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Nidus Prime

Help I Can't Die! (Group and Solo Variants)

by last updated 2 years ago

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Mutation is endless. The ravening plague-bearer returns in a long-unseen form, seething with a primal strain of the Infestation.

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ITEM RANK

30

60 / 60

APPLY CONDITIONALS

ENERGY
190
HEALTH
650
SHIELD
0
SPRINT SPEED
1
DURATION
100%
EFFICIENCY
100%
RANGE
100%
STRENGTH
115%
ARMOR
525
Damage Reduction
63.6%
EFFECTIVE HIT POINTS
1,788
Guide
0 Comments
Nidus Prime builds
Builds by Alhazred

Help I Can't Die! (Group and Solo Variants)

You can get away with only one Umbral forma if you either drop the Exilus mod entirely or choose a single build from the possible variations that are gone into further down and Forma every other slot for your preferred build's mods. In the other direction, a full three Umbral Forma will allow for way more wiggle room in possible variations. The third alternative, of course, is to simply not do a full Umbral build. For me, that falls into "why bother" territory. [Nidus] is a tank with no shield, the entire idea is to jack his health and armor up as much as possible. Plus, not needing shield mods means you can use the full set while still leaving you spoiled for choice on what to put in other slots. Plus again, you'll probably have to drop the entire Umbral set, not just [Intensify], which makes it worse.

Arcane Nullifier because I absolutely loathe getting hit by sneaky magnetic procs, let alone on a frame/build with an emphasis on spamming a power; it's replaceable with whatever you prefer. Grace for more survivability is a good choice. Nidus (and by extension, Inaros) gets less out of Energize since Hunter Adrenaline/[Rage] procs every time you take a hit, but is still a perfectly fine choice as well, especially since plague boi prime has some nice extra armor compared to normal plague boi and the massive pile of damage mitigation you'll get going will cause Hunter Adrenaline/[Rage] to give you 1 or 2 energy from any one hit taken. If you're soloing though, you may as well use the opportunity to escape the Energize tax on your arcane slots; despite the low return per hit for Hunter Adrenaline/[Rage], you won't really need the arcane when you're the only target for enemies.

We're stacking two Carapace mods because they're more bang for the buck than [Adaptation]. Because of the way [Adaptation] works, you'll never have true 90% resistance against all incoming damage. With the full Umbral set, using Parasitic Link on an enemy already gives you over 90% damage reduction without having to stack a buff (and Parasitic Link also isn't taken into account for the 20k effective HP given here with conditionals applied.)

Aura can be whatever you prefer, so [Corrosive Projection] is, of course, a good choice. [Physique] seems like the obvious choice, but it's crap since it only applies to base health, giving [Nidus] a whopping 405 extra HP. Not a bad chance to use [Shepherd] to give pets a longer life since your Aura mod doesn't need to help [Nidus] survive at all. The Exilus slot doesn't need to be anything specific either, so you can switch it out for a little extra utility like more mobility with a Bullet Jump mod or [Rush].

My preferred variation for solo is:

(Actual build page here if you want to see Overframe display the stats.)

The Rejuvenation/[Coaction Drift] combo raises [Nidus]' health regeneration to 17.5 per second up from 13, so both can be replaced with whatever you prefer without much loss of survivability. The third carapace mod is really a placeholder; due to diminishing returns on armor it only adds another 1.5% damage reduction. It still gives you an extra 3000 effective health since the mod also provides a health boost, which isn't bad, but it's replaceable. More power strength or [Abundant Mutation] is a good choice for Steel Path so Virulence won't lose as much effectiveness.

How 2 [Nidus]

Many players struggle to gain stacks quickly, to the extent that some can't imagine the [Abundant Mutation] augment as actually being useful. After all, if one is having trouble reaching 50 stacks, what good is an augment that increases the cap from 100 to 300? The trick to it is simply to use all four abilities in-tandem. Do not wait for the perfect chance to cast Parasitic Link and Ravenous and more importantly, do not get into a mindset of needing a place you're going to hunker down before casting them; they don't actually cost much to cast, you can just renew them if you move on after a few seconds.

