Vauban & Ember Dev Workshop

[LupoDWolf]

I know Ember needs some ove and all...but its just me that feel weird how most of the caster-like frames have an damage redution mechanic?
Also, can Frost be the next n the line of reworks?

[Jcyrano]

Armor removal in everything... it's not bad, unless everything removes 100% of it, because, then... What's the point of having armor... "oh, is there just in case they forget to remove it"

the Vauban rework seams nice, but the nuke might not hit anything at all, since nothing really last enough, the Nails grenade looks like a energy cost Azima secondary shoot, It's not bad, but not really effective, the radiation grenade it has now is better, by far.

Ember is nice, the fact that if you don't manage the 2: Immolation  explodes and drains all of your energy is great, but how much of that heat we remove with the new 3: Fire blast?, all, some, how much Damage reduction does that cost? the explosion applies heats procs?

a lot of questions, but overall is an amazing job keep it up looking for the tweeks on this ones

[Maka.Bones]

20 minutes ago, (XB1)ELM0Damian said:

Bad reason to keep a bad part of the kit we shouldn't have to ignite enemies to make the ability function better. It just feels like you are defending this for no reason i get it its new but its not like im saying the whole ability is bad just the part that is mosly agreed on being pointless. It doesn't feel good for you or your teamates to want to shoot something but have it flung around. you are forced to push 3 to not lose energy that means even when you dont have ignited enemies and that will throw them around and force you and your team trace them around the ground to kill. Im not trying to make this ability worse just better and more consistent.

It just feels like you're attacking it, and calling it bad for no reason.  Just ignite them first, and you'll be goooood k?

 

Why don't we wait to play the rework first, before we diss it? 

[Maka.Bones]

I wish his 2 had more creative interactions with his Tesla balls, and maybe also with the rest of his kit.  Or if Tesla were somewhat of a multi-function pets, rather than just a power. 

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

Ragdolling is almost always bad in almost all situations. (even ragdolling corpses is bad, especially in spy missions, since it alerts enemies that see the body go flying.) I have never seen a good use for ragdolling, except for laughs - even if the enemy is dead while it's being ragdolled. Maybe it's the melee in me, since tracking down each flung enemy is a pain. This doesn't even fall into the "rule of cool" overriding most things.

The fact that you can hold an enemy in place by setting them on fire is a nice little workaround to the downside... but it's still a downside. (Just like the new aimed slams... I hate the ragdolling there too.)

[Aldain]

12 minutes ago, Maka.Bones said:

But why not both??

Again, it is easier to shoot a stunned enemy that a ragdolled one accurately, and I don't fancy sticking a mine to a something and trying to shoot the enemies that they drag around, especially in something like survival where they can drop life support. Think like the issue some people have with Khora's Strangle dome whipping enemies around making them hard to shoot.

13 minutes ago, Maka.Bones said:

I WILL SAY that it would be nice if it offered variety of damage type options within the damage buff.... Like if it was an "augmented ammo" damage buff... But i'm still happy even though it doesn't. 

I would actually have been fine with it being some sort of unique ammo augment pickup or something like that, maybe special ammo that adapts to what it hits for extra faction effectiveness (like "Ignores x% of armor against Grineer" or "Stuns Corpus Machinery", things like that) it but just making it like a droppable Rhino roar is kinda dull.

Also more damage stacking is just going to make power creep even more nuts and that is a personal reason I have for disliking straight damage buffs.

[(XBOX)ELM0Damian]

17 minutes ago, Maka.Bones said:

It just feels like you're attacking it, and calling it bad for no reason.  Just ignite them first, and you'll be goooood k?

 

Why don't we wait to play the rework first, before we diss it? 

Because DE is more likely to change things before they put them in the game. Feels like im attacking it and calling it bad for no reason. Literaly gives good reasons on why one little tiny thing makes it inconsistent and annoying. 

[angel_bee]

awesome proposals DE!! 😄 would it be an even better improvement to the synergy between Ember's abilities if the flames from fireball were also able to spread to enemies within a short range? (so that they are exactly like the flames from the new Inferno).

