(PC) Ember & Vauban Revisited Feedback

[Tyeia]

Ember currently feels pretty good: Only complaint here is that it feels like you need to use fireblast more often than seems necessary to keep heat down, could other abilities lower immolate's heat?

Vauban: Oh boy, here we go

Tesla: Feels alright when I've used it, kind of wish they would follow Vauban

Minelayer: Still a joke, Vector Plate doesn't feel nice to use, Flechette grenade seems more obnoxious than useful, Budget Vortex is budget vortex. Overdriver is the only good thing about this ability

Photon Strike: Cast speed could be a bit faster, same with the charge speed. Teammates murderize anything im trying to space cannon before it has any chance of going off.

Bastille: Feels good, cast speed feels a touch slow, but isn't as bad as photon strike.

Overall notes about Vauban: It seems like I never have energy, and therefore can't even use his abilities. Energy costs might be a touch too high on Photon Strike and Bastille, for what they are.

[Truearcaneist]

Alright, got more time with the new vauban and he’s starting to grow on me. 
Tesla Nervos: still too slow for keeping up with you and the delay of first proc has left me forgetting this ability until I’m setting up a defensive area. Even then it’s a last though due to how inefficient the ability is.  I would recommend a limited range and targeting system similar to wukong’s clone. Would make for a quality on the go CC during the more mobility  intensive missions. 
 

minelayer-tether coil: very good at wide area disabling and snagging mobs as they come close to a defense point. Still has a bug where tendrils will not disappear after killing a tethered enemy, and will face plant anyone grabbed more than 9m from it if deployed on the ground. Found this fun to use with a mid-range vortex and deployed above said vortex. That or a status ferrox and condition overload for smaller spaces. Issues with this is ragdoll colision and frozen lazer shows. Also, cost is 25 and it takes 2 deployed to have an effective coverage of 4 tethers. Is this by design?

Fletcher orb: very much viable in level 60 or less missions, or level 70 or less non-grinder/corrupt missions. No utility outside free random low damage in an area.  Would still see giving this a chance to cause an enemy to become disarmed to be a valid addition to this ability (doesn’t have to be high).  Again, requires at least 2 deployed in the same area to be effective.

Vec.. boost pad 2.0: I get the memes of shooing something off a cliff or into a wall. Make the ragdoll do something more than bump an enemy, collision damage or stun.  Boost needs to be more substantial than a scoot in one direction to want me to set this down.

Overdrive: look at other complaints on this thead and see that it is inefficient with the wheel concept to be of use outside just seeing what would happen if I boost this deployable or companion. I do not use this unless I feel my nail orb needs a chance to stay useful at 50-70 level missions.

photon strike: good if loosed on 8+ enemies due to scaling, bad because speed is slow. Outside a oh S#&$ it’s getting crowded in here situation, it’s more efficient to slaughter stiff with daggers than a flashy explosive. And even then w/o natural talent you will get shredded w/o something to stop bullets from hitting you.

bastille/vortex: vortex is best cc, fight me if you don’t agree. A 17-20m radius orb of ragdoll of doom makes it to where you don’t need to worry about getting shot. Bastille is good for an lock down and breach, but the armor buff seems to not really stay long enough to want me to use it for survivability. would recommend a slow degrade instead of a flat timer. Make it for every 100 armor gained it will degrade by 2 armor per second (0-100 armor= -2A/sec; 101-200=-4A/sec, etc).

overall gripe: still feels like he is made of gasoline soaked paper. Make armor gained from Bastille last much longer outside of it to encourage the use of it at 100 energy cost. Reduce casting time on the 2 and 4 ability and try to reduce windup of the photon’s charge. Add a splash of utility to his minelayers that promotes survival (health gain, overshield, speed buff, or energy gain). For example, tethered enemies have a greater chance to drop health and energy orbs.

thats all for now!

Edited November 2, 2019 by Truearcaneist

[ScytodiDaedalus]

Day 2 of Playtesting Ember and I will say my previous thoughts on the rework might've been slightly optimistic and touched by a bunch of disbelief of the idea "This can't be worse".

Here are the issues I've encountered so far:

My thoughts on Fireball haven't changed, here they are for reference

Spoiler

On 2019-11-01 at 12:41 AM, ScytodiDaedalus said:

Fireball: This right now is Ember's biggest lacking ability, the max Combo damage is great, but it has three big problems, two of which have been present long before:

A. The Combo Window timer and it's steps: Requiring to cast 3 Fireballs worth 75 Energy, each dealing 1/8; 1/4 & 1/2 the damage of a final combo one, is absurd.
The timer is also very small and at 100% Duration you can't even cast any ability in-between without losing it.

My suggestions: I strongly suggest increasing the Window timer to a minimum of 4 unmoddable seconds. Doubling the base damage of Fireball and reducing the amount of steps required to Max the Combo so it only reaches up to 4x. Also, reduce the base cost of Fireball and make it increase to 25 upon hitting the Max Combo, maybe 6.25; 12.50; 25?
 

B. Radius & Area Damage: The biggest damage number Fireball deals is on a target that is directly hit by the Fireball, makes sense that whoever took a flaming ball to the face is melting more than everyone else but the enemies caught in the radius only take roughly 1/3rd of the damage of Fireball even if you target the ground the damage it deals is very minimal and the radius makes matters worse.

My suggestions: Invert the Damage from Area & Direct hit(So that the Area damage values is the Direct one and vice-versa) OR just make it so it's just the Area damage.
Double the Explosion Area radius. Also Charging Fireball should increase the Radius of explosion by up to 50%.
 

