Nekros Soul Punch FX

[LAWD]

can we have the ability to be reflective of how it's displayed in the Nekros Prime Trailer, whereby the soul gets separated from the target and becomes the projectile.

Right now it has no use, besides ragdolling a bunch. Titania even hs this ability but very different

[NightmareT12]

But you want only the VFX changed or the ability use too? As in soul gets sperated enemies behind get hit and ragdolled.

[Dabnician]

2 hours ago, LAWD said:

Right now it has no use.

FTFY, If they do anything with soul punch they need to rework it, like make it do true damage no mater the level of the enemy. Honestly i only use it in super rare occasions.

[LAWD]

On 2019-01-02 at 5:18 PM, NightmareT12 said:

But you want only the VFX changed or the ability use too? As in soul gets sperated enemies behind get hit and ragdolled.

Not Only VFX, but that should be the first on the list, second is making it useful with Desecrate

[Bristoling]

First 2 abilities of Nekros need an overhaul really. There is no synergy in his kit and other that having 1 toggle and one long duration ability, there isn't much ability use at all.

[LAWD]

Just now, Bristoling said:

First 2 abilities of Nekros need an overhaul really. There is no synergy in his kit and other that having 1 toggle and one long duration ability, there isn't much ability use at all.

His Terrify ability is fine as if, but it does feel like it should add more than just make enemies run away very quickly. Shouldn't it make a scare factor to the Shadows of dead? Probably make it Ember's accelerant for his shadows

[(PSN)CaitaZatomi]

I think true damage is the way to go. I think it should do one of two things, either make the range acceptable to the point that you wouldn't rather just shoot the enemy with the Sonicor to achieve the same effect, or keep it at borderline point blank range, have it do true damage to the first enemy it hits (or outright kill them because the soul is LEAVING THE BODY) and have the enemy send out a portion of that damage to the other enemies affected by it. In the ranged iteration, the skill isn't particularly better, but at least you're doing something Banshee can't do. The augment could also be better utilized in that case because you could save someone you can't quite reach I guess. In the latter example, scrap the augment and do something cooler. I'm sure there are use cases for it, but while the operator exists in its current capacity, why would you ever use a chunk of your energy to save someone at almost a hop, step, and a jump away from the res target?

[Bristoling]

1 hour ago, LAWD said:

His Terrify ability is fine as if, but it does feel like it should add more than just make enemies run away very quickly. Shouldn't it make a scare factor to the Shadows of dead? Probably make it Ember's accelerant for his shadows

The biggest issue with Terrify is that it goes against what Nekros does in current state of the game - help prolong life support in Survivals. In Survival, you want enemies to come to you, not run away. You don't want to use it in defense either, since it makes each wave longer. Apart from Interception and Mobile Defense, there is no mode where Terrify might be useful, and for these 2 modes other frames perform a much better role at defending points and CCing the enemy. If Terrify was changed to a Curse increasing Shadow damage in a meaningful manner, as well as provide some small damage boost to Nekros by debuffing armour/multiplying damage, it could be a useful ability. Remember that this is a 75 energy skill that doesn't really do that much.

[Andele3025]

2 hours ago, Bristoling said:

First 2 abilities of Nekros need an overhaul really. There is no synergy in his kit and other that having 1 toggle and one long duration ability, there isn't much ability use at all.

Nah, terrify is just not used/used badly by people that either never fought or dont get the power of long duration cc which completely stops enemies from dealing any damage (or simply use a max range build for some reason while not having a melee weapon AND cant aim even with shotgun spread). Tho its augment being baked into the base ability or making it work like desecrate (aura that lets energy regen happen and drains some 2.5 energy per target feared with fear happening when they are in range, possibly armor reduction increasing the longer the target is in range) would be nice for gameflow.

Overhauls that are needed is mostly on the augment(s) and 4; Shield of Shadows base value buffed to at least 7% if not even 10% and Shadows AI prioritizing staying in range (and not eating allied bullets) being the simplest big buffs to consistency. Also the ever noted Soul Survivor either giving invul duration based on energy drained or just not draining energy.

