Loadouts: Steel Path Saryn (U29.9.1)

In a majority of content, and particularly in (Elite) Sanctuary Onslaught, Saryn is renowned for her ability to wipe out massive numbers of enemies with ease. The drastically increased tankiness of Steel Path enemies greatly reduces the speed at which her abilities will map-clear, however she can easily be adjusted to be fearsome weapon-buffing platform.

Steel Path Overview

Steel Path takes the regular Star Chart and jacks up its enemies a heap. On top of adding 100 levels, it also multiplies enemy Health, Shields and Armour by 2.5x. For an armoured enemy, this gives them an overall effective health equivalent to something like five times their Steel Path level (e.g. a level 100 SP Butcher has effective health roughly equivalent to a level 500 non-SP Butcher). They are seriously tanky enemies, and can be a pain to deal with if your builds and weapons are not up to scratch.

Against these sorts of enemies, the traditional Saryn nuke builds are nowhere near as effective, as Spores take much longer to build up to significant damage ticks. Instead, she can be adjusted to act more as a buff and debuff Frame.

Loadout

This build revolves specifically around making Saryn more effective in Steel Path. Weapons are largely to preference, with this particular set (Kuva Hind, Sporelacer, Kronen Prime) being among my favourites in the game.

Zenurik is the default Focus school to ensure energy-on-demand. Naramon is the preferred school for melee-focused combat.

Saryn Build

This build is largely based on my general-use build, with some notable changes for Steel Path.

Blind Rage + Umbral Intensify gives for a lot of Strength even with Overextended, which gives Saryn quite strong weapon buffs. Overextended notably increases Spore spread range to around 30 metres, which is usually enough with Steel Path's very high enemy spawn density. Umbral Vitality + Adaptation + Arcane Guardian + Regenerative Molt give a lot of health-based survivability, though at this level and number of enemies, even that can get overwhelmed. Hunter Adrenaline converts any Health damage into energy, which at Steel Path-levels of damage output, means max energy pretty much all the time. Primed Sure Footed is a great quality-of-life mod, not only negating any enemy knockdown abilities, but also self-stagger/knockdown from explosive weapons like the Sporelacer.

Venom Dose is one of only two mod changes from my usual setup. It replaces a Range mod, trading the increased Spore spread range for a 194% Corrosive damage weapon buff. This is a fairly large bonus, adding a lot of damage to some already strong weapons. Corrosive is among the best damage types in the game, and a great buff to most weapons in Steel Path.

The addition of shield-gating turned Brief Respite from basically useless into a top-tier aura for high level content, and similarly for the Augur set mods. Its restoration of shields gives you, at minimum, a 0.33 second buffer until you can be killed. With Saryn having an instant-cast, non-interrupting ability in Molt, it is very easy to maintain a state of either being shielded, or being in a shield-gate-invulnerability period. At Steel Path levels, where enemies can easily blast through just about any amount of health, total invulnerability is the only reliable form of survivability.

Similarly, Arcane Aegis quickly became a top-tier arcane thanks to shield-gating. When triggered, it will constantly restore Shields at a given rate over a set period. Of note, this also means that while active, it will constantly restore your shield-gate and restores shields far faster than even the short shield-gate period. Ultimately, this means that while active, Arcane Aegis will make you functionally immortal to any attacks except Toxin (which of course bypass Shields entirely) while it is active. The main limitation is that it can only be triggered by receiving damage to Shields and not Health - this is where Brief Respite (and any Augur set mods) come in. Casting any abilities will restore some amount of shields, which immediately offers more opportunities for Arcane Aegis to be triggered.

You may notice that this build seems to partly contradict itself - part of the build is set up for Health-based survivability, while another part goes for exploitation of shield-gating, and the two are not really compatible. At very high levels, even basic enemies will one-shot Saryn's Health, rendering that portion of the build pointless. While this is absolutely true, it is also not content I regularly play. I almost never engage in long edurance runs, nor do I particularly care for extremely high level content. As such, for what I do play, the Health-based survivability is enough to stay alive for a few hits, which is then more than enough to max out energy for casting of abilities to restore shields.

