Thoughts On Nekros, The Frame That Apparently Don't Follow His Roots.

[Xamuswing]

This is just a brief overview of him, experience, opinions and how to improve.

 

Nekros, is he a Necromancer or a just Scavenger?

 

First we must ask ourselves what a necromancer is. By reading like 4 dictionary definitions and having D&D friends, necromancers aren't necessarily attackers. In fact, they are very self-supporting magic wielders that use the undead for oracle like purposes. They are more of scavengers and will attack only with sickening witchcraft and curses that kill an enemy slowly and painfully. So yes, a necromancer is also a scavenger.

 

Knowing this, Nekros' skills are already in this pit. His skills like Desecrate will loot everybody around and Terrify sends everyone near you into a fearful frenzy and scatters like dust on a fan. Even though it's direct damage dealing, Soul Punch even works because of the whole debuff scenario. Shadows of the Dead is kinda not fitting (like you could find one necromancer in games that will follow all this passive support stuff.) but it's not that bad though and it's less divergent than the necromancers you see in Guildwars II and WoW. Those just break all kinds of rules. And don't even get me started on Lord of the Rings.

 

Skills aside, what about appearance? If he is a controller of the dead, shouldn't he look like it? Well, necromancers are described to look similar to either a wizard or a shaman. While he maybe far from a wizard, the shaman aspect is still very present with the long tendrils and shrouded head. I guess they were also going for the whole skinny guy appears normal but is secretly a mass murderer kinda deal too. Given the way Nekros moves also, its also hypnotizing. Like he is preforming Voodoo magic or an ancient ritual, again similar to shamans. This feels especially true when hes wearing the Mortos syandana.

 

Finally stats. There isn't to much for how they were meant to be, but lets continue with shaman/ wizard. Depicted shamans are physically as capable as anyone else with voodoo knowledge of magic. AKA a jack of all trades. Looking at his stats, Nekros also kinda fills this role but he is below average except in speed. (following mode) Mabye a shield buff or more health could help with that.

 

My Thoughts? He fills his role good enough. His skills in complement with appearance follow necromancer lore extremely well and it's nice to see something like this. Revamping him in abilities doesn't seem like a great idea in my perspective, because, well, he is what a life like necromancer is and not the glorified warlocks you see in, again, GW2 and WoW. So to finish off, he is unique in his own right and is good enough as it is.

 

BUT to make him a bit better

 

I would change his stats. His utility vs stats isn't the same as Vauban so I would buff his current set of stats to either have more health or give him equal shields to everyone else. As for abilities, I would change desecrate or soul punch to have it heal any downed teammate cast on instantly. He is a support frame, he should fill this role. Also, you can't die when casting Shadows of the dead or at least have damage resistance, afterwords your open game. Seriously, thats annoying to watch me die midway resurrecting the undead.

[VoidPunch]

He is a necromancer, he brings the dead back to life. That is already a necromancer, nothing more nothing less.

 

He is also a support class and an attack class because DE doesn't like to do things by the book and be a little more original. i.e. Valkyr and her supposed Berserker class and Oberon and his supposed Paladin class. Just because it doesn't fit the mold 100% doesn't mean it's not what it is.

[(PSN)Panzer-Strike]

In the end I just end up using desecrate for farming. The whole shadows of the dead never seems to do that much but clutter the hallways.

[Seanjuju]

Won't someone help the lamest frame?

[ViLeDeth]

Yeah he's such a lame frame I mean I don't find myself doing so well at the 50minute mark on high lv survival missions but that's just me I mean damn he's so bad.

 

I'm happy people are still unhappy with Nekros because they don't have to use him and do horrible with him. Pressing 3 is not the only thing he has - try pressing 2 then hitting 1 into a clustered group of Grineer fleeing in terror, then tap 3 to get more booty ;3

 

Its the same people who get mad about picking Loki as their first warframe or trying to justify it being worse vs Ash. Clearly a lot of people don't see that scaling powers > pure damage. Nekros is a master in survival with mods and his abilities.

[Buzkyl]

 

Its the same people who get mad about picking Loki as their first warframe or trying to justify it being worse vs Ash. Clearly a lot of people don't see that scaling powers > pure damage. Nekros is a master in survival with mods and his abilities.

 

You mean desecrate? Which is basically all what he is used for. His 2 sends a group of enemies running only for more to fill the area as the flee from him.

 

Nekros is a farming frame, decent frame abilities, but just a farming frame.

[ViLeDeth]

You mean desecrate? Which is basically all what he is used for. His 2 sends a group of enemies running only for more to fill the area as the flee from him.

