What is Ember's role in Sortie or any high level mission?

[BornWithTeeth]

Hmmmm. Gonna be reeeaall cynical for like two seconds here, ya?

 

Given the number of folks who have no idea how to use Ember and would have no ability to get her to work at Sortie level, I am reconsidering my otherwise iron hard stance on Warframe Rivens, because I can wreck face with her in Sorties, and her disposition would be spectacular. Magnifico. Ridonkulous.

[Nocontents]

Just now, BornWithTeeth said:

Hmmmm. Gonna be reeeaall cynical for like two seconds here, ya?

 

Given the number of folks who have no idea how to use Ember and would have no ability to get her to work at Sortie level, I am reconsidering my otherwise iron hard stance on Warframe Rivens, because I can wreck face with her in Sorties, and her disposition would be spectacular. Magnifico. Ridonkulous.

I don't want another "bandage" for the solution for badly designed warframes.

Just like any other rivens, it will just cause power creeps and not actual solutions.

and everybody knows how to mod her and use her. It's just that there is no reason to do that because outcome is mediocre and futile.

[BornWithTeeth]

8 minutes ago, Nocontents said:

I don't want another "bandage" for the solution for badly designed warframes.

Just like any other rivens, it will just cause power creeps and not actual solutions.

and everybody knows how to mod her and use her. It's just that there is no reason to do that because outcome is mediocre and futile.

Ok, jokes aside, let’s have a quick but nuanced discussion, yes?

 

First off, I do actually agree that Ember is slightly underpowered and above all else her kit absolutely reeks of DE not knowing what they want with her or how to achieve that. I personally feel that DE are almost embarrassed of her, and that they regret including World On Fire, that World On Fire is an ability which just doesn’t really fit into how they feel the game should work. At least, not any more.

When you mention Equinox, there are three things which prevent DE from gutting Maim, which really is just a better World On Fire.

1. Equinox is a lot harder to get than Ember, so all things being equal, newbies acquire Ember way before they get Equinox.

2. Equinox hasn’t had her Prime released yet, so there’s no way in hell that DE will nerf her until a few months after her Prime Access closes.

3. Equinox is already mechanically fiddly and a nightmare to balance.

 

A thing which was already mentioned in the thread is that a rework to Heat damage would effectively be a second order rework to Ember...however, the way that DE are looking at damage hints that such a rework would effectively be a huge nerf. The big thing that was going to come with Damage 3.0 was that it was going to be a massive nerf to Status as a source of damage, and that would likely have spilled over to nerfing Heat even more. Sigh.

If such a damage rework made Heat damage better, though, that would be good for Ember and put her in a better place.

 

 

Final comment, on how everyone already does know how to build her and mod her, and the result is just not good...I don’t agree that that’s true. Look at the thread and you generally see a split of opinion, with some people building around WoF and some people building around Accelerant, with some wildly varying builds. I’m away from computer right now or I’d show you my core Ember build, which is actually very silly.

The big thing from the discussion though, is that more than any other warframe which I can think of, Ember relies on her Augments. Any actually good Ember build needs either Firequake or Flash Accelerant. That’s actually not good, and should be a real sign to DE that they done screwed up somewhere along the line.

 

I like Ember, I get her to work just fine at levels where other people say that she’s hopelessly outclassed, but DE should still acknowledge that she’s an unfinished work and that even they themselves are obviously unhappy with her, considering what they’ve done, where they’ve put her, and the power level of other ‘frames in the game, but are seemingly unable to fix her.

 

Jesus Christ DE, no-one is going to take you seriously when you insist that your game is balanced while it contains Octavia. 

[Fluff-E-Kitty]

Well, she can knock things down. but otherwise not as usefull as other frames.

 

[Highlord83]

Whatever role you feel like giving her, not like Warframe is based on the stupid MMO class trinity.

The only people calling Ember/Emper Prime garbage are the ones that think every frame should be a two-button map nuke and complain if a mission takes more than 45 seconds.

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

Ember fans shouldn't expect to have it both ways. It's like they expect world on fire to not only be a turn it on and leave it on literally once kind of ability, but also one of the best damage or crowd control abilities in the game. It shouldn't work that way. If a frame is gonna have more damage, more crowd control, or more both, it shouldn't be almost automatic.

The range nerf needed to happen.

