Shadows of the Dead rework

[(PSN)Siriothrax]

Ok. So anyone who plays nekros in any meaningful way knows that this ability is one of the worst in the game. Sure - with the augment, you can increase your survivability. But thats kinda it, and it ends up costing you a RIDICULOUS amount of energy. I feel they need to adjust this ability. 
 

Step 1.

adjust the energy economy of this ability. Make the base cost of this ability be 30 energy plus 10 energy per summon you are ACTIVELY calling up. That would put your upfront cost for this ability when getting max shadows at the standard 100 energy while allowing nekros to use his SotD to refresh their health for 30 energy. Given how quickly their health decays, this is a MUCH needed change that would put his energy economy in a reasonably healthy place ASSUMING you DO NOT increase the decay. 
 

Step 2. 

A classic necro ability is to make bodies go boom. And something nekros needs is both a way to deal more damage on demand with his abilities, and a way to end his SotD early to resummon.  Now when playing him at high lvl your shadows begin to fall behind the horde of enemies so it becomes needed to get new stronger shadows. What i'm suggesting is the ability to hold down your shadow summoning button and have that trigger a corpse explosion dealing a % of the units' remaining life as damage (based on strength) in a radius (based on range) at a cost of 5 energy per shadow, knocking down any enemy units in blast radius (to give nekros the time to resummon)

 

Step 3.

this one would just be nice, but with the other changes, wouldn't be needed. allow your shadows to be healed by gloom

Step 4.

enjoy.  

[Suzie_Quatro]

summon a health eximus bro

[CoffeeElemental]

Step 5.

Make shadows not affected by Oberon's 3.

I like steps 1 and 2.

[Bratty_Child]

I want the summons cap to be removed since DE is no longer concerned about performance issue when they limited shadow counts in first place, years ago.

[(XBOX)Ampathetiic]

30 minutes ago, Little_Cunny said:

I want the summons cap to be removed since DE is no longer concerned about performance issue when they limited shadow counts in first place, years ago.

The cap could probably be increased, but DE obviously still cares about performance issues: Frames like Grendel and Gyre have been nerfed in recent time because their abilities were causing crashes/lag.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

The explosion is a bad idea. A single instance of damage never scales well into higher levels. Even when it is scaled to % of enemy health.

I recommend finding some way to continuously increase shadows damage output.

[(PSN)CommanderC2121]

I know Im in the minority here, but Ive always wished SotD got a rework. My idea has been inspired by the nekros prime trailer, where we see a grineer die and instantly become shadowified, losing his weapon but joining an army of shadows around Nekros. 
 

Again, I dont expect it will happen, any given how many people would miss the old SotD its best this doesnt happen, but my pipe dream for SotD is that it becomes an aura around you, that shadowifiies enemeis upon death, turning them into essentially a charging melee enemy. 

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

4 hours ago, (PSN)CommanderC2121 said:

I know Im in the minority here, but Ive always wished SotD got a rework. My idea has been inspired by the nekros prime trailer, where we see a grineer die and instantly become shadowified, losing his weapon but joining an army of shadows around Nekros. 
 

Again, I dont expect it will happen, any given how many people would miss the old SotD its best this doesnt happen, but my pipe dream for SotD is that it becomes an aura around you, that shadowifiies enemeis upon death, turning them into essentially a charging melee enemy. 

People still miss Embers old 4.

People still miss Wukongs old Defy.

there’s a point where DE needs to disregarded the feelings of the community in favor of actually improving the frame in question.

Instead of what they do now which is disregard the feelings of the community in favor of not bothering with improving frames.

[sunderthefirmament]

My biggest requests for Shadows changes would be reduced ally vfx (they should be almost invisible to allies, like summons in Diablo 3), and the inability to block friendly bullets. 
 

In its current state, Shadows of the Dead is a griefing ability. It crowds the screen and blocks bullets/projectiles from your teammates. In the chaos of this visually unclear game, it’s often hard to tell what is a shadow and what isn’t, and sometimes the vfx glitch out and don’t render on the shadows.

[Mediloric]

Honestly step one would be perfect.

[RobWasHere]

-Integrate Theorem Infection into the kit somehow, I dunno, desecrated enemy can leave a pool of cursed ground that deals minor damage and Nekros standing in them gain damage buff to Shadows.
-Terrify casted when Shadows are up have decreased cost and also affect enemy shields.
-Shadows ability no longer heals them, but Nekros picking up energy/health orbs from Desecrate do. The ability still teleports the pets back to you and replenish fallen ones. Soulpunching enemy marks Shadows to focus fire on it.
-Ice and Shield Eximus do not block ally fire.

There, the shadows will carry their damage as long as enemies have mass stripped their defence while synergizing with rest of the kit. With max Theorem Infection the Shadows carry themselves even in SP as long as you remove the armor. Less effective against Corpus unless you use Toxin infusion kitgun arcane.

