Loadouts: 100% Armour Strip Saryn (U35.0.6)

U35: Whispers in the Walls brought with it a new set of Archon Shards, this time offering the ability to combine the three existing Shards (Amber, Azure, Crimson) into three new types of Shards (Emerald, Topaz, Violet) with their own set of effects.

Emerald interacts with Toxin and Corrosive damage and procs, making them ideal for Saryn. In particular, one of the potential effects is to increase the maximum number of Corrosive procs on enemies (normally 10), which at +4 max procs allows Corrosive to once again completely remove enemy armour. On Saryn, who spreads Corrosive procs everywhere with her Spores (1), this is a massive power boost against armoured enemies.

Overview

Nothing too special about this Saryn loadout, the focus is on the Emerald Shards and their interaction with Spores (1) in particular.

Spores deal scaling Corrosive damage to infected enemies, with high chance of Corrosive procs. Each enemy can be infected by up to 3 Spores at a time, for up to 3 Corrosive procs-per-second. With the default Corrosive proc cap of 10, Saryn can spread up to 80% armour reduction in around 4 seconds. By increasing that to at least 14 procs with Emerald Shards, Saryn can achieve 100% armour reduction in around 5 seconds.

Against very high level, heavily armoured enemies, the difference between 80% armour reduction and 100% armour reduction is massive. For instance, a level 100 Steel Path Grineer Heavy Gunner has roughly 16,100 armour, for a Damage Reduction of roughly 98%. Reducing that by 80% gives 3,220 armour, for a Damage Reduction of roughly 91.5% - an increase in damage dealt by 4.25×. However, total armour strip will remove the Damage Reduction entirely, for a damage increase of roughly 50×.

As shown in the above video, 100% armour strip turns even Steel Path enemies into easy pickings, completely removing their colossal armour damage reduction.

Saryn Build

The build featured is a modified version of my Shooting Gallery SP Saryn, which I featured in a previous post. The specific build doesn't really matter, this setup works with any build that uses Spores - which is almost every Saryn build barring specific weapon buff setups.

The highlight of this build is the Archon Shard setup, since everything else has been covered in the past and is to personal preference. Specifically, two Emerald Shards (Amber + Azure) each with the +2 Corrosive proc Max effect. Tauforged Shards will not achieve this any easier, as the threshold to reach full armour strip is +4 max procs, and a Tauforged will only give +3.

That said, a single Tauforged increases Corrosive armour strip to 98%, which is still a massive increase over the base 80%. If you want to save an Archon Shard slot and are happy to stick with not-quite-total armour strip, a single Tauforged Emerald will do well.

The other Shards are to preference.

Weapons

Weapons are all to preference.

My preferred Primary for this setup is a Viral + HM Bubonico. Corrosive is provided both by Spores, and the Venom Dose Augment.

My preferred Secondary for this setup is a Crit-focused Laetum, again built for Viral as the Venom Dose Augment provides ample Corrosive.

My preferred Melee is a Praedos built for Healing Return and mobility.

Companion

I use a Sly Vulpaphyla in this loadout, partly for the Martyr Symbiosis Precept (which can auto-revive me if I go down), and partly for the funny name. Again this one is to preference, with the caveat to not use a Panzer Vulp as their Spores compete with Saryn's Spores.

The many new Companion Bond mods give some interesting new options for Companions, such as setups to spread procs using Contagious Bond, and Duplex Bond to generate extra Energy Orbs. I haven't had much of a play with these Bond mods personally, but they are very much worth investigation.

Alternatives

While the introduction of Helminth and subsumable abilities such as Pillage (Hildryn) and Terrify (Nekros) offer total armour strip to every Frame, few can provide wide area, line-of-sight-ignoring passive total armour strip with wide area, propagating damage as well. Additionally, this setup retains Saryn's subsume flexibility, allowing you to slot in another ability (e.g. Shooting Gallery [Mesa] as used in my setup) rather than relying on a subsume for armour strip.

Notably, with his recent rework, Hydroid can natively fully strip armour with Corrosive procs even without Emerald Shards, thanks to his new Passive. His Abilities are also well suited to spreading Corrosive procs amongst enemies, however he does not have the same widespread and indiscriminate range and damage that Saryn has. Lavos is a solid candidate for Emerald Shards given his ability to spread a wide range of Status procs.

The other effects of the Emerald Shard are also quite beneficial to Saryn. Increased Toxin proc damage combines perfectly with Toxic Lash (3), and is especially potent against the heavily Shielded Corpus. Similarly, Healing upon dealing Toxin proc damage can give Saryn a massive amount of passive Healing provided Toxic Lash is active. Finally, +15% Ability Damage to enemies affected by Corrosive procs is basically a permanent damage increase, since Saryn spreads Corrosive procs effortlessly with Spores (1). However, given the insane power of enemy armour at high levels, I consider the increased Corrosive proc max far more important than any of those.