Specters of the Rail: U2.1 - Nekros Changes

[BulletsforTeeth]

7 minutes ago, (PS4)AllOrNothinDays said:

Sad if there are no changes. I was really hype for nekros prime and he's going to probably just sit in my inventory rather than be something I pulled out routinely since I loved his look and liked having an army of undead running around. I could deal with just 7 of them but with how quickly they can get picked off in combination of their health degrading, it simply wasn't fun to play that aspect of him and was reduced to just getting the most I could out of his desecrate and having to be satisfied with that after pouring forma into him. I keep trying to make my favorite ability of his work but it's just not fun managing it. 

See, this is what we're all complaining about DE. It's fine to balance it, but honestly, having to micromanage shadows like this makes a normally fun ability... Really tedious.

[PsychoticMarik]

1 hour ago, God_is_a_Cat_Girl said:

But if you really believe that Atlas would be better by just having 5 more seconds or is better the current 15 seconds at base, then there's no changing your mind and no point in going any further with this.

I gave an extensive list of reasons as to why Atlas has an easier time with his minions than Nekros that cannot be refuted. They are facts.

I dont mean to sound like an &#! but I get the impression you didnt play very much Nekros prior to this "rework". At least not a build based on his shadows. Nekros is worse now then he was before baring very few changes. Those being desecrate is a toggle(which despite being less good I can accept because now its a toggle), and shadows prioritize stronger units. Thats it. The rest are nerfs to a frame that was already under par. Anyone who played an extensive amount of Nekros knows this. Thats why the feedback is so largely negative. Lets never forget DE hyped up this rework when they said his shadows duration was being removed. Thats a huge part of the reason for this negative feedback. They fed us a line of bull to hype up his rework and then pulled the rug out from under us for no good reason.

I have not noticed this fabled "higher aggro" they supposedly draw now. It doesnt feel any different at all. My shadows were always targeted first when I had 14 of them. Now we have far less units on the field to even draw that aggro, so if this is even true all its doing is trying to compensate for the smaller amount of shadows. Which would be fine if they didnt decay. Now that they do even if they are drawing increased aggro(which frankly I'm not buying is even happening. Let alone able to compete with the 14 I use to have.)their is fewer of them to draw it and because of the decay they die even faster now.

Never once did I state that Atlas and Nekros had to be on par in everything. Only that the damn necromancer should have significantly better minions than a frame not designed around them, but apparently thats too much to ask. As a whole they are more of a pain than Rumblers and have roughly the same impact. Without the augment Rumblers still draw aggro just fine and scale into high level perfectly. They exist as cc meatshields and thats what they do. Same as shadows except with far less tediousness. You can argue that they dont draw as much aggro but that just advocates even more for the removal of decay because they should be taking even more damage from enemies and thus decay is just a stupid add on that makes us have to spam more and removes the fun of having minions to begin with. Rumblers are also just supposed to be an aspect of Atlas and not a central theme unlike Nekro's shadows. Necromancer is in his name. Him having far superior minions is the balance, or at least its supposed to be.

Nekros is factually worse than he was, and fixing this problem is as simple as removing the shadows health decay. Tho there are certainly other things that could be tweaked.

Why anyone would argue against a simple(and frankly huge)qol improvement that we were promised to begin with is beyond me. This is the warframe community tho. Proving time and time again that they will oppose anything even if its sensible. We were told duration was going away and it was instead changed to be made worse both in practice(shadows decay and die sooner)and in qol(we now have to constantly scan their health bars and spam 4). Based on principle alone we should be advocating the removal of health decay.

Stop defending DE when they make bad decisions and start holding them accountable.

Edited August 31, 2016 by PsychoticMarik

[Gurpgork]

33 minutes ago, God_is_a_Cat_Girl said:

I'd say that right now he's different enough from before where it's not just a nerf or a small change, he's still Nekros but a lot different from before, where everything works very well to keep him alive even if each individual thing has lost something. You lose shadows and easier access to damage reduction cap but got better agro which helps getting hit less and so decreasing the need to tank hits. Shadows can die faster now but you can now teleport them to you and keep them alive instead of losing a good shadow squad and have to farm strong enemies or just summon the last 1X enemies you killed. And so on. Well, that's reworks are about, they aren't really just buffs, they are actual changes, for worse or better. Nekros mechanically changed, not just his numbers.

