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Alternate Nekros - Shadow Monarch


Klaleara
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(Art is from Solo Leveling)

Anyways, I've always wanted a more offensive pet Nekros.  And I just like thinking about the possibilities.  People love the current Nekros, so why not come up with an Alternative brother to the Nekros?  The Shadow Monarch.

(Unchanged, its very fitting for a Necro)  Trait:  A master of death, NekrosIcon272 Nekros regenerates 5 points of Health any time an enemy dies within 10 meters of him. His passive also can heal Companions.

Exalted Pet:  Death Knight - The Shadow Monarch will always have his bodyguard with him.  A large shadowy Knight will be by your side, always protecting you.  Mostly melee focused, but will have a secondary ranged attack if it is required.  The Death Knight will accept melee mods.  

Spoiler

Related image

The Death Knight is a powerful entity within the Shadow Monarch's entity.  If the Shadow Monarch is Death incarnate, than the Death Knight is the scythe.  The Death Knight moves throughout the battlefield with his giant claymore, cleaving any enemies that dare even look at his liege with hostile eyes.

The purpose of the Death Knight is to provide the Shadow Monarch some sort of protection, even if the Shadows of the Dead ability isn't in use.  Giving the Shadow Monarch some room to gather the souls of the damned, and raise them as Shadows in his service.  He will also be integral for the first ability, and has synergy with all of the other abilities. 

The Death Knight will also use melee mods, which will enhance him, and provide him with better scaling for higher end combat.  A portion of the mods affects will also be granted to Shadows of the Dead, allowing even the Shadows to be customized for each mission.

Ability One:  Strike from the Shadows - This ability will have your Death Knight move through the shadows, and appear at your target, performing a cleaving attack.  This ability has three purposes.  Can also change the Death Knights stance by holding this down.

Spoiler

Image result for black smoke stealth art

(I couldn't find better art, makes me sad, but you get the idea)

The Corpus Crewman looks up from his work for a second, just as the shadows seem to part.  Suddenly large metal boots grind against the ground, and a hulking figure somehow walks right out of the shadows as if it was just a hallway.  The Corpus Crewman's eyes bulge, and right as he considers alerting the comms, there is a glint of steel, and then darkness.

Strike from the Shadows is essentially a teleport for your Death Knight.  He will move through the shadows, and appear next to the target you have chosen.  Once the teleport is done, the Death Knight will immediately go into a large cleaving attack empowered by the mods of this ability.  This mod is meant to give the Shadow Monarch a direct damage ability, along with being able to position the Death Knight on any enemy you deem an immediate threat.

If you use this ability on one of your Shadows, the Death Knight will devour the shadow, instantly killing it (No matter any augment), and give the Death Knight a damage boost.  This is to make it so you can kill a Shadow if you'd like, or boost the Death Knight if needed.

Also, because you will always have the Death Knight, holding down this ability will change his stance instead of teleporting him.  As sometimes you don't want your Death Knight to attack.

Augment:  Ambush from the Shadows - This ability will now teleport your entire Shadows army with your Death Knight.  They will not do a cleaving attack however.  Depending on balance, may provide your Shadows a short damage buff though.

Ability Two:  Desecrate - Using this ability will cause all of the corpses within the abilities range to explode.  It will also cause orbs and ammo to spawn

Spoiler

Image result for corpse explosion art

(hehe)

As the Grineer squad marches over their fallen comrades, they grunt in frustration, ready to fire upon the Warframe scum.  The leader halts the squad, noticing the shadowy Warframe in the distance.  Looking closely at the Warframe that is just standing there, he notices a giant grin on the Warframes face.  The grin sets off all kinds of instinct alarms within the Grineers head.  The Warframe lifts one hand up, with some smokey miasma trailing the movements.  The only thing the grineers see next, are explosions and blood, then darkness.

Desecrate has been changed from just farming, to corpse explosion.  It still provides orbs and ammo, but no longer provides loot as a trade off.  The ability is normally a trigger that uses energy.  However, if you hold it down, it will become a toggle that uses health instead, exploding corpses at a rate similar to the current Desecrate.

Augment:  Despoil - The ability now drops loot again.  Should quiet the people who are obsessed with farming, and for farming, you have to use the augment anyways.

