Specters of the Rail: U2.1 - Nekros Changes

[Eldritchsqueaker]

I hope these aren't the final revisions, I really would like Nekros to be more playable by the time his prime comes out.

[SoulOfTheHunter]

Love the changes. I am able to create a build that hosts all 3 augments and is very, very usable. The changes have allowed all 4 abilities to be utilised on a single build rather than a build for a single ability.

My build http://goo.gl/efpcFM

Gives 61% damage reduction and the rest can be dealth with by Health Conversion, I don't think the extra damage reduction is equired simply because you are only 1/8th of the target anyway. I put Primed Continuity on which results in a ~2% decay on SotD which should last 50 seconds. This assumes I don't top them up or that the amount of damage they recieve kills them. I've not had issues with energy (Zenurik) but Equilibrium or Flow instead of Streamline might be a alternative

Soul Punch = same, will probably still not use this
Desecrate = awesome, I have no issues with the drop rate. The 'cooldown' is a little odd, but I don't find that it hampers gameplay at all. Basic range is good.
Terrify = same, but now more useable as power range can be kept relativly high (ie 100% or more), I use this as a panic button when reviving downed players
Shadows of the Dead = awesome, the Decay is a little annoying, but I don't have an issue with how long they last.

Suggestions;

• animation speeds are still too slow. Sometimes recasting SotD will do the full length animation, and other times a short one. It always needs to be the shorter one if there are any SotD shadows still around. I understand the reason why it does this; if it has to summon it does the long animation, if it's just topping up it does the short.
• Recasting SotD needs to take into account the amount of shadows are still there. If 2 are gone then the cost to top up the rest and summon 2 more should not be the cost of a full summon. It should be 2/7ths the initial cost plus an amount proportinal to what has been lost in the remaining shadows. There should be no energy cost to teleport to your location apart from teh cost to top up their health.
• (Update) I think the Shield of Shadows augment needs to be slightly higher now, not just 6%. Maybe 7%. This would result in reaching the maximum damage reduction at 184% power strength. 90% damage reduction at (about) +90% power strength seems logical.

Bugs;

• On occasion I have noticed that a shadow I have summoned has not taken on the visual effect. This resulted in me blasting away only to realise he is linked but does not have the 'skin treatment'.
• (maybe not) If you are knocked off the map your shadows are not dispelled (desecrate is though) and respawning will link you again. I'm not sure if this behaviour is correct/consitent with other frames but it is nice.

Edited August 11, 2016 by SoulOfTheHunter

[Megakirby7]

1 hour ago, PsychoticMarik said:

Health decay needs to go.

Having it is literally the definition of anti-fun. Not only did you cut my shadow amount by half(I personally ran with 14)for "performance issues" which no one is buying, but you went ahead and flat out lied to us about them not having a duration. Yes, leaving out that important little detail in your dev stream counts as a lie.

 

 

Agreed. Please remove the health decay. The health decay is just a worse form of standard duration.

[----_Hayden_Tenno_----]

27 minutes ago, Cano_Lathra said:

Actually, no, as the 46% of the time that no loot happened, the corpse wasn't consumed. This allowed for multiple casts, and typically resulted in ~90% loot chance, with 10% of the ragdolls dissipating before they were desecrated. Now, every corpse is consumed, regardless of whether or not something drops. This means a ~35% nerf to desecrate's loot chances.

its always been like that, difference is that u got atleast health orbs before... wich have been nerfed now.

the chance of getting extra loot per desecrated body is the same.

"Sometimes corpses yield no drops because the enemy's loot table includes a chance to drop nothing."

 

go to 4:02 - 25% playback speed-

 check the second body he desecrates, it contains NOTHING, just the health orb.

[Vali]

Just gonna say this:

Let duration reduce drain on Desecrate or remove the Health Decay completely. With the nerfs to health orb drop rates it has become increasingly difficult to upkeep Shadows. 

Edit:

Just a reminder that Desecrate works with efficiency+range while SoTD works with duration+strength, modding for both is completely counter intuitive. 

Edit 2: 

Also it would be nice if SoTD displayed the lowest HP Shadow, it would help immensely with timing heals. 

