Ember

[(XBOX)STIZZ]

On 2018-09-19 at 2:54 AM, Nacond said:

I'm fine with her still after the rework. Don't have any problems with wof even with increased energy cost, I just built her with more range and less strength.

 

Ember is still a great low level killer so for me there is no reason to rework her. 

I can't see how she's even worse than before

[XenMaster]

Her problem is the cc.

 

If you cast Fire Blast with Fire Fright augment that cause heat panic status for 10 seconds, and cast Accelerant to regain the heat multiplier, the stun from accelerant will override Fire Blast's heat panic.

 

Solution to overriding status crowd control, Accelerant and Fire Blast should have the same heat panic status proc type, casting each other will keep the duration up.

[TeaHawk]

I really pledge for at least a buff, but yet a real rework is needed.

Ember was a perfect low level insane range killer. Now she's patently useless. The only useful ability was dramatically nerfed. And nothing useful for endgame was added tho. I like this warframe, but it's a shame I can't enjoy playing it anymore.

[Nacond]

vor 8 Stunden schrieb TeaHawk:

I really pledge for at least a buff, but yet a real rework is needed.

Ember was a perfect low level insane range killer. Now she's patently useless. The only useful ability was dramatically nerfed. And nothing useful for endgame was added tho. I like this warframe, but it's a shame I can't enjoy playing it anymore.

I my opinion she wasn't really nerfed... 

Build for duration >100, efficiency 175, max range and primes flow and she is as strong as she has been before... I still Don't deactivate wof because I have enough energy left 

I still enjoy her as much or as less as before... Although I have no real use for her... 

 

Leveling - speed nova because wof wouldn't give me any affinity

Sorties - to hard enemies to get easy killed by wof (like it was before) 

And any low level content is still easy with her (farming relics in ext missions) but that's something I don't do that often... 

[TeaHawk]

Rework: -range +energy cost.

> wasn't nerfed

Okay. Keep talking.

[Nacond]

vor 16 Stunden schrieb TeaHawk:

Rework: -range +energy cost.

> wasn't nerfed

Okay. Keep talking.

What a great answer of reading only my first sentence half... oO

Like I said "she wasn't really nerfed". Not really... I didn't say not... 

 

Yep range shrinks over time energy doubles... But ALSO damage doubles... 

So if you build her for 200% range and 50% dmg it's the same like 100 range 100 dmg before... 

And yeah more enegery drain... But for the missions where I(!) use her - like I also said - I still end the mission with wof activated at the beginning and still on at the end and rushing through... 

 

So in my opinion (like I also wrote before) there was no painful nerf... I don't say there were no changes. But they personally don't hurt me... That's all I said. 

[TeaHawk]

On 2018-12-08 at 7:46 PM, Nacond said:

What a great answer of reading only my first sentence half... oO

Like I said "she wasn't really nerfed". Not really... I didn't say not... 

 

Yep range shrinks over time energy doubles... But ALSO damage doubles... 

So if you build her for 200% range and 50% dmg it's the same like 100 range 100 dmg before... 

And yeah more enegery drain... But for the missions where I(!) use her - like I also said - I still end the mission with wof activated at the beginning and still on at the end and rushing through...  

 

So in my opinion (like I also wrote before) there was no painful nerf... I don't say there were no changes. But they personally don't hurt me... That's all I said. 

You don't need more dmg, as you generally use Ember for low level extermination, where you need only efficiency and range. As Ember is still useless in high rank this dmg buff is ridiculous compared to aforementioned utility nerf. You can "fix it" by maximizing range. Indeed. But why should I fix something what was originally intended to improve that warframe?

To mention I'm currently using over 200 range build, with good power strength. I can't really go over 45 lvl. The reason is that any Saryn would do the same job better&faster.

Then comes the question of survivability. It's a case in point when it comes to Ember. As soon as you get to high levels, you can't insta-kill anymore. Hence you become really vulnerable. You may have a tiny crowd-control in change of damage if you use an augment. But why doing so? You have a dozen of frames with a better dmg outcome and being able to survive at these levels.

All accounted, I come to the conclusion, that this rework doesn't bring anything really useful yet ruins a bit an old good low level utility.

Edited December 17, 2018 by TeaHawk

[Flames21891]

Honestly, I feel like Ember needs the Excalibur treatment: Get rid of one of her abilities and giver her a new ult. The ones I would put on the chopping block currently are World on Fire and Fire Blast, simply because they achieve more or less the same thing. Keep one and ditch the other, then get her a new 4 that is more interactive and accomplishes something different. Oh, and a new passive for sure, because wow her current one might be the most useless in the game right now.

