Say Bye To Fire Blast, Say Hi To Firestorm

[Taihus]

Ember's abilities already overlap by a significant amount (AOE DOT, in different kinds of shapes but the same hot flavor) and the proposed change to Overheat simply increases that overlap. One of her lesser used abilities is Fire Blast, which creates a ring of fire that damages enemies who enter or exit. While nominally useful for defense missions, this ability is already very similar to World on Fire, and while it doesn't follow Ember around it doesn't do a very large amount of damage and doesn't do much to enemies who are already inside the ring. What I am proposing will reduce Ember's ability overlap, and make this ability slot far more useful in a defense scenario.

Firestorm: taking inspiration from Fire Blast's appearance, this is a swirling pillar of flame which deals minor damage over time to enemies which enter. More importantly, enemies which are caught in the blast are knocked down, and enemies which enter have a high chance of being staggered by the burning winds, potentially getting stunlocked. With longer duration, one could potentially lock down or at the very least seriously inconvenience those bastards trying to take your precious cryopod.

This is, at the very least, much more interesting than the current set of pure damage abilities. Thoughts, comments, flaming (pun, lolololol)?

One potential concern is that this kinda overlaps with Vauban's Bastille, but with the upcoming changes I'm not sure if that would be true, plus Ember badly needs some alternative crowd control methods (as per her description) other than "BURN EVERYTHING WITH FIRE WHO CARES ABOUT DAMAGE MITIGATION".

[Patrynio]

Nice idea.

[Farge]

I was just thinking about this same idea. The fire ring basically looks like a fire hurricane, so it would make sense for it to have some amount of crowd control by way of ragdolling enemies or sweeping them around a bit. With the way enemy ragdolling works currently (there seems to be a "cooldown" before enemies can get ragdolled again), I really don't think it would be overpowered at all. It would certainly help her survivability and group utility, both of which Ember lacks (although the former not so much, at least until U10 nerfs Overheat's damage resistance).

Edited September 6, 2013 by Farge

[CloudPies]

God, anything to make her other abilities different from a cheaper WoF...

[dragonslayer667]

Ember's abilities already overlap by a significant amount (AOE DOT, in different kinds of shapes but the same hot flavor) and the proposed change to Overheat simply increases that overlap. One of her lesser used abilities is Fire Blast, which creates a ring of fire that damages enemies who enter or exit. While nominally useful for defense missions, this ability is already very similar to World on Fire, and while it doesn't follow Ember around it doesn't do a very large amount of damage and doesn't do much to enemies who are already inside the ring. What I am proposing will reduce Ember's ability overlap, and make this ability slot far more useful in a defense scenario.

Firestorm: taking inspiration from Fire Blast's appearance, this is a swirling pillar of flame which deals minor damage over time to enemies which enter. More importantly, enemies which are caught in the blast are knocked down, and enemies which enter have a high chance of being staggered by the burning winds, potentially getting stunlocked. With longer duration, one could potentially lock down or at the very least seriously inconvenience those bastards trying to take your precious cryopod.

This is, at the very least, much more interesting than the current set of pure damage abilities. Thoughts, comments, flaming (pun, lolololol)?

One potential concern is that this kinda overlaps with Vauban's Bastille, but with the upcoming changes I'm not sure if that would be true, plus Ember badly needs some alternative crowd control methods (as per her description) other than "BURN EVERYTHING WITH FIRE WHO CARES ABOUT DAMAGE MITIGATION".

needs some refinement maybe but this is years ahead of the random changes they seem to be making. +1

Edited September 6, 2013 by dragonslayer667

[rangeless]

good idea =)

[ScrubbyDubDub]

I like it. I hope this gets added.

[Taihus]

Time for some shameless self-promotion, because IMO there needs to be a shift of focus away from simply juggling numbers or doing more damage and instead people taking a look at how to make abilities that are more interesting to use.

[LtZefar]

The moment I got my ulti on Ember I didn't use any other skills because they where all inferior.

[s4itox]

Not going to lie, I read title and thought of

 

But I agree, right now Ember needs a drastic overhaul of her skillset. When all four skills are functionally identical (i.e set this thing on fire!) without a significant variety in the methods used, it feels really one directional - which is a shame, because I really like using Ember.

[Taihus]

The moment I got my ulti on Ember I didn't use any other skills because they where all inferior.

What I'm trying to do here is to solve that by actually making the other skills do something other than just pure damage.