Ember is hot Garbage

[Reivhyn]

I'm curious how people were making ember survive into the 100+ levels before? Nothing seemed to work beyond spamming accel every couple of seconds and even that was iffy. You couldn't mod for shields cuz eventually a toxin or slash proc would kill you and health was a no go because of her low armor. 

[zoffmode]

6 minutes ago, Reivhyn said:

I'm curious how people were making ember survive into the 100+ levels before? Nothing seemed to work beyond spamming accel every couple of seconds and even that was iffy. You couldn't mod for shields cuz eventually a toxin or slash proc would kill you and health was a no go because of her low armor. 

Mainly Adaptation and Quick Thinking. Ever since the nerfs to range I gave up on Ember Firequake build and empowering fire damage is just playing worse version of Chroma/Rhino/Mirage.. So I don't see why people are crying about that. This is the build I used and it was doing fine to some extent. Obviously above lvl 100 it started to suffer, now it's much better and can easily survive into 200 and above. So I'm happy personally.

 

[EinheriarJudith]

21 minutes ago, Reivhyn said:

I'm curious how people were making ember survive into the 100+ levels before? Nothing seemed to work beyond spamming accel every couple of seconds and even that was iffy. You couldn't mod for shields cuz eventually a toxin or slash proc would kill you and health was a no go because of her low armor. 

Vitality+Redirection+Adaptation+heat/healing melee. i was still able to get 200+ strength in my build. without much sacrifice. 100 is not an issue. 200 well they dont balance the game around that so what does it matter?

Edited November 3, 2019 by EinheriarJudith

[XenMaster]

On 2019-11-02 at 9:11 PM, Midas said:

^^ How do you suggest it be fixed?

Like Khora's and saryn's synergy, Fire Blast should apply a debuff of 500% extra dmg to Fireball or Heat related.

 

Fireball need bigger Area of Effect of around 10m or above and transparent visual (preventing blinding yourself and allies out of enemy's attack).

 

Fireball need to be hitscan instead projectile (more like Opticor's hitscan visual).

 

Fire Blast armor strip shouldnt be rng. Let it benefit on Strength stat.

[Askorti]

1 hour ago, XenMaster said:

Fire Blast armor strip shouldnt be rng. Let it benefit on Strength stat.

RNG? It's based on immolation level. It strips 100% of armor at 90% immolation.

[XenMaster]

1 minute ago, Askorti said:

RNG? It's based on immolation level. It strips 100% of armor at 90% immolation.

Oh sorry oof.

 

Wait what? Requirement mechanic? 

[Blexander]

Just now, XenMaster said:

Oh sorry oof.

 

Wait what? Requirement mechanic? 

It's not necessarily a requirement. It strips 50% at base.

[ShortCat]

On 2019-11-02 at 4:54 PM, ZenHare said:

This isn't a problem limited to Ember.

While this is true, you misstook the direction of my critisim: Armor scaling has its own issues, I have huge problems with the design of her Armor strip. At the stage Fireblast becomes necessary its only usefull when Immolation meter is full! Fireblast's Armor Strip at 85% is worthless, a placebo and this is an issue.

[ShortCat]

22 hours ago, zoffmode said:

Idk how you say Ember has problems staying alive. She's an incredible tank now. Her nuke is also able to dish out good damage. Only time it can't is vs armor in which case she just strips it. You really can't compare every frame to Saryn. That's a horrible benchmark.

22 hours ago, MrTitan123 said:

Hot garbage? Garbage? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Holy S#&$ you’re wrong. Slap on an efficiency build, Rage, Healing flame, and you can shrug off level 90’s and above if you manage her immolation well. Max immolation when venting fire blast strips 100% armor instantly, and procs heat to add bonus power strength for Inferno to nuke everything.

And no, Ember’s new kit is not about pure damage like it was before. This version of her is meant to reward proper immolation management with damage reduction, increasingly powerful fire damage, and meteor nukes against unarmored enemies.

Before you criticize something, be sure to try it first, dude.