Just for spitballing, the three changes I have off the top of my head are:

1. Bring back Overheat and make it her passive, then grant X% DR per enemy that is currently on fire. This gives Ember a great reason to try and burn everything in sight while rewarding the player with increased survivability for doing so. As far as what the cap is and the amount added per enemy burned, that's pretty debatable, but since it's a passive I don't think it should be something crazy like 80-90%. Maybe more like 50-65%.

2. Remove current World on Fire. Really, it's not much different than Ash's old Blade Storm, where you press 4 then go make a sandwich while everything in a circle around you dies. It's an ability that you activate and then it controls itself, requiring zero input from the player. DE supposedly took a stance against abilities like this, but I guess they didn't touch this one because it has always sucked against higher level content. I think it's time to get rid of it though, and replace it with something interactive.

3. World on Fire 2.0 (because the name World on Fire would still fit for this ability) would change up the way Ember is played. She would essentially get kind of an exalted weapon, where she stows her current weapons away and instead focuses purely on wielding fire itself. In this mode, she is cloaked in flame, so any melee attackers are hit with a heat proc at 100% status chance. She can shoot fireballs using LMB that function pretty much the way her 1's do, though they can be fired rapidly, and using E causes her to do a combo that sweeps flames over an area, setting any enemies hit by it directly ablaze and burning the ground for damage over time. In addition, Ember's power strength is raised by X% for every enemy currently burning while in this mode, making all of her abilities far more lethal. In return for this amazing power, base energy consumption would be much higher than what WoF currently has. Whether or not it should also ramp up over time is debatable.

 

Ideally this gives her the ability to dish out some bananas damage in short bursts making her viable at high levels, but without mindlessly clearing the map by simply pressing 4 and running through a mission, even at low levels. A DR passive based on burning things also rewards players who actively use her powers to ignite enemies.

 

Ember is not fine as she is. Just because she's still the best at clearing low level content doesn't mean she's okay. Every frame should be reasonably viable in Sortie 3's, bare minimum, and Ember doesn't have the damage, CC, or durability to really claim that at the moment.

[Shelusine]

I am not an ember main by any mean but I feel like her gameplay is good it's just that the effect of her kit is wrong. Why boost fire damage instead of boosting damage on targets that are on fire ? That kind of thing. Also her stats really don't match her anymore imo. She should get mid tier defensive stats with her current range, like at least 300 armor. 

[TeaHawk]

She needs at least something to increase her suitability. Personally, I wouldn't like to see World on Fire removed, as it is her main feature. But, as it was aforementioned, I would like to get rid off circle of fire, get a full rework of her current abilities. Make World on Fire a defensive one to ensure crowd control and have a new ult. That would be great.

[TKDancer]

saryn's current existence makes ember a joke, tho less passive in playstyle her widespread dmg output, viral and corrosive statuses and better survivability just makes ember seem ridiculously weak by comparison

no frames should fall to just "good at killing low level enemies", specially when other frames can do that and high level enemies better

[TeaHawk]

On 2018-12-18 at 7:29 PM, TKDancer said:

saryn's current existence makes ember a joke, tho less passive in playstyle her widespread dmg output, viral and corrosive statuses and better survivability just makes ember seem ridiculously weak by comparison

no frames should fall to just "good at killing low level enemies", specially when other frames can do that and high level enemies better

Fully agree. But sadly they not only did not manage to make this warframe more reliable an versatile for late game, but also ruined the only purpose it had.

[Chaemyerelis]

On 2018-10-07 at 7:38 AM, Teridax68 said:

Ember's in a bad spot, but her decline has also been the product of her poor design. Simply buffing her would only amplify the issues that already exist with her: currently, she's relegated to auto-clearing low-level content, but if she receives pure buffs to her current pain points, notably World on Fire, she'd start auto-clearing increasingly higher-level content as a result. If the goal is purely to buff Ember, the only other alternative would be to avoid buffing those parts of her, which risk bending her out of shape, and creating an even less comfortable situation where she may output a lot of power, but still feel weak to many. Because of this, while I'd definitely support buffs to Ember, I think she needs a rework first

As it stands, the core problem with Ember is one shared with many older frames, including a few more recently worked ones: her design is far too indulgent, and skips right to giving the player power, while forgetting to add gameplay. Warframe as a game is one that tries to offer the player a power fantasy, and so maximizes the impact of our every move for every input we make. However, a proper power fantasy comes not just from impact, but also agency: we as players feel powerful not just because of what our in-game avatars do, but because of what we choose to do with them. Getting a headshot is a fantastic feeling, for example, not simply because we killed an opponent incredibly quickly, but because it's the product of perfect aim. It doesn't really matter that enemies are mostly the same height, whether there's any aim assist going on, etc., because what matters to us is that one of the actions we took brought us tremendous rewards. Our agency is rewarded with impact, and so our power fantasy is realized. This also happens with frame powers: blinding a group of enemies with Excalibur before finishing them off with Exalted Blade is tremendously rewarding, for example, because the player made the decision to use those powers in just the right sequence, aimed at a bunch of enemies, and killed them in a smooth combo. It's not particularly difficult to do, but it feels awesome.

