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What Nekros Needs What He Dosen't Need. Nekros Rework Thread


Dylshero
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Ok people will complain about nekros mainly because people say his number three ability doesn't work well with other his abilities. I personally think one thing that is very good about nekros is his augments. His shield of shadows augment gives him good survivability if you have ever ran it before (I personally run it quite regularly) Despoil combined with rage and equilibrium provides a nice health and energy restoring powers and the ability to turn him into a bit of a healer makes sense but the problem is he is the frame of death not the frame of bring back health.

 

Nekros problems don't even start with his abilities they start with his stats. There is not a single stat above 100. Most frames have a few stats above or at 100 and a few below nekros has a few only at 100 and a few below. He needs a bit of a stat increase to help him before we even look at his abilities.

Here are his stats so every knows them

Health 100

Shield 90

Armor 65

Power 100

Stamina 100 (redundant now anyway)

 

So as you can see none of his stats stand out. His armor is not the lowest but still very low his Shields are ok but not great and his Health is ok at 100. His power is even only 100.

 

So my prosposed changes of his stats to give him something to work with.

 

Health 115 (345 at max rank)

Shield 90 (270 at max rank)

Armor 75 (Stays the same)

Power 100 (150 at max rank)

Stamina 100 (Getting removed so doesn't matter)

 

Now this is not a massive buff but it adds something to give him a bit of extra stats and have a few stand out stats. This allows him to have good health with a bit of extra armor.

 

Now moving on to his abilities and what needs changing out of these.

 

1. Soul Punch

Soul punch is currently fine its like all first abilities damage doesn't scale very well so good at low to medium struggles at high level which is fine when most other frames have a weaker first.

2. Terrify

It works well and does what it says quite well but maybe being able to recast it while its still going or an area around nekros where if an enemy walks into it the enemy becomes terrified and runs. Possible augment Frozen Terror when they are unable to move in terror.

3. Desecrate

Desecrate I feel needs to be reworked to move fit in with his other moves. I think that you should suck up the souls of all the killed enemies. Powering up you by making your armor out of souls increase armor value by X% and increases the armor of your shadows as well it also increases your damage by X% and it also affects shadows of the dead and soul punch so it becomes more viable. Base it off duration with the percentage dropping during the duration. Augment could be change that it effects all team mates with in a 5-10 meter radius of Nekros.

4. Shadows of the Dead

Shadows of the Dead is a perfect move except for the AI of you shadows. I feel that if you were able to give them two basic commands it would really improve the skill. Command 1 would be they follow you not cowering behind anything and charging fearlessly into battle basicly meaning that they follow you around not hiding behind crates. Command 2 would be they hold an area taking cover behind objects but still having the guts to fire. So similar to the way they hide behind crates now but they fire a bit more and are bit more willing to get shot cause they are already dead they feel no pain.

 

So I feel with the new number 3 of nekros combing well with his number 1 and 4 and the number 2 already fitting in well with the number 4 it allows nekros skill set to wind into one and be used effectively together. The augment suggestion may not be the best put I would prefer it the critsicm was focused on the changes and not the augments also don't moan because he no longer picks up loot with these buffs is designed to really make him the frame of death not the frame of farming. 

 

Thank you for reading I would really like to here your thoughts on my suggestion and maybe DE can hear this and implement this after frost rework.

-Dyl.

 

 

 
 
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Soul Punch is awful and needs to spawn Shadows on enemies it hits.

Then it will have a purpose and Nekros can be played aggressively in modes that aren't defense/survival and their subtypes.

He also won't have to always equip natural talent and still have to do 20 hail mary's while he sloooowly casts his 4 to get some ghosts up.

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Number 1 abilites are not meant to singlehandly destroy the enemy having it spawn a shadow would be a bit much on just hitting an enemy if it was when one died maybe it wouldn't be too overpowering. I agree his number 4 need to have a quicker cast time

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1- soul punch spawns short duration shadows of tgts hit and also adds the tgt to the ULT counter regardless if killed or not (nekros steals his soul and uses that for the clone)

 

2 - terrify is fine as is atm IMHO

 

3 - desecrate is changed into a ground effect AoE like Oberon's Hallowed Ground, so that nekros cast it, then any enemies that die within the AoE during the duration will have the red orbs pop and a chance for xtra drops

 

4 - summoned shadows from the ULT are now NOT duration dependant as they are permanent until they die or nekros recasts the ULT and replaces the current batch with another group (maybe some tweaks for max # of shadows would be fair, say half of current or whatevs)

 

voila

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ this is what nekros needs, it gives his 1/4 some synergy and gives him more useful pets/minions as well as reduces his #3 spam nonsense

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I think soul punch should be changed to something like soul steal. Holding down the button and drawing souls from one or many opponents giving it some AoE.