I mentioned it right here:

On 2019-11-02 at 2:06 PM, ShortCat said:

In higher lvls Ember also struggles to stay alive, because she has no CC and cannot kill fast enough. As a result, you would have to invest more into survivability at the cost of nuke power, which makes her even less dangerous in the process. This leaves only clunky Armor strip as a possible contribution.

Yes, she has more survivability than before rework, but this Rage, Healing Flame build provides only Armor strip when meter is full. She simply has no room to fulfill her DD and becomes a weapon platform with with conditional DR as well as Armor strip. Compared to many other Frames with DR skills, like Gara, Nidus, Nezha, Nova, Trinity, Mesa, Gauss, even Baruuk her kit offers nothing. There is absolutely no reason to pick Ember over any other Frame.

 

[DroopingPuppy]

12 hours ago, Djego27 said:

Well the WoF issue the community had could be fixed at lower levels by just using overextended or double tab the ability 5-6 times per minute(what is way less button mashing then the current Ember). The only thing it really screwed over was it's use for CC at high levels, given it became with accelerant spam to expensive to be worth it, but that never affected the people that complained in youtube guides or her on the Forums about the frame.

While the current energy use of Ember(being a energy hungry before the rework as well at high levels) is absolutely ridiculous, the rework adds tons of micro management(what the old Ember had more then most other frames in the game) that does not allow you to use your energy effective and feels overall meaningless. The new Ember design tries the same thing(press 4 for dps) that people where not satisfied with the frame for years while removing her actual main source of damage what was weapons build around accelerant. Also because DE stripped the frame even the DR(what is worse then on other tank frames) feels not even like a big improvement, simply because you get shot much more now.

Fireblast and Inferno are a incredible energy ineffective and slow way to kill armored stuff at L100 and it is actually worse vs other factions because the HP scaling of non armored units is higher. WoF did also not deliver in that regard, however WoF was at least good as CC and Ember had accelerant. Given that more or less nothing changed in the basic idea that Ember uses guns for damage at higher levels it is beyond me why DE removed accelerant, the single reason why Ember did perform very well in that role, just like Chroma. Ember basically went form a frame that had lots of AOE for lower levels and crazy weapon damage plus CC for higher levels to a frame that has a kind of meh damage reduction, a Inferno that scales just a little bit better then WoF did(leading to the same, shoot things to kill at high levels), incredible energy hungry and limited CC(that also kills your DR) and also does 3 times less damage with weapons now. 

 

 

That's just the low level's solution(not to mention about Equinox) but it doesn't save her in the high level.

Man, I was enraged by killing Ember by the false charge and I am keep using Equinox Prime after making her ever since, And Equinox Prime is my tool of the retribution for the injustice what DE have done. Before then, I was mainly use Volt(Prime) and use Ember occasionally but I am use her mainly on tier 3 to 4, and Volt was actualy the low level solution for me. But, they blamed Ember by the false charge of 'low level cleaner' and simply removed her from the game, so they must see how to 'ruin the low level' actually. DE have the responsibility for the consequence.

And, I am also think that current mechanism of Ember is flawed too. Its design requires the pump of energy to be functional. Perhaps they design her to be work with a Trinity with Energy Vampire by the minimum requirement? Else the position where energy orb is spawned in the Simulacrum?

But, it is, simply better than before. At least she can survive on the high level, and able to cause the damage against the enemy. I doubt it is possible to making her even worse with something that was intended to be crippled, though.

Edited November 4, 2019 by DroopingPuppy

[ShortCat]

11 hours ago, zoffmode said:

Mainly Adaptation and Quick Thinking. Ever since the nerfs to range I gave up on Ember Firequake build and empowering fire damage is just playing worse version of Chroma/Rhino/Mirage.. So I don't see why people are crying about that. This is the build I used and it was doing fine to some extent. Obviously above lvl 100 it started to suffer, now it's much better and can easily survive into 200 and above. So I'm happy personally.

 

Just what I was talking about. With this build and now with DR from Immolation you may survive, but what does it offer beyound survivability? Your PS is on the low side, so Inferno does very littly; then with low Duration and Range Inferno's debuff cannot spread and at least burn some enemies. With this build you just press 4 to rise heat and then 3 to lower it - in other words, mico manage a meter.