Where the power fantasy breaks down is when that element of player agency is removed: if the power in question isn't a button one presses to do something cool at a specific moment, but rather a passive aura that kills everyone in a wide radius, for example, there is no real choice for the player to make. It is never not a good idea to activate this aura, and so even if the player is racking up kills, they're not really driving the action, so much as spectating while the game does all the work. With this, the amazing becomes mundane, and what should've been a very high moment becomes a chore. This is also the problem with Ember (and not just Ember): because of how broken the current Energy economy is, there is no real reason for her not to use World on Fire, a passive death aura, and when she's faced up against enemies with sufficiently low health, she turns missions into walking simulators. What could be an awesome power fantasy, i.e. burning everyone in sight, instead becomes boring, and makes the game more tedious even for her teammates, who find themselves unable to interact with enemies at those levels as well. Her nerfs did not solve this, and so this needs to change.

With this in mind, I think there are two possible directions one could take World on Fire:

1. Give World on Fire a cost that cannot be negated: the idea here would be to bring Ember back to her roots, and restore the ability to its original intended purpose, where it would be able to mass-murder enemies, but would only be able to be used occasionally, rather than all the time. This would fulfil the requirements of a player fantasy, as the ability would require actual decision-making, and thus require player agency. Increasing its Energy cost could get towards this somewhat, but would risk making her unplayable for lower-rank players. Additionally, doing so would still create problems where using her 4 means she has can't really use any other part of her kit, besides maybe her 2. Switching her to a different resource, e.g. some bespoke resource built up over time, or even her own health, could avoid this problem, while keeping her 4 under tight control. There would, however, still be the problem of her 1 and 3 serving no real purpose, as both achieve the same purpose as WoF, only to a weaker degree. Those could get reworked, but then again, it'd be a pretty big loss for the fire frame to not be able to cast fireballs.
2. Make World on Fire unable to kill enemies on its own: this would be a bigger departure, and may upset some players, but the idea here would be to make WoF an ability that enables kills, rather than one that single-handedly kills enemies on its own, while also being usable on-demand and having all of its gameplay resume itself to a toggle. Having the ability deal current health damage, for example, could have it scale much better, and serve a stronger purpose as a means of softening up enemies (more so even if the ability also stripped armor), but would still require player agency to actually get kills, thereby fulfilling the requirements of a proper player fantasy. The added benefit to this is that it could have the ability synergize much better with Ember's other abilities, as her 1 would have its own purpose as a damage source legitimately capable of killing enemies.

Going with either or both of these options would, I think, be enough to fix World on Fire, and Ember as a frame, even though her 3 might itself need a rework (it doesn't really do much on its own). By avoiding a situation where Ember just presses 4 to auto-murder everyone in range at all times, she could afford to be buffed significantly, even made to scale much better into higher levels.

Very well written. 

[SenorClipClop]

On 2018-09-19 at 1:46 PM, (PS4)powderblue10s said:

I believe you already know what the community wants.Please buff her 

What a sound and specific point. Specific in that you clearly stated what you'd like her to be made better at, and sound in that of course the playerbase doesn't always want their toys made more powerful.

 

Ember needs one thing, and could benefit from another thing, to be an incredible powerhouse.

The thing she could benefit from (but doesn't need) is a new passive. Passives don't need to be huge, playstyle-defining traits, but Ember's is based on taking damage that doesn't pop up all the time. This has people playing self-damage Javloks to proc her passive. A new passive that rewards good gameplay would be nicer, like a bonus for setting enemies, and not herself, ablaze.

The thing she needs, which doesn't even have to do with her design, is that Heat damage needs to stack its DoTs like the other damage-over-time elements. Slash procs stack, Toxin procs stack. Heat damage refreshes the duration on a single instance of low damage. I get that Heat has a CC component as well, and so it would be fair to have diminishing returns on stacked Heat procs, or reduced CC on new procs. It's obvious that Heat status damage almost completely loses its relevance beyond Level 60 and becomes pure CC. Allowing stacked procs would make Ember very, very strong.