Terrify seems useful enough...maybe make it look more terrifying lol.

Desecrate....maybe make the bodies explode or rip to pieces in a violent manner because you know we are desecrating the enemy so make it look...nasty:)

For souls of the dead maybe change it (and the name:) so that you summon...four altered infested units that take and do more damage. These could be like nekroses four horsemen hehe. Oh and when they kill an enemy make it so they cut them to pieces...more violent and helps nekros desecrate.

These are just a few ideas off the top of my head. Nekros could use more love and fine tuning but either way he's still one of my favorite frames just on looks alone:)

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nekbros is my favorite and i love the flavor of soul punch so much that my main build revolves around spamming it regardless of how ineffective it is

 

i think if his abilities were reworked to have more utility, like you described, then his stats should be pretty much fine, although a bit larger energy pool would help his survivability, support, and nercomancer aesthetic

 

like you said, being able to command his Shadows of the Dead would boost his utility greatly without having a large mechanical rework

and i really like the idea of being able to pick select souls with his Soul Punch, which definitely needs a makeover, cause of the ability syndergy

but then you'd also want a way of replacing them, so maybe only having 1 extra soul from soul punch stored at a time would work

 

to make Soul Punch more effective i could see a few possibilities:

-have its damage scale with lvl

-add cc by making it a shorter ranged ethereal punch that ragdolls enemies in an aoe cylinder

-add cc by making the original ejected soul from the main target splash out of its back and ragdoll enemies in a aoe cone, like turning an enemy's soul into a high impact shotgun shell

 

i like the possible frozen augment for terrify. you could call it petrify

 

and desecrate is good as is. reworking the looting mechanic into a buff might be a bit much, and with better cc he wouldnt need it

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My responses below.

 

I'm not a numbers kinda guy so I cant directly respond to your proposed stat changes, but I have to disagree that his problems start there. Numbers can always be adjusted, but bad design such as desecrate are much larger core problems. This is more just my personal view than anything else tho. I dont disagree that his stats could use some tweaking.

 

1. Soul Punch

Soul punch is currently fine its like all first abilities damage doesn't scale very well so good at low to medium struggles at high level which is fine when most other frames have a weaker first.

 

I have to disagree that soul punch is fine as is. Its basically a weaker version of Oberons smite. I dont want to re-invent the power tho. I think just giving it small aoe ragdoll(so it effects enemies that are basically hugging each other)and making it do more damage to targets with less hp would be enough to set it apart from smite while also bringing it up to par in its own way. Without overpowering it.

 

2. Terrify

It works well and does what it says quite well but maybe being able to recast it while its still going or an area around nekros where if an enemy walks into it the enemy becomes terrified and runs. Possible augment Frozen Terror when they are unable to move in terror.

 

I like your first bit, but the augment sounds more like a band-aid fix to me. The power should by default do something akin to this, or at the very least they should be slowed while they run. Like the Kubrow version of terrify. Augments should be a means of changing how a power works, and altering a players playstyle. Not granting powers effects they should already have. I admit I dont have an idea for an augment for terrify as an example tho.

 

3. Desecrate

Desecrate I feel needs to be reworked to move fit in with his other moves. I think that you should suck up the souls of all the killed enemies. Powering up you by making your armor out of souls increase armor value by X% and increases the armor of your shadows as well it also increases your damage by X% and it also affects shadows of the dead and soul punch so it becomes more viable. Base it off duration with the percentage dropping during the duration. Augment could be change that it effects all team mates with in a 5-10 meter radius of Nekros.

 

I like that it synergizes with his shadows, but the radius would need to be more generous imo as 5-10 basically requires your team to be on top of you. I think there are better alternatives to a desecrate rework however. Something along the lines of a set it and forget it type of ground fog that holds enemies that walk into in place and reduces their accuracy, or something that basically works exacly as the ability is implemented now but drastically changes how it functions.

 

Such as turning all desecrated bodies into shadows(think infested spore flies)that latch onto enemy and ally alike. Providing hp regen and armor(maybe they even act as a sort of "overshield" that depletes after a certain amount of damage is taken) to allies, and debilitates enemies by acting as a sort of temporary blind, or perhaps a miny terrify effect. Like how you or I would react to getting a cloud of bee's around our head.