[Bristoling]

It's not that nobody thought about it. Why would anyone want to "CC" enemies by making them run away from the player if the whole point of the game is killing enemies, not letting them escape. Having it work like an aura is terrible since Nekros doesn't have any good active abilities, and turning his whole kit into abilities that just work on a toggle is going to fix nothing. You might think that having a constant aura and causing enemies to constantly run away from you is fun, but its a terrible gameplay. Everyone hates max range Limbo/Vauban on defense missions, everyone hated Nyx's Chaos stopping defense waves or survival spawns, and nobody is using Raksa's precept Howl.

Let me say that again - the only job Nekros is good at, is providing extra life support in Survival. And to stay long in survival, you have to kill enemies. Enemies that are running away from you take more time to kill, making sustaining life support harder. Its an anti-synergy. 

Soul survivor is completely not needed due to Operators.

Overhauls are needed not only on the augments. Seriously, getting over 200 power strength is easy enough, with Health Conversion and SoS Nekros is already tanky and doesn't need another defensive CC abiliy. Its the base skills that need buffs/overhauls.

His Soul Punch is trash. His Terrify is an anti-synergy to his purpose and kit. His Ultimate ability deals no damage to anything above level 25 and its only purpose is for it to be used with an augment. So instead of patching up bad designs with augments, his core skills should be reworked/buffed, and then we can talk about changing his augments.

His minions should be his dps skill. His 2nd ability should be a meaningful debuff. His 1st ability should provide some utility of be a straight up damage skill. Right now his skills are in a spot where if you want to use 3 out of his 4 abilities for anything other then a meme, you need to use 3 augments. That means it's the core of the skills that needs changing, and we should stop patching up what should be base functionality with augments on a frame that already has so many "must have" mods.

Edited January 3, 2019 by Bristoling

[Andele3025]

32 minutes ago, Bristoling said:

It's not that nobody thought about it. Why would anyone want to "CC" enemies by making them run away from the player if the whole point of the game is killing enemies, not letting them escape. Having it work like an aura is terrible since Nekros doesn't have any good active abilities, and turning his whole kit into abilities that just work on a toggle is going to fix nothing. You might think that having a constant aura and causing enemies to constantly run away from you is fun, but its a terrible gameplay. Everyone hates max range Limbo/Vauban on defense missions, everyone hated Nyx's Chaos stopping defense waves or survival spawns, and nobody is using Raksa's precept Howl.

Well first off, big difference between 15~17m and 44m range. second how about just with Limbo and Nyx, not using the skill then and there unless its called for due to something (like scaling or someone dying due to energy drain killsquad or whatever). As far as survival goes, if you have trouble killing moving enemies, not only did you pick a small room which is bad, but you probably dont have the weapons to kill the enemies/scale to the level in the first place. As in his 2 already is a meaningful debuff. Tho baking its augment into base skill and then changing it into turning terrify into a Despoil style aura would be nice too.

And no, Minions are aggro pull and supplement your kit with current iteration. Unless Nekros gets a Octavia Somacord treatment for his technocyte zombies where you can pick priority and even exclude kills to go into the pool the wont ever be a "main dps skill" (nor should they ever be a saryn spore/regulators).


P.S. Its not due to going BR+Intensify, but due to not being able to select only the most tanky shadows/having to recast every 15-20s a 100-155 energy skill to keep the 90% DR because one of the shadows was a tech/lancer/kamikaze infested is why im saying SoS should be buffed.
 

[Bristoling]

2 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

[...]

44m range can be achieved only with Overextended, and if you use that, the number of enemies affected by Terrify is pretty limited, meaning you would have to keep recasting an ability that costs 75 energy at base to get every enemy. There is pretty much never a situation where Nekros would need to use it because allies can be revived by Operators which is a lot safer, and if you are in a party the chance that other frames having much stronger and better CC capability is very high. Comparison to Limbo or Nyx doesn't work, because if you do a mission requiring CC, you will pick these frames to do the job, not Nekros. 

Baking the augment in would be a good start but the ability itself still wouldn't be worth the high energy cost especially since it has a limit on how many enemies can be affected. It is too situational and not needed in 99% of gameplay. And 20% armour reduction at base is not a meaningful debuff at all.

