Specters of the Rail: U2.1 - Nekros Changes

[(PSN)B_Psycho2]

 

Edited August 11, 2016 by (PS4)B_Psycho2

[Gurpgork]

5 minutes ago, -BM-Leonhart said:

That is why with fewer but stronger shadows, they don't need to make up the sum of the weaker ones. The fact that each are much tougher and won't get down in one-hit, guarantees more damage in the long run.

They aren't much tougher, though. Unless you're fighting Corpus, they aren't any tougher. We have fewer Shadows with the same amount of HP. 

[-N7-Leonhart]

4 minutes ago, Gurpgork said:

They aren't much tougher, though. Unless you're fighting Corpus, they aren't any tougher. We have fewer Shadows with the same amount of HP. 

Both the HP and damage are bigger than the single shadows from before. The multipliers you see on the HUD are just from the base of each shadow, which is increased now.

Everything in the OP seems to be made on the assumption that the new shadows have the same stats and they lose since they have fewer numbers.

The shadows from before had both scaling numbers and stats with Power Strength, that is why they make a much bigger sum. DE will probably get around this by increasing the stats even more.

Edited August 11, 2016 by -BM-Leonhart

[Matt89Connor]

i repeat every day now....the decay IS A BIG PROBLEM, DE or you reduce the % or eleminate this and change with another solution , this is a feedback no? so Guys of all nations, speak about this problem every day so the DE can understand the problem and fix , they are great, if they want :)

[----Fenrir----]

5 hours ago, SpeedOfLightPuncher said:

active means you can heal them

I could just re-cast the ability before. Which was far superior because not just made it sure that the shadows were not behind in level but also actually positioned them close to me each time so they could actually function as meatshields. Now I have to re-fresh them more often, for the same amount of energy it took to re-cast them before I might add, and additionally they will be spread out all over the place which reduces their effectiveness as meatshields quiet considerably. And that is on top of the reduction in numbers of shadows...

It's a massive nerf of an ability that wasn't even very good to begin with.

Edited August 11, 2016 by ----Fenrir----

[Tizodd]

1 hour ago, lyravega said:

 

Thank you for taking the time to do the math.  Hopefully DE takes notice and realizes they nerfed an ability for no reason.

The 7 minion cap is fine if the reason is to make it easier for lower machines to handle the load.  But the minion health degradation is totally unnecessary.  They're taking damage from enemy fire anyway...why have them constantly losing health just for the sake of losing health?

[lyravega]

22 minutes ago, -BM-Leonhart said:

Everything in the OP seems to be made on the assumption that the new shadows have the same stats and they lose since they have fewer numbers.

Yes, because this is what the game tells me. 130% Power Strength (+30%) still gives you 0.3 health multiplier, and 0.45 damage multiplier for example, and it was the same before. Unless the ability is now adding another bonus on top of those (which would mean it is undocumented), then their base is the same, because what you kill is the same.

[notlamprey]

1 hour ago, (XB1)His 1st Shadow said:

Desecrate - actually triple nerfed? 

1. They purposely lowered health orb drop percentage. I don't think they took into consideration > 2. No longer able to re roll on disappearing corpses that produce nothing. 3. Now costs more in addition to less productivity.

Am I off? I love the QoL changes, toggle desecrate and maintaining/teleporting shadows. Unneeded Nerfs concern me tho.

That's the situation in a nutshell.

Health orbs are now included in the same pool of possible yields as things like ammo, credits, resources and mods. The chance of getting a health orb is also lower than it used to be. Corpses can now disappear without having dropped anything at all.

Desecrate seems to now be less effective as a squad support tool and less effective as a loot support tool. In addition, the hoped-for QOL improvement of channeled casting is offset by the need to wait for corpses to be desecrated. So far those have been the only real negatives for me, but other players are finding additional irritations.

Overall... I'm not really liking it, sadly.

[Taegire01]

3 hours ago, bl4ckhunter said:

the point is that the ability is objectively worse than before the change

Exactly

[PsiWarp]

All in all I'm not really liking the rebalancing of Shadows of the Dead.

I understand that with the additional features added to the ability, devs would think that stronger Shadows with unlimited duration would make gameplay too easy for teams with Nekros. However, despite the good intentions of buffing up Shields and Health of the Shadows, the health decay over time is counterintuitive to these buffs because Shadows are only at the peak of their resilience in the 1st second of summoning and become weaker every second.

