Specters of the Rail: U2.1 - Nekros Changes

[EnderDDT]

A very good breakdown, thank you for taking the time to crunch the numbers and point out how the shadows change was, in fact, a nerf to a frame that was not in a super great place to begin with. It can be easy to get bogged down with how something "feels" without realizing where and what was and is actually happening.

An additional problem is predictability. Before you could know when your shadows were going to go down to be ready by getting out of the line of fire to recast (or at least to not be immediately in the middle of enemies when your meat shields disappeared). Now you can only know if you are about to loose your shadows by manually staring at them. I'm sure anyone who has used them knows how bad that can be when you are depending on those shadows to do one job or another.

[(PSN)alpha_redlion]

I like how desecrate works but the cost 10 per enemy cost is crazy. Now i dont use desecrate now because  its too much of a liability now both on energy and health 

[tifanator]

Use Streamline / Fleeting Expertise.

[Soju.]

6 hours ago, zehne said:

I expect you to tell me where it says in the game it is 'ultimate' before I even consider your argument.

  Reveal hidden contents

Pretty sure it doesn't, it's a player coined term, maybe the 'players' should re-think it.

 

Um. It's all common sense, when an ability is described the most highly, it is considered an 'ultimate'.

But if you so wish. Straight out of Scott McGregor's tongue. Design Director.

Spoiler

 

Oh your highness, please consider my 'argument'. Unless you want to be difficult and one of those people and say "he says specifically for Inaros" (even though he's blatantly referring to his "4th").

Edited August 29, 2016 by AlphaWolf003

[Soju.]

6 hours ago, zehne said:

I expect you to tell me where it says in the game it is 'ultimate' before I even consider your argument.

  Reveal hidden contents

Pretty sure it doesn't, it's a player coined term, maybe the 'players' should re-think it.

 

 

10 minutes ago, AlphaWolf003 said:

Um. It's all common sense, when an ability is described the most highly, it is considered an 'ultimate'.

But if you so wish. Straight out of Scott McGregor's tongue. Design Director.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Oh your highness, please consider my 'argument'. Unless you want to be difficult and one of those people and say "he says specifically for Inaros" (even though he's blatantly referring to his "4th").

Waitttt. I got another one. This time straight outta Rebecca.

Spoiler

 

 

Edited August 29, 2016 by AlphaWolf003

[zehne]

I used 'ultimate' myself. Did I use it to describe the ability or because it's a term that is recognized commonly to refer to the fourth ability of warframes?  Was it used describe the ability in the stream to to refer to which ability it was?

Spoiler

It was used to refer to the ability.  It was used as a noun not an adjective.  Replace 'Ultimate' with 'Scarab Swarm' or 'Exalted blade' and the contents of the streams are unchanged.  But hey you know dev's need to refer to some abilities before they have settled on their names 100%.  Times like these they sometimes use a whole sentence to convey that they're using that one ability that they think will be named something like this but might not so we'll just call it the 3rd ability.  But since players have accepted that 'Ultimate' is a good noun to refer to the fourth ability, it is used as such.

There is a difference between noun and adjective.  'Ultimate' in warframe is most commonly used as a noun/pronoun.  Call me crazy, but adjectives and nouns don't mean the same thing.

EDIT:

This is one of the biggest TV tropes.  "Tiny" or "Big John" and the such.  Are they describing the character or referencing them?

 

Edited August 29, 2016 by zehne

[Klavinmour]

It only costs 2.5 health if you mod yourself right.

This means that each time you kill something you get back double the health you used to desecrate.

[Xekrin]

45 minutes ago, (PS4)alpha_redlion said:

I like how desecrate works but the cost 10 per enemy cost is crazy. Now i dont use desecrate now because  its too much of a liability now both on energy and health 

Unfortunately they tend to balance energy costs and other ability stats around the minmax mods so it becomes pretty interesting to find a decent build that isn't well, meta.  Your best options are using the two eff mods or turning it on and off between kill zones, which kind of lowers its effectiveness but oh well.

