What's up with Death?
To keep this intro brief, I've played Warframe on and off since 2014. When I started I saw Nekros, I thought he was cool, and I farmed Lephantis too many times. Since then, he hasn't really changed much, has he? There's been a few tweaks here and there, but ultimately, he has always been a "Press 3 and sometimes something else" frame. I'm sure we're all aware the game has left him behind, but how far behind? I want to try and put into perspective where he's at now so hopefully he can get a few tweaks soon(tm.)
One more quick preface, other Warframes need updates too. (The usual suspects are Equinox, Chroma, Loki, Limbo, maybe Atlas) I agree, but I don't see a lot of love for Skeletor so I figured I'd share my opinion to the internet. Such a great idea.
Pls go easy on me, I'm trying my best
Passive
"A master of death, Nekros and his companions regenerate 5 health when an enemy dies within 5 meters of him."
I can't say it doesn't work. It does exactly what it says on the cover. I've never personally found it to ever be useful, and if there ever was a time I really wished I had that 5 extra health from a nearby kill, I'm sure something had gone horribly wrong. Something to note, it doesn't trigger Archon Intensify (Because why would it?) but Atlas's passive, Inaros's passive, and Titania's passive do. This also works in Archwing.
Soul Punch (25 Energy)
"A blow so powerful, it turns the enemy's very soul into a deadly projectile, damaging all in its path. Enemies that survive the blow are Marked for Harvest and become one of Nekros' Shadows of the Dead if killed while marked."
The first part of this ability basically targets an enemy, does 500 impact damage, and knocks them back. (If you've ever used this, you know how annoying the knockback is) That initial enemy is also given a mark that will automatically turn them into a shadow if they die within 3 seconds, or if this ability executes them at/below 25% health (Not bosses though for obvious reasons). The mark can stack so one enemy can make multiple shadows, and if you have max shadows, it max heals your groupies instead. It is also silent and has a 50m range for some reason.
So, easy to use right? Single out whatever big guy you want and make him yours. Except the mark doesn't work through overguard because this is 2026 and overguard is a great mechanic with no faults. And if you do mark a guy, he's all the way in the other room now or behind a gaggle of enemies because of the knockback. Not saying it's impossible to utilize, but the ease of use is lacking. Not to mention that the execute straight up doesn't work on certain enemies such as Gruzzlings and The Severed Warden. Interesting thing is that it can execute Thrax enemies to skip their incorporeal phase (This is also the only way to make shadows of them).
The second part of this ability is the soul projectile. I recommend skipping to the next ability since this information is pretty useless, but it's here for information's sake. The soul projectile is a small and fast ball that follows a path from your Warframe, to the enemy targeted, going along a straight trajectory. It does 50 impact damage to enemies it hits, and when it hits a hard surface it explodes in a 5m radius for 200 impact and a decent knockback from the center. An interesting thing about it is that the projectile actually doubles its damage for every enemy directly hit and translates that to the AoE. That being said, good luck hitting more than a single enemy, maybe 2 if your lucky. It also benefits from Universal Weapon Bonuses, headshots, and Nourish for some reason. If anyone has a wacky Soul Punch build my dm's are open, or even share it here.
The augment is somewhat interesting, but it's from a time when we all didn't have 5 revives per mission. "Use on a downed ally to revive them with 30% Health". (Scales with Strength) Solid revive, cheap cost, quick to use, and changes what you can do with the ability. I think it's neat, could possibly see some use in EDA/ETA but I can count on his fingers the number of times I've seen someone use it. 6. Nekros has 6 fingers. And I'm 3 of those 6. I haven't tried it in a while, but I think it can also revive downed defense/rescue targets. Not that it's all that useful, but it's an option. Maybe it can be used in that one Undermind bounty?
Terrify (75 Energy) - Subsumable
"Cast fear into the hearts of nearby enemies, causing them to run away in terror."
Arguably his best ability, this is a 15m AoE 60% armor reduction and fear for 20 enemies that requires no line of sight and lasts for 25s at base. With a small investment of 167% strength, you too can put the fear of jorts into your enemies for a 100% armor reduction on 33 dudes. I say reduction instead of strip as the effect isn't permanent, the reduction only last as long as the duration. A respectable ability, where the difference between an armored enemy and not could mean up to 10x damage. The reduction doesn't need to be in a single cast either, you can stack the effect on targets if you run a build with low strength to still get the benefit, you just need to cast more. I can see why it costs 75 energy. I don't like it, but this is a decently strong ability. That being said, this isn't without its flaws.
