(PC) Ember & Vauban Revisited Feedback

[[DE]Danielle]

DEV NOTE:  Because so much is changing by design with THE OLD BLOOD, we want to be clear on how we’re handling your feedback. The majority of week 1-2 Hotfixes will speak to feedback. We want to combine feedback and stats together to iterate. To be a part of the feedback conversation please be constructive and clear (expand the spoilers below for a guide on how to write feedback), and most importantly, patient.

Spoiler

 

HOW TO WRITE FEEDBACK: 

1. Keep it simple
Write simple, directed points about the topic you feel strongly about. Remember to be constructive and to the point.

2. Back it up
Support your points with concrete points. X has better stats than Y. This ability is less useful when considering X. Provide in-game situational evidence or a solid foundation for your argument to rest upon.

3. Be polite

The best feedback occurs when two people discuss opposing viewpoints to find a constructive middle ground. Discussion is a natural part of feedback! Ensuring that it is polite and without personal attacks is key. We’re far less inclined to listen to feedback filled with personal attacks and rude speech. We are all trying our best!

The Forums can be an amazing tool when used correctly. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on Grendel, how to acquire him, and his signature weapon! 

 

There’s nothing wrong with first reactions - but relearning takes time. We are especially interested in feedback from players who have taken time to understand The Old Blood. Thank you! 

 

 This thread will be used to house your feedback on Vauban and Ember’s revisiting from The Old Blood: Update 26.

EMBER REVISITED

Expand the spoilers below for the full list of changes for Ember:

Spoiler

 

New Passive: Receive 5% Ability Strength for every enemy within a 50m engulfed in flame (up to a cap). 

FIREBALL
Works fundamentally the same as it does now - tap for quick fire, hold to charge for greater impact. Enemies already inflicted by any Heat Status effect will now take additional damage. 

Fireball has a casting combo, if you use it multiple times rapidly it gets stronger.

The damage output and charge speed also scale off of one of Ember’s newest abilities...
 
IMMOLATION (replacing Accelerant)
Time for a history lesson! Prior to Update 11.5, Ember’s second ability used to be “Overheat”, offering an aura of heat damage which also protected her from enemy fire. Almost SIX years later, it’s time for this ring of fire to come full circle.

When cast, Ember Immolates herself with protective fire armor. Her current level of self-Immolation is indicated by a unique UI indicator; the higher the heat, the more damage resistance, and the more effective Ember’s other abilities become.

The Immolation meter will build slowly at first - using Ember’s Fireball or Inferno causes the meter to build faster. But be warned! If the meter reaches maximum, Ember will “overheat” and Immolation will cost progressively more energy per second the longer you stay in an overheated state. To prevent this from happening, use Fire Blast to expel a portion of your heat meter, or toggle Immolation off to reset meter build.
 
FIRE BLAST
Casting time has been greatly reduced, and the ability now strips armor from nearby enemies. The amount of armor removed scales in effectiveness based on current Immolation levels. On cast, this immediately reduces your Immolation level by up to half.

INFERNO (replacing World On Fire)
Upon casting Inferno, all enemies currently within sight are struck by a fiery comet, lighting each target ablaze in a personal ring of fire. Inferno costs Energy per each target in sight, with the cost capped at 10 targets.

If an enemy ignited by Inferno comes in contact with another unit, the fire will spread, igniting them as well with a fresh ability duration. Damage of the heat AoE scales with current Immolation level.

With these changes, players will take a more active role in “bringing the heat” to all that stand in their way, with added protection that encapsulates Ember’s volatile nature.

Ember Augment Changes:

• Fireball: Fireball Frenzy: This augment is unchanged.
• Immolation: Flash Accelerant is now Immolated Radiance: Allies within Affinity range will receive 50% of Immolation’s Damage Reduction.
• Fire Blast: Fire Fright is now Healing Flame: Each enemy hit heals Ember by 25 to 50 based on the level of the Immolation meter.
• Inferno: Firequake is now Exothermic: Enemies killed while under the effect of Inferno have a 15% chance to drop an Energy Orb.

