Vauban & Ember Dev Workshop

[DaMasque]

Ember:

I feel like removing something iconic from Ember isn't the right way to do things and seeing as a filled Immolation meter is more detrimental, why not incorporate World on Fire into it. 

Once her Immolation is full it should active World on Fire, giving her extra sprint speed and extra heat damage to weapons which gradually lowers as the meter shrinks. 

Whilst in World on Fire, pressing Immolation again will cause a massive explosion inflecting Heat proc on all in its range based on how much meter is left. 

Vauban: 

• Rename "Sticky Ripline" to Bola.
• Make Nail Grenade explode on impact.
• Boost Pad should give friendlies and himself a parkour buff (Extra speed in bullet jump, roll speed, etc.)

 

[HolySeraphin]

52 minutes ago, FlashExe said:

One idea to entertain for Ember's Immolate ability is that when things overheat they tend to take gradual damage over time.  Gradual DoT that scales the longer immolate stays capped, combined with a warning in the center of her hud would probably work really well as opposed to an energy drain.

I support this. Although I would suggest an energy drain, so it is less punishing. You could also make it so that her 3 only reduces 30% of the meter. Ember is till squishy,a health drain would be lethal to her.

Speaking of which, wouldn't it be better for skills to instantly increase the meter instead of increasing the heat growth? Like, her 1 gives 20% heat meter and her ultimate gives 40%. Also, for even more control you could make the charged versions of 1 and 4 the inverse, instead of increasing the heat meter you use 20-40% to increase the damage-range.

[(PSN)Crixus044]

I will ask you leave accelerant in, or at least leave the weakness to fire damage in. Fire blast will never be as useful as you'd think, so i'd say combine the 2. Accelerant and it's augment was a terrific ability and watching it go is terrible. The weakness to fire was great and the augment made it even better.

Please leave this effect in

[Hypernaut1]

Am I the only one that hates "cast magic magic meteors" replacing her world on Fire? The new 4 looks terribly generic and is LoS. 

Making enemies spontaneously combust was one of my favorite things about Ember. They literally could've just kept the ability but added the new spreading fire functionality to it. It couldn't added to get new DR too.

Speaking of which, are players not bored with simple DR abilities? I wouldn't mind if it was added to accelerant, but increasing fire damage was actually a unique ability. Shouldn't have been removed. It made using fire based damage weapons a bit more interesting

[Bioboygamer]

Definitely not a fan of the micromanagement on the meter - I'm bad enough that I can hardly manage refreshing any buff abilities that I have, let alone managing some meter. It just doesn't add anything interesting in exchange for the complexity it introduces.

Vauban, on the other hand, seems rad - although I do understand the concerns people have over the general weakness of CC in the current meta. 

 

Fun but likely impractical suggestion: Have Vauban's boost pads propel more than just Warframes. If it worked on enemies too, you could funnel them into traps. Let it redirect bullets in the direction it points, and you can have fragile frames shoot from behind cover or around corners. Set up loops with it as a way to constrain enemy movement that can't be made immune to. Use it to launch your mines and orbital strike markers at full speed towards enemies at long range. As it is now, it doesn't seem too useful, but it's got so much potential for creative use - and that seems to be what Vauban's abilities are all about!

[Amazerath]

It all seems good at a glance but the meter thing on Ember seems like a bad idea for a few reasons:

1) Other high damage warframes don't have this kind of mechanic that imposes penalties for spamming their powers. I'm not against the mechanic itself, but giving something like this to Ember and only Ember doesn't feel good or fair. It can lead to a situation where people will once again avoid using her because other warframes can do just as much damage without having to deal with penalties.

2) Attaching Ember's defensive power to a meter percentage and then adding a mechanic that makes you not want to get the meter to 100% makes no sense to me. You need to fill the bar in order to survive. But if you fill the bar and get as much damage reduction as you can that causes you to potentially lose all your damage reduction...? I mean, I get the point. It's supposed to be a balancing mechanic. But unless there are some specifics you didn't share this is going to be frustrating to use.

3) There's also a potential for this to become a mechanic that distracts players from the action and forces us to consult this little bar at the corner of the screen all the time. Good visual effects and sound effects that tell you how close you are to overheating are going to be really important.

[(PSN)The_Verethragna]

I think Ember's Immolation meter is kinda vague as far as how much of it will be increased/consumed by casting her abilities.

Maybe change it to a thermostat (tie in the UI option for meters/feet into this as far as whether the meter will show Celsius or Fahrenheit?) that gives an actual temperature for her overheating as well as a casting cost/addition for each ability measured in degrees?

[Anthraxicus]

I am not sure I like Vauban's rework. Seems to keep having way too many gimicks that don't actually work during normal gameplay, especially high level.

As for Ember, Fireball will be a bit more useful only because of its interaction with Immolation. The reason is the same was why nobody mods for fire. It is a weak and useless element. The same goes for Inferno. It looks visually cool, but I am wary of its actual usefulness.

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

Overall I like it but I do have some qualms. 