[Nothingface]

I feel she is in a more healthy place now than she was and I feel like the main problem with this ember rework isn't so much her kit but enemy scaling in general... That said I do have some feedback on her kit as a whole.

Her 1: indeed feels lackluster, even if it did damage higher level enemies the explosive radius feels too small. In my opinion it should be more like a grenade and blow up with a generous range spreading fire to help her passive, even if it didn't do damage at that point the stripping and CC from ignite procs would make it generally useful. its better with the augment but that's not really much a saving grace as warframes like Sayrn can do the same and more with no augment.

Her 2: is POWERFUL, we forget how strong flat DR is because of all the frames that are essentially unkillable. And TBH this shouldn't be the case, I personally feel that warframes shouldn't have god mode level abilitys that give 90+% raw damage mitigation, let alone an augment that can give 45% Damage Mitigation to all allies in XP range... that S#&$ is nightmarishly hard to balance around. Folks complain that enemies feel too easy... Abilitys like this, Over statted rivens and mass multipliers (10x crit damage... 900 Increased damage on Chroma...) are the cause. How can we ever have challenge with things like this in the game?!

Her 3: is suppose to be utility, its a huge range cc/stripping ability and its useful. I wondered why the damage was so low but I figured out that it was suppose to be a method to propagate ignite procs to power up her passive. I like it, but feel as tho its usefulness is stunted by how fast heat is generated by her 2. It feels like you HAVE to turn the 2 off all the time to keep it from going out of control, I would like a slower heat generation that you can actually manage with this ability. It would also be neat and synergistic if this ability did more base damage based on embers current heat!

Example. 50% = 400 damage, 60% = 800, 70% = 1200  ... I'm not a numbers guy but you get the idea. making it fill slower and feel more rewarding to vent would go a long way to making it feel less clunky by giving a good pay off. The visual indicator is already pretty good but Im frequently not looking at ember her self, a slightly more pronounced Audio Que when at full heat would be amazing!

Her 4: I like how it feels and looks. Her casting animation is a bit odd, but the visual on the meteors themselves is stellar. The frontal visual cone is a good balance choice that keeps her from afk spamming 4. Honestly I like much about it including the lingering damage on folks who survive. What i don't like is how low that damage feels in the current content. Running Luva Liches make it painfully obvious that she doesn't deal with the insane nature of enemy scaling well. Honestly i would like to see the lingering damage aura on survivors do more damage to those around them make them surviving actually beneficial to you.

TO BE ENTIRELY HONEST... her 4 ability is remarkably well designed and in a well adjusted warframe this could be a paragon of a decently regulated damage ability. The problem is enemies out scale it by level 90. And it one shots enemies under level 60... that means the sweet spot where this ability feels REALLY good is very small. And why would i go through the effort of stripping enemy armor with a cast, and pressing fireballs over and over again in high level content to do medicore DPS, when I could pull out Mesa and blow up the entire level, or exist on Sayrn, or mash 4 on Equinox, or press 1 on Octavia and read a magazine.... you get the idea. Any warframe with hyper scaling AoE renders ember obsolete at the start. And the only way I can think of to fix it is to rework enemy scaling, and that kinda sucks.

[Awazx]

If you believe that Ember's rework is bad, wait to try Vauban.

[zoffmode]

14 hours ago, ShortCat said:

Just what I was talking about. With this build and now with DR from Immolation you may survive, but what does it offer beyound survivability? Your PS is on the low side, so Inferno does very littly; then with low Duration and Range Inferno's debuff cannot spread and at least burn some enemies. With this build you just press 4 to rise heat and then 3 to lower it - in other words, mico manage a meter.

She's heavily improved and much more useful than before. So rework is a success since now she's usable. She might need an adjustement on energy cost for 2 perhaps, that's it.

I also have different build with more range and duration that drops Rage and relies and stacks damage resistance on shields instead, but honestly it's pretty unneeded. Most stuff tends to die from initial blast. 