 

 

VAUBAN REVISITED

Expand the spoilers below for the full list of changes for Vauban:

Spoiler

 

When revisiting Vauban, we aimed to retain his status as a crowd control powerhouse, while increasing his mobility and lethality to keep up with 2019 Warframe’s lightning-quick pace.

TESLA NERVOS (replacing Tesla Grenades)
Instead of sticking to surfaces, these new Tesla Drones will roll around, following the player. Once an enemy comes within range, these Drones will latch on and emit a shock that stuns the target and nearby enemies. Each Drone has a limited number of shock charges before it must be replaced. Hold cast to summon multiple Tesla Nervoses at once!

MINELAYER
All four of his mines have been replaced with new options:

• Tether Coil pulls a number of nearby enemies to wherever it sticks, rendering them immobile.
• Flechette Orb fires high velocity nails in all directions, inflicting puncture damage to any unlucky enough to be nearby.
• Vector Pad lays down a walk pad, granting a boost of speed in a chosen direction (indicated by arrows). Players must be moving in the same direction as the pad to receive a boost, while enemies are affected no matter which way they wanted to go.
• Overdriver will latch onto a nearby ally or yourself, enhancing their damage output for a period of time.

PHOTON STRIKE (Bastille moved to #4)
A deployable beacon marks a location on the map. After a short countdown, the area is struck by a massive orbital laser explosion (and yes, it does work indoors).

BASTILLE (combined with Vortex)
Vauban’s two marquee powers have been combined into a new and devastating ultimate ability!

When deployed, a Bastille will capture nearby enemies, stripping them of their armor over time. Players standing within a Bastille’s radius will gain a temporary armor increase, building up over time based on how many targets are currently being held in the Bastille.

When a Bastille’s duration expires, it collapses into a brief Vortex at the center of the cast for easy group kills. Want the Vortex to appear sooner, or last longer? Holding the cast key will collapse all active Bastilles early, or if you have no Bastilles, holding will deploy a new Vortex instead.

Overall, many of Vauban’s powers have been streamlined or replaced, making his tools less redundant, and much more versatile for keeping up with the pace of an average Warframe mission.

Vauban Augment Changes:

• Tesla Nervos: Tesla Bank: While a target has a Nervos attached, any damage dealt to it will be absorbed by the Nervos and channeled into a 8m burst of Electricity on death.
• No Augment for Minelayer.
• Photon Strike: Photon Repeater: If Photon Strike hits at least 5 enemies, the next cast will cost no Energy.
• Bastille: Repelling Bastille: Since Bastille and Vortex have merged, their Augments have merged as well. Enemies within the Bastille have a 100% chance to be repelled every 4s. Plus, Vortex’s duration is increased by 70% of its Maximum Duration for each additional Vortex thrown into it.

 

Need to report a bug? Visit the THE OLD BLOOD Bug Report Megathread.

[TKDancer]

i currently have 3 issues with vauban:

1st, the flechette orbs feels weak, something i expect when it was introduced, improvements to its status chance and changing its damage type to slash would great improve it, as it stands i see no use for it as photon strike is just superior

2nd, bastille armor stripping effect seems to ONLY work on enemies in the "floaty" animation, enemies within the bastille being stunned by tesla orbs or being ragdolled by another vortex or stuck by a tether coil are not affected by the armor debuff, making combined use of vauban's abilities damage his efficacy

3rd, tether coils limit of 2 targets seems rather low

[fr4gb4ll]

so far, i'm generally pleased with the changes to ember - though there are some points that are bothersome:

- there heat increase seems to be rather slow at start and then, after around 60% are a bit too fast to reach the 90% maximum... i think this needs a bit more tweaking

- her 3rd, works well to do damage and to reduce the overheating, but i think the energy cost for it should be a bit more lowered... or, better yet, also depend on the currently heating-level (meaning, cheaper to cast when your heat-level is high, and more expensive when it's low - with about 50% being the cost it has now)

- also about the 3rd ability, it seems that the blast is not always... 'conecting'... to the enemies in range - might be a bug or they are counted as 'in cover' for some reason - something that isn't really mentioned in the ability description.

