Ideas for a Nekros Rework

[TheMostFrench]

Read about Nekros abilities in detail here https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Nekros#Abilities_

I see most people talk about Nekros as 'the loot frame' but I think some changes could make him more diverse, and get some more use from his other abilities.

My hope is to see him become genuinely more 'Horrifying' like he is in the Nekros Prime trailer, as opposed to now where he kind of just dashes between groups of dead enemies to convert them into more loot, like a scary easter bunny hopping all over the place, filling everyone's baskets with junk.

My perception of Nekros is an evil Warframe who toys with the living and uses the dead like puppets. He enjoys making enemies suffer, and rewards himself for it. I want to see his abilities be more focused on the psychological breakdown of his enemies using Terrify, combined with some more horrible violence and necromancy with changes to Soul Punch and Shadows of the Dead.

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Soul Punch:

Currently knocks back enemies with a ragdoll effect, enemies who survive are 'marked' for 3 seconds and become Shadows of the Dead if killed. Tap to knockdown a target and it will bowl over everything in its path. The 'Soul Survivour' augment lets us use all of our energy to bring a downed ally back to life instantly. These are nice ideas, but does anyone use this ability? I don't ever use it myself. It can apparently one hit kill enemies at 25% health or less.

Right now a person needs to get on just the right angle to knock down multiple enemies with the push. Having lots of power strength seems to throw an enemy into the air instead of knocking them straight back, and that means an enemy isn't a useful projectile, they just kind of fly away randomly.

The changes:

• A new ability called Soul Grip - Instead of a punch / push effect, Nekros can pull a single enemy to him from a medium distance (increased by power range%) and hold them in front of him. If they are the same size as he is, i.e human sized/shaped, he grabs them by face the face or throat. They drop their weapon and struggle against his grip. Larger enemies like ancients, bombards, heavy gunners are held out a short distance away and take ineffective swings at Nekros. Holding an enemy slowly drains energy (if energy runs out he releases the enemy).
  
  Doesn't work on bosses and mini bosses, or ability resistant enemies.
   
  Spoiler

  

   

• While Nekros holds them they act as a bullet shield absorbing a percentage of damage based on power strength% and absorb damage in an increasing radius in front of him based on power range%. Nekros can use some ranged weapons when holding an enemy, hopefully including shotguns like the Tigris Prime from the Nekros Prime trailer (hopefully with a special one handed reload animation).
   
• Nekros can also do melee attacks to the enemy he is holding with a chance to decapitate them e.g stabbing/cutting (maybe attacks are done using the parazon so that there is no animation issue with very large weapons - but the damage comes from the equipped melee weapon if there is one). Your Soul Grip target becomes a more valuable source for desecration.
   
• Hold the ability button again to charge it up and throw the enemy in the direction you are aiming. It still has all the effects of Soul Punch now (knocks other enemies over and marks them to become shadows). If the enemy Nekros is holding dies from being shot or stabbed, he can still throw the corpse. Soul Grip is now a single target CC ability with defensive capability. Run towards groups of enemies confidently with your meat shield.
   
• For fun, if Nekros is standing on the ground and aims at his feet, he slams the enemy into the floor face first.
   
• 'Soul Survivor' augment - Nekros grabs a downed player and revives them to where he is standing with 30% hp. That player's corpse is summoned as a Shadow of the Dead at the spot where they died.

 

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Terrify:

Enemies run away in fear, and lose a portion of their armour, affected by power strength%. The 'Creeping Terrify' augment makes them run away more slowly, but not really worth a slot IMO. Terrify is very chaotic, enemies run around and it feels like a panic button for when things are going wrong.

The Changes: 

• Enemies very close to Nekros when he casts Terrify are too scared to move or fight, with ranged enemies dropping their guns. This is called the 'frozen in terror' range (referred to as 'FIT' range from now on). Default FIT range without mods is 5m from Nekros, maxing out at 15m with mods (15m is the default range for terrify at 100% power range right now).
  Enemies outside of 15m will run away like normal.
   
