Nekros / Nekros Prime is great when farming materials for building new Warframes and weapons, as his Desecrate ability cause enemies to drop more loot when killed including more Health Orbs and Energy Orbs for keeping you alive and replenish your energy for casting your abilities. Make sure to equip weapons with high Slash damage as enemies killed by Slash damage will be torn into multiple pieces where each limb have a chance of dropping extra loot when Desecrate is active.
Nekros is a must have on Kuva Survival runs, where his Desecrate ability helps the team stay alive by forcing enemies to drop more Health Orbs, Energy Orbs and Life Support. Also the Catalyst target will drop more than one catalyst so you can instantly start harvesting Kuva from new life support portals.
Nekros is not only useful for farming, he also have some CC and DPS abilities in his toolkit; the Soul Punch will damage and stun enemies in front of Nekros while the Terrify ability will cause enemies to run away and also reduce their armor temporarily - finally the Shadows Of The Dead will raise a small army of fallen enemies to fight for you - with the Shield of Shadows augment these shadows will also give a small damage reduction.
Nekros abilities allow him to both being a great team support but also allow you to survive on solo missions with high-level enemies.
How to get Nekros
Nekros component blueprints drops from Lephantis @ the Orokin Derelict Assassination mission in the Derelict; the component blueprints all have a drop chance of 33.33% so you should be able to quickly loot all three. I recommend watching some YouTube tutorials on the fight if you haven't fought Lephantis before - the fight is actually easy and fun once you know how to do it and can easily be done solo.
The main blueprint can be bought at the market for 100.000 credits.
The relics that drops blueprints for Nekros Prime are currently removed from the drop tables and have been moved to the "Prime Vault". They will likely be unvaulted again at a later date - pay attention to news on the official Warframe site for information of which warframes gets unvaulted next time. You can however still acquire those blueprints by trading with other players (for Platinum) who already possess those blueprints.
Abilities
Nekros passive ability is to gain 5 health points whenever an enemy dies within 10 m from Nekros; this will also heal companions.
1: Soul Punch deals Impact damage and will stun the target as well as all enemies on a straight line behind him; when the Soul Punch projectile hits a wall or other hard surface, it will detonate and give AoE Impact damage to nearby enemies.
The damage on targeted enemy can be increased by Ability Strength mods; however the projectile deals a fixed amount of damage to other enemies, this does not scale with Ability Strength. The cast range can be modified with Ability Range mods.
Augment: Soul Survivor allow the Soul Punch to be cast on a dying team mate - this will revive him/her with 30% health.
2: Terrify will cause nearby enemies to flee in panic and will also reduce their armor temporarily by up to 20%. Can be recast while still active to refresh the duration.
The number of affected enemies and armor reduction scales with Ability Strength.
The armor reduction stacks multiplicatively with the Corrosion Projection mod. The duration is affected by Ability Duration and the affected area is affected by Ability Range.
Augment: Creeping Terrify cause affected enemies to move 60% slower.
3: The Desecrate ability is why you need a Nekros when farming resources; it will cause killed enemies to drop extra loot; however, Desecrate does not work on enemies that explode on death or on certain bosses.
The radius is affected by Ability Range.
Hint: Enemies killed by Slash damage will be cut into pieces - each piece have a chance to drop extra loot by the Desecrate ability. That is why you should bring weapons with high Slash damage when playing Nekros!
Augment: Despoil cause the Desecrate to consume health instead of energy. This augment will make it easy to keep the Desecrate active during the entire run as you do not need to worry about running out of energy and the Desecrate ability will force enemies to drop lots of Health Orbs so you should not have any problems keeping Nekros alive even when using this augment. Desecrate also synergizes great with the Equilibrium mod.
4: Shadows Of The Dead summons up to 7 shadow copies of recently killed enemies; it will prioritize summoning the strongest enemies. The shadows will loose health over time and will disappear when they are either killed by enemies or have lost all of their health. Shadows Of The Dead can be recast at any time to refresh the duration and number of shadows. The shadows will aggro enemies causing them to attack the shadows instead of players.
Ability Strength will affect the damage, shield and health of the summoned shadows. Ability Duration will affect the health drain and thus how long they can stay alive.
Augment: Shield Of Shadows will cause a percentage of the incoming damage on Nekros to be transfered to nearby shadows instead. The Ability Range affect how far away shadows can walk away and still contribute to the damage reduction.
Nekros Builds
Kuva Survival build
This build is great for keeping the team alive on those endless Kuva Survival runs. The Desecrate ability cause enemies to drop more health, energy and life support, which is required for long survival runs.
The Enemy Radar will make it easier to spot the Catalyst carriers on the map but on long survival runs you may consider exchanging this with Corrosive Projection to strip armor and kill enemies faster.
This build give a decent Range for your Desecrate and some Duration for keeping the Shadows of the Dead alive a little longer. More Efficiency allow you to recast Shadows of the Dead whenever you need to in order to get some assistance on killing enemies and some damage reduction with the Shield of Shadows augment.
We need some extra health with the Vitality mod so we can equip Despoil to avoid spending energy. Equilibrium will help us keep both Health and Energy topped up during the fight. This combination will allow us to keep Despoil and Shadows of the Dead up during the entire survival run!
