Ember rework

[Birdframe_Prime]

17 hours ago, (PS4)ninjawolf2118 said:

Im not going to lie I have an attachment to the old style of ember I never thought she was broken. And I do tons of research on the best builds for every frame. I have played war frame for years when I started ember prime just got released for the first time. Also there was the void runs that you had to do to get primes.

Eh, the thing is that Ember wasn't really broken... When Ember was released she was a hybrid, with damage reduction and damage output in a time when those two things were not supposed to combine on Warframes. Not broken, just not what was intended. That first change, to give her Accelerant and the new World on Fire instead of her Overheat, made her more appropriate for the game that existed at that time.

That wasn't broken either, from a point of view, because she could only scale her ability damage so far, and she became very reliant on game play style and stun-CC for her survival, it was a fair balance at the time. What she could do, though, was spoil games for other players. People in Warframe will always use the most efficient way of completing any given objective if they have to do it repeatedly. Some people will, of course, just play what they feel like, but if you have to farm a low-level exterminate or survival or capture again... and again... and again... just for resources, then an ability with massive range, that could nuke those lower levels without line-of-sight and could be maintained for the entire mission... is something players will use. And that ruined it for people who were on those lower level missions for the specific reason that they were also low level. It was even sillier when it got Fire Quake, which allowed the ability to become AFK CC instead of needing her other abilities to do that, then people started using it for survivability and so on, and Ember was doing things that DE didn't actually intend her to do. Not broken, just... not doing what they actually intended at that point in the game's life.

So they changed it again, but in a way that really just made no sense... Instead of nerfing the ability by making it line-of-sight, or any mechanical change that would actually stop players from using it in that oh-so-convenient AFK manner, they made it have a shrinking range and a climbing drain. Trying to force players to stop using the ability the way they had been, but also trying not to alienate the players that used it already by making it have a few seconds of that max-range effect so that casting it 'more actively' (read, turn it off and on again after a while) would maintain the style of play they'd been using before. Of course that didn't work.

Ember had low base survivability, relied entirely on her weapons because her base abilities didn't do damage in a scaling fashion, and had a buff ability that was extremely specific and so was powerful in its limited way... It really wasn't enough. People stopped playing her to a degree that drove her down the ranks by a loooong way.

Again, it relied on your game play more than the frame itself, at which point you're really just making a themed weapon-platform. Plus her 3 was useless, her 1 was weak, and now people didn't even have the AFK CC aspect of her to fall back on. People were upset.

Embers changes throughout were never really based on what she did as such, but more on how people treated her and were treated by players that used her. I mean, why else would DE bring out Mesa, who was just a better version of the original Ember? Because that kind of hybrid was then something the game supported with how it could scale and the enemies they'd released since.

This latest change was the first one that was really driven by players not liking to actually play the frame and consistently calling them out on nerfing her.

But it's like... hmmm... It's like old Ash. The 4th ability was the thing that was truly, truly the problem. It was made for a part of the game that didn't exist anymore, and they'd already iterated on it, but made it objectively worse. Since DE don't revert changes unless it's within the first month or two of the change... they had to iterate again. Or replace it.

They opted to replace it. And we have what we have. An ability that can do pretty much the same damage, but in a more burst fashion, except they added in those two aspects that Warframes kind of need in the current game if they want to scale; damage mitigation and armour removal. As people have pointed out in the thread, these are band-aids, but they are pretty much necessary ones until the game is actually in a better state.

Having armour strip, her damage type becomes far more useful as the things that have armour are now suddenly weak against it instead of strong against it, and the other enemies don't really have the kind of scaling EHP that armoured enemies do. And having damage reduction, situationally, means that with modding for her EHP with things like Adaptation, is actually now more viable than it was, and the ability also gives buffs to the rest of her kit.

While older Ember wasn't broken, she did need the updates and DE backed themselves into a corner with her by making the wrong kind of changes over time.

