Specters of the Rail: U2.1 - Nekros Changes

[Gelkor]

I feel like new Desecrate could take a page from Prowl. The delay on initial desecration (2 seconds) and cooldown between desecrating corpses (1 second) should scale inversely with duration.

[Buzkyl]

On 10/30/2016 at 1:51 PM, (PS4)DesecratedFlame said:

I don't think it is going to happen though.

Nekros is not going to be revisited anytime in the near future. For better or for worse. 

Right now Nekros isn't in a horrible place, while he can be better he certainly isn't the train wreck people will make him out to be. While yes he can certainly be made better, I highly doubt he's on DE's radar atm as he has no immediate glaring issues such as the press32loot spam issue which was old desecrate.

If previous frame revisions are anything i wouldn't expect anything for the next year minimum interms of tweaks.

[RealPandemonium]

1 hour ago, Buzkyl said:

Nekros is not going to be revisited anytime in the near future. For better or for worse. 

Right now Nekros isn't in a horrible place, while he can be better he certainly isn't the train wreck people will make him out to be. While yes he can certainly be made better, I highly doubt he's on DE's radar atm as he has no immediate glaring issues such as the press32loot spam issue which was old desecrate.

If previous frame revisions are anything i wouldn't expect anything for the next year minimum interms of tweaks.

If he's in a good place now then where was he before?  A great place?

[LunarEdge7]

3 minutes ago, RealPandemonium said:

If he's in a good place now then where was he before?  A great place?

No longer a one trick pony (spamming 3), and shadows can be sustained as long as you want. That's a great leap from bad to good imo.

I'd like if I could have 10 or 12 shadows instead, but currently, it's all good. At least it'll be neat and tidy, less blockades for my ally Tenno to complain about. Some of you might not know this, but the limited number of shadows now is a bit of good news to my friends and a lot of other players.. They have trouble with my shadows. No matter the color.

Edited November 1, 2016 by LunarEdge7

[LunarEdge7]

1 hour ago, Buzkyl said:

Nekros is not going to be revisited anytime in the near future. For better or for worse. 

Right now Nekros isn't in a horrible place, while he can be better he certainly isn't the train wreck people will make him out to be. While yes he can certainly be made better, I highly doubt he's on DE's radar atm as he has no immediate glaring issues such as the press32loot spam issue which was old desecrate.

If previous frame revisions are anything i wouldn't expect anything for the next year minimum interms of tweaks.

The same goes for Volt, imo. Yes, he could be given QoL to his 4th and can be made better, but he's not "totally unplayable" as mentioned by a few other Volt mains now. Only difference is more CC instead of short huge bursts of Damage. A more reliable ult that doesn't depend on the tileset area.

Edit: Almost forgot, his Elec Shield. You shouldn't have to rely on a mobile shield for 2 - 3 minutes in the first place. Still getting complaints on the energy drain. But you still have the option to, just need to think when to use.

Edited November 1, 2016 by LunarEdge7

[RealPandemonium]

4 minutes ago, LunarEdge7 said:

No longer a one trick pony (spamming 3), and shadows can be sustained as long as you want. That's a great leap from bad to good imo.

I'd like if I could have 10 or 12 shadows instead, but currently, it's all good. At least it'll be neat and tidy, less blockades for my ally Tenno to complain about. People might not know this, but the limited number of shadows now is a bit of good news to my friends. They have trouble with my shadows. No matter the color.

Losing tons of shadows (along with control of which you get) and nerfing the hell out of Desecrate was not a good trade-off for shadow sustain gimmicks and hands-free loot generation.

It's like they wanted to buff AFK farming builds while punishing players for actually building around Nekros' unique traits.  

Desecrate is worse than it's ever been at doing its job, and SotD is a joke now, on defense, for utility, and certainly on offense.  Instead of smoothing out the rough edges, they just chopped things off and called it a day.

Edited November 1, 2016 by RealPandemonium

[LunarEdge7]

1 minute ago, RealPandemonium said:

Losing tons of shadows (along with control of which you get) and nerfing the hell out of Desecrate was not a good trade-off for shadow sustain gimmicks and hands-free loot generation.

It's like they wanted to buff AFK farming builds while punishing players for actually building around Nekros' unique traits.  

Desecrate is worse than it's ever been at doing its job, and SotD is a joke now, on defense, for utility, and certainly on offense.  Instead of smoothing out the rough edges, they just chopped things off and called it a day.

Losing shadows to 7, I guess that's a bad trade. But desecrate being nerfed, I'm not sure how. Lesser health orb drop rate? It was no surprise there, from my perspective. Almost no extra loot drop rate? I guess that's to stop encouraging people to think every farming mission has to have a Nekros in it. I'm trying to think from their side of the coin.