The only upside I see from decay-duration is to summon stronger units from our recent kill list, but that means building for duration actually doesn't help us do that frequently enough (you will have to wait until all your Shadows die to recast for a new group of Shadow units).

The way I see it, enemies do not have a hard time killing Shadows as they are prioritized by heightened threat level, ensuring enemies (which vastly outnumber players and Shadows) will focus-fire on Shadows on sight. There's no need for health decay over time, since the recast of SotD provides both healing and recalling of Shadows which are incentives enough for players to keep using the ability (as I suspect devs want players to repeat casts and not press-4-once-and-forget). Of course, without duration, players need a way to summon better Shadows without having to wait until Shadows are killed, so I would suggestion this:

• Soul Punch can be cast on a selected Shadow to remove it (like Frost's Snow Globe and Freeze interaction), allowing recast of Shadows of the Dead to potentially summon a better unit type from the recent kill list.
• Healing of active Shadows is no longer 100% each recast, instead it is a percentage (e.g. 25%) modified by Power Duration. Therefore, Nekros players have the choice to keep duration above average to conserve energy from multiple recasts and heal their Shadows up quickly, or choose lowered duration to spec into other power stats but needing more recasts to fully heal active Shadows.
• Lower Shadow threat level slightly so enemies will target Nekros if close enough, if this is a necessary balancing act for the above changes.

[Eldritchsqueaker]

It's apparently for balance reasons... but Nekros was super weak as is and this is enough to make him nearly unplayable right before his prime access is set to come out. I hope DE realises this soon and goes back on the health decay thing.

[(XBOX)RAG is NAROK]

Honestly they should just remove the Health Drain. Nekros's Shadows of the Dead was hard enough to use before the update. Now I am dreading seeing the update coming to Xbox. Seriously DE quit hurting my baby.

[(XBOX)RAG is NAROK]

What I find to be sad is that prior to the news of the SotD changes I was looking forward to buying Nekros Prime Access. Then I saw devstream 79 and I while I was worried I was still excited and wanted to buy Nekros Prime Access. Now the update is actually out and now I am really reconsidering throwing my money at the screen.

[(PSN)B_Psycho2]

This is what I'm talking about. in my other thread (Yes, I made one just so it doesn't sink through the comments) 

Soul Punch should be cast on Shadows to make them essentially become irradiated volatile runners, and then you can summon a better one.

Delete the Decay, as they're weak enough, 

Allow them to be commanded like specters

And there you go, you have an actual army

[(PSN)B_Psycho2]

Shadows of the Dead should work somewhat like Specters do, but kinda better since they're a whole ultimate. 

That's what should happen. 

[(XBOX)RAG is NAROK]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)B_Psycho2 said:

This is what I'm talking about. in my other thread (Yes, I made one just so it doesn't sink through the comments) 

Soul Punch should be cast on Shadows to make them essentially become irradiated volatile runners, and then you can summon a better one.

Delete the Decay, as they're weak enough, 

Allow them to be commanded like specters

And there you go, you have an actual army

Yeah, I like this. Not only because it removes the whole dumb health drain, but it actually makes Soul Punch a more useful ability.

DE make this happen!

[(PSN)B_Psycho2]

Spoiler

Once again, right here. Not trying to extend the space and make my post unnecesarily huge.

 

Also, allow the spawning to not just spawn the "strongest" units, but the best ones in the current situation. 

 

6 heavies, 1 Osprey, 5 Heavies 1 Ancient 1 Drone (Osprey) something like that. 

If you have a Shield Osprey Eximus out, you don't need a Shadow one.

 

Man, just think about Nekros having an actual ultimate. A real army. 

Throw out your Corrupted Lancer, your Shield Osprey Guardian Eximus, Your Tenno Specter, your Clem, your Moa, kill some baddies, 

Cast Shadows of the Dead, and command your new army, tough enough to dominate the toughest of the Neural Sentry's command!

Tough enough to rival the strongest of all grineer, the smartest corpus, and the largest swarm of infested! 