New Ember is objectively better at handling the game as it is now, and with the abilities as they are now she could also be either adapted if the game damage system changes, or buffed/nerfed more linearly than she was before.

Fun, though, that's subjective.

Is she more fun to play? I say so, because in my opinion being able to cast my abilities for the more effective results is genuinely more rewarding, because having a little risk-reward of her abilities pushing that Immolation up and down means that you have to weight the better DR against the potential Energy Drain, but actively reaching the 100% means better enemy death against armoured enemies when you use her 3 to strip that. It gives me, personally, a more engaging frame to play.

Other people, like the OP? They don't agree. And that's fine, but the way they're going about it is very un-constructive.

[marceloooo]

She is objectively better than old ember for how the game evolved to be, you just need to tinker a bit.

People try garbage cookie cutter builds from youtube and go all pikachu surprised face when they lose their damage reduction then get 1 shot because they are using adaptation without armor. Then they cry because they can't do high level content and can't aoe nuke a whole low lvl tile either

I've been breezing through all higher level content with a 0 forma build and 2 mod slots empty(because I've heard so many people complain she's bad, I was expecting her to be complete garbage and didn't bother with formas)

 

Max efficiency, inferno augment, vitality, equilibrium, health conversion(with synth synergy from sentinel) and 2x arcane guardian, then whatever else you want. Pair that with a viral+heat aoe status weapon and you're set. 

Your meter fills in 1-2 seconds after fireblasts because of constant infernos so you always have maximum damage reduction and 100% armor strip, and if you get hit in those 1-2 seconds you have another 90% reduction from armor anyway.

 

I'm not saying the rework is perfect or even good, and I agree there are frames that do all she does but better, but if she can do all the high level content with a half assed 0 forma build you can't say it was bad either.
I can think of at least 2 other ways to build her that would work too so I don't know what else you people expect from a rework really...

[Djego27]

On 2020-01-12 at 3:31 AM, (PS4)UltraKardas said:

That's nice that you think that, but Corrosive blast Tigris just two shot everything in a line of 140 gunners, sooooo- Kinda splitting hairs when you say it can't when it clearly can. 

You have severely faulty opinions on weapons at this point, which isn't surprising when you complain about a rework that makes a frame less dependent on fire based weapons for all of her damage, and ignore how vastly superior her entire kit is currently-

So basically you tested your calim for the Tigris prime just as poorly as you tested the pre change Ember?

Nevermind that corrosive blast status weapons are terrible for actual dps(the reason everybody showcase them with Vauban so they do not have to deal with the knockdown) and the Tigris prime is one of the worst designed status weapons and weapon in general from DE.

I personaly find it such claims very rich from people her on the forums, that are honestly in the vast majority unfriedly, have not a slightest clue how a discussion works and are for some reason super conviced that her "argument"(that they do not even have) is correct, even if it is not based around actuall ingame experience, but rather just repeating a common opinion, that is also most of the time wrong.

I actual hate the Ember rework for legit reasons, have tested the changes and actually did understand and use the pre work Ember every day(52% of my playtime is on that frame).

Do you know where the huge amount of Ember rework requests and the general appriciation for the rework comes from?

I do:

- A playerbase that is so terrible at the game that they get her semi afk asses handed to them in anything that is not absolutly unkillable till L100 even in the hands of the worst players in the game. Point in case next to nobody complains about absolute boring gameplay in any content 99% of the playerbase that this approach of DE produced, nobody complains about DEs broken enemy damage scaling that only works for the starmap(the thing it was designed for) good, nobody complains about broken enemy accuracy vs host players or the ton of mechanics that produce just broken results at high levels(acient hooks that scale in damage and also do bleed and toxic procs at high levels that kill normal frames quicker then you can get up again while being hitscan and aimbotting the player at the same time).

- A playerbase that screams for years for more damage, because they do not understand the status system, weapon/frame interactions and that older weapons where suposed to be used in combination with frame specific buffs at high levels. All the vast majority in the game can do is wave around AOE weapons and spam AOE abilities, point in case the old Ember.

