to say, haha.

As for the majority, if you can pull figures that show >50% of all saryn players dislike the rework then, yeah.  Stop what you're doing and fix the thing.  But I can't speak to that.  All I can say is that she works well enough for me from lvl's 10-65.  That's all I've done with her as of the 20.7 fix. 

She's worse in regards to the fact that, you no longer have a variety of play styles to choose from. You used to be able to be a purely Debuff Saryn (Max Range, no Str). Now, you can't really do that. Saryn's design direction has been taken from "Debuff/Support/Damage", to purely "Damage", and I don't know about everyone else, but as a 1.0, 2.0, and now 3.5 player, I can say I don't like it. Yes, I like the Molt changes, and the Toxic Lash changes. But the changes to her spores and miasma were (in hind-sight) a bad idea. Now DE will constantly be in this balancing act of making sure Spores are never too strong, but never too weak, which will never really reach equilibrium. They'll either do something that makes them too weak (removal of spore-spread on death) in the majority of situations, or make them too strong (such as giving them infinitely scaling damage), and so now Saryn is in this precarious position where she will be under a constant magnifying glass by not only the community that actually enjoyed playing her (and those who enjoy play-testing new things), but also the Development Team, and given what they did to Ember (which by the way, I feel bad for you), I can't say I am exactly optimistic any more. I was at the beginning, because there is a lot of room to work with, and a lot of new, fresh ideas thrown out by players. Now it feels more or less that they are focusing on balancing her around Onslaught, which is only 1% of what the game offers, and isn't even the future direction the game is taking (Open world).

I can't say I enjoy her in anything below Sortie Levels, because that's what she is good for. Spores kill too quickly in anything less than 60, and don't spread because of it, making it a useless ability (which is funny, because it is her first ability, and generally a frame's first ability isn't meant to be exceedingly good for high-level missions). It forces you then to just never use that ability until she ranks up, or take your low-level frame into a high-level mission. Sure, you can still use it, if you want to Micromanage everything on your screen. But I wouldn't, and that's just me, I guess. The removal of the Spore spread on death function was also a bad call, but DE needed to do something to prevent the Flood of Spores (Which could have been entirely prevented if they left spores in their 2.0 state, because they didn't do Scaling damage, they just had a scaling Proc, Viral, which would rarely kill on their own). Using Miasma is practically a waste, because of the 75 energy cost, with an energy pool of like 300 something (think mine is 325 or something like that). The Viral proc on Miasma is okay, but 75 energy a hit is still pretty major, and I just fore-go the ability entirely most of the time. The problem is that, the Viral procs lent themselves better to spores, because you could keep them spreading in her 2.0 days, making the majority of enemies have Half HP. Given that your team would have most likely run Corrosive Projection (because that is the most used mod, for good reason), this was an incredibly boon, because no other frame, ability, or weapon could do what the viral spores could do.

She's a power-house DPS frame, that's okay for me. But I feel that her Design change was unnecessary, and really ruined the experience for me.

[Cibyllae]

Once they come out with heavier content, something like elite defense, elite kuva survival, elite this, elite that, it'll be easier to manage her.

[Konachibi]

33 minutes ago, SyBuhr said:

1. -snip-

Pretty much agree with everything you said.  

Saryn held a niche that no other frame offers, she had the power of debuffing.  Where you have frames like Ember for damage (haha who am I kidding Ember can't do REAL damage!), Trinity for healing, Oberon for party buffing, Hydroid and Nyx for CC and so on, no other frame offers up the ability simply cut every enemies health in half so easily.  In sorties, Spores were great, especially in Sortie 3 Eximus Strongholds where enemies were spongier than a bath full of sponges, and since it was her first ability, and therefore her cheapest, even if you were surrounded by Energy Leech Eximus you could probably fire off a spore before your energy pool took a dive.  Nowadays, you can splatter corrosive all over Corpus Crewmen or Infested Crawlers, because that's totally a usefull thing to do isn't it? No it isn't.  In the same way that the Mag rework suddenly made her more effective against Grineer than Corpus, the Saryn rework has done the exact same thing.  It's as if DE have forgotten that Corpus and Infested are actually a thing, and that Bursas and Corpus Techs are some of the hardest hitting enemies in the game, and that being able to cut their health in half made a fight against a level 100 Corpus Tech feel more fair and less 'predict when I'm going to receive the single shot that instantly kills me'.

The switch to Corrosive damage on Spores felt dumb, in many ways, but mostly from a design perspective.  Saryn is meant to be the queen of poisons, the queen of toxins, not the queen of battery acid.  Spores mostly come from flowers, and I've yet to see any flowers that produce spores that can melt someone's face off, while spores that can negatively effect a persons health isn't that uncommon, so the old Viral Spores made perfect sense both in-game and in reality, where as now... no, this is just silly.  Are we next going to get an Ember rework where World On Fire causes Corrosive procs?  Or how about Volt's Shock causing Corrosive procs?  Or even Nezha's Firewalk causing Corrosive procs???  

This is the problem here really, DE have noticed that practically everyone builds their weapons for corrosive because the armour stripping is a valuable bonus against Grineer, and so they're reworking frames to do Corrosive too thinking everyone will love it!  But we don't!  We have weapons to do our Corrosive damage, we have our frames to do everything else!  Now the only frame that had a handy-dandy Viral ability has been turned in to an inconvenient version of the Tysis that has to blow a whole heap of energy in order to get the same effect, in a smaller radius, than she was capable of before. 

As SyBuhr said before, Saryn USED to work everywhere, she USED to be good everywhere, she USED to benefit the team, but now she only works good in Sanctuary Onslaught, she's only good at doing damage to high level stuff, and she's a useless waste of time everywhere except Sanctuary Onslaught, and this is supposed to be a GOOD thing?  Imagine if they did this to every other frame, where they only worked well at really high level content but were useless in low level content, then imagine how utterly annoying fissure missions, relic farming, invasions, syndicate missions and alerts would be when every frame is completely gimped and you had to rely entirely on your weapons to run through each one.  Absolutely everyone would be using an Ignis to mass-murder everything because they would not have the patience to constantly spam abilities because they would only kill one or a tiny handful of enemies at a time.