As I've said before, the buffs he got were nothing more than QoL fixes that he absolutely deserved to have without getting his damage potential absolutely axed, and without getting an objectively worse version of duration. They are not at all fair compensation for the heavy nerfs to SotD in the name of performance, an issue that these changes didn't even resolve.

Edited August 31, 2016 by Gurpgork

[Gurpgork]

4 hours ago, NightmareT12 said:

Actually duration is worse. 

No, it's not. With Duration, the Shadows can take the same amount of damage after 29 seconds that they can after 1 second. With health decay, they die to a stiff breeze after 29 seconds. 

4 hours ago, NightmareT12 said:

It's all down to adjusting the health drain so it's a bit less opressive

Why can't we just get freaking rid of the stupid health decay? We were promised removal of duration anyway. Not replacement. Removal. 

What does the health decay do for the ability? Balance it? It's already a lackluster ability. It already requires Nekros to get kills before he can summon his Shadows. All the health decay is good for is artificially inflating the number of key presses necessary to play Nekros, while simultaneously making it one of the most expensive abilities to maintain. The abiliity does not need this balancing factor. It's oppressive, as you said, it's honestly ruining the ability. So why keep it at all, especially when DE said they were getting rid of duration?

[Soju.]

3 hours ago, NightmareT12 said:

Hence what I said, adjsuting the Health Drain. I meant base Health Drain, not our modded versions.

Hence what he said, remove the health decay entirely, the old duration system is still better than this system.

4 hours ago, I3oggle said:

I really enjoy Nekros how he is, with the right mod setup you are super tanky and provide a lot to a squad from the extra loot, health orbs, and not to mention that the enemies focus on the shadows.  Excavation, Defense, Mobile Defense...  All the enemies are more interested in killing my shadows than killing me, but more importantly, what I am actually defending.  

Putting some duration on Nekros to make the health decay not as bad is a part of his modding process now, that's all there is too it.  With Intensify and Power Drift you get 45% strength, which with shield of shadows gives a 61% damage reduction, combined with Health Conversion...  And you have a Warframe who is taking absolutely minimal damage.  Not to mention the additional positive modifiers from that much power strength.  

Nekros just needs to be modded differently now, and is a very powerful asset to any squad.  

Are you implying these can't be done before and enemies weren't focusing on Shadows before? Because that is absolutely false. And I think you didn't read anything before posting this. Putting some duration Nekros to make the health decay not as bad is a part of his modding process? It's just literally duration, like before, but worse, with less Shadows and less tanky Shadows. And if you want to bring the shield of shadows thing here, then that only supports my point, Nekros could get up to 91% damage reduction with base cap Shadows amount. That sounds op on paper but usually Shadows are scattered and so only about 10 of them more or less would be around if you have 20+ Shadows, that could have been easily fixed if they just add the teleportation and healing and renewing Shadows to the old SotD and it'd have been way better than this piece of crap.

5 hours 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. 

Spamming your 3 is not fun is exactly why I did not play Nekros primarily for faming. No one is forcing you to. Tell me how is 4 going in the right direction? With nerfed duration and less tankier Shadows and less numbers of Shadows? And if you say his summons did nothing outside of acting as meat shield then I guess you did not observe them enough. Corpus Crewmen two or 3 shots enemies anyday.

[NightmareT12]

Just now, Gurpgork said:

No, it's not. With Duration, the Shadows can take the same amount of damage after 29 seconds that they can after 1 second. With health decay, they die to a stiff breeze after 29 seconds. 

Why can't we just get freaking rid of the stupid health decay? We were promised removal of duration anyway. Not replacement. Removal. 