- A playerbase that does not actually test and experiment with frames anymore, the reason why every new frame DE releases is incredible boring to play for me, because there is nothing complex to that designs anymore and why they failed so hard to play one that actually had interesting mechanics, like the old Ember or Saryn.

- A playerbase that does not experiment with weapons and builds on them at high levels, given that they just slap on it what they seen on Youtube. Otherwise more then 3 people in a over 10 pages long thread would have complained at the changes to status shotguns in 2015 and more then just myself would have called out DE out for terrible overbuffing the mara detron(what was allready king of secondary shotguns by a mile at high levels with far less damage then the brakk) making all other options mostly pointless. Also you would most likely see more people with status weapons in sorties. Do you know why I never seen another Saryn with a status modded Arca Plasmor in a public match for 1.5 years, even when it what just hilerious broken? Because next to nobody did took his time to understand the old spore mechanic and then looking into what kind of weapon would produce the most reliable result in scaling content. All you did hear here on the forums was that Saryn even buffed falls off at L50, because the only thing people used was Spore and Molt, what had a rather restrictive scaling, compared to what you actually could push out on damage by utilizing spore on actual targets.

Edited January 18, 2020 by Djego27

[marceloooo]

On 2020-01-18 at 9:21 AM, Djego27 said:

Do you know where the huge amount of Ember rework requests and the general appriciation for the rework comes from?

I do:
 

Spoiler

 

- A playerbase that is so terrible at the game that they get her semi afk asses handed to them in anything that is not absolutly unkillable till L100 even in the hands of the worst players in the game. Point in case next to nobody complains about absolute boring gameplay in any content 99% of the playerbase that this approach of DE produced, nobody complains about DEs broken enemy damage scaling that only works for the starmap(the thing it was designed for) good, nobody complains about broken enemy accuracy vs host players or the ton of mechanics that produce just broken results at high levels(acient hooks that scale in damage and also do bleed and toxic procs at high levels that kill normal frames quicker then you can get up again while being hitscan and aimbotting the player at the same time).

- A playerbase that screams for years for more damage, because they do not understand the status system, weapon/frame interactions and that older weapons where suposed to be used in combination with frame specific buffs at high levels. All the vast majority in the game can do is wave around AOE weapons and spam AOE abilities, point in case the old Ember.

- A playerbase that does not actually test and experiment with frames anymore, the reason why every new frame DE releases is incredible boring to play for me, because there is nothing complex to that designs anymore and why they failed so hard to play one that actually had interesting mechanics, like the old Ember or Saryn.

- A playerbase that does not experiment with weapons and builds on them at high levels, given that they just slap on it what they seen on Youtube. Otherwise more then 3 people in a over 10 pages long thread would have complained at the changes to status shotguns in 2015 and more then just myself would have called out DE out for terrible overbuffing the mara detron(what was allready king of secondary shotguns by a mile at high levels with far less damage then the brakk) making all other options mostly pointless. Also you would most likely see more people with status weapons in sorties. Do you know why I never seen another Saryn with a status modded Arca Plasmor in a public match for 1.5 years, even when it what just hilerious broken? Because next to nobody did took his time to understand the old spore mechanic and then looking into what kind of weapon would produce the most reliable result in scaling content. All you did hear here on the forums was that Saryn even buffed falls off at L50, because the only thing people used was Spore and Molt, what had a rather restrictive scaling, compared to what you actually could push out on damage by utilizing spore on actual targets.

 

 

Couldn't agree more. Especially weapon synergy and armor stripping, past a certain point it's not optional anymore.

People hold the trigger on their blast proc ignis wraith against level 100 grineer and wonder why they don't die. People's builds are complete and utter garbage most of the time, what a shocker it doesn't work in higher level content.

But since we're pushing for higher and higher level content as time goes, I think they will have to adress how it all works somehow. Either by making all frames have % damage reduction or reworking damage/scaling of enemies. You can already see a move towards this with Adaptation for example.