Yesterday I gave the newest iteration of Saryn a try, and at first I thought I liked it, until I realised that all I was actually doing in a mission was using Spore on one enemy, activating Toxic Lash, shooting that enemy, then using Miasma.,.. then move on to the next group of enemies and repeat, over and over and over and over.  That is not fun gameplay, it is not rewarding gameplay, it is not engaging gameplay... it's an MMO rotation, it's World Of Warcraft 5 years ago, it's a 9 to 5 job in a factory, it's everything bad and nothing good.

[Tonberryc]

I don't know how many more rounds of testing I have left in me, but round 4. Ready. Fight!

Quote

• Targets you cast Spores on directly will always spread on death.

Very positive change. This takes away a big part of the "punished for playing well" aspect of the last update. It doesn't completely fix the problem, since the targets hit by that initial spread still die quickly and there isn't much of a window to chase spores the better you manage them, but at least we aren't waiting for our damage to drop to be able to use our spores again.

Bugs related to this change:

• Spores spread by spore death on initial target sometimes trigger the spore damage decay sound, which is not only a false trigger but may be causing the second bug in this list.
• Spores spread by spore death on initial target don't always spread with bonus spore damage. Many times the spores ticking on secondary targets are at base damage instead of the values ticking on other infected targets and the damage value shown in the indicator.

Quote

• Targets affected by Miasma will always spread on death

Miasma

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

These changes seem like a step in the right direction, but I'm not sure they are behaving as intended or just need some clarification. Enemies hit with spores while Miasma is active will always spread spores regardless of whether Miasma is active when the enemy dies. The increased duration does help by increasing the window for application, but it reads like Miasma needs to be active when the enemies die. Also, the spores spread by spore kill after hitting enemies with Miasma are not always buffed by the spore damage stacks. Most of the time my spores are spreading at a significantly reduced damage (close to their base damage), and you can easily test this by seeing enemies next to each other with completely different spore damage ticks despite all being the same enemy type, same level, and infected at approximately the same bonus damage value. She's still doing lots of damage, but this doesn't feel like an intentional design due to the buggy nature of the audio queues and inconsistency.

Possible bugs related to this change:

• Spores spread on spore death after hitting enemies with Miasma are ignoring the spore damage stacks and applying at just above base damage.
• Enemies dying to spores after being hit by Miasma still set off the audio trigger for spores going into decay state regardless of how many spores are spread on death. This may also be the cause of the loss of damage on spread.

While I like the direction of this change, motivating players to use Miasma and reducing its cost still doesn't fully compensate for the extra energy cost of so many Spores and Molt casts on top of maintaining the Toxic Lash buff. I see lots of players claiming they "don't have a problem with it because look at my damage and kills", but that logic doesn't address the fact that she is a caster warframe with a heavy dependency on being able to manage energy after these changes. So any complaints about her energy management deserve more attention than "some people can make it work in the right conditions with the right loadouts". The results of a rework should not severely limit build options like this, and accusing other players of not building or playing her correctly only supports my point.

Overall, these changes feel like a step in the right direction, but the result is still a strong damage warframe that feels clunky to play and is missing the class fantasy of a "spreader of plague and death". No amount of "look at my scoreboard" screenshots prove otherwise since most players aren't even worried about her damage output compared to the rest of her issues. Unfortunately, her role as a warframe has been completely changed just to remove a specific play style, and I'm not sure that's a great design philosophy when it knowingly sacrifices her class fantasy and fluid gameplay.

[Cibyllae]

5 minutes ago, Konachibi said:

esterday I gave the newest iteration of Saryn a try, and at first I thought I liked it, until I realised that all I was actually doing in a mission was using Spore on one enemy, activating Toxic Lash, shooting that enemy, then using Miasma.,.. then move on to the next group of enemies and repeat, over and over and over and over. 

How would you rather have her play?

[Traumtulpe]

19 hours ago, LSG501 said:

Why is it wrong for players to expect DE to 'finish' what they started when they do a rework?

Well, they kinda have. You just don't like the new play style, and that is reasonable.

I suppose if enough people express their dislike for the rework, DE could scrap the questionable damage mechanics on Spores after all and create an amalgamation of all variants of Spores - the best of every iteration. I would imagine something like this:

• Spores are permanent - but they deal no damage, just status (corrosion or viral, switchable like Ivara's arrows).
• Toxin procs on spored enemies also add to Spore damage, displayed the way Spore damage is now. Adjusted by power strength, permanently decaying.
• Toxic Lash replenishes 1 energy per second for 5 seconds on melee hit (reset duration on additional hits), but does not deal 2x damage in melee.
• Venom Dose returns to being toxin damage.
• Miasma becomes gas damage.
• Spores can be cast on Molt again (it deals no damage so that's fine) + Molt's damage scales with it's maximum health (so it stays relevant).

How does that sound to you? I believe the issues they wanted to fix - Spore spamming and weird toxin interactions - would be fixed, without changing her style or disappointing people who have come to like the new Spores.

By the way, please make Molt castable during attacks, rolls, other abilities etc. Thanks. 😘

Edited June 1, 2018 by Traumtulpe

[LSG501]

2 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

Well, they kinda have. You just don't like the new play style, and that is reasonable.

I suppose if enough people express their dislike for the rework, DE could scrap the questionable damage mechanics on Spores after all and create an amalgamation of all variants of Spores - the best of every iteration. I would imagine something like this: 

• Spores are permanent and spread like they do now - they deal no damage, just status (corrosion or viral, switchable like Ivara's arrows).
• Toxin procs on spored enemies get added to Spore damage, displayed the way Spore damage is now - percentage adjusted by power strength, permanently decaying.
• Toxic Lash refunds 2 energy when a melee attack hits any number of enemies, but does not deal 2x damage in melee.
• Venom Dose returns to being toxin damage. 
• Miasma becomes toxin damage.
• Spores can be cast on Molt again (it deals no damage so that's fine). 

How does that sound to you? I believe the issues they wanted to fix - Spore spamming and weird toxin interactions - would be fixed, without changing her style or disappointing people who have come to like the new Spores. 

By the way, please make Molt castable during attacks, rolls, other abilities etc. Thanks. 😘

Actually for me personally the biggest issues with the current version (it's not going to be reverted even if many prefer the older viral/corrosive order) are:

• the countdown timer is too fast (still),
• spores don't play well with other saryn spores,
• molt doesn't pull enemies in enough,
• spores could do with a slightly larger target hit zone for when you want to cast while 'running at full speed'
• spores are designed around onslaught at the expense of normal maps,
• 10 enemy multiplier could do with being increased and miasma has no scaling whatsoever, it doesn't even leave spores on enemies it doesn't kill.  
• Still would prefer ALL enemies to spread spores on death by spore, not just the first target, if the first one instantly dies on contact with spores the next ones will too...
• if your spore 'tick' hits at just the right moment it can prevent spore spreading as the enemy dies via spore rather than weapon, can be easily fixed by the above

The current spore mechanic also kind of makes you need to keep enemies alive (and focus on that) which is basically the reverse of what every other player in the team is trying to do, basically a saryn player is fighting his own team to keep his spore 'stacks' up.... and then we have 'bugs' which wipes out the entire spore count instantly etc. 

