Ember 9.8: Feedback Thread

[CloudPies]

DE does it again!

Protip: Radically changing things that people like just because it doesn't fit your "vision" is a sure fire way to alienate your player base!

Their vision is to have Ember cooking KFC.

[Suolistaja]

WTF are you doing !

Now ember has literally no survivability at all, none , zero.

At higher levels ember dies way too quickly to be of any use anymore because all her abilities are close range.

Overheat was the thing that made her usefull against anything other than infested because without it enemies past lvl 50 shoot you dead in a second if you get too close, and you have to get close to use her abilities so now she has the survivability of a snowball in hell.

 

Revert overheat back or atleast close to what it was. If not reverted to orginal it should add a decent speed boost because ember is painfully slow at times.

Fix/redo fireblast.

WOF needs a small buff not too much, but it really should affect more enemies.

And for the love of god do SOMETHING to make fireball more viable beyond lvl 20 enemies, like make it explode and toss enemies around as something named fireball should do.

 

If ember is a glass cannon caster frame why does she have to stand in the middle of an enemy horde to do damage, and have ABSOLUTELY NO SURVIVALITY.

[quietcanary]

holy crap that Canary guy likes to talk if you dont feel that what i said about "what we all like" pertains to you dont tell me.... just post what you like instead.

Edited September 7, 2013 by quietcanary

[LittleReshiram]

DE does it again!

Protip: Radically changing things that people like just because it doesn't fit your "vision" is a sure fire way to alienate your player base!

I guess SOMEONE in the team is just filled with massive ego beyond believe.

Oh, oops~

[Dracosaber]

They should have waited to make this change after U10, where it might be more viable...

[LittleReshiram]

holy crap that Canary guy likes to talk if you dont feel that what i said about "what we all like" pertains to you dont tell me.... just post what you like instead.

Eh.. I like your previous post, albeit I can hardly read it past your sentences about Nova and her Null Star because of how tight every sentences is...

[Lazer]

I guess I'll repost this, I had deleted it. 

 

 

Utility is king. Damage abilities fall off and lose their effectiveness past a certain point. This isn't even taking into account the current armor system that make most damage abilities worthless mind you, because it is getting reworked soon. What makes a frame matter more past appearance after a certain point is what utility they bring to the table. 

 

A frame centered around all damage is going to lose its effectiveness as enemy health is increased. Sure, they'll be "god" at lower levels but any frame can do that currently. Its up to your weapons to be doing the damage at the later stages because in the early stages you have no good weapons or mods, you have to rely on your frame and their powers. Later on your frame just helps you with their utility, if they offer it. Otherwise they're strictly appearance only. 

 

Banshees Sonar, Rhinos Roar, Novas 2x dmg and -50% movement with Mprime, Nyxs Chaos, Vaubans Bastille and Vortex are great examples of good utility and they're used heavily for it. Some lesser extent but still good utility would be Mags Pull, Banshees Sonic Boom, Rhinos ult, Trinity in general, Invis/Smokescreen of Loki/Ash and Frosts Globe. 

 

Volt, Ember and Exal are frames centered around damage and offer very little utility (or too situational), and their effectiveness drops and are used less because of it. Frost to an extent too, hes "suppose" to be a defensive caster but all he is used for is the utility of his globe. 

 

Before this update Ember was used primarily for the survivability Overheat offered. WoF fell off but was still good and a great concept (and will only be better after the rework). Fireball and Fireblast were rarely, if ever, slotted and I don't see this changing, even after this update. She needs some survivability and utility when her offensive powers require her to be running around enemies or getting up close and personal. She doesn't need another damaging skill, she has 3 of them already. Two of which are useless and do need to be looked at. Overheat does not need to add more damage, it needs to keep its suvivability. Fireball and Fireblast need to be made useful so they can be the damaging abilities along side WoF.  

 

The changes to Overheat cut 39% damage reduction (91% to 52%), which means you'll be taking about what 5x? the damage you were prior to this, for an increase of 2.6x (with max Focus) set amount/non scaling damage (520 from 200, against infested). Plus a loss of disruption protection. A very drastic change and nerf for very little in return. If anything stagger or knockdown resistance should be added, especially when damage reduction is reduced by that much. Even then better damage reduction is more useful. It scales. 