If Nekros's job isn't to help out with life support, and isn't to be a Grim Reaper/Summoner (which he currently isn't, be he should be), then his role is being reduced to that of a tankier Smeeta kavat, which is simply sad.

No, I'm not suggesting to put Nekros Shadows on the same level of dps as Saryn or Mesa, that would be ridiculous. But as it stands now, there is simply no reason at all for his Shadows to have even the current pitiful 2.5x damage multiplier since by the time you might want to use Shadows, enemy level/scaling is high enough for them to not be able to kill anything at all anyway. What I would like, is to see my 3-4 215% strength Heavy Gunners in Kuva survival being able to kill at least something past first extractor, and I would like the tools (abilities and their synergies such as an actual debuff/curse) to be able to achieve that. 

It goes the other way as well, even if you summon only a bunch of Butchers, by the time you need to use Shadows the level of enemies will be so high, that these Butchers won't die even to a group of Heavy Gunners. The summon pick priority might be only important to get rid of several Nullifiers which you don't want or the new Fortuna Moas/Bursas that spam their bounce ability and are annoying as hell. I pretty much never have a problem of Shadows dying, no matter the enemy level, because they simply don't die from damage.

I believe SoS should be buffed just as much as you do, but what I'm saying is that just improving the damage redirection from 6% to 7-10% isn't enough to make Nekros anything else then a Smeeta with guns.

Edited January 4, 2019 by Bristoling

[Andele3025]

5 hours ago, Bristoling said:

44m range can be achieved only with Overextended, and if you use that, the number of enemies affected by Terrify is pretty limited, meaning you would have to keep recasting an ability that costs 75 energy at base to get every enemy. There is pretty much never a situation where Nekros would need to use it because allies can be revived by Operators which is a lot safer, and if you are in a party the chance that other frames having much stronger and better CC capability is very high. Comparison to Limbo or Nyx doesn't work, because if you do a mission requiring CC, you will pick these frames to do the job, not Nekros.

44m thing was abount limbo and nyx range, but ty for agreeing that simply not casting or picking is legit if you find it annoying is legit (or if a person cant aim nor melee for S#&$, not using nekros but instead any frame with aoe stun or excal waves).

As far as shadows damage goes, on paper its already at the "1-3 shadows kill level 80-100s in 3-5 seconds" point, but its enemy shadows priority, the fact that they count as objects for bullets yet will aim/try to shoot through eachother and scaling armor that guts their damage output (and for armor there is terrify, even if you have to cast it 4-7 times in a row, depending on if sos or no strength setup, to get a notable enough effect/7-8x damage taken vs level 100 heavies). If players could choose what even goes on the priority list at all via a pre game screen/ui, the lack of damage would mostly be due to bad choices or vs a mission with lots of heavy grineer (a tank priority list would include heavy gunners, bombards, ancients, most moas and summoner units while a damage oriented wouldnt, except for swarm moas and healer ancients, as their aim is worse than that of a blind paraplegic using heavy cal on a prisma grakata would be). Buffing the shadows damage or making terrify have a additional damage boost other than the armor strip is just overkill without fixing the things that actual hinder his core game loop.


As far as Terrify energy cost goes, its already efficient after one counts that nekros is really the one frame who has true synergy and 1 of 2.5 frames that effectively can make use of equilibriums health to energy effect, however as said nothing against the slow being a core part of the skill (which would provide further hidden synergy with his best weapon damage type as it prolongs slash procs just like a cold proc does AND stacks ontop of cold procs for a combined 30~31 ticks when you have the duration and strength).

[(PSN)ForNoPurpose]

On 2019-01-02 at 8:43 AM, LAWD said:

can we have the ability to be reflective of how it's displayed in the Nekros Prime Trailer, whereby the soul gets separated from the target and becomes the projectile.

Right now it has no use, besides ragdolling a bunch. Titania even hs this ability but very different

i once used it on a target in the valis... sent it flying 500m away and i had to use my archwing to catch it.

 

so yeah, it could use a changing imo. it is entertaining tho.