Ability Three:  Shadows of the Dead -  Create up to 7 Shadow clones of the last enemies you've killed.  Preferably with a system that allows you to pick priorities of enemies to use.  Also, they will inherit a % of the mods that the Death Knight uses.

Spoiler

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The Shadow Monarch raises his hands high in the air, as a black miasma falls out of his hands like a waterfall of death.  The Infested, only living off of instinct, feel "danger" spread throughout their entire body.  They pause for a moment in confusion as this alarming body overcomes their entire body.  Then shock overtakes the "danger", as the screams of the damned fill the air, and hands made of smokey shadow reach out of the ground, and the deceased Infested rise again, to meet their old brethren in combat.

Create up to 7 shadows from previously dead enemies.  This ability also comes with a menu to prioritize which enemies to use, or store enemies for re-use throughout that mission.  Only some of the slots would be used for storing, and can only have one of each enemy stored.  The huge difference between Shadow Monarch, and Nekros, a % of your Exalted Pet's mods are also transferred to your Shadows.  This will help them scale into higher tier easier, as currently, they are only meatbags and nothing more in gameplay. 

This will give the Shadow Monarch more customization for each mission, allowing them to tailor themselves a bit more.  And to help support the team with various status affects.

Unsure about how the Shadows AI should work.  Should it try to take cover or not?  I love seeing my pets take cover and stuff, but should the Shadows really care?

Augment:  Eternal Shadow of the Monarch - When a Shadow would take fatal damage, it instead drains some energy, and returns to full health.

Ability Four:  Land of the Monarch - Create a large ground based zone that buffs your Shadows, and Death Knight with Speed, Cold Damage, and Life Steal.

Spoiler

Image result for spreading fog

(Fog would change to energy color)

Shadows spread across the floor like a heavy fog, giving anyone who touches it a glimpse of death itself.  As the swirling mists surround the minions of shadow, they are filled with the energy of the dead.  An eerie and distant roar comes from the shadows, as they begin to march towards with a deadlier look in their eyes.

Create a large ground based zone, and cover it in eerie shadows.  All shadows (Including Death Knight) within the zone are buffed with both move speed, cold damage, and life steal (Will prolong the Shadows lifespan).  That is the main purpose, but it would be interesting to also see enemies that die within the zone have a chance to automatically come back as an extra temporary shadow (They will instantly die if they leave the area). 

Augment:  Bone Yard - Will randomly stab enemies with spikes, draining their life, and providing all allies within the Land of the Monarch area health.  (Think of Garuda's ability)

PS:  I know this won't happen, I'm just in dreamland.  I would like to know of any better synergies though

Edited by Klaleara
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That's not Nekros, it's a new Warframe. A rework this drastic will never happen because it's more profitable to invest the time and resources into an entirely new character that can make DE more money. And besides, Nekros' theme is death/undead. Not shadows per se

Edited by (PS4)LoisGordils
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39 minutes ago, (PS4)LoisGordils said:

That's not Nekros, it's a new Warframe. A rework this drastic will never happen because it's more profitable to invest the time and resources into an entirely new character that can make DE more money. And besides, Nekros' theme is death/undead. Not shadows per se

I didn't say it was Nekros, I said it was an alternate one.  Close, but not the same lol.  Also, I said it was a pointless dream, I definitely do not expect this to come out.

Also, the ability literally creates Shadows on the current Nekros, sooooooo....

Edited by Klaleara
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On one hand, I too would very much like Nekros to become a more interesting minion-mancer (or just a necromancer, really), as his Shadows are among the coolest-looking part of his kit, yet also one of the most inconsequential outside of Shield of Shadows. On the flipside, I feel this particular proposal goes about it in a way I'd consider redundant: Nekros already has an army of the dead, thus adding one extra Death Knight to the mix, let alone having an ability exclusive to that Death Knight, I feel mostly does more of the same, instead of fleshing out his current pet-based gameplay.

Just a quick example of how one could go about it differently:

  • Passive - Soul Siphon: Nekros and his Shadows heal when they take down an enemy.
  • 1 - Soul Rip: Nekros rips the soul from the target enemy, stunning the victim as their soul tries to rejoin them. Killing the target before their soul rejoins them dismembers their corpse, and turns the soul into a Shadow that fights by Nekros's side.
  • 2 - Terrify: Nekros causes nearby enemies to cower in fear, reducing their armor.
  • 3 - Desecrate: Nekros causes all corpses, body parts and Shadows in the target area to explode, dealing Viral damage with 100% status chance to nearby enemies, based on the exploded target's maximum health.
  • 4 - Shadows of the Dead: When tapped, Nekros commands his Shadows to focus the target enemy or move to the target area. When held, Nekros channels to summon Shadows from the enemies he's taken down.

