Specters of the Rail: U2.1 - Nekros Changes

[(PSN)DesecratedFlame]

They nerfed shadows, nerfed Desecrate, and changed which button you have to spam. Enjoy.

[Celas_]

4 hours ago, (PS4)Lord_Gremlin said:

So, looks like nekros will be left as new bottom tier useless frame.

For minions you have atlas, maxed rumblers are very tanky and great at killing. For loot you have hydroid with pilfering swarm augment. I've been testing it recently, hydroid easily 4 times better than nekros at farming.

I'm still shocked. They took a bad warframe which had 1 loot ability that was a bit better /on par with other loot frames... And made it completely useless.

It's like saryn and mag. Except they've been made meh. Nekros is completely destroyed.

 

Seriously I don't understand thought process. Like, shadows are not good to begin with, what's the point of health decay? And desecrate... They made every single piece consume 10 energy base. And changed it from 90% loot drop with extra guaranteed health orb to 54% loot drop DILUTED with health orb drop.

finally someone who understand that thank you,

5 hours ago, F4talFr4me said:

Maybe you should look at changes to frames before throwing money at bad decisions in the future? hope you learned your lesson and dont give them any more money from today anywards.

Maybe you right, i want support DE but even after that DE dont care about the wishes from the Community. Not even a Answer or a Compromise

[Soju.]

14 hours ago, zehne said:

I can't say enough how I think you're completely wrong about how strong the ability should be.

I just went solo into a heircon.  Using my 1 forma Nekros (not prime).  I killed enemies and summoned my shadows.  Next I did one extractor killing everything that came.  I then let my shadows die and started a new extractor.

I Used 0 abilities besides SoTD, I used 0 weapons.  I stood ontop the extractor and watched my shadows fight.  I completed the extractor successfully, my SoTD minions killed all the enemies neccesary for energy, and the ONLY thing I did was pick them up and turn them in. 

 

Now I can understand wanting a stronger ultimate, but SoTD is already capable of 'soloing' defense missions while you watch tv and press one button every ~~24 seconds.

(and my nekros had 3 empty mods slots at the time I did this)

EDIT:

To make it clear how strong SoTD already is, the ONLY mods that effected my SoTD at the time was Primed Continuity, Narrow Minded and Transient Fortitude.  Turns out that equilibrium, Quick thinking and Primed flow were unnecessary.  I was only touched several times and never took any hp damage despite only 270 shields due to the fact that the shadows held aggro.

EDIT:

Did this experiment again, this time: 2 empty mod slots, everything else was 'dedicated' to SoTD.

MISSION: Defend an extractor until it dies (no energy feeding)

MISSION: Failed; I gave up after 20 minutes, only having to press SoTD every ~~45 seconds (with no shadows dieing).

/facepalm

 

1 hour ago, (PS4)DesecratedFlame said:

They nerfed shadows, nerfed Desecrate, and changed which button you have to spam. Enjoy.

^ This guy got the right idea.

[(PSN)AllOrNothinDays]

As it is now it's also just far too difficult to keep track of your shadows compared to having a little timer in the corner to follow before they all died off. Even when you have the shield mod equipped, it's asking a little too much to keep your eyes on your damage reduction percentage seeing as you have less shadows than before so when one drops you're losing quite a lot

[Soju.]

15 hours ago, zehne said:

I can't say enough how I think you're completely wrong about how strong the ability should be.

I just went solo into a heircon.  Using my 1 forma Nekros (not prime).  I killed enemies and summoned my shadows.  Next I did one extractor killing everything that came.  I then let my shadows die and started a new extractor.

You're talking as if solo with SoTD was a problem before.

This is a video of me playing Nekros with the last and final mission of The New Strange (defense) against 10 waves over a year ago, not even trying. An experimental build I made with a decent enough range for desecrate + despoil while still maintain a high amount of Shadows to distract and eat the enemy bullets for me so I can finish the mission with ease and scan the Chroma without any obstacles, also KILL them for me when I didn't kill them first. And as you can see, most if not all of my enemies shoot at my Shadows first unless I approach real close to them. That helps both me, AND the defending objective.

