Necramechs - Bug or Flawed Design?

[Wahuu]

Alright, I'm gonna be honest, I'm totally mad. Like, very very mad. But first, let's run down what's supposed to happen, as you do with any possible bug. Get Isolation Vault bounty, collect residue for bait, defend bait station, kill marked infested, fight Necramech.

Let's pause there. How I assume the Necramech fight is supposed to go is that you defend when it's invulnerable, the invulnerability wears off, you avoid its grenades and mines while taking out its arms, you hit the back weakspot, it dies, hurrah. That is not, however, what has happened the past 15-20 times I've fought the damn thing.

Every time I've fought the Necramech, it has remained in a practically constant state of invulnerability. It has only had split-seconds of vulnerability, generally 8-10 minutes apart. I understand that the damage reflection and invulnerability is part of the intended flow, to keep you from brute-forcing the thing, but the inability to do any damage to it for this length of time it is beyond frustrating. I've been unable to complete a single vault due to this issue, and I'm beginning to feel stupid with how easy it seems for other people.

And yes, I do understand that there are cheese strategies - but I'd like to know what the intended fight is like. With the warframes and weapons that I usually use. 

So, please, is this a rare bug? Is this just a poorly designed fight? I'm losing motivation to play this game over it, and I don't want to. I want to think something's wrong or that I've made an oversight.

[AndouRaiton]

1. you can get rid of the invulnerability by void blasting it or void dashing through it: note that dashing through it will immediately switch you back to your warframe and turn off all buffs/abilities it had active beforehand so be careful.

2. shoot it's back, it is always vulnerable. The issue is getting behind the thing as it can turn on a dime. Either use a frame that can manipulate it's attention like octavia, loki or ivara or hope that the infested can last long enough to distract it whilst you shoot it.

3. the fight is meant for a team and designed for a team. Which is why it feels really bad to do solo, so try to avoid soloing it and just join in a random group. Should be easy enough to do as there are many people doing them, not just for mech parts but because the Iso vaults have LOTS of resources in them so people will be farming them for a while to come.

[IamLoco]

I can only give you my opinion from what I observed and my thought about it.

The necramech shield ability costs energy, easily observable from your own mech or the broken mechs/vault mechs you can find, If the energy is depleted, he can´t shield himself.

If you start a fight against the mech with massive damage, rip off his arms in seconds, he will go into shield mode and stay shielded until his energy is depleted.

That´s why "cheese tactics" work in this fight so well which provoke him to use his damage abilities constantly.

A good way that worked for me was to start the fight with getting close to the mech, taunting him to use his rockets and AoE attacks, then opening fire and ripping his arms off. This way he can´t shield himself permanently or not even at all.

[Wahuu]

I can't be sure, but I highly doubt they follow the same rules as players. Considering the length of time I fought them for, and the fact that at no time did they really stop using abilities, it just seems unlikely.

[Wahuu]

Ah, okay. Well it kinda sucks that playing it solo sucks ass, but I'm glad there I things I missed. Would be nice if it was properly explained somewhere though.

[iiGamma]

12 hours ago, Wahuu said:

Ah, okay. Well it kinda sucks that playing it solo sucks ass, but I'm glad there I things I missed. Would be nice if it was properly explained somewhere though.

This is Warframe m8. Nothing is explained clearly in game. ever. this is why the wiki, and their content creation program exist. 

[(PSN)AbBaNdOn_]

The vaults not being explained is just really really bad.    Even if you cant put your explanations in-game the devs could very easily make videos and post them along with the patch notes.  Or have their partners make the videos and post the video's in the patch notes.

[SargionMagara]

While this question is already answered, i would like to add some info and strategy that i use and isn't mentioned here as i solo Isolation Vaults too, just in case if you don't want to do it with a pub squad no matter what.

Surely you're familiar with the fact that you need to rip off it's arms, and it's weak point being located on it's back. The thing is, Necramechs don't magically regenerate their arms out of nowhere after it's ripped offー They actually go back to where it fell off, and put it back on.

With this in mind, after you ripped both of it's arms, Necramechs are forced to literally charge at you and spam Gravemines mindlessly. You can lure it to a place far away from where it's arm fell off, and then stall him there, while of course evading it's attacks. Eventually, it will start to ignore you and try to go back to retrieve it's arms, resulting in the Necramech exposing it's back to you for quite the generous duration of time. Usually i can finish it in that duration, but should i fail i can do this "Rip the arm and lure him away" strategy again. Also if you're already used to it's movements, when it charges at you, you can just evade by rolling sideways, quickly look back, and you can actually fit one or maybe two shots to it's back (I use Sybaris personally).

 

And then, turns out Hydroid's tentacles can damage Necramechs, i cleared a tier 2 Isolation Vault mindlessly just by spamming the tentacles at the Necramechs and try to keep it there.

 

Hope this helps.

[--K--Sharkfin]

I guess this is a good place to share some more insights and tips from what I have learnt and tested.

1. Void blasting and dashing is not meant to rip off their invulnerability. The shield works like rhino's iron skin, which has a charging phase right after the cast. During the charge phase, all damage taken would be used to buff the invisible HP of their shield.

Assuming the shield has similar formula of rhino's iron skin:
Shield HP = (Base Health + (Armor Multiplier × Base Armor)) + Absorbed Damage

If you don't charge it up, it should only have around 1k HP, so a simple void blast is enough to break it. However, if you dealt a large amount of damage during the charging phase, the shield would have enormous HP.  The phase should only last 3 seconds at most. So if they cast the shield, don't attack for a few seconds, then break it with melee or void blast/dash. The shield doesn't reflect melee/contagion damage.

2. Excessive damage dealt on arms passes onto the main HP of nercamech, so a high damage sniper / gunblade is recommended with the possibility to one-shot them.