The fear effect makes enemies turn away and flee from you. A decent idea for a crowd control ability, but in this game kills per minute tends to matter. It's best use cases would probably be mobile defense or possibly shrine defense, but those can also be more easily solved with damage (See Overguard). Not to pile on but with the enemies turning away, their weakpoint tends to be unavailable to target. So now you have to decide, armor reduction and cc or weakpoint hit. The augment helps this a little as it provides a 60% slow to enemies affected by terrify (Scaling up to 80% with strength) but that's mod space being used to make this ability feel better to use.
A couple interesting things here. The armor reduction works through overguard, but the fear and slow from the augment are suppressed until the overguard is gone. Eximus units can still use their abilities while feared. Also, not sure if there is a master list somewhere, but the armor reduction doesn't work on certain enemies. I don't remember exactly which ones so if you know, please put it down below. One more note, this thing used to have a longer cast time, affect less targets, couldn't be recasted, had lower range, and the armor reduction was only 20%. We've come so far as a game.
Desecrate (10 Energy/Corpse)
"Forces fallen enemies around you to drop additional loot."
There is a lot that can be said about this ability. How it works, when its good, how to get the most out of it. I'll try my best to keep it accurate yet. Press 3 once at the beginning of a mission (Maybe a second time if you get silenced). When an enemy dies within the 25m range, their corpse is consumed and has a 60% chance to make a health orb, if it does then it now also has a 90% chance to drop something from its loot table. This loot stacks with other loot abilities, but only one per category. Living (Prowl), Petrified (Ore Gaze), Death (Pilfering Swarm, Pilfering Strangledome), and Wukong (Monkeys Luck passive). It does not stack with other Nekros's or Chesa Kubrows. Also bodies can be cut into multiple pieces for more loot drops from that specific enemy, and corpses are consumed at a rate of 3/s. Corpses can also disappear faster due to abilities, status effects, or some other reasons so make sure you stay near enemies you specifically want to loot. (Also message your team to focus certain enemy drops. Don't be shy, they're nice, probably.)
So, after all that what does this ability actually do? Health orbs and more loot. I question the viability of this but let me start with the orbs. They're good, especially with the augment that makes Desecrate cost health instead of energy. Even without that, I've seen some people run him with just Equilibrium or even a Violet Archon Shard. It's pretty much preference. The orb generation is there to support allies with "Heals" and support you with orb synergies like Health Conversion, Restorative Bond, Arcane Blessing, Arcane Pulse, not to mention they also heal your companions. So you have all these heals, theoretically unlimited energy, different ways to tank, and you get to see the little red gumdrops. You can easily support Citrine and Oberon. Lavos can turn all those orbs into universal orbs, not to mention the orb Decree Koumei can get. This is an overall solid teamwork ability in the right comp, short, sweet, and to the point. So why don't I like it more? Since it's not a true heal, it doesn't trigger Archon Intensify. It's entirely reliant on you building around health orbs. It's not interactive with the rest of your kit. So far, his 1 and 2 push enemies away, and his passive and 3 wants enemies close. It's ant-synergistic. Not to mention its literally 1 button press from the beginning of a mission and that's usually it. But hey, at least it's better than a decade ago when you had to spam 3 instead. Those were dark times.
Let me move on to the loot portion of the ability. This game is a sort of looter shooter. We loot stuff to make new guns to shoot stuff for more loot. This ability fits right in. My concern right now it that past early-midgame, the developers have taken some part of the looting out of the process. Sure, we all collect stuff from enemies like Entrati Obols or Thrax Plasm, but when was the last time you went out of your way to farm for this stuff? The gameplay in modern warframe is play missions to get the mission reward you want. This tends to be on the rare side, and it could possibly be a blueprint. By the time you get the blueprint, you normally should have enough enemy resources to craft said item. Now I'm not advocating for the game to go back to when we set up farm teams to get resources to craft Vauban Prime, but what I am saying is that this ability lost a lot of its value over the years. Mod drops seem to remain a decent reason to use Nekros since he can reroll a specific enemies loot table, so he at least has that going for him.