C. Hitbox: Lobbing a ball of flames usually has it slip past enemies or land just at their feet if thrown from above, whereas Inferno lands 100% of the time. I just think it'd be nice to increase the size of the Fireball's hitbox so that it more reliably explodes at enemies, that is without making it collide of every bit of terrain.

 

Immolation:

-Damage Reduction isn't the best Survival tool for Ember. The reason people generally requested Ember having some form of DR was because WoF encouraged Ember to be in-between enemies, being surrounded by them as they melted away, now that is no more, the fact that there's more than twice the enemies shooting at her now makes it as DR didn't make a difference.

-The Energy Cost & Drain is high and feels too punishing, I understand the idea is to disallow you to run it forever else the game is too easy, but it feels the energy is simply thrown out the window even when recasting it or Fire Blasting away the heat
 

Fire Blast:

-It's Damage is very lacking for it's 75 Energy cost.

-It is now Ember's only fast CC Ablity with 75 Energy cost.

-The Armor strip is dependent on Immolation's bar.
 

Inferno: Too Useful compared to the rest of her kit, still not good enough.

-Enemies stop spreading the flames upon death, means that if an Enemy is immediately killed there's nothing to spread.

-It's DPS is doubled when the Immolation Bar is at max, or to be more precise it's DPS is halved when you aren't running Immolation at max.

-It's energy cost is 10 per enemy, it simply outclasses Fireball and Fireblast in damage, however with a massive amount of enemies this cost goes way up high, being the most reliable source of damage and choosing to spam it to maximize damage just adds up to the bad side of things. Correcting it now: The maximum cost is actually capped at 100, the cost for hitting 10 enemies and above is the same.
 

The Synergies: These so called synergies should really stop, the ones woven with Immolation on Fire Blast's Armor Strip and Inferno's dps, they stop being Synergies and start becoming Dependencies, forcing playstyles nobody asks for and punishes players for not using them.
 

Summarized: Ember's Ability Costs are too high for the damage they deal, this damage not being enough means more enemies are around, more enemies shooting her is bad and Immolation can't do much about it because Ability Costs are too high.

Suggestions: Here's a bunch whole lot of suggestions of what I believe could or should be applied to help Ember's current state. Warning, very long.

Spoiler

Fireball: I stated my Suggestions on the previous spoiler already but here they go

-I strongly suggest increasing the Window timer to a minimum of 4 unmoddable seconds. Doubling the base damage of Fireball and reducing the amount of steps required to Max the Combo so it only reaches up to 4x. Also, reduce the base cost of Fireball and make it increase to 25 upon reaching the Max Combo, maybe 6.25; 12.50; 25?

-Invert the Damage from Area & Direct hit(So that the Area damage values is the Direct one and vice-versa) OR just make it so it's just the Area damage.

-Double the Explosion Area radius. Also, Charging Fireball should increase the Radius of explosion by up to 50%.
 

Immolation: As said previously, the damage reduction it gives isn't worth the loss of continous death around Ember, also it's purpose and reason of being is gone as is WoF, or is it?

-Having this ability Enable "World on Fire" when reaching the maximum heat would make up nicely for the Ever-growing Energy it has, increasing the rate the bursts happen as the ability exponentially increases in Energy cost.

-Remove or Greatly lower the speed at which Fireball & Inferno accelerate the heat increase of the meter. Make it so Immolation increases the heat passively on it's own. Remove it's interaction with Fire Blast, so nothing hinders the growth of the meter. The idea being that it works as an ability of it's own based more on timing but allow it to receive a SLIGHT boost with the rest of her kit.

-Lower Minimum DR to 20 or 25, reason being I understand the intent on the current iteration of Immolation forcing you to have some sort of vulnerability window and not having Ember have a 90% or really high DR at all times, so having it start at 50% or so at all times with a changed energy cost is too easy, too rewarding.

-Reduce Energy Cost to 25, so it slightly matches the initial DR.

The reasoning behind all these changes is allow Immolation to Immolate enemies. It feels really off that Ember can get hotter but all that happens around her is receiving less damage and draining her energy for no added benefit. Making a use for the DR that was needed before the rework by giving her what really could use the most of it, that being WoF, while also locking it behind a "timed activation" and a massive energy drain preventing her running it all day long but still giving you SOMETHING out of burning that energy, unless there's no more enemies around her in which case players would rather choose to disable the ability.
 

Fire Blast: Just make it not as expensive for how valuable it is.

-Remove it's interaction with Immolation so that they behave as abilities on their own.

-Reduce it's energy cost to 50 or 40.

-Make the Armor Strip a Static 75%
 

Inferno: Spreading is key.

-Allow Inferno to also leave a Pyre or Flames that will spread on enemies who pass where meteors landed
   OR
-Allow Inferno's Flames persist even through enemies' death so that they still spread if enemies decide to wander about (or both options really)

-Make the cost Static 100, it still outweighs Fireball's damage in all domains specially if it has the perk to spread at no more than 10 energy per enemy.

-Change the Damage Per Second to it's maximum 700 and make it unaffected by Immolation. Again, synergies being dependencies start to not be nice.

Sorry that this may have been long but the issues with the current Ember are numerous and the current iteration really has very good aspects and ideas, but their execution isn't the best... yet. I just aim to make it not brutally expensive in the energy and remove the dependencies with Immolation, it was bad that Accelerant was VERY necessary to maximize the damage of all of Ember's Abilities, I just really don't want it to happen again.