The general idea being that the kit would focus on generating Shadows and then doing interesting things with them (e.g. controlling them, sacrificing them to raise more, etc), in exchange for a lack of direct damage, which would befit a pet frame.

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On 2019-06-29 at 6:40 AM, Teridax68 said:

On one hand, I too would very much like Nekros to become a more interesting minion-mancer (or just a necromancer, really), as his Shadows are among the coolest-looking part of his kit, yet also one of the most inconsequential outside of Shield of Shadows. On the flipside, I feel this particular proposal goes about it in a way I'd consider redundant: Nekros already has an army of the dead, thus adding one extra Death Knight to the mix, let alone having an ability exclusive to that Death Knight, I feel mostly does more of the same, instead of fleshing out his current pet-based gameplay.

Just a quick example of how one could go about it differently:

  • Passive - Soul Siphon: Nekros and his Shadows heal when they take down an enemy.
  • 1 - Soul Rip: Nekros rips the soul from the target enemy, stunning the victim as their soul tries to rejoin them. Killing the target before their soul rejoins them dismembers their corpse, and turns the soul into a Shadow that fights by Nekros's side.
  • 2 - Terrify: Nekros causes nearby enemies to cower in fear, reducing their armor.
  • 3 - Desecrate: Nekros causes all corpses, body parts and Shadows in the target area to explode, dealing Viral damage with 100% status chance to nearby enemies, based on the exploded target's maximum health.
  • 4 - Shadows of the Dead: When tapped, Nekros commands his Shadows to focus the target enemy or move to the target area. When held, Nekros channels to summon Shadows from the enemies he's taken down.

The general idea being that the kit would focus on generating Shadows and then doing interesting things with them (e.g. controlling them, sacrificing them to raise more, etc), in exchange for a lack of direct damage, which would befit a pet frame.

The passive you mentioned is exactly what it currently does heh.  You just have to be within 10 meters or whatever is dying.

Also, the entire point of the Death Knight, was to share his mods with the other Shadows.  And the fact that it would be cool, but 80% of his purpose is to make it so the shadows scale better with difficulty (Their lack of mods makes them entirely useless once you reach any kind of difficulty).

Terrify is meh imo, in both versions.  I just don't like it, I feel like there are far better alternatives, that is more Necromancer like.  Buffing his shadows, causing temporary shadows, bone spikes, whatever.  Even though Terrify is clearly useful, to me its just...so boring.  Personal opinion of course.

Your desecrate is amazing however.  I still wish it dropped orbs, cause that adds a really cool unique support to Nekros.  But having it have a corpse explosion isn't something I've thought of, and I'm pretty disappointed in myself for not thinking of that.  I might change it to do so in my description.

Your target moves, I'm really on the fence.  Like its REALLY good actually.  It all depends on the Necromancer, there are two kinds.  The fire and forget, and let your expendable minions do their deed until they die?  Or the strategic necromancer with ultra obedient undead that move in sync (Warhammer Necromancers).  While I love the strategic ones, I feel like these might be better as expendable fire and forget kind?  I'm torn.  One of the reasons why I had the Death Knight too, to give you one to actually bond to, and have control over.

Edited by Klaleara
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5 hours ago, Klaleara said:

The passive you mentioned is exactly what it currently does heh.  You just have to be within 10 meters or whatever is dying.

I'm well aware; I think it's a perfectly okay passive and don't think it especially needs to change.

5 hours ago, Klaleara said:

Also, the entire point of the Death Knight, was to share his mods with the other Shadows.  And the fact that it would be cool, but 80% of his purpose is to make it so the shadows scale better with difficulty (Their lack of mods makes them entirely useless once you reach any kind of difficulty).

I think if you want Shadows to scale better, just increase their damage multiplier so that it becomes more relevant: the reason why Shadows fall off is simply because enemy health scales far harder than enemy damage, causing any enemy-based damage to plink off of each other. Wukong's new Defy and Amalgam Javlok Magazine Warp both acknowledge this by having a much larger multiplier, and the same should be applied to Shadows.