Edited August 12, 2016 by Agentawesome

[ThePredicament]

The new mechanics is really awesome, just need some slight tweaks. Tested it on Elara, ~40 mins basically solo (other dude was afk).

New Shadows:

• Shadow nulls should protect those inside the bubble from enemy null dispel.
• Health decay is garbo, the damage reduction from Shield of Shadows is good but dealing with those two things really hurt the efficiency in mid/late game.
• Damage reduction from Shields need to be beefed up a bit, not a crazy amount but since the Shadows aren't that reliable, it's currently not worth having in tense situations

New Desecrate:

• Takes up way too much energy compared to before. Instead of per tick it should be an area around the first "kernel pop" costing 25-50.
• Since it's a toggle, shouldn't be turned off when jumping into null bubbles, just mute the skill so it doesn't des inside them.

Aside from those, it's a great rework, giving Neks the proper battlefield presence in the game. He can focus on the good stuff, while still supporting the team and being an adds god. What's really cool is that he's not so much different to what he was before, only making the game style and builds much better.

[Eldritchsqueaker]

The health drain shouldn't be a thing, especially after nerfing the number of shadows. It seems counterintuitive.

[keyboardmann]

As other have said, Health Decay needs to go. It's just another duration under different name. If you're going to keep health decay, make the shadows 3 times stronger by default or something like that. Currently you need to mod for duration, strength, range and optionally efficiency. Plus, you have a frame whose all 4 augments are great... There's no place for such amount of mods.

[Thebel]

Shadows are terribly weak it seems, Hp drains over time/ multipliers are lower/ there are less of them.

Desecrate is super slow, and with despoil can get you killed by your team if a lot of things drop at once, should just be a normal toggle like the other ones, drains hp over time, regardless of there being bodies or not, would help a lot with getting your Hp nuked every now and then.

[Xebov]

1 hour ago, Cano_Lathra said:

Actually, no, as the 46% of the time that no loot happened, the corpse wasn't consumed. This allowed for multiple casts, and typically resulted in ~90% loot chance, with 10% of the ragdolls dissipating before they were desecrated. Now, every corpse is consumed, regardless of whether or not something drops. This means a ~35% nerf to desecrate's loot chances.

You had a 90% chance that a Health Orb appeared and if a Health Orb appeared you had a 60% chance to roll the loot table again. So you already had a 46% Chance that a consumed corpse returned no loot other than a Health Orb.

 

8 minutes ago, Thebel said:

Desecrate is super slow, and with despoil can get you killed by your team if a lot of things drop at once, should just be a normal toggle like the other ones, drains hp over time, regardless of there being bodies or not, would help a lot with getting your Hp nuked every now and then.

I dont see how it can get you killed. You need 10 HP per corpse base value. I run Blind Rage, so i have 15 HP per corpse and i have no issues picking up enought health orbs to counter that. If you go for efficiency you can even counter it with Rejuvenation. A constant drain when toggled on would make Desecrate into a drain ability wich would stop energy recharge effects, so its a bad idea.

[aerosoul1337]

We need power strength, duration and efficiency now.

And full shadow build isn't worth it, you still need mixed build.

It's not as good as it was especially for mixed build :/

 

Health decay of the shadows is even worse than old duration.

Edited August 11, 2016 by aerosoul1337

[ColPresumptuous]

When i heard about this i was quite scared... I like my Nekros (I never did to begin with but now I use him a ton) and this change would impact me alot.

 

Well, I was running around in game today wondering why in the hell my desecrate wasnt working... then i found out they had pushed the toogle, I grimiced turned away and and gave it a try... and i have to admit, its an actual improvement, not sure if the extra loot drop rate is any different (seems lower, although most of the old drops were life orbs the majority of the time). So yeah, this isnt that bad of an update, the shadows are a little rough given i used to use them as mass distractions with my old duration build and they worked great that way, but they where more a panic button for me anyway.

 

i went streamline +Fleeting and it works wonders, especially once i hit the zenurik. I never have to touch number 3 again during a mission.

Edited August 11, 2016 by ColPresumptuous

[Aearie]

36 minutes ago, Xebov said:

You had a 90% chance that a Health Orb appeared and if a Health Orb appeared you had a 60% chance to roll the loot table again. So you already had a 46% Chance that a consumed corpse returned no loot other than a Health Orb.