What does the health decay do for the ability? Balance it? It's already a lackluster ability. It already requires Nekros to get kills before he can summon his Shadows. All the health decay is good for is artificially inflating the number of key presses necessary to play Nekros, while simultaneously making it one of the most expensive abilities to maintain. The abiliity does not need this balancing factor. It's oppressive, as you said, it's honestly ruining the ability. So why keep it at all, especially when DE said they were getting rid of duration?

Let's be realistic for a single second: DE will not get rid off the Health Decay. They actively want Nekros to have a reason to recast the ability, whether it's to heal the shadows or to recast them. Also to avoid stuff like 5x the damage and 3.75x the health. It's obvious something in testing must have happened that Scott had a change of heart. So maybe we should ask ourselves what it is. Hell, I'd like to hear what it was. (although I can imagine it's what I like to call "Bladestorm Ash": All PS, all Efficiency possible, some range and call it a day. Terrify? What's that?).

What we can do, and I will do, is to ask for a better status of the current mechanic because at this stage it's ridicolusly too bad, and not really supportive of Power Strength. Which is a shame.

At least we and others can heal the shadows now, and we can recast them before all of them are gone. Something tells me that if we want back to straight duration that would be out of the question.

[Soju.]

11 minutes ago, NightmareT12 said:

Let's be realistic for a single second: DE will not get rid off the Health Decay. They actively want Nekros to have a reason to recast the ability, whether it's to heal the shadows or to recast them. Also to avoid stuff like 5x the damage and 3.75x the health. It's obvious something in testing must have happened that Scott had a change of heart. So maybe we should ask ourselves what it is. Hell, I'd like to hear what it was. (although I can imagine it's what I like to call "Bladestorm Ash": All PS, all Efficiency possible, some range and call it a day. Terrify? What's that?).

What we can do, and I will do, is to ask for a better status of the current mechanic because at this stage it's ridicolusly too bad, and not really supportive of Power Strength. Which is a shame.

At least we and others can heal the shadows now, and we can recast them before all of them are gone. Something tells me that if we want back to straight duration that would be out of the question.

He was already being realistic. He said " even if it means bringing back duration" (which means the OLD one before the 'rework').

Which is why I'm asking them to revert it, OR DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT THAT ISN'T ABSOLUTE SH!T, because as you said, at this stage it's ridiculously too bad, it is a complete nerf.

[(XBOX)TheLegend 64312]

From what I've played around with, rejuvenate makes efficiency unnecessary and you can focus on range and power. My only real issue is that now instead of spamming desecrate, I'm spamming SotD to keep damage lower done they decay so absurdly fast. They removed duration in seconds but added it right back in as health decay.  Also, I'm not sure exactly how it changed but shield of shadows doesn't seem as efficient as it was. I don't have any numbers to back it up though. Just how it feels.

Edited September 1, 2016 by (XB1)TheLegend 64312
Misspellings

[Gurpgork]

50 minutes ago, NightmareT12 said:

They actively want Nekros to have a reason to recast the ability, whether it's to heal the shadows or to recast them.

Why? Frost doesn't have to recast his Snow Globe. It just sticks around, regardless of your duration. Shadows already have a finite amount of hitpoints, and they require you to kill enemies before using summoning them. Why does the ability need a third limiting factor? It's already under par as an ability. It doesn't need so many restrictions. 

50 minutes ago, NightmareT12 said:

Also to avoid stuff like 5x the damage and 3.75x the health.

Again, why? We lost 65% of our maximum Shadows and the health and damage multipliers didn't get touched. It wouldn't be overpowered for Nekros to have strong Shadows, especially when Nekros himself has so little that he can do. 

50 minutes ago, NightmareT12 said:

(although I can imagine it's what I like to call "Bladestorm Ash": All PS, all Efficiency possible, some range and call it a day. Terrify? What's that?)

While it is a problem for Warframes to come pre-loaded with clear dump stats, it's equally bad for Warframes to require mods that are only useful on them to function, if not worse. Equilibrium? Health Conversion? Two augments? Are you kidding me?

