Specters of the Rail: U2.1 - Nekros Changes

[Wolfnrun]

Ok, I REALLY want to buy nekros prime access! That trailer looks sick! even though soul punch is better in there when in reality it's eh, this health decay and all that went with it prevents me from continuing to be nekros. Honestly, just revert everything to before the update THEN START PLANNING SOMETHING BETTER. What is balanced in warframe? What isn't? All of this is frustration to no end, if they don't do anything, after all that's happened these past few months... I'm not sure what else is left? Oh, and NEKROS PRIME HAS NO AURA POLARITY!!! Just putting that out there... This isn't working at all...Ugh...

Spoiler

Decides to go volt until rework

I am Volt

MOVES TO NEKROS

Nekros rework comes and I can't be nekros either

I am Nekros 

So who's next? 

 

Edited August 24, 2016 by Wolfnrun

[Gurpgork]

More good news (also sarcasm) is that even if the damage multipliers were fairly adjusted so that the ability did just as much damage as before, this change is still a nerf.

 

Edited August 23, 2016 by Gurpgork

[RealPandemonium]

The nerf is even worse than you figured, since the shadows' damage was not even buffed (as was implied) and it is unknown whether armor was applied to Grineer shadows before the changes since displaying armored companions/summons with yellow healthbars was not implemented until fairly recently.  

[Voluge]

Something you should notice from the bonus health and damage they have in comparison when using the same build is that the new Sotd isn't using the new base values but the old base values, that's why it's exactly 100% difference in both damage and health between the old and new one with the exact same build.

 

I believe it's an inconsistency they haven't really thought about but they practically only added another 100% that isn't interactable when it comes to power strength.

[jeremy900]

33 minutes ago, RealPandemonium said:

The nerf is even worse than you figured, since the shadows' damage was not even buffed (as was implied) and it is unknown whether armor was applied to Grineer shadows before the changes since displaying armored companions/summons with yellow healthbars was not implemented until fairly recently.  

oh ok, I assumed they didn't have armor because I couldn't see the yellow health bars, so then if there is no change there then I shouldn't need to change any of the values because with the hypothetical enemies I used they would all have the same armor, leading to the same ending percentages.

however if there was a change to armor and it actually wasn't implemented in shadows before the patch then assuming the enemies I used had 100 armor then the shadows would have 25% damage reduction which would give them 7 x ((100 x 440%)/(1-.25)) = 4106.66 health. still not that close to pre patch shadows.

[TheVeiledScion]

+1 for Nekros zombies. 

[JalakBali]

Okay, so DE won't make any real sweeping changes to Nekros and we're stuck with what we got. But Nekros is still underwhelming and in need of small tweaks to make him a real contender to be a properly used frame.

 

First of all, Desecrate took a large nerf. We got a finger-friendly version of it, for less return and higher cost and THEN the health orb drop got a nerf. I don't understand why DE must nerf the health orb nerf when the cost of Desecrating is now counted per body instead of per cast. But, maybe they don't want it to be too useful for the team with health orbs littering the floor. OK, so I propose a tweak to Soul Punch to counteract this problem. Soul Punch is still an underwhelming pointless power that also barely fit the lore other than the name. But now we have Titania's Tribute power and system which could be replicated into Soul Punch. It should work like this: you use a Soul Punch on an enemy and they get ragdolled though the damage is low. At the spot where the Punch hits, an orb is spawned. This is the enemy's "soul" (and the other enemies who got the surrounding blast also spawned an orb). The orb only lasts a very short time, like 2-3 seconds. If the Nekros (and only the one who 'punched' the soul) go up to that orb and used his melee on it (basically, 'reaping' it) he would get health back based on the percentage of the enemy's health. It's basically a health steal, but only after you used a Punch and then 'reap' the soul. A simple system, works with the lore and make Soul Punch useful instead of pointless.

 

Now, Shadows of the Dead took a sizeable nerf if you're using it for tanking (and why would you use it for other than tanking?). So they need better armor or more health. But they still work badly due to how the AI works. At the very least, make the health drain on the Shadows half of what it is now. Then make them teleport to you if they're at a certain distance. What's the point of raising a squad that you'd end up ditching behind 2 seconds later. Giving them better AI might take too much work so at least make them usable by dying less fast and actually stay near you.

