Specters of the Rail: U2.1 - Nekros Changes

[PsychoticMarik]

1 hour ago, RealPandemonium said:

They just need a base damage multiplier of 5, and it will be as strong as old max powerstr builds.  The ability to maintain the shadows of your choice (more or less) indefinitely is potentially really powerful and justifies the health drain (thought base drain is probably too high atm.)

I'm sorry but no it does not justify the health drain. Nothing does. Its the most unfun thing they could have done to the ability, and they flat out lied to us about it.

Shadow count is now only 7. We still cant use eximus units(which wouldnt be op even if we could),and I'm supposed to believe this would be more powerful, or hell even on par to the likes of say...Excaliburs ult? Molecular prime? Snow globe? Disarm? Bastille? Our guns?

Sotd isnt even close to being as useful as any one of these powers, but they had better slap on a constant hp drain right? Because "balance". Even tho everyone knows that they would still be sub par to these powers even if they had no hp decay and still had the same numbers as before.

This change is straight up anti-fun. It feels horrible, and doesnt encourage any interesting gameplay at all.

 

You know what could have tho? Interactions with his other abilities, or waypoint commands. What if I could soul punch minions, or enemies and get a reaction of some kind? What if a terrified group of enemies pulled all my shadows aggro onto them, and the shadows gained a buff of sorts when they landed kills, or perhaps it could grant them lifesteal? What if my shades could directly benefit from desecrate by gaining hp from the orbs themselves, or something else entirely?

What if I could order my shades to stay put in one spot and just fight from there? What if I could order them to follow other players?

This is the kind of stuff that would encourage different and varied gameplay, and it would feel great. You would be rewarded for doing things rather than punished for not doing something. The current shadows would be the baseline, and the player could use other means to make them even greater. A skill ceiling could exist. Being forced to spam 4 just to keep subpar minions going is not enjoyable in the slightest, and frankly its downright lazy. DE has basically said they arent creative enough to come up with ways to encourage gameplay in a manner that feels good to the player, so instead they added hp decay BS because reasons. Even tho it feels horrible for the player...oh, and they already told us they werent going to have a duration.

And yet here I still see people in this community arguing against removing the health decay. As if it would do anything except improve the frames fun and usability. It never ceases to amaze, and disappoint me.

Edited August 12, 2016 by PsychoticMarik

[DerkmeisterPrime]

12 hours ago, smokednin said:

For me, under this new system my shadows actually seem to die faster than they used to. Before the update I was able to keep them up constantly and never run out of energy (with just Nekros' base 150 energy), but now I frequently lose my shadows, and don't have enough energy to get more. :S

The AI hasn't been improved from what I can tell, and since I used to rely on the sheer number of shadows summoned to keep me safe (along with the augment), it has made the ability less useful in many circumstances. I like some aspects of it, but I feel like 7 is just too few, and the rapidly draining health is a bit too extreme. It's kinda sad that these changes have considerably limited the augment's usefulness, especially since useful augments are so rare to come by as it is.

Also, on the topic of performance - couldn't DE just keep the shadows from rendering for people who are having frame rate issues? It's not like you really need to see them, especially if you weren't the one who summoned them. I kinda wish DE did that with Mirage's projectiles too instead of cutting Hall of Mirrors' clones in half. Having fewer, stronger things isn't as fun as having a bunch of things for me. Dunno why but both abilities just feel less.. interesting now. I loved the hectic action that having 4 clones or 10+ shadows brought.

According to the wiki, it takes 214% power strength with all 7 shadows currently alive and in range to achieve 90% damage resist.

Yea, DE just nerfed the crap out of SOTD. They basically decreased the duration of it and the damage output. It really is stupid.

[Tizodd]

9 minutes ago, PsychoticMarik said:

<snip> And yet here I still see people in this community arguing against removing the health decay. As if it would do anything except improve the frames fun and usability. It never ceases to amaze, and disappoint me.

This part amazes me as well.  I'm all for being optimistic and open minded, but sometimes things are just bad and need to be changed.  I don't understand why people are trying to make it like health decay is somehow a positive addition to the game.