50 minutes ago, NightmareT12 said:

What we can do, and I will do, is to ask for a better status of the current mechanic because at this stage it's ridicolusly too bad, and not really supportive of Power Strength. Which is a shame.

What we can do is call DE out on their mistakes. I understand that people make mistakes sometimes, but we need to say that it was a mistake, not accept it and try to cope with it. 

50 minutes ago, NightmareT12 said:

At least we and others can heal the shadows now, and we can recast them before all of them are gone.

We should have been able to do that without getting our army's damage nuked to oblivion. 

Edited August 31, 2016 by Gurpgork

[zehne]

I stockpiled Power cores in a solo Heircon.

I summoned shadows as I started a fresh extractor.

I fed it to full energy.

I healed my shadows with 71 seconds left on excavation time.

I left the extractor and started a 2nd.

I successfully completed the first extractor.

 

SoTD...Does defence very well.  With a build dedicated to it it is very stronk.  Less health decay would be nice, so would higher hp/damage modifiers but how is DE going to balance around that given what it can currently do?

Edited August 31, 2016 by zehne

[Gurpgork]

It's been a few weeks since the changes to Nekros, and Nekros is long overdue for a second round of changes.

I propose a much more radical rework, hopefully one to successfuly solve the core problems of his kit. 

Here are the goals this rework aims to accomplish:

Spoiler

• Solidify Nekros as a true summoner class.
• Make Nekros's gameplay more engaging. 
  • Remove all unnecessary button mashing.
• Improve energy economy to make Nekros less dependent on circumventing the energy system through Despoil + Equilibrium. 
  • Reduce the effectiveness of this combination in order to maintain balance and build diversity, but leave it as a possible build option. 
• Keep all four power stats relevant to improve build diversity, but set them to reasonable values to prevent build nightmares.
• Increase synergy between abilities; give each ability its own, independent purpose. 
• Make Soul Punch useful and Terrify strong without its augment. 
• Remove dependence on Natural Talent. 

With those goals in mind, here are my proposed changes.

Note that these proposed changes are compiled from ideas I've seen around the forum, as well as my own ideas. As such, I do not take full credit for this list of changes. 

Spoiler

General Changes

• Nekros energy pool increased to 150 unranked and 225 at level 30. Nekros Prime energy pool increased to 175 unranked and 262.5 at level 30.
• Nekros and Nekros Prime armor increased to 125. 

Soul Punch

• Soul Punch now deals Finisher damage based on the target's missing HP.
  • Soul projectile damage dealt as Impact equal to the damage dealt to the original target.
• Soul Survivor now costs a fixed 100 energy to revive the target. Shield and health cost removed.
  • Revived ally gains the energy lost by Nekros. 
• Targets killed by Soul Punch do not drain energy if raised as Shadows (see Shadows of the Dead). 
• Inflicts knockdown instead of ragdoll. 
• Deals additional damage to targets stunned by Terrify (highly negotiable). 

Terrify

• Base range increased to 25 meters.
• Duration reduced to 15 seconds. 
• Armor reduction removed.
• Targets cower for 3 seconds before fleeing; slowed by 45% while fleeing.
• Creeping Terrify replaced with Terrible Resurgence: Damaging Terrified targets restores health. Health restore increased on killing blows. Possible energy restore component (negotiable). 

Decay (Desecrate merged with Shadows of the Dead)

• Deals damage over time to affected targets, dealing 150 Viral damage and reducing base armor by 50 per tick for 6 seconds. Each damage tick heals nearby allies for a percentage of the damage dealt. Heath return percentage increased for Shadows.
• Costs 50 energy. 

Shadows of the Dead

• Now a toggled aura like Desecrate.
• Costs 20 energy per corpse.
• 75% chance to spawn a Shadow. If a Shadow is successfully spawned, then there is a 54% chance to additionally produce a health orb and/or reroll loot tables.
  • Desecration cost reduced to 10 when Shadow cap is reached.
  • Failed Desecrations still consume the corpse, but no longer drain energy. 
• Health decay removed.
• Max Shadows once again scales with Strength mods.
• Shadows automatically teleport to Nekros's location if they are more than 20 meters away. 

