Specters of the Rail: U2.1 - Nekros Changes

[CRCGamer]

All I'm seeing is a massive nerf to the Health Conversion based Tankros build.

[Achromatic.]

What happened to removing the need for duration on Shadows of the Dead? The drain should just be based on efficiency. 

 

 

[TheSilverZephyr]

After testing these changes out in just a 20 minute derelict survival (Not "end game" levels of difficulty, but it's at least a good constant to test new things against for me), I absolutely love these changes. The way units are selected I ended up with a squad of ancients and brood mothers soaking up damage, I only had to top off their health every minute or so, which is nothing since the cast time for refilling is so quick. I was able to combine my shadows and desecrate builds into one, after some minor tweaks. The shield of shadows augment still gives enough damage mitigation and now that you have a guarantee to get tankier, more aggro-drawing shadows, nekros feels like a hefty choice for solo runs. Also, my left hand thanks everyone at DE for not having to mash 3 anymore.

[NightmareT12]

Played a bit of solo on a Jupiter survival.

Let's see a few points:

I was running with:

• Strength: 180%
• Duration: 125%
• Range: 145%
• Efficiency: 130%
• No augments

I also had Zenurik as my Focus.

I struggled a lot to keep my Shadows up alongside my Dessecrate due energy issues. Even with Zenurik on, I had a problem with some energy management. The good thing is Dessecrate is not really channeled, so you can regain energy between Dessecration and Dessecration.

I also noticed a big issue with the Shadows: if you recast it and you have to up one or two, I believe they're all teleported back to you (need to double check) but if you just heal them that's not the case. I think I came up with a neat idea to adress a bit both issues:

• If you only heal shadows, make it cost less. I'd cut it to 50% if healing only and full 100% if having to get one up at least.
• If the Shadows are out of your range and you recast them, make them teleport next to you: Because in either case, simply healing or not, sometimes you need to go away and they're left behind. And when you need them they're not there. I think this could adress them neatly: It would allow us to take them with us, at a cost of course.

So yeah. I'll keep trying out to see what else I come up with :P

EDIT: Wanted to add the third suggestion but I forgot: What if we made Nekros passive work for the shadows too? It could make sense right?

Edited August 10, 2016 by NightmareT12

[RAZORLIGHT]

Shadows of the Dead: remove the health decay and the ability should be fine!

[Xekrin]

53 minutes ago, [DE]Danielle said:

Health orbs are no longer guaranteed drops from pilfered corpses.

don't you mean desecrated corpses? Pilfer is hydroid ;)

53 minutes ago, [DE]Danielle said:

Shield of Shadows - now displays current % damage mitigation as a HUD buff. 

I wish we had more of these, primarily for Saryn's molt health.  Considering its health is a vital part of miasma's damage it would be nice to be able to keep track of it other than holding the reticle over it.

As for Nekros changes, I am glad he is no longer a spamfest, I hope these changes make him less of a one trick pony in the eyes of some people.  I know many already disregard the forced requirement of constant spam when playing Nekros but it was a constant demand by others whenever he was seen in a group.  This may change that at the very least.

[Elathas]

So ya, tried it out on Hieracon, and the verdict is.... With two Nekros being there, it's a nerf : / 7 shadows like a feared do very, very little. Most of the time they don't keep up or follow at all, they spread out, and don't really stem the flow of enemies. Also my pickup count was 908 which is goodish kind of... but there was 2 Nekros there, and we where there for 1400 Cyro to me the seems pretty low, credits were 18680, which also seems low for two Nekros.... I like the desecrate changes, but it looks like we are getting less bang for our buck, the shadows are just plain nerfed, and still use duration, just instead of a plain timer, it's health drain, which is a bit harder to keep track of. Anyone who had a desecrate shadow build is not happy with this update : /

O there is one positive thing I forgot to mention, you can now make a build that uses all of your abilities

*Updated* Shadows now will teleport to you which is a great fix and terrify is surprisingly good in helping with cc... So Nekros isn't completely broken, we have just lost our shadow army (we really should at least get eximus units) and the drops so far seem to be nerfed. He takes 3 ability's now to cc instead of just 1 : / making him a bit of a energy hog, but with equilibrium he still works. But! He really could use a few more shadows like 5 more.... or 6 more, come on, 13 shadows for nekros just makes sense :D

 

So far Nekros is not as powerful as before, and farming may have become easier, but also less effective at this point.

 

 

Edited August 10, 2016 by Elathas
Update

[Jade-Lotus]

Okay, so I played with him a little to try these changes, and I'm sad to say I'm a little disappointed.

With Shadows of the Dead, instead of there being a duration timer you have to constantly monitor your Shadow's Health and recast to heal them. The problem is, we were told duration would no longer be a factor, but it still is, and trying to keep an eye on your shadow's health is hard and a pain. Honestly a set health decay should be plenty along with the wear and tear of battle to make players have to recast a decent amount.

