Oberon And Nekros Really Need To Change.

[Noble_Cactus]

None of the changes suggested come from WoW. I don't even know where the WoW comparisons stem from. Just sounds like a bunch of people hyperventilating into a bag over something that's not there.

 

The point is that people feel these two classes' skills are uninspired. There's an entire pantheon of skills to choose from when designing a Paladin, with most of them being protective and restorative:

 

http://home.online.no/~rahag/AD&D/Paladin%27s_Handbook.pdf

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/paladin.htm#smiteEvil

 

In fact, mass nukes (Reckoning) are -not- traditional Paladin spells as far as I'm aware. But it's a useful utility spell to an extent, so it doesn't really need any changes.

 

What could have made Oberon more interesting, in my opinion, would have been to give Hallowed Ground some kind of defensive buff for his team. Renewal could have additional utility by buffing the teammate with a one-time Quick Thinking, immunity to knockdown while being healed, or some other protective ability beyond just restoring health. Getting another mass nuker with a subpar healing ability just feels like wasted potential (then again, every healing ability is going to feel subpar compared to Blessing), given how many directions you could take a Paladin - whose precepts include protecting teammates, dispelling the undead, and inspiring his allies with auras.

 

Reinterpreting Holy power as Radiation was pretty creative, though. It's rather ironic and that's what I like about it.

 

The thing to remember is that WF's classes often try to deviate from conventional preconceptions of what it means to be x class. And that's a good thing. Yet we must also remember that by making x class (let's say a necromancer), you are drawing upon antecedents set forth by previous games and books. Abilities like Soul Punch, while somewhat useful, seem like wasted potential for something more unique to being a necromancer to some players. It doesn't mesh with Nekros' theme, nor his toolkit. In fact, Nekros' toolkit is all over the place and it seems like the WF team couldn't come up with a coherent design for him, so they slapped a bunch of skills together and called it a day. So nobody is asking for WoW classes, and you're making a big fat strawman by accusing others of doing that.

 

In the end, we are asking for ability coherence. These frames may not be "totally useless" (that honor goes to Ash), but there's a lot more that could have gone into making them than just "AoE nuke with a little stun" and "looting corpses."

Edited April 3, 2014 by Noble_Cactus

[theammostore]

Actually, I main nekros, oberon, and zephyr.

 

So when threads like these keep showing up, it really makes me wonder why people keep posting over and over that my favorite frames are "totally useless" and the fact I get tons of mileage out of all of the skills means they're "totally worthless" and "horrible".

 

An average player has spent less time playing the game in total than I have on either nekros or oberon alone.

 

So from my perspective, you're a bunch of clueless, angry newbies who need to either go back to the game they keep wanting to wreck my favorite frames to match, shut up, or say something constructive or useful.

 

I don't want my frames wrecked to match your lack of creativity. That's not useful or constructive. You clearly do NOT play these frames if you're having such troubles with their skills. If you want a frame to do whatever theme you've come up with, SUGGEST A NEW ONE.

 

I'm sorry you can't use oberon well. I'm sorry you can't figure out how to play nekros. I like them the way they are. I wouldn't have hundreds of hours of playtime on them otherwise.

 

I feel zero sympathy at all for any of this.

Well, let's look at how one plays Nekros, in tune with his abilities. Terrify helps you amp up damage on a select few enemies around you, who then run away effectively trying to avoid the amped up damage. Not to mention if you over do it on the armor reduction, they actually become MORE resistant to your damage. You have Soul Punch which does direct damage and cannot miss the initial impact, but the secondary projectile is easily missed and thus wastes the damage. Granted, it also has a ragdoll, but ragdolls are picky and don't always do what we want. You have a scavenging ability which can give you more ammo to do damage, but it's finicky and has a fairly high chance to not work at all. 60% chance to roll the corpse into a health orb, with a 90% chance afterwards to reroll the drop table, which may not even drop anything else afterwards. And finally an ultimate that relies on you doing the final bit of damage to an enemy to secure the kill so it can work. So he's a great support, but he doesn't really have any synergy or cohesive theme. His stats put him at about Excal level, with slightly weaker shields and slightly faster sprint, giving the impression that he's meant to stay out of most combat, sprint around and have other do the dirty work for him while he reaps the rewards. But he doesn't. He needs to do the killing, or at least the killing blow, in order to use 1 of his abilites properly, and as we've covered, his abilities don't do much damage and can possibly even negate most damage trying to be dealt.

 

If Desecrate fed into SoTD, or Terrify rooted and prevented attacking, or even if Soul Punch's second projectile was a guarenteed hit on another enemy, then maybe he'd be better, maybe he'd be more used outside of Survival, but as it stands he's kinda meh.

 

EDIT: I main Nekros. Not only does it fit my name but he's also great looking and can be modded into some very interesting roles, but that doesn't make him great. Zephyr can do the same thing, but she has great self-synergy.