- the 4th is all nice and (fairly) powerfull too, but it lacks the usefullness of her old WoF crowd-control (with the augmentation for it) which affected every enemy in range, not only the ones in view (or whatever effective angle you gave the new ability). though i don't mind the, now gone, missing hit-through-walls-and-obstacles way of WoF, the new inferno comets (wth did you guys named them comets anyway when meteor is far more logical for it?) lack a lot of usefullness now... i would rather have a 360° area of effect with lower range (and ofc, only enemies that can 'see' you - even if you do not).

all this was tested with the 'old' build for ember which was build for max range (250%) and strength of (139%) - actually, the build for her 'old', 'old' build, when WoF was still fun to play with...

[--RV--arm4geddon-117]

i'm running max efficiency on Ember it says the drain when fully immolate is 2.5 the thing is, sometimes it's like that but i noticed when casting inferno ( maybe fireball too but haven't used that much ) alot then it ramps up and it drains at a crazy rate, more like 20-30 energy per second.

I'm already sacrificing other attribute cus i wanted the lowest drain possible but it doesn't seem the case.

[Maka.Bones]

Fireblast's energy cost IS TOO DAMN HIGH!!!... Especially when it needs to be spammed so much to be effective. 

That is all. 

 

oh, I lied... ONE MORE THING (In Jackie's uncle's voice) Fireball still isn't killing enemies very well, and the gradual passive increase of the heatgauge is causing too much of an energy strain to spam her abilities. 

Ember is too energy hungry. 

[Circmfission]

New vauban just kinda sucks.

Tesla nervos doesn't really do anything, I ran several missions and always casted it first. I'd see my 4 balls latch to something, stun them for a bit, do a little AoE explosion and then I didn't see them after that. Couldn't recast either as it said I still had 4 nervos.

Minelayer feels entirely useless aside from flechette mine, which is kind of just an "oh S#&$" button and overdriver

THE CAST TIMES. THE ANIMATIONS. I almost never want to use Bastille or Photon Strike just because it takes vauban, such a squishy frame, and forces him to stand around and take fire to do either an AoE attack that relies on enemies not moving in the 40 years it takes you to cast the ability or bastille/vortex. Even with a maxed natural talent on him it still feels absurdly slow

It's to the point with his cast times that flechette mine is probably more useful than photon strike, because you can throw that while shooting and it takes effect before everything moves away.

From a stat perspective it's confusing what you even want to build him for. Go into strength for photon strike? Well you want the duration for Bastille and his mines. Go into duration for bastille and the mines? Well you need strength to get the most out of photon strike, nervos and the flechette mine. Then range is important on his 3 and 4, leaving you with three things you want ALONGSIDE cast time

[Calthous]

I feel like the energy cost for Ember's Fire Blast (3) is a bit high for what you get. I think either some reduction in cost (such as lowering to 50, or a reduction based on immolate levels), or adding in something like passive heat 'venting' for a few seconds (4-6 seconds?)  would help the ability mesh better.

 

Immolate does feel like it is rising very quickly, but what I suggested might help with that, otherwise a way to slow the build up might help. Such as bullet jumping or rolling helping to dissipate heat. 

 

I still think Fire Ball has the same old problem of being a bit slow and clunky to fire off, but the combo addition is very welcome to me.

 

Otherwise, I think the rework is very solid and so far I am mostly enjoying it, I just think it could use a few small tweaks.