 

 

 

Edited November 2, 2019 by ScytodiDaedalus
Striking and correcting some data.

[NoClip-]

Tesla nervos with the augment is awesome. so awesome that i feel it should be rolled into basic functionality. Wishful thinking probably, but a solid improvement over the original for sure. The complete lack of duration and moving solely to charges is great. They could maybe move a little faster and a max of 1 mine stuck to an enemy would help a lot though.

Minelayer is a waste of space except for overdriver. Remove the other mines, make overdriver provide its current bonus +extra speed +some shields cause vauban needs them desperately. If it ends up being more energy expensive as a result, i think that would be a fair trade despite his current energy issues. Speed pad, the shrapnel thing, and the tether thing are all useless in regular play and needlessly underpowered

Photon repeater is awesome. Great damage, range is decent for what it does, extra cast speed would be nice but i honestly cant complain about it otherwise. Love it. some tool tips for scaling would be aces. 

Bastille is also great with the changes. Speed up the animation a touch and you really have nothing anyone can complain about.

 

I do feel like vauban is running a little energy hungry now, maybe change his passive to give a very small energy regen on cc'd enemies, or consider adding a secondary resource for him. A replenishing magazine of orbs/mines/balls/whatever, and dialing down the costs a touch perhaps, i dunno, just spitballing here. I really do like the rework aside from minelayer still being a waste of a button 90% of the time. 

[Haranthus]

Vauban...

Unfortunately - my reveal thoughts have pretty much come true.

Let's start with the good:

• Photon Strike - Super satisfying but chunky.  It's a little slow so I feel like if I don't have CC out I'm never going to hit anything with it ... but nonetheless very satisfying
• Bastille - Same old goodness ... but it has some issues
• Vortex - The combo ability is kinda nice but also kinda wierd.  Not 100% sure how I feel, but it's not an overall negative.
• Telsas - Good secondary CC ... but ...

Now the negatives:

• Vauban is still so squishy that he pretty much can't do anything.  He has no sustain, no tank and no ability to get either of these things in a meaningful way.  I have all the CC in the world, but not much ability to actually use it as I can literally get one-shotted from off camera and that's it. 
  • Built Umbral tanky had problems
  • Built full Primed Vigor had problems
• Modding Vauban is hell - yeah there's a bit of whack-a-mole in many frames, but Vauban is exceptionally bad.
  • Want to use your kit? Better mod for efficiency because your costs are super high!  Oh wait ... that kills your duration neutering the kit *wah wah*
  • Oh wait ... you have to build power strength for bastille to be useful ... which kills your range and your efficiency ... *wah wah*
  • OH WAIT to have any survivability you need to give up slots to do any of that!  Leaving  you with an incredibly mediocre build ... 
  • OH OH WAIT you also need range ... did we forget that?
  • Basically as I mod him I feel like I can't actually build into any real strength or survivability meaning that pretty much all of the other CC frames in the game are MUCH better than Vauban at his main job
    • Nidus has tank & built in survivability and limited immortality
    • Kohra (who also struggles with build) has her cat to heal her and her CC is as strong and arguably stronger than Vauban
    • Nova has big damage reduction (which synergies with how you want to build her)
    • Nyx makes enemies in to Allies meaning they stop shooting her and when push comes to shove can hit her 4 and just stop taking damage
    • Hydroid doesn't have any limiters on his CC - 20 tentacles, no limits on enemies they can hit, pool and a healing mod for his pool
  • Once again, I don't feel like there is any good way to mod him into any kind of good place.  The best I got was a "ok" place with higher efficiency and middling everything else.
• Tesla Grenades ... don't do much damage ... they have good status chance ... but really ... why use them?  I threw them around a lot but often didn't see a use-case where they shined over dropping a Bastille
• Minelayer
  • Why?  This ability played out exactly how I thought it would...
  • Tether coil 
    • There is absolutely no use-case for this ability.  Why would I ever choose this over Bastille or even my Tesla's?
  • Flechette orb
    • Low damage ... low range ... largely meaningless ... why use this?
  • Vector Pad
    • WHY?! What? What am I supposed to do with this? Why is it here?
  • Overdriver
    • Switch 2 to this ... leave on this for the mission.  Done
  • This whole ability lacks any real synergy with the kit.   There are no clear use-cases as to when/why you would use 3/4 of the abilities.  I don't know ... maybe I'm missing something here?
• Bastille/Vortex
  • Bastille is hard to mod for.  Capping the enemies effected by power-strength destroys his whole kit.  Which means if you build around that cap, your other choice is to spam which further highlights the lack of reason for Minelayer and the Tesla grenades.
  • The armor strip and supposed buff are extremely non-noticeable
  • Vortex same as ever ... for me it's just a way to deliver my Photon Strike *so satisfying*

I want to like this kit.  And in some ways, I really actually do like it over the old kit ... but it lacks synergy and is impossible to mod for.  I don't mind his cast times as much as other people seem to ... until they get me killed which they have.

He needs something so he doesn't just go squish.  His squishyness disqualifies him from high level missions.  

I guess I'm happy for the change, but really disappointed in some of the outcomes.

[Bratty_Child]

Ember 2 damage reduction is very conflicting because she doesn't have space between juggling the DR and massive energy drain. A buffer to use Fireblast and prevent energy drain? Sure there's one, but she's not keeping DR to at reasonable level.

 

Fireblast is rather expensive at 75 energy and its primarily used to lower heat level. Aside from some armor stripping, its still a weak ability. It should have Accelerant integrated with it.