5 hours ago, Klaleara said:

Terrify is meh imo, in both versions.  I just don't like it, I feel like there are far better alternatives, that is more Necromancer like.  Buffing his shadows, causing temporary shadows, bone spikes, whatever.  Even though Terrify is clearly useful, to me its just...so boring.  Personal opinion of course.

To some extent I can agree, because Terrify in its current state doesn't do much, but I do think that the ability would indeed befit a necromancer, or some other mage-like character versed in dark arts. To me, I think it'd help if enemy behavior during Terrify were changed (i.e. if it caused feared enemies to run towards non-feared enemies or nearby cover), but on top of that I'd like to the ability to let Nekros terrify one extra individual enemies off of range, and thus be able to use the ability more surgically to peel certain more distant enemies away from allies or himself.

5 hours ago, Klaleara said:

Your desecrate is amazing however.  I still wish it dropped orbs, cause that adds a really cool unique support to Nekros.  But having it have a corpse explosion isn't something I've thought of, and I'm pretty disappointed in myself for not thinking of that.  I might change it to do so in my description.

Thank you! I think one could still have the best of both worlds with the Despoil augment: if, instead of changing the cost to health, the ability caused the explosions to drop health orbs upon killing enemies, you'd get back to a Nekros that'd be able to heal his team via corpses, without devolving into a loot frame either.

5 hours ago, Klaleara said:

Your target moves, I'm really on the fence.  Like its REALLY good actually.  It all depends on the Necromancer, there are two kinds.  The fire and forget, and let your expendable minions do their deed until they die?  Or the strategic necromancer with ultra obedient undead that move in sync (Warhammer Necromancers).  While I love the strategic ones, I feel like these might be better as expendable fire and forget kind?  I'm torn.  One of the reasons why I had the Death Knight too, to give you one to actually bond to, and have control over.

I think one can have both: to me, Nekros's minions are expendable, but in general, every frame who can control minions should be able to have some button on their kit that lets them direct their pets. From a broader perspective, I think the pet frame with a single, powerful companion should be Khora, and her own kit should do more to emphasize her bond with Venari, whereas Nekros should be the one to command an undead horde and generate an endless tide of death.

With the above, you could have another iteration to what I suggested, which could also incorporate the idea of a single, much more powerful pet:

  • Passive - Shadows of the Dead: Nekros summons a Shadow from enemies he takes down which fight by his side, up to a cap. These Shadows have increased health, shields, and damage, have perfect accuracy, do not take defensive actions, and lose health over time.
  • 1 - Soul Rip: When tapped, Nekros commands his Shadows to focus the target enemy or move to the target area. When held, Nekros rips the soul from the target enemy, stunning the victim as their soul tries to rejoin them. Killing the target before their soul rejoins them dismembers their corpse, and turns the soul into a Shadow that fights by Nekros's side.
    • Augment - Soul Survivor: When cast on a downed ally, Nekros consumes all of his Energy to revive them at full health and shields, while also summoning a Shadow of the ally that ignores the unit cap.
  • 2 - Terrify: Nekros causes nearby enemies and the target enemy to cower in fear, reducing their armor.
    • Augment - Creeping Terrify: Unchanged.
  • 3 - Desecrate: Nekros causes all corpses, body parts and Shadows in the target area to explode, dealing Viral damage with 100% status chance to nearby enemies, based on the exploded target's maximum health.
    • Augment - Despoil: Enemies killed by the explosions have a chance to drop health orbs, Energy orbs, and ammunition.
  • 4 - Necrotic Frenzy: When held, Nekros consumes his own health, and on release, he empowers his Shadows, giving them massively increased attack and movement speed, for a duration based on the health consumed.
    • Augment - Necrotic Shield: For the empowerment's duration, Nekros redirects a portion of all damage he takes to his Shadows.

With this, you could have all of the different fantasies that were discussed for Nekros:

  • The necromancer frame with a horde of disposable undead minions.
  • The more meticulous, Warhammer-style necromancer who controls and directs powerful minions in various ways.
  • The tanky utility frame who fuels himself and his team with resources.
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On 2019-07-01 at 9:23 AM, Teridax68 said:

Passive - Shadows of the Dead: Nekros summons a Shadow from enemies he takes down which fight by his side, up to a cap. These Shadows have increased health, shields, and damage, have perfect accuracy, do not take defensive actions, and lose health over time.

