Specters of the Rail: U2.1 - Nekros Changes

[Gurpgork]

8 minutes ago, Wolfnrun said:

This is a nightmare... 

Yep. That's one way of putting it. And a good way of putting it at that. 

[jeremy900]

Since the nerf to shadows damage and health was so great due to number of shadows I say get the unmodded values back to what they were if you had 20 shadows.

In other words buff the multipliers to equal the same damage and health as if you had 20 shadows.

so the numbers before patch

(Unmodded, 100 health per shadow): 20 x 100 x 100% health bonus = 2000 health

(Unmodded, 100 damage per shadow): 20 x 100 x 150% dmg bonus = 3000 damage

and the numbers after patch

(Unmodded, 100 health per shadow): 7 x 100 x 200% health bonus = 1400 health

(Unmodded, 100 damage per shadow): 7 x 100 x 250% dmg bonus = 1750 damage

what I propose

(Unmodded, 100 health per shadow): 7 x 100 x 286% health bonus = 2002 health

(Unmodded, 100 damage per shadow): 7 x 100 x 429% damage bonus = 3003 damage

I think this would solve a couple problems I have with the patch.

 

also the lowest I could possibly get my build for health decay down to was 1.08% health per second,

however this came with massive sacrifices to efficiency and range.

if no damage is taken at all this would come out to 92.59 seconds.

lets say your shadows find a scorch or napalm and get shot.

lets also say that the fire damage does about 1% of their hp every second.

it would drop the duration to about 100/2.08 = 48.07 seconds.

lets say the fire only lasts 5 seconds and it takes away 5% of their hp.

it would drop the duration to about 95/1.08 = 87.96 seconds.

the problem here is extra damage on top of health decay will just reduce the duration by dramatic amounts.

if we factor in shield of shadows into this it will drop even further.

lets take the fire damage above have it affect you and your 7 shadows while you have the augment.

first the duration would drop to 48.07 seconds due to your shadows taking damage, then 

you yourself are also taking the same amount of damage (1% health per second)

split this into .90% damage taken by your shadows and .10% taken by you.

so 100/2.98 = 33.55 seconds.

 

on top of all that, the build I used for the calculations needs 150 energy to cast shadows.

The unmodded health decay of 3% health per second is ridiculous.

even with my heavily modified build I still am sacrificing about the same amount of health per second in a scenario with low damage.

I also run zenurik and energy siphon so to get 150 energy without orbs i would need to wait 37.5 seconds to be able to recast it.

that means with low damage and the augment, most of the time the shadows would die without outside support (trinity, orbs, etc)

before i can even cast them again.

 

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

Nekros was here first

[DaMasque]

It burns so nice...

 

[F4talFr4me]

6 hours ago, Noble_Cactus said:

Fun Fact: Desecrate was actually a life drain aura before it suddenly became a loot roller, before he was released. I can't find the original dev post, but it's buried somewhere in the archives

I think its buried as deep as DE's last responce to a feedback topic. :P

[Wandrecanada]

Yeah apparently fire will self immolate if you rez any enemy that throws fire surfaces. I know it happens with Hyekka Master for certain. I recall napalm fire blob can also harm you but I might be mistaken since there were Hyekka Masters in my missions.

[DaMasque]

47 minutes ago, Wandrecanada said:

Yeah apparently fire will self immolate if you rez any enemy that throws fire surfaces. I know it happens with Hyekka Master for certain. I recall napalm fire blob can also harm you but I might be mistaken since there were Hyekka Masters in my missions.

It's annoying beyond belief... one grenade toss and half your shadows are dancing...

[R34LM]

I'd say that the big issue with SoTD right now is how spammy and inefficient it is. You have to recast it to heal and recast to transport them to you, and at an average of 100 energy each cast it becomes stupid even with Arcane Energize and Zenurik. I have a few suggestions that can be used together or individually.

Firstly, the health decay should be lessened, since they are already being wailed at by enemies thanks to their increased aggro. This way we don't have to heal them as much and save energy.

