(PC) Ember & Vauban Revisited Feedback

[Magnus]

Ember has lost her niche as a roving nuke. It means she's lost her primary use, in exterminate fissures, in hopes of seeing more general use. You could have instead let her keep her best in category and improved her general use, too, but this hurts my usage of her completely.

[XaoGarrent]

I want to test Vauban and provide some feedback, but I have absolutely no idea how to build him, lol. Being two of the frames I've absolutely ignored (due to their irredeemably poor performance), Ember and Vauban are a bit of a blindspot for me.

6 hours ago, MrFrog9 said:

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.

[zakaryx]

I like the ember update so far for the most part. Her 3 ability however is either bugged or just inconsistent. Sometimes enemies are knocked down and take damage and other times it literally does nothing. I've tested this on groups of 16+ enemies and have had 12+ knocked down in one hit. Other times against two enemies only one gets hit. I've tested with negative duration only negative range only and negative power strength only and can't always reproduce the effect. No idea what's causing it.

Here's a pic of my build and a video showing what  I'm talking about below.

 

Besides this though I'm really enjoying her new abilities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 1, 2019 by zakaryx

[Colyeses]

31 minutes ago, zakaryx said:

No idea what's causing it.

Might be ye olde 'LOS from toe level broken up by a pebble' issue. 

[Etzu]

First impression.

Vauban:

• 3rd ability: The delay between grenade spawn and damage effect is too long for me.

A possible way to improve that would be to add a charging system like that:

• Quick Cast (no charging): instant throw the grenade, producing a high (like now) delay on deployment to calibrate the orbital strike.
• Prearmed Cast (charged): prepare the orbital strike coordinate while charging, quick (way shorter) delay on deployement to fire the orbital strike.

With that idea the time between engaging the ability and damage dealing would be identical, either we invest time in charging or in waiting after quick cast.

 

Ember:

• 1st ability: lacking epicness on animation charging.

That's something I felt on the old vauban and the old ember too, no animation on the charging, but now Vauban has an animation but not ember. Would be cool if she was casting the fireball in her hand before throwing it.

• 1st ability: lacking particles on impact.

The old ability spawned a spot of fire particle effect and an explosion particle. The new one just spawn some kind of "light" sphere effect but no real flame styled effect. I'm playing on entire low quality so it might be a quality setting bug, I'll check that deeper later on.

 

I'll keep studying those two reworks and give more indepth feedback if any is necessary later on.

[Batwing]

After playing around with both new kits I'm liking embers new set up, except fireball.

The charging just feels awkward I feel like whatever the charge stats are should be default if we're to use the combo feature at all really.

Would like a custom animation for her immolation since atm it's just khoras kavat skill animation.

Vauban again all around massive improvements but I feel like the puncture grenade is just a worse Tesla at this point and the launch pad is gimmicky at best. Would prefer maybe more support since he has cc for days.

Maybe something to help with his survivability like others say. Maybe a leeching turret you can use in conjunction with his grouping skills to leech health from enemies. Could have it give health based on how many statuses are in the enemies as well.

And if we have to have some sort of damaging mine can we get like a slash based one ? Something akin to those used in Dishonored where they just kinda whip blades around in a good aoe stacking loads of bleed procs. I would ever take a stationary saw blade that you can place in grouped up enemies or choke points.

The Bastille armor strip is very nice I just don't want to have to do the whole set up to be able to do damage to enemies.

 

[Batwing]

Remove these dupe comments if possible posting on a terrible mobile

Edited November 1, 2019 by Batwing
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[Batwing]

2

 

Edited November 1, 2019 by Batwing
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[Lacirev]

This is only feedback for Ember

1. For her fireball, I feel like the charge time is too long and feels finicky to use consistently while moving because of having to hold 1..

2. I really like the micro-managing of Immolation however a little thingy next to the meter showing the current rate that Immolation charges at would be useful

3. No complaints about fire blast

4. The targeting of Inferno feels weird as Ember gets stuck facing one direction and sometimes I can't tell if it's basing the targeting off the direction Ember is facing or the direction the camera is facing.

Edited November 1, 2019 by Lacirev

[Colyeses]

The Ember rework very heavily missed the mark, in my opinion.

When the idea of immolation was first presented, I was excited. The problem with damage oriented Warframes is that we do not want another Saryn/Mesa, but we do want something that can actually compete, whose damage actually shoulders up against weapons. Nidus was an excellent move, and Gauss' kinetic battery moved things in the right direction. The idea of filling a gauge and then getting a limited time of just having all inhibitions lifted was so appealing, and the thought of this being applied to Ember excited me tremendously.