I'm not too worried about spores on molt but I wouldn't say no to the old system where we could spread extra damage with the right elemental combos when popping spores.

[Traumtulpe]

That's not going to happen. Spores right now are arguably too strong in the right situations - yet not all that fun in any situation at all (in particular for other players). And an unwanted change for quite a few people, apparently. We don't actually want to make them stronger, that would be really bad.

Molt not pulling all the aggro is also a feature, not a bug. I really like Molt actually, in particular the part where it doesn't get oneshot anymore.

[SyBuhr]

1 hour ago, Cibyllae said:

Once they come out with heavier content, something like elite defense, elite kuva survival, elite this, elite that, it'll be easier to manage her.

Hypothetically, yes. But why does it need to be this way? It shouldn't be like this, where it is only easy to manage her when certain conditions are met.

But a frame shouldn't be balanced for one set, or another. Right now, she is balanced around quick-spawns, Near-by spawns, and nothing else. She isn't balanced for Open world content, which is the forward-moving direction for WarFrame. And it truly concerns me, because that will make her so niche that it won't even matter. So what if she is good at killing a lot of things just as well as any other DPS frame. It won't matter because people will stop using her over-all, and move onto a Frame that can do the things she can do, while still being effective at other content in the game.

13 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

Well, they kinda have. You just don't like the new play style, and that is reasonable.

I suppose if enough people express their dislike for the rework, DE could scrap the questionable damage mechanics on Spores after all and create an amalgamation of all variants of Spores - the best of every iteration. I would imagine something like this:

• Spores are permanent and spread like they do now - they deal no damage, just status (corrosion or viral, switchable like Ivara's arrows).
• Toxin procs on spored enemies get added to Spore damage, displayed the way Spore damage is now - percentage adjusted by power strength, permanently decaying.
• Toxic Lash refunds 2 energy when a melee attack hits any number of enemies, but does not deal 2x damage in melee.
• Venom Dose returns to being toxin damage.
• Miasma becomes toxin damage.
• Spores can be cast on Molt again (it deals no damage so that's fine).

How does that sound to you? I believe the issues they wanted to fix - Spore spamming and weird toxin interactions - would be fixed, without changing her style or disappointing people who have come to like the new Spores.

By the way, please make Molt castable during attacks, rolls, other abilities etc. Thanks. 😘

These are interesting ideas. I don't know how effective they would actually be, but given how you put effort into it, I'd be happy to test it if they actually pushed it through.

1 hour ago, Konachibi said:

Pretty much agree with everything you said.  

Saryn held a niche that no other frame offers, she had the power of debuffing.  Where you have frames like Ember for damage (haha who am I kidding Ember can't do REAL damage!), Trinity for healing, Oberon for party buffing, Hydroid and Nyx for CC and so on, no other frame offers up the ability simply cut every enemies health in half so easily.  In sorties, Spores were great, especially in Sortie 3 Eximus Strongholds where enemies were spongier than a bath full of sponges, and since it was her first ability, and therefore her cheapest, even if you were surrounded by Energy Leech Eximus you could probably fire off a spore before your energy pool took a dive.  Nowadays, you can splatter corrosive all over Corpus Crewmen or Infested Crawlers, because that's totally a usefull thing to do isn't it? No it isn't.  In the same way that the Mag rework suddenly made her more effective against Grineer than Corpus, the Saryn rework has done the exact same thing.  It's as if DE have forgotten that Corpus and Infested are actually a thing, and that Bursas and Corpus Techs are some of the hardest hitting enemies in the game, and that being able to cut their health in half made a fight against a level 100 Corpus Tech feel more fair and less 'predict when I'm going to receive the single shot that instantly kills me'.

[Removed Paragraph (Sybuhr)]

This is the problem here really, DE have noticed that practically everyone builds their weapons for corrosive because the armour stripping is a valuable bonus against Grineer, and so they're reworking frames to do Corrosive too thinking everyone will love it!  But we don't!  We have weapons to do our Corrosive damage, we have our frames to do everything else!  Now the only frame that had a handy-dandy Viral ability has been turned in to an inconvenient version of the Tysis that has to blow a whole heap of energy in order to get the same effect, in a smaller radius, than she was capable of before. 

As SyBuhr said before, Saryn USED to work everywhere, she USED to be good everywhere, she USED to benefit the team, but now she only works good in Sanctuary Onslaught, she's only good at doing damage to high level stuff, and she's a useless waste of time everywhere except Sanctuary Onslaught, and this is supposed to be a GOOD thing?  Imagine if they did this to every other frame, where they only worked well at really high level content but were useless in low level content, then imagine how utterly annoying fissure missions, relic farming, invasions, syndicate missions and alerts would be when every frame is completely gimped and you had to rely entirely on your weapons to run through each one.  Absolutely everyone would be using an Ignis to mass-murder everything because they would not have the patience to constantly spam abilities because they would only kill one or a tiny handful of enemies at a time.

Yesterday I gave the newest iteration of Saryn a try, and at first I thought I liked it, until I realised that all I was actually doing in a mission was using Spore on one enemy, activating Toxic Lash, shooting that enemy, then using Miasma.,.. then move on to the next group of enemies and repeat, over and over and over and over.  That is not fun gameplay, it is not rewarding gameplay, it is not engaging gameplay... it's an MMO rotation, it's World Of Warcraft 5 years ago, it's a 9 to 5 job in a factory, it's everything bad and nothing good.

Thank you, I appreciate that. I don't like her new design, but it doesn't mean I don't see her potential as a  pure DPS frame. I just don't believe that's the right direction for her.

I should also note that, armor stripping is utilized best by Corrosive Projection, which many players use due to the insane armor scaling enemies get in higher levels. It almost makes spores redundant at that point, because there is no bonus damage gain from no armor. 

