Ember Redesign concept (Including illustrations)

[Teoarrk]

Ember is the fire frame. A raging fire, set wild and free and yet, falls behind Saryn at every turn. Her greatest rage seems to come from the gnashing of teeth and the ire that players that mained her in the past have towards her anemic performance at present.

Permit me, if you would, a few minutes of your time for my idea of the Ember that could be.

Passive- Mote of Agni

Spoiler

UI marker for the passive.

In the spoiler tag, is the UI element for Ember's passive. It has 6 levels, 1, to overheat. The idea is that Ember is like a furnace and is stoked by fiery destruction, like the namesakes origin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agni.

The lines are the scale of her passive. At first, only the middle flame is tickled by the fire, but as she goes up levels of her passive, the fire spreads, until it reaches up to the edge of the dias. There is advantages to being at 1 and overheat and every point in between. To advance a level is like going up the combo counter; using powers increases it. Burning through 50 energy increases the level. Not using an power for 10 seconds resets the counter. Spend more than 50 energy? Go up another level.

As you increase levels, you lose armor and power efficiency, but your powers level up and you move faster. Additionally, while dealing periodic damage with your abilities, you gain 10% of the damage dealt as health per second, and 5% back as energy.

So, what does this look like in practice? What happens to Ember's stats?

Here is a mockup of how this works in practice. If there is no additional information on particular parts of powers, they do not change from the previous ranking of the power.

 

Level 1-the starting point.

Spoiler

Level 2

Spoiler

Level 3

Spoiler

level 4

Spoiler

level 5

Spoiler

Overheat

Spoiler

Conclusion and reflective analysis

This submission is to try to bring up Ember to the standard set by her nuker sister Saryn. Saryn scales exponentially with level and has the power kit to stay relevant whether you're fighting level 1s or level 100s. Ember cannot say the same thing, whose flat damage values lose out to high health, high armor opponents from abilities alone. Does this bring Ember up to the raw nuking power of Saryn? It might do, but the resources necessary to get there are far greater than 25 energy and a minigame of hit the spore. Does it mean that this kind of scaling is a bit extreme? Most likely.

Do I regret pouring over this for a while? No. If I get the time to come back and recreate the UI in a editor, I will. My drawings are ... well they could be better. 

Thank you to everyone that took the time to read this. Have a great day 🙂

[Swagernator22663]

I ain't gonna read all that, but i agree that Ember could use some update.

 

Shes an amazing frame. Or .. was.

[khazlol]

I feel like more can be done with the phoenix theme, they are creatures of healing and ressurection not just fire.

Im not saying your ideas or bad or anything, they would be a huge improvement on her current situation. But i think it would be better to give her a more varied set of abilitiees instead of just turning her into another nuker.

Because i don't think the current nuker meta will last forever.

[Teoarrk]

1 hour ago, khazlol said:

I feel like more can be done with the phoenix theme, they are creatures of healing and ressurection not just fire.

Im not saying your ideas or bad or anything, they would be a huge improvement on her current situation. But i think it would be better to give her a more varied set of abilitiees instead of just turning her into another nuker.

Because i don't think the current nuker meta will last forever.

I think of her as a wildfire, driven by void magic as a fuel and like all fires, wants to burn everything in her path. I wanted to write her to fit more of that niche and build her kit around the fact she is supposed to be the embodiment of fire, or an efreet, or a phoenix like you said. I would rather however focus on her as an efreet though, since having her be a resurrecting, recursive fire would be venturing too heavily into Nidus's territory.

Back in the old days, she had the best raw damage nukes, but then they changed how health scaled and she became irrelevant. Her quick fix was very disappointing, but I liked the name and extrapolated on it.

Part of the passive I've written included lifesteal and regeneration, but if she ventures too heavily into that territory, she becomes something she (at least up until this point) was never meant to be.

1 hour ago, Swagernator22663 said:

I ain't gonna read all that, but i agree that Ember could use some update.

 

Shes an amazing frame. Or .. was.

I understand. I wanted to make it into a slider to make it easier to read, but I don't know how to make BBcode sliders. Thank you for commenting regardless. I do wish that you got the general gist of what I was trying to do. She gets more mobile, does more damage, gets more vulnerable and looks more like a wildfire rather than a benchwarmer.

Edited July 30, 2019 by Teoarrk

[Swagernator22663]

5 hours ago, khazlol said:

Because i don't think the current nuker meta will last forever.

Its been here all the time, and its not going anywhere, community will kick DE into the leg if they simply nerf every nuke in the game. The same way they kicked them when they removed arcanes from exalted weapons or when they touched farming bonuses with specific frames. You remember what happened to itzal nerf ? Yeah.

Edited July 30, 2019 by Swagernator22663

[keikogi]

4 hours ago, khazlol said:

I feel like more can be done with the phoenix theme, they are creatures of healing and ressurection not just fire.

That is a great idea , her visual would fit this theme. Also it is way easier to make her usefull if she had defensive skills, because It would be easier to support her close quarters caster play style.

Now @Teoarrk , I can see to issues with your rework.

First, burden of knowledge. Since each tier adds new properties to ember skill set , it is too much information to keep track off. Like skills change range and properties.

Second , use %Maxhealth dmg carefully , this type of scalling has a nasty tendency of being either useless or broken.

[Teoarrk]

4 minutes ago, keikogi said:

Now @Teoarrk , I can see to issues with your rework.