[(PSN)Shadow_Wolf_667]

Vauban really needs a defensive ability. Squishy warframes like Limbo, Loki, or Mirage, all of whom have similar base stats on their prime variants, have some sort of defensive ability, be it Limbo's rift, Loki's invisibility, or Mirage's eclipse. Vauban however, has no such ability, which given he is so very squishy (100 base health, shields and armour) is incredibly detrimental to his usefulness. Something like a shatter shield would be cool, or even like Volt's shield, just to aid in his survivability, or even a full body armouring that stores damage and then releases it in an AOE blast, akin to Black Panther's outfit. Basically, he really needs some way to quickly and efficiently mitigate damage.

[Bratty_Child]

Vauban Vortex needs to shift enemies vertically and horizontally whilst pulling them toward the center to prevent enemy being locked down between corners which is cumbersome for cases in defend mission.

[HealingMind]

So, regarding Ember's rework I overall like the way her kit works together, and playing around with it has felt pretty powerful. However, I'm really not sure why Immolate needs the energy drain on max ramp up. It makes her fire blast feels more like an "AFK check" than a natural part of her kit, and makes the kit feel a lot more janky that it really is. It's especially odd, since you're incentivized to use her 3 at max ramp to completely strip armor and them go buck wild with her fire, and I feel like that playstyle wouldn't be super broken if it removed an arbitrary downside it doesn't really need.

Now, Vauban is... I guess a bit better, but I wouldn't say it helped that much. Vauban suffers from 2 BIG issues: redundancy (why would I ever use sticky ripline/teslas over his 4 if they both are slow, but low energy, and your 4 has much more value, why would I use Flechette orb ever when his 3 exists, etc.) and just general clunk. Even with Natural Talent, he is S L O W, and has trouble really competing, even with the OTHER rework in ember. This is ESPECIALLY apparent in his 3, as by the time the damn thing gets out you could have just shot/melee'd the group in the vortex much faster.  I have no idea why this thing needs to be so slow, I don't even consider it to be that great at damaging compared to some other options we have now if it could be cast. It feels like even DE knows about this, as vauban gets a free cast basically for MANAGING TO HIT A GROUP WITH IT.

[Amadurim]

Ember's rework is nice but there's a problem.

She's too energy hungry, immolation's meter increase too fast after 2-3 cast of inferno and to reduce it you have to fire blast which cost 75 energy.                                                             Fire blast cost has to be reduced or just give ember +efficiency on ability cast based on immolation meter.

 

Vauban, i dont play him much but Bastille should not has enemy limit based on strength. It's a cc ability and everyone know that what make cc good is that you dont need strength, but range. Loki, Limbo to name a few. Bastille's armor strip also need to strip all enemies inside bastille regardless what condition the enemies in, currently it only strip enemies that are floating by bastille.

[MrFrog9]

(Ignore the leecher lel)

as far as I can tell the best way to use the new Ember is to build exclusively for Inferno. Max Strength, max efficiency, range about 150-175% (any more is overkill), duration can be ignored because it doesn't really affect anything significant. Use Zenurik focus for better energy management. Immolate can be used at really high levels to strip armour off of heavies with Fire Blast but it's not worth using otherwise, as the only thing it really does is reduce damage and you aren't going to get shot at in the first place if the entire map's constantly on fire. Pick a relatively elevated spot to help you see over obstacles (just jumping helps too) and spam 4, making sure to hit every area around you so you don't get attacked from behind. If there's a convenient corner which has a decent view of the room, use that.

I don't understand what Fireball is supposed to be used for. Even at 8x combo, it only does twice as much damage as Inferno at over twice the energy cost per enemy. If there's a large group of enemies, Inferno is better. For small groups or single enemies... Inferno is still better, because it doesn't have Fireball's combo rampup and is more energy efficient.

Ember needs significant rebalancing across the board I think.

[CuteFoxyFox]

So far satisfied with Ember rework, not so much with Vauban

 

EMBER

I will start from saying the same thing everyone does...

EMBER IS TOO ENERGY HUNGRY

Passive. Passive sometimes doesnt count, enemies are burning around me and i get no bonus for it

1. Make fireball cost less to spam it, well still adding a combo counter still makes this skill bad, inferno costs less per-enemy hit than a single fire ball, why would i choose to spend 50 energy instead of 7?

2. It sucks energy more than her old ultimate and to cool it off you need to spend additional energy when it jumps up to 90 almost instantly. Also it can receive energy from zenurik ability but not energy pizzas? Please change it if you want to keep ember energy hungry.

3. Good ability, too much energy cost

4. Would need to increse damage of the burn or projectile itself, it kinda still doesnt to as much on high levels, make the damage stack with the heat gauge - then i would feel more likely to keep it up then keep it on 50

 

Ember needs either more energy to spend or less costs, 3 should cost 30-35 at base and fire ball even less, ember is so so so so energy hungry other frames that players used to call energy hungry doesnt even stand up to Ember's name rn. Her 4th damage is not quite enough on high levels, i would love for it to stack up with Heat gauge so we could get more rewards for keeping the gauge high up since its the main mechanic in Ember now, for now it feels like... expensive iron skin. And please please please let her get energy from energy pizzas while 2 is up, lack of it makes her so energy hungry you just cant afford to even cool off yourself.