She works good in High level content, where you can reliably get to your spores, and pop them, not necessarily just Onslaught (although your results may, and will, vary). She can really get gimped in missions with Energy Reduction (like the sortie today), because at 325 energy, it drops you down to 75, leaving only enough for one cast of spore and Toxic lash. She's more energy hungry now with the removal of her built-in energy regain via her Toxic Lash ability, and due to the fact that many players will now spam 1-4-4-4 to be the most efficient.

I should also note that, due to how she functions, having another Saryn in the team is just a mess. I thought I was doing well, my spores were up for the majority of the Mission, and I didn't do well at all. I was playing pretty actively too, so I am not quite sure what went wrong. I could have been playing like an absolute potato, I won't rule that out just yet, but I did piss-poor when I felt like I was playing her correctly.

Many players new to her like her new scaling damage. I personally hate it. It will never be balanced as well as it was during her 2.0 time, because now it will always be scaling up, or down. There is no opportunity for the damage to be based upon the level of enemy you are fighting, which means she will either always be too strong, or always too weak to contribute.

On a side note, I took her into the Corpus Sorties, and Nullifiers are a massive problem for her spores (which is expected, really). I know someone mentioned that Nullifiers were a non-issue. I am reiterating that they are an issue for every frame, but the issue is exacerbated on Saryn and any other AOE frame. I lost a lot of Stacks and Spores during the mission, and given how the Nullifiers had a meat-wall of Corpus around them, it makes it difficult to get in there and do melee. The bubble-blower was clipped into a wall during this time, so I ended up having to hide and wait for the opportunity to deal with it.

My issue is that, the scaling damage was introduced because the Team knew they were going to lose the scalability from Viral when they changed spores to corrosive. The problem is that, viral, even at low levels, would not necessarily out-right kill your targets, allowing you to get in there and spread them. All viral did was halve enemy HP. This new system introduces Corrosive (which becomes redundant if your team doesn't pay attention), and scaling flat damage, which will out right kill enemies if they are weak enough. This is my problem with the re-work. If they literally undid the Spores and Miasma changes currently, and kept the Molt and Toxic Lash changes, I'd be 100% with the update. (Molt changes including the Removal of the Molt-Tower, 2-1 Combo.)

Just now, Traumtulpe said:

That's not going to happen. Spores right now are arguably too strong in the right situations - yet not all that fun in any situation at all (in particular for other players). And an unwanted change for quite a few people, apparently. We don't actually want to make them stronger, that would be really bad.

Molt not pulling all the aggro is also a feature, not a bug. I really like Molt actually, in particular the part where it doesn't get oneshot anymore.

You're 100% correct. Spores are too strong in conditional situations. I can't say I enjoy playing Saryn, and players also seem to not really want to "play with" a Saryn either. It's really strange, because while you can look at the Damage out-put she can dish out, it all looks great, but I think there comes a point where you have to draw a line in the sand and say, "We really bamboozled her kit a bit with this one, we should go back a bit". Her current damage situation will take getting used to (for me at least), and I am sure I can manage a way to make her insane at later levels (which isn't too difficult, given how she works now). I'll find it difficult to enjoy her the same way as I did before though.

[Acquamancer]

After playing this Saryn 3.5.2, I have some stuff to say.

Well, she is better and more fun to play than 3.5, for sure. However, I have to ask this question again: What was the point of this whole rework? I mean, you did Saryn 3.0 because she was a Spore turret. Then in 3.5 you made her an energy hungry Spore turret. Now she's a Spore and Miasma turret. I mean, was all of this actually necessary? Look at Vauban, look at Nezha, look at Wukong, look at frames that actually need some urgent rework.

Also, her 2 and 3 are still quite useless in a way. Why don't you make her Molt heal naturally? That augment is a total band-aid mod, many ppl pointed that out in this thread and you basically ignored it, lol.

In conclusion, she's still a beast in tiny rooms with loads of enemy (Onslaught and some survivals basically) and she's still garbage in big maps with small density. It's pretty stupid the fact you guys are balancing frames around Onslaught when the biggest open world in warframe is coming somewhat soon.

Edited June 1, 2018 by FrioCalor
posted without finishing typing

[Cibyllae]

1 hour ago, SyBuhr said:

Hypothetically, yes. But why does it need to be this way? It shouldn't be like this, where it is only easy to manage her when certain conditions are met.

 I think once viral was removed from the table it was inevitable that she was either going to become really good at low level content, or really good at high level content. I think it was inevitable once viral was removed from the table that her management was going to become more difficult when certain conditions were not met. Whether those conditions be found in high or low level content. I think trying to replace a 50% decrease in max hp with some type of man made system to output the same effective utility with the same consistency is impossible. That system is either going to over perform or under perform by the very nature of systems themselves.

 

2 hours ago, Tonberryc said:

but that logic doesn't address the fact that she is a caster warframe with a heavy dependency on being able to manage energy after these changes. So any complaints about her energy management deserve more attention than "some people can make it work in the right conditions with the right loadouts".

Here, use this bb and then you'll stop saying she has energy problems:

Blind Rage is a wild card, substitute it for anything you like. I use it to get more healing.

Pair with one of these mods:

And a decent weapon.

And there you go, survivable, good range, damage, and energy. In one build. She doesn't have energy problems, the issue is with the players who don't know how to user her. So I'll say it again.

 

7 hours ago, Cibyllae said:

Many complaints people are having can be remedied by better builds and understanding her strengths while capitalizing on them. Her skill ceiling was higher and the reward for reaching it was high before these third round of changes, now Pablo has drastically lowered that ceiling and increased the reward for reaching it. If you are someone who is still having issues you just need to put some time into the frame before going onto the forums and requesting that she be further buffed because she seems:

"clunky"

"squishy"

"energy hungry"

"off"

or any other words that you try to use to describe your experience with her. Every time I enter into ESO with Saryn people are leaving now, that should be indication of just how oppressive she can be.

The Rizz guy was using Saryn

The other Saryn left

And the fourth left, don't know what he was using.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EDIT: Technically TF is a wildcard too

Edited June 1, 2018 by Cibyllae

[Traumtulpe]

5 minutes ago, Cibyllae said:

Here, use this bb and then you'll stop saying she has energy problems:

I prefer Regenerative Molt over Primed Flow and Stand United over Rejuvenation. Great build otherwise.

If one chooses to drop Flow however, he should take note not to max out Blind Rage - or you cant cast your abilities on missions with energy reduction.

[Cibyllae]

8 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

Rejuvenation.