Some changes, nerfs, buffs need to happen for balancing reasons (Bladestorm, Tonkor, Simulor, prework Miasma, prework Peacemaker, etc).  But shadow health decay is a pointless change that serves no purpose.  Shadows of the Dead has never been an OP ability, there was no reason to nerf it.

[Buzkyl]

Just now, RealPandemonium said:

They just need a base damage multiplier of 5, and it will be as strong as old max powerstr builds.  The ability to maintain the shadows of your choice (more or less) indefinitely is potentially really powerful and justifies the health drain (thought base drain is probably too high atm.)

 

No, in this case nothing can justify a health decay. That is even worse than a timer because the shaodws draw increased aggro meaning they're going to be taking more damage in addition to thier health being chipped away.You could increase the base to 10 and you will still run into the same problem at higher levels. If the drain was 1% every X seconds it would be understandable, but 3% every second? Come on.

[Ar0ndight]

Why so stubborn DE ? Why is it SO hard to just listen to what we've been saying for two days now ? To just say "oh, we might have #*(&#036;%%@ up there. No biggy, here's your fix to SotD" ?

You straight up lied with the no duration SotD thing. To add insult to injury, the new duration is worse. And all we've got for that is a "after further testing we added duration for balance purposes" from Rebecca.

We, the people playing your game more than you do, have been saying for 2 days straight that the current decay is bad. It's not like we're asking you to bring Draco back, or to half the cost of formas, we're not asking you to make a game defining decision. We're just asking you to tweak a broken mechanic you introduced and you just ignore us. Is it because you don't want to admit your mistake ? Honestly I don't know. One thing I know I'm not getting the PA anymore. I'm tired of these reworks left half done.

Some people might say i'm overreacting, the rework happened a few days ago. I would agree, if it wasn't for the last trend in reworks. Volt, Mag, Saryn, now Nekros. They all got reworked and left in a half working way, never to be tweaked again:

Volt's ult damage cap ruins its CC, picking his shield destroys his energy. Saryn went from spamming 4 to spamming 1, still has huge survivability issues. Mag's magnetize is a mess, her 4 is still useless and her polarize got destroyed, not just toned down.

For all these reworks huge feedback thread were made with 100s of alternatives, options and even solutions to the problems. DE doesn't do anything with that. These threads are just ways for them to contain the backlash.

I'm so tired of these reworks. Excal and Frost's were great. But anything after that has been a mess. Buzzwords like synergy used to hide nerfs. Good mechanics on paper that turn up bad ingame left as is. Feedback ignored.

Edited August 12, 2016 by Ar0ndight

[Eldritchsqueaker]

4 minutes ago, Ar0ndight said:

Why so stubborn DE ? Why is it SO hard to just listen to what we've been saying for two days now ? To just say "oh, we might have #*(&#036;%%@ up there. No biggy, here's your fix to SotD" ?

You straight up lied with the no duration SotD thing. To add insult to injury, the new duration is worse. And all we've got for that is a "after further testing we added duration for balance purposes" from Rebecca.

We, the people playing your game more than you do, have been saying for 2 days straight that the current decay is bad. It's not like we're asking you to bring Draco back, or to half the cost of formas, we're not asking you to make a game defining decision. We're just asking you to tweak a broken mechanic you introduced and you just ignore us. Is it because you don't want to admit your mistake ? Honestly I don't know. One thing I know I'm not getting the PA anymore. I'm tired of these reworks left half done.

Some people might say i'm overreacting, the rework happened a few days ago. I would agree, if it wasn't for the last trend in reworks. Volt, Mag, Saryn, now Nekros. They all got reworked and left in a half working way, never to be tweaked again:

Volt's ult damage cap ruins its CC, picking his shield destroys his energy. Saryn went from spamming 4 to spamming 1, still has huge survivability issues. Mag's magnetize is a mess, her 4 is still useless and her polarize got destroyed, not just toned down.

For all these reworks huge feedback thread were made with 100s of alternatives, options and even solutions to the problems. DE doesn't do anything with that. These threads are just ways for them to contain the backlash.