Once you have a stack, hit an enemy with Parasitic Link the next time you see a group, cast Larva to group them together, and spam Virulence at them until they're dead. Try to grab as many enemies as possible by casting Larva relatively close to the enemy you're tethered to with Parasitic Link, so the copy of Virulence that gets cast from their position whenever you cast it yourself will also hit the Larva ball of tangled enemies, thus doubling your stacks. Depending on enemy level, unless they're so low that Virulence is a one-hit kill with no stacks, you should gain quite a few stacks from this first group alone. Repeat this with the next group, but cast Ravenous after linking to an enemy, and cast Larva over Ravenous to draw the group of enemies to where [Nidus]' puppies are spawning so they'll immediately get jumped by them. If the enemies are tanky (basically guaranteed if you're on Steel Path,) you can cast Ravenous right where Larva has your very first group balled up once you've gained those starting stacks back. If the enemies are hardy enough, once they're dead, the stack counter will have to actually catch up because it displays its increments at a set animation speed. You can easily get 30-50 stacks at the start of an Exterminate mission in less than 20 seconds from when you find an enemy group to exploit (again, enemy level is a factor here.) It gets far more ridiculous in an endless mode where enemies will swarm you more reliably and even more if you're solo'ing; it's quite possible to [Reach] 100 stacks without realizing it because the counter takes that long to catch up.

Here's the thing, though. [Nidus] has an important mechanic that's easy to miss, and it very likely contributes to the way players struggle to get a grip on just how they're supposed to make this frame work. If you've never looked up [Nidus]' mechanics on the wiki or read the tips on his ability screen, prepare to have your mind blown. The mechanic is simple; Virulence does more damage for every mutation stack Nidus has. Mutation stacks are a modulation mechanic, not a race to the cap. If your Virulence is one-shotting Eximus units, the problem isn't that it's too hard to gain stacks, the problem is that you already have enough. You don't need anymore than what you have plus another 15 just in case Undying needs to be triggered. (Sidenote; enemies can and will get beefy enough that even at 300 stacks, Virulence can't one-shot them anymore, and one-shotting is basically never going to happen in Steel Path. [Nidus] can still easily fight with nothing but his powers at these levels, though, because Virulence still tops out high enough damage to kill enemies efficiently. When you're fighting beefy enemies, you'll just keep spamming Virulence into groups yanked together by Larva to kill them instead of for more stacks. It's also still worthwhile to keep Parasitic Link on an enemy to double the damage Virulence does and to maintain your high damage mitigation.)

This build is missing out on duration because Parasitic Link and Ravenous already have good duration as it is (60 and 40 seconds respectively,) while leaving Larva at it's base duration obviates the need for Larval Burst. Now that we know how to gain stacks like a boss, it means we don't have to worry about having the stacks on hand to re-new these abilities when their base duration expires. If you want to avoid downtime with Ravenous, stand on it (so it doesn't spawn a new one and reset the puppies) and cast with two seconds left on the timer.

Honestly, swapping out [Stretch] for [Overextended] is completely valid, since you'll still be able to increase your damage by gaining stacks, but there are drawbacks other than Virulence taking longer to reach it's one-shot kill level, and I personally prefer avoiding the drawbacks of so much extra range. Most obviously, you'll lose a noticeable amount of damage mitigation from Parasitic Link, which you may need to make up for by putting more effort into topping your stacks off should you need Undying to proc. Next, more range on Larva seems like a great idea because you grab more enemies in the ball to get stacks faster, yay! The problem is, the longer Larva can [Reach], the greater the chances an enemy it grabs will get stuck on a surface between it and the position Larva was cast at. This isn't too bad since duration hasn't been increased and it won't take long for Larva to expire on it's own, but it will still take longer than if the problem enemy simply hadn't been within range and you could just kill every enemy grabbed by the ball. The last drawback is that Virulence can't be re-cast until it either reaches it's maximum range or it terminates early against a surface it can't travel through, which significantly slows down your stack-gaining unless you position yourself to deliberately make Virulence run into a wall after it passes through your hentai ball and the enemies it's holding. This can get more difficult when Parasitic Link is active since you have to account for the second cast from whatever you're linked to. At the end of the day, I prefer to just stick with [Stretch] as a good balance between additional range and mitigating these drawbacks, but your preferences may be different. If you want turbo hentai ball extension, keep [Stretch] and drop a Carapace mod for [Overextended], and throw [Cunning Drift] in the Exilus slot. (With three Umbral Forma, you can replace a Carapace mod with Auger [Reach] instead, giving a range bump without sacrificing your damage or your damage mitigation)

Gaining stacks so efficiently makes the [Abundant Mutation] augment far easier to take advantage of (if you're using it, remember to run away when you see Undying proc; get away from the group of enemies who killed you so they can't kill you again while Undying is on cooldown. Get yourself into a less hectic situation to replenish the spent stacks, or just keep retreating until the cooldown is done to play it safe.) A good variant is to replace [Flow] with [Abundant Mutation] for solo play. Remember, the main benefit of this augment is not giving you extra chances to trigger Undying without having to refill your stacks in-between; the fact that the augment nerfs Undying by adding the 30 second cooldown completely nullifies this as an advantage. The real point of this augment is to further buff Virulence so very high level and/or Steel Path enemies will die to fewer casts because its mutation stack damage buff can get higher than 100.