You have it backwards actually. It was a 60% chance of a health orb drop, and if that health orb dropped there was a 90% chance of additional loot.

The issue here is that the chance of a health orb drop didn't matter. Because corpses weren't deleted until they naturally despawned or successfully dropped a health orb when desecrated, it was generally only a matter of time until it did. So in reality, Desecrate's loot drop chance when spammed was actually around 90%.

Currently, the corpse is desecrated, there is a loot chance of 54%, and then the corpse is deleted. No rerolls. So if you never spammed Desecrate, you'll be getting around the same amount of loot as before. If you were someone who spammed Desecrate, however, your looting chances have gone done significantly. Personally, I still prefer the current Desecrate even if I'm getting less loot, but it is still a nerf.

[WhyNotBro]

Having Vitality, Overextended (a half), Streamline, Flow , Blind Rage , Primed Conti, Stretch and Despoil (Cunniung drift is my Exilus). Feeling pretty fine <3 Really, i love the changes, mostly because of the fact, that now Nekros is a fully functional mobile fighting-able unit. Desecrate was toggled on since the start and i kept this on over 25 mins on Hieracon. Used my sent with Medy-Ray as a healing support stuff (still have energy/health pizzas, other frames in party abilities, my melee with lovely life drain mod euqipped, syndicate weps with heal / energy restore, schools). Many ways to keep yourself alive, while desecrate is active. Now i can do what other Frames do, keeping my desecrate on. This is, for me, the  major change. I don't really care if the final amount of loot will be less than before. This thing doesn't mean much untill i am able to actually play Nekros.

Ofcourse, no changes for 1st and 2nd abilities kinda weird, since it is a Nekros rework, you know :D  Same thing to Ulty's augment. See no point in it at all :D

[Elathas]

18 minutes ago, WhyNotBro said:

Having Vitality, Overextended (a half), Streamline, Flow , Blind Rage , Primed Conti, Stretch and Despoil (Cunniung drift is my Exilus). Feeling pretty fine <3 Really, i love the changes, mostly because of the fact, that now Nekros is a fully functional mobile fighting-able unit. Desecrate was toggled on since the start and i kept this on over 25 mins on Hieracon. Used my sent with Medy-Ray as a healing support stuff (still have energy/health pizzas, other frames in party abilities, my melee with lovely life drain mod euqipped, syndicate weps with heal / energy restore, schools). Many ways to keep yourself alive, while desecrate is active. Now i can do what other Frames do, keeping my desecrate on. This is, for me, the  major change. I don't really care if the final amount of loot will be less than before. This thing doesn't mean much untill i am able to actually play Nekros.

Ofcourse, no changes for 1st and 2nd abilities kinda weird, since it is a Nekros rework, you know :D  Same thing to Ulty's augment. See no point in it at all :D

The problem is, that with the right build you could all ready play Nekros, you would have more shadows, more control over them, and well more loot : / the most significant part of this rework is that it makes farming easier, but at the cost of the drop rate of items : / They did some interesting things, but over all it's a nerf.... well to fair, at least in combat, it can be argued that you can now compensate with terrify  (shrug) but drop wise it's just a plain nerf and in combat you now have to pay way more attention to your shadows... Nekros is still usable, but his play style has changed, and over all in my eyes his effectiveness has gone down : /   

[Doctor_Grayfield]

It has been said, but I'll say it again since it irritates me so:  The health drain on Shadows... why?  Why would you remove the duration, and then add it right back in by sapping their health constantly?  I can't wrap my brain around the logic there.  I also do not recall, at all, any of you mentioning that this would be the case when you showed the Nekros changes in Dev Stream.  I'll have to watch it again to be sure, but this feels like a huge change that should definitely have been mentioned.

Secondly, though with the same ability, the shadow teleporting does not seem to work at all.  Regardless of my distance, I only seem to revive the dead ones rather than teleport any of the group to me.  Please look at this power again, and I'd love it if that ridiculous health drain would go away.