And possibly introduce an effect in Inferno that actively paths enemies that are already on fire to seek out enemies that are previously unaffected so that there's less random chance of getting a significant benefit/reward that comes from casting the ultimate ability which requires the most energy investment?

this way, if fireball can spread, there's more opportunity for more enemies to be on fire, thus improving her passive ability's strength bonus.

and with Inferno, better pathing of enemies to spread flames to others which were previously unaffected means that it can be used as a sure-fire way to increase power strength due to her passive. because if enemies run about randomly, enemies already on fire would often collide into each other and do nothing, which isn't terribly useful.

❤️

[Jcyrano]

Radiation Mine!!! he had one, now is gone, WTF... I rather have enemies fighting each-other that a energy draining secondary Azima shot

[Ham_Grenabe]

Minelayer is a waste of a power slot in general; it will remain the "Power I Never Use" for Booben. The others sound fine (assuming slow casting time / animation locks / etc. are addressed). They certainly look cool. 

But minelayer...sigh. No amount of implementation can fix a conceptually poor idea. 

[Maka.Bones]

15 minutes ago, (XB1)ELM0Damian said:

Because DE is more likely to change things before they put them in the game. Feels like im attacking it and calling it bad for no reason. Literaly gives good reasons on why one little tiny thing makes it inconsistent and annoying. 

You're making an assumption which has been proven untrue on many occasions. Just look at the last buff they gave Gauss, and almost every last warframe/rework they've released...

They still monitor & change things after they've been launched into the game. So let's just play the rework first 😄

[NeboBazz]

VAUBAN is PERFECT! 🥰 but why so many changes for ember... Immolation is good, new animations is gorgeous. But if you synergize 3th ability with new animation and call it "world on fire" it will look even more gorgeous. Dramatically more. 

 

[(XBOX)ELM0Damian]

2 minutes ago, Maka.Bones said:

You're making an assumption which has been proven untrue on many occasions. Just look at the last buff they gave Gauss, and almost every last warframe/rework they've released...

They still monitor & change things after they've been launched into the game. 

Zephyr, ash, ember, atlas these are all frames that got changed and could have had small little tweaks on their last reworks but didnt because of people like you who said just wait they will buff them more when its in game took them a hot minute to make ash's blade storm feel better atlas's passive still takes to much work to keep up zephyr has some pointless hover ability no one will use and ember is just getting touched now. Im not asking for a whole new ability my guy its literally just to remove a pointless knockback that 97% of the time a downside that you would want to keep for reasons i guess.

[mikakor]

it may already been said before, but...

her 4 is better not be a Line of Sight, this would totally destroy this ability.

her heat meter shouldn't give drawback. at all. period. Ember didn't had this before, she shouldn't have this now. this is making an old warframe more complicated than what it needs to be. it should be an indicator of your DR until it gets to the max, and that's it. not actively screwing up your gameplay. you are FORCED to use an ability just because using your kit is actually bad for you and mess you up. this, as a feeling, sucks. nothing in her actual kit deserves... anything about that. no drawback at all. there shouldn't be.

[Buzkyl]

 

Well Ember's Passive is now affinity range, that's alot of (potential) damage

 

[(PSN)Shatter02]

For Vauban I suggest his 3rd stay the same as an orbital strike is so awesome. His 4th stay mostly the same except transfer the armor buff to his Minelayer more detail below.

1. Replace Sticky Grenade with Damage Amp rename it Overclock (for our PC brethren) and allow it to scale up to a minimum amount with enemy levels that will stack with ability power allowing a useful but not overpowered damage buff. A helpful addition would be some sort of effect to indicate when you an allies are under the effect of this ability so we know when to recast. 

2. Replace Nail Grenade with an armor buff rename it Fortification. Yes I know his 4th has an armor buff but it should be transferred to this ability because certain game modes like interception require players to split up. This will make it costly to cast 4 times. With this grenade it will not only cost less but also be faster allowing you to quickly buff your team and get back to your point. As stated before an affect that indicates when you and allies are under it's effect would be beneficial. Possibly something to the armor effect that the engineer class from Mass Effect had, where it looks like a hologram?

