Idea to Encourage active Ember Playstyle

[Chappie]

The change to ember to increase damage at the expense of range I do not think had the desired intent.    Simply put it is either a toggle simulator or just a set it and forget it build.  Neither of these seem to promote an "active playstyle" IMO.

My recommendation is the following.

• Range to its original value (15m) and scales only via range mods
• Energy at is 3 energy/sec before efficiency/duration
• Damage numbers to nominal original
• Upon activating your #4 ember beings to build "heat"
• As heat goes up world on fire damage goes down to 0% eventually
  • Decay would always be 5% per second, no delay
  • Simply put "set it and forget it" gameplay does not work
  • There would be a dial on the screen like gara or nidus for a more obvious state of skill
• To restore your damage you can 
  • Turn on/off world on fire (hammer approach)
  • Use skills (activity approach)
    • Using your #2 would give back 25%
    • Using your #3 would give you 35%
    • Using #1 would give 10% but fully charged #1 would give you 50%.
  • Each skill-use resets the "delay timer".
• Furthermore, using your skills would also give you the ability to increase your damage
  • Damage increase up to +100%
  • Increased energy consumption
    • e.g. 6 energy/sec at +100% 

In terms of game play I feel this does the following

• It encourages active enemy dispatch
  • The effective energy consumption is somewhere between 3.25 and 5 energy spec with a 175% build and optimal eff/duration. 
  • With a 225 energy pool you have somewhere between 55-70 seconds before you run out of juice if you pick nothing up.  
• Requires player to move around to regain energy
  • Other frames like EV trin or pizza cannot solve the energy problem since it is a channeled skill
• If players want to "speed run a mission" they will have to drop pizzas and use primed flow to have enough juice to effectively run the mission.
• It minimizes the benefit of a dump stat
• It encourages skills to be used
• Gives players a chance to push damage if they want to put but also run at more "reasonable levels"
  • I think this would allow ember to potentially be more viable in sortie missions

Edited December 10, 2018 by Chappie1975

[BlachWolf]

Your Idea isnt bad, I rather like it; though the biggest problem with ember was not her dmg, but her scalability, after level 50 she's basically is worthless, the only thing she had going for was her cc, which was nerfed a while ago if I'm right.

What she really needs is something that helps her scale a lot better into endgame, your changes would be the cherry on top. One of my ideas was to introduce a new passive called thermal runaway, a real phenomenon that occurs in situations where an increase in temperature changes the conditions in a way that causes a further increase in temperature, often leading to a destructive result. Ingame it would translate into enemies having a bar which starts to fill up, when they have a fire proc and are less then 30m away from ember, the closer they are to her the faster it will fill up (5%/s on the outer rim and at max 25%/s when less than a meter near her). When the bar was full it would melt armor off and disrupt shields, while staggering the enemy, this al would last for 3s. In this way she would have scaling utility while still needing to engage the enemy at close range for best results.

But im not an ember player so yeah maybe my ideas arent the greatest; hope I could provide some insightfull infos / ideas.

[Naneel]

I must say your idea is nice and in combination with BlachWolfs passiv it sounds like a viable way for Ember Endgame.

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

1 hour ago, BlachWolf said:

after level 50 she's basically is worthless

Mod your weapons for Heat damage (or use her Accelerant augment (or both)) and focus her play around Accelerant and firing your guns through her Fire Blast ring and you'll kill enemies well into Sorties, Arbitrations and Elite Onslaught just fine. She's a very effective weapon-enhancer frame, not the fire mage people keep wanting to play her as. 

[Roboplus]

Here's the thing. If World On Fire isn't meant to be kept on at higher levels of difficulty, then it's not a good power. In terms of CC, Accelerant is far better. In terms of dealing damage, your weapon is far better (via Accelerant and Fire Blast). There is no reason to turn WoF on if you're not keeping it on as passive CC/damage. And to that end, the Range reduction/damage amp was a good call. Max Range CC builds were resulting in low-performance Embers with poor Power Strength, and thus poor Accelerants. By cutting the Range on WoF it forces players away from using Power Strength as a stat dump, which they never should have been doing in the first place. The whole point of Ember is damage amplification, and max Range/CC builds were a severe, self-imposed limitation.

The problem that exists now, is that World on Fire is barely, if at all worth running at higher levels, because it costs too much. If Ember can't cast Accelerant because that energy got spent on WoF, then she's not pulling her own weight.

If they did something as simple as reducing World on Fire's Energy cost by a quarter for every enemy that it's burning (down to 0), then the WoF's Overheat cost of 6 Energy-over-time would hinder rushing through maps and killing everything at lower levels (because everything is dying too fast for the cost reduction), but become inoffensive at higher levels (because something/someone is always burning)

[Helljack84]

1 hour ago, (PS4)Riko_113 said:

Mod your weapons for Heat damage (or use her Accelerant augment (or both)) and focus her play around Accelerant and firing your guns through her Fire Blast ring and you'll kill enemies well into Sorties, Arbitrations and Elite Onslaught just fine. She's a very effective weapon-enhancer frame, not the fire mage people keep wanting to play her as. 

There are a few problems with this:

1. Fire Blast is a horrible ability. The low damage fire proc will hurt your dps, while being a sitting duck at any level where the damage is actually useful will be your undoing. 

2. Any decent weapon kills enemies in Sorties, no buffs required.

3. Arbitrations are a total snoozefest. Killing large groups of enemies has never been easier thanks to the exact mechanic that should've made them harder. 

