Nekros has been in a great spot ever since his buffs to Terrify and Soul Punch healing his shadows. He just needs one final push to make him feel amazing to play and cement Soul Punch as a core ability, not just one you remove via the Helminth system as soon as you get him. I'm also leaving a few other ideas for his kit that have bothered me for a long time.
Passive - Nekros and companions regenerate 5 health when an enemy dies within 10 meters of him.
This is an alright passive, but 10 meters are basically melee range and don't compliment builds other than ones that focus on melee. The range should be buffed from 10 meters to 50 (Affinity Range) or at least 30 meters. Other than that, it's a fine passive.
First Ability - Soul Punch:
Great ability to support your Shadows of the Dead by healing them back to full. The only bad part about is how annoying it is to use. Soul Punch currently knocks your target with so much force, that it's impossible to aim at the flying target and kill them within the death mark time. It's one of those hard crow control abilities that you just never use because how frustrating they are for the player.
Purposed Changes:
Change Soul Punch to a soft crowd control ability - Remove the super hard knock back and replace it with a stagger. This makes it ideal for a short disable, enough to kill the target via headshot or after priming. There is nothing more annoying than chasing a ragdoll flying around the whole tileset. Not to mention that will usually take longer than the 3 seconds you have until the harvest mark runs out.
Bonus Suggestions:
- Add a VFX for successful execute - Currently there is no indication if you have killed the target within the duration of the mark and it leaves you often looking back at your shadows. There should be an effect or audio cue upon successfully killing the marked target like a smoke effect on the harvested target or shadows, similar to desecrate or a fitting sound effect.
- Make Soul Punch scale with stats - Soul Punch's Harvest mark is a flat 3 second duration, making it impossible to kill a high level target in time, especially since you already lose up to 2 seconds from the hard knock-back. The mark length should be able to scale with duration mods, making it more useful in Steel Path and higher level content. If necessary, cap it to 1 active mark at a time.
Second Ability - Terrify:
Terrify is a great ability since its changed in the Veil Breaker update, however it can use some few tweaks as well. It is currently the only ability in the game that costs 75 energy for no reason, instead of the standard 50 Energy cost.
Purposed Changes:
Change Terrify's Energy Cost to 50 and nerf the base armor removal from 60% to 50% - This makes the full armor strip possible at 200% strength, while giving it a huge buff to usability for Nerkos, since you won't spend as much as 116.25 Energy PER CAST if you run negative efficiency and opens up more modding options. This will also be a buff to other warframes that opt to use Terrify via the Helminth system, since most of the damage dealers already opt into builds with more than 200% power strength.
Third Ability - Desecrate:
Desecrate is absolutely fine as an ability, but the augment Despoil should be just part of his base kit. 100% of Nekros builds already run Despoil and it ends up hurting his modding options in the long run, Despoil will also compliment his passive ability. The augment can be changed to something like a 20% Universal Orb drop chance.
Fourth Ability - Shield of Shadows:
Fine as it currently is, aside from the annoyingly long cast animation. It's around 4-5 seconds at base and not allowing any sort of movement, unless cast while bulletjumping.
Purposed Changes:
Change the cast time from 5 seconds to 3 - This makes it more bearable to sit through and makes having casting speed via a mod or archon shards even more valuable for smoother gameplay.
Bonus Suggestion - Shadows of The Dead prioritize targets marked by Soul Punch's harvest mark. Optionally giving bonus damage against the marked target, similar to Wukong's Celestial Twin.