Secondly, either more shadows should be available to summon or Shield of Shadows needs a minor buff to 7% or 8%. To get to 90% reduction requires you to basically have Blind Rage, which doesn't help the poor efficiency that SoTD already has.

Third, the cost should be gradually less depending on how many shadows you have. If you are only healing them, it should be 1/8 of the cost. If you are adding one shadow, 2/8. Two, 3/8. So on, so on.

If they can fix how energy hungry Nekros is, despite despoil and equilibrium doing what the can, he'd be solid.

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

4 hours ago, F4talFr4me said:

I think its buried as deep as DE's last responce to a feedback topic. :P

Ooohhh snaps 

 

Edited August 27, 2016 by (PS4)WINDMILEYNO
That was nice

[(PSN)salovel1991]

Okay DE, you can stop the joke now. It's been almost 3 weeks. Nekros is glitchy, has ridiculous costs on abilities, and you haven't stated anywhere that you're considering changing anything. Maybe instead of going to Pax to see people who will likely question you face to face about Nekros, you should stay at your desks and work on your game a little. Not even Nekros in particular. Since SotR released it has been nothing but bug after bug on console. I have never had so many glitches/network crashes. But to keep this relevant. 

Nekros bugs: Vauban's Bastille is still treating my Shadows as hostile. Please fix this. Please just listen and fix stuff. I would like to be able to not have to abort a mission or simply sacrifice the use of an ability because I can't play with Vauban. I mean Shadows of the Dead is no where near as useful but still sometimes I like to watch shadows die in 15-20 seconds, especially if they get suspended in the air. Also my Napalms are shooting me in the back still. 

[(PSN)salovel1991]

2 hours ago, R34LM said:

I'd say that the big issue with SoTD right now is how spammy and inefficient it is. You have to recast it to heal and recast to transport them to you, and at an average of 100 energy each cast it becomes stupid even with Arcane Energize and Zenurik. I have a few suggestions that can be used together or individually.

Firstly, the health decay should be lessened, since they are already being wailed at by enemies thanks to their increased aggro. This way we don't have to heal them as much and save energy.

Secondly, either more shadows should be available to summon or Shield of Shadows needs a minor buff to 7% or 8%. To get to 90% reduction requires you to basically have Blind Rage, which doesn't help the poor efficiency that SoTD already has.

Third, the cost should be gradually less depending on how many shadows you have. If you are only healing them, it should be 1/8 of the cost. If you are adding one shadow, 2/8. Two, 3/8. So on, so on.

If they can fix how energy hungry Nekros is, despite despoil and equilibrium doing what the can, he'd be solid.

I personally feel that asking them to just lower health decay is an unnecessary compromise. If we just keep compromising feedback will be pointless. I would rather just have them outright do away with health decay. I mean enemy damage and shield of shadows already causes enough harm to them. Blind rage doubling the percentage they take. I don't want to compromise for something better when we were told we would have something better... I even put narrow minded constitution, and p continuity in my build to test and my Shadows didn't last half as long as they would have on pre-rework Nekros. 

[(PSN)salovel1991]

Napalms, scorches, hyekka masters, nullifiers occassionally, and Vauban Bastille are all glitchy af now..

[Matt89Connor]

AFTER several hotfix we don't see any fix for the health decay....i think the DE used Nekros only for merchandise not for help well, and i think they not like too mouch this frame, because if they want, they can help well.

We, players of Nekros, want not a great changes, just an help with health decay and the shadows, then we finally see a real ultimate as we saw in the prime trailer: a great power.

[The_Stalker]

I agree with all of this, though I haven't experienced the fps issue yet but I honestly would like it if they reverted back to the OG SoTD, I've been noticing I have to use more energy then I'd use to, for example instead of using SotD every 1-2 minutes I have to use it every about 30-40 seconds which is well very terrible in my regards.  From seeing threads and replies to those threads people are still having fps issues so like you said the 7 cap was unnecessary.  

Honestly I just want the old SotD back :/ that's what really got me into Nekros and now he's honestly not that fun anymore.