 

Nekros is a farming frame, decent frame abilities, but just a farming frame.

 

So you're a 1-trick pony type of person? Then that's fine by me, you'll be my support and I'll be the one dealing most damage.

[Buzkyl]

So you're a 1-trick pony type of person? Then that's fine by me, you'll be my support and I'll be the one dealing most damage.

 

Considering Nekros is a support frame, i don't see what conclusion you're trying to draw out here.

[Charismo]

I'll be the one dealing most damage.

 

lol

[ExplodingStars]

My Thoughts? He fills his role good enough. His skills in complement with appearance follow necromancer lore extremely well and it's nice to see something like this. Revamping him in abilities doesn't seem like a great idea in my perspective, because, well, he is what a life like necromancer is and not the glorified warlocks you see in, again, GW2 and WoW. So to finish off, he is unique in his own right and is good enough as it is.

Don't agree on Nekros being competent or filling his role good enough as a Necromancer. It be more fitting to call him Desecrate than Nekros right now. 

Considering he's suppose to manipulate the dead and be a Minion master, he does it poorly.

His current skills vaguely fits the Necromancer status but having 3 CC skills with none benefiting each other much is pretty painful. 

 

Shadows of the dead is a beginning as are his other skills, it's definitely has potential and can be improved, either tweaking it directly or better yet reworking his other abilities to have synergy with the summoned Minions. I honestly don't think improving Nekros's stats is enough to make him better than he is right now. 

[RealPandemonium]

Who cares what his "theme" is?  Play the frames you like, ignore the ones you don't like. 

[Archwizard]

Who cares what his "theme" is?  Play the frames you like, ignore the ones you don't like. 

 

It's partially the fact that it feels like a wasted opportunity to create a character with a highly-requested theme, and then attempt to remold it for what the game needs at that instant rather than what the players expected/wanted when and even before it was announced. The Survival niche would've been there when they got around to the next frame or sentinel or mod, but instead they dropped it on a character class who was already riding on high expectations. Bonus points for deciding to ignore player outcries when this role was announced, and for not touching Nekros since release except to patch an AI bug in spite of him coming up in Community Hot Topics and Devstreams several times. (Bonus bonus points for not making such a hubbub about any other frame released since - megathreads with a list of skills for community approval, etc. Great impressions all around, what with all that communication failure.)

 

And partially because spamming Desecrate the entire mission is lame. It creates a class that everybody wants on their team but nobody wants to be the one playing "effectively".

Edited April 3, 2014 by Archwizard

[Phatose]

Odd thing about Nekros.  Everybody seems to think his role should be something different, and opinions on what should be changed vary highly. 

 

I'd personally like to see the whole zookeeper-role drop kicked right out of the game for being a terrible idea in a fast past first person shooter.  Thematically they're inappropriate for a powerful necromancer skill - animating the dead is a base level skill since D&D ages ago, and they're cannon fodder for a distraction while a necromancer does something much more useful.

 

But, there will never be agreement on these things.

[Noble_Cactus]

That's because there are two major conflicting notions of what it means to be a Necromancer: The classic DnD diviner who operates on the boundaries of life and death to manipulate his foes and communicate with the spirits for personal benefit, and the mass zookeeper popularized by Diablo and who tends to appear in RTSes.

 

I don't think summoning the undead should be eliminated form his skillset (because that IS one of the staples of a traditional RPG necro), but there is indeed a whole pantheon of themes and skills to draw from. A life drain used to empower Nekros/his team/his pets, for example, would fit neatly with Nekros' theme while also granting him more support/utility:

 

http://gctm.free.fr/add/necromant/dark%20art.html#8th-Level%20Spells

 

So you're a 1-trick pony type of person? Then that's fine by me, you'll be my support and I'll be the one dealing most damage.

 

That's not what he said at all. He just explained why Nekros is a 1-trick pony frame. Terrify is, more often than not, bad. It's good for scattering enemies when you need to revive a teammate, but it ends up making them much harder to kill because they're running around like headless chickens. And this is from someone who's been using all four of his skills lately.

Edited April 3, 2014 by Noble_Cactus

[ArchPhaeton]

Archwizard made a very complete post about Nekros some time ago, with lots of feedback and opinions yet nothing happened.

 

I use the fella out of pure greed but I have lost all hopes of him being viable to at least stand his ground when there are no others around. Seems like the devs have him how they want him to be.