 

A better compromise if you must nerf the dmg reduction would be around maybe 70-75% damage reduction (with Focus, or at max rank and Focus not effecting it) and either stagger or knockdown resistance added. The damage it does can stay at the current, be reduced back down to what it was prior or be completely removed and it wouldn't matter because its irrelevant.

 

Fireball should be replaced by a new skill. No matter what you do with the concept of Fireball it'll never be useful. Its a single target, low damaging ability. Its just a completely worse version of WoF and even Fireblast. Off the top of my head, turn it into a single target CC ability. Like placing the fire on the ground as a trap and an enemy that walks into gets "engulfed in flames" and is trapped for x amount of time (a decent amount). Apply low damage over time if you fancy. Can even make 2 sides to the skill, a direct impact will cause more damage, make the enemy "panic" in flames for a very short amount of time and burn. You'll have a choice of low damage with more CC or higher damage for less CC on a single target. Something like this might get used. 

 

 

Fireblasts ring of fire is tiny and is only really useful for the direct impact damage (which falls off with distance), since the entire center of the ring is completely safe. Either make the ring bigger or make the entirety of the center all fire. A "ring of fire" sorta speak. Making it a true denial of an area skill. 

 

Excuse me if the skill suggestions are unrefined or unbalanced, they came to me in the course of all of 2 seconds. 

Edited September 7, 2013 by iTzLazer

[Sirabot]

Gotta say, I never used ember. Too slow for me, but now her only saving grace is gone.

 

She's just a sub par AOE DOT frame now. Trumped by Saryn, Mag, Nyx, Nova, Banshee, and Trinity in utility, trumped by Nova, Banshee and Sayrn in raw damage potential. Scott, Bro. I love you but... Frames need more than just damage to be interesting to players. They need utility. Ya know? interesting Mechanics. Who in their right mind would waste 50 energy on Overheat as it is how? when for 50 more energy you can just use world on fire? She's just straight damage. It's boring. :/

 

Overheat = All shots fired by squad members set enemies on fire. dealing 100% fire damage for 15 seconds but consume + 100% ammo per shot.

Overheat = Ember is set on fire, her base speed is greatly increased, enemies she runs into are knocked down and take physics and are set on fire.

Overheat = Ember overheats and begins to absorb all incoming ranged damage as health. (the bullets melt and are absorbed to become part of her warframe)

 

^ above examples to show just how boring Overheat is as it is.

[AugmentedJustice]

After playing her...I am super annoyed. Not only is she now just another...BOOM BOOM BOOM damage dealing frame, you took away her survivability. Most of her attacks are only viable at a suitable range, and you have to risk doing the animation, like for world on fire in deadly situations and normally you'd have overheat to protect you while you cast it, now the one that saves your life, doesn't and it's only useful when you get close, and most of the factions have guns, BULLETS. With overheat, before the NERF, it was a life saving skill. Ember was made with infested in mind, so how are you supposed to run around, through toxic ancients and disruptors, and corpus, and grineer, when it's now just a dmg dealing skill. There's a thing called defense and offense, and like in football, it has to work both ways, but now that you've taken away the defense, all you're left with is offense, and in this case, it's not enough. It only takes, going to outer terminus or a T3 void, defense mission to know how useless her new skills reworked, are now.

[ValhaHazred]

Overheat = Ember is set on fire, her base speed is greatly increased, enemies she runs into are knocked down and take physics and are set on fire.

Overheat = Ember overheats and begins to absorb all incoming ranged damage as health. (the bullets melt and are absorbed to become part of her warframe)

I would like one of these. Probably the first.

[uekami]

I'm Japanese. I'm poor English.

I'm using a translation engine.

Please point out an incomprehensible part.

 

Overheat did not match the concept of EMBER. Maybe.

But there is no advantage of WoF other than to EMBER now.

Range is too narrow for Fire Blast.

Probability that the enemy touches the ring of fire is low. Probability that the enemy has stopped in flames too low.

Fireball weaker gun fitted with a MOD.

And it is impossible to kill the enemy high levels of OH.