The resultant Saryn build is a lot more active than the usual Star Chart Saryn nuking. Spore (1) is used both as a team-buff, as well as for debuffing enemies with Corrosive procs, dealing some chip damage to them, and marking them with damage numbers for Saryn to find more easily. Molt (2) is primarily a survivability option. It is an instant, non-interrupting cast that distracts enemies, restores some Shields, and will also heal some Health-over-time. Toxic Lash (3) remains a great self-buff that also guarantees Spore spread. In particular, its guaranteed Toxin damage and proc utterly trivialise almost all Corpus units, bypassing their immense Shields to hit at their (usually) much smaller Health instead. Miasma (4) becomes much less useful as a room-clear option, instead being more useful for Viral proc spreading, guaranteeing Spore spreads, and its short stun.

Weapons

My go-to Primary for most high-level content is my Radiation Kuva Hind, with a Viral build. It is my favourite Rifle, being effective against practically any target. In this particular loadout, it is mainly used against enemies who are resistant to AoE and melee attacks - Grineer Noxes being a notable example.

My preferred Secondary when running Saryn is a Sporelacer-Haymaker-Killstream. Of all explosive Secondaries, this is my favourite, for its combination of solid explosive radius and immense damage output. With Saryn's buffs and debuffs, this Sporelacer will effortlessly tear through most enemies, with only the absolute toughest (e.g. Heavy Gunners, Bombards) surviving one shot. With Toxic Lash active, it will also easily spread Spores to infect, debuff and mark more victims.

For the toughest of enemies, I default to using Kronen Prime for Melee for its sheer speed, raw stats, and great stance. My KronenP build is a little unusual, notably stacking up a lot of Range and running Healing Return as I really like the healing. I have +Heat on it, partly as it is the best single element/proc and I don't have space for two elements, and partly because nothing else in this loadout deals Heat.

Condition Overload and Healing Return in particular have an absolute ball with Saryn. She provides three procs from her abilities (Corrosive, Toxin, Viral), which when combined with just the damage types on this KronenP, offers 7 unique Status procs. Not only does this grant +840% Melee Damage, but also means every single hit on every single affected enemy will heal Saryn for up to 77 health. Combined with a very high attack speed and a plethora of multi-hit combos in Sovereign Outcast, this causes KronenP to rapidly heal Saryn, often back to max health with just a single press of the melee key.

Companion

The Panzer Vulpaphyla is largely considered the most useful companion for high-level combat. On top of having the infinite self-revives of a Vulp, the Panzer can also inflict enemies with Viral procs, and even its own Spores that inflict Viral instead of Saryn's Corrosive. These Spores are affected by the Companion damage mods, and any damage dealt by them triggers Hunter Recovery. As such, a good Panzer build (ie probably not mine) not only spreads Viral procs, but can actually deal solid damage (perhaps not in Steel Path, but definitely in most regular content) and provide incredible healing.

There is one major issue with the Panzer here however. Its Spores compete with Saryn's Spores for "slots" on enemies - there can only be up to 3 of Saryn's Spores on an enemy, but the Panzer can have up to around 10. If there are already 3 of Saryn's Spores on an enemy, then the Panzer can still infect them with its own. However, if the Panzer has already infected an enemy with 3 of its Spores, Saryn will not be able to infect them with hers. Given that Saryn's are so much more powerful, clearly the ideal situation is to have Saryn's Spores take preference. Panzer's Spores seem to have a spread range of around 15-20m, so Saryn's Spores with sufficient +Range will infect enemies from further away (this build has a 30m spread range). In my experience, this is usually enough to ensure at least one Saryn Spore on every nearby enemy.

