Hi, I'm Ugly_Poro and I'm absolutely in love with [Nezha] right now. I've played a lot of regular [Nezha] and tinkered with this build for a couple months now, trying different things to see what works. As it stands, the build I present to you here is the one I use whenever I want to tank a lot of damage.

The premise is simple: armor + [Adaptation] + Warding Halo = a lot of EHP. Warding Halo is a 90% damage reduction. [Adaptation] also provides up to 90% damage reduction. They combine for up to 99% damage reduction, and armor pushes that even further. Combining Arcane [Guardian], [Health Conversion], [Wukong]'s Defy, and [Nezha]'s base armor value of 250 you'll have 3,250 armor under the right conditions for an additional reduction. Combining all the values, your total damage reduction equals 99.925%! Put simply, even the enemies on Steel Path Mot will have trouble damaging your health bar until 1h+ into the mission. Commenters have pointed out [Adaptation] is a trap. I've swapped it out for [Equilibrium], swapped [Primed Flow] to [Flow], since the drain is too high otherwise.

That's especially true when you add [Brief Respite] tech. [Brief Respite] along with reduced efficiency, Augur mods, and a Decaying Dragon Key means that any time an ability is cast [Nezha]'s overshields will be completely restored, which will reset the shield gate and provide additional invulnerability. This matters a lot since you'll want to spam Blazing Chakram to force health and energy orbs to spawn.

Next, I'd like to outline why I chose the stats I chose:

• Duration: 72.5%. Even with this negative duration, Divine Spears will stay active for 9 seconds and Blazing Chakram's debuff will last 11 seconds. Enemies shouldn't be living that long anyway, so we don't need any more duration.

• Efficiency: 70%. [Brief Respite] benefits from reduced efficiency, and even at 70% Blazing Chakram only costs 33 energy. Since it's the only ability we spam and it produces extra energy orbs on kill, plus we're running Arcane Energize, we'll have more than enough energy regardless.

• Range: 100%. The base range for Nezha's abilities is perfect, in my opinion. Feel free to slot in Stretch for Augur Secrets if you disagree.

• Strength: 324%. This build focuses on making Warding Halo as powerful as it can possibly be, and the best way to do that is to brute force as much ability strength as possible into the build. At 324% strength, Warding Halo's health will absorb 8.1x the damage that it receives. Additionally, enemies damaged by Blazing Chakram will receive 324% additional damage from all sources which is incredibly useful.

Even still, there are two flex spots in this build (three if you include Aura, but I really like [Brief Respite] in this case). [Augur Secrets] and [Controlled Slide] can be slotted in and out as desired for other exilus, augment mods, or supplemental stats like Range or Duration if you'd really prefer. Personally, I only do this when I want to help my team survive, or [Protect] defense objectives: Preparation + Safeguard Nezha

Now that I've explained the reasoning behind my build, I'd like to take a moment to explain a couple ability synergies I've found to be useful:

• Divine Spears -> Blazing Chakram

  • When Blazing Chakram hits an enemy that is impaled by a spear, it will actually create a second Chakram and both will continue to ricochet toward other enemies. It's the best way to spread the Chakram mark and spawn extra health/energy orbs. Until I found out about this synergy I didn't use Divine Spears very often, but now I spam it so I put Primed Flow in the build.

• Defy -> (trigger shield gate) -> Warding Halo
  - This has become my bread and butter combo whenever I run out of health on my Warding Halo. Defy has a lot going for it in terms of synergy with [Nezha]'s kit. It provides additional armor for Halo, additional invulnerability when we're at our most vulnerable, and it refills our shields which means we can wait for enemies to attack us before recasting Warding Halo. This is big, because taking damage in the first 3 seconds after casting Warding Halo will increase its health. Expect Warding Halos around 60-150k in most Steel Path missions. On Mot, my highest Halo so far was around 660k using this combo. Still works, isn't bad, I just find it isn't necessary. I've added Empower because I'm too lazy to bother with subsuming right now, and I still get Halos with 450k+ health on it.

And to go along with that, a few more synergies that take Nezha to the next level:

• Blazing Chakram will pass through enemies if you press and hold the button, which makes it ideal for quickly applying status to a mob in front of you. It will ricochet off enemies if you quickly release the button, which is better when you want to hit enemies impaled by Divine Spears and spread the status all around you. Pressing and holding also increases the range from ~30 meters to ~70 meters which makes it a useful tool to traverse the map, since you can recast it to teleport to the location of the chakram.