[Noble_Cactus]

Well, let's look at how one plays Nekros, in tune with his abilities. Terrify helps you amp up damage on a select few enemies around you, who then run away effectively trying to avoid the amped up damage. Not to mention if you over do it on the armor reduction, they actually become MORE resistant to your damage. You have Soul Punch which does direct damage and cannot miss the initial impact, but the secondary projectile is easily missed and thus wastes the damage. Granted, it also has a ragdoll, but ragdolls are picky and don't always do what we want. You have a scavenging ability which can give you more ammo to do damage, but it's finicky and has a fairly high chance to not work at all. 60% chance to roll the corpse into a health orb, with a 90% chance afterwards to reroll the drop table, which may not even drop anything else afterwards. And finally an ultimate that relies on you doing the final bit of damage to an enemy to secure the kill so it can work. So he's a great support, but he doesn't really have any synergy or cohesive theme. His stats put him at about Excal level, with slightly weaker shields and slightly faster sprint, giving the impression that he's meant to stay out of most combat, sprint around and have other do the dirty work for him while he reaps the rewards. But he doesn't. He needs to do the killing, or at least the killing blow, in order to use 1 of his abilites properly, and as we've covered, his abilities don't do much damage and can possibly even negate most damage trying to be dealt.

 

If Desecrate fed into SoTD, or Terrify rooted and prevented attacking, or even if Soul Punch's second projectile was a guarenteed hit on another enemy, then maybe he'd be better, maybe he'd be more used outside of Survival, but as it stands he's kinda meh.

 

EDIT: I main Nekros. Not only does it fit my name but he's also great looking and can be modded into some very interesting roles, but that doesn't make him great. Zephyr can do the same thing, but she has great self-synergy.

 

What's interesting is that Nekros does have some self-synergy. It's just that it all feeds into Desecrate. Need to loot some corpses, but there's a wall of enemies heading your way? Summon some minions to cover you while you're looting. Pack of mobs nearby and you don't have enough time or space to summon shadows? Terrify and pillage to your heart's content. Desecrate is the end, the omega of Nekros' role. It fulfills a boring, unreliable, yet necessary function in Survival. So all of his effort and energy fuels waving his hand in a corner ten times in a row before moving onto the next pile of corpses.

 

What would make the skill more interesting while still keeping its current function would be some sort of life drain, as many have suggested, including Archwizard. VKhuan also suggested a pinging aura that Nekros must activate. Maybe Desecrate could become a combination of both. Upon activation, Nekros waves his hand and spawns energy-colored tendrils made of nanomachines. These tendrils seek out nearby corpses and loot them as Desecrate normally would (built-in Carrier Vacuum effect?). For each corpse Desecrated, Nekros and his minions are healed for a small amount based on a fixed percentage. Number of corpses looted at a single time is affected by Power Strength, giving the additional benefit of synergizing with Shadows. Duration and Range affect their respective components.

 

Obviously this move has some glaring issues. What's stopping Nekros and his minions from living forever if he has a steady supply of enemies for him and his teammates to kill? Would this ability hit the scaling wall, and would its healing component be nullified past Lv50 or so? Nekros would always have to have this ability up as well. But the point is that we can turn Desecrate into something that's fun to use, fits his theme as a Necromancer, and retains his current role all at the same time.

Edited April 3, 2014 by Noble_Cactus

[theammostore]

What's interesting is that Nekros does have some self-synergy. It's just that it all feeds into Desecrate. Need to loot some corpses, but there's a wall of enemies heading your way? Summon some minions to cover you while you're looting. Pack of mobs nearby and you don't have enough time or space to summon shadows? Terrify and pillage to your heart's content. Desecrate is the end, the ultimatum to Nekros' role. It fulfills a boring, unreliable, yet necessary function in Survival. So all of his effort and energy fuels waving his hand in a corner ten times in a row before moving onto the next pile of corpses.

 

What would make the skill more interesting while still keeping its current function would be some sort of life drain, as many have suggested, including Archwizard. VKhuan also suggested a pinging aura that Nekros must activate. Maybe Desecrate could become a combination of both. Upon activation, Nekros waves his hand and spawns energy-colored tendrils made of nanomachines. These tendrils seek out nearby corpses and loot them as Desecrate normally would (built-in Carrier Vacuum effect?). For each corpse Desecrated, Nekros and his minions are healed for a small amount based on a fixed percentage. Number of corpses looted at a single time is affected by Power Strength, giving the additional benefit of synergizing with Shadows. Duration and Range affect their respective components.

 

Obviously this move has some glaring issues. What's stopping Nekros and his minions from living forever if he has a steady supply of enemies for him and his teammates to kill? Would this ability hit the scaling wall, and would its healing component be nullified past Lv50 or so? Nekros would always have to have this ability up as well. But the point is that we can turn Desecrate into something that's fun to use, fits his theme as a Necromancer, and retains his current role all at the same time.

That would be better than what we have, given some tweaks. Then again, some things that we have already can be pretty good given some tweaks.

As for Desecrate my biggest complaint about it is honestly it's RNG component. 40% chance to do nothing at all per corpse, 90% chance where if it is rolled we reroll the drop table. That's 3 layers of RNG in an ability. And that's just unacceptable.

 

Secondary complaint is O2 packs being spawned from desecrate but that's something completely unrelated to Nekros as a whole, and rather a small facet of 1/4 of his total kit.

[RealPandemonium]

Oberon's skills are currently half-functional but Nekros just needs some tweaks to be polished.  Forget the "themes" of the frames and focus on game mechanics.  

Edited April 4, 2014 by RealPandemonium

[ArchPhaeton]

Nekros user here.

In his current state he's only viable if you have a real team of people that understand he needs others to do the destruction so he can focus on his abilities. Yeah I carry a 5 forma Penta but if I focus on shooting bodies start disappearing... Also he's not the frame I take for soloing missions, he should be able to at least hold his ground.

 

I think enough has been said in the ArchWizard threads, but seems like the devs have these frames how they intended them to be, or theyre not a relevant concern for now.