 

VAUBAN

Animations: Cool but makes a squishy frame stand in a place. Well standing in one spot while enemies shoot from all directions seems like a nice death wish alright. Think about animations please 😕

Passive: Good, no problem with it

1. Too weak, doesnt even feel like using it.

2. Teather Granade pulling up to 2 enemies? Waste of energy, Flechette granade... little AOE spot where i can use tether or 4th ability? waste of energy really - dmg and speed ones are okay

3. DEALS NO DAMAGE, problem is when you go for the higher levels and the beam does completely nothing, i think it should have a % scaling or something, since the further you go the only thing you want to use is Dmg granade and bastille

4. Well, feels good I suppose, nothing much changed from these - they feel like good ol' vauban skills and works well.

 

Please think to change granades on his 2 and give 3 a % scaling or something to actually be useful on higher levels.

 

Thanks for reading! ❤️

 

Edited November 2, 2019 by CuteFoxyFox

[FlyingDice]

Ember Rework:

Hot-take (get it?): On the whole, she feels much improved. However, there are a couple points that really make her painful to play in the current state.

1. Immolation feels really bad because it quickly escalates out of control and sucks up all of your energy with no good way to dial things back. The mechanic is fitting and Ember needs DR, but the functional energy drain is far too high. This comes about because once the meter buildup starts to accelerate, it quickly reaches a state where it rebuilds so fast that you're forced to either toggle it off (i.e. stop using your defensive ability with little control over when you do so), waste all your energy letting it sit at 90%, or waste all your energy spamming Fire Blast constantly. I've been running a max efficiency build with Arcane Energize + focus tree energy regen spam + the 4 augment + Primed Flow and she still takes way too much energy -- and that's on relatively low level (20-40) missions where everything actually dies to a cast or two of Inferno.

I see a couple ways forward: a) Hard cap the peak meter build speed for the Immolation meter when Ember isn't actively casting Fireball or Inferno to a much lower rate. b) Have Fire Blast reset the meter build speed on cast.

Personally I think the latter makes the most sense and gives the player a reasonable amount of control over meter build. I'm sorry, but having to toggle your defensive ability off frequently to keep it on is counter-intuitive and finicky.

2. Fire Blast being Line-of-Effect makes it frustrating and not very useful. Why is an AoE fireburst that fills the area around you with flames stopped by: thin railings, grated stairways, windows, doorways, &c.? If it's not possible to allow it to propagate through all connected spaces within the AoE without going through walls from a technical perspective, it's better to let it go through walls than to not let it go through open doorways and small decorative bits full of holes.

3. Inferno being directional is strange, annoying to manage, and at odds with Ember's general motif. Why do you need to look right at the people you want to set on fire? For a frame that's all about indiscriminate arson, that's oddly specific, and in a sense even more so than how Personal Space on Fire felt before this rework. It also makes range pretty much pointless, since you're only going to be able to effect a relatively small slice of the area around you at any given time anyways.This is especially jarring on more compact tiles, where enemies that are at the edge of your range and occluded by multiple walls will be hit, but enemies that are literally hitting you in the back at melee range will be ignored.

[PlasmaPsychosis]

Vauban's Rework. Lots of people wanted it, and now we have. However, this rework strikes me as missing a lot of things that would make Vauban go from useless, to high tier. In this rework's current state, Vauban is not significantly better off than he was. He still suffers from the same issue of having abilities that do not

Tesla Nervos:

This is a significant improvement over the old Tesla, in my opinion. The only issue I have with Tesla Nervos is the status chance. In Warframe, or a least how I and many other veterans play the game, if you can kill an enemy instantly, there is zero reason to do anything else. It is simply the most efficient option. Now, Tesla Nervos would serve two main purposes. To lock down an enemies and make them easier to kill them instantly, OR to lock down an enemy that you CANNOT kill instantly. In such a situation, I would not want to be charging Tesla Nervos to get the status chance up, or at least the chances of proccing Electricity  on an enemy (or enemies). Relying on a coin flip could be the difference between getting one shot or the objective getting one shot. Lots of frames already have guaranteed electric procs, so why can't Vauban? Having an unreliable 1 ability is not good when compared to Volt's 1 ability.

TL:DR You shouldn't have to charge an ability in order to make it reliable, because that takes things out of the player's control. If Vauban is a frame who is ultimately all about control, then this change would only enhance that feeling and streamline gameplay.

Minelayer:

This ability needs some help. Pure and simple. This ability does not do enough to warrant use outside of either memes, or Overdriver, in it's current state.

Overdriver: This ability is good. Damage buffs are never a bad thing.

Tether Coil: This ability only has one problem that keeps it from being really useful. Only being able to grab two enemies is too few. I would have no reason what is essentially a mini version of Vortex with about double range if it can't grab more than two enemies. I feel it would be best to raise the base to at least 4 enemies, and make that number scale with power strength. At 150% strength, Tether Coil would be able to hold 6 enemies, a third of the enemies that Bastille can hold at that same level of ability strength. 

TL:DR Tether Coil can currently hold too few enemies for it to be useful compared to something like Bastille or Vortex. Or even Excalibur's Radial Blind.

Vector Pad: This ability simply does not do enough to be considered worthwhile. Why would I ever use Vector Pad when I could use something like Gauss, Nova, Zephyr, Wisp, Excalibur, that do what this does, except better. Vector Pad needs to do something else. if it is to be useful in comparison. A common idea I have heard thrown around a lot is for it to give a speed boost. I don't know if it necessarily has to give a firerate/reload/holster speed buff as well (which would make it a mini Gauss Redline + speed boost that can be shared with teammates. I think that would be cool), but the important part is that it gives something related to Vectors if the theme must be preserved. 