 

Edited October 31, 2019 by Calthous

[MrFrog9]

just gonna copypaste my notes from like... maybe 30 minutes of messing around with Vauban? lol

Nervos do their job of passively keeping Vauban's squishy ass from getting turned into swiss cheese. Unfortunately, the fact that you can only have 4 of them and the AoE stun seems to take a bit to wind up makes them not as effective as I'd like against large groups of enemies.
Speed pad is pretty much perfect, you can go crazy fast with high Str. Only change I'd want is maybe making the base boost a bit higher as without Str investment it's a bit pointless.
Similarly, Overdriver's base damage boost is a bit small for my liking, while it's decent if you build for it specifically it's not super useful without specifically investing in Str. Still, I suppose buffing has never been Vauban's thing.
Bastille's cast time feels a bit slow.
Photon Strike is obscenely strong esp. with high Str but this is offset well by its delay, high cost, short range, and casting time. Incredibly good addition to Vauban's kit, nice job! :D
Why does Tether Coil only affect 2 enemies lmao, that's not even worth the time casting it -- it should be at least 4. Range and duration are really good though, so it's nice for passively "fishing" for enemies in situations where Vortex is impractical or just overkill.
Flechette orb is pointless except against very weak enemies but whatever, that was virtually guaranteed. I wasn't expecting it to do a lot of damage and IMO it absolutely should not do a lot of damage or else people will use it for lazy afk farming.

A bit of an issue I've noticed right now is that Vauban has lost his immediate CC options; Bastille has significant casting time, Tesla has a windup after latching an enemy, and Tether only affects a couple of enemies. It suits Vauban's characterisation as a tactician to not want to be caught unprepared but I think he's a bit prone to getting swamped in hectic situations. I think Tether Coil's capture number should be increased to 4 and Flechette should proc Blunt. Shorter cast time on Bastille would be appreciated too but I'm not sure if that'd be a good idea since it's already the keystone of his entire kit. This will give Vauban better ways of keeping himself alive against groups of enemies. That said, these criticisms are fairly minor; this rework is better than I ever dared dream of. It diversifies Vauban's kit while keeping his "soul" intact. 9.9/10, I love it! :D

[fr4gb4ll]

14 minutes ago, Maka.Bones said:

Fireblast's energy cost IS TOO DAMN HIGH!!!... Especially when it needs to be spammed so much to be effective. 

That is all. 

 

oh, I lied... ONE MORE THING (In Jackie's uncle's voice) Fireball still isn't killing enemies very well, and the gradual passive increase of the heatgauge is causing too much of an energy strain to spam her abilities. 

Ember is too energy hungry. 

indeed, the fireblast energy is a bit too high. i run ember with 175% in efficiency and use zenurik (maxed out) for energy regeneration... funny enough, i still generate energy with emmolation active (and not casting anything else) upto ~89% heat when the zenurik regen is running too - only at 90% it starts slowly reducing my energy... but this can hardly be what was intended to be needed to use ember - especially since she's a caster frame (and an 'active' caster at this now too). i'm happy that zenurik works with immolation active, but think that fireblast should need less energy too, at leat when the heat level is high (already stated that in my post above).

also, the heat-development is a bit hard control after a certain level (about 50%) - it goes up quite fast, compared to the lowere level where fireballs are really the best way to push the heat up... after this turning point, casting anything but fireblast will drive the heat up to max a bit too fast - and i only tested this in solo mode so far... with more enemies this sure will be even more drastic (i'll test this now...).

[MrFrog9]

Big issue/bug I just noticed with Vauban -- Tether sometimes doesn't pull enemies in very well. I noticed this on Io. Even if I put the tether relatively high up, enemies would drag on the ground and often get stuck even on flat terrain. Also, the tether visual doesn't get cleared properly sometimes when a corpse disappears, which exacerbated the above problem because I'd often see a crapton of lines coming out from the orb but no way of knowing which one actually had an enemy on the end of it.

[OdysOne]

Vauban is was one of my favorite frames. As he is squishy main rule playing him is "you stop, you die".  Before movement was fast and fluid thanks to instant cast of his abilities, which is now completely ruined by ridiculously long, anti fun animations. Casting his skills mid air turns him into a rock which is a death sentence for him and ruins completely his gameplay for me.

He is super squishy, none of his abilities block bullets, he cannot afford to be a rock. 

