Allow Nekros to remove shadows

[theraot]

Suggestion

Allow Nekros players to hold 4 to destroy the shadows from Shadows Of The Dead (4).

I guess testing will be necessary to make sure the amount of time to hold 4 is right.

This will allow Nekros to cast Shadows Of The Dead (4), then destroy the shadows, which if done while having Desecrate (3) active will yield health orbs. This will allow Nekros to play better as support / healer at no detriment to how people currently play Nekros.

 

Motivation

This idea comes from other players complaining that I confuse them when I cast Shadows Of The Dead (4), being the most recent case a Trinity trying to cast Energy Vampire (2). That player was just complaining, did not ask me to do anything about it (probably because that player was aware that virtually nothing could be done). As I am unable to destroy my shadows the only option I had is to away which led another player to follow me, and eventually Trinity.

In another situation, an unknowing player left the mission because I "didn't want" to remove the shadows. While we could disregard that as being that player noob, I’d prefer to avoid making the game hard for newer players.

In addition, of course, some extra health orbs could get you out of trouble.

Futhermore, everything else would continue to be the way it is, both visually and mechanically, Thus I expect no drawbacks from this suggestion.

 

Alternative Suggestions

1: Allow Nekros to destroy shadows one by one, by interacting with them (similar to interacting with specters). I am not fond of this idea, because it means that I have to go after each shadow, and there is the risk of interacting with something I don't intend.

2: Allow us to change the default pure black body of the shadows. Although, I don't know how well using accent color will fit with fashion Nekros. Thus, I see potential fashion drawbacks from doing this, also shadows would continue to cloud the visual field.

[BaIthazar]

the thing is.. do your own shadows bother YOU?

if not, then leave it.
if yes, then I can roll with this thread

if people complain, ignore them.
Your Shadows are helping.

having a desecrating Nekros on your team makes up for being confused by a shadow once in a while.

and how bad is it really?
you swing your sword at a shadow once or twice and realize.. "that's a shadow, this is pointless" and you go on with your life.

Edited August 3, 2017 by BaIthazar

[VoxGray]

I do think it'd be a useful QoL addition for Nekros to be able to single out Shadows to eliminate. Not only would this allow him to summon more powerful Shadows if he kills a stronger unit later, but it would allow him to get rid of potentially troublesome Shadows if need be (such as if he winds up summoning a Scorpion that has a habit of yanking enemies out of allied fire). This would also allow better team play, as he would be able to remove any Shadows getting in the way of squadmates if necessary, giving him greater synergy with the likes of Oberon and Trinity. All said, I think this could be a major improvement to the QoL of Nekros players without a ton of effort on the back-end.

[NinjaZeku]

In a previous topic, I brought up the idea of giving SOTD a hold function
to gradually kill Shadows, following the summoning priority in reverse.

Just because, here's the full post:

Quote

How 'bout this?

1) Make Shadows unable to be healed by anything other than a recast.
2) Make Shadows unable to be damaged by anything other than the Health decay.
3) ???
4) Grofit!

That whole Health decay thing was a neat gimmick to replace the duration timer
and I'd like it to stay, both for flavor reasons and so Squad mates also have a visual indicator.

However, with enemy damage being a thing, this was actually a nerf to Shadow duration
(and while the recast option is awesomesauce, that still is 100 Energy each time).

So, really all this'd do is bring Shadows back to what they were before
- as they almost never died from enemy damage back then, lasting their full duration -
along with not least fixing the (maybe again flavorful but in this case) stupid Oberon vs Nekros anti-synergy, yay :D

Furthermore, with Shadow Health now always at an equal %,
you can simply have that % displayed right by the ability icon,
telling you at a quick glance how soon your next recast should be, nifty.

Plus give us a hold-4-to-release-Shadows function so we're not stuck with basic units when we have stored up multiple Eximi, heh
(maybe even make the release gradual, from lowest summoning priority to highest,
so we can keep our heavies while further enhancing the quality of our Shadows).

After all, let's not forget, we did get a severely reduced max number of Shadows without a corresponding buff to their general power,
plus AI gonna AI, so having your derps last longer isn't exactly the most OP change ever.

 

[(PSN)SentientSickness]

like the idea, though i think it should be triggered by hitting a shadows with soul punch

[NinjaZeku]

8 hours ago, (PS4)SentientSickness said:

like the idea, though i think it should be triggered by hitting a shadows with soul punch

Why?

To introduce forced "synergy" that's clunky and a waste of Energy?

[OvisCaedo]

5 hours ago, NinjaZeku said:

Why?

To introduce forced "synergy" that's clunky and a waste of Energy?

To me it sounds like one of the best and most intuitive ways to allow a player to dismiss singular shadows of their choosing from a range without needing to trample into other input systems. The energy cost seems like it would be dirt cheap to a lot of set-ups, but I guess might hurt more with a blind range build that's not making use of equilibrium or something, especially if you feel prompted to do a lot of pruning at once.

I suppose one approach they could take is, similar to Saryn's spores on a molt, making this usage of the ability cost significantly less than the normal cast.

but I dunno. With how many things there are that can break the energy economy apart, control sounds like it'd have more value than efficiency to me.

Edited August 6, 2017 by OvisCaedo

[DeadlyBard676]

14 hours ago, OvisCaedo said:

To me it sounds like one of the best and most intuitive ways to allow a player to dismiss singular shadows of their choosing from a range without needing to trample into other input systems. The energy cost seems like it would be dirt cheap to a lot of set-ups, but I guess might hurt more with a blind range build that's not making use of equilibrium or something, especially if you feel prompted to do a lot of pruning at once.

I suppose one approach they could take is, similar to Saryn's spores on a molt, making this usage of the ability cost significantly less than the normal cast.

but I dunno. With how many things there are that can break the energy economy apart, control sounds like it'd have more value than efficiency to me.

could always have soul punch not drain energy when used to kill a shadow.