3. Lastly remove Boost Pad and rename it Aegis Charge. This ability boost yours and allies shields recharge and melee kills on enemies under the effect of Tesla Drones stun, increase the rate of shield Regen. (Applies to allies as well) This allows more utility with his 1st ability and gives him a more complete kit in my opinion. As listed before an effect to indicate when you and allies are under this effect would be helpful.

I realize this would require more time to work on him but I think he deserves this and would definitely make him more fun to play solo and coop. However it is critical that DE gets the numbers right for all this to work so please DE take your time. Any comments or concerns?

[Borg1611]

My first thoughts on the Ember stuff was that her passive needed a much longer range, so I'm glad they're already changing that. 

I think maybe they should change the immolate meter mechanic so it's not just a penalty when you fill it.

For example, maybe start the DR at max at like 90% with the bar empty, and then as the meter fills, the DR reduces to ??% at full, but as the meter fills, you gain a damage bonus or an energy cost reduction bonus if that was too redundant with her passive. That way you can decide if you want to leave the bar full for a different kind of bonus, or keep it low for high DR or somewhere in the middle. That would create more choices in how you play and use the meter instead of just the current don't let it get full or you have to start over mechanic. Toggling it off could then be the only way to release it entirely all at once by choice in an explosion that does a lot of damage based on how full the meter was.

[ColdCremator]

Plenty of people are concerned about Immolation's drawback so here's some ideas to lessen the punishment but preserve the intended purpose and drawback/decision of Immolation reaching 100%. Personally, as long as Immolation's cost is only on cast and not a drain I am happy either way.

• Instead of overheat detonation being immediate upon reaching 100%, add a delay with an audio cue indicating you are overheating. If you remain at 100% for a period of time, for example 3 or 5 seconds, you detonate. If you vent before this timer has reached 0, you reset it for the next time you reach 100%. To maintain player choice in whether to detonate or not, allow holding the key to manually detonate while pressing just turns it off and losing all built heat.

This allows you to maintain the skill aspect as well as having it be a drawback for inattentive players. Players can also choose whether to detonate willingly or turn it off to save their energy and start from scratch.

* Optional: When toggling off Immolation, instead of losing all heat immediately it could instead deplete slowly over time while still maintaining its effects.

This idea may be a bit too powerful, hence why it is definitely optional while the others are more necessary. This in tandem with the first bullet point would allow you to still manage your resources w/o needing to constantly rebuild from scratch. Again, holding the key would spend your built up heat and energy as desired for the heat explosion, but you can deliberately prevent overheating while also maintaining max DR and cast speed, only spending energy on cast toggling Immolation on and off.

• If you are at 100% heat and are overheating, either begin regenerating energy and/or gain +X% ability efficiency for all abilities. Maybe instead have Fire Blast cost no energy if at 100%, to allow those going "oh no, I'm overheating but don't have enough energy to cast Fire Blast" to vent but give the free cast effect a cooldown to prevent exploiting and spam at low energy.

Whatever route is taken should help tie up loose ends regarding scenarios a player can end up in which they cannot control being punished by Immolation's drawback. If they get punished, it should be because they were not paying attention or got greedy, not when they literally cannot not do anything to stop it from the start. Understandably, this sort of condition is mainly catering to players such as newbies who do not have access to fast regen and those with 45% efficiency builds who need large amounts of energy fast to cast anyway, because otherwise standard players will rarely, if ever, find themselves in this predicament.

Among these three ideas, the second and the third point are interchangeable i.e pick one or the other, but the first one in my opinion is a must. There needs to be a delay so that players can react, but anything else is notably optional but definitely welcome.

[(NSW)ToadBlue]

The reworks look like improvements, but still with some flaws. Ember getting new abilities is welcomed, because her fun abilities weren't very useful and her useful abilities weren't very fun, though her Overheat draining all of her energy does seem overly harsh as others have said. I agree with the idea that it either drains Energy over time instead of all immediately, or at least allow a brief grace period with warning lights and sirens to give the Ember player a chance to panic-cool themselves. And a more clear-cut easily understood meter, because like Gauss's, it looks cool but it seems hard to read.