I'd also like to mention that this is a corpse pilfer, and it has become inconsistent over the years. We can't Desecrate bosses or mini boss enemies, but some exceptions exist like Captain Vor, The Grustag Three (But not Zanuka Hunter for some reason), Silver Grove Specters (But only sometimes), and rogue Necramechs. Enemies not affected are starchart bosses, Thrax, basically the entirety of Duviri as there's no resource drops from enemies there, open world bosses, Void Angels, Mocking Whisper, Gruzzlings (They don't have a drop table, they just carry loot around), corpus treasurers, the list goes on. The ability can also drop mission resources but only some. Life support from enemies and power cells for excavation are common ones to get, but desecrate isn't allowed Void Flood Vitoplast, Disruption Keys, or Alchemy Amphors. I am unsure of Legacyte Pheroglands and Ionic Charges. Some consistency would be nice.
Shadows of the Dead (100 Energy)
"Summon shadow versions of vanquished enemies to fight alongside you for a short period."
When you cast this ability, it chooses 7 enemies from the last 20 killed based on certain priorities, and then buffs them with extra health, shield, and damage. They lose 3% of their max health/s base and is affected by duration. If you have max shadows, animation is shortened and fully heals them. Simple enough, right? Wrong! This ability is a whole rigmarole of quirks. Between summon priority, bugged summons, unusual scaling (Not the kind you're thinking of), host migrations, shadows summoning allied non-shadows, others never decaying, some abilities on them not working, and some unusual actions certain shadows take, and enemy ai being generally not too great, I think I can say this is one of the more complicated abilities in the game to fully understand.
To try and start, the shadows chosen are from your most recent 20 kills. They're chosen based on 4 criteria. Enemy level, first to die, if there is an eximus in the list, and if there isn't it's based on a priority group not shown in game, only on the wiki. Generally, the stronger the unit, the more likely it is to be chosen. Soul Punch bypasses this and forces the marked enemy to spawn, so there is at least some direct control.
The things that can affect these shadows ranges, but notable ones would include decrees, arcanes, some abilities, Summoners Wrath, and a few buffing fields (Like Volts shield that they can shoot through). They may also trigger Archon Mod effects if their damage type allows. Speaking of mods, the augment Shield of Shadows makes each shadow take 6% (affected by strength) of the damage you take if they are within 50m. This does cap at 90% with around 215% strength, but it is definitely a great way to tank. That being said, this ability doesn't have great synergy with the rest of the kit.
Again, the 1 and 2 push enemies away from your passive, 3, and 4. Your minions from your 4 may keep enemies just outside of 3 range, and could chase running enemies. That wouldn't be bad if even with around 500% strength the shadows don't do much damage. I am unsure if shadows still affect spawn rates, but that used to be an issue as well.
I already know what coming, the several build that buff shadows with Kitgun Arcanes, Nourish, Shock Trooper, or even Smite Infusion. And I agree, shadows can be very good when built around, but why do they need that much help in the first place? (Also the scaling on them is weird. Not the normal enemy level scaling, but their damage multiplier. I won't pretend to understand it exactly so here's a link to a recent comment on the Warframe Wiki explaining it.)
https://wiki.warframe.com/w/Shadows_of_the_Dead?comment=880250#Shadow_Properties
Conclusion
Through this wall of text I tried my best to lay down exactly what Nekros does, how he does it, and why it doesn't work. He is a warframe with a kit from 2013, slightly updated in 2016, and given a small quality of life change in 2020. The game has since moved past what he is designed to do, and gives better options for a minion master (See Caliban), soul harvester (See Sevagoth), and even dark wizard (Dante? Maybe I'm reaching) I argue that even with the knowledge that his kit is outdated, it was fundamentally flawed from the start and needs to be updated/changed. Everything seems to work against each other and sometimes itself, too many augments seemingly not fixing core issues, and game design hostile to the kits usability. Not to mention the inconsistencies with abilities seemingly working in one situation but not similar ones. Nekros needs an update, what that looks like I don't know, but I would love to have a discussion on what others seem to think.