[paul5473]

She use to be a good CC for making enemies fall over so you could do a finisher with her aug but now she's useless. Even before her nerf she wasn't exactly useful for higher level stuff and now no point at all for her in a mission.

Edited December 13, 2018 by paul5473

[BornWithTeeth]

6 minutes ago, (XB1)ECCHO SIERRA said:

Ember fans shouldn't expect to have it both ways. It's like they expect world on fire to not only be a turn it on and leave it on literally once kind of ability, but also one of the best damage or crowd control abilities in the game. It shouldn't work that way. If a frame is gonna have more damage, more crowd control, or more both, it shouldn't be almost automatic.

The range nerf needed to happen.

Octavia would like a word.

 

EDIT: That said, I’m not saying I’d like to have the old WoF back. Instead, I would rather that DE either finish the rework of Ember and replace WoF altogether with a more utility focused ult, or rework Heat damage in a way that puts Ember in a better place damage-wise.

Edited December 13, 2018 by BornWithTeeth

[schilds]

Roles? What roles? 

[DatDarkOne]

5 hours ago, BornWithTeeth said:

Jesus Christ DE, no-one is going to take you seriously when you insist that your game is balanced while it contains Octavia. 

Don't leave out the all powerful solo goddess Ivara.  😁 While I love my Stealth Queen, I can admit that she's almost brokenly powerful solo.  

[(PSN)Valar_Morgoolis]

like people hav said, her role is to not show up in sortie or high level content lol. only time i use her is in low level exterminate in opening relics

[BornWithTeeth]

1 minute ago, DatDarkOne said:

Don't leave out the all powerful solo goddess Ivara.  😁 While I love my Stealth Queen, I can admit that she's almost brokenly powerful solo.  

The thing about it is that literally any argument for nerfing any ‘frame on any grounds runs into the problem of “What about Octavia though?”

 

You gotta nerf ‘frames which have easy wide area damage! (Except Octavia.)

You gotta nerf ‘frames that encourage you to sit still spamming your abilities! (Except Octavia.)

You gotta nerf ‘frames whose kits are just super self-sustaining while dealing scaling damage, that’s too powerful! (Except Octavia.)

 

While playing her in a Defence or Mobile Defence, you can practically just hit 1-2-3-4-Crouch-Crouch-Crouch and then step away from the computer to grab a cup of tea. When you come back, you’ll find that not only are you still standing, you’re doing the most damage in squad.

 

I have long since concluded that either 

a) Most of the given justifications for reworks of other ‘frames are arbitrary nonsense

or b) Octavia is the darling of someone on the dev team who won’t allow her to be looked at critically.

[DatDarkOne]

16 minutes ago, BornWithTeeth said:

b) Octavia is the darling of someone on the dev team who won’t allow her to be looked at critically.

This is exactly it.  I noticed it with just how fast she got her Deluxe skin.  Yes, I'm still a little salty about that.  

[BloodKitten]

On 2018-12-12 at 3:38 AM, (XB1)Thy Divinity said:

Ember's role is nonexistent in anything past the starchart unless you are a sadist

*Masochist.

Sadist punishing or teasing, masochitst love to receve it.

[Buff00n]

25 minutes ago, BornWithTeeth said:

The thing about it is that literally any argument for nerfing any ‘frame on any grounds runs into the problem of “What about Octavia though?”

You gotta nerf ‘frames which have easy wide area damage! (Except Octavia.)

You gotta nerf ‘frames that encourage you to sit still spamming your abilities! (Except Octavia.)

You gotta nerf ‘frames whose kits are just super self-sustaining while dealing scaling damage, that’s too powerful! (Except Octavia.)

While playing her in a Defence or Mobile Defence, you can practically just hit 1-2-3-4-Crouch-Crouch-Crouch and then step away from the computer to grab a cup of tea. When you come back, you’ll find that not only are you still standing, you’re doing the most damage in squad.

I have long since concluded that either 

a) Most of the given justifications for reworks of other ‘frames are arbitrary nonsense

or b) Octavia is the darling of someone on the dev team who won’t allow her to be looked at critically.

This is a little exaggerated.  If Octavia was that overwhelmingly powerful then everyone would be using her?  Just anecdotally, I rarely encounter another Octavia in pubs.