Vauban's Tesla Drones look great, Orbital Strike looks great, Bastille looks great, but Minelayer still looks underwhelming and impractical to me. I only like the Sticky Ripline, that's an actual trap. The nail mine looks weak and ineffective (it's just Azima's alt-fire jammed into an ability), the boost pad looks absolutely useless with minimal applications anywhere (why am I spending energy for a 2-second speed boost on the ground in one direction?), and damage amp is useful but... really boring. It's just a "make number bigger" ability with no style nor strategy. And it's not even really a mine. So I still don't see myself using Minelayer much if at all. At least I can have a bunch of little zappy drones following me around though, I like that a lot. Minelayer aside, Vauban looks worth playing to me.

And why's everything getting armor-stripping? It feels like a band-aid cover-up to the wonky armor scaling instead of addressing the armor scaling and damage system itself. It's a worrying pattern.

[WolfgangHype]

On the one hand I'm very happy to be getting some DR back with Ember. On the other hand I'm disappointed to be losing the consistent radial damage. Of course, I basically just miss the time when Ember had Gara's gameplay- run up and burn things that get close to you. I'd love it if one of her abilities included a damage aura of some kind.

Thinking about how I would actually play Ember with this kit, I'm not really sure how it would go. The abilities seem like they are likely to rely on a bit of spamming, which will then depend on the energy cost. I can kind of see a synergy between the new 4 and the 3 if you nuke a group then blast them apart to spread it, but I almost think I'd rather do it the other way- hit them with 3 first strip armor then nuke. I think what could be a more interesting way of setting it up might be to have the 3 stagger instead of knockback- it's a little less CC, but also less disruptive if you're lining up for a big hit following the armor stripping. Then move the knockback to the charge on Fireball. This would give you some AoE CC still, easier prep for big hits like your 4, and a more controllable way to knock enemies around to spread your 4.

Something that might be doable with the Augment but I think the 4 would benefit from having a lingering ground effect that would spread the fire to anything that passed through to give Ember a bit of area denial.

Finally it sounds simply annoying to have the explosion on Immolation be so punishing. I think that needs toned back a bit- like maybe blow up to release all the built up heat and reset it without dumping your energy. You're still losing a good chunk of DR and damage this way without crippling yourself.

[(PSN)MyUnhealthyHobby]

9 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Sooo, who noticed that it was my passive? ^^

Proof that it was your passive idea. A post with the date and time will suffice.

[(PSN)AbBaNdOn_IGN]

1 hour ago, Buzkyl said:

 

Well Ember's Passive is now affinity range, that's alot of (potential) damage

 

Awesome!!  Now change WoF back to what it was just before this retrash and I would be ecstatic!! I would try using Vazerin as primary focus school to double affinity range?   That would be so awesome lol.  She would rock PoE/OV so hard.  I use hunters adrenaline but i mainly use Zenurik to fuel my ember so it would be a hard choice between Zen and Vaz. = good.

The damage reduction and armor stripping ARE things i would look forward to.   Not that excited her DR will roller coaster but i guess its better than not having any.

When frames go through reworks do they have all formo reset and refunded?  Cuz mine is hella specific.  I cant even fit 8 mods on her right now.

[atejas]

10 hours ago, [DE]Connor said:

But be warned! If the meter reaches 100%, Ember will “overheat”, unleashing a wave of flame expending ALL energy. To prevent this from happening, use Fire Blast to expel a portion of your heat meter, or toggle Immolation off to reset meter build.

You suggested on stream that players might want to tactically trigger the overheat mechanic, but if it's at the cost of all energy, I guarantee nobody will ever do it. One burst of damage, no matter how high it is, will never be worth your whole energy pool.

Instead, consider: When the bar maxes out, Ember enters 'overheat mode'. Healing stops working on her, and she begins taking rapidly increasing unmitigated damage over time, but in return, gets significant buffs to her abilities (either strength and range, or lowered cast costs). This would create an interesting game of chicken.

[(PSN)Lei-Lei_23]

2 hours ago, (PS4)Lei-Lei_23 said:

Why. Is. Bastille/Vortex. Still. A. Power 4?!