And you know what else? Summoned Shadows when killed (either by duration, or another mob which is very rare to happens, as their health points are as high as the enemies, with the same low damage) and then desecrated, have a 90% chance to drop a health orb, and they only drop health orbs, and guess what the health orbs are for? Despoil. And you know why it's useful info? Because I have OVER 15 @(*()$ SHADOWS, and most of them are dropping health orbs for me so I can continue desecrating, and thus keep the cycle going.

 

And yes, I could have just sit and do Desecrate and pick up health orbs and probably still win. But that's impractical, that's going to take longer to finish a wave and I will have to waste twice as much energy as they might not kill all enemies in one summon's duration. I don't even have the high end mods at this time, no Primed Continuity, strength's not even maximized.

 

Edited August 30, 2016 by AlphaWolf003

[(PSN)Lord_Gremlin]

3 hours ago, (PS4)DesecratedFlame said:

They nerfed shadows, nerfed Desecrate, and changed which button you have to spam. Enjoy.

That's actually amusingly, exactly correct. And don't forget they done it to an already BAD frame. No wonder nekros prime dropped to 150p or less in trade in a day. And now barely anyone buying it. Mastery fodder.

The good thing about nekros being butchered is I had a reason to appreciate hydroid again. Really good loot frame and overall nice powers.First is a bit weak and he's a bit too squishy but overall very decent. And atlas. Who has 2 legitimately good minions. Except until nullifiers removed from the game all minions are bad.

But now if somebody says hydroid is bad I'll just point to nekros. That, that is what's actually bad. Completely useless. Hydroid is decent. 

[(XBOX)x Deathcraft x]

I find my self attacking my own shadows :( even my team mates do it.

Can we come up with a way to distinguish them from the original enemy?

I'm thinking make it like Rhinos iron skin, summons would be like a metallic accent color or something, besides just little spouts of energy drifting off of them.

[NightmareT12]

Are you using Nekros or Nekros Prime?

Which color?

I've found myself attacking too much the shadows as Nekros Prime. As Nekros, it doesn't happen so often because the energy color is usually more present.

Also, this is best suited for Art & Animation Feedback methinks.

[1tsyB1tsyN1nj4]

OR

Look at the mini map?

[DeMonkey]

Just now, 1tsyB1tsyN1nj4 said:

OR

Look at the mini map?

Bit difficult to be constantly looking at the minimap at the same time as playing the game.

[1tsyB1tsyN1nj4]

15 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

Bit difficult to be constantly looking at the minimap at the same time as playing the game.

That's why I have it on my screen at all times with less opacity, can't be looking at a tiny square in the top left all the time on a 70" TV

[Inarticulate]

29 minutes ago, 1tsyB1tsyN1nj4 said:

That's why I have it on my screen at all times with less opacity, can't be looking at a tiny square in the top left all the time on a 70" TV

I do that and it's still difficult.

Also, when I see 4 blue dots all surrounding a red arrow, I still can't really tell which one is the red arrow.

[God_is_a_Cat_Girl]

19 hours ago, zehne said:

I can't say enough how I think you're completely wrong about how strong the ability should be.

I just went solo into a heircon.  Using my 1 forma Nekros (not prime).  I killed enemies and summoned my shadows.  Next I did one extractor killing everything that came.  I then let my shadows die and started a new extractor.

I Used 0 abilities besides SoTD, I used 0 weapons.  I stood ontop the extractor and watched my shadows fight.  I completed the extractor successfully, my SoTD minions killed all the enemies neccesary for energy, and the ONLY thing I did was pick them up and turn them in. 

 

Now I can understand wanting a stronger ultimate, but SoTD is already capable of 'soloing' defense missions while you watch tv and press one button every ~~24 seconds.

(and my nekros had 3 empty mods slots at the time I did this)

EDIT:

To make it clear how strong SoTD already is, the ONLY mods that effected my SoTD at the time was Primed Continuity, Narrow Minded and Transient Fortitude.  Turns out that equilibrium, Quick thinking and Primed flow were unnecessary.  I was only touched several times and never took any hp damage despite only 270 shields due to the fact that the shadows held aggro.