[Shadow8600]

Did I miss something? I've been enjoying him tons since I got the prime. Already forma him 4 times, and really enjoy him. I don't usually run desecrate though, is this a desecrate thing?

[[DE]Momaw]

6 minutes ago, Shadow8600 said:

Did I miss something? I've been enjoying him tons since I got the prime. Already forma him 4 times, and really enjoy him. I don't usually run desecrate though, is this a desecrate thing?

No, OP is talking about shadows of the dead.  They lose a percentage of their health each second which acts as the "duration" of the ability. This is a somewhat unpopular change because in the old system you could get the Shadows duration to be longer and they wouldn't lose health while active. Personally, I think people are overreacting. Yes, your shadows lose health now which hypothetically makes them weaker... But the game will also now automatically use the strongest shadows possible and you can fully heal them by recasting. So.  Net improvements in my book.

[Shadow8600]

15 minutes ago, Momaw said:

No, OP is talking about shadows of the dead.  They lose a percentage of their health each second which acts as the "duration" of the ability. This is a somewhat unpopular change because in the old system you could get the Shadows duration to be longer and they wouldn't lose health while active. Personally, I think people are overreacting. Yes, your shadows lose health now which hypothetically makes them weaker... But the game will also now automatically use the strongest shadows possible and you can fully heal them by recasting. So.  Net improvements in my book.

Oh, I will bow out then, as I really like shadows in their current state, and I constantly press 4 to bring them to me when I'm moving around the map. 

[NightmareT12]

49 minutes ago, Momaw said:

No, OP is talking about shadows of the dead.  They lose a percentage of their health each second which acts as the "duration" of the ability. This is a somewhat unpopular change because in the old system you could get the Shadows duration to be longer and they wouldn't lose health while active. Personally, I think people are overreacting. Yes, your shadows lose health now which hypothetically makes them weaker... But the game will also now automatically use the strongest shadows possible and you can fully heal them by recasting. So.  Net improvements in my book.

So we moved the 3 to 4. That's awesome!

[[DE]Momaw]

19 minutes ago, NightmareT12 said:

So we moved the 3 to 4. That's awesome!

No, that's not what happened at all.

[NightmareT12]

31 minutes ago, Momaw said:

No, that's not what happened at all.

I know I exaggerated.

The thing is, though, that Health Decay on units that take damage is an even worse mechanic than the Duration they were actually aiming to delete. And you can quote Scott for that, "we're taking Duration out so players can invest in more Power Strength for Shadows of the Dead".

If you now try to do that, you end up in a worse position than before, because, while if the Shadows don't take damage they last for the same amount of time, when they're in a fight they're basically recieving more damage from the same units.

It's also a bad idea because this game has three factions, and one of them, the Corpus, revolve around shields. They're at a disadvantage when summoned, because their health pool is lower. So while you can heal them, you feel that the mechanic ends up being a spammy tool if you want to keep Shadows alive.

It's also worth noting that many people feel bad because after 3 weeks of having the Megathread open, there's been absolutely 0 statement about the Health Drain mechanic. I'm not going to say "DE lied to us, they're bad, omg", but I'm surprised that there was no response explaining why they decided to add that in, or that they haven't tried to tweak it further than how it is. And that's a legitimate feeling (feeling bad), because when you have your hopes up for something and they get crashed, it's terrible. Especially when you like the devs, which is something that usually (and I'm pretty sure this is a case of it) happens.

While it's true that you can build for Duration, it feels counterintuitive when you're supposed to be a damage dealing Necromancer. It's also worth noting that many builds will try to use Narrow Minded, putting Desecrate also at a bad spot.

Besides, healing the shadows costs you energy, so you're already getting a drawback by building PS. And if you go negative duration, Terrify gets the shaft too, so that's also to take into account. I never stray too far out of the 100% values when building for a specific thing so I don't end up with "bad" abilities -- because it reminds me of that terrible thing we used to do of removing the abilities completely by taking out the mods (man, does time fly by).