[tifanator]

Honestly, as long as you keep killing enemies, you don't even need efficiency. Health orbs still drop from desecrated enemies very frequently. I even use Blind Rage on my Shadows/Desecrate build with no Vitality and never really run into any problems.

[(PSN)LoisGordils]

Use Despoil 

[Soju.]

19 minutes ago, zehne said:

I used 'ultimate' myself. Did I use it to describe the ability or because it's a term that is recognized commonly to refer to the fourth ability of warframes?  Was it used describe the ability in the stream to to refer to which ability it was?

  Hide contents

It was used to refer to the ability.  It was used as a noun not an adjective.  Replace 'Ultimate' with 'Scarab Swarm' or 'Exalted blade' and the contents of the streams are unchanged.  But hey you know dev's need to refer to some abilities before they have settled on their names 100%.  Times like these they sometimes use a whole sentence to convey that they're using that one ability that they think will be named something like this but might not so we'll just call it the 3rd ability.  But since players have accepted that 'Ultimate' is a good noun to refer to the fourth ability, it is used as such.

There is a difference between noun and adjective.  'Ultimate' in warframe is most commonly used as a noun/pronoun.  Call me crazy, but adjectives and nouns don't mean the same thing.

 

Just as I expected. More needless reasons and one person's speculated insights into why it is such. Have you ever seen a person, walks into a school, and need to ask a teenager wearing a backpack whether he is a student or not? As I said. It's called 'common sense', but since you have so many speculated reasons why the devs themselves call them 'ultimate' and still not justify that it is an ultimate, then I don't know what can do justly for you.

 

His 4th, the core ability of every known necromantic theme - summoning the dead. And your reasoning is that there is (supposedly) nowhere to be found in the game that says it is an ultimate, therefore it is not an ultimate, even though the devs themselves repeatedly calling every 4th an ulti, it just comes out of their mouth like that, maybe, y'know, once again, it's just 'common sense'. There are no needs to over-analyze something instead of providing a valid 'argument'.

Edited August 29, 2016 by AlphaWolf003

[zehne]

2 minutes ago, AlphaWolf003 said:

As I said. It's called 'common sense'

You tell me it's common sense that if you see something it is exactly what you see?

IF SO:

Spoiler

It says exactly what it says.

 

[Soju.]

3 minutes ago, zehne said:

You tell me it's common sense that if you see something it is exactly what you see?

IF SO:

  Hide contents

It says exactly what it says.

 

Having common sense and taking something literally, are two seperate things, I'm not going to sit here like a 10 years old and have a philosophical debate about words and adding them to your dictionary in the process with you if you are so hard on that and trying so hard to not see reasons.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=common+sense+definition

Edited August 29, 2016 by AlphaWolf003

[(XBOX)x Deathcraft x]

Despoil & Streamline/Fleeting Expertise & continuity

[Gurpgork]

6 hours ago, zehne said:

Not all 'ultimates' cost 100 energy.  (when I say ultimate i'm referencing the abilities that are default keybind #4).

While it would be a fantastic change if the devs started to balance abilities by adjusting their energy costs, I still believe that SotD should be brought up to be worth 100 energy, rather than having its cost lowered in acceptance of it being a lackluster ability. This is the thing that ought to be Nekros's bread and butter, being a necromancer and all. It should be, in my opinion, the clear strongest ability in his kit. 

[RealPandemonium]

8 hours ago, Racter0325 said:

They actually nerfed Desecrate in most farm setups as well. Because it takes so much longer to desecrate mass enemies you end up losing quite a few to their natural decay now. They also added health orbs to his drop table instead of them being their own thing.

Those are substantial nerfs, but by far the worst is that now Desecrate can consume corpses without producing anything at all, whereas before if it failed to roll the HP orb the corpse would stay around for further attempts.  