EDIT:

Did this experiment again, this time: 2 empty mod slots, everything else was 'dedicated' to SoTD.

MISSION: Defend an extractor until it dies (no energy feeding)

MISSION: Failed; I gave up after 20 minutes, only having to press SoTD every ~~45 seconds (with no shadows dieing).

Without commenting on the experiment itself, there's a factor that people seem to forget which contributes for this experiment and for some shadows to die much faster now (aside of the drain), which is that the Shadows actually draw agro now, enemies will prioritize shadows a lot more now which makes it so things around shadows to survive more easily, this includes anything from players to excavators and defence targets, however, it's not a magical agro, the enemy can still target other things, but it is a much stronger agro than we usually have (I'd guess it's along the lines of what Atlas 4th augment is meant to do).

 

Though honestly I don't see what's the problem with pressing 4 every 20+ seconds and how is that "spam" comparable to old Desecrate spam, which lets not forget that old desecrate didn't have a 100% desecrate chance, which made it so it was better than new when there was LOTS of corpses but worse when there was very small amounts of corpses (which could be annoying when you mashed 3 and watched an enemy take several casts until it worked because RNG, if it worked which could and did happen occasionally).

Edited August 30, 2016 by God_is_a_Cat_Girl

[F4talFr4me]

5 hours ago, ObjectM said:

finally someone who understand that thank you,

Maybe you right, i want support DE but even after that DE dont care about the wishes from the Community. Not even a Answer or a Compromise

Sadly yes. untill they change there ways, i wont be giving them another *insert currency here*

[Soju.]

32 minutes ago, God_is_a_Cat_Girl said:

Without commenting on the experiment itself, there's a factor that people seem to forget which contributes for this experiment and for some shadows to die much faster now (aside of the drain), which is that the Shadows actually draw agro now, enemies will prioritize shadows a lot more now which makes it so things around shadows to survive more easily, this includes anything from players to excavators and defence targets, however, it's not a magical agro, the enemy can still target other things, but it is a much stronger agro than we usually have (I'd guess it's along the lines of what Atlas 4th augment is meant to do).

 

Though honestly I don't see what's the problem with pressing 4 every 20+ seconds and how is that "spam" comparable to old Desecrate spam, which lets not forget that old desecrate didn't have a 100% desecrate chance, which made it so it was better than new when there was LOTS of corpses but worse when there was very small amounts of corpses (which could be annoying when you mashed 3 and watched an enemy take several casts until it worked because RNG, if it worked which could and did happen occasionally).

Um, I'd rather have the enemies target over 15 shadows than all of them targeting on 7. That makes their life shorter, that + health decay = an overall way shorter duration, and the more enemies there are the shorter it becomes.

 

If you actually watch my video, the enemy mobs always target my Shadows first instead of me, of the objective I'm supposed to defend, so this whole "drawing more bullets than before thing with 7 Shadows" seems like a complete bullS#&$ excuse to nerf.

 

And saying 20 seconds is generous, as I said, the more enemy mobs there are, the shorter it gets.

Edited August 31, 2016 by AlphaWolf003

[The-Matrix]

Totally agree, Nekros got nerfed so badly...  Desecrate is so  useless right now and SotD is weaker than the former one...

 

Desecrate :

_ a lot less loot chance, dont even know why it has been nerfed (90% to less than 54% in including the orb)===> reverse back the  % loot chance

 

SotD :

_ 13 less summons  than before (maxed) so less agro, less protection around you, less diversity in undead abilities===> increase the number of summons available (not 20 but at least 5 more)

 

_undead need to be constantly babysitting compared to before where you could easily achieve w/o too much pain and negative stats  40 sc duration. You cant really focus on an another task or your asmatic pets won't survive  their fast decaying state + the dmg they take======> increase the health's pool of the undead

 

_augment shield of shadow require more power strentgh to achieve the 90% reduction compared to before with only 7 summons where as you had around 14 summons (average)===> increase the number of pets

 

 

Seriously DE before reworking any warframe if you cant see what will happen at least ask a choosen group of experienced players to help you because it's not the first time a "rework" has been done quite lightly.