Sadly, that's not what this rework is. Immolation, as the key part of this rework, is more of a restriction than a benefit. Initially presented as something about carefully managing your heat just turned into a highly volatile cross between a yoyo and a bouncing ball. The meter ramps up -insanely- fast, and fireblast just empties it. The result is that you're not really playing Ember, your immolation bar is. It is -constantly- dictating your actions. 4 now to get your DR up, 3 now to save your energy. Now 4, now 3, now 3 again, now 4 again, etc.

And all this amounts to a very subpar and not very tangible quantity of damage with clunky application. I'm pretty sure there's some LoS hitreg shenanigans going on left and right with this rework as well, but suffice to say, nothing feels satisfying about this new Ember. 

Based off of what is present in game now, here's what I would've done...

Immolation starts at 40% DR, and caps at 90%. This gives 50% that the player needs to fill up. Every enemy hit with 1 or 4 adds .5%. This means it requires 100 hits to cap the bar out. That takes time and energy, but it will gradually accumulate a lot of DR for her.

Once the bar hits 90%, there's a second bar that fills up over time. It takes 100 seconds to fill up. Every second, Ember's damage output increases, akin to the way Nidus' mutation stacks amplify his damage. At 50 seconds, halfway through, Immolation will start decreasing Ember's energy, slowly at first, but gradually ramping up, without blocking passive energy regen. It increments consistently, and at 100 seconds, it would drain energy very rapidly, maintaining DR and damage amplification, but making it almost impossible to use abilities.

Using Fireblast restarts the timer and drains the bar of, say, 15% of its DR%. This means you need to get 30 hits to cap the bar out again, and restart the damage building process.

The result of this would be:

1) More consistent DR to aid in Ember's durability
2) The player better controls Immolation, rather than the other way around
3) More tangible damage amplification that can help put Fireball into a position where it can be used
4) Challenging gameplay by encouraging players to maintain max DR as long as possible, weighing the damage benefits against the encroaching energy cripple
5) Meaningful downtime allowing Ember to be highly destructive since she leaves large gaps during which her allies can take over

 

As a final note!

The visual feedback on Ember's fireball is severely underwhelming, as the animation has no weight and the visual effect has no body. This may seem small but can be an integral part of making Fireball feel more 'fun' to use.

[(PSN)LoisGordils]

6 hours ago, nnexenn said:

ember rework opinion.

in general is great but his 2+3 combo is not working to me, his 2 should increase more slowly, his 3 should cost 0 or less energy when his 2 is in overheated.

Her*

[BlackVortex]

9 hours ago, MrFrog9 said:

>kills a bunch of lvl100 heavy gunners in seconds
>garbage

i don't understand this community sometimes lol

if it ain't miliseconds, then the use for ember is gone

ember was a rushing frame to clear out exterminates without wasting too much time

now ember can do what saryn does, only worse

ergo saryn > ember so ember is going in the closet

[Morticielle]

Thanks DE for destroying the only warframe I really liked! Ember was THE warframe for me. Now with the new 4 and this immolation nonsense she feels horrible to play. Well, my hours played in this game already dropped when you nerfed Ember's 4 some time back and I guess now my time in this game will drop to near zero. Congratulations for changing a warframe with no necessity to do so at all! 🙄

[DawnBlossom]

So I've been doing a little bit of testing of Ember. She's one of my favourite Warframes and I'm really happy you're finally addressing her!

Let's get started:

Fireball's combo duration should increase, like two or three fold. One second isn't long enough to charge it and duration doesn't help any of her other abilities enough to be worth building.

Immolation is a good start but it is clunky and annoying. Building up the DR to full gives a huge negative, but recasting resets the DR to only 50%, which is useless. Other Frames can consistently have 90%, so Ember should too! I would suggest making the DR a flat 45% which scales up to 90% at 200 power strength. Then, in addition to increasing the power of her 3 and 4, Immolation should do a weak AoE Heat proc that increases in range as the heat gauge builds up. This would help her passive and give a minor armour reduction to nearby enemies so she isn't as reliant on her 3.

Fire blast is fine for the most part, but has a crucial problem - it knocks enemies flying miles away. This means that she casts her 3, then wants to cast her 4, but she just knocked everything out of range with her 3! Make it so it just knocks enemies down rather than knocking them back, like a blast proc!

Inferno seems pretty good to me right now. The thing I would change is to make Fire Blast remove the increased build up of heat that Inferno gives you. This way, managing heat and energy would become much easier!