Its to help reduce stagger from QT. I don't have the plat for a Guardian Set otherwise that would be there, if you want more survivablility take out Blind Rage for Steel Fiber. If Molt popped spores on its burst damage I'd try making a molt build, but Regenerative molt stop its healing once the Molt is destroyed even though UI indicator says it is healing you. It also does not scale with ability strength, which is unfortunate. Toxic Lash extra toxin damage adds to lifesteal. If you want to put regenerative molt in the build replace Blind Rage for it.

Edited June 1, 2018 by Cibyllae

[Traumtulpe]

4 minutes ago, Cibyllae said:

Regenerative molt stop its healing once the Molt is destroyed even though UI indicator says it is healing you. It also does not scale with ability strength, which is unfortunate.

Since Molt lives on average 6 seconds (3 seconds absorb), the first part is not a problem anymore. The second part is just wrong, Molt does scale with power strength.

[Cibyllae]

4 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

Since Molt lives on average 6 seconds (3 seconds absorb), the first part is not a problem anymore. The second part is just wrong, Molt does scale with power strength.

You're right that was incorrect. I apologize for spreading misinformation and will work to not do so as haphazardly as I did.

[Tonberryc]

21 minutes ago, Cibyllae said:

Here, use this bb and then you'll stop saying she has energy problems:

I feel like you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of feedback threads. Recommending a specific build is a band-aide for a design issue with the warframe, not a fix, and telling players to compensate with their loadout is a great example of how her build diversity is mostly gone due to the very energy issues you're claiming don't exist. As I said in the post you quoted, nothing about showing that she's a strong frame with a working build invalidates any of the complaints about her design. No matter how much energy management, damage output, or survivability you have, none of it matters to a large portion of the player base if she still feels clunky, overly-micromanaged, lacks build diversity, and has lost her class fantasy.

Please don't go through a feedback thread and try to invalidate every post that even remotely suggests her current version isn't perfect. That is just as damaging to the forums as the people claiming that "she's broken" or "unplayable." She is neither perfect nor broken, which is the entire reason this thread exists.

[SyBuhr]

50 minutes ago, Cibyllae said:

1 hour ago, SyBuhr said:

Hypothetically, yes. But why does it need to be this way? It shouldn't be like this, where it is only easy to manage her when certain conditions are met.

 I think once viral was removed from the table it was inevitable that she was either going to become really good at low level content, or really good at high level content. I think it was inevitable once viral was removed from the table that her management was going to become more difficult when certain conditions were not met. Whether those conditions be found in high or low level content. I think trying to replace a 50% decrease in max hp with some type of man made system to output the same effective utility with the same consistency is impossible. That system is either going to over perform or under perform by the very nature of systems themselves.

That's exactly the point I am trying to illustrate (but in a much more verbose way). Thanks for taking those huge paragraphs and shortening it into something digestible!

The Viral system worked well at any, and every stage of the game, because it was a system fleshed out over time, and refined. It never felt too strong, or too weak, because it didn't scale off of how many are hit, or how long they are lasting for, but the enemy's stats themselves, which is why they were so well received. Now you have to micromanage your scaling, and in certain conditions, you just can't do that like you could during her 2.0 time-frame. If you scale them too fast, you end up only eliminating a small handful of enemies; Scale too slowly and you won't be effective as your new role as a Damage dealer. The Viral scale worked because it always Halved the enemy's HP, and was rarely the direct cause of death. Certainly, you could use it in low level missions, but you would still achieve what you wanted: Halve the group of enemies' HP. The corrosive system doesn't do well in the early game because of the Nature of Corrosive; Enemies at low-levels don't have ridiculous amounts of armor, and so that damage just becomes a flat damage value after reductions get taken into account. This means that they will die quickly before you can get to them, regardless of how much they cap the increase/ramp up. In-fact, the cap on ramp-up actually hurt Saryn's end-game potential, while offering nothing of value to her low-mid level game.

As it stands, this system in place greatly over-performs in conditions where you can always readily pop the spores, but under-performs in Open areas, against certain factions, and with your team. It now relies more on conditions also set that are out of your own control, and it makes it not an enjoyable experience, personally. It feels like a gamble on whether or not the hard-work I put in to micromanaging my spores will really do anything of value, especially if the team I am working with is a PUG, or just doesn't like Saryn, or if the Enemy Spawns are atrocious. The list goes on.

There is no way to control the pace at how quick the spores kill like you could do before with the viral damage, because (again) rarely did the viral spores ever make the finishing blow; It was usually due in part by the player actively doing something to the spores (I.E.: Gas Lanka). With the removal of Molt-Towering, DE solved the over-arching issue of "AFK-Play", but the motion to over-haul the ability was going over the deep-end. With no means of controlling the Spores, you are going to lose them, and no amount of hard-work will change that. At some point, you will lose 20% + a half-second recurring -10% on your massive stacks (which becomes more punishing the more you have worked for it). It's a negative feed-back to the hard-work you put in, and it puts me off from enjoying her. Seeing myself weave in and out to cultivate spores with toxic lash, only for it all to go Poof in practically 5 seconds is not rewarding to me as a player, especially after all the micromanaging I have to do to achieve that said stack number. It makes it really difficult to enjoy, because I know spores won't cultivate in practically any Star-Chart mission from experience, and putting in a load of hard-work just to see the reward vanish nearly instantly is not enjoyable either. Again, I love damage, but I don't think of Damage necessarily when I think of a Frame that held the spot of "Queen of Debuff"; I think of a Frame that can Debuff, and do it well. As it stands, why would I use spores other than for damage when everyone runs Corrosive Projection? Why would I spend 75 energy for a Viral Debuff on enemies that will just die from my Spores? It's all situational, and her abilities really don't feel like they mesh as well as they used to.

I think I am just going to take a break from Saryn for a while. God knows I love her thick thighs (DE, please do not touch Saryn's beautifully thick thighs, unless you want to buff them), but it isn't enough to keep me playing what is essentially a Micromanagement game within a game that I am supposed to be enjoying.

[Nurmetya]

I've given up on Saryn entirely I'm not even bothering with this half baked attempt, I now fear the work "Rework" from DE. 