With the new Desecrate, I feel that how long it takes to actually desecrate bodies causes you to have to linger in an area a bit to be able to get the pickups. With old desecrate you could at least cast it once, grab all the loot, and move. I was hoping Negative Duration would affect how long it takes to pop the corpses, but it doesn't appear to plus it causes your Shadows to die faster. Finally, the default energy cost per BODY is insane. something much lower is going to be needed with this per-body system because it's either forcing players to use the Despoil Augment or completely build for efficiency so their Energy doesn't completely disappear when a horde of enemies die. And building for efficiency means you lose duration making your Shadows useless again.

In essence, if the goal was to also stop players from having to build towards one skill or the other, you failed and you still have to specialize in only one to be effective.

Edited August 10, 2016 by Jade-Lotus
Typos and additional thoughts.

[Thundervision]

So, my friend is currently doing a Def mission (well, he tries to) as Overlord Nekros. He died while his minions were poking around, then he revived to see that all his previously summoned minions are Neutral to him and he can't:

• Damage them at all
• Progress further in the mission

 

Also, another bug (visual?): SotD in Abilities tab, its default HP-decay per second is set to 3. Modded for better efficiency -- 1.61% per sec, modded for worse efficiency -- 3.16% per sec.

Edited August 10, 2016 by Thundervision
attached a pic

[cy6erex]

why only 7 minions?

I have 20 minions running on map, and it was cool!

and btw strenght still affect shadows hp and damage...

but now we need balance more stats - like incriase duration, efficint and range...

 

Before I run in max duration max strengt build...

And remove shadows decay over time! It's annoing!

[KIREEK]

The only way shadows were usefull was if you added str on it, to make a nice defensive shield, now with health decay and a max number of shadows at 7, that seems to be very underwelming.

There was an "woah" factor when you casted the ability and performance issues were very very rare, while 7 strong permanent shadows might sound great, having 20 would be better.

I speak by myself but in defense missions the shadows while great to deal damage and cause enemies to attack other things besides you, it does have flaws caused by rng, enemies behave in an unpredictable way, it's like casting a snowglobe with holes in it in random locations, sooner or later those flaws will cost the mission, so the ony way was to create more shadows to create less gaps and even then i wished i could place even more shadows

A build with maxed primed continuity, maxed narrow minded, max blind range, max flow or primed flow, and a max energy conversion takes a long time to do, the way your talking about optimization is as if everyone has a build like that, i have played countless games and i can tell you that as a nekros i am usually the most impressive, everyone i see using nekros never actually uses the ammount of shadows that makes you think "it needs to be reduced"....ever.

Huge slap in the face, especially the health decay

Yeah sure now we can have bursas, corpus tech on our side for longer periods of time, but 7?, just 7?

I suggest 25 instead, there, done, made my opinion.

I am displeased with the change to shadows of the death.

[AuroraSonicBoom]

Overall positive impression. Biggest issue at the moment would be the messy way of managing your shadows' health drain. Would it be possible to combine the health pool of all shadows and have that displayed over the ability icon instead of the number of shadows? That stat could be moved to the top right as "aura buff".

[Finedaible]

Tested a bit. Desecrate seems okay, but i have a few issues with SotD:

First, where are shield osprey clones? Heavy units are great to have, but sometimes it's favorable to have a support clone in the mix too. I'm not sure the ability selecting enemies is a good idea.

Corpus shadows have a severe disadvantage since the ability decays hp, through shields. Additionally, what was the point of removing the timer if clones are gonna lose a percentage of hp/sec anyway? Even if you buffed them, that still translates to time, except you need to now 'nurse' your shadows by recasting every several seconds to make sure they stay up. They take even more damage if you are using Shield of Shadows.

Edited August 10, 2016 by Finedaible

[Nakremy]

I'm confused : adding duration appears to lower the amount of health decay but its shown in red numbers on the abilities page (so negative?)

while capping efficiency is causing it to increase the health decay (because duration is being removed in the process) but it is shown in green numbers on the abilities page.

Is this intended? It seems to me the red is supposed to be green and the green is supposed to be red.

[Hammahness808]

Not sure if my comment will be read, especially by those who have already posted. The reason why there's 7 minions (reduction) instead of the 15+ or whatever, is due to performance issues with lower-end machines.

[Chroia]

22 minutes ago, armedpoop said:

Have fun having your shadows die instantly and deal no damage. Shadows still scale off of duration, and so does desecrate.

Granted, I haven't updated yet - so going entirely off the patch notes.
That said, I generally found that they did 'well enough', and most of the damage came from my/team's guns - especially as enemy levels increased and Shadows didn't kill stuff without 4xCP anyway.

Desecrate notes don't indicate that it scales off duration,
and if you're talking about the Shadow health decay - again, I'd be hugely surprised if recasting isn't better than stacking dur. - but let's leave that one hanging until I can actually see.

[Finedaible]

Just now, TGKazein said:

Not sure if my comment will be read, especially by those who have already posted. The reason why there's 7 minions (reduction) instead of the 15+ or whatever, is due to performance issues with lower-end machines.