I was shot dead in the Grineer, burned to the corpus, it would die in the poison of Ancient.

 

I write ideas all possible. I'm looking forward to tenacious efforts of DE.

 

Fireball:

It is good for beginners as power. May be.

I think that there is no need power all great.

However, even for low-level, long a bit more DoT is necessary probably.

 

Fire Blast.

It's very interesting power. However, attack power is not enough too.

-Increased  *extremely* damage.

-Reduced  *extremely* cost.

-Enemy touched the flame to get stuck.

-Enemy touched the flame to DoT(to be continued even after leaving the flame).

-In addition to the normal damage, the current health of the enemy is halved.

 

Overheat:

I want DE to understand that this was a really great power.

At least Reduced damage 60%.Or strengthening of *extreme* attack performance.

I write the idea of strengthening attack below.

 

-In use, it is to strengthen the attack power of all. (Similar to Roar)

-User generates a weak FireBall whenever shoot a gun.

-Armor of enemy touched OH is 0.

-Enemy touched OH to instant death with a fixed probability. (it except the boss)

 

World On Fire:

I think it is good.Change is not required.

Edited September 7, 2013 by uekami

[Sirabot]

Oh and Scott, if you're gonna take away her survivability (utility) then you need to give her speed to make up for the damage she's going to take. lol

[Engelheim]

Let me start by saying I'm extremely disappointed at the new changes to Ember. As a player that has maxed every frame and played over 100 hours on Ember I now feel that this frame is among the poorest developed in terms of usefulness and ability design. The changes do not overcome the underlying issues that players have been discussing about such as utility, end-game, and overall usefulness. In fact these changes are either insignificant or outright downgrades towards end-game, fun-factor, and uniqueness.

 

Fireball:

This ability does a mediocre amount of damage even after the update. The 200 DoT is affected by resistances meaning it is useless towards even mid-game enemies. This ability is the worst out of all of them and any gun would do better to kill an enemy.

 

Fireskin/Overheat:

This is one of my biggest qualms as Overheat was what made Ember an enjoyable and well received class to play. The damage is only increased by 100 and even though it is armor ignoring, it is not suitable to damage or kill mid-game enemies. I don't appreciate the removal of disruption resistance.

 

Fireblast:

Like the above two skills the damage is extremely low (only 50 increase) and not suitable for higher levels. Furthermore the overall design of the ability is poor for game play purposes as most infested will just run through it. Most Corpus and Grineer wont even get near it as they are ranged.

 

WoF:

I'm glad that this ability has been left alone and frankly it's fine as it is now.

 

 

[size=5]Why the changes are bad:[/size]

I understand Ember's initial design was to have a casting type frame; that's great on paper but not for game play.

 

Synergy:

Her abilities and stats do not coincide with one another and she will often have to get close to enemies in order to use her damaging skills. The downgrade of Overheat removed any chance of her surviving to use her abilities. If Ember is indeed supposed to be an anti-Infested frame, why does she have no protection from melee or disruption anymore?

 

Diversity:

As of now all of her abilities main purpose is for sub-par damage. She is the only Warframe that does not have any utility (with the poor exception of Overheat). One could make the argument that fire does some stunning but it is negligible as most enemies are not affected by this. Because all of her abilities are similar, WoF is the only skill worth using in most situations as it will do the most AoE damage for the least amount of energy.

 

Damage:

Ember has poor damage all around. Although she has two armor ignoring abilities their values are so low that using them on mid to end-game content isn't worth while. If Ember is indeed meant to be a casting frame, shouldn't her abilities be worth casting?

 

End-Game:

As stated (numerous) times, there is now no reason to use Ember over another frame for end-game purposes. Damage, resistances, and survivability are not suited for high level enemies.

 

 

[size=5]Proposals:[/size]

Below are some proposals that I feel will remove the issues stated within the post.

 

Fireball:

Instead of making this a one-time damage skill, allow it to become a proxy ability. Increase the duration (to maybe 30-40s), increase the AoE, and lower the initial damage. This will allow fireball to become somewhat similar to Vauban's Tesla and be much more useful when used in conjunction to teammates and defending. It would also be nice if it was armor ignoring.