The whole idea of the Mod system was to give you freedom to build as you wished. Want a specific goal? Build for it! We're giving you more freedom! In this case, it feels the contrary. And that's why people think it's failing to do its purpose.

I love Scott, sometimes I take I won't like his decisions, but DE is always open to listen to us -- that's precisely why we're here. I understand sometimes drawbacks are necessary, but sometimes he feels so adamant at something. And that kind of breaks the flow.

I think I explained that the best I could. Don't even know if I made a fair point, but I think that should summarize all the Megathread replies asking please to take another look at it without being a terrible attack, disrespectful, a rank or something. Just let me know if that's not the case :P

[Dragon-V0942]

Spoiler

1 hour ago, NightmareT12 said:

I know I exaggerated.

The thing is, though, that Health Decay on units that take damage is an even worse mechanic than the Duration they were actually aiming to delete. And you can quote Scott for that, "we're taking Duration out so players can invest in more Power Strength for Shadows of the Dead".

If you now try to do that, you end up in a worse position than before, because, while if the Shadows don't take damage they last for the same amount of time, when they're in a fight they're basically recieving more damage from the same units.

It's also a bad idea because this game has three factions, and one of them, the Corpus, revolve around shields. They're at a disadvantage when summoned, because their health pool is lower. So while you can heal them, you feel that the mechanic ends up being a spammy tool if you want to keep Shadows alive.

It's also worth noting that many people feel bad because after 3 weeks of having the Megathread open, there's been absolutely 0 statement about the Health Drain mechanic. I'm not going to say "DE lied to us, they're bad, omg", but I'm surprised that there was no response explaining why they decided to add that in, or that they haven't tried to tweak it further than how it is. And that's a legitimate feeling (feeling bad), because when you have your hopes up for something and they get crashed, it's terrible. Especially when you like the devs, which is something that usually (and I'm pretty sure this is a case of it) happens.

While it's true that you can build for Duration, it feels counterintuitive when you're supposed to be a damage dealing Necromancer. It's also worth noting that many builds will try to use Narrow Minded, putting Desecrate also at a bad spot.

Besides, healing the shadows costs you energy, so you're already getting a drawback by building PS. And if you go negative duration, Terrify gets the shaft too, so that's also to take into account. I never stray too far out of the 100% values when building for a specific thing so I don't end up with "bad" abilities -- because it reminds me of that terrible thing we used to do of removing the abilities completely by taking out the mods (man, does time fly by).

The whole idea of the Mod system was to give you freedom to build as you wished. Want a specific goal? Build for it! We're giving you more freedom! In this case, it feels the contrary. And that's why people think it's failing to do its purpose.

I love Scott, sometimes I take I won't like his decisions, but DE is always open to listen to us -- that's precisely why we're here. I understand sometimes drawbacks are necessary, but sometimes he feels so adamant at something. And that kind of breaks the flow.

I think I explained that the best I could. Don't even know if I made a fair point, but I think that should summarize all the Megathread replies asking please to take another look at it without being a terrible attack, disrespectful, a rank or something. Just let me know if that's not the case :P

 

I definitely couldn't have put it better myself.
As all of my attempts have resulted in nothing more than me just simply crying and whining.

I really loved this game and the developers behind it, like most people... but now, with this lack of response and no questions answered...  I don't know how to feel any more, but upset.
You'd think it would be logical to keep an eye out for feedback and respond as soon as possible when they make big changes like this.  But instead all we're getting is silence, no answers, nothing, leaving us to speculate, especially people like me.

And since it has been tested that the FPS problem is still present, this makes the whole "reducing the shadows to 7 for performance reasons" false.

So now it's up to DE to notice this and change SOTD back to what it was before this rework.
I really wish that they would hire/recruit testers like us to actually help them out with this, because it seems like they're looking at this on paper more than game play.

[Dragon-V0942]

Wouldn't it just be simpler and easier for us to just ask for the old SOTD back?  The one before this change?
We have already tested and found out that the "performance issue" is still here, nothing performance wise has changed.
Doesn't this make this whole change completely wrong?