I'm so tired of these reworks. Excal and Frost's were great. But anything after that has been a mess. Buzzwords like synergy used to hide nerfs. Good mechanics on paper that turn up bad ingame left as is. Feedback ignored.

They're going to have to listen if they want the upcoming prime access to succeed.

[bl4ckhunter]

3 hours ago, (PS4)Lei-Lei_23 said:

Sure, you can say it's a nerf, but is it manageable? Yes it is. I don't think this aspect of SotD's rework warrants any immense QoL concerns on Nekros' [new] playability.

becouse necros had this huge playability already before so don't worry if we nerf it even more, the guy above has a point, after they see that no one pays real money to buy golden lootbot prime they'll learn to do balance in a way that makes sense hopefully

[estosan]

We fight swarms of enemies without having framerate issues but having more than 7 shadows would ruin everything... 

They could at least limit us to 10 or something. Honestly this rework just seems like a nerf. I liked having disposable shadows that died after their duration. Now building power on them is almost pointless...

[bl4ckhunter]

Just now, estosan said:

this rework just seems like  is just a nerf. I liked having disposable shadows that died after their duration. Now building power on them is almost pointless...

FTFY

you still need a cubic ton of power duration if you want to use shield of shadows, which basically was all that sotd was ever good for, and it's still less effective.

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

1 hour ago, (PS4)Lord_Gremlin said:

I have to agree, fellow ps4 player. Right now if you just want whatever resources, like plastids, gallium, polymer you just take hydroid. Just overall better. What nekros is good for is getting specific mod drop from specific rare enemy. Say, you want terminal velocity from drekar hellion. They are not very common, but you can go to Uranus survival and make sure to cut every hellion into 3-4 pieces and spam desecrate until every piece rolls out loot. Which is way better than hydroid or ivara, who merely double the loot roll. With announced changes nekros is just rubbish. For rare enemies you better off pickpocketing with 4 ivaras and for general loot hydroid is way better, also decent crowd control, especially if helped by disarm loki or nova. With these changes nekros becomes limbo. Or zephyr. No niche basically. 

Necros was all about the health Orbs. He was the one and only Frame to Profit from equilibrium big time....

I mean sotd needet LOTS of strength and duration to give propper results but the despoil/equilibrium Combo substituted for that flaw. It was perfect and it didn't screw you over if you used it moderately...now?

 

No point in Building for strength. The useless shadows are still as useless as ever-only static

Like duration on the shadows wasn't Bad enough - they still need duration, just now to die slower...

And desecrate? Same results as using it moderately, just without health Orbs.

 

This is such a big Nerf for a allready underperforming Frame....why DE? And who thought that releasing this right before his Prime access was a good idea?!

 

[notlamprey]

1 minute ago, (PS4)CoolD2108 said:

This is such a big Nerf for a allready underperforming Frame....why DE? And who thought that releasing this right before his Prime access was a good idea?!

In terms of "how it feels to play Nekros right now," yeah. It does feel like significant step down, at least in terms of fun factor.

SOTD is now too much like a babysitting minigame, and we no longer get the joy of making enemies reliably drop extra goodies for our squadmates.

[WinterishRope]

20 minutes ago, bl4ckhunter said:

FTFY

you still need a cubic ton of power duration if you want to use shield of shadows, which basically was all that sotd was ever good for, and it's still less effective.

Not really. I'm able to keep shadows of the dead up 24/7 no matter what due to a equilibrium/health conversion build . You just have to cast shadows a lil more to keep them alive nothing else. The new rework if anything fixed everything annoying about nekros and made him feel more complete imo. The onlly problem is it takes a good amount of forma to get him working efficently

Edited August 12, 2016 by WinterishRope

[bl4ckhunter]

Just now, WinterishRope said:

Not really. I'm able to keep shadows of the dead up 24/7 no matter what due to a equilibrium/health conversion build . You just have to cast shadows a lil more to keep them alive nothing else. The new rework if anything fixed everything annoying about nekros and made him feel more complete imo.

they were nerfed obiviously, at the very least duration wise since now they last a lot less if you leave them alone even excluding that the possible number was halved, and i was talking about the augment with the comment about power strenght

[-N7-Leonhart]

4 hours ago, lyravega said:

If you are going to get obsessed with just one word (stronger) over there, it can mean they are stronger because of what follows that word. They can be stronger because they are prioritized by heavy units, or it can be because they have a shield multiplier.