 

Overheat:

I'd love if this could be reverted to its original state or at least increase the damage reduction for melee to make her more viable against infested. However if that isn't possible, keep the current changes but allow Ember to have a damage boost; either for her weapons or for her skills. I believe that this option would be fitting for its name. Also add disruption resistance again please.

 

Fireblast:

This ability is a mess right now. Enemies just waltz right through it and the damage area is too small to be of any use. I suggest to either create a slow-down effect on enemies caught in the fire or to have the fire vaporize or partially vaporize enemy bullets. Both of these options are rather similar to Frost's Snowglobe. Alternatively just have the entire circle do damage and remove the ring.

 

World on Fire:

I like WoF but, of course, there's always room for improvement. Here's some suggestions:

• Increase the number of targets
  
• Lower damage but make it armor ignore
  
• Have it target enemies with the lowest armor first
  
• Allow it to target cameras and turrets again
  

 

 

Thanks!

[Rafa1910]

Im going to add my voice to the crowd, please revert overheat or turn it into something completely different, something actually useful.

 

And fireball, and fireblast, theres so many things you could do with them. Make fireball explode on impact, deal fire damage to all enemies in a small radius. Make it something like those shots from the grineer napalm. Right now it may be the worst first skill in the game, even frosts first skill is more useful.

 

And fireblast, you could make all the enemies inside the circle take damage over time, you could turn it into a more defensive skill, get a damage reduction while inside the circle, or make all weapons receive a fire damage buff. 

 

WoF still needs a little more damage, but I trust after U10 it will do enough damage.

 

Just turn her 3 first skills into something with more utility, something that isnt just pure damage, WoF already does more damage than any of her other skills so theres no point in using any of them.

 

If you really, like REALLY want her to be pure damage at least make the abilities into something different, not the same ability in 3 different sizes. Nova has projectiles that seek targets, a controllable bomb and a chain reaction explosion with a massive debuff. Saryn has spores that spread to other enemies, a buff to her melee and an AoE-DoT skill. So why does Ember needs to have 4 AoE skills?

 

Also, stats. All of embers abilities require to be in the middle of the group to work, but she doesnt have the stats to do that. She isnt as durable as Saryn, and she isnt as fast a Nova. Thats why overheat was needed. She needs to have something to defend herself, she cant have 4 damage abilities.

 

So please, revert overheat as it was, or at least make it have something good like 75% damage reduction so its still useful but not as insane as it was before. And give fireball and fireblast something special so theyre not just crappy versions of WoF.

[AlienOvermind]

Overheat = All shots fired by squad members set enemies on fire. dealing 100% fire damage for 15 seconds but consume + 100% ammo per shot.

I like this idea, but not as a Overheat. Overheat should be life-saving skill in my opinion. And this kind of "flaming aura" would be a nice replacement for useless Fireblast.

[zombaio]

As a relatevely slow/squishy frame for one that is supposed to get close and personal with the enemy as her abilities suggest. She had one power that was actually any good - Overheat. Since all her damege powers were completely unable to deal almost any damage, she at lest had some way to protect herself for very limited amount of time.

 

May i remind you Overheat was lightyears away from the effectiveness of Ironskin since it didn't granted us invulnerability to knockdown or to stun and still allowed us to get killed very easily. And therefore i believe i was not the only one who expected changes in this direction making it at lest a decent defense power, since it goes for such short time. So again you've done excatly the opposite of what made any sense and have rendered another frame bad. The damage dealer that doesn't deal damage now also has no defence.

[Engelheim]

By the way guys, since the wiki doesn't have all the values yet I did some testing. Here's most of the values and changes for those of you who don't know.

 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/103151-98-ember-changes/

[Terrornaut]

This feels much more like a 'touch and go' design scheme than a sit down and think about synergies and game play style.  Where is the design strategy, the intent in her kit, what is supposed to be fun and her gameplay role?

Fireball is a direct damage + damage over time ability that generally affects one target, maybe a few others if they're clustered and physically touching. 

-Its damage is still negligible (max fireball + max focus) and there is no reason to spam this rather than just shoot something or use any of the three other abilities.  

-What purpose does this ability serve other than 'cool, I can shoot fireballs and hadouken things'?.  