 

There you go, simple tweaks to make Nekros' powers more viable without any huge overhaul.

[xXDeadsinxX]

Disagree with all of these. He's fine the way he is.

Edited August 24, 2016 by xXDeadsinxX

[Eldritchsqueaker]

DE seems content to just cover their ears to all the feedback right now.

[Kastorius]

It's not only a Health Orb nerf—it's also a % loot drop nerf, because bodies that fail the Desecrate loot roll are now consumed. Before the rework, corpses that failed the loot roll remained, so Desecrate could continue trying until the roll succeeded. Additionally, Desecrate 2.0 affords a narrower window to slash up corpses, since Desecrate procs automatically and fairly frequently.

On top of all that, there's a very high per-corpse (or per-chunk, if there are slashed corpses) Energy cost that was further increased in a later patch. This makes non-Despoil Desecrate builds extremely energy-intensive when there are a lot of enemies around, and 170%+ Efficiency is absolutely required without a Trinity along, unless you enjoy running out of energy constantly.

Toggle Desecrate is hardly a "Quality of Life" change given the tremendous nerfs to Desecrate's loot/health yield and Energy cost.

Furthermore it's now more difficult to run a strong hybrid build than it used to be. People are talking about 2- and 3-Augment builds as though filling up your mod slots with Band-Aids is some revolutionary awesome meta.

I'm very impressed with the Prime Accessories but extremely displeased with the Nerfros changes. For the first time since I began playing Warframe, I'm going to skip Prime Access and only buy the Accessories this time. The song of the wallet is the most effective one, I think.

[BulletsforTeeth]

First off, I would like to state that overall, I love the changes to nekros. In a perfect world, DE would have nailed it all across the board in one go. This though, as I think we can all agree on, is not that perfect world.

DE, for the most part, left his one and two as is. In my opinion, that is fine, as they work as is. Maybe not overly well, but as a 1 and 2 power respectively, they aren't exactly supposed to be overly powerful. Desecrate saw a very large change. The good, almost indisputibly, is it being changed to a toggle. The exact mechanics are debateable, as with anything else. I personally wish the loot roll would dissappear entirely, but I digress. The only thing I'm, personally, a bit iffy on, is integrating the health orbs to the same roll as loot. Desecrate makes a very much decent support ability, with the health orbs it spawns, and those same orbs are the bread and butter of the majority of nekros builds.

Now for the controversial part, Shadows of the dead. Many people voiced their dissent over this ability, and alot of it is, at least partially, justified. I'm a tad on the salty side myself, but that is not the point of this thread. No, I'm aiming to provide actual feedback.

Most powers in this game, have tradeoffs, for specialising. That is fine, and in general a good thing. However, when one looks at SotD, it seems to be punished rather harshly, no matter how you specialise it. Reducing the number to 7 is reasonable enough. Some of us do still have a toaster that can barely load youtube these days. Plus, as we all know it can be rather difficult to optimise for the locked-in console hardware. A good side of the changes, is the removall of duration (sort of), and allowing us to refresh our shadows. Allowing us to keep our minions is, indisputably, a good thing. In order to balance out the now-weighted soul cache, the developers implemented a sort of bleed out mechanic, based upon duration, which we need to heal by recasting. Recasting has the animation shortened depending upon how damaged, or how many shadows are left. However, each and every time, we pay the full price for our current efficiency. On top of this, the minions, depending upon the presense or absence of SoS, are taking damage fron two to three sources at any given time, one of them being a percentage.

What I personally suggest, would be to keep the bleedout mechanic, and most other things. However, to make life a little bit easier for our belovedly terrifying Bonedaddy, I would suggest three things. One is simple, and that is to deactivate the bleedout for a set time, unaffected by duration, upon recieving outside damage. This would allow Nekros and his shadows to fight more effectively in the thick of things without worrying too much about the bleedout. Two is to take the animation tuning a step further, and reduce the energy cost a bit depending upon how much health your minions have, with a set, base energy level of 10-15 or something, for example. Three is very much a QoL suggestion, and that is display the grand total health, in a hard number or percentage, of our minions somewhere on our display. That way we don't have to frantically search for a minion's health every 10 seconds to see if we need to recast or not.