Justification of changes:

Spoiler

Soul Punch

Something needed to be done with this ability. Dealing more damage as targets got weaker seemed like a fitting purpose for a Necromancer's toolbox. Causing it to knock the target down rather than sending it flying makes the ability less frustrating. 

Terrify

Terrify has so many limiting factors that it would have been justified if it were a long-duration hard crowd control. It costs as much energy as Chaos and Bastille, and yet can stand up to neither of them as crowd control abilities. In fact, it has the drawbacks of both: It has poor range and a target limit, like Bastille, but it also doesn't completely petrify targets, like Chaos. The armor reduction, which should have been the ability's saving grace, wasn't strong enough to justify its drawbacks.

Ultimately, I decided that it was probably better for Nekros if the ability tried to fill the shoes of a different crowd control ability: Radial Blind. As such, it has the same range and a similar stun to Radial Blind. And while it does have a target limit, it has the advantage of ignoring line of sight. Furthermore, while Radial Blind increases melee damage by virtue of the stealth multiplier, Terrify guarantees that targets will not fight back. As an added benefit, the reduced cost helps alleviate Nekros's high energy consumption. 

Decay

Decay is intended to accomplish a few purposes. One, it's now Nekros's primary form of healing. Two, it gives the Warframe some much-needed on demand offensive power. And three, it improves the value of Nekros in a team lineup, since it allows him to double as both a crowd controller and a medic. Additionally, it now has Terrify's armor reduction, but functions unlike any other armor reducing ability. Reduction to base armor allows Nekros to outright remove the armor of weaker units, while needing more Power Strength in order to completely melt the armor off of heavier units. Overall, it would be a very useful ability, and furthers the point of giving each ability its own, distinct purpose; Terrify is for crowd control, Decay is for debuffing enemies and healing allies, and Soul Punch is for finishing off weakened targets. 

It also fits the Necromancer theme of debuffing enemies while minions supply the main source of firepower.

Shadows of the Dead

The most important thing here is that health decay has to go. From there, this ability needed only buffs.

Desecrate's toggle mechanic is extremely handy. Thanks to that change, Nekros's hands are free to play the game while he's using it. Unfortunately the changes to Shadows of the Dead switched the button mashing from 3 to 4, undermining the entire purpose of changing Desecrate. Merging these two abilities seemed like a good solution for this problem. Now Nekros has no artificial button mashing, leaving his key presses only to using his other abilties. 

It also solves a few other problems. Shadows of the Dead currently has the longest cast time in the game, and making it a toggle removes that problem entirely. Desecrate doesn't do enough on its own to merit an entire ability slot, but making it spawn Shadows gives it a meaningful impact on gameplay. It even makes him feel more like a Necromancer, almost as if it takes no effort for him to raise the dead, like he can do it as easily as breathing air. It also solves the age-old problem of Nekros's conflict with heavy killframes, since now he can raise the dead from the corpses they leave behind. 

The reduced synergy with Equilibrium is intentional. Nekros will still be able to produce health orbs in the same volume he was capable of before, but since he can't reliably lower his health anymore, he can no longer use it as a means to entirely circumvent the need for efficiency. As compensation, his energy pool has been increased, and the energy costs of Terrify and Soul Survivor have been reduced. 

Other than that, the maximum Shadow count's scaling with Strength mods was restored in order to restore the ability's previous power. 

Overall, these proposed changes seek to eliminate the problems with Nekros's kit, whether they existed before or after the first pass of changes. Thank you for taking the time to read it and please leave any suggestions for improving this thread. 

Edited August 31, 2016 by Gurpgork

[NightmareT12]

1 hour ago, AlphaWolf003 said:

He was already being realistic. He said " even if it means bringing back duration" (which means the OLD one before the 'rework').

Which is why I'm asking them to revert it, OR DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT THAT ISN'T ABSOLUTE SH!T, because as you said, at this stage it's ridiculously too bad, it is a complete nerf.

