The Best Nekros Builds In Warframe

Nekros is Warframe’s

master of puppets, a necromancer who reanimates the dead to serve under the Tenno cause. But for most players, he’s mostly known for his ability to desecrate corpses to spawn additional loot. For a game that’s primarily known as a looter shooter, any character that can spawn additional drops is going to be highly sought after, regardless of the rest of their kit.

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Thankfully, Nekros is a solid Warframe in its own right, capable of tanking an unholy amount of damage through various augment mods and build choices. Today, we’ll be looking into how Nekros works, covering their abilities and augments, and then showing some of this Warframe’s best builds.

How To Craft Nekros

Nekros’ components drop from the

Lephantis boss
on Deimos. For clarity, this is not the Zealoid Prelate fight you unlock later in Deimos. Lephantis is a two-stage fight where you’ll need to destroy its mutated heads. This boss has damage attenuation, so bring a weapon with a high fire rate or pellet count to kill Lephantis as quickly as possible.

You’ll find Nekros’ main blueprint on the in-game market, costing 25,000 Credits to purchase.

Nekros Blueprint

Nekros Neuroptics

Nekros Chassis

Nekros Systems

How To Craft Nekros Prime

As with all Prime Warframes, Nekros Prime is obtained through Void Relics. This is a consumable item you’ll frequently receive as an end-of-mission reward. You can bring these to Void Fissures throughout the Star Chart to crack them open, revealing a Prime part or Forma blueprint. Nekros Prime’s components are found in certain Void Relics, although the exact Relic roster frequently changes.

If you can’t get one of his components to drop, you can also trade Nekros Prime’s schematics with other players through Warframe’s trading system. Built components cannot be traded.

Nekros Prime Blueprint

Nekros Prime Neuroptics

Nekros Prime Chassis

Nekros Prime Systems

Nekros Abilities

Stats

Passive

Restores 5 HP with every enemy death within 10m.

Unlisted in the description, Nekros also heals his companion whenever this passive triggers. All enemy deaths trigger this as well, not just kills from Nekros or his companion(s). Bear in mind that summons from Shadows of the Dead do not count as companions and are thus unaffected by this passive.

Soul Punch

A blow so powerful, it turns the enemy’s very soul into a deadly projectile, damaging all in its path. Enemies that survive the blow are Marked for Harvest and become one of Nekros’ Shadows of the Dead if killed while marked.

Soul Punch’s main use is to cherry-pick targets to summon with Shadows of the Dead. Enemies tagged by this ability will be added to Nekros’ army of shadows the next time you cast your ultimate. This can be incredibly useful if you’re trying to summon a specific Eximus unit or foe with support capabilities. As an actual damage skill, it’s pitiful at best.

If you have no interest in using Soul Punch to summon specific units, we suggest using this slot for a Helminth ability instead.

Terrify

Cast fear into the hearts of nearby enemies, causing them to run away in terror.

Nekros raises his arms and releases a burst of terrifying energy, forcing a select number of nearby targets to flee in fear. Enemies tagged by Terrify will have a portion of their armor stripped and will run away from Nekros, making them less likely to attack you. Remember that Terror is one of a select few abilities with a target cap. It’s 20 by default, although you can increase it by scaling your Ability Strength stat.

In general, you’ll want to scale Ability Strength to make Terrify fully strip armor. This armor strip only lasts for the ability’s listed duration, so consider scaling your Ability Duration stat as well to make the strip last longer.

Desecrate

Forces fallen enemies around you to drop additional loot.

Desecrate is an aura that follows Nekros wherever he goes. All enemy corpses that make contact with this aura will be desecrated after a short duration, creating a puff of smoke that spawns a cache of loot. This can be ammo, Health Orbs, Energy Orbs, or resources found on that tileset. You can even get Endo or mods from the desecrated target, notably drops that are usually exclusive to that enemy.

It should go without saying, but Desecrate is one of the strongest looting abilities in Warframe. It’s passive, has a moderate chance of dropping extra items, and can drop nearly every planetary resource and enemy mod in the game. Stack this with Khora’s Pilfering Strangledome augment for a shower of items.

Shadows Of The Dead

Summon shadow versions of vanquished enemies to fight alongside you for a short duration.

Nekros summons seven shadowy figures to serve as his personal bodyguards. Each shadow you summon is an enemy you previously killed, prioritizing Eximus units and tougher foes you’ve slain. Shadows from this skill are buffed with enhanced damage and survivability stats, all of which can be scaled with Ability Strength.

While Nekros’ shadows are quite powerful, their life essence is fleeting. Your minions will continuously drain HP while alive. You can heal them by recasting Shadows of the Dead, restoring them to full HP while repositioning them on top of Nekros. If you want to heal them in a more passive fashion, you’ll need to rely on weapon gimmicks or Helminth abilities. You can slow this drain with Ability Duration.