Edited August 11, 2016 by Windspike

[WhyNotBro]

14 minutes ago, Elathas said:

The problem is, that with the right build you could all ready play Nekros, you would have more shadows, more control over them, and well more loot : / the most significant part of this rework is that it makes farming easier, but at the cost of the drop rate of items : / They did some interesting things, but over all it's a nerf.... well to fair, at least in combat, it can be argued that you can now compensate with terrify  (shrug) but drop wise it's just a plain nerf and in combat you now have to pay way more attention to your shadows... Nekros is still usable, but his play style has changed, and over all in my eyes his effectiveness has gone down : /   

I haven't mentioned ulty in my post for a reason :D I saw how quickly my guys vanished away. So i stopped paying attention to ulty, just pressed it by cd :D
Seeing many comments about how ulty is actually bad now because of the health drain (and yes, i agree with this), makes me think that DE will take away (i really hope so) the drain. No duration means no duration, indeed.
Without the drain you can come back to your King-of-the-deads role. But this time, while desecrate is on.
Anyway, i can't remember when DE released something already done-an-ready.Changes will come.

For now, i like Nekros :p and this is the most important thing (for me, ofc).

 

Edit: Same thoughts about the drop story. Something might be changed sooner or later. Yeah, having less loot sucks. However, come on! You can move now. You are free :D

Edited August 11, 2016 by WhyNotBro

[Tesseract7777]

DE: "It will no longer be duration based." 

Actuality: It is now still duration based, and even worse than if it had the old duration mechanic. 

So... when do we get the fix for this oversight/error? Or do we need an apology from DE for a deliberate lie? 

Edited August 11, 2016 by Tesseract7777

[Thebel]

Also realized there is something weird with the level scaling of the shadows, did Pluto excavation and the osprays consistently spawned as lvl 35 while some other things like brood mothers actually scaled to lvl 101. I'm assuming that the level you kill them is the lvl they spawn but it didn't entirely make sense.

[Elathas]

20 minutes ago, WhyNotBro said:

I haven't mentioned ulty in my post for a reason :D I saw how quickly my guys vanished away. So i stopped paying attention to ulty, just pressed it by cd :D
Seeing many comments about how ulty is actually bad now because of the health drain (and yes, i agree with this), makes me think that DE will take away (i really hope so) the drain. No duration means no duration, indeed.
Without the drain you can come back to your King-of-the-deads role. But this time, while desecrate is on.
Anyway, i can't remember when DE released something already done-an-ready.Changes will come.

For now, i like Nekros :p and this is the most important thing (for me, ofc).

 

Edit: Same thoughts about the drop story. Something might be changed sooner or later. Yeah, having less loot sucks. However, come on! You can move now. You are free :D

lol expect I was all ready free! Which leaves me a little bit less satisfied with the changes (shrug) don't get me wrong. I like the desecrate toogle, but with the right build you could move, you could have shadows, and you could even get extra loot : / Now sure, I can do all that now, just weaker, with less protection and less control : / Ughh, Nekros is my favorite frame, I have stuck 5 forma in him, so I will admit to being a little biased, but still it hard to not see this as just a nerf... But, I am glad people are playing him, who knows maybe if gets enough popularity, he can get some pet themed cosmetics 0_0 shadow armor would be pretty cool       

[SoulOfTheHunter]

4 minutes ago, Elathas said:

 But, I am glad people are playing him, who knows maybe if gets enough popularity, he can get some pet themed cosmetics 0_0 shadow armor would be pretty cool       

So much this. I dont care about Primes anymore. The only reason I used them before was because of the death orb perk in the void (now useless). Standard varients are generally much easier to make suitable for endgame (fashionify/colourise). Nyx is a Prime (lol) example of this; Nyx Prime has silly lumpy things on legs that don't disapear when you swap to immortal skin, because of this I haven't even installed a potato on her. Sure I'll farm Nekros Prime for the mastery, but I'll stick with my 2 standard Nekros for actual gameplay. Skins are the new Primes imho.

[Thebel]

The more I use shadows the more annoyed I get, with a 2% drain / second, you theoretically have a 50 second duration but once you start factoring in damage it drops down quite a bit. It feels like I basically have to recast every 20-30 seconds to keep them alive. Using 100 energy every 20-30 seconds kinda sucks, more so since Nekros has a pretty terrible energy pool for a caster frame, why only 150 instead of 200?