Please [DE], bring back his old animations.

Edited November 1, 2019 by OdysPL

[Vubby]

Vauban's tesla nervos are great, although I wish they would be able to only have one attach to any given enemy, having all 4 balls on a single enemy while the other enemies are shredding me to pieces isn't all that fun. His ripline doesn't actually pull in enemies, just kinda ragdolls them and keeps them immobile. I'd say fix the pulling in part and increase the enemy cap to say, 5, because right now, it's not worth dealing with the hassle of switching minelayer around for 2 enemies. Flechette sucks as puncture isn't very good to begin with, and the damage is mediocre. As for speed boost, I see little to no point in using it as I have bullet jump and I'd rather just shoot the enemies or use some other ability instead. Overdrive is a damage buff so it's fine, if a little boring. Photon strike is good, but the cast time is a little long and it could have a lingering CC effect like a radiation cloud because, well, it's an orbital strike. Bastille is fine, but armor should increase (at a pitiful rate) even when there's no enemies in the bastille since if I go public with vauban, I have a feeling that I won't be able to build up any armor whatsoever due to allies killing enemies in the bastille as soon as they see them. Sometimes the vortexes don't combine, and I am just going to assume it's a bug. Cast time for bastille is way too long, and whenever I'm casting it in the air, I'm a sitting duck for like 2 seconds, enough time for high level enemies to deal some real damage. Bastille has always been a spamming ability as well, so it's be nice to see his 3 and 4 swapped for energy purposes, as well as making more sense in my opinion (cc -> cc -> cc -> dmg). My only real miscellaneous gripe is that his abilities are no longer one handed, but this rework was a step in the right direction.   

[Maka.Bones]

I know I've already said this but...

Her heat gauge shouldn't continue to rise up on its own... this removes any point of controlling it with fireblast. Then fireblast is also WAYYYYY TOO EXPENSIVE, when it's THE ONLY WAY to lower her heat, AND the heat passively increases on its own. This is a big counterintuitive problem to her mechanics. 

 

We need ember's efficiency to increase with her heat gauge. 

Edited November 1, 2019 by Maka.Bones

[MrFrog9]

after messing with Ember a bit on Hydron, I'd say that Inferno is very overpowered and lacks nuance. At Star Chart levels you can completely ignore all of her other abilities and just mash 4 to instantly destroy every single enemy on the screen for trivial energy costs; basically Mesa without any windup time. I'd recommend significantly lowering Inferno's base damage, but making it scale with her overheat gauge, so as to give her downtimes where she isn't nuking everything.

[Otakuwolf]

I tried Ember and this is what I think:

You DO want to have a high overheat for that sweet high damage reduction... but you also want to NOT overheat because the energy drain goes up like crazy the longer you stay like that.

Sorry but, we can't have both, these two mechanics contradict eachother, I THINK the energy drain on max overheat should be a static value and not increase with time, otherwise it just makes Ember an uneffective chore to play

 

Edit: DE should have listened to Brozime and his suggestions for Ember's rework

Edited November 1, 2019 by Otakuwolf

[Ramflare]

Vauban's photon strike has a massively unecessary and restrictive 3 second delay between cast and strike.

Vauban was already a frame that struggled with teammates stealing the kills you set up & this rework has just reinforced that. The delay should be removed or reduced to .5s.

Speed pad should provide a short speed increase as well, at the moment it's awkward to use and lacking utility.

Edited November 1, 2019 by Ramflare

[Borg1611]

I was expecting Ember to feel better to play than she does in practice. The meter is obnoxious to play around for minimal benefit. It can be annoying energy wise to use, but I was playing at a low enough level that I could easily get kills with the new exodia brave when lets you get energy back a lot faster. I don't have a maxed arcane energize to try to combine with her inferno augment but it doesn't really generate enough energy orbs to feel like it's worth the mod slot. 