 

Something a little more exciting and engaging that the player can witness rather than just number buffing is whats needed imho. As desecrate is first place in the boring category and a replacement would be more well recieved by those who would resist it if the power was more fun.

 

4. Shadows of the Dead

Shadows of the Dead is a perfect move except for the AI of you shadows. I feel that if you were able to give them two basic commands it would really improve the skill. Command 1 would be they follow you not cowering behind anything and charging fearlessly into battle basicly meaning that they follow you around not hiding behind crates. Command 2 would be they hold an area taking cover behind objects but still having the guts to fire. So similar to the way they hide behind crates now but they fire a bit more and are bit more willing to get shot cause they are already dead they feel no pain.

 

I cant entirely agree with you that this move is only in need of AI improvements, but your ideas arent far off from mine. The things I'd like to see besides AI improvements would be drastic changes to the soul cache. Such as seriously bumping the limit up(20 is insultingly low), and having it prioritize the most powerful units. Both in what it remembers, and in what order it summons them in. I'd also like to see the shadows be given just a tiny amount of transparency so we can see through them a bit, and if possible it would be nice to let our bullets travel through them. Tho I realize that last bit is probably a programming nightmare.

 

My biggest desired change however is to allow them to survive until killed off. Its a staple of what makes a necromancer class fun, and I'd really love to see Nekros given this type of love by DE. Its rediculous that they currently have both HP, and duration.

 

Your commands I agree with completely tho. I would however take it a step further. Another command wheel(on the same menu as the emotes and such)should be added when they get summoned that would provide a variety of orders. Such as "Defend this position", "Follow that ally", "Do your own thing", and just for fun "Self Destruct". The default command would instead be changed from what it is now("do your own thing")to "stick with me". Allowing us the freedom to still let them run around as they do now. While also providing much needed utility via new commands. Combine this with allowing them to stay alive until they die and suddenly you have a totally unique playstyle in warframe, and it adds importance to the minions we can summon with still allowing them to be expendable.

As for how we get them to follow us again after issuing another command recasting 4 would summon them to us via teleport. As many have suggested before.

 

All in all I agree with most of your desired changes/upgrades but I'd go a little further. I'm becoming pleasantly surprised by the more frequent interest in people looking to change Nekros into something better.

Edited by PsychoticMarik
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Desecrate is fine how it is.  If you want to make it better, just give it a 100% proc chance.  Then make a new augment for it that that sets desecrated bodies on fire for 15 seconds at max level and make the bodies cause a 100% burn proc to any other enemy that touches the fire.  Call the Augment Desecrated Flame. Everyone is happy.

 

Your welcome.

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Desecrate is fine how it is.  If you want to make it better, just give it a 100% proc chance.  Then make a new augment for it that that sets desecrated bodies on fire for 15 seconds at max level and make the bodies cause a 100% burn proc to any other enemy that touches the fire.  Call the Augment Desecrated Flame. Everyone is happy.

 

Your welcome.

Desecrate is by no stretch of the imagination fine as it is. Advocating otherwise is encouraging bad design.

I'm getting tired of constantly explaining whats wrong with it, so I'm just gonna take various parts of other posts to help explain why.

 

These come from another poster known as Archwizard.

 

"It doesn't blend with his toolkit; the health orbs can keep Nekros alive but do nothing for his minions, and maximizing it excludes the entirety of his arsenal. It plays the metagame for loot bonuses, rather than actively influencing the mission right in front of you."

 

"If it weren’t for the corpse relation, it would have no reason being in a necromancer’s arsenal"

 

"It should never be in the power of one class to influence the reward system of the game."

This is important.

 

"Players gain a sense of entitlement towards the loot he provides, and your teammates will often get very angry if you aren't furiously mashing the button. Desecrate distills the main reason players run missions down to its purest, most mindless form."

Even if you make it a 1 handed cast or proc 100% this mindset amoung teammates will still persist.

 

These last few are from myself.

 

"This ability has nothing to do with his theme. You could put this on ember. "She burns her enemies to ashes for extra loot!". You could put this on Volt. "Gives you a shocking chance at more goodies!".

You could tack this onto anyone, and it would be lilterally no different than it is right now..."

This point is actually hilariously(read Tragically)accurate when you look at your suggested augment.

 

"We shouldnt be encouraging DE's bad habbits. Desecrate is the very incarnation of bad game design both in concept and in implementation. I almost guarantee that somewhere some dev team is citing this ability as an example of what not to do."