There are other improvements to be made, as with anything, but those stand out at the front of my mind. Thank you to anyone looking for giving this thread a look. Feel free to discuss, but please, keep a lid on the salt. DE will not listen to us if all we do it throw salt and complain. Thank you :)

[Guest]

because of the shinyness of primed warframes it does mean that every frame is not allowed to have its weak spots where you need skills and weaponry to master the different situations to protect the universe ^^))))))))))

[Wolfnrun]

18 hours ago, Ar0ndight said:

We need DE to look at this thread really.

 

18 hours ago, F4talFr4me said:

Looks like they released Nekros Prime right now. no changes and community still ignored. BOYCOTT TIME!

 

14 hours ago, (PS4)salovel1991 said:

So with no word of any changes coming on glitches, abilities, or acknowledgement of our feedback. What reason would I want to buy PA? I have no way of remembering where the keys drop without writing them down. I do not have the will to farm this and I'm not paying 1000p for a set. 

 

7 hours ago, Eldritchkitty said:

DE seems content to just cover their ears to all the feedback right now.

 

16 hours ago, Eldritchkitty said:

I'm just not sure what they were thinking. 

Let's take a stand and fight! 

Spoiler

 

[Eostara]

Spirits/souls of the dead is so much better than overdone, overhyped zombies. I found the trailer pretty disappointing actually - but not surprising since they barely managed to even put one out. 

 

[Matt89Connor]

well nekros prime finally come: DE , for 14 days i create topic and mine topic has 7 page for the health decay problem, and you do nothing?

why? 

why give to us a feedback, but you don't listen to us , why? 

you want only the bugs? so recall and call "bug report nekros change" not feedback pls.

now, maybe you will still punish me with another   warning, but I matt89connor , who want help the comunity ,i replace another topic with nekros problem now!

Edited August 24, 2016 by Matt89Connor
change

[Matt89Connor]

ALL GUYS OF EVERY CONSOLE LISTEN TO ME!

for 14 days i leterally spam topics, invite a feedback and listen all of us who love nekros, or simply like him.

in general we have spoke about the shadow of the dead problem, YES, PROBLEM.

7 MAX UNDEADS, 100 OF ENERGY IF YOU HEAL ,SUMMON 1 OR 7 SOLDIER, HEALTH DECAY, WHO ONLY CAN REDUCE HIS HIGH % (3% is 60% every 20 seconds)BY ONLY DURATION MODS!

this is unbelivable, why so mouch credit for nekros, a great trailer, but in the end for play with strong warframe like valkyr nova frost nyx, loki ecc... he has to sacrifice slot for have duration or sacrifice the desecrate, a great power now, for using this 7 undeads? C'mon DE we like nekros especially for the undeads!! And you give to us only an escamotage for make us happy, but, we aren't happy!

A great trailer you send to us , but in the reality nekros can't kill anything with soul pounch and there's no army of undead but a squad of 7 decay soldiers.

Now tell me what you want,but i'm fine with mine soul i'll give all for help the game and the people, i'm not change mine mind, NEVER.

[OnTarasMind]

This isn't really much of a way to give feedback. All I see is childish anger, and no suggestions on how you think the "problem" could be "fixed."

[Praxxor]

Well there's only one thing I'll say about this matter

They promised to remove duration from ult, yet i see a drain that's even worse than what it was before, the shadows survivability was nerfed considerably. There was no need for this "feature"  and the ability wouldn't be OP or much stronger without it, but more people would use it (including me and OP). It's just a bad design choice IMO.

[Tizodd]

I do agree 7 shadows is too low (10 would be a nice number imo), and I also feel the base health drain is too high.

That being said...after playing Nekros with an open mind and no bias, I actually prefer the way it is now over the old duration.  Reason being: I can hang on to shadows I like.  We weren't able to do this before.  We also don't have that moment of complete vulnerability when shadows die and we have to recast SotD.

Part of me feels like no form of duration would be ideal however; I like letting one or two just drain out if I know I recently killed a more powerful enemy to take its place.

A nice alternative might be: no duration at all (health drain IS a form of duration), and let us Soul Punch shadows we want to get rid of.  This would give his abilities some synergy and get rid of that annoying health drain while alloying us to control what shadows we have.