Her 1 isn't fun to use still and doesn't really feel like it's worth using over killing enemies in some other way. I'm not really sure what to do with it. Maybe add some interesting mechanic to make it serve some purpose IE: killing an enemy affected by inferno with fireball causes all enemies in a decent range to be affected by inferno.

You have to use her 3 too frequently to manage the meter if you're actually using her damage abilities frequently and you don't want to deal with the energy drain. Also, because heat procs can't completely remove armor, your other abilities damage depends on you using this to strip armor, which means you're going to have to frequently cast it to manage to do decent damage to high level grineer with your 1/4.

If you go below 100% power strength, your 3 can no longer strip all armor even with a full meter and even at 95% armor reduction, high enough level grineer have enough armor for them to still die fairly slowy to your ability damage. The armor reduction seems based on a % of their current armor, which means if you removed say 90% of their armor and then cast it again to remove 50%, they still have armor, which makes it annoying to use as an armor strip as you have to have sufficient strength + wait for the meter to be full before casting to actually fully remove a targets armor. Perhaps making it remove 2x as much armor% as your DR % would make it feel better and also work with sub 100% strength builds. 

Her 4 damage isn't as impressive as I was hoping it would be. It's limited by line of sight, so it should be a more impressive death dealing ability than abilities that are not (like spores). In terms of low level AoE, it's also a lot weaker than just using something like Frost's Avalanche which ignores line of sight and does sufficient damage at lower levels to wipe everything out in a massive area with no LoS requirement (edit as a more specific comparison, doing IO for Meso relics is faster and easier to faceroll AoEing on a frost than Ember because of LoS issues). At higher levels it doesn't compete with better DPS abilities from other frames.

The inferno DoT didn't appear to stack from repeated casts. Maybe making it stack would be a way to make the ability feel better against higher level targets. Or maybe make every dot tick do a heat proc (since those procs stack now) so that the inferno DoT effectively ramps up over time? 

edit: Also, I don't know if this is a bug or intended, but once your meter gets to a faster building rate/has been high level, even dumping all your heat with her 3 leaves the meter building at a faster than baseline rate even when you haven't cast your 1 or 4 in awhile, it just stays building heat at a faster rate until you toggle it on and off. 

Edited November 1, 2019 by Borg1611

[Maka.Bones]

2 hours ago, fr4gb4ll said:

indeed, the fireblast energy is a bit too high. i run ember with 175% in efficiency and use zenurik (maxed out) for energy regeneration... funny enough, i still generate energy with emmolation active (and not casting anything else) upto ~89% heat when the zenurik regen is running too - only at 90% it starts slowly reducing my energy... but this can hardly be what was intended to be needed to use ember - especially since she's a caster frame (and an 'active' caster at this now too). i'm happy that zenurik works with immolation active, but think that fireblast should need less energy too, at leat when the heat level is high (already stated that in my post above).

also, the heat-development is a bit hard control after a certain level (about 50%) - it goes up quite fast, compared to the lowere level where fireballs are really the best way to push the heat up... after this turning point, casting anything but fireblast will drive the heat up to max a bit too fast - and i only tested this in solo mode so far... with more enemies this sure will be even more drastic (i'll test this now...).

you're accurate, the heat goes up drastically fast when there are many enemies ignited... which makes fireblast counter-intuitive to use, since it ignites all the enemies nearby, AND IT COSTS 75 FREAKING ENERGY.  What lowers the energy decay is duration, more than efficiency. Which makes a duration/power build ideal, BUT you can't even play like that since it costs 75 energy to cast fireblast.... which you need to keep spamming, like your life depends on it (even more if you're using rage & the heal augment for energy regen & life sustain) 

Yo, DE... I love you guys, but that one was kinda ridiculous... why the *bleep* would you make THE ONLY ability that lowers her heat gauge, cost 75 *bleeping* energy?  and why the *bleep* would you make enemies ignited ALSO increase her heat gauge, IF YOU WANTED US TO CONTROL OUR HEAT LEVEL.... You want us to die or something? 