But whatever they decide to do, my expectations are very low, because they have to consider huge part of the playerbase is brain dead so...

 

As far as Ember goes, the more I play with her, the more I'm certain she is fine, despite having such a controversial rework.

Only things I would change are:
- Firaball is still garbage and clunky

- Increase the ramp up time for energy drain after reaching max heat

- Swap her Immolation with Fireblast. Fireblast is very punishing as far as energy costs go for how often you need to use it, even with max efficiency.

- Inferno animation should be upper body only, it's extremely annoying to lose control of your frame each cast because she's locked in animation, given that it's an ability you literally spam.

Edited January 21, 2020 by marceloooo

[Teridax68]

The OP could stand to explain even a little what led to their opinions, but thankfully what started out as a low-effort thread has been picked up by many more players who took the time to share their thoughts, which I very much appreciate. I personally do agree with the OP, for various different reasons, but just to focus on the 4 for now, I really don't believe Inferno is a meaningful gameplay improvement from World on Fire: WoF was a notoriously poorly-designed ability in that it was just a toggle the player activated to produce a horrendously overnerfed damage aura, and so it ended up carrying little gameplay and little payoff. However, Inferno itself is just a one-click wonder whose spamminess means a whole bunch of its unique mechanics are wasted (which they'd still be even if it weren't spammy, as the CC it applies prevents enemies from spreading fire adequately to unaffected units). The player doesn't even have to aim; they only have to look in a general direction to apply burst damage, which I think makes the effect only barely richer in gameplay than the ability it replaced.

Beyond that, I also think the Ember rework has a bunch of serious fundamental issues, namely that it was designed with an extremely short-term mentality and little care for potential upcoming systemic changes: Ember's 3, for example, is an armor strip, which every new frame has, but which is going to create issues when enemy armor scaling eventually gets fixed, and stops forcing the entire build meta to focus on stripping or bypassing armor: when that happens, the ability will be little more than an expensive Heat dump button, and otherwise a dud whose damage and knockback aren't all that good in most situations already. Her 2 provides damage reduction, because every frame needs damage reduction these days, but once enemy damage scaling ultimately gets addressed, the ability, and Ember's whole resource management system, will fall flat on its face, because currently the ability requires a lot of busywork and incurs an exponentially increasing Energy cost just for Ember to not die in higher-level content. Thus, I suspect this will not be her last rework, which is unfortunate given how much time it took for her to receive just this one.

On top of that, though, Ember has a lot of rather common design problems among warframes, which is disappointing given that there are many examples of successful reworks, e.g. Wukong and Nezha, who succeeded precisely because they learned from past mistakes. Namely, those problems include:

• A 1 ability that's essentially a diminutive version of the frame's 4 ability, and therefore redundant, with the icing on the cake here being that Fireball is actually more expensive for one target than Inferno, for far less damage and reliability.
• Clunky animations on frequently-used abilities (namely, Inferno) that make playing the warframe feel that much more awkward when they're constantly starting and stopping.
• A kit that largely tunnel-visions on doing a single thing to the point where its playstyle doesn't feel too diverse, in this case with three out of five effects being damage-related (e.g. the passive, 1, and 4), and the rest being currently-mandatory DR and armor stripping. As a result, whereas the previous Ember was known for her CC and ally utility as well as her damage (more so than her damage in fact, which wasn't ideal either), the current version feels more like a worse Saryn, as she's got overall weaker AoE nuking, but also very little utility and mediocre CC.

So effectively, while Ember has certainly been made more powerful in certain obvious and expected ways, I don't think her rework improved her playstyle as drastically as it should've, as it ultimately failed to comprehensively address her problems, and added a few more. She's better at what most people expect her to do, but isn't all that functional at higher levels without a build capable of adequately taking care of her Energy problems, and is a far less versatile frame as well. Old Ember's design was poor overall and I wouldn't want a full revert, but I do think there were many good or salvageable aspects to her that got lost in translation, which disappoints me when DE's had a fairly good track record overall for preserving the identity of frames when reworking them.