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Nekros Augments

There are five augments up for grabs, four of which are tied to the Steel Meridian and Red Veil Syndicates. Each augment obtained from either Syndicate costs 25,000 Standing and can only be purchased once you’re rank five. You may also purchase these augments from other players through trading. Nekros’ fifth augment, Discharge Strike, is obtained from the Conclave or Nightwave. Discharge Strike may only be used in PvP.

Soul Survivor

Soul Punch Augment: Use on a downed ally to revive them at 30% Health.

There’s not much to explain here. Casting Soul Punch on a downed Tenno or companion will instantly revive them. You can scale your Ability Strength to restore more HP, but we generally recommend you use the Vazarin Focus school instead; it does the same thing but with a 100 percent HP restore and is Warframe agnostic.

Discharge Strike

Soul Punch Augment: Depletes up to 25 Energy from the target.

PvE enemies don’t have Energy, so this augment does absolutely nothing for the vast majority of content. Skip this augment entirely.

Creeping Terrify

Terrify Augment: Affected enemies have 60% reduced movement speed.

All enemies affected by Terrify will now also be slowed. This is set to 60 percent by default, but you can get this up to a cap of 80 percent with Ability Strength mods. This stacks multiplicatively with other sources of slow, allowing you to effectively freeze targets in place if you pair it with another slow effect.

Despoil

Desecrate Augment: No longer consumes Energy, but consumes 10 Health per corpse instead.

Desecrate now drains HP instead of Energy when it loots corpses. Since Health Orbs are significantly more common than Energy Orbs, this is somewhat of a benefit from Desecrate. You’ll almost always spawn a Health Orb with this ability, which will then recover any lost HP from Desecrate. In other words, this ability is more or less free if you can keep desecrating targets.

Shield Of Shadows

Shadows of the Dead Augment: Each shadow within 50m take 6% of the damage done to Nekros in his stead.

Shield of Shadows works much in the same way as Trinity’s Link ability. While near your shadows, all damage you receive will be redirected to your minions instead. You can increase the damage redirection by scaling your Ability Strength, although the DR provided by this augment cannot exceed 90 percent.

Unlisted in the augment’s description, Shield of Shadows also redirects status ailments and knockdowns. So long as you’re near a shadow, you won’t suffer from status effects or be knocked down.

Nekros Builds

We’ll be looking at two Nekros builds today, one focused on farming while the other is a melee necromancer. Since Nekros can spawn extra Health and Energy Orbs through Desecrate, he’s a great candidate for Equilibrium and Simaris’ conversion mods—Health Conversion and Energy Conversion, respectively. For tanking, we recommend Shield Gating for Desecrate builds and HP tanking for summoning builds.

Desecrate Farming

This is a fairly standard Desecrate build that focuses on looting as many corpses as possible. The only stat that matters here is Ability Range, so we go all-in on scaling our Desecrate aura, using Overextended, Stretch, and Augur Reach to get as much range as possible. If you’re willing to put an extra two Forma on the build, you can also use Cunning Drift in the Exilus slot.

There’s not much else this build needs, so we focus on survivability. Primed Redirection and Vitality give you a decent HP and shield buffer for most content, although you might want to drop Redirection for Health Conversion if you’re strictly HP tanking. Despoil turns your HP into an Energy meter, and Equilibrium will ensure that every orb pickup heals you. The last slot can be any mod you please; we opted for Primed Redirection. Primed Sure Footed is a good option as well.

For Arcanes, we focus on adding more survivability. Arcane Blessing is a no-brainer here, granting an extra +1,200 HP for collecting Health Orbs. The second slot is much more flexible. We’ve opted for Arcane Eruption for free crowd control, although Arcane Guardian is also a great pick if you aren’t using Health Conversion or another form of armor scaling.

Shadows Of The Dead Build

This build is incredibly expensive, but this is a fun way to make Nekros a tank through his Shield of Shadows augment. We use that augment and a high Strength stat—achieved with Blind Rage, Umbral Intensify, and Growing Power—to gain an extra 90 percent DR while shadows are near us.

Doing so comes with a major efficiency penalty, so we need to fix that. Despoil is a safe bet here, draining our HP to spawn Health and Energy Orbs. Equilibrium will then grant both resources from either orb type. Umbral Vitality and Arcane Blessing aggressively scale your HP, Arcane Guardian grants DR through armor, and b adds another form of DR as you receive damage. All together, you have a great platform for a melee-focused build or a laid-back tank.

You have quite a few subsume options here if you want to tailor this build to your playstyle:

• Lycath’s Hunt (Voruna): Spawns Health Orbs on melee kills, perfect for ramping up Arcane Blessing.
• Warcry (Valkyr): Gives you a major attack speed buff with melee weapons.
• Blood Altar (Garuda): Heals Shadows of the Dead minions that are within range.

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