Nekros: some QoL tweaks and a synergy

[o.0-]

Nekros, has an interesting Kit, and should only need a few QoL tweaks to get the frame into a solid place, here are some ideas that I hope get considered:

Soul Punch could scale along the lines of how Landslide for Atlas works, where Melee mods help Landslide, secondary mods can be considered to boost to the ability. And a tie in with Shadows, is that Soul Punch can mark specific enemies to be locked into the Shadows spawn list.

• Alternative scaling idea, convert Impact Damage to Finisher and have additional damage scale as a percent of enemy level (like the Jat Kittag mod), so no need to add any weapon mods to affect the ability and the ability would be able to scale better.

Terrify either needs to reduce energy cost to 50, or add more for that 75 energy cost. The change I'd consider is allow Terrify to affect all enemies in range, and remove the limited count based on Power Strength.

Desecrate can use a sped up animation and should have an affect on the living. I'd simply add a weaken status affect to the living, which causes affected enemies to deal less damage.

Shadows of the Dead should retain the memory of killed enemies better, so that every time you recast the ability, you do not see a chance of zero shadows and can more easily get the Shadows you want. One of the limits of the ability is having to keep killing between casts to keep the list full, which can get harder the higher the level and the more Shadows spawned at once.

• So hopefully if it's code-able, one possible way to prioritize what stays on the spawning list, is to tag or kill the specific enemies you want with Soul Punch. So for example, against infested, you are working hard to kill Ancients to add to the spawning queue, but Leapers are dying in droves and push the units you want off the list, so when you go to recast the ability, you are not getting what you were expecting with how the ability works now. Therefore, now Soul Punch can be the means to lock in specific targets for the Shadows you want to Spawn, filling the list out on preference.
  • An example, the game currently saves the last 20 enemies killed, you Soul Punch three Techs and a Nullifier and proceed to kill a mix of 30 other enemies. So currently those that you might have wanted for Shadows of the Dead are now gone, and you would only see a mix from the last 20 killed. So if Soul Punch could be a way to retain those four that you wanted as Shadows, when it comes time to recast, you will get those four and whatever mix that has been killed afterwards.
• So Soul Punch becomes an important tool to help supply the Shadows you want when it comes time to recast.

From here, Shadows could then see slight buffs, such as not melting from Nully bubbles, or disappearing from the one Comba/Scrambus variant, and allowing Eximus to substitute regular units in their place when killed by Nekros.

• One last consideration is to never allow the list to empty during a mission. So that as Nekros racks up kills, there will always be 20 possible Shadows to cast from, that can be cast for the rest of the mission. With kills simply updating the units on the list. And so Soul Punch would be able to allow players to eventually choose how their Shadow army would look, and would need to keep using Soul Punch, to rescale the Shadows against the scaling enemies.

Name for Passive:

Soul Curse - Nekros leeches health from dying enemies in a range of 20 M.

Either it could be 25 per enemy like Health Orbs, or maybe scale, plausibly 5% of an enemies base Health. Might need a cap but say 35 from a Tech shouldn't be so bad.

Edited May 15, 2016 by SPARTAN-187.Thanatos
Adding an alternative idea

[Aquasurge]

terrify should summon skeletal hand that grab enemies as they leave the range of the ability

[o.0-]

How would that work with Terrify? Are you thinking like how Vauban can hold enemies in place?

[Fifield]

Most of those are straight up buffs, which he doesn't need. Rather, other frames need to be brought down to his level.

His ult could clearly be a lot cooler though.  It should definitely include eximus enemies, possibly balanced by a 30s max storage.
I'd suggest tapping 4 removes the last soul.  It would be nice if there was some representation of enemies but a simple number would suffice.

 

[Thebel]

Only changes I'd want are Terrify to not be power strength limited and Shadows to not get insa-nuked by nullies. As far as frames go, he's one of the most well rounded with a lot of utility and scaling damage.

[(XBOX)KickassNinja14]

On 5/15/2016 at 10:45 PM, SPARTAN-187.Thanatos said:

Nekros, has an interesting Kit, and should only need a few QoL tweaks to get the frame into a solid place, here are some ideas that I hope get considered:

Soul Punch could scale along the lines of how Landslide for Atlas works, where Melee mods help Landslide, secondary mods can be considered to boost to the ability. And a tie in with Shadows, is that Soul Punch can mark specific enemies to be locked into the Shadows spawn list.

• Alternative scaling idea, convert Impact Damage to Finisher and have additional damage scale as a percent of enemy level (like the Jat Kittag mod), so no need to add any weapon mods to affect the ability and the ability would be able to scale better.

Terrify either needs to reduce energy cost to 50, or add more for that 75 energy cost. The change I'd consider is allow Terrify to affect all enemies in range, and remove the limited count based on Power Strength.

Desecrate can use a sped up animation and should have an affect on the living. I'd simply add a weaken status affect to the living, which causes affected enemies to deal less damage.

Shadows of the Dead should retain the memory of killed enemies better, so that every time you recast the ability, you do not see a chance of zero shadows and can more easily get the Shadows you want. One of the limits of the ability is having to keep killing between casts to keep the list full, which can get harder the higher the level and the more Shadows spawned at once.

