by Arvenyte — last updated 5 hours ago
Death's new master. Featuring altered mod polarities allow for greater customization.
ITEM RANK
3060 / 60
APPLY CONDITIONALS
[Nekros Prime] represents the Necromancer, but one could also say he's a Lich.
The main focus of this build is to make use of [Nekros Prime]'s full arsenal, being able to collect as much loot as possible while also helping our shadows not die in high level content. To do so we follow these steps:
Cast Desecrate and keep it active, then switch to operator and do chained slings for +40% ability strength before casting Gloom for a 73.5% slow.
Kill a few enemies fast, using Terrify if you need to get rid of armour or shield gate.
Cast Shadows of the Dead when you killed enough enemies (preferably 7, but can be less if under heavy fire) to get stagger, knockdown, and status immunity along with more damage reduction the more enemies you kill (capped at 90% after 184 enemies, 93.1% counting your armour's damage reduction). If you're early in the mission you can do chained slings before casting, getting 92.34% damage reduction from the get-go (88.9% from Shield of Shadows and 31% from the 11.1% left from your base armour).
After 250 kills do chained slings again and re-cast Gloom to bring the slow up to 94.5%.
Keep killing enemies, re-casting Shadows of the Dead whenever needed, and casting Terrify whenever you need armour strip or de-aggroing.
We use either Madurai for this build. The nodes we care most about are:
Crimson Archon Shard:
+15% Ability Strength x1. This is to get to 100% armour strip from the get go. While we can slowly build up ability strength with Molt Augmented to get 90% damage reduction with Shadows of the Dead and not rely on Sling Strength, we don't wanna compromise at all on Terrify. It also is necessary to get Gloom as close to its slow cap as possible. We could use 2 shards to get to the 95% cap, but I don't find it worth it to slow one extra shard just for a 0.5% increase.
Amber Archon Shard:
+37.5% Casting Speed x2. Both Terrify and Shadows of the Dead benefit greatly from this, so the more casting speed you can get, the better. We don't need more than two since we already get +50% cast speed from Power Transfer.
The last two shard slots are a free choice. Here's some options:
STRENGTH: We use [Transient Fortitude], Molt Augmented, and an archon shard. With this we'll get to 170% ability strength from the get-go. It'll take 184 kills to get to the 214% cap for [Shield Of Shadows]' damage reduction. Molt Augmented will eventually bring the damage multiplier of shadows from 253.5% to 343.5% at full stacks. Until you get enough stacks you should switch to operator and do chained slings to get +40% ability strength. With that it'd only take 17 kills to get 90% damage reduction.
Gloom also benefits from this. Using Sling Strength we get 210% ability strength for a 73.5% slow, and at max Molt Augmented and another Sling Strength we can re-cast for 94.5% slow, so close to the slow cap that it's not worth it to try and improve it further.
The amount of enemies affected by Terrify per cast are also affected by ability strength, starting with 34 and ending with 46 at full stacks.
DURATION: We use [Primed Continuity]. All our abilities besides Desecrate benefit from duration. At 127.5% ability duration Gloom's max drain per second is 5.88 energy, and Terrify would last 31.9 seconds, while Shadows of the Dead would have a 2.36% health drain.
RANGE: We use [Stretch] and [Augur Reach]. All of our abilities benefit from ability range.
Gloom's range is one of its most important features, since it'd be worthless if it can't affect as many enemies at possible. 28 meters is a comfy enough radius.
Terrify affects a large amount of enemies with our current ability strength, but it'd mean nothing if it doesn't have a big AoE. At 175% ability range you'll be just over the 25 meter mark, but we sadly can't add more range mods.
Desecrate lives and dies by its range, so increasing it is always optimall. 43.8 meters seems to be enough for most ocassions.
Shadows of the Dead doesn't benefit directly from range, but the links from [Shield Of Shadows] do. At 175% ability range the links have a radius of 87.5 meters, making it so you don't have to recast Shadows of the Dead to bring them close to you as often.
EFFICIENCY/ENERGY: We use [Preparation], [Primed Flow], and [Equilibrium]. With how much energy we get because of Gloom a bigger energy pool tends to be better than less energy per cast, which is why we chose [Primed Flow] over [Streamline] or [Fleeting Expertise]. Desecrate is up at all times, and it ends up creating a massive amount of energy and health orbs. Because of that we make the most out of it by putting [Equilibrium] on our [Nekros Prime], effectively filling up our energy at all times. Energy regeneration doesn't work whenever Gloom is active and slowing enemies, so our only other choice is to run things like [Netra Invocation] to make all of our other abilities consume way less energy.