Seriously, please DE, darlings, you're beautiful and you make this lovely and amazing AWESOME GAME... dearly I ask of you that you lower the damn cost of fireblast.... oh and fireball too.  Literally just lower the damn energy costs, or make ember's efficiency increase with her heat gauge (since it's easier to burn things when they're already hot)

Much love DE

[hs0003]

Tesla Nervos
The good:
Hard CC on the targeted enemy and they stay around till they've run out of charges.
The bad: 
The balls are very slow, more speed please. Also multiple balls will attach to the same enemy, wasting charges and lowering CC. 

Minelayer
The good: 
Still very gimmicky. The extra damage from overdriver is always welcome (too sad it doesn't affect abilities). 
The bad: 
You can toss out 4 of each ball at the same time for a total of 16, why not have it 16 total, of any combination we want? Vector Pad has a rather long delay before we can get pushed again (no ping ball for tenno). Flechette Orb misses quite a lot, the damage is low enough as it is, no need to further reduce it with misses. 

Photon Strike
The good:
It seems to do scaling damage.
The bad:
It doesn't say anything about how it scales, or even that it actually scales. Also, casting animation is hella long, increase by 400% please.

Bastille
The good:
2 great abilities in one, complaining should be illegal.
The bad:
But I'm gonna complain anyway. Casting animations are too slow, especially when jumping, 300% casting speed increase, please. 

[Maka.Bones]

6 minutes ago, Borg1611 said:

Her 1 isn't fun to use still and doesn't really feel like it's worth using over killing enemies in some other way. I'm not really sure what to do with it. Maybe add some interesting mechanic to make it serve some purpose IE: killing an enemy affected by inferno with fireball causes all enemies in a decent range to be affected by inferno.

Fireball casts faster with more duration btw... but I agree that it's still inefficient. If they want us to spam it, it needs to cost less energy--or we need better energy sustain. 

[Borg1611]

5 minutes ago, Maka.Bones said:

Fireball casts faster with more duration btw... but I agree that it's still inefficient. If they want us to spam it, it needs to cost less energy--or we need better energy sustain. 

I noticed that the charge up mechanic charges faster the more the bar is filled up (particularly at max meter), although it didn't cast fast enough with base duration and no natural talent to to be able to fully charge and still get combos even with a full meter. Does duration make it cast faster or just increase the combo window? It seemed like it was just about the combo window. Natural Talent I think also makes it cast faster, but it destroys your energy if you spam FB with the meter full. 

[Reivhyn]

I like the changes to ember so far. The meter keeps you involved. Controlling its pace is fun. Having to use her 3 isn't an issue to me because it strips armor, provides a knock back AND a heal if using her augment. So I would be using it anyway just for the cc. You can even sit in overheat for a while before the energy drain becomes too high. The changes to heat proc help a lot with her damage.

I like that her abilities states are affected by certain mods they weren't before like fire blast and fireball with range.

 

Since the first hot fix though ive had issues with her meter for 2 not working correctly. It'll just stop charging after some time has passed and wont fill or wont fill at all upon casting. recasting sometimes fixes this issue temporally

 

EDIT

the bug seemed to be related to the augment for the 2. It worked correctly after removing it.

 

also her abilities no longer burns enemies on death consistently....I miss that

Edited November 1, 2019 by Reivhyn
update

[Arcira]

First impression: extremely disappointed

I need more testing but so far those are my thoughts:

Spoiler

1.) Fireball - Still pointless in terms of dps and even worse for cc

- lingering flame removed for some reason
- the base damage is far too low to be relevant even with 8 times combo
- the target specific damage increase is irrelevant as well because I´m pretty sure no one is fighting a single enemy for 30 seconds until you see some reasonable damage numbers
- 25 energy for ~ 1k damage .. seriously?

Augment:

- good especially in combination with her passive
- might sound harsh but this combo is probably the only reason you might consider to use her

- should have a time above the firebal icon because its quite hard to identify in the top right corner among all other buffs

2.) Immolate - ...