And if you are going to take everything in literally as they're written, it says "with Shield multiplier" - at first glance you may understand it as "every shadow now have a shield multiplier" and thus "every shadow now has shields".

As I've said, base is most likely the same. The base is the enemies you kill. You say you don't play Nekros, and you are just hearing what other people say. I'm saying, I'm not feeling that "compensation". Many others on the forums saying the same.

On the other hand, currently you also have no way of disprove the fact that the Shadows may actually be stronger. The HUD is no indication at all, as you have no way of what the base currently is. Much like it is with Mesa's Peacemaker, they adjust the damage, but the HUD only tells you the multipliers.

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

I play on ps4, Max shadow build. No issues whatsoever since forever.

 

Sr but that one isn't bc of consoles.

[xRufus7x]

2 hours ago, Eldritchkitty said:

We'll have to agree to disagree then because apart from the desecrate toggle all I see are flat nerfs and I was really looking forward to giving the frame another try too.

You should reread the patch notes then. Shadows draw more aggro than they did before and can be refreshed as well as recalled which is extremely useful for defensive missions and Shield of shadows builds. They also have a larger multiplier. Toggle desecrate allows Nekros to be mobile rather than stuck in an animation.

2 hours ago, RahuHordika said:

Shadows would still die faster than before because they are taking continuous damage to their health on top of what they'll be receiving from the enemies.

A timer is still a timer so we may as well go for the one messes with the shadows the least if DE insists on keeping one.

Effective health on enemies scales faster than damage in Warframe combine that with the power strength multiplier and the damage they take in at higher levels does very little to their overall health pool. So we end up with a situation where at low levels the shadows gain a damage boost and can kill for you but at higher levels they become more of an agro tool tanking for you and your team.

 

26 minutes ago, (PS4)CoolD2108 said:

Necros was all about the health Orbs. He was the one and only Frame to Profit from equilibrium big time....

I mean sotd needet LOTS of strength and duration to give propper results but the despoil/equilibrium Combo substituted for that flaw. It was perfect and it didn't screw you over if you used it moderately...now?

 

No point in Building for strength. The useless shadows are still as useless as ever-only static

Like duration on the shadows wasn't Bad enough - they still need duration, just now to die slower...

And desecrate? Same results as using it moderately, just without health Orbs.

 

This is such a big Nerf for a allready underperforming Frame....why DE? And who thought that releasing this right before his Prime access was a good idea?!

 

Have you even played it? I run a despoil build and had no problem keeping him topped off on health and Equilibrium all while permanently maintaining my shadows and managing a 69 damage reduction from Shield of Shadows and a constant 3 orbs from Health Absorption. He carried me through the sorties without issue. Overall his builds haven't changed much other than the fact that he can now support Energy Absorption and his gameplay is more engaging. IMO the only changes he needs is to slow the health drain a bit, review the priority list for shadows and give us a way to manually dispel individual shadows so we had more control over our team composition. Someone suggested being able to soul punch them. I would expand on that a bit by having it cause an explosion with a guaranteed knockdown and have the dispelled units health distributed amongst the remaining shadows. That is all the feedback I really have so on that note I am going to go solo some sorties with my newly revitalized necromancer.

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

2 hours ago, (PS4)Lord_Gremlin said:

1 minute ago, xRufus7x said:

Have you even played it? I run a despoil build and had no problem keeping him topped off on health and Equilibrium all while permanently maintaining my shadows and managing a 69 damage reduction from Shield of Shadows and a constant 3 orbs from Health Absorption. He carried me through the sorties without issue. Overall his builds haven't changed much other than the fact that he can now support Energy Absorption and his gameplay is more engaging. IMO the only changes he needs is to slow the health drain a bit, review the priority list for shadows and give us a way to manually dispel individual shadows so we had more control over our team composition. Someone suggested being able to soul punch them. I would expand on that a bit by having it cause an explosion with a guaranteed knockdown and have the dispelled units health distributed amongst the remaining shadows. That is all the feedback I really have so on that note I am going to go solo some sorties with my newly revitalized necromancer.