It's a good start for sure, but just needs a bit of tuning to make her more fun to play. :3

Edited November 1, 2019 by DawnBlossom

[Kashik_HIkaru]

I'm not really a fan of the new ember. The new abilities compared to the old ones are apples to oranges. Near Completely new kit should have been used on a new frame instead. 

Fireball still isn't really worth using. 

Immolation is interesting don't mind it so much but Fire Blast cost to much to use and if we have to get it down I'd expect it almost only to use the built up heat. Probably would have been better to change Accelerant into a wide sweeping stun that lasted longer. Either or this change could be said to have gone good or bad.

Fire Blast, cost too much to use if it has to be used to cool off Immolation. I think it should still have a persistent ring that does damage as enemy's walk into it and perhaps strip armor over time as they walk through it. It was a decent enough point def ability. 

Inferno, it's neat I kinda like it but it's definitely not ember. Why is it raining meteors? Did someone play Phantasy Star Online and decide they like the one meteor strike ability they saw? World on Fire was a 360 AOE that shrank over time as it got stronger and was great for running around and taking out the weaker hoards of enemy's allowing you to focus on eximus units and other stronger harder ones. This change was the most baffling to me, as it took away what was Embers signature ability, and replaced it with something that should have been probably been given to a new frame.

Edited November 1, 2019 by Kashik_HIkaru
Some errors that where bothering me.

[Xyhon]

Ember needs immediate fix for her 3rd, which drops on obstacles, level, etc., not igniting enemies. This is her not only CC but debuff skill, so it is crucial right now for her kit to work as intended. Was doint arbi on void def, stairs, small fences, etc, all nullify her ability and make her overcasting which with current cast cost, is not so perfect. 

[BlackVortex]

20 minutes ago, Kashik_HIkaru said:

Near Completely new kit should have been used on a new frame instead.

My thoughts exactly

but knowing DE they will just release a new frame with similar abilities to the old ember (they did similar things to other frames too when reworked)

[(PSN)MJ-Cena7]

Anyone else thinks that the armor effect from heat should have been for puncture procs that is anti armor !!!!

Eating away enemy armor should have ben 10-15% from BASE armor every sec the proc is active 

Or just give 75% armor dec for 6 sec for punc 

For ember 

Her 1 is useless compared to her 4 the augment helps off course shince her 2 and 3 no longer add heat dmg 

2 is fine but would still loved to have explosion when you get to max meter 

I think the meter should be the same as gauss decrease with time/not using abilities and all ablities make it rise

Also if the energy drain on meter must be a thing then it needs a cap of 5 enegy/sec with max efficency

3 is just accelerant would have been better can we get heat dmg buff on non armor enemies at least 

Also should be 50 energy not 75

 

 

[LascarCapable]

VAUBAN

The rework really missed the mark and failed to adress multiple points :

• Vauban's survivability is still far from acceptable.
• Bastille spam is still the way to go. Worse : because Bastille is your only mean of earning survivability, you're required to spam it.
• There's still an awful lot of redundancy in Vauban's kit. Bastille is still your best CC and it's still spammable, to the point of utterly outshining the rest of your CC abilities.
• Some abilities aren't very useful. I'm mostly thinking about Flechette Grenade and Booster pad.

Inprovement suggestions :

• Move the armor drain effect from Bastille to Nail Grenade. This would give to nail grenade a real utility.
• Increase the width of Vector Pad so it can fulfill its niche better. It's really too narrow right now.
• Add an additional effect to overdriver so it can improve Vauban's survivability. It could be an armor buff, or some form of health regen, or some form of shield sustain.
• Limit the max amount of live bastilles to 1 per user. It's already crazy strong as a CC. Adding armor drain effect in addition to it was uncalled for in my opinion. Bastille is absurdly powerful.
• Consider improving Vauban's base stats. Health and Armor should probably go up.
• There might be some more required changes I haven't found yet. Will edit this post if necessary.

[CTanGod]

Ember feedback:

1. Fireball is still bad because of it's low range and split damage and now also has the unnecessary stagger effect which overrides the more useful heat proc stun. My suggestion would be to remove the stagger effect, make the Fireball do full impact damage in the whole AOE and increase the base range to 6m (starting range) and 8m (max Immolation) and give it a 50% heat proc chance scaling with power strength. Also, is this ability supposed to leave the napalm bomb anymore? The ability card shows that it still leaves it but it doesn't do so in game.

2. Immolation's energy drain completely ruins any energy management when using Ember as a caster since it fills too quickly and the energy drain prevents energy restores from anything other than Energy Orbs, best solution would be to make it a duration based ability with 30s base duration and remove the energy drain, this way it's not a toggle and forget ability.