TL:DR Vector Pad needs to do more than just launch people. There are already frames who do that much better (Nova being the best example). If Vector Pad also gave a speed boost (possibly in tandem with Guass's Redline Buffs), then Vector pad would be a very useful ability.

Flechette Orb: This ability simply does not have the damage or utility to be useful. In virtually any situation I can think of, it would be better to simply shoot or melee an enemy instead of placing down a Flechette Orb. Puncture Damage is not very good in comparison to slash, and the damage I can do is overshadowed by simply swinging a melee weapon. I believe that if this ability is to remain as a sort of turret, then it needs a way to have utility. I believe that Flechette Orb should have it's damage changed to Slash, give it 100% status chance, that  and have the ability to absorb the elementals in the weapon that shoots the Orb. Each added elemental would then be added as 100% of the Orb's base damage. For example, if I shoot a Flechette Orb with base 100 damage with Viral modded weapon, it would then deal 100 Slash and 100 Viral damage per second. This would make Flechette Orb EXTREMELY useful. You could use it for CC, armor stripping, Viral proccing, Heat proccing, and the list goes on. It would be important to make it so that the Orb doesn't get it's elementals replaced when shot by different elementals like Zephyr's Tornado. Instead it would continue to gain damage as you hit it with more element types. Also, if the Orb always forced statuses to proc, it would mean that it would both have the potential to 

TL:DR Flechette Orb does not do enough in it's current state. It's damage is lackluster, along with any utility it might have. My suggestion is that it would be changed to slash damage, force status procs, and then gain 100% of it's base damage every time it is shot with a different elemental, gaining that damage type as the extra 100%.

Woohoo! That was a lot of stuff to read through. Now onto to something much easier to talk about

Photon Strike: This ability is #*!%ing SICK to look at! Unfortunately it has two problems.

1) It charges too slowly. It makes sense that it would charge slowly, creates a cool sense of anticipation, but is too impractical. In the time it takes for Photon Strike to finally hit enemies, I could have run over to them, and then killed them right as the Photon Strike finally came down. Compared to a lot of other relatively slow abilities (Nidus's 1, Oberon's 4, Wisp's 4, etc), this ability simply takes too long to use. I think that that a cast time between 0.8 and 1.2 seconds would be an ideal charge time to keep it fast enough to keep up in Warframe's chaotic, breakneck speed combat.

2) Scaling damage. This is Vauban's main damaging ability, and just doing flat damage is not enough to keep it relevant in high level content. Considering I currently have something called the Tigris Prime, which is modded for punch through, AND I have melee weapons that have the damage potential that fair outclasses the damage of this one ability. To be honest, I have no idea how to make this ability scale. Maybe every time it kills something it takes some of that enemy's health as damage to be added. Something like Gara's Splinter Storm + Mass Vitrify Combo. Maybe Orbital Strike could absorb the health of things killed in Vortex, promote some extra synergy.

TL:DR Photon Strike takes too long to charge and does not have a way to scale.

Bastille/Vortex: This seems to be the best part of Vauban's rework. Combining his two best abilities into one and giving Bastille the ability to strip armor is very good. The only thing I MIGHT do to these abilities is increase their base duration a little. This is not by any means necessary, but it would be a nice QoL change and would make Vauban less dependent on duration, thus allowing for more build variety.

TL:DR This is a really good change. There is room for a little extra base duration, but is not necessary.

In summary, I am of the opinion this rework has put Vauban in another state of unfulfilled potential, despite revealing more of it. He is better than he was before, but he still does not have enough utility or damage to make him a stellar Warframe, such as Saryn, Equinox, Rhino, or Wisp. I know that I currently do not have a reason gameplay-wise to use him. Using him for fun is one thing, using him because he is useful is another. Also, I congratulate anyone who decided to read this ENTIRE thing. If anyone at Digital Extremes does decide to read the entire thing, PLEASE understand that this is an attempt (perhaps not a perfectly worded or phrased one) to make Vauban a better Warframe. Making him more enjoyable by players at all levels of play can do nothing but benefit the future of this game, a game that I desperately want to see grow, succeed, and continue being the amazing success story that it is. I have played this game for just under three years now, and I can confidently say that this game is something special. Hopefully this criticism of Vauban's current state will help make this frame something special too.

Kind regards,

PlasmaPsychosis

[EvGreed]

I can say Ember now press 4 spammer.. and you don't need other ability so as not to waste energy. (no better no worse just stagnation)  

Previously, the ember was more unique than now: She was the only one who amplified the fire damage (good with fire weapon) and of those who could be put as a turret while runnig an operator (well at interceptions). 

Now she is like others frames. (gara, garuda as example)

And yes the meteor shower and immolation look awful (the concept of falling fire stones in an enclosed space and luminous sphere of fire)... who invented this, a designer from some kind of free fantasy mmorpg (ah, yes i forget it)?

 

[LordDoom01]

Concerning Ember's Rework, it is an improvement. But it could use more. Fireball still feels weak, and charging it up doesn't seem to change much. Immolate is interesting. I find the energy drain is sometimes an issue, other times it isn't. I'd say the worst thing about it is when you accidentally turn it off. When you mean too, it feels like a smart move to save energy. But when you do it by accident, the lack of any effect makes me feel like I wasted it. Maybe some fire wave sent out on deactivation, based on the level at the time?

As for Fire Blast and Inferno, got no complaints. I actually do like the new Inferno, looks and feels powerful.

Concerning Vauban's rework, I have not played him enough to give proper thoughts. I did one mission and he didn't really feel all that different. And his orbital strike has far too long a cast animation. That is all I got for him.

