Overview: Spread a lethal plague across enemy forces, shredding armour and health with horrifying speed or shed your skin as a decoy when overwhelmed – if this sounds good, pick up Saryn blueprints from Kela De Thaym in Sedna!

Prime: Saryn prime is currently vaulted, meaning you’ll need to ask your friends and clanmates if they have the relics, try your luck on the trading channel

Special: Status effects from Saryn last 25% longer – in addition, spores deployed by Saryn build in power over time.

Pros: Massive map spanning damage that builds over time, removes armour from enemies, can quickly heal using the Regenerative Molt augment.

Cons: Poor crowd-control abilities, must maintain multiple abilities to remain effective.

Powers: Nominate patient-zero with Spores (1) causing them to sprout infectious growths, dealing corrosive damage over time with infinite duration and a high status chance. The initial damage dealt is very low, but gets stronger every second based on the total number of enemies you have infected – you’ll get a little gauge that tracks how much damage and how many people are infected. Directly hitting a spore growth will cause it to burst, infecting enemies in range. If you like you can try the Venom Dose augment, granting you and your allies bonus corrosive damage – or perhaps the Revealing Spores augment, showing the infected on your minimap.

Molt (2) is a simple decoy ability, allowing you to shed your skin (and any status effects) that will attract enemy fire before exploding in a burst of toxin damage – you’ll also get a bit of a speed boost when you cast it. This is a useful ability for getting out of a bad situation, but you can improve it with the Regenerative Molt augment, granting you a small heal-over-time effect.

Toxic Lash (3) infuses your weapons with additional toxin damage (doubled for melee attacks) and spreads your Spores (1) any time you strike an infected target. This is key getting the most out of Saryn – keep it up at all times. You can further augment it with the Contagion Cloud augment, causing kills with Toxic Lash (3) to leave a poison cloud behind.

Miasma (4) exhales a viral mist in a large radius, stunning enemies, dealing damage over time and inflicting a viral status effect. Miasma deals 400% damage against targets covered in Spores (1) and will cause them to spread if the target dies. To make the most out of this power, cast Spores (1) on a target before hitting them while Toxic Lash (3) is active, spreading Spores (1) to leave everyone nearby vulnerable to a quadruple damage Miasma (4) that deals double damage against reduced armour from the viral and corrosive status effects.

Build – Epidemic Saryn: Saryn’s Spores (1) are one of the most effective crowd-killing abilities in Warframe. Starting off as a weak damage over time effect, they can be spread to nearby enemies when popped by weapon hits, Miasma (4) or the death of the initial host. In addition, the damage dealt by Spores (1) steadily increases for each infected enemy, and an enemy can be carry multiple spores. By stacking ability range mods (Stretch, Augur Reach, Overextended, Cunning Drift) you can get to the point where bursting a spore will infect every enemy within multiple rooms – and you don’t even need a good ability strength to do it! I found that a single strength mod like Augur Secrets can keep your other powers feeling effective despite the strength penalty of Overextended. Try combining this set up with an explosive weapon (or a Sobek with the Acid Shells mod) and Toxic Lash (3) to pop multiple spores on anyone within the blast, or use your Miasma (4) to finish off infected enemies and spread their plague.

Opinion: Saryn is very much dependent on synergy, and you’ll need to make sure you manage several abilities to get the most out of her. The payoff is colossal damage that scales infinitely while dramatically increasing the damage enemies take from attacks. On the flip side, she lacks the survival tools possessed by some other frames, relying on Molt (2) and slightly above average health and armour to keep her alive. She can be extremely energy hungry (and typically requires a little set up time to shine) but she is an undeniably powerful option for exterminate, survival, defence and sanctuary onslaught missions.