[Cibyllae]

11 hours ago, Tonberryc said:

I feel like you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of feedback threads. Recommending a specific build is a band-aide for a design issue with the warframe, not a fix, and telling players to compensate with their loadout is a great example of how her build diversity is mostly gone due to the very energy issues you're claiming don't exist. As I said in the post you quoted, nothing about showing that she's a strong frame with a working build invalidates any of the complaints about her design. No matter how much energy management, damage output, or survivability you have, none of it matters to a large portion of the player base if she still feels clunky, overly-micromanaged, lacks build diversity, and has lost her class fantasy. 

Please don't go through a feedback thread and try to invalidate every post that even remotely suggests her current version isn't perfect. That is just as damaging to the forums as the people claiming that "she's broken" or "unplayable." She is neither perfect nor broken, which is the entire reason this thread exists.

 

11 hours ago, Tonberryc said:

Recommending a specific build is a band-aide for a design issue with the warframe, not a fix, and telling players to compensate with their loadout is a great example of how her build diversity is mostly gone due to the very energy issues you're claiming don't exist.

Your sentence should have read:

"Her build diversity is mostly gone due to the very energy issues you're claiming don't exist, recommending a specific build is a band-aide for this design issue with the warframe."

You know why they don't exist? Because every frame has the same energy constraints. Deal with it. Don't use the state that Energy is in as ammunition for why Saryn should receive further changes. This type of attitude that we as players are powerless to make a frame good in spite of the walls which bound us from their potential is deafening. Inherent weakness in a frame is mandatory, and I am not saying I think you don't believe frames should have weakness. I am saying that you are viewing her weaknesses as design flaws. They aren't design flaws, they are weaknesses to be overcome. Your loadout is how you overcome those weaknesses. When you start talking about build diversity do you even know what you mean? I sure don't, because if you mean anyone should be able to build Saryn however they want and attain the same output, I am wholly against that. That would be the death of her.

11 hours ago, Tonberryc said:

As I said in the post you quoted, nothing about showing that she's a strong frame with a working build invalidates any of the complaints about her design.

Here you continue to frame the issue as a design flaw stemming from her energy management which makes you unable to see my build as evidence that she has no design flaws. Because to you her performance is irrelevant in a discussion about her "design flaws". Because a frame with "design flaws" can still perform well. These  "design flaws" stem from her energy economy. By this, you could say every frame has design flaws, its to general a statement to attribute to Saryn alone which is why I believe it unfit to be used as a reason to suggest that she has "design flaws".

11 hours ago, Tonberryc said:

No matter how much energy management, damage output, or survivability you have, none of it matters to a large portion of the player base if she still feels clunky, overly-micromanaged, lacks build diversity, and has lost her class fantasy. 

Claiming that the large portion of the player base is pretty bold. Forum posts aren't an indication of a majority, just the most vocal opinions. Its pretty audacious to suggest that even when a frame performs outright that the feelings of those who voice their opinions should warrant consideration for more changes. That's what feedback is for, voicing feelings and opinions, but I'm not gonna let that be the thing that dictates the direction or path Saryn walks.

11 hours ago, Tonberryc said:

Please don't go through a feedback thread and try to invalidate every post that even remotely suggests her current version isn't perfect. That is just as damaging to the forums as the people claiming that "she's broken" or "unplayable." She is neither perfect nor broken, which is the entire reason this thread exists. 

Never claimed that she was perfect mate, you shouldn't put words in other people's mouths. People are complaining that 50lbs is to heavy to lift and are asking for the weight to be reduced when they haven't done a push-up in their life and it needs to stop. At what point are the players responsible for making a frame good? People want Pablo to compensate for the weakness in their Saryn builds instead of making their builds better, that is why I am speaking up. If you actually enjoy the frame, you find what works and play it because you simply enjoy playing the frame. Right now we got a good portion of the voices on the forum who don't actually enjoy playing her, they just want her to be strongest dps frame there is and that mentality is going to ruin her or they are too attached to how she was and can't get out of that way of playing her. Things change, people change, you don't stop loving someone just because they change mate you just find new reasons to love them.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 1, 2018 by Cibyllae

[Cibyllae]

3 hours ago, SyBuhr said:

That's exactly the point I am trying to illustrate (but in a much more verbose way). Thanks for taking those huge paragraphs and shortening it into something digestible!

The Viral system worked well at any, and every stage of the game, because it was a system fleshed out over time, and refined. It never felt too strong, or too weak, because it didn't scale off of how many are hit, or how long they are lasting for, but the enemy's stats themselves, which is why they were so well received. Now you have to micromanage your scaling, and in certain conditions, you just can't do that like you could during her 2.0 time-frame. If you scale them too fast, you end up only eliminating a small handful of enemies; Scale too slowly and you won't be effective as your new role as a Damage dealer. The Viral scale worked because it always Halved the enemy's HP, and was rarely the direct cause of death. Certainly, you could use it in low level missions, but you would still achieve what you wanted: Halve the group of enemies' HP. The corrosive system doesn't do well in the early game because of the Nature of Corrosive; Enemies at low-levels don't have ridiculous amounts of armor, and so that damage just becomes a flat damage value after reductions get taken into account. This means that they will die quickly before you can get to them, regardless of how much they cap the increase/ramp up. In-fact, the cap on ramp-up actually hurt Saryn's end-game potential, while offering nothing of value to her low-mid level game.

As it stands, this system in place greatly over-performs in conditions where you can always readily pop the spores, but under-performs in Open areas, against certain factions, and with your team. It now relies more on conditions also set that are out of your own control, and it makes it not an enjoyable experience, personally. It feels like a gamble on whether or not the hard-work I put in to micromanaging my spores will really do anything of value, especially if the team I am working with is a PUG, or just doesn't like Saryn, or if the Enemy Spawns are atrocious. The list goes on.

There is no way to control the pace at how quick the spores kill like you could do before with the viral damage, because (again) rarely did the viral spores ever make the finishing blow; It was usually due in part by the player actively doing something to the spores (I.E.: Gas Lanka). With the removal of Molt-Towering, DE solved the over-arching issue of "AFK-Play", but the motion to over-haul the ability was going over the deep-end. With no means of controlling the Spores, you are going to lose them, and no amount of hard-work will change that. At some point, you will lose 20% + a half-second recurring -10% on your massive stacks (which becomes more punishing the more you have worked for it). It's a negative feed-back to the hard-work you put in, and it puts me off from enjoying her. Seeing myself weave in and out to cultivate spores with toxic lash, only for it all to go Poof in practically 5 seconds is not rewarding to me as a player, especially after all the micromanaging I have to do to achieve that said stack number. It makes it really difficult to enjoy, because I know spores won't cultivate in practically any Star-Chart mission from experience, and putting in a load of hard-work just to see the reward vanish nearly instantly is not enjoyable either. Again, I love damage, but I don't think of Damage necessarily when I think of a Frame that held the spot of "Queen of Debuff"; I think of a Frame that can Debuff, and do it well. As it stands, why would I use spores other than for damage when everyone runs Corrosive Projection? Why would I spend 75 energy for a Viral Debuff on enemies that will just die from my Spores? It's all situational, and her abilities really don't feel like they mesh as well as they used to.