Edited November 2, 2019 by LordDoom01

[KokoroWish]

Honestly, why is the heat gague not part of her passive? I actually really like her, but this keeps bothering me.

Edited November 2, 2019 by KokoroWish

[Karanak141]

Frankly immolation would be better as the passive on ember,bake in the current passive while let it build from 0 to 100 giving DR and boosting other abilities but each shot taken reduces the meter.

Move fire blast to 1 and reduce the energy cost as right now its only good for 4 things, minor cc, armor strip, bar clear and light enemies on fire which is fine as long as you make that purpose useful in the kit.keeping the armor strip to the meter dump is a good thing.hold it to use the fire dump part to get armor strip as it would dump 25 points

Bring back accelerate for 2 and make the stun on it tied to immolate so it is also dumps the bar for 25 points to stun, again hold down for dump and press to make all enemies take extra fire damage also bring back the support ember that folks like

Have inferno be the 3 spot as it is a good nuke and feels great to use.With the way it is supposed to work it makes a balanced immolation builder

Fireball changes to Fire of the Phoenix for the 4 slot. You have to have a maxed meter to go into this form but you now can rapid fire fireballs that have good knock back effect, you use a summoned fire whip as a melee and the passive shifts from DR in this mode instead to revive from death as in reborn phoenix kind of thing but the revive empties the meter and puts you back into normal mode. You can still use your abilities normally in this mode as well.

 

But besides my ideas coming out what Ember needs right now is bug fixes as there is a lot of inconsistent issues with her then number tweeks

[Huteer]

With Ember I am very disappointed with the new update, I play her pretty much exclusively and this update has almost killed all enthusiasm I have for playing Warframe anymore. The ability changes mean that my playstyle is just dead, it ceases to exist, with accelerant now gone. Personally, WoF was a nice buffer for a quick room clear in an emergency but the new ability is fine. But I don’t like immolation at all.

Now I may be alone here but, I don’t play ember to be tanky, that’s Rhino’s or Inaros’ job or whatever and I never had any survivability issues in any of the content I do, which is all of it except extended endless. I play her to do damage and keep my enemies dead. Accelerant with the augment, flash accelerant, ember was very good at that. Not only was I getting a massive multiplier for my fire damage, I was giving my teammates a cast speed buff.

The new passive is just bad as far as I can see. And maybe I’m wrong but, I don’t want my enemies to be on fire around me, I want them dead. If I have a sufficient amount of, on fire, enemies to make any use of the passive I’m not killing fast enough, probably because accelerant is gone, but I digress. Once I started using the Penta with napalm grenades, I found the old passive really useful, and yes, I know that’s a very specific loadout. However, I despite being a fully negative efficiency I never had energy problems again, and the buff to power strength was nice, but not important.

Now maybe I’m just a salty old guy trapped in the past and throwing a tantrum because my favourite toy got a new paint job, but for me Ember is just like Rhino, press 2 for DR then press 4 to damage things. Though with Rhino you at least press 3 for more damage so he wins out there.

Sorry if this is more ranty than analytic, but these changes are pretty personal to me and I am very sad to see the Ember I love now gone. I just need to get with the times or just stop playing Warframe I guess.

[Shonaney]

You wanted to make Vauban more "on the run", yeah you could play em like that, layn traps so noone could follow...but wait, the enemys arn't behind, they are in front of us!
Is there an Option to Stick Minelayer to other Players or myself? So enemys pulled to me with the coil or get dmg if they get close to me with the flechette.
And the Photon Strike...give em a 2 second Vortex/Coil to suck enemys to the point of impact, otherwise it is only usefull if u throw it into a existing vortex...and thats not that kind of "on the run" you said vauban would be, cause the time until i throw a vortex and a strike...the squad is at the other side of the map

So Ember,
i kinda like her but her Blast...make it a REAL aoe (not blocked by stuff cause u heat the area around) and give em a falloff 50%-100% of the range from 100%-50% of the dmg/reduction) and please, reduce the energy per cast depending on the immolate % (90% immolate .... 90% energy reduction? or maybe just 50%) you want synergies, use em all the way

that takes us right to Immolate, we know that ability should have a drawback but drain energy to 0 with a usefull build? (if u setup the 90% cost reduction for blast this may doesnt need to many tweaks) you added a "overcharge" stuff to gauss...add it to immolate, if it reaches 90% it keeps filling to 120% but after 90% it accumulates way slower cause the heat is already emitted setting stuff around you on flames (5m max range), it starts to increase draining energy and emitting waves of blasts, also knocking you off your feed, (energy drain increases between immolate 90-120% from 0-100%, chance of getting knocked down from 0-50%) the dmg reduction should keep the highest amount for about 5 seconds and then start to drop to the actuall immolate % to have the chance to "refresh" it to 90% with the next cast to keep it up

and finaly Inferno, i could live with the angel of view restriction...it isnt as annoying as ashs bladestorm where u have to look around like ur in panic, the range also is pretty damn good (if u keep the angel restriction in mind), but WHY why does enemys affected by the spreading burn not count to our passive? is it another sort of "burning"? ... oh and you remember revenant? you add a "flame" if a thrall is killed...add these to the location the comets impact if they kill all enemys there...may for a fixed 1-2 seconds or for 5-10 seconds but only if no other inferno cast is done

I could play ember at the moment just with 175% eff if i want to use 234, if i get a build with more range, dmg and less eff ... i just use 4 cause otherwise i would just toggle immolate on and off and 3 is just to expensive to use...for that amount of energy i could hit 4 some more times with better results...(it is like wait for immolate, cast 3 into enemys instant cast 4 after it to kill...oh no 90% immolate...cast 3 without any enemy around cause the drain starts wastn even more or toggle immolate ... even with the augment for inferno and a arcane energize you run out of energy fast)

Edited November 2, 2019 by Shonaney

[ViolaTan]

I'll personally be giving my feedback on Ember specifically. This is only the second day so far, so I apologize if I missed somethings that could fix some of the issues I have. But this is my current opinion on Ember's abilties as of now.