4. Good luck keeping up with any Equinox/Volt/Saryn that didn't suffer a stroke. Anyone else...see point 2.

5. I'd rather pick a real weapon enhancer frame than a failed fire mage wannabe with one good ability.

 

[Neightrix]

This seems too technical. Even if World on Fire becomes perfect she won't do anything she didn't do before. I'd at least make the range reduction over time only apply to the modded range, so you're not forced to gimp her whole kit with Overextended just to make WoF reasonable. And get rid of the cost increase.

If they want her to be an aggressive (non-passive) frame, replace Fire Blast with something like Garuda's 1 and have it grant temporary DR so she doesn't die instantly at high level from being aggressive. Make her passive grant armor ignore for fire damage on enemies close to her.

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

4 hours ago, Helljack84 said:

. Fire Blast is a horrible ability. The low damage fire proc will hurt your dps, while being a sitting duck at any level where the damage is actually useful will be your undoing. 

The wave part is not where the damage comes from. Firing a gun through the ring adds heat damage to the projectile, adding to the Accelerant benefit. 

4 hours ago, Helljack84 said:

Any decent weapon kills enemies in Sorties, no buffs required.

Sortie was included only because it is officially one of the closest things we have to end-game, high level enemies. ESO and Arbitrations can get much harder though. 

4 hours ago, Helljack84 said:

Arbitrations are a total snoozefest. Killing large groups of enemies has never been easier thanks to the exact mechanic that should've made them harder

I agree with this. Unfortunately it only becomes an issue of doing enough damage to kill the drone. It should deal no damage to its allies when detonating. But not all enemies are protected by the drone at all times, and they do get hard as it progresses. 

 

4 hours ago, Helljack84 said:

4. Good luck keeping up with any Equinox/Volt/Saryn that didn't suffer a stroke. Anyone else...see point 2.

So, she doesn't compare with the top 3 room clearers in about 40 frames? With that kind of mentality Chroma must have terrible damage, huh? The damage of those frames make literally every damage ability in the game useless by comparison when put that way. That problem is with them. 

4 hours ago, Helljack84 said:

5. I'd rather pick a real weapon enhancer frame than a failed fire mage wannabe with one good ability.

Your inability to use her effectively, or lack of preference for her has in no way diminished her ability to do damage in the highest level game modes in the game.

The only failed ability she has is her 4. The OP suggestion for improving it could actually be good at making it useful without a broken afk button. 

[XenMaster]

She require a team with 4 corrosive projection aura to be effectice against grineer.

 

She cant be anti infested because of ancient aura stopping her.

 

Nyx get her Psychic bolts that strip every defensive hp even ancient aura.

 

Hence Ember require that same rework. Strip armor/shield and shutdown aura.

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

9 hours ago, XenMaster said:

he require a team with 4 corrosive projection aura to be effectice against grineer.

The same could be said about a lot of frames, but most can't clear 95% of the game simply by turning on a toggle and sprinting through the map.

9 hours ago, XenMaster said:

She cant be anti infested because of ancient aura stopping her.

That applies to every frame except Nyx (after her rework). You simply use a weapon to kill the Ancient first.

9 hours ago, XenMaster said:

Nyx get her Psychic bolts that strip every defensive hp even ancient aura.

 

Hence Ember require that same rework. Strip armor/shield and shutdown aura.

You can't compare the kit of Nyx and Ember, they fill entirely different roles on the team. Nyx is not a damage oriented frame so she depends entirely on her weapons and redirecting the damage of her opponents. She is being given the armor/shield/aura stripping as a means of actually making that redirected damage finally effective for the first time, since enemy damage and health/armor were designed to scale against Warframes, not each other. It also adds to her support capability to improve her team's damage dealt.

[ShortCat]

23 hours ago, Chappie1975 said:

• To restore your damage you can 
  • Turn on/off world on fire (hammer approach)
  • Use skills (activity approach)
    • Using your #2 would give back 25%
    • Using your #3 would give you 35%
    • Using #1 would give 10% but fully charged #1 would give you 50%. 
  • Each skill-use resets the "delay timer".
• Furthermore, using your skills would also give you the ability to increase your damage
  • Damage increase up to +100%
  • Increased energy consumption
    • e.g. 6 energy/sec at +100% 

This part is wothless because of how fire procs work atm: https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Damage/Heat_Damage
If you want to restore Ember, you have to fix Heat first.

15 hours ago, (PS4)Riko_113 said:

The wave part is not where the damage comes from. Firing a gun through the ring adds heat damage to the projectile, adding to the Accelerant benefit. 

Fireblast is a noob trap, do not use this ability. It is not affected by PS, so you add only 50% for 75 energy and limit your battleground. I rather spend 50 energy and give me and my team 120% buff from Flash Accelerant on top of massive fire debuff on enemies (Ember's actuall damage source). Furthermore, the buff was just tagged on later in the process, there is not even a clear indication where you have to shoot through.
Buff works: https://imgur.com/BUcSnUM
Jump (not a double jump), and you lose the buff: https://imgur.com/r37yvg2
Just standing in the ring is also not enough: https://imgur.com/V4fk5rW

21 hours ago, (PS4)Riko_113 said:

She's a very effective weapon-enhancer frame, not the fire mage people keep wanting to play her as.  

Indeed, Ember performes better as a buffer/debuffer, however she is at the bottom of the list and is outperfomed by any real damage support frame.