Edited April 3, 2014 by ArchPhaeton

[Archwizard]

I'd personally like to see the whole zookeeper-role drop kicked right out of the game for being a terrible idea in a fast past first person shooter.  Thematically they're inappropriate for a powerful necromancer skill - animating the dead is a base level skill since D&D ages ago, and they're cannon fodder for a distraction while a necromancer does something much more useful.

 

That's more a matter of execution. There are a number of games that have successfully pulled off a swarm-type attack style*, while Warframe has proven to have a bit of an issue with scaling that actually makes directly cloning corpses a viable means of having an army worthy of end-game... provided the AI is improved.

Meanwhile, Nekros doesn't exactly do anything worthwhile outside of Desecrate while his are up anyway. Summoning his minions actually takes time and energy away from what most consider to be the only skill he's worth, not to mention the conflicting Corrupted mods that would maximize them...

At any rate, pacing doesn't really affect a lot of abilities in this game, just look at Trinity. It might be a nice experiment to have a frame with a higher output after gaining a little bit of momentum - again, provided the minion AI is strong enough that there is no need for micromanagement.

 

*Diablo's necromancer and witch doctor, Guild Wars' necromancer and ritualist, City of Heroes' controllers, City of Villains' masterminds - which include vampirism and necromancy, Starcraft's classic Zerg strategy... The list goes on.

Edited April 3, 2014 by Archwizard

[Phatose]

Are there any FPSes that have done that though?  Typical MMOs behave far differently then Warframe, and the most typical description of AI helpers in shooters is "useless".

[(PSN)ElZilcho]

Odd thing about Nekros.  Everybody seems to think his role should be something different, and opinions on what should be changed vary highly. 

 

I'd personally like to see the whole zookeeper-role drop kicked right out of the game for being a terrible idea in a fast past first person shooter.  Thematically they're inappropriate for a powerful necromancer skill - animating the dead is a base level skill since D&D ages ago, and they're cannon fodder for a distraction while a necromancer does something much more useful.

 

But, there will never be agreement on these things.

 

 

Are there any FPSes that have done that though?  Typical MMOs behave far differently then Warframe, and the most typical description of AI helpers in shooters is "useless".

 

Arch and I talked about this in the other thread. We still don't agree on the fix, but it bears repeating. Nek's minions suck in a huge way. They are just bad, and they're bad not because of their stats, but because of how they behave. I think all his skills are thematically appropriate (even if the fluff regarding them could use some changes), but Shadows is the one that stands out as the one that's hard to justify casting. Terrify and Soul Punch could use a little bit of a buff (something else I went over there)  but can be useful. They are utility skills, you use them when it's appropriate. Desecrate is useful, especially in survival, though apparently I just don't spam it as much as others. I guess that's why I don't have a problem with it.

 

Anyway, Shadows. Shadows' problem begins with minions being on a timer. Resurrecting enemies as they died is okay, but letting them be killed through HP loss and when time runs out makes it a less effective, more expensive version of Nyx's Chaos. If they just lived until they died, they would be more useful for mostly stationary game modes. That still leaves him with a useless ult. for anything that means moving around. Shadows don't follow you, and even if they did their pathing would suck, and even if the pathing didn't suck they still would do a lousy job protecting you. Minion masters just don't seem to exist in shooters, and I think we can see why. A game as speedy as Warframe will make that even harder to do. Are they going to tail me when I wallrun too? Truly, what I don't want is for his skills to be redone around being a minion master while minions are trash. It will make him like Valkyr, who is a frame designed around health tanking in a game where health tanking was made not viable before she was even added.

 

I too wouldn't mind if they just dropped the skill for something else. I try to come up with something new each time, just to see what sticks. How about, instead of a bad version of Chaos, we get an amazing and totally metal version of Null Star? Instead of dumb-as-celery gun platforms, we get an equal number of ghosts. These ghosts fly around and can pass through walls and obstacles, hunt down enemies, do some damage, and stagger them for X seconds. While occupied staggering an enemy, that ghost is attached to them and not flying around. Damage done can be based on enemies killed, number of spirits can be determined just like shadows is now. Your remaining ghosts can follow you around just like spare stars. They'll be consumed fast enough that it probably won't be spammable.

 

There, instead of a bunch of useless junk you leave in the room where you pressed 4 even if it survives until the time runs out, you have the Ark of the Covenant. Plus, it's the spirits of the dead, or something like that. Totally thematic. Or maybe it's totally OP. Whatever. It's an idea that's more effective than the junk we have now.

Edited April 4, 2014 by (PS4)ElZilcho

[Noble_Cactus]

Ooh, now that I like. Can the ghosts be attacked and killed, or are they non-targetable entities?