-No kit synergy.  This ability does not work in any kind of meaningful way with any of the other abilities or offer any utility.  Its still a pinpoint to aim, not heat seeking, fast travelling, or anything that makes it somehow engaging or handy to use.

-Does no noticeable damage to level 49 ancients.

Fireball.  Why would I want to slot or use this ability when it offers me no tactical advantage or impressive damage?

Overheat.  It certainly more damage, still has its short range (with stretch even), and less protection.  I always looked at it as Ember getting so hot bullets melt as they get close enough, energy disperses, etc.  There's no more wading through fire with this.  If you want any hard defense...I guess...overheat and block?  This is identical to WoF, but 

Overheat is now just a short ranged WoF...hell, it might be better than wof in ways.

Fireblast seems much better now, possibly as if the range tradeoff was worth it.  It lasts a looooooong time and does significant damage.  You can still cast more than one so that has its benefits.  Its a stationary damage zone that lasts forever.  Not very interesting, but useful in survival and defense at least.  This combined with overheat makes for a deadly area...but what enemy is going to live long enough to get there with Nova or...really anyone else doing anything.  At least WoF still goes through walls.

Why is a one trick pony that doesn't even do her trick well acceptable?

.

.

.

 

Possible Changes:
Scrap fireball.  Let's face it, every game has a fireball but when is it actually impressive?  Every crappy wizard/metahuman can launch a soccer ball sized piece of fire.

Lets do some brainstorming

1. Fireball Replacement: Give her an ability that is point blank short range, conal, that does -extremely- high damage.  Have you ever been in a pool and reached out sideways as far as you can, then swoop inwards in kind of a hulk smash and created huge splashes? Let's do that with fire.
2. Fireball Replacement: Turn it into a piercing jet that casts and recovers quickly so it is spammable and worth it.

3. Fireball Replacement: Fire Ball.  Create and propel a large, rolling ball of fire that Ember can direct on contact.  Essentially its a giant soccer ball that Ember could travel with, or fire and forget and send it rolling. Since its not long range and tough to aim, making it a good size (half warframe height) and 1 tick of high damage would be excellent.  Ember could set up some cool combos and traps with this and her other abilities (think Dhalsim's ultimate)
4. Fireball Replacement: Eruption.  So Ember lost a lot of safety with the change to Overheat.  She isn't supposed to be so tanky, but why not give her a risky means of survival.  Eruption is a short range blast of heat that sends enemies flying up in the air and then they knock down.  This does some damage, but what it does is allow Ember to use her overheat with some measure of safety...but she still has to get in there.  Of course you want an affect cooldown/recovery on enemies.

World on Fire
It doesn't scale well.  Its great for trash mobs (non ancient infested, moas, lancers), but...who wants....an ultimate that's great at killing easy to kill things?  What it does well is get things early since it goes through walls.
Proposed change:

1. Superheat.  Remove the damage portion, or make it do minimal damage that scales well, but make it nullify/reduce armor for affected targets.  Like everything is so superheated that Ember and her allies' attacks are accelerated, heated, etc.  This gives her some team game-play, because now she makes everyone a hero, instead of being a glory hog like Nova.  If fireball is changed to something that is a fire wave/jet, or just blows up on impact severely when something is superheated, then she'll be interesting.

2. Make it ignite a wide area initially, and then anything that is set on fire takes increased damage -from fire sources- for a period of time.  This will make Ember and people with fire mods want to prep tough baddies before baking them.
3. Make a portion of its damage to % health per tick so that it always remains relevant.

4. Include number 3, but give Ember some kind of buff while its active, like energy restore when something dies by her fire or a speed boost.  If she isn't going to be tough, why can't she be fast?  Nova puts out wide area massive damage and is fast.

[raian78]

First skill should do knock back.

 

Second skill, bring back overheat. maybe reduce damage reduction a TINY amount. Who cares about AoE damage.

 

Third skill, everything in radius should take DoT. Just what crosses the line is stupid.

 

DE, you killed my favourite frame. I pity the mess you are going to have on your hands when you get to work on Monday.

[fatpig84]

My idea ?

Fireball.

Fast flying fireball (slightly faster than arrow speed ?) that does 300 fire impact damage and a DOT of 200 fire dmg over 4 seconds.

