A Fireblast Replacement Idea For Ember?

[TunaMayo]

Ember is basically portrayed as "run around and kill everything before they can kill you" kind of frame. As fun as this is on low-medium level content, it inevitably falls off in higher level content much like the old Oberon. Adding some utility to Ember and giving her the Oberon treatment could bump her to higher levels of viability. The easiest way I see to do this would be to replace Fireblast, so I thought I'd give it a stab or at the very least spark some discussion.

 

Fireblast

 

Fireblast is great for area denial against infested and certain melee units in other factions, but given the theme of Embers "run around and kill stuff", it doesn't quite fit. In my eyes, something that would fit into Embers kit is a power that allows you to get about quickly, get into the thick of things and allowing Ember to Survive whilst maximising the World on Fire and Accelerant combo, without making her a massive tanky unit that got Overheat removed in the first place. So here is my replacement for the skill : 

 

Phoenix Rising - Ember calls upon the flames of the phoenix to aid her in battle. Ember gains bonus shields for the duration of this skill and every kill that Ember gets minor increases Ember's movement speed, starts uninterrupted shield regen for a few seconds and adds duration to "World on Fire", these buffs would be minor if achieved with weapon kills but increased if achieved with ability kills. When Ember's shields are depleted during this skill, Ember would emit a "FireBlast" around herself, knocking back all enemies in the radius and setting them on fire.

 

Ideally this would be useful at all levels of gameplay. In low-level content, you could turn this skill on to help you run around and kill stuff with World on Fire + accelerant faster and stay alive whilst doing so. In higher level content, you could turn this skill on to survive, aid your damage output and for clutch defence/revives with the "Fireblast". In essence I was hoping that it would help Ember stay alive, like Overheat, but requiring some skill and not just an unstoppable force, unlike Overheat.

 

[Vyrn]

Sounds fiery and destructive...

 

I like it.

[Adaptor-Face]

i support all changes that increases synergy between one frame's abilities

[(PSN)Veg1ta]

When you say high level content what kind of level you referring to? Cause i done alert on pluto yesterday with lv38 corpus and wof with just intensify on was killing them no problem, granted i agree taking down lv 50 heavies with embers powers can be a struggle, but thats not where de balance the game ,so am confused? Do u want the solar system to be a joke?

[Frostmire]

When you say high level content what kind of level you referring to? Cause i done alert on pluto yesterday with lv38 corpus and wof with just intensify on was killing them no problem, granted i agree taking down lv 50 heavies with embers powers can be a struggle, but thats not where de balance the game ,so am confused? Do u want the solar system to be a joke?

This thread is about Fireblast, not WoF or Ember in general . 

 

Myself wish it could add 50% Blast proc chance to your weapon , insane CC :D

[Sunfaiz]

Sounds fiery and destructive...

 

I like it.

^ Also ALL MY YES

[(PSN)Veg1ta]

This thread is about Fireblast, not WoF or Ember in general .

Myself wish it could add 50% Blast proc chance to your weapon , insane CC :D

I know that, its relevent regarding adding more stuff to make a frame stronger. Edited October 16, 2014 by (PS4)Veg1ta

[Frostmire]

I know that, its relevent regarding adding more stuff to make a frame stronger.

There's no point leaving a frame with only 2 abilities worth using. Ember isn't top tier anyway. M. Prime is powerful but it doesn't mean Null Star has to be crap , Chaos is OP but Psychic Bolt should be useful in PvE is some degree at least, and so on.

Edited October 16, 2014 by Frostmire

[(PSN)Veg1ta]

There's no point leaving a frame with only 2 abilities worth using. Ember isn't top tier anyway

She isnt top tier, but shes not at the bottom either, when u say top tier we know exactly what u mean , cant handle end game which is your opinion and entitled to it, but whats not opinion is DE dont balance for end game therefore ember can handle everything shes expected to.

[Frostmire]

She isnt top tier, but shes not at the bottom either, when u say top tier we know exactly what u mean , cant handle end game which is your opinion and entitled to it, but whats not opinion is DE dont balance for end game therefore ember can handle everything shes expected to.

 

Leaving a frame with 2 usable abilities is not what i would call a balance. But if you like it this way , let's just agree to disagree

Edited October 16, 2014 by Frostmire

[(PSN)Veg1ta]

Leaving a frame with 2 usuable abilities is not what i would call a balance

How so? You saying fireblast combined with accelerent isnt usefull in the solar system? Or enemy in realistic level?

[Llyssa]

I'm not sure it fits her theme. They've stated they specifically did *not* want her running around being tanky.

 

While it's an interesting power concept, I don't like the idea of sacrificing fireblast for it--FB is quite useful in its own right, as it causes a great deal of damage and CC at all levels--using it to light up an area effectively protects anyone there.