• So hopefully if it's code-able, one possible way to prioritize what stays on the spawning list, is to tag or kill the specific enemies you want with Soul Punch. So for example, against infested, you are working hard to kill Ancients to add to the spawning queue, but Leapers are dying in droves and push the units you want off the list, so when you go to recast the ability, you are not getting what you were expecting with how the ability works now. Therefore, now Soul Punch can be the means to lock in specific targets for the Shadows you want to Spawn, filling the list out on preference.
  • An example, the game currently saves the last 20 enemies killed, you Soul Punch three Techs and a Nullifier and proceed to kill a mix of 30 other enemies. So currently those that you might have wanted for Shadows of the Dead are now gone, and you would only see a mix from the last 20 killed. So if Soul Punch could be a way to retain those four that you wanted as Shadows, when it comes time to recast, you will get those four and whatever mix that has been killed afterwards.
• So Soul Punch becomes an important tool to help supply the Shadows you want when it comes time to recast.

From here, Shadows could then see slight buffs, such as not melting from Nully bubbles, or disappearing from the one Comba/Scrambus variant, and allowing Eximus to substitute regular units in their place when killed by Nekros.

• One last consideration is to never allow the list to empty during a mission. So that as Nekros racks up kills, there will always be 20 possible Shadows to cast from, that can be cast for the rest of the mission. With kills simply updating the units on the list. And so Soul Punch would be able to allow players to eventually choose how their Shadow army would look, and would need to keep using Soul Punch, to rescale the Shadows against the scaling enemies.

Name for Passive:

Soul Curse - Nekros leeches health from dying enemies in a range of 20 M.

Either it could be 25 per enemy like Health Orbs, or maybe scale, plausibly 5% of an enemies base Health. Might need a cap but say 35 from a Tech shouldn't be so bad.

You so know nekros is getting a passive where he regens health when enemies die near him.basically the same thing you're saying.

[(XBOX)EntropysAcolyte]

On May 15, 2016 at 10:45 PM, SPARTAN-187.Thanatos said:

Nekros, has an interesting Kit, and should only need a few QoL tweaks to get the frame into a solid place, here are some ideas that I hope get considered:

Soul Punch could scale along the lines of how Landslide for Atlas works, where Melee mods help Landslide, secondary mods can be considered to boost to the ability. And a tie in with Shadows, is that Soul Punch can mark specific enemies to be locked into the Shadows spawn list.

• Alternative scaling idea, convert Impact Damage to Finisher and have additional damage scale as a percent of enemy level (like the Jat Kittag mod), so no need to add any weapon mods to affect the ability and the ability would be able to scale better.

Terrify either needs to reduce energy cost to 50, or add more for that 75 energy cost. The change I'd consider is allow Terrify to affect all enemies in range, and remove the limited count based on Power Strength.

Desecrate can use a sped up animation and should have an affect on the living. I'd simply add a weaken status affect to the living, which causes affected enemies to deal less damage.

Shadows of the Dead should retain the memory of killed enemies better, so that every time you recast the ability, you do not see a chance of zero shadows and can more easily get the Shadows you want. One of the limits of the ability is having to keep killing between casts to keep the list full, which can get harder the higher the level and the more Shadows spawned at once.

• So hopefully if it's code-able, one possible way to prioritize what stays on the spawning list, is to tag or kill the specific enemies you want with Soul Punch. So for example, against infested, you are working hard to kill Ancients to add to the spawning queue, but Leapers are dying in droves and push the units you want off the list, so when you go to recast the ability, you are not getting what you were expecting with how the ability works now. Therefore, now Soul Punch can be the means to lock in specific targets for the Shadows you want to Spawn, filling the list out on preference.
  • An example, the game currently saves the last 20 enemies killed, you Soul Punch three Techs and a Nullifier and proceed to kill a mix of 30 other enemies. So currently those that you might have wanted for Shadows of the Dead are now gone, and you would only see a mix from the last 20 killed. So if Soul Punch could be a way to retain those four that you wanted as Shadows, when it comes time to recast, you will get those four and whatever mix that has been killed afterwards.
• So Soul Punch becomes an important tool to help supply the Shadows you want when it comes time to recast.

From here, Shadows could then see slight buffs, such as not melting from Nully bubbles, or disappearing from the one Comba/Scrambus variant, and allowing Eximus to substitute regular units in their place when killed by Nekros.

• One last consideration is to never allow the list to empty during a mission. So that as Nekros racks up kills, there will always be 20 possible Shadows to cast from, that can be cast for the rest of the mission. With kills simply updating the units on the list. And so Soul Punch would be able to allow players to eventually choose how their Shadow army would look, and would need to keep using Soul Punch, to rescale the Shadows against the scaling enemies.

Name for Passive:

Soul Curse - Nekros leeches health from dying enemies in a range of 20 M.

Either it could be 25 per enemy like Health Orbs, or maybe scale, plausibly 5% of an enemies base Health. Might need a cap but say 35 from a Tech shouldn't be so bad.

These ideas are fantastic, it would greatly increase Nekros's effectivness in each game type and would also help release him from the depence on specialized mods. 

[MindHoney]

I don't know if anyone knows of power creep, but can I please point that is what is happening. Also most of those are buffs, soul punch with meel might be, and some of the shadows was, but the rest is just a buff to him.

[o.0-]

The main change I'd like to see considered is to how Soul Punch and Shadows of the Dead can synergize, while improving how the list for Shadows is handled.

Improvements to Soul Punch's damage and improvements to Terrify and Desecrate would be icing on the cake.