Is the title clickbait? Nope! Welcome to the million HP loot tank 4 forma build!
In my 1900 hours in warframe, this is the absolute best Nekros build I've managed to make
*NOTE: this build REQUIRES SYNTH FIBER on your companion
---===GOALS OF BUILD===---
-=Tankiness: Be unkillable in the highest level content
-=Infinite Energy: have INFINITE energy without the use of Zenurik focus school
-=Strong abilities: Keep Nekros's signature 2, 3 and 4 ability strong, and allow room for a strong helminth ability
---===Newer player build variants===---
- Swapping out molt augmented for the Empower helminth ability is viable, negating the need for kills. This comes at the high opportunity cost of abilities like Nourish
- Swapping out Umbral intensify for Intensify is fine, but requires swapping Cunning drift for Power drift
- Equilibrium can be swapped out for Flow/[Primed Flow] + Zenurik focus school, but will require almost 100% Wellspring buff uptime to keep up with energy needs in high enemy volume missions
- Forgoing Health conversion and adaptation is fine for missions below level 100, but then you're not doing the million HP tank build
---===Goal 1: Tankiness===---
Let's do some math and figure out how much effective health this build provides
-=Effective health
- damage reduction from shield of shadow: 90%
- damage reduction from armor: 83.1% (Health orbs are abundant with Nekros's 3 ; you will always have +1350 armor from Health conversion)
- damage reduction from adaptation: up to 90%
health pool: 1500 health + 450 shield. (Health orbs abundant, building up to +1200 hp with Arcane Blessing is easy)
Effective damage reduction on shield: 90 to 99%
Effective damage reduction on health: 98.31% to 99.831%
Total effective health from shields: 4500 to 45,000
Total effective health from health: 88,757 to 887,574
Total effective health: 93,257 to 932,573 (not quite a million but hey sue me)
-=healing
- you need no other way of healing than healing orbs that spawn all the time from your 3rd ability
-=Why no vitality mod?
- [Vitality] only gives you an extra 440 hp. Arcane blessing gives you 1200. So one arcane blessing is doing about 3x more than [Vitality]. Why waste a mod slot for + 29% effective hp? Other mods like adaptation or health conversion give will give you up to +1000% effective hp...
---===Goal 2: Infinite energy===---
-=Energy income
- When combined with Nekro's 3 Desecrate, Equilibrium provides SO MUCH energy that you effectively have infinite energy.
- BIG PROBLEM: Equilibrium doesn't allow you to pickup health orbs if you are full health
- SOLUTION: use [Synth Fiber] on your companion. This makes you pickup all health orbs all the time. I've also considered Despoil and Combat Discipline but they are terrible compared to this option.
-=Energy capacity
- We forgo the use of Primed Flow ; Our 188 base energy pool is more than enough considering it is always full from Equilibrium.
- Extensions to this pool through archon shards is a nice equality of life upgrade but isn't necessary. I Recommend 1-2 blue energy max archon shard
---===Goal 3: Strong abilities===---
-=shadows of the dead (4)
- We need at least 214% power strength when the ability is casted to achieve 90% damage reduction with shield of shadow
- This is achieved with intensify + growing power + molt augmented for a total of 169% to 229% ability strength.
- the 214% power strength breakpoint reached at ~188 kills for molt augmented
- The damage reduction from shield of shadow requires you to be in range of your shadows, which is affected by ability range (which we have a lot of!)
-=Desecrate (3)
- We reach a respectable +90% range and 100% efficiency, more than enough to make Nekros a useful loot frame
- Massive synergy with the health orbs this ability spawns with Equilibrium and Health conversion, making this ability fully essential to the build
- This ability's high passive energy cost is irrelevant due to Equilibrium being OP on this frame
-=Terrify (2)
- A S-tier ability that FULLY removes armor at 167% ability strength, which we easily hit
- Combined with the high range and average duration of this build, this ability is fully functional
-=Helminth ability (1)
We always replace Nekro's 1 Soul punch in this build
-The best option by far is Nourish
-Nourish will give +172% viral damage to you, yours allies, and quite importantly your shadows. that's almost a TRIPLING in shadow damage!
-BUT it gets even more busted: Nourish makes it so you (and your shadows...) explode when you take damage, dealing a guaranteed viral proc. this causes enemies firing at your shadows unit to take 2x-4.25X damage
-This stacks with the viral damage bonus from before...Resulting in a X5.44 to X8.84 boost to shadow damage, while buffing you and your teammates with a very strong buff...
-And if that wasn't enough, nourish multiplies all sources of incoming energy by X4.58 while it is active...
-With 190% range you are providing the buff from very far away, ensuring this reaches your teammates
-This is by far the best helminth ability in the game right now, and Nekros just so happens to be able to use it better than any other warframe!Other viable options are Xata's whisper, Roar, and Empower, in order of viability
- Xata's whisper allows for high damage with things like the Secondary Encumber or Cascadia empowered arcanes
- Empower allows the use of another arcane than Molt augmented and negates the need for kills before we reach 1M effective hp
- Many helminth abilities are viable on him, but these are the ones I've tried. Feel free to explore other options.
---===Final words===---
- This build is fully functional without the use of [Augur Reach], meaning you can swap it out for another mod without too much cost. I however have not found a more suitable mod for my playstyle
- Primed Sure Footed is useless ; Shield of shadow transfers crowd control from you to your shadows
- Recommended archon shards are :
-2x casting speed amber OR 1x tauforged casting speed amber. you have to press 4+1 every 38 seconds
-2x max energy blue OR 1x tauforged max energy blue. Nice QOL for our small 188 energy pool, though not mandatory
-probably use the rest of the shards for damage, something like melee crit damage red shards
Enjoy the build!
Author: Psilo50, IGN Retro050