Mallet can scale indefinitely but it depends on mobs damaging it, and does not draw agro away from other players, pets, etc.  In a squad it's not particularly reliable unless you place it far enough from the action.  Normally when I end up damage leader it's because I went out and killed things myself and less often due to Mallet.  It's even less reliable paired with Resonator, unless you burn a mod slot on the augment and micro-manage where the ball goes.  And if you're fighting Infested then Resonator straight up disables Mallet, unless you burn a mod slot on the other augment that can give you a second, smaller but stationary Mallet that they can actually hit.

You still have to recast regularly, and her passive alone is hardly enough to make that self-sustaining.

There's an argument to be made for Metronome's invisibility being OP, but that's a statement about invisibility in general in this game.

 

Ember's ult was nerfed partly because it trivialized any exterminate mission on the star chart.  Drop an energy pizza, turn it on, and run straight to the exit.  I'll confess to doing this more than once back in the day.  Equinox can do that up to about level 10-15, but Ember could do that all the way through level 35 and that was a problem for players who wanted to actually play.  Power alone is never the reason things get nerfed.  Nerfs happen to things that make gameplay nonexistent for other players, which is why Limbo continues to be problematic and polarizing.

What you can argue about is whether nerfs/reworks of high profile nuke frames (a) successfully allow the rest of the squad to still play the game when they're being used, and (b) left them in a state that was still effective.  For Ember, I'd argue (a) Yes, and (b) Not really, at least not by itself. 

In high level content Ember is basically about boosting fire damage and maybe a little bit of weak CC.  Probably her best use is as support, boosting the fire damage of her squad mates with the Fireball augment, shooting through Fire Blast, and Accelerant.  Nobody plays Ember for support, so you never see anyone doing this.  But you can effectively give everyone else on your team (250% + 125% for each ring) extra fire damage, and that's with no strength mods.

[DatDarkOne]

2 minutes ago, Buff00n said:

This is a little exaggerated.  If Octavia was that overwhelmingly powerful then everyone would be using her?  Just anecdotally, I rarely encounter another Octavia in pubs.

This could be because she's INCREDIBLY boring to play.  

[BornWithTeeth]

4 minutes ago, Buff00n said:

This is a little exaggerated.  If Octavia was that overwhelmingly powerful then everyone would be using her?  Just anecdotally, I rarely encounter another Octavia in pubs.

 

 

1 minute ago, DatDarkOne said:

This could be because she's INCREDIBLY boring to play.  

Pretty much this. Her abilities are overwhelmingly powerful, and her passive is basically just extra free power efficiency, but she's also unbelievably boring to use. You just press 1-2-3-4 and crouch a couple times and then she just plays herself for like forty seconds at a time. 

[Buff00n]

4 minutes ago, BornWithTeeth said:

Pretty much this. Her abilities are overwhelmingly powerful, and her passive is basically just extra free power efficiency

I believe I covered the counter points to this.

 

2 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

This could be because she's INCREDIBLY boring to play.  

Just now, BornWithTeeth said:

but she's also unbelievably boring to use. You just press 1-2-3-4 and crouch a couple times and then she just plays herself for like forty seconds at a time. 

Octavia is only boring if you choose to play in a boring way, just like with any other frame.

Besides, when has boring gameplay ever been a detrimental factor for overused OP frames?  That's almost a requirement.

(Sorry, OP, I didn't want this to become an Octavia thread, I still think Ember is hugely underrated as support in high level content.)

[BornWithTeeth]

35 minutes ago, Buff00n said:

I believe I covered the counter points to this.

 

Octavia is only boring if you choose to play in a boring way, just like with any other frame.

Besides, when has boring gameplay ever been a detrimental factor for overused OP frames?  That's almost a requirement.

(Sorry, OP, I didn't want this to become an Octavia thread, I still think Ember is hugely underrated as support in high level content.)

Your argument there kinda comes across as "It's ok for the devs to stiff Ember and have no apparent idea how to fix her so long as Octavia's overwhelming power stays juuuust on the right side of annoying everyone else on low level missions."

 

Speaking as someone who stuck an Eidolon Lens in her and used her to farm up all my Zenurik points in high XP content, Octavia is brokenly powerful in exchange for bugger all skill or input, and it absolutely puts the lie to any notion that DE implement mechanical changes purely for the sake of balance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That said, for those who insist that Ember is completely useless as opposed to merely needing to fight back against the Corpus, the Grineer, and the Dev Team, well...