The only major problem I face with SotD, is the current priority system and we have no capability to mark any enemies to spawn in our shadow army for sure. So we'll have to go around finding the enemies we prefer to spawn as shadows before we cast it, which is a pain in the butt.

[RealPandemonium]

14 minutes ago, LunarEdge7 said:

Losing shadows to 7, I guess that's a bad trade. But desecrate being nerfed, I'm not sure how. Lesser health orb drop rate? It was no surprise there, from my perspective. Almost no extra loot drop rate? I guess that's to stop encouraging people to think every farming mission has to have a Nekros in it. I'm trying to think from their side of the coin.

The only major problem I face with SotD, is the current priority system and we have no capability to mark any enemies to spawn in our shadow army for sure. So we'll have to go around finding the enemies we prefer to spawn as shadows before we cast it, which is a pain in the butt.

Descerate was nerfed in numerous ways:

1) HP orbs are no longer guaranteed.

2) Consumes corpses even when the loot roll fails

3) Addition of HP orb to the reroll drop table sharply reduces the chances of desirable loot drops

4) Because its effect is no longer on-demand, the likelihood of consuming a given corpse is decreased since the corpse may disappear before it is rolled.  This is especially problematic on Infested corpses since they disappear very quickly; you are only able to Desecrate a very small portion of a large group of Infested because of this, but it can also affect other factions' corpses in large groups.

5) Desecrate's cost is now fixed at 10 per corpse.  While this can be beneficial when corpses are sparse, it can be a significant penalty when large numbers of corpses are present; old Desecrate could get ~60% (according to probability; actual % would vary with RNG) of those corpses for a flat energy cost of 50, so the disparity increases greatly when there are many corpses around (which will be the case in Survival missions where Desecrate is most desired, conventionally.)

Both Desecrate and SotD maxcases were nerfed by >50%, never mind the other issues introduced by the new mechanics.  These changes were more like performance fixes than actual revisions, with no regard to the gameplay implications thereof.  It's clear that no one responsible for these changes ever played Nekros more than frivolously (which is no surprise because these people don't play Warframe, period, and it shows.)

Edited November 1, 2016 by RealPandemonium

[LunarEdge7]

4 minutes ago, RealPandemonium said:

Both Desecrate and SotD maxcases were nerfed by >50%, never mind the other issues introduced by the new mechanics.  These changes were more like performance fixes than actual revisions, with no regard to the gameplay implications thereof.  It's clear that no one responsible for these changes ever played Nekros more than frivolously (which is no surprise because these people don't play Warframe, period, and it shows.)

I do agree that your 2nd, 4th and 5th points can seem to hinder our Nekros experience. Well, we just have to pray that they'll revisit him after all these: TWW, Ash, Bardframe, and Limbo reworks are done.

[Buzkyl]

7 hours ago, RealPandemonium said:

If he's in a good place now then where was he before?  A great place?

On a scale of 1-10. He was a 5, now he's a 7.

Nekros feels alot better to play, he is no longer rooted in place spamming the same button. Shadows can now follow him and he is free to participate in the fight. Overall he is in a much better place but that doesn't mean he as aframe does not have major glaring issues.

 

Desecrate despite the nerf (and it is a nerf) is still the best farming tool in game. Any energy problems is made redundant by the augment. I run a 55% efficiency build, energy is hardly problem with Equilibrium.

Shadows before were a horrible offensive tool, niche defensive tool and were mainly a support tool, at higher levels anyway. 14 shadows vs 7 means almost nothign at higher levels other than screen clutter. And they still retain that aspect, being able to be healed, teleported and maintained. The skills fails in that it fixed old problems with new ones.

• Shadows now draw more aggro but have a health decay meaning they're going to die even faster under pressure,
• Shadows now follow you around and can be teleported to you.
• Being able to summon heavier units is fine but now i can't summon niche units like shield ospreys

His rework addressed some major problems but left others out such as Soul Punch being useless, being unable to dispell a shadow and other. Rigt now i playy nekros more now than I did in the past. He was never great, before or after his changes but he's overall better now, comparatively.

[(PSN)DesecratedFlame]

12 hours ago, Buzkyl said:

Nekros is not going to be revisited anytime in the near future. For better or for worse. 

Right now Nekros isn't in a horrible place, while he can be better he certainly isn't the train wreck people will make him out to be. While yes he can certainly be made better, I highly doubt he's on DE's radar atm as he has no immediate glaring issues such as the press32loot spam issue which was old desecrate.

If previous frame revisions are anything i wouldn't expect anything for the next year minimum interms of tweaks.

