I have both of them in the foundry, but due to circumstances I can only claim one soon and the other one down the line.I myself am indecisive so I thought I’d come to the community for help. I main Octavia but have built her for steel path if that information is relevant in your comment of helping me choose. Thank you to those of you that help me choose.
I have two answers.
The first: fun factor.
Saryn is a great weapon platform that you can slap any weapon on and buff the heck out of. She can also spread spores that constantly degrade enemy health while they get in range of your guns. She’s great at every level of enemy durability, from star chart to long Steel Path runs. On scaling content, Saryn lives and dies by Molt and shield gating, although she’s very tanky for the first couple hundred levels.
Mirage is an evasive and parkour-based frame who necessarily locks you in to weapons with big hitboxes, radial effects, or homing and autoaiming capabilities, due to how her clones can’t aim. As long as you like moving a lot, I find Mirage a lot more chill on SP because I very rarely have to shield gate. Having to constantly be aerial and moving might be more taxing for some people though.
Having played both, I like Mirage a lot more. She’s one of the funny number frames of all time. I can’t argue that Saryn has some of the highest kills-per-minute potential in the game, though.
The second: functionality and numbers.
They both have their uses. Mirage can potentially balance personal power and party support with a range-based Total Eclipse build. I find she has a bit of a comfier pace due to the inbuilt evasion from Hall of Mirrors and her passive parkour boost. Both are good SO/ESO focus farmers.
I think the tie breaker is that Saryn can be built as an infinite scaling ability nuker for SP Circuit, whereas Mirage lives and dies as a weapon buffer.
I’m not the best person to ask for this, but in my view both are used for static game modes like defense, survival and disruption
Mirage is mostly seen with the Sleight of Hand augment that makes enemy drops turn into mines, but you can have fun with her doppelgangers increasing your weapon damage
Saryn needs a bit of time to ramp her spore damage
Hope this helps
They’re both amazing frames that are great for both general purpose and nuking. Gloomy Saryn and Explosive Legerdemain are two of my favorite builds in Warframe.
Personally, I’d say Saryn is my general purpose nuke warframe. Any weapon, just about any content, I feel extremely confident she can handle it comfortably. Mirage, otoh, is my go-to Warframe for being stupidly overpowered at a particular thing, like Explosive Legerdemain for SO, Disco ESO, or buffing Exodia Contagion to extremes.
Saryn is really good for farming affinity in Sanctuary Onslaught which can be pretty useful early-game when you are leveling up a bunch of throwaway weapons to get your MR up.
that’s when you join pubs, because kills with the frame don’t give xp to weapons
edit: I mean, toxic lash does help in that regard
Saryn, purely due to how the frames are accessed.
Mirage is acquired through a quest you’ll do at some point anyway, Saryn is from a slightly annoying boss to run in Sedna (requires you to do arena points to gain points which can then be spent to access the fight).
Just generally, if in doubt, pick the one that is hardest to get.
Mirage only due to the fact that you will want to subsume her for eclipse anyway freeing up a slot for saryn