 

"The only thing that boggles my mind more than DE implementing abilities like this is a large portion of its communities complacency to accept them."

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Desecrating corpses for personal enrichment has nothing to do with Necromancy? Really?  REALLY?

Did you seriously not read my previous post at all?

Do I really need to quote it for you a 2nd time?

 

"This ability has nothing to do with his theme. You could put this on ember. "She burns her enemies to ashes for extra loot!". You could put this on Volt. "Gives you a shocking chance at more goodies!".

You could tack this onto anyone, and it would be lilterally no different than it is right now..."

This point is actually hilariously(read Tragically)accurate when you look at your suggested augment.

 

Take special note of how I mention you could tack this onto Ember(and again point out how your augment idea is basically embers version of desecrate), or volt. Hell you could tack this onto Oberon because his effects almost look like fire or something. What about frost? His version of desecrate could freeze a body and then explode it before the loot pops out. Literally any frame in the game could have desecrate pasted onto to them, and the only thing that would change is the visual effect that goes off before the bodies dissapear and the loot drops.

 

When an ability on a frame could be taken off and applied to anyone else without even having to change anything then we have a problem. If you took shadows of the dead and put it onto ash you would think "well that doesnt make sense...ash isnt a necromancer". Desecrate however wouldnt make anyone think twice. That is the definition of boring design without a true theme. The only thing it has in common at all with necromancy is that it effects bodies. Whoo hoo. I suppose that means that any ability in the game that disintegrates or vaporizes a body is now related to necromancy.

 

I could go on and on, but by now I certainly hope its clear to you why it only fits his them at the very basic/boring of levels.

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Did you seriously not read my previous post at all?

Do I really need to quote it for you a 2nd time?

 

"This ability has nothing to do with his theme. You could put this on ember. "She burns her enemies to ashes for extra loot!". You could put this on Volt. "Gives you a shocking chance at more goodies!".

You could tack this onto anyone, and it would be lilterally no different than it is right now..."

This point is actually hilariously(read Tragically)accurate when you look at your suggested augment.

 

Take special note of how I mention you could tack this onto Ember(and again point out how your augment idea is basically embers version of desecrate), or volt. Hell you could tack this onto Oberon because his effects almost look like fire or something. What about frost? His version of desecrate could freeze a body and then explode it before the loot pops out. Literally any frame in the game could have desecrate pasted onto to them, and the only thing that would change is the visual effect that goes off before the bodies dissapear and the loot drops.

 

When an ability on a frame could be taken off and applied to anyone else without even having to change anything then we have a problem. If you took shadows of the dead and put it onto ash you would think "well that doesnt make sense...ash isnt a necromancer". Desecrate however wouldnt make anyone think twice. That is the definition of boring design without a true theme. The only thing it has in common at all with necromancy is that it effects bodies. Whoo hoo. I suppose that means that any ability in the game that disintegrates or vaporizes a body is now related to necromancy.

 

I could go on and on, but by now I certainly hope its clear to you why it only fits his them at the very basic/boring of levels.

Necromancers desecrate corpse for their own profit. It fits his theme.  It doesn't make sense if you put it on Ember or Volt.

 

You could put shadows one ash and no one would bat and eye (shadow clone justsu).  Your argument doesn't hold up.

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Necromancers desecrate corpse for their own profit. It fits his theme.  It doesn't make sense if you put it on Ember or Volt.

 

You could put shadows one ash and no one would bat and eye (shadow clone justsu).  Your argument doesn't hold up.

It's an awful concept and awful ability regardless of whether it fits the necromancer theme. Most frames have four abilities. Nekros has three, and a loot button. What does that loot button do?

1. Prove that there's no reason DE couldnt just increase the drop rates, and then give Nekros four actual abilities.

2. Force players to choose between gameplay and rewards. "You want to get stuff in the game? Try not playing it" makes no sense and is some of the worst game design I've seen. Nekros is expected to be a loot piñata, a reward bot, and little else. This is a big example of typical Skinner's Box methods in games and undermines the purpose of gameplay. It shouldn't ever have existed.

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It's an awful concept and awful ability regardless of whether it fits the necromancer theme. Most frames have four abilities. Nekros has three, and a loot button.

Most frames have two good skills at most.  If you consider him to have 3 good skills then he is ahead of the curve, and you have nothing to complain about.  Even my favorite frame, Trinity, has a terrible skill.

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I said that just because it fits the theme, doesn't mean it's a good ability. I then explained why it isn't. You said "other frames have bad abilities" which was willful ignorance of the problems with Desecrate that I pointed out.