 

If literally one frame is better than Ember, that doesn't automatically mean that Ember is trash and unusable. Saryn isn't a benchmark.

[ZenHare]

Damnit! I have to admit I was wrong. Welp, time to quit the Internet. I was wrong about the damage nerf being as extreme as what it is. But now I am really puzzled as to why I stopped playing Ember. Hell, I switched to Mag of all frames. Was it her paper thin defenses? Was it her ugly deluxe skin? Or was it just the constant hassle of juggling weapon builds every time I wanted to play her?

[Marinara19]

2 hours ago, zoffmode said:

 Saryn isn't a benchmark.

Right, ppl wine and moan and compare every frame to her like they supposed to be her. I don't even see her as anything more than a focus farmer~

[EinheriarJudith]

4 hours ago, Awazx said:

If you believe that Ember's rework is bad, wait to try Vauban.

vauban rework is not all that bad but it definitely is flashy for no reason. they also didnt listen to people (myself included) that said replace mine layer/make it throw all the mines at once to create a mine field.

people keep asking for frames to get charge hold and ability wheel gimmicks and vauban has both its actually disgusting (not in a good way) imo.

Edited November 5, 2019 by EinheriarJudith

[Miller_Genuine_Draft]

Maybe someday the game will be at a point where we will have a choice as to what skills we want to assign to the #1-4 buttons.   Thats getting pretty complex, but atleast that way people can customize their character with the skills they actually like instead of being forced to use skills that programmers set in stone.   (Yeah, thats a dream).

Me personally, for a long long time, when many people have had their Ember on the shelf collecting dust, I've used her daily to burn through my lower level missions.    She was fun for me and efficient at that.   She had a use.

For me having all her "skills" changed makes me feel robbed of a character that I really liked.   And I simply do not like her current ones.

Here's another dream ... Why not have a "Legacy" character with her old skill set for the folks who liked her the way she was.   It may be a difficult task to implement in the game, but it seems that the designers are some pretty smart folks.

So basically this was just a rant, but I'm pissed.   🙂

 

 

 

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

18 hours ago, ShortCat said:

While this is true, you misstook the direction of my critisim: Armor scaling has its own issues, I have huge problems with the design of her Armor strip. At the stage Fireblast becomes necessary its only usefull when Immolation meter is full! Fireblast's Armor Strip at 85% is worthless, a placebo and this is an issue.

Sorry but no, you absolutely do not need 100% armor strip for it to be useful.  As long as armor still exists on a target they receive extra damage from the element it is weak against.  And if you're "spamming" her abilities often because her gauge fills quickly then that armor is going to be gone anyway.

18 hours ago, ShortCat said:

I mentioned it right here:

Yes, she has more survivability than before rework, but this Rage, Healing Flame build provides only Armor strip when meter is full. She simply has no room to fulfill her DD and becomes a weapon platform with with conditional DR as well as Armor strip. Compared to many other Frames with DR skills, like Gara, Nidus, Nezha, Nova, Trinity, Mesa, Gauss, even Baruuk her kit offers nothing. There is absolutely no reason to pick Ember over any other Frame.

 

Her kit is the only kit that can consistently hand out heat procs.  Which melts armor and cc's targets for the duration.  Frame picks are purely player preference in 90% of the content that the game has.  Ember not being the best at something/ another frame doing something ember can do but better (like your DR argument) doesn't automatically invalidate Ember as a viable and playable choice.

18 hours ago, ShortCat said:

Just what I was talking about. With this build and now with DR from Immolation you may survive, but what does it offer beyound survivability? Your PS is on the low side, so Inferno does very littly; then with low Duration and Range Inferno's debuff cannot spread and at least burn some enemies. With this build you just press 4 to rise heat and then 3 to lower it - in other words, mico manage a meter.

You do not need much power strength to begin with because she not only gains extra power strength from enemies being on fire but her heat gauge also lets her do more damage the higher it is.  You do not need high range/duration with ember due to how often you're recasting your abilities to set enemies on fire.  And yes, you do micro manage a meter.  That's the point of it.  It's fine if you dislike that style but that doesn't make it an objectively bad thing.