Then what in the name of the Void am I doing? I'm asking DE to cut down the decay by 1%, which should be more than enough already. Or add a build up. Or 10 seconds without decay. I don't know, all I see here is "This is nerfed" "bring back duration" "remove health decay".

Where are the alternatives? All I'm seeing is people pulling their hairs off, calling other people stuff, calling the staff stuff, etc.

1 hour ago, Gurpgork said:

Why? Frost doesn't have to recast his Snow Globe. Shadows already have a finite amount of hitpoints, and they require you to kill enemies before using it. Why does the ability need a third limiting factor? It's already under par as an ability. It doesn't need so many restrictions. 

Again, why? We lost 65% of our maximum Shadows and the health and damage multipliers didn't get touched. It wouldn't be overpowered for Nekros to have strong Shadows, especially when Nekros himself has so little that he can do. 

While it is a problem for Warframes to come pre-loaded with clear dump stats, it's equally bad for Warframes to require mods that are only useful on them to function, if not worse. Equilibrium? Health Conversion? Two augments? Are you kidding me?

What we can do is call DE out on their mistakes. I understand that people make mistakes sometimes, but we need to say that it was a mistake, not accept it and try to cope with it. 

We should have been able to do that without getting our army's damage nuked to oblivion. 

Frost's Snowglobe is a stationary bubble, which you actually want to have Strength, Armor and Range. It's got a fix health value, doesn't scale off enemy damage, nor it deals damage scaling off your enemy. Also, you recast the Snowglobe to heal it.

I know they didn't touch the multipliers. I was bummed about it. I'm bummed about it. But I can only guess it would have been ridicolous to make it too much. I already stated on the megathread that if DE actually decreased the Health drain by one single percentage, we would have shadows that should actually last the same or more than before. I even added a second point "If we still see the Shadows don't make it, we can amplify the multipliers a tad further".

That build is terrible, and is a symptom that something's wrong. I don't use it. Hell, I don't even usually use augments at all. Equilibrium just synergizes too well with someone who spawns free extra orbs and is using constantly energy and has such low armor. Even if we had not that much recasting going on, I'd still run it.

And I know that. The mistake here is the lack of communication regarding the change. Because first Scott and Rebecca say there's no duration, and then something must happen, and in the end we're given the Health Decay without any kind of inbetween communication explaining why it's here. This reminds me horribly of what happened when The Dark Sectors got to the release week... Or rather, it didn't.

Perhaps, but they still do considerable damage that scales, remind you. This is touchy because it's the biggest collateral damage off removing shadows, less canons appointing at the same enemy.

Edited August 31, 2016 by NightmareT12

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

More like "How i picture my ideal Nekros" thread. 

Too OP, too ideal. 

[Dragon-V0942]

Or... just change back to old Nekros?
The changes to Saul punch and terrify are welcomed, but you're still asking DE to tweak the existing SOTD for us to nod at, when we should be demanding them to change it back.
The intended reason for this SOTD change has failed, according to this...

 

[Burnthesteak87]

Nekros as it is now has never been so strong and in a better spot.
I'd say only Soul Punch would need a tweak, other skills are actually fine enough.

Edited August 31, 2016 by Burnthesteak87

[Gurpgork]

8 minutes ago, MicSet said:

Or... just change back to old Nekros?
The changes to Saul punch and terrify are welcomed, but you're still asking DE to tweak the existing SOTD for us to nod at, when we should be demanding them to change it back.
The intended reason for this SOTD change has failed, according to this...

Fair enough. Restored Shadow count scaling with Power Strength. 

[(XBOX)A Nekros Prime]

How about this,Soul Punch when used on an enemy will legit drop a soul like orb(Similar to Reapers death orbs from overwatch but the color matches your energy color)and each soul you collect will add a minion to your 4th until used,resetting the soul counter.If you want to see how many souls you have,it will have a number over your 1st.