Gaining stacks so efficiently also makes the [Insatiable] augment redundant; when you're gaining stacks so fast you don't even realize you've reached 100, you just don't need it. If you're going to run it, it should be alongside [Abundant Mutation] to [Reach] 300 faster, but even then, I think it's a waste of a mod slot. The simple fact of the matter is that if you're struggling to gain stacks in the first place, this augment is not the solution, the solution is to simply adjust your playstyle so you'll get more out of Nidus' powers.

The Fail
Nidus is garbo at one thing, and that's solo-protecting an excavator on high or even mid-level excavation. His insane durability means he's a perfectly fine choice for using a good weapon to [Protect] the excavator but you can't sleep through it like many frames can, and if you have [Nidus] you probably have at least one frame that makes the whole thing way easier.

We'll go over howe2nidus on Excavation for completeness' sake. Firstly, we're using a more specialized build:

Keep this aura/exilus in this case to debuff enemies. Bring a good crit weapon (preferably an AoE weapon) for [Teeming Virulence] to buff, grab the first group you see in the hentai ball, cast Virulence to proc Teeming Virulence, and start blowing enemies away wherever you see them. Try to alternate between shooting at non-grabbed enemies and casting Virulence at your hentai ball to both keep the buff up and to gain the 15 stacks to proc Undying if the need arises. Once you're above 15 stacks you want to repeat the above-noted synergy of casting Ravenous and cast Larva over it to increase your stack gain even though stack gain isn't your main priority here, because the puppies will distract enemies and take their fire off the excavator, giving you more time to shoot them.

If you drop something for Larval Burst you can do more of a spam thing with Larva to crowd-control more enemies than you would otherwise. It's clunky but it does help, just not enough that you can get away with not using your weapon to kill enemies as fast as possible. You can also use Helminth to switch Parasitic Link with any crowd-control power to help keep the enemies off the excavator, or even [Xata]'s Whisper to kill them faster.

The Giant Mouth Thing

In my opinion, and I'm going to stress in my opinion on this one because your playstyle may vary, nothing is really worth it from Helminth for Nidus (with the exception being the note above on the excavation-specific build,) it's just too important to use all four of his abilities in tandem with each other. You obviously can't replace Virulence, since it's the only way to gain stacks. Replacing any of the remaining three will seriously nerf your stack gaining as well as your non-weapon damage output. Beyond that, replacing Ravenous would probably be the safest bet, since the extra healing from standing in it is probably the least important part of making Nidus super-durable, but you lose out on [Nidus]' puppies greatly increasing your stack building by using Larva to group enemies right on it. Replacing Larva also seriously nerfs the speed you'll gain stacks at and replacing Parasitic Link seriously nerfs your survivability, once again nerfs the speed you can gain stacks at. Even if you're okay with losing out on stack-gains and whatever else one of those abilities gives, there's really nothing worthwhile to replace them with. Because of the way he works, Nidus doesn't need a non-native ability to increase his ability strength. Nothing that adds more tank durability like armor or healing or whatever will add enough of it to justify losing out on stack-gaining; [Nidus] is already an insane tank and if you're gaining stacks as fast as I've described, you'll have more than enough for Undying in a long endless mode run, so it really just makes Nidus less efficient. Nidus is not a frame for whom the wheel needs to be re-invented.

Still, the crowd-control of Larva makes [Nidus] an excellent choice for a few Helminth abilities if one is willing to lose a lot of [Nidus]' inherent power synergy. As an easy example, Grind Hard Squad has a guide here where he replaces Ravenous with Sickening Pulse, then uses Larva to inflict ludicrous Electricity damage on huge groups of enemies. As I said above, to me it's still not really worth it, I'd rather just use Helminth to put Larva on a frame that doesn't depend as much on ability synergy. Of course, you lose out being able to pair Larva with a second Helminth'd ability like Sickening Pulse, but again, this just isn't my thing. I like my Nidus at maximum stack-gaining speed. Your mileage may vary.