[Bristoling]

8 hours ago, Andele3025 said:

[...]

AI is stupid but fixing it is a lot harder then fixing the numbers, so that even with stupid AI the same effect can be achieved.

I've been playing around in Simulacrum pitting different factions against themselves on a 215% power strength build. Selection of 2 Elite Crewman, 2 Terra Attack Drone, 2 Corpus Tech and 2 Railgun Moa vs same number of opposition finished fighting around 30-40 seconds later, killing roughly 1 target every 4-7 seconds.

Now the problem starts when we pick Grineer to fight against Grineer - once armour scaling comes into play the Shadows can only kill efficiently super lightly armoured targets like Butchers. I could cast Terrify twice which gives me 86% total armour strip + Corrosive Projection which ends up in around 10% armour left or even 3 times to stip all of it, however the problem is the Shadows can't kill anything because their targets run away. I tested 2 Heavy Gunners, 1 Bombard, 2 Elite Lancers, 1 Drahk Master (later swapped to Eviscarator to avoid melee stealth multiplier on paused targets) vs same selection of units, and:

- If I pause the AI and have just CP, my 215% strength Shadows will kill Lancers and Drahk Master/Eviscerator after 15-20 seconds, if and only if Heavy Gunners/Bombard isn't targetted first. If Bombard/Heavy Gunners are targeted, nothing will die.

- If I unpause AI, 1 light unit will die on average in 20 seconds, since Shadows can't focus fire targets that start spreading out.

- If I unpause AI and cast Terrify three times, nothing will die since Shadows can't chase down targets that are running away, no matter if all of the armour is stripped.

- If I pause the AI and cast Terrify three times, Shadows would kill other Grineer around 20-25 seconds in.

 

So in conclusion, maybe the damage itself isn't as bad as I thought previously, however it isn't great by any stretch either since I could easily kill the same targets in under 3 seconds myself instead of waiting for 15+ seconds for Shadows to kill 1 target. You have frames that can make enemies take over 100% more damage or frames that can buff their damage by over 100%, there's frames that can AoE entire tilesets, and some don't even do it with their Ultimate skills. If you compare Nekros kit to other frames he's really weak. Giving a buff to Shadows in any kind is far from making him overpowered.

Sure, fixing their AI, giving players an option to select summon priority is all fine and dandy but it won't turn them into killing machines by any stretch since the numbers just aren't there, especially since in real gameplay Shadows won't be focus firing on enemy, they will be spread out and try to take down whatever is near them. Even 300% more damage to Shadows wouldn't matter much in higher levels of content.

The mechanic of enemies running away from you is the biggest anti-synergy that Nekros has. Slotting in Creeping Terrify isn't a real option since Nekros is very mod starved and I'd have to sacrifice either 50+% power strength (which means weaker Shadows/more Terrify casts) or more crucial pieces like Vitality or Health Conversion/Adaptation for an augment that turns a "bad" skill just a "meh" skill. Having Creeping Terrify be merged into the base skill would be better but still not good enough, since the enemies are still running away, not matter if slowed, so your Shadows still can't aim/chase them down, and even myself I'd rather not cast it since any kill time reduction I could gain from it is offset by having to chase down enemies down corridors and rooms.

Again, if Terrify wasn't a Terrify but a Curse instead, not making enemies run away and maybe with higher base armour reduction or damage increase for Nekros/Shadows, it could be useful, right now you might use Terrify maybe once in 100 hours of playing Nekros, and that's only if you miss with your finger trying to turn on Desecrate at the start of the mission.

And Soul Punch still sucks not being able to kill anything that's even remotely tanky at level 30 or higher.

 

 

I agree with you that on paper their damage might not be too bad, especially on a high strength build. But once you factor AI, aim, crowd control from enemies, armour, the way Shadows spread out, suddenly your Shadows might score 1-4 kills during 30-40 seconds of duration of the ability. Fixing AI, making them immune/resistant to CC, making their aim better or ignore each other when calculating collision/hitboxes sounds like a lot more development time then simply increasing their damage numbers or reworking Terrify as a stronger armour stripping Curse (you only turn off panic proc and increase armour stripping number/add a line of code to increase Shadow damage against affected enemies, simpler then rewriting the AI).