I think I am just going to take a break from Saryn for a while. God knows I love her thick thighs (DE, please do not touch Saryn's beautifully thick thighs, unless you want to buff them), but it isn't enough to keep me playing what is essentially a Micromanagement game within a game that I am supposed to be enjoying.

I was going to say  you already were hinting at that in your post I'm glad you saw it too. I think your evaluation of the current situation is not incorrect, I just think your evaluation was unavoidable and inevitable as soon as spores changed off of viral. I think the only way to alleviate this loss of hard work would be to enable one of our other three abilities to hold onto the spore damage counter, but if they allow us to be able to counter act the decay, numbers will be tweak. Ranges will be tweaked. Something has to be given up in order to make that happen. In my mind I've always seen warframe as a room by room progression so the reset on spore damage does not bother me, but I also despise doing something twice and hate when my hard work goes to waste so I understand how you feel when that counter resets to zero. The only way that's going to change  is if we gain some sort of control, other than modding stats, through our abilities that allows us to preserve the spore damage counter. You said it in an earlier post, she's going to be in a constant state of flux with constantly overshooting and undershooting where she was in 2.0. I don't think giving us the ability to preserve our spore counter with make these changes a lateral move from 2,0, but I think it will get rid of that helpless feeling of losing your hard work. 

I think the answer you're looking for is to be found in the potential housed within miasma's augment. Maybe making miasma into some type of toggle ability that stores damage based on how many enemies die to spore ticks, and then automatically in a radius around saryn infects enemies with new spores with the starting damage for the spores based on how many enemies have died when spores counter reaches less then or equal to 5, or upon deactivating the ability. Let the spore counter be preserved while we have the ability toggled and then reset to the value which has been building up inside the ability. We'd lose the stun, it would take up a slot if it was an augment, but we could keep our spore counter from resetting. However this change would occur whether it as from an augment or not,give it an affinity range.

 

 

 

Edited June 1, 2018 by Cibyllae

[Rambit23Z]

9 hours ago, SyBuhr said:

Still doesn't change the fact that if a Nullifier spawns on the spores, or on you, that you will either lose your stacks, or lose the spores entirely.

When does a Nullifier spawn ON you, the only time I can think of where that happens is fissure missions and even then, they get stunned giving ample time to respond.

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There is no counter to something you have no perception over when it will appear or where it will appear.

They are giant glowing blue/yellow balls, it's pretty difficult to miss.

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The problem here is that, given how her spores are gimped in terms of spreading, either due to team-mates or spawns, if multiple Nullifiers spawn and are spread out, their bubbles will remove the spores on your spread victims, Curing a lot of spored enemies. That's the problem, and that's just how Nullifiers work. The key with this point, and point number one is to address how you felt Nullifiers were not an issue to Spores, and they obviously are.

I think you've misunderstood what I meant by "Nullifiers are not a problem". Yes they hurt your spores and it's an intended effect that the player has to deal with.

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Yes, you can do that (I've had to do that, and some other janky stuff to kill them). It doesn't change the fact that the bubble still went out and potentially cured your enemies. This is more of a problem with the strange enemy spawns, more than anything else, but it is definitely more exacerbated with spores, and other AOE abilities.

Again, the problem here lies within spawns, not spores. Better to solve the root cause than make a bandaid to avoid it.

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That's the difference between her 2.0 days and now. Before, I didn't need to cast a 75 energy (100 back then, if I recall right) ability for trash. I could cast her spores, have them spread viral, get the energy back if I wanted with Toxic Lash. Her one felt good at every stage of the game, where-as now you will only potentially find it useful at high-level content.

I'd much rather have a frame that scales well, than one that "feels good" in non challenging content.

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Remember, I love damage! But I don't think that is what Saryn is all about.

But that's what the devs think, and they ultimately have the final say in this, if they want Saryn to be a DPS frame, that's what she'll be.

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Before she filled the Viral-Debuff niche

Still does, just requires more energy. Thankfully, having the largest energy pool (Prime) and decent armour for Rage/Hunter's Adrenaline solves that problem. I'm running a maxed Blind Rage, no other efficiency mods and still have very few energy issues.

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 was excellent at doing that while remaining relevant at any stage of the game. Now, she has a one that essentially does a Localized Corrosive Projection with Damage, of which you will not really see the benefit of stripping armor if your team-mates bring in Corrosive Projection.

Your point about Corrosive Projection is true. But she can also allow the entire team to switch to something like Growing Power, because Spores shred quite quickly. Remember the first couple Corrosive procs are the most important.

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The spores no longer spread on death, something they should not have done at all, but had to in order to control the insane spread these monsters now have, and even that is going to fall flat on its head.

It's a lot easier to keep spores spreading now that directly casted Spores always spread and Miasma temporarily grants automatic spread. Have you actually played with Saryn 3.6? It made a huge difference and removed a lot of the frustration with spore spreading.

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"But aren't all DPS frames?" Well yes, but that was not the intended design direction for Saryn.

Not back then, but it is now. One thing I learned really early in Warframe was to expect changes, huge ones. Damage 2.0, Melee 2.0 (3.0 Soon), Parkour 2.0, etc.

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If you look at her 2.0 Days, she filled the role of Debuff frame, with Corrosive on Miasma, and Viral on Spores.

With Viral, you mean. Miasma was actually pretty bad back then because it did not proc Corrosive and as such the damage didn't really amount to much.

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Why was this great? Because it would be incredibly rare for your spores to out-right kill, but it was practically a given for them to afflict Viral on enemies, which was great because you have nothing else, other than weapons, to apply a viral debuff to a large group of enemies.

Except Miasma, now.

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The changes now made it more costly to apply that viral on a large group of enemies, and for maximum benefit, you need to be at the epicenter of all the enemies around with Miasma, and not die.

Which is why she was given a better Molt and yet more Armour.