EDIT: I also agree with you about the amount of energy it takes to heal/summon shadows.  Energy cost should be based on the number of shadows healed/summoned.

Edited August 24, 2016 by Tizodd

[BulletsforTeeth]

12 hours ago, Neo_182 said:

Well stated. I too hope for a revisit.

 

Thank you ^^ Took a bit of thought to write this out

12 hours ago, textural_being said:

because of the shinyness of primed warframes it does mean that every frame is not allowed to have its weak spots where you need skills and weaponry to master the different situations to protect the universe ^^))))))))))

Erm, what are you trying to say exactly? I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you mean.

[F4talFr4me]

1 hour ago, Zia_Avenicia said:

This isn't really much of a way to give feedback. All I see is childish anger, and no suggestions on how you think the "problem" could be "fixed."

To be fair. precise, calm and structured feedback dident get us any further ether. nor a reply.

Edited August 24, 2016 by F4talFr4me
spelling

[OnTarasMind]

8 minutes ago, F4talFr4me said:

To be fair. precise, clam and structured feedback dident get us any further ether. nor a reply.

But things are more likely to go smoother if things are calm and structured.

[Eldritchsqueaker]

While the tone might have issues, DE's silence on this matter has been pretty discouraging. I can understand people's frustration but we shouldn't let it get the better of us. 

 

That being said... DE I am disappointed in you for letting out such a half done rework. I'm not sure what the cause of this all is, from the buggy state of SotR, buggy frames like Titania.. There has just been a drop in quality control as of late. I hope you can understand why so many people are upset over this. 

[Nhemin]

I have been a Nekros player since he came out way back when and have played this frame to death.  I had a variety of builds for him as well based off of what my team needed (despoil being my least favourite for obvious reasons).  I had been hoping for GOOD changes to Nekros for sooooo long as he was a completely out of date frame that was put in back when his stuff was considered "end game".  

So what do we have now?  Still a squishy frame that can't really do much, not viable for sorties or high end stuff due to lack of survivability.  That is still a general issue with the game that DE doesn't seem to want to address as they keep ignoring enemy armour scaling and the lack of caster scaling late game (casters also usually have no armour or defensive abilities for some weird reason).  Meanwhile certain frames (cough cough, valkyr, rhino, chroma, excalibur, etc) enjoy high armour to begin with and you see them a lot in high tier levels because they have a MUCH easier time.  Other frames like Loki or Frost have abilities that can give CC (crowd control) or have defensive abilities to protect themselves.  Mag and Ember have stuff to provide themselves with CC as well and provide the team with good ultimates.  

Aaaaaaand then there's poor old Nekros.  The old farming frame that is no longer the farming frame.  His only CC is the tiny AoE on soul punch and terrify which makes enemies run away from you.... Which you tend not to want as your team generally wants to kill them for loot/mission objective.  Yes, it gives your team bonus damage in the form of armour reduction, but it doesn't synergize well with your own abilities as the enemy now runs away from your shadows.  Don't even understand it at all.  **edit, the Syndicate mod for Terrify is a waste of a mod slot because you need power strength/efficiency to be viable**

Then there's Shadows of the Dead.... I get that they wanted less clutter on the screen but holy hell you guys nerfed the one thing that was FUN and INTERESTING about the Nekros.  Where I used to be able to get 75-90% damage reduction depending on my build, I now get 42%.... Da fuq?  At most I only get ~700 hp and no shields which has been one of Nekros' biggest problems forever.  He has no armour, no shields, and no health to speak of.  His only tanking ability for late game was Shield of Shadows.  Now that is gone too.  

The other biggest problem is his abilities cost a king's ransom to cast.  So you are FORCED to build efficiency or suffer the consequences.  One of the things I've never understood about Warframe in general is why they hate players using their abilities.  Even with energy syphon aura and Zenurik focus, I still run out of energy on this frame because his total energy pool is garbage for no reason.  Meanwhile Loki can go invisible forever and Ash can ultimate people into oblivion (#skillshot) without even having to worry about energy.  

WHERE IS THE SYNERGY THAT WE HAVE SO DESPERATELY NEEDED FOR THIS FRAME?!  

He is supposed to be master of souls and yet he gets NOTHING in the way of energy, energy regen, or energy syphoning for himself.  He cannot sustain his own mana pool unless he specifically specs into energy efficiency and Equilibrium.  There goes 2-3 mod slots and you are stuck with Energy regen aura ALWAYS now.  So what gives?  
 