Please DE, I implore you. Make Orbital Strike his Power 4 and keep Bastille/Vortex as a Power 3! I don’t want to see Bastille/Vortex as a 75-100 cast cost ability! At least amuse us that it can potentially be a 50-75 cast cost ability as a Power 3!

Digital Extremes.

Scott!!

I’m going to follow up with my previous point in case it gets lost in translation.

Orbital Strike should be Vauban’s ultimate. The ability has so much visual impact that it looks like a power 4, the cast animation for it is exaggerated enough to feel like a power 4, and the way the ability is utilized feels like a 75-100 cast cost ability. It also looks like it can deal a lot of damage if modded for it. Orbital Strike should be a power 4, not a power 3.

With regards to Bastille/Vortex: Bastille is Vauban’s most widely-used ability. It’s pretty much the ability that a majority of players that play Vauban are familiar with, and they use it to lock-down the area they are CC’ing with it. If we’re going to lock-down areas with Bastille, we will be spam-casting it. However if Bastille/Vortex is a power 4, imagine the cast cost for the ability if this is to become Vauban’s ultimate: 75-100 cast cost at best! This is utter nonsense. The core CC ability that Vauban players are systematically drawn to use will forcibly have a higher cast cost because it got bumped up the ability hierarchy chain, with armor stripping on Bastille and a team buff on Vortex? I’m sorry, but I’m going to say no on that. While the ideas listed with the buffs on Bastille and Vortex are great and the transition from multiple Bastilles to one Vortex is amazing, I cannot justify an ability like this that we will be using liberally to have the cast cost that is suitable for a power 4. That is going to be too expensive to cast. If Bastille/Vortex were a power 3, we can justify cheapening the cast cost to 50 or have it remain at 75 to make it feel like a decent buff to the ability and synergetic qualities in merging them together.

Speed Pads. Remove them. I can think of many scenarios where I can see this ability be used to troll other players and grief them with it. Please do not implement that particular ability into Minelayer and gives us something useful. Bounce pads should have been blipped out of existence like Tonkor’s grenade jump and Excalibur’s Super Jump as they were intended to be, but the implementation of Speed Pads is just a reinvention of Bounce Pads except it’s the removal of verticality for increased forceful lateral movement. This is not a feature we need in Vauban’s kit, and we certainly don’t need anything in-game to grief other players with. If anything, please default to keeping Concuss grenades from the original Minelayer kit as Rad-proc’ing enemies is a good distraction and Eximus-aura off-switch. Otherwise, think of something else to fill this slot.

[Grav_Starstrider]

Overall, my major concern is this.

When would we choose Ember over Saryn?

Saryn is more inherently tanky by default, she has a duration-based weapon-boosting ability (weapons tend to scale better than most Warframe abilities), she has one of the few good enemy-scaling-matching abilities with her Spores escalating damage, her Spores and Miasma aren't LoS limited, all in all, it feels like Ember is just going to be an inferior Saryn. I'd recommend looking at their kits, and seeing if you can make some modifications that make Ember actually worth using over Saryn. Ember still shows up as my second-most-used frame in my stats, after all of this time, but I haven't touched her in a millenia because Saryn just feels consistently better to use, and I'm not sure this rework gives Ember any sort of niche that actually makes her worth choosing over Saryn. I would *highly* recommend listening to a bunch of the other poster's critiques, because while it may well be a fantastic update/upgrade to her current kit, I don't see people choosing her over Equinox's Maim or Saryn's Spore/Miasma.

(sorry, repetitious phrasing in there, but in general I think every Warframe should have a kit that allows for several different effective, fun, and/or unique playstyles that, while they may not be as efficient as "meta" options, are still fun and viable enough that they aren't choice-prohibitively worse. After all, DE is reworking Archwings and the Itzal specifically to make it not choice-prohibitively better than other Archwings, so I feel like the same care should be taken with Warframes. Every Warframe should have at least one or two mission types that they can really excel at, where they aren't completely overshadowed by another specific Warframe every time. Unless she's meant to inherently be a Hybrid-functionality Warframe that will only ever be mediocre at everything, never among the best at anything, which would be a sad fate)