On the topic of WoF, I also kind of do think it could've been salvaged, if it had an entirely different mode of gating: if Ember had to generate her own resource, kind of like what she does now with heat, in order to toggle on WoF and keep it going, the ability could've afforded to deal much more damage and still be healthy, as it would be the culmination of her efforts, rather than just an aura one were to turn on and forget about. It also wouldn't be on all the time, which would allow her teammates to participate as well in the killing, which is still kind of a problem now given that Ember can spam 4 to kill enemies far quicker than many frames can engage in combat at most level ranges.

[(PSN)UltraKardas]

On 2020-01-21 at 8:11 AM, marceloooo said:

Couldn't agree more. Especially weapon synergy and armor stripping, past a certain point it's not optional anymore.

People hold the trigger on their blast proc ignis wraith against level 100 grineer and wonder why they don't die. People's builds are complete and utter garbage most of the time, what a shocker it doesn't work in higher level content.

But since we're pushing for higher and higher level content as time goes, I think they will have to adress how it all works somehow. Either by making all frames have % damage reduction or reworking damage/scaling of enemies. You can already see a move towards this with Adaptation for example.

But whatever they decide to do, my expectations are very low, because they have to consider huge part of the playerbase is brain dead so...

 

As far as Ember goes, the more I play with her, the more I'm certain she is fine, despite having such a controversial rework.

Only things I would change are:
- Firaball is still garbage and clunky

- Increase the ramp up time for energy drain after reaching max heat

- Swap her Immolation with Fireblast. Fireblast is very punishing as far as energy costs go for how often you need to use it, even with max efficiency.

- Inferno animation should be upper body only, it's extremely annoying to lose control of your frame each cast because she's locked in animation, given that it's an ability you literally spam.

I think Fireball should fire 1 extra fireball per level, and at full charge do one massive fireball that looks like a hadouken. 

Also, I think Immolation needs to be swapped so it takes energy to ramp it up to max damage reduction (so you have less energy troubles. Idk. Her kit is too power thirsty. She needs some energy economy adjustments. ) 

Otherwise, I'm in agreement with you. I like her kit way more now. 

[eboomer]

She used to do something better than any other frame.  She had her purpose, had her niche.  Now she's just one among the other dozen or so "press 4 to nuke a group of enemies" frames.  But her abilities are fire themed!  Hazah!  That doesn't impress me.  And I find her variant of 'press 4 to nuke' way more inconsistent and way less effective, and less consistent, than the others.  It is dependent on line of sight.  It is dependent on field of view.  It is dependent on... something else?  Don't even know what it is, maybe ping, but I often don't nuke enemies that were clearly in my field of view for seconds before pressing 4.  And it's limited to just a few enemies at once.  And yes, I use the augment for her 4.  And primed flow.  And r3 Energize.  And Zennurik and the Arcane for energy.  And a fricking Dethcube sentinel with the energy orb augment.  And I've used builds from prominent streamers.  I have tried to like her for what she currently is.  And I still find her to be a strictly worse version of other frames.

Her damage reduction is also sucky because it vacillates, on terms you can't control very well, between 90% and like 40 to 50%.  But your survivability is kind of only as good as it is at its lowest point.  So you have to make do with like 40 to 50% damage reduction.  That's like just using Aviator.  Which is something, but it really does not make up for her low armor.  So she's still not so tanky at all.

I miss old Ember.  I think all they had to do was give us a reason to use her 2.  Instead they took her out back and shot her and replaced her with some other dumb useless airhead with some dumb flashy animations.  She's dead to me.

[(PSN)UltraKardas]

3 hours ago, eboomer said:

She used to do something better than any other frame. 

Na dude. If that "something better" was how well Ember sat on the shelf of irrelevance, old Ember did nothing better then any other frame. 

If you like the fire damage buff, Banshee can fill that for you only infinitely better.

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