• 'Creeping Terrify' augment becomes 'Feign Trust' - This augment causes terrified enemies (excluding those who are FIT) to slowly move towards Nekros instead of away. He takes advantage of their traumatised state making them think 'Don't worry, I won't really hurt you'.

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Desecrate:

This ability is fine in my opinion, and even better with Nekros' passive and the despoil augment to use health instead of energy. Bring Nekros on a survival mission and you may never need to use a pod because he spawns enough life support to keep things above 90% for most of the mission. It stops being useful in boss fights and missions where there aren't trash enemies to kill, though.

Some people have argued that Desecrate should become his new passive, and the third ability should be something new entirely. I have no suggestions for what that could be, I was thinking of something involving bleed procs, and being covered in blood, but we already have a blood themed frame.

A Change:

Enemies have a slightly increased chance of dropping loot if they are frozen in terror when they die (read terrify changes if you didn't).

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Shadows of the Dead: 
Two things I dislike about this ability:
1) The shadows have health decay that you can't see without looking at their health bars, so their duration is never really certain. They might be wiped out immediately or last for ages depending on your mods, enemy damage, and how often you recast.

2) You can't kill them prematurely, you have to let them degenerate or be killed. It's not usually a problem but maybe there are some enemies you would rather replace them with immediately? Maybe someone in your group or something in your build is keeping them alive? You just can't do it.

The Changes:
 

• Can hold ability cast to expel any existing Shadows. Expelling them makes them explode with a chance to cause bleed damage based on remaining health (e.g 100% health means 100% chance to proc).
   
• Let us use Soul Grip to pick up our Shadows of the Dead to be thrown at enemies and used as bullet shields. They are minions of Nekros - he is not merciful towards them.
   
• Just a personal thing - Change the ability icon to display a percentage instead of the number of shadows still alive. This way you have a better idea of the overall health of your Shadows army. Any time that number is below 100% is a good time to re-cast Shadows of the Dead, because your army is not at full strength (if you use the 'Shield of the Dead' augment you can also think 'My shield is not at full strength'). The percentage represents the total health of all living Shadows, it will slowly tick down as they decay outside of combat, and that has the advantage of making the rate of decay really obvious.
   
• A new augment "Death's Gambit". Instead of reviving dead enemies, Nekros spends a revive to summon a Shadow of himself which doesn't decay, and doesn't die unless the player does. It has increased damage and health based on player mods. If the player only has one revive left then they go back to summoning regular Shadows of the Dead. Starting out means you could use it twice, 4 revives - 2 = 2, then 2 - 2 = 0. If you die after the second cast then it's game over.
  
  Maybe a certain amount of Soul Grips will allow you to regain a revive - just one more reason to use the other abilities, which is something the Nekros needs.
  
  You could still get extra Shadows of the Dead from Soul Grip by reviving friendly players with Soul Survivor or using it on enemies.
   

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Edited February 27, 2021 by TheMostFrench

[TheMostFrench]

Bump for discussion and I edited a bunch of things. These threads are always a bit weird especially now that the helminth system exists - it's kind of hard to go changing anything now that people have invested lots  of time and effort into creating so many varied builds, I get the feeling that we might not see many older frames get revisited too much, but it's still fun to talk about in my opinion.

Edited February 27, 2021 by TheMostFrench

[Andele3025]

Alternatively:

Passive gives 0.5% lifesteal to self and same amount divided across allies in Desecrate or vs feared enemies

Soul Punch just deals % max hp true damage (and tips notes explain knockback/knockdown depends on proximity and elevation) instead of anti-synergy trashxecute

Terrify slows default to not annoy allies and has a resistance reduction as augment

Desecrate initial cast cost removed (its 10 energy cost to activate is the only actual hard downside energy version for farm has compared to despoil)

Shadows have UI in arsenal letting you select priority and AI type for all units (since it already has a priority table in game, just not one players can tweak)
OR replaced with exalted GIANT SCYTHE that just has a defensive (damage/lifesteal building halo/iron skin like technocyte ward that decays) and a minion augment (killed enemies raise as current shadows, but uncapped)

Edited July 13, 2023 by Andele3025