While technically true, it's mostly because of consoles.

[legendarysidekicksteve]

My thoughts on Nekros changes

-The shields of shadows damage reduction percentage needs to be increased to compensate for lower number of maximum shadows spawned. 

- A visual indication of when despoil is active would be nice

- Health drain on shadows must be removed. It has been stated in this thread that this is just a duration cap in another form, but in addition, if the whole purpose of the shadows rework is to brand Nekros as a frame who should be monitoring his zombies' health and healing them when they sustain damage, the drain makes this trivial as the damage your zombies take is out of your control. 

- Soul punch is still lack luster. I suggest that enemies who are soul punched are automatically added to the SOTD queue even if they are not killed. Since new shadows focuses on summoning the strongest units you have killed, it syncs well with this added attribute as  dangerous enemies (heavy gunners, bombards, etc) are prime targets to be soul punched to both CC them and add them to the queue, potentially twice in one enemy (one from soul punch, one from killing it).

[Roboplus]

10 health per Despoiled target, with a significantly reduced health orb drop rate.

And people were worried about the Shadows of the Dead changes...

[Stoner]

The loot from desecrate is nothing now. Not sure if a bug or huge nerf. Energy/Health consumption is fine though.

[Madraz]

I got hyped for the new nekros changes when they were announced. Sadly the update was not up par with my hopes. The desecrate changes are good and all, makes playing loot nekros way more enjoyable than before ... but ... the shadows ...

Pre-patch i had 18 shadows for 59 seconds, with about 4x the original damage and 3x the health, with 40 meter range on shield of shadows giving me pretty much constant 90% dmg reduction.

With the same build i now have 7 shadows, with 4.21x dmg, 3.14x health and now 3.14x shields (Not certain if these values are still the old ones, as i did notice that my shadows seemed to actually kill enemies even alone.), and they last only for 40 seconds. Noting that is the time they reach 0 health, at 20 seconds they are already at 50%. This means you have to constantly recast the ability which makes it so it doesn't work well with energy conversion anymore.

Problems related to shield of shadows is now that, when you recast the ability to refill the shadows health, they don't spawn to you. This basicly makes you not gain the full effect of the damage reduction. After some play testing all my shadows had ran off who knows where and i had less than 50% dmg reduction most of the time, sometimes going down closer to 15%. Only way to counter this is wait until all the shadows die and then recast.

But so far it seems the shadows are pretty much the same quality as before, except they seem to deal more dmg individually, which doesn't matter much if their aim is the same as before.

So i ask for and hope for:

- The shadow duration to closer to what it used to be, the shadows already take damage to counter their "power"

- Make the shadows a) with better A.I so they will actually stick to you and follow you or b) teleport to you when you recast the ability

- Make the shadows actually better, or show in stats that they are better than their pre-patch counterparts

- Have the shadows possess improved aim compared to the originals

 

 

Having less shadows is awesome and really sad at the time. It was always hindurance to yourself and the team have the screen cluttered with enemies but at the same time it was something awesome that you could do in the game, and it was really fun. ^^ Nobody really played summoner nekros before anyway and yet almost every new player who saw it in action wanted the frame and to try the build.

I hope you guys make it more viable than it was before and improve it. With these new changes i fear that even less people will play him this way.

Also this is just my opinion, don't hate.

[CrudShuzKong]

17 minutes ago, Elathas said:

So ya, tried it out on Hieracon, and the verdict is.... With two Nekros being there, it's a nerf : / 7 shadows like a feared do very, very little. Most of the time they don't keep up or follow at all, they spread out, and don't really stem the flow of enemies. Also my pickup count was 908 which is goodish kind of... but there was 2 Nekros there, and we where there for 1400 Cyro to me the seems pretty low, credits were 18680, which also seems low for two Nekros.... I like the desecrate changes, but it looks like we are getting less bang for our buck, the shadows are just plain nerfed, and still use duration, just instead of a plain timer, it's health drain, which is a bit harder to keep track of. Anyone who had a desecrate shadow build is not happy with this update : /

O there is one positive thing I forgot to mention, you can now make a build that uses all of your abilities

 

 

Shadows should get teleported to you on each recast of SotD. It gets very costly if you dont run despoil or stop desecrating form time to time, but it works.

[notlamprey]

3 minutes ago, Stoner74 said:

The loot from desecrate is nothing now. Not sure if a bug or huge nerf. Energy/Health consumption is fine though.

That's been my experience as well. More testing is required before I can make any reasonable guesses as to exactly why, but the credit/resource yields appear to now be negligible.

 

[Tymerc]

Thanks Danielle.

[CrudShuzKong]

6 minutes ago, Madraz said:

- The shadow duration to closer to what it used to be, the shadows already take damage to counter their "power"

???

1 hour ago, [DE]Danielle said:

• Shadows now live until they die with Health decay over time that is affected by Duration instead of Strength.

They now live infinitely as long as you keep up their health...