That's the entire problem. DE comes in, messes something up, then calls it good and never touches it again unless the community raises a crap-storm.

[Gurpgork]

33 minutes ago, (PS4)DesecratedFlame said:

That's the entire problem. DE comes in, messes something up, then calls it good and never touches it again unless the community raises a crap-storm.

They tend to leave things the way they are even when the community does raise a crap-storm. Heck, just look at this thread. 76 pages, and not one change to Nekros since then. 

[(PSN)DesecratedFlame]

2 hours ago, Gurpgork said:

They tend to leave things the way they are even when the community does raise a crap-storm. Heck, just look at this thread. 76 pages, and not one change to Nekros since then. 

That's not a crapstorm. What we got with the Vacuum nerfs or Parkor 2.slow was a crap storm. Both got things changed instantly.

[LunarEdge7]

3 hours ago, Gurpgork said:

They tend to leave things the way they are even when the community does raise a crap-storm. Heck, just look at this thread. 76 pages, and not one change to Nekros since then. 

He's right. You need more than just this amount to raise their attention. Hue hue

[RealPandemonium]

10 hours ago, Buzkyl said:

On a scale of 1-10. He was a 5, now he's a 7.

Nekros feels alot better to play, he is no longer rooted in place spamming the same button. Shadows can now follow him and he is free to participate in the fight. Overall he is in a much better place but that doesn't mean he as aframe does not have major glaring issues.

Maybe for you, but for me Nekros is worse in every way.  I didn't have a problem weaving Desecrate casts into my gameplay, and I made the most of my Shadows, which were often picked strategically and paid for themselves in terms of kills for the next cast.  He went from a 7 to 3 for me and, I imagine, numerous players who tried to play Nekros optimally and outside of max range afk 3spam builds.

[Matt89Connor]

2 hours ago, RealPandemonium said:

Maybe for you, but for me Nekros is worse in every way.  I didn't have a problem weaving Desecrate casts into my gameplay, and I made the most of my Shadows, which were often picked strategically and paid for themselves in terms of kills for the next cast.  He went from a 7 to 3 for me and, I imagine, numerous players who tried to play Nekros optimally and outside of max range afk 3spam builds.

desecrate is good with this method for give us time for play instead of stay and spam, but this will low the % of find loot.

The real problem of Nek now his the ulti, the health decay give us a Chain that obbligate us to watch the undeads for heal then: yes, now we can mantain alive a type of units for how mouch we want, but what is the price for that? DE ,really is this a rework ? 

[RealPandemonium]

15 minutes ago, Matt89Connor said:

desecrate is good with this method for give us time for play instead of stay and spam, but this will low the % of find loot.

Lots of people say this, but I'm not buying it.  Before, you could weave jump-casts of Desecrate in between other actions during fighting, or hunker down and spam 3 as much as possible if a particular loot was being farmed.  Now, your target corpse is likely to be wasted or not even desecrated at all before it expires.  This translates to wayyy more farming in the end.  Even in the worst case, where all you do is sit in the mission and press 3 (which you wouldn't and shouldn't, but this is for the sake of argument,) you would end up farming for less time because of the higher efficacy of loot generation.  People who only [improperly] used Nekros to farm spent less time playing Nekros.  Now, everyone must farm for much longer for the same result; everybody loses.  

[low1991]

On 11/1/2016 at 9:49 PM, LunarEdge7 said:

I do agree that your 2nd, 4th and 5th points can seem to hinder our Nekros experience. Well, we just have to pray that they'll revisit him after all these: TWW, Ash, Bardframe, and Limbo reworks are done.

When there's Nerkos Umbra. Which IF exist. Will be after all other frame that got primed.

On 11/2/2016 at 5:46 PM, Matt89Connor said:

The real problem of Nek now his the ulti, the health decay give us a Chain that obbligate us to watch the undeads for heal then: yes, now we can mantain alive a type of units for how mouch we want, but what is the price for that? DE ,really is this a rework ? 

This problem worn't be a problem like now if there's a player customization option... U know, those movable UI for personal like-ing? And those additional UI which pops-up when condition fits. (Nerkos' SoTD for this)

 

Or easy, let us customize the script in which filter what will be recorded for the last 20 kills..

Edited November 3, 2016 by low1991

[(PSN)DesecratedFlame]

On 11/2/2016 at 3:26 AM, RealPandemonium said:

Maybe for you, but for me Nekros is worse in every way.  I didn't have a problem weaving Desecrate casts into my gameplay, and I made the most of my Shadows, which were often picked strategically and paid for themselves in terms of kills for the next cast.  He went from a 7 to 3 for me and, I imagine, numerous players who tried to play Nekros optimally and outside of max range afk 3spam builds.