 

Only 31% of squad damage, sadly, but 8 revives, and all melee kills, look, 0% fire accuracy because I didn't pull a trigger all mission.

 

Final Sortie mission, Ember solo melee only Spy vs Corpus.

 

 

0 deaths.

Edited December 13, 2018 by BornWithTeeth

[Olphalarepth]

No offense meant but a pic like that can mean everything and nothing. I support Ember being a viable choice for sorties despite the lack of love DE has shown her compared to other far more impressive frames but a pic like that is proof of what exactly? That every frame can use a bo prime and get melee kills?

[BornWithTeeth]

3 minutes ago, Olphalarepth said:

No offense meant but a pic like that can mean everything and nothing. I support Ember being a viable choice for sorties despite the lack of love DE has shown her compared to other far more impressive frames but a pic like that is proof of what exactly? That every frame can use a bo prime and get melee kills?

Just means that in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing, she's ok. I do think she's a little underpowered, but according to some folks in this thread those screencaps should be impossible.

 

Besides, that's an afterthought. The other one was Ember in a Sortie II Survival with enhanced Slash damage, getting 31% of squad damage dealt while reviving the rest of the squad eight times.

Edited December 13, 2018 by BornWithTeeth

[Olphalarepth]

Maybe I'm wrong but the point of using a frame over another is because of innate abilities (both active and passives) since they are all equivalent in mobility and physical prowess (except for a few exceptions). If I have to use a frame only to swing maces and use guns without even using abilities because for some reason or another they are underwhelming (and because of this maces, swords and guns are a better option), well...I think you just proved their point.

[BornWithTeeth]

10 minutes ago, Olphalarepth said:

Maybe I'm wrong but the point of using a frame over another is because of innate abilities (both active and passives) since they are all equivalent in mobility and physical prowess (except for a few exceptions). If I have to use a frame only to swing maces and use guns without even using abilities because for some reason or another they are underwhelming (and because of this maces, swords and guns are a better option), well...I think you just proved their point.

Then why did everyone else go down so much in the Sortie II, and why did I manage to both absorb the highest damage taken in the squad (which you'll see that I did!) but also keep everyone else on their feet while doing the second highest damage? That squad included a Saryn, a Nova, and a Nezha, by the way.

 

Now, I appreciate that we're staying civil, but it sounds like you're basically saying "Oh, the thread's been disproven, therefore nothing matters and it's not about the Warframe at all."
That requires a little bit of unpacking, but here goes: the thread was basically saying that Ember seems to be worthless now and have no place in Sortie. I demonstrated that Ember in fact kicks ass in Sortie missions and can perform better than other 'frames when played by someone who knows her. To which you are now saying that actual choice of 'frame is completely meaningless and it's all about the choice of weapons, so the thread was pointless.

 

No?

 

EDIT: Oh wait, I misunderstood! You thought I did that without using Ember's kit! Oh, no. I used Flash Accelerant with a Blind Rage build which also incorporates Hunter Adrenaline, and melee Lifestrike. Means that yeah, all my kills are weapon kills, because I'm killing everything with mad bonus fire damage on my weapons, and using her 2 and 3 for crowd control and bonus area damage.

 

Apologies, I had to read your post a second time to spot that. No, dude, I'm definitely using her kit to achieve that damage and CC.

Edited December 13, 2018 by BornWithTeeth

[(PSN)big_eviljak]

On 2018-12-12 at 6:13 PM, trst said:

She used to have almost exactly that, it was replaced with Accelerant.

It was % damage resist and a very short range heat dot effect (fire Chroma's Elemental Ward effect).

Got removed because Ember was a true damage dealing frame back then and she was considered overpowered by having such high damage and being one of the better tanks as well. Plus it was too identical to WoF at the time.

Yes overheat. Miss it

[(XBOX)zThulsaDoomz]

8 hours ago, BornWithTeeth said:

Octavia would like a word.

 

EDIT: That said, I’m not saying I’d like to have the old WoF back. Instead, I would rather that DE either finish the rework of Ember and replace WoF altogether with a more utility focused ult, or rework Heat damage in a way that puts Ember in a better place damage-wise.

Facts

Octavia is hopelessly beyond broken in a cup that runneth over with broken