My main alternative Vulpaphyla is the Crescent one, mainly because I have one coloured to resemble a Gungan. Its unique Precept is nowhere near as good as the Panzer's, but it still has the infinite self-revives that makes Vulps so good at high levels.

Alternatives

This loadout revolves primarily around Saryn, with the weapons heavily to my preference. As such, pretty much all of them can be comfortably switched out.

Saryn:

• To be honest, a lot of the Saryn build could be considered sub-optimal. At these levels and quantities of enemies, shield-gating is the only reliable form of survivability, with health only going so far. Even with Arcane Guardian active and Adaptation maxed out, Saryn could still get one-shotted by a powerful attack (e.g. Bombards), or rapidly whittled down by several enemies. With shield-gating (ab)use working properly, the only threat to Saryn is Toxin attacks, notably from Toxic Ancients, who will one-shot her even with the aforementioned protections up. As such, a solid argument could be made to switch Arcane Guardian, Adaptation, (Umbral) Vitality and Regenerative Molt out for other things - perhaps Arcane Energize, more Range and Strength and/or some Augur mods. With all that said, I like having these extra pieces of survivability, partly because it suits my playstyle and partly because it allows me to run Hunter Adrenaline for energy regen.
  
• The Helminth system offers a lot of interesting options. I've opted to keep Saryn's kit as-is because I really like it, however it would be very easy to justify switching one of them for something else. A CC ability like Resonator can lessen the need to build for survivability, and generally make life a lot easier. Roar or Eclipse are always options for increased damage, the former being more consistent and working with abilities, and the latter having much higher weapon-buffing potential. A versatile ability like Firewalker or Thermal Sunder could be worth considering as well for their various merits. Pillage is almost always worth consideration for both its armour/shield-stripping and shield restoration. Breach Surge is an option that will trigger constantly from Saryn's many sources of damage.
  

Weapons:

• My Primary choice is purely personal preference, the Kuva Hind is my favourite Rifle right now. Any strong Primary will do well, it is probably worth considering a weapon to cover damage types that the rest of your kit does not (e.g. Radiation damage). In the line of thinking for my Secondary choice, a weapon with strong area-of-effect (e.g. Ignis Wraith, Kuva Ogris, Kuva Bramma, Primary Vermisplicer) may be useful to help spread Spores more reliably. The Sobek with Acid Shells is one of my favourite weapons to use with Saryn, however it is not a particularly strong weapon overall.
  
• The Secondary Sporelacer is one of my favourite weapons to use with Saryn (and in general), as it deals massive damage to single targets, while also having a solid AoE to help clear groups and spread Spores. The most notable alternative would be the Kuva Nukor, not just for its AoE but also for the additional Status effects it inflicts, to further enhance Melee's Condition Overload.
• There are so many good Melees in the game that can handle Steel Path content. For this loadout, you'll want a weapon and build that synergises well with Condition Overload...which is almost every good Melee weapon anyway. The main thing to watch out for is particular builds that don't work correctly with Condition Overload - for instance there was a time when Glaive throws did not work with it (I don't know if this is still the case or not). Examples of other excellent Melees include Gram Prime, Nikana Prime, Kuva Shildeg and Nami Skyla Prime.
• The Vulpaphylas are by far the best Companions to take into Steel Path. The high levels of SP mean that enemy damage output is very high, and can quickly kill most companions. With the correct Precept (the one ending in "Devolution"), Vulps cannot permanently die, and even when downed will hover around still providing loot/enemy radar and vacuum until they are auto-revived. The Djinn Sentinel has the Reawaken Precept that grants it unlimited self-revives as well, however it only triggers 90 seconds after death and does not remain partially active during this time like Vulps. Otherwise, any Companion with Link Health, Link Armor and Pack Leader can survive for a reasonable time if you melee a lot. Smeeta Kavat is always worth a mention for its Charm buffs, notably being able to increase Steel Essence amounts.