SUGGESTIONS NEEDED FOREVER AGO:

-Make terrify frighten enemies in place. END OF DISCUSSION.  No more running around.  Remove the stupid syndicate mod and make it do something else.  This is needed so your shadows can actually kill something for once.  #synergy4nekros

-A shield of some kind (spirit, bone, shadow shield) I don't care what but this character NEEDS survivability badly, especially now that the old Shield of Shadows build is no longer viable.  I've started using the Cephalon mod which makes health orbs give you 3 stacks of armour (kinda works but you need to constantly take health damage for it to proc). The goal of the devs should be to let EVERY frame be somewhat viable late game.  Currently this is not the case.  AND ITS A PVE GAME!  No other PvE game has glaring imbalances like this game does and for how much grind you have to do to get a frame to end game its asinine!  There is no reason a PvE game should have classes that are absolutely useless end game.  The barrier to entry late game should be your gear, level, and mods NOT your actual frame.

-Give Nekros the energy pool and syphoning that he deserves!  5 health per enemy kill passive?  Cmon, really?  Do I look like a high health pool frame to you?  I already get decent health orbs WHY do I have a 5 health passive when my health pool is trash and I have Energy problems? Give me both, give me energy, I don't care but there NEEDS to be some way to fix this frames energy issues without me having to spec massively into efficiency which ruins my power strength/duration build completely.  The syndicate weapon options for this frame as well which give energy aren't even that good.  So I'm kinda screwed on all fronts. Meanwhile everyone else is running around with Heks and Tigris Sancti's blowing S#&$ up.  Or just make it so Despoil now gives more energy orbs.  Or fear refunds energy per enemy feared, or Soul Punch syphons energy per enemy hit, JUST GIVE US SOMETHING so that we can spec into survivability and power strength without losing our ability to cast stuff.

-Shadows of the dead NEEDS to be based off of just summoning w/e is in the level randomly AND not such an insane degeneration on my guys.  Basically remove the requirement that you MUST kill enemies making it more in line with other ultimates.  Think about every other frame first before you get all fanboy goggles on me.  Which other frame has a limitation on their ultimate WITH SUCH A HIGH ENERGY COST as well?  ... That's right, NONE!  Everyone else can cast their ultimates as long as they have energy.  Meanwhile Nekros cannot spam his, has to rely on the AI for doing damage, and MUST kill a pool of targets to summon them.  Late game you aren't doing as much killing as everyone else anyway so you kinda take a back seat.  I can deal with having only 7 dudes up but they better be freaking good CUZ ITS MY ULTIMATE ABILITY.  When Nekros' ultimate is in line with Ash, Saryn, Frost, Mag, Ember... Pretty much every other warframe THEN I will be satisfied.  Till then he is just going to continue being a second rate warframe that is 100% novelty and 0% viability.  Its nice that SoTD finally agros enemies but now there's too few shadows and too little damage/health on them.  If there was a way to heal them easier, then sure but then that means more energy spent which means more problems for Nekros.

 

I'm just hanging up my Nekros for now until DE fixes the end game, armour scaling, energy problems or actually gives this frame the buff he deserves.  I'd love to see a talent tree that isn't the focus tree or maybe an addition to the focus tree where we just get flat out passives for run speed, armour, energy/health regen so that you can build your frames more how you want.  Tired of some frames like Nekros being completely unviable late game when others completely break the game and trivialise content.

Btw you can quote DE on the "we don't want players to trivialise content".  #loki #ash #ember #frost #valkyr #rhino #chroma

RIP NEKROS

Edited August 24, 2016 by Nhemin

[Eostara]

Sorry you feel this way about your favourite frame. My experience with him is different, using Despoil with Health Conversion and I find him very tanky. Don't really need my energy pool, so you can also run Naramon shadowstep with him, which makes almost everything easy mode. If you don't want to do that, you could also include shield of shadows, which again makes him even more tanky. 

I will agree that he needs a lot of very specific mods to make him this so-called "endgame viable", but many frames and builds do.

I also wish they would dramatically lessen the health decay on the shadows, but otherwise I'm pretty happy with where he's at right now.