 

So far the only legitimate complaints i've read has how her new rework removed her weapon buffer playstyle and that she can be energy hungry.  It would have been nice to keep the old style preserved in some fashion.  But I personally won't miss it when this drops for console.  There are other frames I can play that fulfill the weapon platform style of play.  Ember was never advertized as this.  Nor was that the outcome I expected when I hunted ember down to own in the early days.  Even if this new ember has some flaws to it's kit I still think it's a much better direction to be than her old kit.

[Monolake]

On 2019-11-04 at 2:20 AM, Reivhyn said:

I'm curious how people were making ember survive into the 100+ levels before? Nothing seemed to work beyond spamming accel every couple of seconds and even that was iffy. You couldn't mod for shields cuz eventually a toxin or slash proc would kill you and health was a no go because of her low armor. 

Before the nerf her ult had good range and acted as 'soft' CC even without the aug - the fire proc staggered. arcane Guardian for armor, (Adaptation didn't even exist then)

After the nerf there was no point playing Ember

[zoffmode]

4 hours ago, Papa--Emeritus said:

Maybe someday the game will be at a point where we will have a choice as to what skills we want to assign to the #1-4 buttons.   Thats getting pretty complex, but atleast that way people can customize their character with the skills they actually like instead of being forced to use skills that programmers set in stone.   (Yeah, thats a dream).

Me personally, for a long long time, when many people have had their Ember on the shelf collecting dust, I've used her daily to burn through my lower level missions.    She was fun for me and efficient at that.   She had a use.

For me having all her "skills" changed makes me feel robbed of a character that I really liked.   And I simply do not like her current ones.

Here's another dream ... Why not have a "Legacy" character with her old skill set for the folks who liked her the way she was.   It may be a difficult task to implement in the game, but it seems that the designers are some pretty smart folks.

So basically this was just a rant, but I'm pissed.   🙂

I've long since moved to Hyldryn for low level stuff. Her 3 needs line of sight but it has more range than post-nerf pre-rework Ember. No energy or tankiness problems either.

[SloppySlopster]

Anyone wanna tell me why Immolated Radiance doesn't affect companions or why Fireball combo doesn't affect Fireball Frenzy?

[Genoscythe]

Ember is a mobile meteor storm that annihilates anything she looks at, at any level, in any mission where enemies are not ability immune. Ember is a goddess of death and destruction and crashing people's PCs with exaggerated particle effects. I can take her into kuva siphons and arbitrations now.

Yes, some things like the clunky micromanagement can pull you down, and the energy cost of fireblast should definitely decrease by the percentage of your heat meter to be able to easily vent, and some people would also like her minimum damage resistance to go up a bit. But calling her hot garbage is pretty hyperbolic. She's around 300-700% more effective than before on level 50-200 missions.

[ShortCat]

8 hours ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

Sorry but no, you absolutely do not need 100% armor strip for it to be useful.  As long as armor still exists on a target they receive extra damage from the element it is weak against.  And if you're "spamming" her abilities often because her gauge fills quickly then that armor is going to be gone anyway.

You need full armor strip for fire, Ember's main damage type, to be effective. And we are back to mindless ability spam which I covered in the OP.

8 hours ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

Her kit is the only kit that can consistently hand out heat procs.  Which melts armor and cc's targets for the duration.  Frame picks are purely player preference in 90% of the content that the game has.  Ember not being the best at something/ another frame doing something ember can do but better (like your DR argument) doesn't automatically invalidate Ember as a viable and playable choice.

The only kit, except Excal, Nezha, Gauss, Wisp, even Mesa and Wukong have high enough status to frequently proc it on desired targets. For Ember to spread fire she either needs LoS for Fireblast, or massive #4 spam.

8 hours ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

You do not need much power strength to begin with because she not only gains extra power strength from enemies being on fire but her heat gauge also lets her do more damage the higher it is.