 

Are there any FPSes that have done that though?  Typical MMOs behave far differently then Warframe, and the most typical description of AI helpers in shooters is "useless".

 

Off the top of my head, Half-Life 2 and Shadowrun (2007). The former is a single-player FPS and the latter is a multiplayer PvP FPS. Warframe, obviously, fits into neither of those categories. Well, it can be a single-player TPS, but we're assuming we're playing with teammates here.

 

http://youtu.be/nMjceAj_8WA?t=6m15s Mind the annoying voice, it's the best video I could find that demonstrated what the Pheropods do.

http://youtu.be/uMNlOYlwRlc?t=4m45s Brief summoning of a spirit. Nobody seems to use it in MLG matches and I couldn't really find a video of it otherwise.

 

On a side note, I've never played Shadowrun 2007 but having watched it, it'd be cool if Conclave took a few cues from it. Namely in how abilities are used. People dumped on it for having a shop-based loadout like CS but I don't see how that would be a problem, really.

 

Edited April 5, 2014 by Noble_Cactus

[(PSN)ElZilcho]

Ooh, now that I like. Can the ghosts be attacked and killed, or are they non-targetable entities?

 

Non-targetable, but consumed when they catch an enemy?

[Darkvramp]

He is a necromancer, he brings the dead back to life. That is already a necromancer, nothing more nothing less.

 

He is also a support class and an attack class because DE doesn't like to do things by the book and be a little more original. i.e. Valkyr and her supposed Berserker class and Oberon and his supposed Paladin class. Just because it doesn't fit the mold 100% doesn't mean it's not what it is.

Wrong

Necromancers are masters of the magics of the body, blood,etc.

the reason Necromancer are so scary is because they know so much about your anatomy which allows for some wicked creepy magic to roll forth from his fingertips.

[GSDAkatsuki]

Hey another one of these threads.

[Drathin]

Yeah he's such a lame frame I mean I don't find myself doing so well at the 50minute mark on high lv survival missions but that's just me I mean damn he's so bad.

I'm happy people are still unhappy with Nekros because they don't have to use him and do horrible with him. Pressing 3 is not the only thing he has - try pressing 2 then hitting 1 into a clustered group of Grineer fleeing in terror, then tap 3 to get more booty ;3

Its the same people who get mad about picking Loki as their first warframe or trying to justify it being worse vs Ash. Clearly a lot of people don't see that scaling powers > pure damage. Nekros is a master in survival with mods and his abilities.

Thank you! Finally some people realizes he is actually pretty amazing at surviving. Everyone always says he is only good for desecrate. But no-one ever mentions fear! Could he use a couple minor buffs, yes(especially the AI of ultimate); but he's not a horrible frame as everyone makes him out to be. Edited April 6, 2014 by Drathin

[ExplodingStars]

Thank you! Finally some people realizes he is actually pretty amazing at surviving. Everyone always says he is only good for desecrate. But no-one ever mentions fear! Could he use a couple minor buffs, yes(especially the AI of ultimate); but he's not a horrible frame as everyone makes him out to be.

He's nothing but a crutch in Survival because of his Desecrate, which is a feature of his that does not deserves praise imo. 

If the Survival game mode didn't come out as soon as it did, what would've really happened to Nekros? 

His Terrify does nothing to alleviate the constant Desecrating.

Funnily enough I see more Sotds than Terrify.

I wonder why? 

[Archwizard]

Everyone always says he is only good for desecrate. But no-one ever mentions fear!

 

Must suppress urge to reference Anastasia...

 

Nobody mentions Terrify because it has a very hard upper limit.

You can't hit more than a few enemies with one cast (making Chaos more effective), you can't recast it while it's active (making Bastille more effective), and the effect is strictly static rather than self-perpetuating (making BOTH more effective - Bastille can affect any enemy who walks into the field at any point it's active, while Chaos'd enemies will still shoot those who aren't, but Terrify is instant and standalone). All enemies hit scatter and do their best to turn invisible, making the damage boost it provides meaningless (though the weak, niche boost it provides does that for itself), and making recasts even harder to accomplish.

 

In essence, it gets the worst of both worlds: the reduced effect of a 2nd-slot skill, and the high cost of a 75 energy CC.

 

There is nothing Terrify can do that a dozen other abilities can't do better, which is why players generally default to the Mass Decoy that makes up his ultimate. And again, it creates no synergy with his other skills.

Edited April 6, 2014 by Archwizard