  • 1 - Soul Rip: When tapped, Nekros commands his Shadows to focus the target enemy or move to the target area. When held, Nekros rips the soul from the target enemy, stunning the victim as their soul tries to rejoin them. Killing the target before their soul rejoins them dismembers their corpse, and turns the soul into a Shadow that fights by Nekros's side.
    • Augment - Soul Survivor: When cast on a downed ally, Nekros consumes all of his Energy to revive them at full health and shields, while also summoning a Shadow of the ally that ignores the unit cap.
  • 2 - Terrify: Nekros causes nearby enemies and the target enemy to cower in fear, reducing their armor.
    • Augment - Creeping Terrify: Unchanged.
  • 3 - Desecrate: Nekros causes all corpses, body parts and Shadows in the target area to explode, dealing Viral damage with 100% status chance to nearby enemies, based on the exploded target's maximum health.
    • Augment - Despoil: Enemies killed by the explosions have a chance to drop health orbs, Energy orbs, and ammunition.
  • 4 - Necrotic Frenzy: When held, Nekros consumes his own health, and on release, he empowers his Shadows, giving them massively increased attack and movement speed, for a duration based on the health consumed.
    • Augment - Necrotic Shield: For the empowerment's duration, Nekros redirects a portion of all damage he takes to his Shadows.

I can fully get behind that Desecrate + Augment.

Necrotic Frenzy sounds pretty solid.  I would have liked something more fun with it, other than just a buff and thats it, but I can't think of anything.  So whatever heh.

Also, just increasing their damage won't work.  Because if you increase their damage multiplier to compete in high level missions, you will make Shadows hilariously OP for lower-mid level content.  As they just walk around and kill everything, and while I know a few frames already do that, I hate that.  

The point of sharing mods, over just increasing damage, is for status effects.  If you can corrode armor (Which is the biggest issue in high level dungeons), you can make your Shadows quite useful in high level missions, while still being on par with most frames on low-mid missions, as status has less of an impact.

Its basically a balancing game.  Plus, being able to change your mods around on your Shadows to be more useful on specific high end missions, will make Nekros FAR more versatile.

-----------

Anyways, as for summoning Shadows, I kinda like standing there and summoning a bunch at once.  Its a cool power fantasy, and I wouldn't want to take that away.  Summoning non-cap Shadows from other means I'm all about still.

Edited by Klaleara
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1 minute ago, Klaleara said:

IAlso, just increasing their damage won't work.  Because if you increase their damage multiplier to compete in high level missions, you will make Shadows hilariously OP for lower-mid level content.  As they just walk around and kill everything, and while I know a few frames already do that, I hate that.  

To be fair, all frames are hilariously OP at low levels, but if you want to avoid Nekros just walking over everyone with his ultra-high damage undead army, then you could have a more complex formula to the base damage multiplier, e.g. "multiplied by 1 per 10 enemy levels (total increased by Power Strength)". That way, you could have the best of both worlds.

1 minute ago, Klaleara said:

The point of sharing mods, over just increasing damage, is for status effects.  If you can corrode armor (Which is the biggest issue in high level dungeons), you can make your Shadows quite useful in high level missions, while still being on par with most frames on low-mid missions, as status has less of an impact.

This suggestion in itself would make for some serious abuse of status effects, when Corrosive and Viral status especially are already really overpowered when they can just be applied normally via weapons. In general, I'd steer clear of having frames depend too much on status procs as part of their power, as not only does that make for a fairly non-unique contribution, it also subjects the frame's balance to the balance of those procs, and status as a system in general. In this particular case, having Nekros multiply status procs via his Shadows runs the risk of turning him from the game's farm frame to yet another Corrosive+Viral frame at a time when Saryn already exists, without really digging too much still into his necromancer theme.

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On 2019-07-03 at 8:39 PM, vakary829 said:

I gotta admit, I do really like the sound of this, it's unlikely anything of the like will be put in for Nekros but damn, it's quite a good idea! The Exalted ally would be a great fit for Nekros! 

Thanks, oddly enough I agree!

PS.  Edited the initial post, made it very TLDR like, with spoiler tags for more specific info.  Also changed up Desecrate to include some corpse explosion goodness. 

Edited by Klaleara
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