My build includes Maxmax str, Maxmax duration and negative efficiency with sotd costing as much as 145 energy so i doubt that serious sotd builds wouldn't change...pure desecrate builds have been slightly buffed by gaining access to sotd but evrything else was nerfed dead pal.

The results now equal a bad shadow build prechange to compensate for the building choice of the majority. That's nothing but a sick Joke pal. You could've had just this all along, you just choose not to.

[Eldritchsqueaker]

8 minutes ago, xRufus7x said:

You should reread the patch notes then. Shadows draw more aggro than they did before and can be refreshed as well as recalled which is extremely useful for defensive missions and Shield of shadows builds. They also have a larger multiplier. Toggle desecrate allows Nekros to be mobile rather than stuck in an animation.

Effective health on enemies scales faster than damage in Warframe combine that with the power strength multiplier and the damage they take in at higher levels does very little to their overall health pool. So we end up with a situation where at low levels the shadows gain a damage boost and can kill for you but at higher levels they become more of an agro tool tanking for you and your team.

 

Have you even played it? I run a despoil build and had no problem keeping him topped off on health and Equilibrium all while permanently maintaining my shadows and managing a 69 damage reduction from Shield of Shadows and a constant 3 orbs from Health Absorption. He carried me through the sorties without issue. Overall his builds haven't changed much other than the fact that he can now support Energy Absorption and his gameplay is more engaging. IMO the only changes he needs is to slow the health drain a bit, review the priority list for shadows and give us a way to manually dispel individual shadows so we had more control over our team composition. Someone suggested being able to soul punch them. I would expand on that a bit by having it cause an explosion with a guaranteed knockdown and have the dispelled units health distributed amongst the remaining shadows. That is all the feedback I really have so on that note I am going to go solo some sorties with my newly revitalized necromancer.

Yes I read them but only the aggro and teleport are bonuses and just don't make up for the loss of numbers or the health decay. 

[xRufus7x]

14 minutes ago, (PS4)CoolD2108 said:

My build includes Maxmax str, Maxmax duration and negative efficiency with sotd costing as much as 145 energy so i doubt that serious sotd builds wouldn't change...pure desecrate builds have been slightly buffed by gaining access to sotd but evrything else was nerfed dead pal.

The results now equal a bad shadow build prechange to compensate for the building choice of the majority. That's nothing but a sick Joke pal. You could've had just this all along, you just choose not to.

No, mid range builds gained a boost over hyper specialized ones. He is now a more effective all around frame and doesn't have to gimp his other powers to be effective in a single roll. Also, yah you could do it before, and I did but not as effectively as after the changes.

 

13 minutes ago, Eldritchkitty said:

Yes I read them but only the aggro and teleport are bonuses and just don't make up for the loss of numbers or the health decay. 

IDK the agro got bumped quite a bit. Nothing even looks at me when they are out. And that is kind of the thing. You don't need 20 meat shields when 7 will keep you safe

[Cryostasisprotoss]

Ok lets say that DE change nekros so that it doesn't drain. DE would to implement a way to eliminate your shadow because as of now, shadows don't die from the enemies, die from the health decay. 

Personally I have no problem and as I said I don't noticed it much. I run with streamline, zenurik and primed flow and there is no problem. Some duration I have a primed continuity and transient fortitude so my duration is around 123% more or less. Before the change I had more duration but to me it seems that it didn't need that much duration. I have more power strength now. I heal my shadows evsry now and then when I am relocating so that it also heal. 

I don't remember who but one said that maybe add that soul punch could removed one shadow but still without that how would they die if you can heal them pretty much forever.

 

Edit: the fast animation when you have all your shadow is perfect and it help to heal faster. I would like though that it would cost less than the actual ability.

Edited August 12, 2016 by Cryostasisprotoss

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

12 minutes ago, xRufus7x said:

No, mid range builds gained a boost over hyper specialized ones. He is now a more effective all around frame and doesn't have to gimp his other powers to be effective in a single roll. Also, yah you could do it before, and I did but not as effectively as after the changes.