 

On 11/2/2016 at 6:06 AM, RealPandemonium said:

Lots of people say this, but I'm not buying it.  Before, you could weave jump-casts of Desecrate in between other actions during fighting, or hunker down and spam 3 as much as possible if a particular loot was being farmed.  Now, your target corpse is likely to be wasted or not even desecrated at all before it expires.  This translates to wayyy more farming in the end.  Even in the worst case, where all you do is sit in the mission and press 3 (which you wouldn't and shouldn't, but this is for the sake of argument,) you would end up farming for less time because of the higher efficacy of loot generation.  People who only [improperly] used Nekros to farm spent less time playing Nekros.  Now, everyone must farm for much longer for the same result; everybody loses.  

^this

[LightPillar]

RIP Nekros I had a good time with you. You shall be missed. 

[aerosoul1337]

Currently the shadows are just confusing instead of useful (health decays too fast).

Especially the prime version, it it hard to distinguish shadows from enemies.

[low1991]

Maybe, just maybe will be better if DE change nerkos #4 into a ulti which summons just one powerful undead, which scale off level of enemies killed/ total HP/ number of corpse. ie, a lump of undead flesh...

[LunarEdge7]

34 minutes ago, low1991 said:

Maybe, just maybe will be better if DE change nerkos #4 into a ulti which summons just one powerful undead, which scale off level of enemies killed/ total HP/ number of corpse. ie, a lump of undead flesh...

 

Perhaps not just one. Maybe, multiple amounts of reapers. 7.

Each of them with unique abilities granted from the 7 enemies you've most recently killed. Markable on priority by Soul Punch.

I.e: Nullifier Reaper, Shield Reaper, Sapping Reaper, Healer Reaper. Proper adjustments from DE to be made on how many times they can cast their abilities before getting a cooldown.

Weaker health but slightly lesser decay, just a little. They hit enemies to sustain their low health, A.K.A Life Drain.

Relies on modded melee weapon's attack speed and crit/stat chance. Nothing else. Does not benefit from Berserker for balance issues. They'll be able to self-sustain so much that they'll be too OP.

Upon any of them touching a nullifier, they'll hide back inside Nekros for 15-30 seconds before coming back out by themselves.

Good idea? Am I crazy? Think I'm high and need some water? Give adjustment suggestions if anymore balance tweaks need to be made.

[low1991]

10 minutes ago, LunarEdge7 said:

Perhaps not just one. Maybe, multiple amounts of reapers. 7.

Each of them with unique abilities granted from the 7 enemies you've most recently killed. Markable on priority by Soul Punch.

I.e: Nullifier Reaper, Shield Reaper, Sapping Reaper, Healer Reaper. Proper adjustments from DE to be made on how many times they can cast their abilities before getting a cooldown.

Weaker health but slightly lesser decay, just a little. They hit enemies to sustain their low health, A.K.A Life Drain.

Relies on modded melee weapon's attack speed and crit/stat chance. Nothing else. Does not benefit from Berserker for balance issues. They'll be able to self-sustain so much that they'll be too OP.

Upon any of them touching a nullifier, they'll hide back inside Nekros for 15-30 seconds before coming back out by themselves.

Good idea? Am I crazy? Think I'm high and need some water? Give adjustment suggestions if anymore balance tweaks need to be made.

i still think, a single ulti undead melee summons will be just enough to matrix dodge DE' nerf bat threshold. DE' aim goal, (in Draco nerf) is non-simson' bird playing for you? And your suggestion kinda goes beyond that, your summons play for u, letting u afk. Due to life-leech.

ie, undead flesh golem? (Rumbler flesh version) one where the ulti shares it's lifes with the caster (Diablo 2' Nerkos' blood golem, ok, way off course.)

Edited November 6, 2016 by low1991

[LunarEdge7]

15 minutes ago, low1991 said:

i still think, a single ulti undead melee summons will be just enough to matrix dodge DE' nerf bat threshold. DE' aim goal, (in Draco nerf) is non-simson' bird playing for you? And your suggestion kinda goes beyond that, your summons play for u, letting u afk. Due to life-leech.

ie, undead flesh golem? (Rumbler flesh version) one where the ulti shares it's lifes with the caster (Diablo 2' Nerkos' blood golem, ok, way off course.)

 

10

If they didn't want us to be able to afk, they wouldn't let us have our current shadows. Or rather, they shouldn't. Just have HC + Equilibrium + Despoil, stand in the centre of a room, and let your shadows fight for you. Get something/someone to constantly hit 4. Or even do it yourself, just pressing 4 every once in a short while.

Edited November 6, 2016 by LunarEdge7