Fireblast has LoS and costs 75e, good luck spreading fire with it. If Inferno kills enemies on impact, you get 0 passive benefits. The only element, that gest extra damage from her gauge is Inferno's debuff effect (not the impact) which is doubled at full gauge. And while this debuff is dealing fire damage, it does not proc fire status and is not considdered for her passive. Only the meteor impact will trigger heat status.
Long story short, Ember gets a lot of her passive benefits, when she sucks at killing enemies.

8 hours ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

You do not need high range/duration with ember due to how often you're recasting your abilities to set enemies on fire.

You want at least close to 100% Duration, because otherwise Immolation energy tax rises too fast. Inferno's debuff, the one that increases with Immolation lvl, is Duration dependant. Last but defenitely not least, Fireball Frenzy, Ember's best scaling tool needs Duration. Extra Range makes Fireblast more efficient and still lets you target more enemies with Inferno. Otherwise, as you mentioned it again, you resort to mindless ability spam.

8 hours ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

And yes, you do micro manage a meter.  That's the point of it.  It's fine if you dislike that style but that doesn't make it an objectively bad thing.

Good for you console players to never beta test new mechanics.

 

Edited November 5, 2019 by ShortCat

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

28 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

You need full armor strip for fire, Ember's main damage type, to be effective. And we are back to mindless ability spam which I covered in the OP.

Doesn't change my statement that non full strip is still beneficial and due to how often she's casting the armor will be gone anyway.

28 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

The only kit, except Excal, Nezha, Gauss, Wisp, even Mesa and Wukong have high enough status to frequently proc it on desired targets. For Ember to spread fire she either needs LoS for Fireblast, or massive #4 spam.

Cool.  Except the only frame on that list that's going to even be close at lathering enemies in heat procs/status is wisp.  Don't see how you can pretend to boast these other frames as a viable strat for specifically going for heat procs/status and then complain about line of sight.  All of these frames need LoS to do that as well and their way of spreading it is a lot less AoE compared to ember.

28 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

Fireblast has LoS and costs 75e, good luck spreading fire with it. If Inferno kills enemies on impact, you get 0 passive benefits. The only element, that gest extra damage from her gauge is Inferno's debuff effect (not the impact) which is doubled at full gauge. And while this debuff is dealing fire damage, it does not proc fire status and is not considdered for her passive. Only the meteor impact will trigger heat status.
Long story short, Ember gets a lot of her passive benefits, when she sucks at killing enemies.

I don't see how any of this actually counters what you're quoting.  So now it's suddenly a negative if my 4 kills something?  Inferno gets a boost from the gauge.  And her 1 while it doesn't technically get a boost from her 2 does have it's own built in combo counter that can be a 14x combo if you charge up your fireball after hitting the 8x combo cap.  It also procs the on fire status effect.  Complains that she sucks at killing.  gets benefits which makes her better at killing.  Complains that if she does kill she doesn't get said benefits.  aight.

28 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

You want at least close to 100% Duration, because otherwise Immolation energy tax rises too fast. Inferno's debuff, the one that increases with Immolation lvl, is Duration dependant. Last but defenitely not least, Fireball Frenzy, Ember's best scaling tool needs Duration. Extra Range makes Fireblast more efficient and still lets you target more enemies with Inferno. Otherwise, as you mentioned it again, you resort to mindless ability spam.

Yes.  But I didn't say that.  I said you didn't need high duration.  So suddenly it's alright to mention fireball as something you care about?  I thought ya'll were adamant about ignoring the ability because it's garbage. -rolls eyes-  Again.  Said you didn't need high range.  Stretch is enough as is.  Because you are LoS checked on blast and you're capable of casting her metors multiple times.  Just so I can make it abundantly clear here I wasn't trying to defend the specific build you originally quoted.  I was specifically tackling your claims about modding.  None of which in your response really counters my statements.

28 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

Good for you console players to never beta test new mechanics.

 

I don't see how that's a response to what you quoted.  We all knew her heat gauge was going to be a thing the moment the revealed her.  It wasn't going to go away.  My point still stands.  You can dislike gauge base mechanics.  You can't use that as a factual negative when trying to have constructive feedback.