So we shouldn't be asking them to change it to make it better.  We should be asking them to change it back.

[BlackCoMerc]

On 8/20/2016 at 7:38 AM, (PS4)salovel1991 said:

So, it seems we've almost reached the end of our feedback "cycle". Posts now moving to Titania, new augments, weapon glitches, etc. That's not the problem. I know the developers were eager to get out The Silver Grove update as the community was growing with angst. All of OUR constructive feedback is necessary to push this game forwards. I know DE will likely never see this. It feels that Nekros posts are being pushed out of sight and out of mind, hence the reason for my post. There are a few simple changes that can be made to mitigate some of the negative feedback:

1. Simply get rid of the enemy capacity on Terrify, or raise it's number. Reworks are supposed to help get rid of out-dated concepts. Such as having low or any capacity on CC abilities. 

2. Getting rid of health decay is one solution that works, but if health decay must remain a factor may I ask that we get a form of compensation. Such as a health and damage buff. It seems like we're working with a few of the tools missing from our shop. Currently I feel less inclined to run shield of shadows simply because it scales with power strength. This has made Nekros more of a min maxing nightmare that is heavily reliant on many different mods, where as other frames do not heavily rely on every single stat. 

        A.Valkyr can sacrifice range and do well with efficiency/duration

        B.Frost can sacrifice duration and do well with strength/efficiency

       C. Nova can sacrifice range and do well with strength/efficiency/duration

The list goes on and on with the warframes. He just keeps creating a vicious cycle upon himself trying to optimize him. If you've read this far I do apologize for the lengthy topic. If you would like to try my build: 

   P. Flow, P. Continuity, Health Conversion, Creeping Terrify, Equilibrium, Vitality, Intensify, Despoil, Rejuvenation, and an exilus mod of whatever. 

I can give you one good reason why almost no one is still talking about Nekros: 

Health drain + the prevalence of Nullifiers on all missions Veteran players experience daily. 

I just tried (an utterly miserable) two person Corpus Fissure survival mission. Nullifiers - with their full bubbles despite the hotfix - spawning right on top of players the entire time. 

Who in their right mind would trust a summoner frame in this environment? When you pair this with the terrible shadow AI and the constant health drain of the shadows...you have a frame with a nigh useless Ultimate.

Still got loot reroll, of course, but now the health orb drops are nerfed. That's...much less useful.

Terrify has an enemy cap, as you stated. Other CC does not.

And Soul Punch is...not useful. And never really was all that good. 

Take all that, and combine it with needing to first grind the new relics...and you have an update designed to NOT create any buzz about its release among the community...

I'm not sure this new grind-new-relics-first system was the greatest idea, from a marketing standpoint.

Fact: Not everyone is going to buy PA.

Fact: You want players talking about great the stuff in your new PA is, when it comes out. 

Fact: That's going to happen at a much slower rate with this new system. 

Combine all of these things, add in a dollop of completely new, and much more fun and interesting, frame was just added, and...you have a recipe for "Nekros who?" syndrome...

[Hixlysss]

Shadows of the dead should get a total rework, I'd aim it to be closer to the trailer for a couple reasons. One, the trailer power looks freaking awesome, two, it doesn't require nekros to actually kill the target to get it to be his shadow minion, just be near the body so it turns into one of his zombies.

I'd also try and make his minions look even more different from the standard units, make em look more like zombies or fallout 4 ghouls or something, because honestly the color isn't enough for some or perhaps most people, specially at range, I mean I'm colorblind so I don't really see "black enemy with X color" over em, I see a enemy shape I shoot it, colors don't help much when they are across the map.

[Celas_]

Why no answers from DE? Desecrate is broken with 54% Chance and put the health orb drop chance within these 54% is just crap. So he is just a health orb machine nothing more. And Shadows of the Dead? i dont have any problems with it but the most have a problem with it. Why no answers? why not a REAL Rework? i want the old Desecrate Drop Chance back and i wrote it allready "Because this is a toggle ability now is no excuse for it" 26 Pages should show you NEKROS IS BROKEN NOW.