[RealPandemonium]

45 minutes ago, zehne said:

I stockpiled Power cores in a solo Heircon.

I summoned shadows as I started a fresh extractor.

I fed it to full energy.

I healed my shadows with 71 seconds left on excavation time.

I left the extractor and started a 2nd.

I successfully completed the first extractor.

 

SoTD...Does defence very well.  With a build dedicated to it it is very stronk.  Less health decay would be nice, so would higher hp/damage modifiers but how is DE going to balance around that given what it can currently do?

Nice anecdote, but the old SotD would have done just as well if not better.  Many of the pro-rework posts sound like yours, extolling things that the post-rework Nekros does more poorly than pre-rework did.  I think mostly people just realized that SotD is a thing, rather than appreciating any buffs (there were none, and most of the positive feedback doesn't even mention the new features.)

[(PSN)salovel1991]

5 hours ago, (PS4)Asdeft said:

I see everyone using Equilibrium, is it really any good? Zenurik covers most energy problems for me and getting health from energy is inconsequential. There has to be something I am missing there, since I use Streamline over it and I am wondering if it is better. 

In my opinion neither are good options. It's easier to run around and not think with Despoil/Equilibrium running because you'll constantly get health/energy. But I feel they need to fix desecrate and sotd costs. We shouldn't need gimmick mods or a focus school to play as a warframe. They should only enhance gameplay. The problem I see is we have a frame that relies heavily on casts. Without zenurik or equilibrium/Despoil we have no sustainment and become a liability since we can't support without it. So I say neither. 

[zehne]

14 minutes ago, RealPandemonium said:

Nice anecdote, but the old SotD would have done just as well if not better. 

So as far as I can tell: Old SoTD was king at defense, New SoTD is still king at defense.

New SoTD deserves to be more powerful than already is, because.

[RealPandemonium]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)salovel1991 said:

In my opinion neither are good options. It's easier to run around and not think with Despoil/Equilibrium running because you'll constantly get health/energy. But I feel they need to fix desecrate and sotd costs. We shouldn't need gimmick mods or a focus school to play as a warframe. They should only enhance gameplay. The problem I see is we have a frame that relies heavily on casts. Without zenurik or equilibrium/Despoil we have no sustainment and become a liability since we can't support without it. So I say neither. 

You can just run a max efficiency build and not have to rely on either.  Equil+Despoil is just a gimmick for free energy, and Zenurik is the same.

[RealPandemonium]

5 minutes ago, zehne said:

So as far as I can tell: Old SoTD was king at defense, New SoTD is still king at defense.

New SoTD deserves to be more powerful than already is, because.

It was lackluster before, albeit effective (but not nearly top-class) at point defense.  It was nerfed instead of buffed, and you're happy about that?

Edited August 31, 2016 by RealPandemonium

[Celas_]

Wow New Update and nothing new for Nekros -.- i want the old desecrate back, the new desecrate is crap with 54% (Health Orbs included) i think we dont have enough threads to make our problems clear or? why we (the community) have no decision about that? its a @(*()$ nerf and not a rework you broke a frame who wasnt op before and now he is nothing thx for killing my main frame, next time ask us before you nerf something -.-

[zehne]

1 minute ago, RealPandemonium said:

It was nerfed instead of buffed, and you're happy about that?

I'm saying that it has it's own niche, and it fullfills that niche very effectively.  Other warframes and their abilities don't even come close to what SoTD can do when maxxed out.

Buff SoTD sure, but don't revert it.  Being able to teleport/heal/prioritize heavy units >>> than more shadows that are disposed of when the clock strikes 12.

[(PSN)salovel1991]

Just now, RealPandemonium said:

You can just run a max efficiency build and not have to rely on either.  Equil+Despoil is just a gimmick for free energy, and Zenurik is the same.

I have a build for this. I've experimented with at least 10 builds. Efficiency was alright but I had to cast SotD way more and got annoyed with it. Even though I had a p continuity on. I tried no Despoil /Zenurik but max efficiency and ran out of energy in two minutes because I couldn't maintain myself.