It has a blast radius of 6m.

Knocks back target by 5m if they got hit by the blast radius.

Cast range up to 20m.

Yes it is a copy of Sonic Boom and a small stun, assuming the fire DOT does their job.

But it does more damage, more range but at a cost that it is not a wide arc like SB but a projectile like the Ogris.

This give Ember a much needed CC.

Fire Blast

Keep it the same, let it use stretch back !

That's perfect, it is good.

Overheat (cos fire skin sounds lame)

Increase the DR% up to 85% with Focus.

Increase radius of burn and leave it armor ignore.

So she can aggro tank, not as tough as before but aggro stuff is good for her.

World of Fire

Remove damage cap of 3 enemies at a time.

Watch the happy times.

Edited September 7, 2013 by fatpig84

[deadbill]

Nice, Ember's overheat got nerf just when I'm about to claim her.


Time for hiatus then.
See ya Warframe, until I get my mood back.

[Trvldl]

Personally i think Ember need major overhaul, even more massive then most suggestions here propose.
We all need more utility, because pure damage is not only less effective late game, its also less fun.
So here goes some suggestion for fun abilities.

Fireball

When sticked to an enemy will obscure his eyesight causing him to fire in wide spread in general direction of player, so most of the bullets will miss its target, even more if player is further away. After certain not so big distance, affected enemy will lose a track of player until he comes closer of effect wears off.
Mentioned above spread and distance must be somehow lower for bosses, but still affecting them.
All other attributes like burn damage radius can remain same.

Fire blast

Make it second ability, cant say for the damage and small DoT radius, but what it can do for utility:
initial blast melts the floor making enemies feet to bog down in it, so they cant move their legs and can turn around only with their upper body, while still able to shoot or flail their arms if they are not quadruped. It will be logical to cease their legs pemanently, but that will be too op, so this effect must end after some time.

Plasma skin

Upon activating, all incoming enemy fire vaporizes and reaches her partially as gases resulting in less damage initially (around 50%), but the more hits ember recieves (including those from allies) the more projectile vapours she gather around herself so it becomes harder for still flying enemy projectiles to move through, and thats including plasma and laser from corpus. Mitigation must fully apply only for bullets and projectiles, while shockwaves and melee will be reduced only by initial amount. In short, percentage of damage mitigated rises with amount of shots she recieved, with high increase for first few shots and diminishing returns after.

Enemies within Ember's direct proximity (2 meters perhaps) must be reduced to ashes almost instantly (maybe the highest base dps from single use of ability among frames), and even more close-range damage from her the more bullets/projectiles she consumed, while those out of range are set on weaker fire in bigger radius. Enemy will recieve on fire animation after every successful melee strike on ember.

All direct hit friendly fire will buff her resistance as well, but friendly bullets/projectiles which passed past her in some radius will recieve armor piercing capabilities either ignoring a percentage of enemy armor for more usefulness of non-ap weapons, or just getting a buff of ap damage similar to ap mods. Yes, Ember must be that good at fire micromanagement. It can be explained by this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munroe_effect#Munroe_effect with a little stretch.


Fiery tornado

Ember directs air flow with supeheating, creating massive funnel of swiftly rotating flames, which sucks in and send flying in circles small enemies, ragdoll and drag medium ones fast by the floor and immensely slow movement of heavies. Fire damage over time is optional, must be enough for offensive frame's ultimate, although all effects must not last too long, maybe around 5 seconds on max fusion level.

 

 

Will love to see at least basic ideas from those suggestions being looked at, we need something like this for every frame eventually.

Edited September 7, 2013 by Trvldl

[Taihus]

tl;dr for the devs: You guys screwed up. Ember is boring and ineffective. Time to start mixing stuff up.

[NokiaPrime]

Devs wake up look what you did, Ember never was OP i just completed 100missions and saw only 1 ember , just 1 ember of 20h gameplay. Im farming ember 3weeks i just need 1 item to build it , these coments making me think that now ember ir wortheless 

(sorry for bad english)

[Holynight6]

Ember is the new Mag, except worse.

Fireball and Fireblast need to go. Replaced entirely. There's no saving them.