3. Fire Blast is mostly fine however the knock-back is a bad idea, better to just have it proc heat. The Line of Sight mechanic is also bad when factoring in the energy cost, better to remove the Line of Sight but reduce the base range to 16m, no need for Line of Sight, it's an armor strip after all.

4. Inferno is fine except for the fact that the fire ring around enemies doesn't proc heat and takes too long to spread, lower duration but faster expansion/spread together with heat proc chance of 30-60% (based on Immolation and power strength) would make the ability great for a CC build or for utility in general.

[BlurZerKer]

Bring back the old throwing animation

TESLA NERVOS (replacing Tesla Grenades)
1. Summon 4 Tesla Nervoses at a time is too few

2. Need  better AI.

MINELAYER
     Tether Coil 

       It should pull at least 5 enemies.

      Flechette Orb 

       No complain.

      Vector Pad 

      Make it able to stick to surface and objects (both allied and enemy)

      Overdriver 

      No complain.

PHOTON STRIKE (Bastille moved to #4)
       Too slow animation (The old throwing animation is better, it is simple and fast which suit vauban's theme well.)

BASTILLE (combined with Vortex) 

       Good skill.

 

Edited November 1, 2019 by BlurZerKer
change details

[Excelion-Skyclaw]

Reading most of what people say here it kinda overlaps with my feeling about Ember current state.
I see what it was the direction her kit was aimed at and i like it (I admit missing her 4 so much) but currently she is - Too much micromanagement, for bringing too little to the table compare to other frames, Which kinda makes her kinda tiring to play after a while. 

Most importantly her 2 - Is definitely the biggest concern as she is pretty much designed around it, but the Energy drain is ridiculous even on efficiency builds. Its kinda tells you - "hey here is her best state, but don't be here so keep it down". Solution: I feel it would be much more fun, if it was designed instead of going up, the % to go down if she is not setting stuff on Fire or just by casting stuff that effect enemies so we keep the her all fiery. Which would motivate us to use her even more as a caster, because the more stuff we set of fire the better she'll be. 

1. Well - i really don't like it how slow it is - it either needs way faster charge OR to be piercing, flame-thrower like things. As 1 slowlish fire ball with ok-ish aoe its really not fun to use ;/

3. It works for what it does. But again, i don't think 'cooling' ember off should be the goal 😄 - making stuff on fire, be more on fire should be! Now that the Ember i know!

4. I miss old 4. New 4 is fun, but its just ...eh 😄 i miss the old 4. Why not make new 4 to be toggle that drops meteors around everything with a pulse. (that is the ember we know). Yes the new 4 is strong, and makes a bigger boom, but.. maybe if the other micromanagement she has was reduced it would be way more fun.

Edited November 1, 2019 by Excelion-Skyclaw

[Harutomata]

Vauban feedback:
One of my major complaints is the survivability. Outside CC, he gets downed way too fast. I'd suggest putting either some form of heal on Overdriver next to the damage buff, or make it restore shields at all times it's up, in a similar fashion like Wisp's healing reservoir does, possibly with overshields. It'd make him not just less squishy, but he would also become more useful to his squad. This change would make modding him into being less squishy slightly easier too (shield related mods, adaptation, etc.) if the player would like to.
Also I feel like it wouldn't be a stretch if that damage buff was a little stronger, considering there are other frames which can get way more ridiculous damage boosts not just for themselves, but the rest of the group too. Which makes the current percentages you can achieve dwarf a little in comparison.
Edit: Overdriver is a little wonky. It would be better if it provided an aura buff around Vauban.

Tesla Nervos is a solid CC with some small damage, slightly improved from his previous kit since it doesn't root the ability in one place

Minelayer overall improved too, his previous kit on this ability felt slightly underwhelming and not serious enough. However it could use some improvements to boost Vauban's survivability (see above for Overdriver).
The Flechette Orb looks pretty cool, but that's about it. The damage it does isn't too effective, and it doesn't provide any utility besides some puncture procs. Maybe it could use some life steal baked in, either for Vauban or maybe even his squad either within affinity range or a reasonable and not too small ability range. This would also help a bit on his survivability, and provide some more support to his squad, therefore making him a more useful to bring along missions
Tether Coil is good to immobilize some stronger enemy targets, but then again Bastille and Vortex also can do that, and they aren't limited to 2 targets. In case of Tether coil, ability strength doesn't even affect how many targets can be affected by it, so it will always just sit on 2. It currently feels like a smaller Vortex for less energy cost
Vector Pad is a fun little Minelayer with some trolling potentials and it could have its niche uses in some tile sets, but it doesn't provide that much utility. I'd suggest it could give some minor speed buff after the pad is used, probably only applying to friendly targets. To enemy targets it could push them, and if they hit a wall, deal some damage to them, optionally also ragdoll them. This damage shouldn't be too strong though, of course.