It seems a bit counter productive to have her cc knock people away when her passive is melee range. Granted if her 4 spreads well enough that's probably fine. Given most maps are cordor simulators. 

I love the visual flair of the meteors but I'm not sure how it fits into ember being a fire frame. Not asking for it to be removed just saying. 

Her 2 seems underwhelming if all it is is DR and faster casting. I'm sure there's more cause it sounded like Scott was saying more damage before Reb cut him off. 

That's about it though. I always used her fireball as a quick panic cc or to cc a doorway with the charged variant. So it being basically the same is fine. Especially since dot will be stronger and fire procs melt armor. 

[HolySeraphin]

5 minutes ago, Anthraxicus said:

I am not sure I like Vauban's rework. Seems to keep having way too many gimicks that don't actually work during normal gameplay, especially high level.

As for Ember, Fireball will be a bit more useful only because of its interaction with Immolation. The reason is the same was why nobody mods for fire. It is a weak and useless element. The same goes for Inferno. It looks visually cool, but I am wary of its actual usefulness.

That fireball was taking 40-60% health of a lvl200 butcher at low levels of immolation. That is good damage.

[Arcira]

Quite hard to give a feedback just yet. There are a lot of question marks for me but I´ll try nonetheless.

In my opinion the most important step is to decide what are heat procs supposed to do before finishing her kit. I think is far more reasonable to adjust a warframe kit around one of the fundermental mechanics rather than the other way around.

Passive: without the actual damage and scaling values from her abilities (especially Fireball and WoF) it´s difficult to tell how impactfull this will be. Maybe good for getting max resistance from Immolate without investing into power strength? Anyway I like the general direction for some kind of scaling passive.

Fireball animation improvements sounds nice but the main concern remains: what´s the main purpose and will it be competitive against the rest of her kit.

Spoiler

Does the dps increase equal to the amount of cast speed now? (e.g. 100% increased cast speed = twice as many fireballs)

Another way to increase viability could be be a stacking mechanic: if you throw a fireball close to another recently detonated one the lingering flame damage, area of effect and duration can be increased.

Is there a compenstion for the removal of Accelerant in terms of base damage or something similar?

Immolate: While Accelerant is probably the strongest ability in her kit it might be too strong (provided that heat procs become good). On the other hand there are certain abilities that offer more consistent and versatile damage buffs. Maybe it would be better to replace Fireblast with Immolate and add the "heat reduction" effect to Accelerant. It´s difficult to say anything about Immolate itself currently other than damage reduction, cast speed and damage sounds nice. Essentially depends on how interesting/ tedious the heat management will be.

Spoiler

Also how much damage does the despell part of immolate do and are there things like lline of sight restrictions?  I thnk as a drawback for pure missmanaging her ability it´s way to harsh but if there would be a mechanic allowing you to actively using this as a skill with a long cooldown instead it might become usefull in certain circumstances.

Maybe adding a status cleanse or converting energy into health regeneration effect would be usefull as well.

Fireblast: as some people already mentioned the interaction between knock back and her passive looks and sounds counterintuitive.

WoF: While it certainly looks cool I´m not sure wether I like this change. I´m still convinced the current version can be made more active without beeing to strong or weak especially with the Immolate mechanics.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After thinking a little bit more about the rework here is what should be changed in my opinion:

Spoiler

P.) Immolate

- should be her passive but without the energy drain at the end
- acts as her scaling tool but decays over time when you are inactive

 

1.) Fireball

- Lingering Flame (napalm effect) is restricted to charged Fireball but stacks in radius, damage and duration with additional Fireballs
- further increased auto targeting effect against enemies inside crosshair while casting (maybe some kind of mark or heat seeking mechanic)
- increased cast speed (~3 per second base) in order to apply more heat status effects faster than other abilities

2.) Accelerant

- remains unchanged
- eventhough not perfect it´s by far her best ability and should not go away
 

3.) Fire Blast

- doesn´t cause knock back on enemies simply deals heat damage and causes a status proc
- if an enemy is already burning, hitting them with Fireblast will consume all his ignite procs, deals additional damage equal to the amount they would have done over there duration, and causes a knock down effect

 

4.) WoF

- might work as a replacement with the fire spread and stuff

 

 

[o0Despair0o]

What's this, now?

A Ember rework, that... doesn't seem entirely worthless?

Never thought I'd see the day.

[(PSN)TONI__RIBEIRO]

Every frame will have a meter and strip armor got it. 

[HolySeraphin]

Instead of the knockdown on her 3, what about just replacing it with accelerant? So it just stuns the targets and reduce their armor. If you do this you still get CC, don't throw everyone around the room (one of the reasons why the impact procs of the first version of damage 3.0 were bad) and can kill them faster. There's a reason why people don't spam fireblast in normal gameplay.

[Zandermanith222]

Nail Grenade is gonna suffer the same problem as the Azima's Alt fire.

The projectiles will be too inaccurate to hit enemies reliably, I suggest having it fire two rounds at a time, one that fires randomly and one that targets enemies.