They should have left it with the duration at this rate since it's higher maintenance now since I actually have to worry about them dying, before the only thing that killed them were Nullies, now anything can.

[Elathas]

9 minutes ago, SoulOfTheHunter said:

So much this. I dont care about Primes anymore. The only reason I used them before was because of the death orb perk in the void (now useless). Standard varients are generally much easier to make suitable for endgame (fashionify/colourise). Nyx is a Prime (lol) example of this; Nyx Prime has silly lumpy things on legs that don't disapear when you swap to immortal skin, because of this I haven't even installed a potato on her. Sure I'll farm Nekros Prime for the mastery, but I'll stick with my 2 standard Nekros for actual gameplay. Skins are the new Primes imho.

lol so it truly has become fashion frame?!?!? :0 It was only a matter of time!...  hmm, I still like the bonus stats primes have, although maybe they can get a new passive or a unique passive, to truly separate them from the non primed version? That would be cool, like 5 more shadows (cough, cough) or you know whatever, but one thing is certain. I won't be in a rush to to lvl nekros prime 6 times to maximize him 0_0 probably, wait for a double affinity weekend or something.     

[Necromancer9]

After playing with the Nekros rework for a couple of hours I found Desecrate felt really good, and Shadows of the Dead felt weak and unreliable.  The end result is Nekros feels smoother to play, has more modding options, and has fewer moments of weakness, but feels less powerful on the whole and less like the necromancer I want him to be.

What feels so good about Desecrate now is that I typically only need to cast it a few times per mission.  That change makes Natural Talent feel less necessary, which opens up other mods for use like Health Conversion with Despoil.  Getting more health orbs from Desecrate would make it feel better by giving it more impact which is something it lacks.  The only drawback for me about the change to Desecrate is that it now consumes corpses even if it fails to get a loot drop from them, which makes Nekros substantially less effective at increasing loot drops in farming runs.

The one thing I really like about the changes to Shadows of the Dead is it can be recast now.  This means, for me at least, that I don't have to go find an out of the way place to cast it every time.  Some of the shadows can cover me while I summon new ones or heal the old ones.  Shield of Shadows can still be protecting me while I shore up my minions.  This is another thing that makes Natural Talent less important on Nekros.  That part of the update is great!  What leaves Shadows of the Dead feeling weak is the health drain on the shadows combined with how few of them we can have now.  Because there are only 7 shadows possible now, each one is drawing more enemy fire.  Each shadow is now less durable than it was before (because their health now drains) resulting in them going down even faster.  Because there are fewer shadows, it makes Shield of Shadows builds more reliant on each individual shadow than before.  The shadows go down quicker than they used to, so Shield of Shadows is a less reliable defense.  The shadows tend to wander off and don't seem to even try to follow Nekros, which also leaves him vulnerable.  Just removing the shadows' health drain would help make Shadows of the Dead feel stronger, and require less casting and energy.  It would also be great to have their health and damage scaling increased to compensate for having so few of them.  I really liked having lots of minions (I typically ran with enough power strength to have 15 shadows), and that was the high point for me playing Nekros.  Even if we won't get more of them back, having them try to stay near Nekros would help me feel their presence a bit more while making directing them easier.

A couple of the bugs I have noticed with the rework are:

• Getting more than 7 shadows when casting Shadows of the Dead.  I have had as many as 10 at once.
• It seems that shadows operating Ramparts do not get summoned back to me even if I cast Shadows of the Dead far away from them.

My mod set-up when I was getting these bugs was Rejuvenation, Health Conversion, Vitality, Blind Rage, Continuity, Despoil, Fleeting Expertise, Shield of Shadows, and Streamline.

[SoulOfTheHunter]

12 minutes ago, Elathas said:

hmm, I still like the bonus stats primes have

Mag vs. Mag Prime = an extra polarity and 75 extra health
Nyx vs. Nyx Prime = an extra polarity, 75 extra shield and +0.025 sprint speed
Frost vs. Frost Prime = an extra polarity and 75 extra shield
etc

The same 'meh' differences exist between all primes. A extra polarity that may or may not save you a forma and between 10-25% extra (base) health or shields. This is getting off topic so we should jsut leave it at that.

Edited August 11, 2016 by SoulOfTheHunter