 

Sadly there is so many warframes who still need to be tweaked or (re)reworked and this is going to be worst and worst since the content keep increasing where as the fix cant follow the progression. I wish you you could take your time reworking all the warframes with less new contents; it would refresh the gameplay w/o penalizing the interest too much thanks to the rediscover of "new" abilities.

Edited August 31, 2016 by The-Matrix

[Matt89Connor]

On 28/8/2016 at 10:02 PM, Archwizard said:

if and only if you have Despoil.

despoil now is the best change...the problem now is the DECAY guys....don't speak of desecrate,,,,is the DECAY the problem

[------Solo------]

The orb these ospreys deploy got the same color with the ones that the Corpus got, is it possible for you DE to change it to the color of our energy. Its confusing when you don't know whose pulse Orb is on the floor. You can't shoot them to destroy them since they are friendly units summoned from SoTD.

[(PSN)W0Wbaggr]

Same goes for friendly kavats.

[NightmareT12]

I've taken a Notepad and a chronometer and used various duration and Power Strength builds to determine how the Shadows of the Dead were keeping up under the first 5 minutes of a survival mission (where the damage and heavy fire is still low). Here's my results (let's see if I don't mess up the formatting):

Shadows of the Dead -- Silver Grove HF#5 test -- Survival first 5 minutes, not under heavy fire

• Old base values at Level 30:
  • Duration: 30 seconds (affected by Duration)
  • Health drain: none
  • Number of shadows: 7 (affected by Range)
  • Health multiplier: 1 (affected by Strength)
  • Shields multiplier: 1 (affected by Strength)
  • Damage  1.5 (affected by Strength)
• Current base values at Level 30:
  • Duration: None
  • Health drain: 3% Max Health (affected by Duration)
  • Number of shadows: 7 (fixed)
  • Health multiplier: 2 (affected by Strength)
  • Shields multiplier: 2 (affected by Strength)
  • Damage  2.5 (affected by Strength)

Builds:

• 130% Power Strength, 178% Duration (50% + 28%):
  • Health drain: 1.69%
  • Old duration system: Max 53 seconds (53,4).
  • Current:
    • Grineer (Sedna): 30s first shadow, 60s all shadows
    • Corpus (Lua): 25s first shadow, 44.5s all shadows
• 180% Power Strength, 125% Duration (50% - 25%):
  • Health drain: 2.4% Max Health
  • Old duration system: Max 38 seconds (37,8).
  • Current:
    • Grineer (Sedna): 33s first shadow, 42s all shadows
    • Corpus (Lua): 30s first shadow, 44s all shadows
• 211% Power Strength, 90% Duration (Base + 50% - 10%):
  • Health drain: 3.3% Max Health
  • Old duration system: Max 27 seconds.
  • Current:
    • Grineer (Sedna): 25s first two shadows (died at the same time), 30s all shadows  
    • Corpus (Lua): 11s first shadow, 29s all shadows

 

Conclusion: On average, the shadows last slightly more than before if left alone, and roughly the same if under normal attack (5 or 7 enemies around). However, it's important to note that the first shadows to die were receiving most of the damage. Those are lasting way less than before. As you can see, when you're not playing Solo, more enemies appear and more damage is received, Shadows of the Dead ends up lasting less than before in a normal 4 squad circumstance. Now, if we put ourselves on a more intense situation (Void, Dark Sectors, Sorties), we can see that we can't possibly keep up in the current state of the ability. Shadows get too low too easily, it's 100 base energy to keep them up and running. It's posing a big problem for Nekros.

Suggestions:

• Decrease Max Health drain from 3% to 2%: This is a straight buff to duration of shadows, yes. This means that they should be able to last quite some more without much problem. It's also keeping the drawback off building up to 300% Strength, to avoid the "Bladestorm Ash" case. DE seems to not want people to use this kind of builds without people having some serious tradeoffs, and I have to agree there.