[Anthraxicus]

17 minutes ago, HolySeraphin said:

That fireball was taking 40-60% health of a lvl200 butcher at low levels of immolation. That is good damage.

Which is something like 2.5k base damage per tick (considering no Corrosive Projection equipped). Nothing a level 40 standard Heavy Gunner can't handle.

[Sohaya-]

32 minutes ago, Anthraxicus said:

I am not sure I like Vauban's rework. Seems to keep having way too many gimicks that don't actually work during normal gameplay, especially high level.

As for Ember, Fireball will be a bit more useful only because of its interaction with Immolation. The reason is the same was why nobody mods for fire. It is a weak and useless element. The same goes for Inferno. It looks visually cool, but I am wary of its actual usefulness.

I just seem to be defending Vauban today but how is a damage nuke that scales off enemy levels not viable in high end gameplay especially when Bastille strips armor? I can get the propulsion pad being gimmicky but that’s the only thing about the rework being “gimmicky” aside from the tether. Everything else is straight up hard cc (with the exception of the nail gun but that’s a weak damage ability, not a gimmick)

Also fire damage now strips armor and stacks procs so there’s that, but I will agree that her kit still needs some work. For now I’m content with spreading universal armor debuffs (still a use) but in the way of damage? Defo needs some work especially since she’s been stripped of her buffs.

[clxrffdman]

6 minutes ago, Anthraxicus said:

Which is something like 2.5k base damage per tick (considering no Corrosive Projection equipped). Nothing a level 40 standard Heavy Gunner can't handle.

Fire dmg strips armor now

[Anthraxicus]

2 minutes ago, RWBY-WhiteRose said:

I just seem to be defending Vauban today but how is a damage nuke that scales off enemy levels not viable in high end gameplay especially when Bastille strips armor? I can get the propulsion pad being gimmicky but that’s the only thing about the rework being “gimmicky”.

I am talking about those useless mines.

[HolySeraphin]

11 minutes ago, Anthraxicus said:

Which is something like 2.5k base damage per tick (considering no Corrosive Projection equipped). Nothing a level 40 standard Heavy Gunner can't handle.

And fireballs got armor melting now, which greatly reduces the difference between units. If they make the armor reduction instant on cast then the difference is minimal:

 A lvl 200 butcher has 30K cloned flesh and 47,24% damage reduction from armor, and has 57K effective health

A lvl 100 heavy gunner has 38K cloned flesh, 96% damage reduction and 976K effective health.

So if Fireball reduces armor instantly on impact (they´re thinking about it) then if you remove all the armor you got a lvl 100 heavy gunner with 38K health, and she will lose around 30-40% of her health.

Also, remember that cloned flesh receives 25% extra damage from heat, so once all that armor is gone (either from her 1, her 3 or her 4 due to how fire procs are intended to work now), you have an Ember capable of killing sortie enemies. Also, her 4 was killing lvl200 butchers after a few seconds.

[Sohaya-]

26 minutes ago, o0Despair0o said:

What's this, now?

A Ember rework, that... doesn't seem entirely worthless?

Never thought I'd see the day.

It’s still bad.

Inferno is likely going to be poor in damage in practice and there’s another bar you have to micromanage now. (Also knocking enemies out of passive bonus range with the only method of discharging heat? Not cool) She did get good debuff potential though

[PrawiSucia]

Why World on Fire has to go..? WHY..?!.. My poor Ember...

I love that ability. It's her signature. It has to stay.

As for the lost of energy when overheat, I don't know, man... it's just too punishing and not fun. Why not just make it so we can cast her ultimate only when overheat, consuming the heat. And if we don't cast 4th ability when overheat, it will consume energy.

For her ultimate, it has to be World on Fire with some buff from the rework.

[Sohaya-]

4 minutes ago, Anthraxicus said:

I am talking about those useless mines.

Oh right. I forgot about those. Now that I think about it... DE could you give vauban better mines? At least for his sticky ripline. Literally discount Tesla.

The damage amp, however, is always welcome and not a gimmick. It’s unlikely to be on par with stuff like chroma but it should be a good bonus to have.

So hey, minelayer still has one not-gimmick use. Not entirely useless.

[HolySeraphin]

Just now, PrawiSucia said:

Why World on Fire has to go..? WHY..?!.. My poor Ember...

I love that ability. It's her signature. It has to stay.

As for the lost of energy when overheat, I don't know, man... it's just too punishing and not fun. Why not just make it so we can cast her ultimate only when overheat, consuming the heat. And if we don't cast 4th ability when overheat, it will consume energy.

For her ultimate, it has to be World on Fire with some buff from the rework.

Actually, now that I think about it. Her new 4 has better CC than WoF. Why? It affects everyone on sight, AND pretty much stunlocks them, also spreading to anyone that touches them. If you stun them in the doors then that area is pretty much secured.

[HolySeraphin]

Wait, is the damage reduction on her 2 affected by ability strenght like Gauss's kinetic plating? I hope it is, but still, remove that instant drain if you reach 100%. I WANT to be at 100%, even if there is a constant drain on my energy.