As for Preparation... why use it when you can generate energy with energy orbs and health orbs non-stop? Well while it's true you won't need it when you got your run going, I've always found the hardest part of starting a high level run as [Nekros Prime] to be the very start when you can't cast lots of abilities. On top of that since we're not running [Despoil] both Gloom and Desecrate are running on the same pool. While it won't be noticeable most of the time, sometimes your energy can drain rather fast if you kill too many enemies at once. This gets rid of that issue, giving you more than enough energy to cast and use Desecrate, cast Gloom, and use Terrify a few times comfortably before casting Shadows of the Dead and getting your build going.
The calculation for starting energy is:
Base Starting Energy + (5 x (Mod Capacity Left + Extra Aura Capacity)) + (Total Energy x [Preparation] Multiplier).
[Nekros Prime] starts with 75 energy. Our aura gives us 14 extra capacity, and our [Preparation] gives us a 73% multiplier and leaves us with one capacity left. That'd make our calculation be:
75 + (5 x (1 + 14)) + (541 x 73%) = 544.93. which is max energy.
PRIMARY: We use the Kuva Bramma. This is a great damage dealer in general. Since we have Gloom active at all times we can keep it as mostly pure Toxin damage to deal with corpus units, while [Hunter Munitions] gets rid of grineer and if you don't feel like waiting you can always armour strip them with Terrify.
I chose this weapon thematically because you literally get it from a Lich, and it's one of the few Lich-exclusive weapons.
SECONDARY: We use the Grimoire. This is a great support weapon. While [Nekros Prime]' Terrify can definitely help you kill enemies with it, the most important thing about it is its support ability. depending on the invocation mod you put on you can easily get +60% ability strength, duration, or efficiency. You could also get +10 energy per second, but Gloom prevents energy regeneraton from working, so it won't be useful there.
I chose this weapon thematically because a necromancer is a dark magic caster that revives people as undead, so of course they'd have their own grimoire or necronomicon.
MELEE: We use the Hate. This is perfect for group 1-shotting with its heavy attack, dealing incredibly strong bleed procs. It now has an incarnon mode which, along with the tennokai, make this weapon fully viable for a light attack build.
I chose this weapon thematically because when you think about necromancy and undead the grim reaper tends to come to mind. When not casting spells you can only see them using either a scythe or a sickle.
COMPANION: We use the Panzer Vulvaphyla. A necromancer should have an immortal pet, shouldn't they? Besides spreading even more viral this companion makes sure you have even more crit damage and fire rate, while also providing health gating in the off chance you receive fatal damage. You could also use a Smeeta Kavat for the chance at double drops if you wish, but you lose on the fire rate and melee combo buffs along with the extra viral stacks and health gate, so I don't think it's worth it.
SHIELD GATING: We use [Brief Respite] and [Augur Reach]. Because of [Catalyzing Shields] your shields will get reduced to 20% of their total, which is 111 shields for [Nekros Prime]. the mods we use give us 150 + 40 = 190% of the energy we used as shields. The ability we'll use for this is Terrify, which is our most spammable ability. At 75 energy per cast it'd be 75 x 190% = 142.5, effectively filling up our shields entirely no matter what.
The reason why we want low max shields is because of how shield gating works with [Catalyzing Shields]. when your shields are depleted you gain 1.3 seconds of invulnerability. If your shield starts regenerating and goes down again before it can fill up fully, however, the invulnerability will only last 0.3 seconds. With these mods we make sure to always fill up our shields to get max invulnerability time.
AUGMENTS: We use [Shield Of Shadows]. [Shield Of Shadows] provides survivability by giving 90% damage reduction and drawing fire away from you, while also giving stagger, knockdown, and status immunity, saving us from having to use [Primed Sure Footed] and [Rolling Guard] respectively.
We don't run [Despoil] because of how incredibly easy it is to keep your energy filled up, but if youe ver wanted to the only mod you could replace is Augur Reach.
SURVIVABILITY: We use [Shield Of Shadows] and Arcane Blessing. As stated above, Shield of Shadows will prevent stagger and knockdown effects, while also preventing you from suddenly dying of toxic procs from eximus units. Arcane Blessing is mostly there to prevent us from suddenly dying from pure toxin damage, which is the only thing that'd ever get past our shields, since while we can prevent a toxin status, we can't prevent the actual damage type from ever hitting us. This can be replaced for any other arcane if needed.
So, if you want to test this build but are too worried that you won't like it and will waste forma on it, here's a 0 forma version of the build for you to test. 0 Forma builds always MAKE compromises, but I try to make them as close to the original to give an accurrate representation when testing.
And that's it! Besides downgrading two mods and removing the exilus all the mods are exactly the same, just in different spots since we can't change polarity positions with 0 forma. While it's a bit harder to start the run due to the lack of [Preparation] and smaller energy pool, it should still be more or less the same.