First, burden of knowledge. Since each tier adds new properties to ember skill set , it is too much information to keep track off. Like skills change range and properties.

Second , use %Maxhealth dmg carefully , this type of scalling has a nasty tendency of being either useless or broken.

Aight, well I'll take a second shot at it. Maybe if I make mod cards with the effects on them it will be easier to explain and visualize.

[khazlol]

43 minutes ago, Swagernator22663 said:

Its been here all the time, and its not going anywhere, community will kick DE into the leg if they simply nerf every nuke in the game. The same way they kicked them when they removed arcanes from exalted weapons or when they touched farming bonuses with specific frames. You remember what happened to itzal nerf ? Yeah.

It wasn't the meta in the past, damage only turned meta because of how enemies scale combined with powercreep. and i expect things to change eventually.

[Teoarrk]

1 minute ago, khazlol said:

It wasn't the meta in the past, damage only turned meta because of how enemies scale combined with powercreep. and i expect things to change eventually.

I feel that it will also depend on just how many enemies we expect to see on screen at a given time. Given what I've seen of Empyrean from the demo, it looks like raw power will be important over the ability to kill everything. But until then, I want Ember to be the strongest Ember she can be.

 

[keikogi]

1 hour ago, Teoarrk said:

Aight, well I'll take a second shot at it. Maybe if I make mod cards with the effects on them it will be easier to explain and visualize.

My problem with the complexity is the many states it has. A mod card describing a 5 tiered ability would cover the screen. You can simplify the desing but keep the idea. For example: 

Ember has a heat guage( will be displayed in mote anti ). Skill cast will increse give heat "stacks ". Each skill will have its damage incresed by "stacks ". At 50 stacks ember gains incresed base range on her skills. At 75 stacks ember gains new efecks on her skills.

[Teoarrk]

4 hours ago, keikogi said:

My problem with the complexity is the many states it has. A mod card describing a 5 tiered ability would cover the screen. You can simplify the desing but keep the idea. For example: 

Ember has a heat guage( will be displayed in mote anti ). Skill cast will increse give heat "stacks ". Each skill will have its damage incresed by "stacks ". At 50 stacks ember gains incresed base range on her skills. At 75 stacks ember gains new efecks on her skills.

Well the idea is to retain the current modifiers, but explain per tier exactly what is going on. The paragraphs at present don't do a great job of keeping attention and I can also digitalise my gauge to make it look more symmetrical.

[keikogi]

I was not trying to make a rework of my own I was just trying to simplify yours by reducing the amount of info the player must know( in you version each skill has 5 version for a total of 20 skills, it is too much info for the player to keep track of)

But since I did not explain myself properly and the best way to explain something is to give an example. Here my ember rework(trying to fallow your path ,instead of the phonex one suggested by @khazlol).

 

Passive- casting skill will give heat stacks. Not using skill for 10 seconds will cause ember to star losing heat stacks.

Fireball (Upgrades at 20 stacks) - does (400+6*” N stacks”) fire damage and has 100% status chance.

Upgrade: Doubles the blast radius and melts enemy armor by 40%.

Accelerant (Upgrades at 40 stacks) - stuns enemies within 20 m and these enemies receive (250+” N stacks”) % increased fire damage.

Upgrade: Will increase the fire portion of gas, radiation and blast damage. Additionally, accelerant will increase casting speed by 50% and give all warframes within range 50% fire damage.

FIre Blast (Upgrades at 60 stacks) - creates a ring of fire. Enemies inside take 225+” N stacks” damage/s and shot through the ring receive (50+” N stacks”/2) % fire damage.

Upgrade: Melts enemy projectiles reducing their damage.

World on Fire (Upgrades at 80 stacks) - enemies within 35 meters take 175+3*” N stacks” damage per 0.5 second.

Upgrade: Does 5% Maxhealth damage

Edited July 31, 2019 by keikogi
Separate upgrade from main skill

[Teoarrk]

10 hours ago, keikogi said:

I was not trying to make a rework of my own I was just trying to simplify yours by reducing the amount of info the player must know( in you version each skill has 5 version for a total of 20 skills, it is too much info for the player to keep track of)

But since I did not explain myself properly and the best way to explain something is to give an example. Here my ember rework(trying to fallow your path ,instead of the phonex one suggested by @khazlol).

 

Passive- casting skill will give heat stacks. Not using skill for 10 seconds will cause ember to star losing heat stacks.

Fireball (Upgrades at 20 stacks) - does (400+6*” N stacks”) fire damage and has 100% status chance.

Upgrade: Doubles the blast radius and melts enemy armor by 40%.

Accelerant (Upgrades at 40 stacks) - stuns enemies within 20 m and these enemies receive (250+” N stacks”) % increased fire damage.

Upgrade: Will increase the fire portion of gas, radiation and blast damage. Additionally, accelerant will increase casting speed by 50% and give all warframes within range 50% fire damage.

FIre Blast (Upgrades at 60 stacks) - creates a ring of fire. Enemies inside take 225+” N stacks” damage/s and shot through the ring receive (50+” N stacks”/2) % fire damage.

Upgrade: Melts enemy projectiles reducing their damage.

World on Fire (Upgrades at 80 stacks) - enemies within 35 meters take 175+3*” N stacks” damage per 0.5 second.

Upgrade: Does 5% Maxhealth damage

Thats actually pretty nice. You also took into consideration armor stripping. Thats something that has to be addressed as well. It's a good overall compression. Maybe two modes is whats necessary and proper. It'll be more intuitive.