 

IDK the agro got bumped quite a bit. Nothing even looks at me when they are out. And that is kind of the thing. You don't need 20 meat shields when 7 will keep you safe

Mind explaining how less, weaker shadows on less effective health (trough drain AND str influence), on less relyable Power/health management addet to his effectivity?

 

I'm dying to know. DE ruined his shadows AND his despoil to enforce some bs below the prior compromise onto the player base. There is litteraly nothing good about this rework.

Edited August 12, 2016 by (PS4)CoolD2108

[Inarticulate]

4 hours ago, lyravega said:

And if you are going to take everything in literally as they're written, it says "with Shield multiplier" - at first glance you may understand it as "every shadow now have a shield multiplier" and thus "every shadow now has shields".

I understand not everyone types with sufficient precision of language, but if we do assume the language is precise, their sentence says these things:

• The shadows are stronger individually. The way this was worded, it is more likely that the following modifiers modify "stronger shadows" rather than clarifying the meaning of "stronger".
• Selection of the enemies that become shadows will prioritize heavier units.
• The shadows have a multiplier applied to their shields. Exactly as it is worded, there is no reason to expect shadows of enemies that do not have shields to suddenly have shields. Anything multiplied by zero is still zero.
• The shadows draw more aggro. To be perfectly precise from the formation of the sentence, it says "Nekros draw [sic] aggro more heavily", but the verb conjugation of "draw" and the obvious contextual fact that Nekros should not be drawing more aggro means the intended subject was the shadows and a clarifying "that" or "which" happened to be dropped.

I cannot verify any of these simply because I do not play Nekros enough to make an informed comparison. However, this is how I interpreted the sentence in the patch notes.

[xRufus7x]

10 minutes ago, (PS4)CoolD2108 said:

Mind explaining how less, weaker shadows on less effective health (trough drain), on less relyable Power/health management addet to his effectivity?

They receive a higher health multiplier. They draw more fire then they used to. Due to the way enemies scale the health drain isn't as big of a deal as people are claiming, although the values could still use tweaking. You can now also recast to keep your shadows close giving you more control over their position and proximity to objectives and healed up. This is also a boon to people that use Shield of Shadows as it can be maintained rather than recast resulting in less down time and you don't have to worry about them wondering out of range. It is easier to keep your queue full not only because there are less shadows but because you can maintain your existing ones. Sure the shadows took a damage hit but damage was never their primary role anyways. They now provide more reliable cc and damage reduction with his augment rather than in bursts. 

[(PSN)salovel1991]

3 hours ago, (PS4)Lord_Gremlin said:

I have to agree, fellow ps4 player. Right now if you just want whatever resources, like plastids, gallium, polymer you just take hydroid. Just overall better. What nekros is good for is getting specific mod drop from specific rare enemy. Say, you want terminal velocity from drekar hellion. They are not very common, but you can go to Uranus survival and make sure to cut every hellion into 3-4 pieces and spam desecrate until every piece rolls out loot. Which is way better than hydroid or ivara, who merely double the loot roll. With announced changes nekros is just rubbish. For rare enemies you better off pickpocketing with 4 ivaras and for general loot hydroid is way better, also decent crowd control, especially if helped by disarm loki or nova. With these changes nekros becomes limbo. Or zephyr. No niche basically. 

Nova is a no no for Nekros. Corpses that are killed my m. prime decay in 3 seconds. 

[Eldritchsqueaker]

18 minutes ago, xRufus7x said:

They receive a higher health multiplier. They draw more fire then they used to. Due to the way enemies scale the health drain isn't as big of a deal as people are claiming, although the values could still use tweaking. You can now also recast to keep your shadows close giving you more control over their position and proximity to objectives and healed up. This is also a boon to people that use Shield of Shadows as it can be maintained rather than recast resulting in less down time and you don't have to worry about them wondering out of range. It is easier to keep your queue full not only because there are less shadows but because you can maintain your existing ones. Sure the shadows took a damage hit but damage was never their primary role anyways. They now provide more reliable cc and damage reduction with his augment rather than in bursts. 

The drain is based on percentage isn't it?