[(PSN)Siriothrax]

On 2022-10-30 at 7:40 AM, (XBOX)GearsMatrix301 said:

The explosion is a bad idea. A single instance of damage never scales well into higher levels. Even when it is scaled to % of enemy health.

I recommend finding some way to continuously increase shadows damage output.

The damage is just sort of a side benefit. the real goal is to cancel the summon so you can pull newer stronger shadows from more recent enemies killed, and if i get some random AOE damage along with it it's just icing on the cake

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

37 minutes ago, (PSN)Siriothrax said:

The damage is just sort of a side benefit. the real goal is to cancel the summon so you can pull newer stronger shadows from more recent enemies killed, and if i get some random AOE damage along with it it's just icing on the cake

I don’t see the benefit of getting higher level enemies then. A level 40 Eximus is going to do the same stuff for you as a level 20 Eximus.

[(PSN)chris1pat8twins]

On 2022-10-30 at 4:14 AM, (PSN)Siriothrax said:

Ok. So anyone who plays nekros in any meaningful way knows that this ability is one of the worst in the game. Sure - with the augment, you can increase your survivability. But thats kinda it, and it ends up costing you a RIDICULOUS amount of energy. I feel they need to adjust this ability. 
 

Step 1.

adjust the energy economy of this ability. Make the base cost of this ability be 30 energy plus 10 energy per summon you are ACTIVELY calling up. That would put your upfront cost for this ability when getting max shadows at the standard 100 energy while allowing nekros to use his SotD to refresh their health for 30 energy. Given how quickly their health decays, this is a MUCH needed change that would put his energy economy in a reasonably healthy place ASSUMING you DO NOT increase the decay. 
 

Step 2. 

A classic necro ability is to make bodies go boom. And something nekros needs is both a way to deal more damage on demand with his abilities, and a way to end his SotD early to resummon.  Now when playing him at high lvl your shadows begin to fall behind the horde of enemies so it becomes needed to get new stronger shadows. What i'm suggesting is the ability to hold down your shadow summoning button and have that trigger a corpse explosion dealing a % of the units' remaining life as damage (based on strength) in a radius (based on range) at a cost of 5 energy per shadow, knocking down any enemy units in blast radius (to give nekros the time to resummon)

 

Step 3.

this one would just be nice, but with the other changes, wouldn't be needed. allow your shadows to be healed by gloom

Step 4.

enjoy.  

By now DE should make it where when you summon shadows, you are able to command them like Kahl does with “brothers”. Make them all attack a specific target or send them to run up and self destruct on the target. Shouldn’t be that hard to implement. That would make the shadows a lot more useful.

Also think they need to make their nullifiers more distinguishable from regular nullifiers cause it’s annoying when someone chooses blue or yellow energy which makes their energy dome too similar to regular ones and thus waste ammo shooting at them. Make their energy dome more translucent or something. Give it a slight foggy appearance. Something to make it noticeable. 

[BR31]

В 31.10.2022 в 11:40, (XBOX)GearsMatrix301 сказал:

People still miss Embers old 4.

People still miss Wukongs old Defy.

there’s a point where DE needs to disregarded the feelings of the community in favor of actually improving the frame in question.

Instead of what they do now which is disregard the feelings of the community in favor of not bothering with improving frames.

Yeah- but why not make a sidegrade frame instead?  Nekros is popular as he is , esp after recent tweaks.

We have gauss and volt-sharing a lot of things . Less similar but in the same vibe- chroma and rhino . Or rhino and nezha,etc.

We don't have that many summoners in waframe. Another one wouldn't hurt.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

17 minutes ago, BR31 said:

Yeah- but why not make a sidegrade frame instead?  Nekros is popular as he is , esp after recent tweaks.

We have gauss and volt-sharing a lot of things . Less similar but in the same vibe- chroma and rhino . Or rhino and nezha,etc.

We don't have that many summoners in waframe. Another one wouldn't hurt.

Why make a completely different frame when you can just rework the frame that already exists?

Literally the only thing Gauss and Volt have in common is going fast.

Here’s the problem with your proposal for another summoner frame. SUMMONS SUCK! Literally any summon that isn’t Celestial twin is complete garbage that does nothing more than occasionally draw aggro. So introducing another frame with another garbage summon without addressing the core issues of summons does nothing.

Even with the terrify buffs Nekros is still solely the “Desecrate frame”. He can only benefit from having his other 3 abilities reworked. And I don’t think him being popular should invalidate him from getting improvements.

[(PSN)FunyFlyBoy]

Here is the biggest problem with Shadows of the Dead, the lack of scaling damage of any kind. Here is the thing, when you're facing Grineer, their weapons primarily deal Impact damage with some Slash, not much usually, and low Puncture. When you're dealing with Corpus, their weapons deal primarily Puncture, with some impact, low slash. Their weapons are designed to fight the other faction, not fight amongst themselves so you end up with Shadows that can't damage what you're facing unless you're killing Infested since they are weak to Toxin, and they spread Toxin.