[(XBOX)Bortis Badtouch]

lets see, summary for nekros as follows:

1: neat

2:neat

3: got nerfed (nekros desecrate was fine the way it was before, i practically mained him for the longest time, just because DE appealed to the masses doesn't mean im happy with it, and i am sure nekros mains are still pouring salt on themselves as we speak)

4: poop, baby sitter simulator 2016 ( they managed to screw his ult up, that why these "reworks, aka nerfs COUGH COUGH" make me and a lot of other people angry, if your wooden wheel powered pc can't handle it, to bad, graphics cards, processors, ram sticks, are very cheap, stop impeding us because of your poopy computers

[zehne]

22 hours ago, AlphaWolf003 said:

Before Nekros Prime update, maxed strength gives Nekros as much as 15 Shadows (or more), now his cap is 7.

...

Now what the hell is this? I might be one of the minor here that loved his 4th

This is part of your OP.  But I have several counter-points:

1) Pre-Nekros Prime, he worked exactly the way he works now.  These changes went into effect nearly two weeks before Nekros prime.

2)For somebody who was 'one of the minor here that loved his 4th'  how do you not know that his cap was 21 shadows?  Or more accurately, you could cap the ability at 21 shadows but only ever summon 20 because that's the amount the game remembered.

 

You're telling me that you can't play him because you don't like the way he works now because he worked better they way he used to work which you don't even know how he worked.

 

 

Edited August 29, 2016 by zehne

[Gurpgork]

2 minutes ago, zehne said:

You're telling me that you can't play him because you don't like the way he works now because he worked better they way he used to work which you don't even know how he worked.

You don't need to know the nuances of game mechanics to understand that it is far, far better to have a bunch of Shadows then a few Shadows, especially when we lost the raw numbers we could get before without getting compensated with higher damage multipliers. 

[zehne]

Just now, Gurpgork said:

You don't need to know the nuances of game mechanics to understand that it is far, far better to have a bunch of Shadows then a few Shadows, especially when we lost the raw numbers we could get before without getting compensated with higher damage multipliers. 

Currently there are other threads that are 'unrelated' but serve the purpose for which I now repute this:

• Duality topic for equinox; the argument being that the spector should be permanent until it dies instead of on a timer, after all even with a 300% damage bonus to the weapon the player uses, they can't aim for S#&$ and thus they are very ineffective at doing damage.
• Reflection damage topic; reflection damage should be GREATLY increased, the reason for this is that while damage is reflected back, what is immense damage to the tenno is just tickles to enemies.
  • In otherwords, npc's attacking npc's do barely any damage at all.  Even with 3.0 damage modifiers it's still hardly anything.

My response: if you were using SoTD for damage dealing at any point in time, you are greatly confused as to what is good at dealing damage.  SoTD was best used to be meat shields, now you have less (okay, it's understandable that less is less).  But as people have pointed out, they are still very good at 'holding aggro'.  Being able to teleport them to you allows you to pick and choose the ones you want (albeit it's sorta hard to do at times) and keep them.  SoTD got 'some nerfs' and 'some buffs'.  Just because you don't like the way it works now (just like how I liked the way the old nova MP worked) doesn't mean it should or will get changed.

[Soju.]

27 minutes ago, zehne said:

This is part of your OP.  But I have several counter-points:

1) Pre-Nekros Prime, he worked exactly the way he works now.  These changes went into effect nearly two weeks before Nekros prime.

2)For somebody who was 'one of the minor here that loved his 4th'  how do you not know that his cap was 21 shadows?  Or more accureatly, you could cap the ability at 21 shadows but only ever summon 20 because that's the amount the game remembered.

 

You're telling me that you can't play him because you don't like the way he works now because he worked better they way he used to work which you don't even know how he worked.

 

 

"Pre-Nekros Prime, he worked exactly the way he works now. These changes went into effect nearly two weeks before Nekros prime"

Are you bloody serious? Ok so now you're nitpicking about it. When I say Pre-Nekros Prime, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Yet here you are nitpicking it unnecessarily.

"2)For somebody who was 'one of the minor here that loved his 4th'  how do you not know that his cap was 21 shadows?  Or more accureatly, you could cap the ability at 21 shadows but only ever summon 20 because that's the amount the game remembered."

... Do you have to know every single number in existence to love mathematics? Every single techniques in kicking balls to love soccer? I think not. I said 15 shadows (OR MORE), because 15 is base maximum. Does that satisfy your need for stupid arguments?