 

It's been stated both that there will be future alternate frames on a theme; suggested that, eventually, we may have access to more than 4 powers; and noted that there will be interesting activated potentials similar to this in the focus system. In any of those scenarios, this would be great.

 

However, as-is, FB is still her longest-lasting skill and only actually defensive one, and allows her to protect other people and objectives, it would be unwise to remove it. Also, you mention skill comboes. A chain of FB can shut down an entire room at once quite well.

 

I do think FB could perhaps use a slight buff, but I don't think replacing it is the best solution--at least, not with this.

[TunaMayo]

When you say high level content what kind of level you referring to? Cause i done alert on pluto yesterday with lv38 corpus and wof with just intensify on was killing them no problem, granted i agree taking down lv 50 heavies with embers powers can be a struggle, but thats not where de balance the game ,so am confused? Do u want the solar system to be a joke?

 

I'm talking T4 survivals and Defence for more than 20 minutes.

 

Now, I'm not saying that the game should be balanced around these modes, not at all in any sense of the word. Which is why my idea was designed to be useful at all stages of the game.

 

The premise behind this skill was purely to aid Ember in both surviving higher level enemies and to add a bit more utility to her kit, with a bit of synergy. The idea was never to increase Embers damage output to the point where she can be running around melting level 50 heavies, but to actually allow her to get close to those level 50 heavies to let her accelerate + world on fire do some damage and help the team. 

 

I don't want the whole solar system to be a joke. But I do want all frames to be viable in all stages of the game. Now, all frames have their specific niche, but they are designed to allow them to excel in that niche, for example : 

 

Nova is about being squishy and making things go boom, she has a ranged explosion, large AoE debuff and mobility on her portals for survival.

 

Loki is about general chaos, he has a fast base speed, invisibility and a teleport to make this feasible. 

 

Valkyr is about getting in your face and punching you a lot, she has mobility on her ripline, enemy debuff and an invulnerability phase.

 

Nekros is about farming and sustainability, his desecrate excels and keeping the team topped up and his terrify and shadows allow him to keep fire off his team, despite his drawbacks he has his uses regardless.

 

Ember is about running around and killing stuff before it kills you, now she presently has accelerant which is absolutely fantastic at allowing her to kill units quickly, but she has nothing that gives her any sort of ability to survive or get around quickly.

 

That is what I was trying to address, not making all content a pushover, but to make all content accessible. 

[TunaMayo]

I'm not sure it fits her theme. They've stated they specifically did *not* want her running around being tanky.

 

While it's an interesting power concept, I don't like the idea of sacrificing fireblast for it--FB is quite useful in its own right, as it causes a great deal of damage and CC at all levels--using it to light up an area effectively protects anyone there.

 

It's been stated both that there will be future alternate frames on a theme; suggested that, eventually, we may have access to more than 4 powers; and noted that there will be interesting activated potentials similar to this in the focus system. In any of those scenarios, this would be great.

 

However, as-is, FB is still her longest-lasting skill and only actually defensive one, and allows her to protect other people and objectives, it would be unwise to remove it. Also, you mention skill comboes. A chain of FB can shut down an entire room at once quite well.

 

I do think FB could perhaps use a slight buff, but I don't think replacing it is the best solution--at least, not with this.

 

The concept wasn't that it would make Ember tanky, as Overheat did, in that she could just pop the skill and then facetank a boss or an entire wave better than Rhino. The concept was to aid her in the "killing stuff before it kills you" playstyle. She wouldn't be any more inherently tanky, she would just have the ability to run into a crowd of mobs and deal damage to them with more of a chance of getting out alive than she presently does.

 

I used to play Ember a lot back in the days of Overheat and I understand the merits of Fireblast. There used to be a time where you could pop a few Fireblast and Overheat and stand inside the ring and basically F*** up anything that came near it, the area denial was second to none.

 

But now, Ember's main source of damage comes from World on Fire as Accelerant actually stuns enemies, preventing them from getting near your ring of fire in the first place.

 

You mention alternate skillsets, but this was a passe comment made about a year ago IIRC, which has since then not been addressed by DE officially. I highly doubt that would would see anything of this nature for years to come, seeing as they only recently had a poll for universal warframe skills, which probably won't be introduced into the game for a few major updates (17-18 I'm guessing). So I see no reason to put off balancing ALL frames because there 'might' be new skills somewhere a few years down the road.

 

If we were keeping Ember's kit relatively the same without majorly changing one of her skills I would simply add a little something to Accelerant. Accelerant, we assume, covers enemies in some space petrol, so make it so that all enemies take a bonus DoT from all of Ember's skills when afflicted by Accelerant. This would increase her damage output in general. It wouldn't fix the bigger issue, but it could be nice.

[(PSN)Veg1ta]

Even if ember got alot of damage increase to her abilities she still lacks true utility, accelerent more of a damage buffer than cc for me and as we all know utility is way more effective than any kind of damage output, so id agree to more utility if anything.