• [Synth Fiber] on a companion will allow you to pickup health orbs even if both you and your companion are full health. This is useful to keep your [Health Conversion] at max stacks while also keeping your shield gate up with [Brief Respite]. Synth Fiber Vulpa

• [Condition Overload] melee weapons are good in general, but [Nezha]'s abilities spread the Heat status for some extra damage. Combine Viral + Magnetic + Electric Kuva Nukor or Viral + Gas + Electric Zakti and a Condition Overload melee (this is my Dokrahm Zaw) for consistently applying 4+ status effects to boost damage. 10x Viral stacks plus a few status effects, plus Blazing Chakram's 324% damage increase, allows this melee weapon to deal upwards of 2.5 million damage per hit when the stars align!

If you've made it all the way to the end, congratulations. I really do believe this is the best all around [Nezha] build possible right now, so please Star and share this build so others know about it!

As a reward for making it this far, behold my latest fashionframe for prettyboi [Nezha] P! :D

Update June 2021-
Hi everyone, sorry I've been absent. I got absorbed in other games and haven't really played Warframe in a while. I'd just like to clear up a couple common questions that have popped up.

1. Negative Efficiency???
   Yeah, it's not that big a deal. Arcane Energize + [Flow] is enough that I don't have to spam pads and I don't have to run Zenurik. If you're having energy problems with this build, there are a few things you can do:

• add Streamline, Equilibrium, Fleeting Expertise, etc. until you no longer have energy issues
• run Zenurik
• hold off on Divine Spears if you have >200 energy (this is what I do), because an Arcane Energize proc is only ~10 seconds away most of the time.

1a. Negative Duration?????
At 72% duration, Blazing Chakram lasts 10 seconds. Divine Spears lasts 9 seconds. I can kill things before they expire, so I don't need more duration. If you need more duration, add more duration. I know Defy likes duration, but it really doesn't matter since you snapshot the armor stat when you press 3.

2. Subsume ability?
   I used Defy because [Wukong] is easy to farm and this guide was written 7 months ago when the Helminth system was 2 weeks old lmao. I think I actually changed it to the helminth parkour skill, or something else for testing. But by all means, if you took the time to farm a second [Hildryn], or just bought one, or just subsumed your only copy, Pillage is probably the better choice. In which case, Respite is out of place. Which brings me to the next topic,

3. Aura mod?
   I thought I made it pretty clear that the Aura is a flex slot. I explained the [Brief Respite] tech, "[Brief Respite] along with reduced efficiency, Augur mods, and a Decaying Dragon Key means that any time an ability is cast [Nezha]'s overshields will be completely restored, which will reset the shield gate and provide additional invulnerability," but I also followed that up with, "Even still, there are two flex spots in this build (three if you include Aura, but I really like [Brief Respite] in this case)," so it should be clear that I don't consider [Brief Respite] to be the optimal mod for everyone in every situation.

4. [Umbral Fiber] vs [Adaptation] vs [Health Conversion]?
   [Umbral Fiber] adds 480 armor for an additional ~25% damage resistance. [Adaptation] straight up adds 90% damage resistance. 90 > 25, so [Adaptation] wins.
   [Umbral Fiber] adds 480 armor, [Health Conversion] adds 1350 armor. 1350 > 480, so [Health Conversion] wins.

5. Yes, I know I could have modded better. R10 [Blind Rage] and [Streamline] = more strength and more efficiency. My one mistake is not changing the build seven months ago when I realized (scroll down to see my comment to Xypheric). I left it up because I hadn't tested the loss of 40% [Energy Conversion] to shield, but now I have, and I can say it's not even noticeable.

Lastly, I'd like to say thanks for the upvotes and the comments. Sorry I couldn't answer all the questions in a timely manner. I'd also like to reiterate that the recommendations in this guide are based on my own personal preferences. I tried to offer suggestions on how you may want to change one mod or another depending on your own preferences, so I'm not sure why people like nathaniel73 feel the need to throw [Shade] in my comment section. I probably won't be checking this guide again unless something major happens to Nezha, so goodbye and good luck for now

UPDATE DECEMBER 2022 - I've edited the guide a little bit. Commenters have pointed out how [Adaptation] doesn't work while under Warding Halo, and I feel a bit dumb. It's been a while since I've played, so maybe I knew that at the time of the guide and decided it was worth it in the downtime? I don't remember. But I've actually went ahead and tested non-[Adaptation] builds and it's fine. I'm an idiot. I'm not going to tweak the build too much, since it appears to be popular and I want to preserve what people enjoy. This is what I'm currently using, if you're curious.