A Lv150 Eximus Heavy Gunner cannot kill a Lv75 Heavy Gunner within the lifespan of the Shadow with the Lv75 not even attacking. a lifespan of roughly 33 seconds without healing at 3% HP Decay.

Maybe give Shadows of the Dead their own modding capabilities and give them access only to the Companion mods. Even with things like Bite (Maul only increases melee damage so wouldn't get slotted... like ever), I still do not see their damage escalating that badly, especially when the Shadows rarely focus on one target together. With some actual elemental damage on weapons with poor typing against their own faction, they will actually begin to do something. The Vitality and Armor mods wouldn't matter because of Health Decay being static, and Nekros healing them. So maybe a mix of Companion and Robotic mods so they have a larger pool of perks to select from. 

[BR31]

1 час назад, (XBOX)GearsMatrix301 сказал:

Why make a completely different frame when you can just rework the frame that already exists?

Literally the only thing Gauss and Volt have in common is going fast.

Here’s the problem with your proposal for another summoner frame. SUMMONS SUCK! Literally any summon that isn’t Celestial twin is complete garbage that does nothing more than occasionally draw aggro. So introducing another frame with another garbage summon without addressing the core issues of summons does nothing.

Even with the terrify buffs Nekros is still solely the “Desecrate frame”. He can only benefit from having his other 3 abilities reworked. And I don’t think him being popular should invalidate him from getting improvements.

Well for gauss-volt- i don't agree, they have similar attacks speed -reload parallels as well. Protection too. And going fast was their signatures tbh.
Obv gauss is more in his niche and volt more versatile.
___
Before recent nerfs to deimos arcanes you could scale the damage quite nicely . Eximus summons were also a big part already.
I'd like to see a buff to his summons (and for caliban, for example). But community are not happy with good minions it seems.
So i'm ok if it's somewhat hard to setup (yet possible)- otherwise another nerfwave. With the wuclone treatment-equi's clone got hit so many times for no reason.
And zarr duality was a thing since 2016 , i have not seen any complaints about her at all. But here we are now.
 

[(PSN)RB3-Reloaded]

Okay I’m definitely in the minority here because I feel like Shadows of the Dead is a great ability only lacking the ability to “delete” they scale slightly depending on your strength but as we all know enemy damage output on other enemies is minuscule specially on Armor units. But with his new Terrify changes Stripping Armor is now easier then ever so the whole “they have Armor” excuse is out the window.

Furthermore they can do INSANE scaling damage with the kitgun Thereom Infection Arcanes if you use them according to enemy weakness. So toxin residual on Corpus and heat residual on Infested/Armor Stripped Grineer. It being limited to kitguns is niche but it’s there none the less and giving it to them inherently would make it obsolete which I disagree with.

Titania’s razorwing flies damage scale slightly with certain melee mods and maybe something to that concept could be added to his shadows but idk cool idea regardless.

holding the ability to Explode them doing a % of their current health to surrounding enemies, whilst tapping the ability works as it does now would be a good buff and work around his and I see no inherent problems with it tbh.

On 2022-10-30 at 9:14 AM, (PSN)Siriothrax said:

this one would just be nice, but with the other changes, wouldn't be needed. allow your shadows to be healed by gloom

Honestly I think they should only be healed by THEIR damage output not yours or Ally’s for balancing reasons other than that I basically suggested the same thing one time.

Pretty great suggestions Summons don’t inherently suck their A.I does though. You can pretty much get Nekros Summons or any summons tbh to do scaling damage with investment.

 

[False_]

My suggestions:

1. Add an optional "show shadow health bars on screen" option, like how teammates show up on the top right. Micromanaging 7 shadows' (maybe more if they up the cap, please DE? Maybe with ability strength again?) will become so much easier if you see all their hp bars. Make it optional as it will be a UI nightmare for some people who want to play with minimalistic UIs.

2. (Hold) soul punch to delete shadows. For someone who loves going endurance runs in survival once in a while, having a level 100 shadow against level 500 makes it very difficult to continue. Why would we need this? Well, with the leech eximi, you can practically have infinite duration shadows—you just need 3 leeches. Once you do have those leeches, you'll be gimping your late game since you'll be stuck with undying level 100s. It also helps with removing butchers when you want a heavy gunner or rocket launcher grineer (forgot the name lmao)

3. Incorporate Theorem Infection OR fix the arcanes, they're horribly inconsistent right now; sometimes they apply, sometimes they do not. I like the one who suggested that desecrated enemies have a chance of creating a "theorem infection" pool that increases the shadows' damage.

 

Please DE, I know not many use Nekros but the niche community that do love using him would love the changes.