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While yes, during this 2.0 time-frame, she could be a DPS/Burst Damage Monster, you could also fill in the role of Support/Debuff exceedingly well, and this is what I miss the most about her.

I wouldn't say exceedingly well, Viral is practically just a 2x damage boost. Compare that to the 10-15x damage boosts from Banshee. Hell, slap 100% extra Power Strength on a Rhino and you've achieved almost the same result with added Durability, Mobility, Proc Imunity and Crowd Control.

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She just feels like another forced-DPS frame balanced around one single game-mode, rather than the all-rounder she used to be.

How was Saryn an all-rounder? She did some debuff and that was it. She had Minimal CC (still does) and high burst damage with one weapon.

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Also, the entire concept of having stacks is to be attached to them, that's the point of farming them up. If you feel it is best not to be attached, then there is something wrong with how they implemented, in my opinion.

Depends on the stacks, some stacks are meant to be fleeting. Think of the Arca Titron. Wheras someone like Nidus who slowly build stacks over time are more suited to stack hoarding. This is why I disregard Duration and build for 222% Strength, which reduces the recast cost to 8-9% and I attempt to avoid decay completely by recasting often.

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(Elemental Enhancement Quote) - I am actually concerned about elemental enhancement actually being a positive thing for players, rather than a hindrance... Sort of ironic, isn't it? The thing that is supposed to stop you, actually helps you. I'll have to actually make a serious go of it at some point.

Kinda like the life drain nightmare modifier, which is basically free healing.

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Yes, PUGs are always a gamble. However, with most other frames, and Saryn during her 2.0 days, they still felt effective at what they did. Again, you either steal the kills with her now, or you don't do anything of importance, because 9 times out of 10, there are 2 other players who are also playing high-DPS frames like Equinox and killing everything around you before you can do anything yourself, and that is the problem that goes back to the Design-Direction change she has received.

Again, mostly a solo/duo player. Can't comment too much on this.

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Before, she was primarily a Debuff frame, with DPS. Now she is just DPS, and trying to even consider using her Miasma, at 75 base energy a pop to spread viral, is just a bad call on their part. 

If you need to debuff your enemies, they're probably high enough level to give you enough energy to do that via Rage/Hunter's Adrenaline. And if they're not high enoigh level to provide energy then you really didn't need the debuff in the first place.

It honestly sounds like you'd be better off with something like Nova, 2x damage buff, slow/speed and spreads automatically.

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"Saryn wasn't that Strong", I think we'll have to disagree on that point unfortunately. I never used Gas-Lanka with her (although I should have, since I had a riven for it at the time). I never utilized her Molt-Tower Combo either. I built her purely for spreading viral spores, and at the end of the game, I would do well. Saryn was always strong, because it isn't about the damage number at that point, it's about how much health the enemy has left over from the viral procs, which was always half, and considering most people at that time were still running Corrosive Projection (because why wouldn't you remove a ton of armor from an enemy for nothing?) she was really great. Mind you, that Viral is effective against nearly all factions, where-as her spores are not as effective now against Corpus and Infested (unless the infested get armor from a mutalist or something). Saryn didn't necessarily need the damage numbers (although you could easily get them then, too), and that's what made her strong. You could play her, debuff everything, and feel like you were an asset to the team, where-as now you will be combatting between 1-2 other players who may have thought, "Hey, you know what, I'm going to relieve some stress and kill everything around me with my 4th ability on Equinox".

True, armour shred is not the best against Corpus and Infested, but the damage is. Corrosive has bonuses against Ferrite armour and Fossilized Infested but one thing that people don't really think about is that Corrosive has only one weakness. Fun fact, I've been running Corrosive on my Supra for the last 2-3 years. Never switched elementals because it's that damn good.

It is only weak against Proto Shields (-50%) and the only non-bosses that possess proto shields are Techs, Corpus Wardens and Targets(They don't really matter), Sniper Crewmen and Nullifiers. These are the only enemies that Spores are weak against, any other enemy will take full damage. And guess what, those enemies listed, are really weak to Toxin, to which I'm just gonna say:

Toxic Lash.

And again, she debuffs better now with Corrosive and Viral procs, as opposed to just Viral.

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You mean to tell me that, recasting a 25 energy ability (12.5 after subsequent cast), that might not even spread because of a bad tile-set, is a fix?

That target will always spread spores. Because directly spored targets will always pop the spores on death. The only time it won't is if there's not an enemy within a 37 meter radius, in which case, why even cast spore on that target in the first place.

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And both those issues will still always impose a risk of losing damage that you worked hard to get, because each recast reduces your stacks by 20%

Sure, if you're running no Strength. My spore recast only costs me about 9%.

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(plus an added -10%/s, if you fail to do so before your team kills the enemies), which becomes more punishing the more stacks you get.

Spores are supposed to spread if killled by an ally.

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Why? Because she didn't have the ludicrous Damage design she has now, due to how Viral innately scaled.

And the Viral still scales, she didn't lose any debuffing utility.

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So if a Bursa spawns behind you, and you can't react quick enough, "Too bad, that's on you", right? Yeah, no. I don't buy that either.

Yes that is on you. They don't spawn within attack range and Lotus even warns you when they spawn.

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Sure, if you see a Scrambus in your view, I'd agree. But I'd wager that more often than not, enemies spawn in your blind spots, and they always know what you are doing.

Animal Instinct is a wonderful mod, and even if my Sentinel dies, just being on guard makes all the difference. When you fail to avoid the nullifying attack, you abilities will suffer. Just how failing to avoid something like Napalm Rockets will cause your health to suffer.

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You can't dodge everything, that's just how it is in this game, but to pin that solely on the player is heavy-handed, and you must agree, that at some point, you get pulled in by a bursa, and lost your stacks (and thus, your utility to the team).

I can't actually remember the last time I got pulled by a Bursa. Again, when Lotus warns me about the bursa, it is my top priority to take it out. Oh, and Miasma's short stun works wonders for safely getting behind them.

Without Nullifying effects this wouldn't even be a game anymore. It's one of the few things that can combat the broken stuff we players have access to.

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I respect that you think she is good as a DPS frame, but as a Saryn 1.0, 2.0, and now 3.0/3.5 player, I can't agree on it. 

So you haven't tried Saryn 3.6? Because the difference is surprisingly large.

 

Anyway, as you said; Agree to Disagree. At least we had a civil discussion. Not often you get that on the internet these days.

Have a nice day.

Edited June 1, 2018 by Rambit23Z