Edited January 4, 2019 by Bristoling

[Andele3025]

3 hours ago, Bristoling said:

I could cast Terrify twice which gives me 86% total armour strip + Corrosive Projection which ends up in around 10% armour left or even 3 times to stip all of it, however the problem is the Shadows can't kill anything because their targets run away.

Terrify takes current armor just like corrosive procs so they'd have 22% armor left which is still insanely stupid DR for any decent levels (e.g. level 80 bombard would still have some 80-81% damage reduction down from 94.8%)

3 hours ago, Bristoling said:

 Having Creeping Terrify be merged into the base skill would be better but still not good enough, since the enemies are still running away, not matter if slowed, so your Shadows still can't aim/chase them down, and even myself I'd rather not cast it since any kill time reduction I could gain from it is offset by having to chase down enemies down corridors and rooms.

Again, if Terrify wasn't a Terrify but a Curse instead, not making enemies run away and maybe with higher base armour reduction or damage increase for Nekros/Shadows, it could be useful, right now you might use Terrify maybe once in 100 hours of playing Nekros, and that's only if you miss with your finger trying to turn on Desecrate at the start of the mission.

 simpler then rewriting the AI).

60% base slow is massive (hell he can beat Slowva in the slowing part itself as its capped at 80% instead of Novas 75% and again enemies that actually arent dense can kill targets that run away even without it, be it corpus techs or scorches), personally i use terrify a decent amount the second enemies stop dying to 2-3 hits from galatine and most notable of all, no need to write new ai, just reusing the non-unique arena aggro enemies (or nox) while removing the innate NPC accuracy penalty from shadows would be enough if one couldnt get a "Technocyte lab" or whatever a shadows equivalent to Tavi Mandachord would be.

Edited January 4, 2019 by Andele3025

[Bristoling]

Quote

Terrify takes current armor just like corrosive procs so they'd have 22% armor left which is still insanely stupid DR for any decent levels (e.g. level 80 bombard would still have some 80-81% damage reduction down from 94.8%)

That's... very unfortunate and disappointing. It makes it even worse of a debuff, I thought that the armour reduction applies to base armour, not current one. Terrify doesn't have the best cast time and spamming it doesn't seem worth it in my opinion.

I'll be honest I didn't know that it does cap at 80%, not 60%, that's a lot better then I previously thought. I guess I could stop *@##$ing about Terrify if the augment was an integral part of the skill. I still don't think it is worth casting during normal gameplay, I'm definitely not going to run a 3 augment build, since I'd have to sacrifice either power strength, duration or range, all of which are equally important. Dropping Despoil/SoS to fit CT in is too much of a tradeoff, same as dropping Vitality, Health Conversion, Equilibrium or power strength mods. There's just too many more important mods and could be the crux of the problem with Nekros.

[(XBOX)SirMilkfiend]

I'd like soul punch just to use energy colour.

[(PSN)ForNoPurpose]

On 2019-01-02 at 10:59 AM, Dabnician said:

FTFY, If they do anything with soul punch they need to rework it, like make it do true damage no mater the level of the enemy. Honestly i only use it in super rare occasions.

Ooh i like what just came to mind

Using soul punch spawns a projectile that does damage equal to a % of the inital targets hpshield. Give it punchthrough etc.

 

Punch the first giy in a hallway and hurt the entire row.

[Andele3025]

1 hour ago, (PS4)ForNoPurpose said:

Ooh i like what just came to mind

Using soul punch spawns a projectile that does damage equal to a % of the inital targets hpshield. Give it punchthrough etc.

 

Punch the first giy in a hallway and hurt the entire row.

Soul punch already spawns a projectile on hit behind the target that has punchthrough, its just that its spawn angle is insanely fiddly.

% true damage to target with same damage value going to the soul damage would be ok but since SP is at its most efficient when used as space program/from higher elevation, even if its just % to main target with the soul keeping its the 50 on hit 100 on wall collision would be fine.

Edited January 6, 2019 by Andele3025