No, it isn't. I like the skill and I think it fits the theme to boot.  You think it doesn't. That's just differing opinions. Yours isn't automatically correct. 

 

Then I pointed out that even my favorite frame has a bad skill, so even if we agreed that desecrate was a bad skill (we don't) that still wouldn't make him unique in that aspect.

 

I didn't ignore anything. You on the other hand ignored everything I said and still are.

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No, it isn't. I like the skill and I think it fits the theme to boot.  You think it doesn't. That's just differing opinions. Yours isn't automatically correct. 

 

Then I pointed out that even my favorite frame has a bad skill, so even if we agreed that desecrate was a bad skill (we don't) that still wouldn't make him unique in that aspect.

 

I didn't ignore anything. You on the other hand ignored everything I said and still are.

I'm not the person who said it didn't fit the theme.

This was my post:

It's an awful concept and awful ability regardless of whether it fits the necromancer theme. Most frames have four abilities. Nekros has three, and a loot button. What does that loot button do?

1. Prove that there's no reason DE couldnt just increase the drop rates, and then give Nekros four actual abilities.

2. Force players to choose between gameplay and rewards. "You want to get stuff in the game? Try not playing it" makes no sense and is some of the worst game design I've seen. Nekros is expected to be a loot piñata, a reward bot, and little else. This is a big example of typical Skinner's Box methods in games and undermines the purpose of gameplay. It shouldn't ever have existed.

That was the first one I made on this thread, and has points that you didn't and haven't addressed. It's not just a "bad skill". It's not a skill. It is just a loot bot. And that's unhealthy for the frame and the game.

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Necromancers desecrate corpse for their own profit. It fits his theme.  It doesn't make sense if you put it on Ember or Volt.

 

You could put shadows one ash and no one would bat and eye (shadow clone justsu).  Your argument doesn't hold up.

It does make sense based on implementation and concept. Volt and Ember amoung a list of others have an excuse that would allow desecrate to fit their themes just as well. The only thing that changes is what happens to the body. Burning/vaporizing it. That is literally the only difference in how it would be implemented.

 

You could absolutely not put shadows of the dead on ash exactly as it is right now and have no one question it. I'm talking about no changes or tweaks to it whatsoever. A straight up copy and paste. You could not do that with ash without changing its mechanics(such as soul cache, the way in which they are all summoned), and changing its visuals.

 

You can however copy and paste desecrate exactly as it is right now onto a very large portion of frames and have it still work. No changes at all. This is the point I've been trying to get through for the past 3 or so posts now. I dont know how I can make it any clearer. The only thing this ability has in common with necromancy is that it involves bodies, but you could paste it as it is right now onto just about anyone else and nothing would have to be altered. Its the flimsiest ability for his theme you can possible make, and thats only part of its problem.

Edited by PsychoticMarik
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I'm not the person who said it didn't fit the theme.

This was my post:

That was the first one I made on this thread, and has points that you didn't and haven't addressed. It's not just a "bad skill". It's not a skill. It is just a loot bot. And that's unhealthy for the frame and the game.

I didn't say you did. You still haven't addressed any of my points.  It is still a skill whether you like it or not.  It's not unhealthy.  Even if you believed it was, you haven't made a case to support that stance.

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You could absolutely not put shadows of the dead on ash exactly as it is right now and have no one question it. I'm talking about no changes or tweaks to it whatsoever. A straight up copy and paste. You could not do that with ash without changing its mechanics(such as soul cache, the way in which they are all summoned), and changing its visuals.

Yes you could.  More easily than Desecrate too. Naruto isn't very good IMO, but it is undeniably popular. There are ninja skills that ressurect the dead to fight for you in that series.  Ash is the most ninja like frame in the game, so people would not even question it.

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I didn't say you did. You still haven't addressed any of my points.  It is still a skill whether you like it or not.  It's not unhealthy.  Even if you believed it was, you haven't made a case to support that stance.

Except I did. You continue to ignore what I said about how it pushes choosing rewards instead of gameplay instead of getting both, how it brings out the worst in Skinner's Box game design in Warframe, how it shows that the global drop rate could be increased without collapsing DE's business model. You ignored what others said (or were quoted in saying); how it causes players to expect Nekros to just drop loot for them and not do anything else, how it doesn't help Nekros other skills and actually hurts them if it's built for. You continue address the theme thing to me even though I've already told you it has nothing to do with my point, and then you say something like "you haven't made a case to support that stance" when I clearly have which, again, can only be explained by willful ignorance.

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