- DR is fine but
- managing temperature with Fire Blast is just annoying and unpredictable
- massive energy drain without any real reason or benefit
- no damage increase effect like mentioned in dev stream (actually doesn´t deal any damage at all)

- effects at low temperature (embers) look nice but fire cloak at maximum not so much

Augment:
- might be ok but probably not worth using with the limited amount of mod slot

3.) Fire Blast - inferior in terms of cc, animation, range, speed compared to Accelerant

- knock down which is good for finisher
- only 100% armor strip at max immolation which is important in order to get the heat damage multiplier against flesh

Augment:
- might be ok but probably not worth using with the limited amount of mod slot and superior alternatives from operator acanes

it´s fine just very situational

4.) World on Fire

- looks cool but that´s it
- corpses don´t create flames

- flames don´t cause ignite procs nor do they count as such

- massive visual clutter when used in narrow corridors

Augment
- might be ok but not worth using with the limited amount of mod slots

 

General:

- too much micro management for essentially no pay off
- worse play-style it feels extremely forced especially with the Immolate/Fire Blast interaction
- already missing the visual effects from old WoF (burning shoulders and orbiting wisps)
- abysmal energy management

- not directly Ember related but fix 50% armor reduction is not good considering the heat damage multiplier mechanics

Suggestions:

- remove Fire Blast and replace it with Accelerant
- Revert WoF

Immolate:
- that sweet spot management feel very unsatisfying to play either remove the drain and make it some kind of scaling ability (like Nidus passive) or
- add a valid reason for that harsh version of a toggle 2.0 drain like heat damage buff or old WoF like aoe heat damage aura

- The cooldown ability (in this case Fireblast already consumes temperatur the additional energy cost feel unfair and prevent you from using it in dangerous situations

 

Edited November 2, 2019 by Arcira

[Amazerath]

Ember:

Overall it's an improvement but there are many troublesome things about her rework. I'll point out the problems that bothered me the most.

1) The visual/audio indicators for when you start to overheat are insufficient. When things get busy you simply can't notice your energy is being drained. And since overheat causes you to lose energy very quickly, this is not ideal. It forces you to keep looking at the indicator at the side of the screen when instead you should be focusing on what's in front of you. If you need a good reference, check the Pyromancer class in Warhammer Vermintide 2. She has an overheat mechanic with amazing audio and visual indicators.

2) I don't like being forced to waste energy in order to preserve energy. I have to constantly cast Fire Blast in order to stop Ember from overheating even if there are no enemies around me. That means I'm throwing away energy in order to avoid losing energy, which is very silly. You can turn Immolation off directly but then you're asking for a random enemy to one shot you.

3) Having your damage reduction from Immolation going up and down all the time is kind of a pain. This is further aggravated by the fact that this damage reduction is basically the only thing stopping you from getting one shot by everything around you. Immolation doesn't feel reliable or safe. It feels like an annoyance that keeps nagging you for attention.

4) You should not instantly lose all of your damage reduction under any circumstances (and this isn't exclusive to Ember). Having enemies that can drain your energy or shut down your powers is generally ok. But you should not be exposed to instant death just because an enemy in a different floor or room was draining your energy without you even noticing. It is equally annoying to suddenly die because you were attacking a Demolyst with a melee weapon and they decided to randomly disable your defensive power.

5) Fireball is stronger now but it will remain forgotten because of how energy starved Ember is. You'll never want to use Fireball because you're constantly dumping energy on Fire Blast in order to stop Ember from overheating. So you have to choose between spamming Fireball to get the combo up (keep in mind you're still spamming Fire Blast as well), or casting Inferno once. I simply can't find a good reason for spending energy on Fireballs. In the end, it's a similar situation to what we had before. If Ember's survival is related to her energy reserves, that automatically discourages players from spending energy on non-essential powers or on doing cool stuff.

[SSI_Seraph]

All of vauban's mines except the damage buff are near worthless.

Why does the tether have a 2 target limit?.

the nail nade deals low damage without a plus.

and the speed pad is just ok.