• Let's start with Fireball, personally I wished fireball gotten reworked much more than it did, it still is pretty bad in terms of using it to kill enemies, especially when abilities like Dread Mirror and Shattered Lash exist. The mantiples casts to get the combo bonuses also pretty worthless when you could just target all the enemies infront of you with your 4. I think Ember's first should be an ability that can set enemies on fire, not to kill them but to help Ember better build up her passive. Especially better if it also had Ember's accelerant's fire damage bonus aswell.
• Second, Immolation and Fire blast, I personally think that Immolation should cost more to innitially cast, but in exchange, Fire blast's cost should be less (Or only cost immolation as someone else suggested in a different thread). Fire blast is an ability you need to cast often to maintain Immolation from draining your energy or to slow down it's increase speed. But in the current state of things, I find it more efficient to just recast immolation rather than using Fire blast couple of times to slow down the rate which immolation increase at
• And finally, Inferno. The ability is nice, though one thing I really wished for was that it scales with Enemy level similar to Vauban's Photon strike, as it was said in the stream. Just enough to scale with enemy's health, not armor, you can already deal with that with Fire blast.

I believe that the abilities all work together, with the suggestions above, I think Ember could make a nice use of buffing her damage with the passive and fire damage bonus, better manage her energy and immolation while doing scaling damaging. Overall the Ember rework has been going in the right direction, similar to Harrow, cycling between abilities instead of leaving them on the whole mission like old World On Fire.

 

[tomrair]

My 2 cents on Vauban - bottom line, I think his rework needs a rework. He got better, but by far not enough.

 

The issues:

1. I think we all agree that the casting and animation times are too slow, especially on his 3.  That delay between casting photon strike and it hitting the target is just pityful.  Also, the aim on Vauban's 3 is off, the grenade is landing significantly below the recticle.

2. The numbers:  Overdrive gives you 25% bonus damage per 100% power strength, and that's just not worth it.  Of course nobody expects Vauban's damage buff to be as high as Chroma's, but if I have a Vauban build with let's say 200% strength, then I expect the damage increase to be significantly higher than a measly 50%.

Flechette orb is actually fine.  With 100% power strength, it's strong enough to kill lvl 100 Grineer butchers.  Of course it doesn't even make a scratch into Heavy gunners, but hey, it's just a 2, and if it just kills trash units that's ok.

Photon strike, however, is a joke.  It's not enough damage, it's the wrong kind (blast), and the radius is much too small.  Either you want it to be just a trash mob killer, then you could leave the damage as it is but make the radius much larger, or you want it to be a precision strike against high-level targets, then you could keep the radius but would have to increase the damage. In it's current state, it's neither here nor there.

 

My proposal for making him better would be to give him real area control abilities, by changing Photon strike:

Give Vauban the ability to select an elemental damage type for his Photon strike (heat, cold, toxin, electricity).  Photon strike then creates an area (cylinder with a 5 meter radius and 5 meter height, scaling with power range) that is infused with the selected elemental damage and stays in place for 20 seconds, scaling with power duration, so that enemies passing through that area will take damage and be affected by heat / cold / toxin / electric procs.

Additionally, if Photon strike is being cast into an existing bastille, the whole bastille will be 'charged' with the selected elemental damage, creating a synergy between Vauban's 3 and 4.

Edited November 2, 2019 by tomrair
fixed a typo

[D06pblH9l]

Good ember rework, which is totally killed by that her 3 and 4 not damaging enemies through walls

[LoopStricken]

RE: Ember

No PBR on her old cosmetics?

[NovusKnight]

I have a sincere few suggestions to further improve Vauban's kit, as some of the new additions aren't that awesome.

1 - flechetes. they deal puncture damage with ok status, but damage isn't stellar and firerate is low. the real problem here is inaccuracy, really; you can jut spam a dozen of these to create a lead storm wall. problem is, they can't hit the broad side of a barn. having these work like the in-game turrets (which lock on to a target and spam lasers) would be much better. I'd also change the bullet visuals to be something more... VISIBLE. it feels incredibly lackluster. if it could actualy lock on targets and unleash lead onto them, I can see this being a viable option to lock down a corridor while you're busy elsewhere.

2 - Vector pad. *HA!* no. this is garbage. I have a different suggestion: VECTOR BARRIER. it creates an energy wall similar to the one vapos crewmen can deploy it's similar to Volt's Shield. differences: 1 - does not increase damage of your attacks going through it, though it does not block your shots. 2 - enemy projectiles are REFLECTED back to the attacker. Vauban can now create portable cover; the one deployable he does not have elsewhere.

3 - the orbital strike could use a Flak effect, because its range isn't the best, has a time to charge up, and even is tossed in an arc... if the area of effect blast also caused a shower of projectiles in all directions (at least injuing those outside the immediate AoE) it'd be a lot better. right now, sometimes you have a unch of enemies being vaporized... with two guys who missed the AoE by a milimeter, *not even flinching at the devastating artilery bombading them.*