"because you don't like the way he works now because he worked better they way he used to work"

So... according to you it's better so it's also better for me. Ok.

"which you don't even know how he worked."

So me did not specify the maximum number of cap for his Shadows modded meaning my arguments are invalid. Ok Mr.Difficult. This is turning more into a desperate joke than a debate. I'm done with comments like this of yours.

Edited August 29, 2016 by AlphaWolf003

[zehne]

Okay then, how about this one:

1) I like the NEW SoTD because I don't have to re-summon all my shadows every-time i cast it.

2) I like how I can hold onto the shadows I summon by healing them back up to full

3) I like being able to re-position the shadows now because I can move and teleport them

4)I like the new SoTD for reasons 1-3 and that the cast time for 1-3 are greatly reduced.

EDIT:

5) I like how I don't have to kill 20 enemies before casting SoTD because it was re-balanced around 7

Edited August 29, 2016 by zehne

[God_is_a_Cat_Girl]

While I can somewhat agree that the damage multipliers and the like could use a change to make up for the lost Shadows, I also see why DE didn't increase the base multipliers, because the base stats right now have the same number of shadows as before, meaning that if they increased the multipliers the ability would be directly stronger than it was before when it lost nothing at all in comparison, because 100% str back then was 7 shadows and now it's still 7 shadows, you only lost shadows if you had positive STR and only then, so only that should be looked at.

Which is why DE opted to give the prioritization to the ability, by summoning the stronger enemies that you killed it will make the ability "stronger", plus let you have a lot more freedom to get better shadows, without having to resort to a killing prioritization that wasn't even a skilful way to play, it was just gimping your offence in order to get 30+ seconds of stronger shadows.

However, I wouldn't call it broken if they changed the way that STR applies to the multipliers, in a way that positive STR increases the multipliers slightly higher than before, like, a STR multiplier, but I'd say that it would've to be done in a way that wouldn't negatively affect  negative STR too hard, so it improves the ability as a whole but not gimp it too much if you go through a different route.

 

And yeah, I have to say, despite that I use Ultimate some times because it's commonly used, it is a bad term to use. It's a bad way to design things, when the mindset already is to USUALLY have abilities getting stronger through the numbers, but by not limiting it to the term Ultimate allows for more variation, and rather, abilities are as strong to justify their cost, not just their key number, and some frames just doesn't apply the term Ultimate, their 4th ability is just something different that isn't "ultimate" at all, but not entirely weak either, just not something that means winning, some times it's just a helping hand that is strong enough to justify the energy it uses.

Edited August 29, 2016 by God_is_a_Cat_Girl

[Gurpgork]

20 minutes ago, zehne said:

My response: if you were using SoTD for damage dealing at any point in time, you are greatly confused as to what is good at dealing damage.

It was a lot better at dealing damage before the change, and it still wasn't very good at dealing damage. This was an undeserved nerf. At the bare minimum, the ability deserved compensation for the number of Shadows it lost with better damage and health multipliers, but it didn't even get that. The result is that the ability only has a fraction of the damage output and tanking potential that it did before the change. 

14 minutes ago, zehne said:

SoTD got 'some nerfs' and 'some buffs'.

It absolutely deserved the buffs and absolutely did not deserve the nerfs. Having 21 Shadows did not threaten game balance. Performance changes are understandable and necessary, but they should absolutely never come at the cost of player power. Change the particle effects if need be, but don't nerf an ability that already underperforms in many respects. 

10 minutes ago, zehne said:

1) I like the NEW SoTD because I don't have to re-summon all my shadows every-time i cast it.

2) I like how I can hold onto the shadows I summon by healing them back up to full

3) I like being able to re-position the shadows now because I can move and teleport them

Nobody is saying that these are bad changes. They are not, however, fair compensation for nuking what little damage potential the ability had. 

 

[zehne]

1 minute ago, Gurpgork said:

It was a lot better at dealing damage before the change, and it still wasn't very good at dealing damage.

Your whole premise for 'revert changes' is that you preferred the smallest factor of the ability that was nerfed, as opposed to all the great benefits it now has?!?

• Congratulations, my mind is blown