Photon Strike feels pretty satisfying to use, so far I didn't see anything wrong with it. Except enemies dying before the orbital strike hits them in some cases.

Bastille/Vortex are good as they are. I think the armor stripping is a good addition, and shouldn't be changed. Maybe vortex could have a bit bigger radius.

Edited November 1, 2019 by Harutomata

[Greasy_Mullet]

Energy cost is way to high for Ember.  She needs to build heat and that requires energy.  Even putting everything I can into efficiency she still burns out too fast.  Perhaps I am using her wrong here but it just seems off.  

[Ennek]

Hey hey people, I'll get right to the general feedback after playing with both of them for the day.

Ember
===
Feels good, interacts decently well now overall with her new kit with some slight adjustments to get right to the sweet spot I think.

-With Fire Blast as her only go to resource for venting heat aside from killing the ability outright it definitely needs to be cheaper in cost. The usual 25/50/75/100 doesn't quite fit right here with her new set up, so maybe dropping it at least to a 50 before efficiency could be a step in the right direction as it leads into the next point of interest.

-For being THE pure essence of unbridled fury through fire and flames and along the vein of "spellcasting mage-like frames" she could use some energy synergy in her kit or even passive. Maybe something along the lines of a .5 regen per application stack of her passive with a hard cap of 2.0 that is applied over a small duration and can be refreshed as she does stacks of passive. Something just enough to keep the firing burning but not engulf the world in flames for free.

-In the latter half of Ember there's Fireball and Inferno. Fireball is still just uninteresting to use, there's no easy way of saying it. Charge mechanics, even as swift as it can be, is a bit awkward to use on offensive, moment to moment abilities. Some sort of added functionality is just needed here to make it an attractive option to even use.

-Inferno on the other hand feels fantastic so far, with the exception of this line of sight choice we went with currently. It's the same issue I have with Wisp and her LOS on her 3rd ability in that it's just counterproductive to use. New kit Ember encourages you to get into the thick of it, with your buff new defense shield while you strip armor around stuff, while Inferno encourages you to stay away from it all instead and sight in on as much as possible. This is fine in a game where ranges shrink and grow rapidly, but it's like learning a bad habit in making me want to constantly shove myself into a corner to use it. Simply removing the LOS however isn't the answer here as we'd just get *another* press button, nuke room, ability on our hands. Alternatively my idea is simply to target any foe currently under the effect of her Fire Blast debuff as well; to "prime" an enemy first even if it's not in her direct line of sight in this case.

 

Vauban
===
OK where to begin... We had an Ember rework and a Vauban rework and somehow Ember wasn't the one I disliked.

-Vauban's stat spread is a bit harshly split now it's painful. Before it was Range-Duration, your bread and butter, with *some* strength where you spared it. Now Strength has taken a much more front seat making things complicated. You need a bit of everything to do anything now, which leaves you ever the jack of many, master of none.

-Tesla Nervos are 'fine' but they could be a bit faster in their movement and even snapping back to player if you move too far from them. Again, a charge system of these feels pointless as it's less of a technical choice or more a given. Do I want one, or do I want four?

-In a bit rapid fire here; Minelayer still wonky. Tether is fun but 2 targets is not. Flechette feels like it has no purpose an is a waste of an activation. Vector pad is a meme with more perchance to troll than to be of help. Overdriver is technically sound but more busy work to manage.

-Photon Strike I wanted to be good and cool, but it's just.. too slow; slow to cast from button press, slow to charge up and actually do damage. The damage isn't anything impressive. The area of effect feels less potent than a sneeze. It needs some across the board attention.

-Finally Bastille, which has been our good engineers core heart and soul. The Mixed Bastille/Vortex is nice. The cast animation needs to go, props to the team that did it I'm sure there was plenty of good work that went in, but this was not the place for it. It can feel like it takes a year to come out, and it's surprising just how quickly you can get killed in a pinch situation with those precious moments of flourish. As an added problem because Bastille has moved into the 4th slot skill, it now occupies the 100 energy cost making his area denial powers that much harder to do in a pinch.

I understand not wanting to give him things like turrets or other "plays the game for you" style of point control or kill, but as he is now he just feels like a collection of things with some thin cohesion between them and an identity rooted solely in balls. Queue the, I'm not mad I'm just disappointed, as it seems like a missed mark on a chance to encapsulate some of that more Corpus style engineering motifs we see.

Edited November 1, 2019 by Ennek
fixed wording