If we see the above is not enough still:

•  Add 0.5 more to each multiplier: That means we'd have 3x damage and 2.5 Health and 2.5 Shields for our summoned shadows. It's a slight buff that should not really make things too wonky. Also, remember we lost the ability to have more than 7 possible shadows. So each current one's effectively taking more damage than before due less minions.

If the above still doesn't cut it (which, honestly, would be weird in any case of build unless it's using negative strength)

• We'd need then, in this case, to consider giving a slight health return to shadows so they can keep up a bit more the fight: Kind of giving them a small lifesteal on enemy hit, so that the decay is still bigger but they can keep up in the middle of a fight a bit more, allowing the player to have some extra time to get energy back.
  But seriously, I'd be incredibly stoned if this had to make its way in.

Thoughts? Opinions?

Edited August 31, 2016 by NightmareT12
Changed a mistake I did when posting

[Rhaenxys]

I never played with nekros before the prime version but what is the point of soul punch? it deals very little damage and is only CC for one enemy, other than to temporary disable a big threat is a bit useless, it would be better if it was an AoE cone ability like banshee`s sonic boom.

And agree with "NightmareT12" a decrease from 3% to 2% to the health drain and a raise of 0.5 to each multiplier for shadows of the dead would be enough to bring some balance.

[--RV--arm4geddon-117]

2 hours ago, NightmareT12 said:

Suggestions:

• Decrease Max Health drain from 3% to 2%: This is a straight buff to duration of shadows, yes. This means that they should be able to last quite some more without much problem. It's also keeping the drawback off building up to 300% Strength, to avoid the "Bladestorm Ash" case. DE seems to not want people to use this kind of builds without people having some serious tradeoffs, and I have to agree there.

If we see the above is not enough still:

•  Add 0.5 more to each multiplier: That means we'd have 3x damage and 2.5 Health and 2.5 Shields for our summoned shadows. It's a slight buff that should not really make things too wonky. Also, remember we lost the ability to have more than 7 possible shadows. So each one's effectively taking the same damage as before.

 

Solid & Balanced suggestion, i hope the DEVs have a look at it , that would be a real nice improvement to SOTD

[Giagantic]

I honestly really enjoy Nekros at the moment before I found him to be a tiresome existence, spamming your 3 is not fun and bad design whereas now it eliminates the need or desire to spam 3 and do little else, his summons did basically nothing outside of act as a poor mans meat shield. Now 3 is a toggle-able giving you the freedom of doing other things and this is a dynamic change that I think is great, 4 is not perfect but it is going in the right direction in my opinion.

 

What I want from 4 is that the health decay either be limited severely or outright removed if the limitation on the number of summons will not be changed. The addition of actual aggro is amazing but I really wish they scaled appropriately and dealt damage similar to their previously killed selves. The decay is annoying and we should either get some sort of indicator of how much health they have as a group so that managing that is less of a hassle. 

[NightmareT12]

8 minutes ago, Giagantic said:

I honestly really enjoy Nekros at the moment before I found him to be a tiresome existence, spamming your 3 is not fun and bad design whereas now it eliminates the need or desire to spam 3 and do little else, his summons did basically nothing outside of act as a poor mans meat shield. Now 3 is a toggle-able giving you the freedom of doing other things and this is a dynamic change that I think is great, 4 is not perfect but it is going in the right direction in my opinion.

 

What I want from 4 is that the health decay either be limited severely or outright removed if the limitation on the number of summons will not be changed. The addition of actual aggro is amazing but I really wish they scaled appropriately and dealt damage similar to their previously killed selves. The decay is annoying and we should either get some sort of indicator of how much health they have as a group so that managing that is less of a hassle. 

I actually ran Lua and Sedna Survivals for 5 minutes and made a cast of Shadows of the Dead. I've left the results I found out at the megathread here:

Basically I think that if we decreased it by a single % it'd feel much, much better.

I also need to say that when people seem to be running Narrow Minded on Nekros, something feels a tad off.

[KirukaChan]

All I want is for the health drain on the Shadows to be gone, even if it means bringing back duration.