[CrogenitorSeims]

A few more suggestions, in addition to my previous ones:

• Weapons used by Shadows also inherit Nekros' energy color. (Sometimes it can be hard to tell who's shooting who, especially with Corpus/Corrupted)
• Shadows are briefly invulnerable when initially summoned. (Does not apply to recasts)
• Desecrate 'tags' corpses in range, looting them even if Nekros himself moves away.
• Shadows can be given commands, as with Specters and Syndicate Operatives. Shadows set to 'Hold Position' cannot be recalled to Nekros, though are still healed.

Edited August 23, 2016 by CrogenitorSeims

[(PSN)B_Psycho2]

Good point. I'll add that to my post, if you don't mind.

[YagoXiten]

This is hilarious.

The minion count changes were justified, ignoring whether or not the scaling buff was enough of a compensation--but the health decay changes are in no way shape or form a nerf. You get a longer base duration at all values of Power Duration than before. Yes, you're going to probably have to recast it to heal them, but you often have a reduced cast animation for doing so, and you would have likely done so to mitigate the damage enemies deal far before the decay's effects were anywhere near significant. Whilst it's true that this is going to be affected by the fact that outside damage sources skew their lives on the significantly shorter side when you tank the stat, why are you doing so? You don't need to run Fleeting Expertise or Transient Fortitude, let alone the two together. Nekros has infinite energy, virtually infinite health, access to some of the highest EHP in the game, powers that scale through all levels of content...He's at the strongest he's ever been. I'm honestly baffled this is being decried. My guess is that people underestimated how much damage their Shadows took before and now that they can recast it to heal they believe it is the decay that is making them cast it so often.

 

 

[Jamescell]

After playing Nekros in a bunch of solo missions to test the changes I have conluded the following:

1.) Dessecrate should not be turned off by entering nullifier bubbles or encountering a scrambus/comba. It should be disabled during such time, but, once the disablers are eliminated, players should not have to recast the ability. The toggle change was clearly meant as a QoL improvement that eliminated the need for constant attention to desecrate. However, in corpus missions I find that I constantly have to recast desecrate and end up focusing on whether or not desecrate is active.

2.) Shadows of the Dead is as irritating as ever, since players have to pay attention to both natural health decay and damage their shadows receive from enemies. The health drain based on duration should be removed from Shadows of the Dead in order for this ability to work smoothly and for Nekros players to not have to fret about the health of shadows every second.

[(PSN)B_Psycho2]

 

Quote

Powers that scale through all levels of content

You're kidding, right?

At the beginning of the game, enemies kill one another so fast that the shadows will instantly die unless you spam recasting. 

 

At the end of the game, at around level one hundred, they won't be doing anything besides giving you damage reduction THAT REQUIRES AN AUGMENT. the base ability should be useful through "all levels of content" without them getting reduced to mobile decoys.

[(PSN)B_Psycho2]

Another good point.

[YagoXiten]

Just now, (PS4)B_Psycho2 said:

 

You're kidding, right?

At the beginning of the game, enemies kill one another so fast that the shadows will instantly die unless you spam recasting. 

 

At the end of the game, at around level one hundred, they won't be doing anything besides giving you damage reduction THAT REQUIRES AN AUGMENT. the base ability should be useful through "all levels of content" without them getting reduced to mobile decoys.

If enemies kill one another so fast that the Shadows die instantly, then the problem is clearly the lack of health on the minions, and not the decay. Ergo, the decay is not a problem.

Seven mobile decoys is actually significant damage mitigation without the augment since they can and do block things like Bombard rockets aimed for Nekros, on top of drawing fire themselves. Their damage scales very well against non-Grineer enemies, and you can make them deal significant damage to Grineer enemies with the usage of Power Strength, Corrosive Projection, Terrify, etc. And it's essentially free damage, since they provide other powerful effects with their aggro manipulation and damage mitigation. And this is sans augment, which is extremely powerful in a vacuum, and even more so with everything considered.

[Chipputer]

7 hours ago, IceColdHawk said:

Problem is not only that but that they've said they will last forever and WON'T need duration anymore.

Seriously, this is my biggest issue.

It was advertised as one thing and given to us as a completely different thing. It's just like the Equinox metamorphosis augment that went from looking awesome to basically being useless unless you formed your entire build around it (and even then it only lasts 20 seconds).

I don't mind the changes aside from the health decay being based on duration. They either need to remove it or make it based on efficiency. They already have a CC ability (terrify) that uses duration. They didn't need to force it into another skill.