Recommendations for Ember

[NezuHimeSama]

Ember is in a really bad place in terms of her kit right now. There's some good ideas, but the numbers are awful and there is no place in the game where she makes genuine sense to use over anything else.

As such, some suggestions to improve Ember's kit.

Fireball: No real changes necessary. It is a 1.

Overheat: The damage reduction by default is bad, because of course it is, % damage reduction in general is a mess to balance, always has been, always will be. The energy drain at max is far too high and frustrating to manage, since the times it overheats are often when there's no reason to use her powers that reduce it anyway.

• No longer drains energy. Always active. Doesn't use an ability slot. Replaces her current passive. Heat meter increases by 1% per tick of fire status after the first, for fire procs caused by Ember, Ember's weapons, or Ember's abilities.
• When using Ember's abilities, they drain the heat meter by the % of the heat meter, drawing the rest of the ability cost from the heat meter at a rate of 1%p per energy. 50 cost ability with 25% heat meter costs 37.5 energy and 12.5 heat. Should the energy cost exceed the heat meter, any extra energy is consumed from the energy pool as normal.
• Augment suggestion: Additionally, every 2% of overheat provides 1% power strength on cast.
• Alternative augment suggestion: At 75% or greater Overheat, allies within affinity range gain status immunity. Overheat decreases by 1% per status prevented in this way.
• Overheat provides 60 armour per % of heat, for a total of +600 armor when full.

Accelerant: Everyone loved accelerant, and now it's gone. It could come back. It was a good ability with some nice attributes and ideas, if a bit jank at times.

• Accelerant returns to her second ability slot with a different effect.
• Enemies affected by accelarant take an additional tick of Heat damage when hit, equal to 20%*str of the hit damage, with a 50% chance to proc Heat.
• Kinda like Toxic Lash, but cast on enemies, weaker to compensate for party hits, and fire instead of toxin.
• Augment suggestion: +50% Status Damage and Status Duration on enemies affected by Accelerant.

Fire Blast: Armor stripping is cool, but it doesn't work as advertised, line of sight makes it not function very well(because LOS doesn't function well period, please fix), the damage is worthless tier, it's slow, and generally kinda just sucks. Improved from ancient fireblast, but still bad. Suggestions:

• No more line of sight. Fire Blast passes through enemies and objects freely, and is obstructed by walls and floors in a pattern similar to a flood fill tool. 
• The wave has a flat plane expanding horizontally from the point of origin, set at the center of Ember upon use, with a fixed vertical height of 7m above and below, ignoring obstacles, unaffected by power strength. The total distance, wrapped around obstructions, is the same as Fire Blast's current range values.
• Upon contact with an enemy, the current fire proc tick damage is taken, multiplied by 125%, and given back to the enemy, replacing the old proc, along with an additional range-in-m - range-in-m-traveled per tick, multiplied by power str.
• 25% of the original tick damage of the enemy is then added to the bonus damage given to each subsequent enemy.
• In practice: Using unmodded fire blast, an enemy at the point of origin, suffering from a Heat status dealing them base 100 damage per tick has this replaced by 150 damage per tick(100*1.25+25*1). The next enemy hit, at 10m, suffering from a heat status dealing 50 base damage per tick, has this replaced by (50*1.25+(25-10+25=35)*1) 97.5 damage per tick. The final enemy, at 25m, receiving 200 base damage per tick, has this replaced by (200*1.25)+(25-25+37.5=37.5)*1) 287.5 base damage per tick.
• 25% may or may not be affected by power strength; something for testing. Range boosts initial damage as well as range. Because the range-based bonus damage is small to begin with, this kind of double scaling should be fine. This means that 200% range and 200% str would have an initial bonus damage of 100.
• No longer strips armor.
• Enemies are still knocked back and knocked down, despite not receiving any direct damage.
• Augment suggestion: Strips armor in % equal to the Overheat meter, unaffected by str.

Finally, Inferno: It's cool, and looks cool, and sounds cool, and just kinda sucks rocks through five miles of bent pipe. Recommendations:

• Impacts from Inferno now explode on first (enemy) contact in a base 5m radius, affected by range.
• Meteor object now has a 2m spherical size for detecting first (enemy) impact collision.
• Meteor objects explode if they reach below the original target's feet, to prevent them from falling infinitely into THE VOID.
• increase targets limit from 10 to 12. Energy cost from 10 to 9.
• Fire rings always hit their target; they always hit the ground.
• Rings spawn directly below the explosion radius, and do not target the effected enemy.
• Rings persist after the original meteor target enemy is killed, as they no longer target an enemy.
• Ring radius is affected by range, and doesn't take time to grow.
• up to 30 rings can be present at a given time, per ember.
• Augment suggestion: Enemies within the ring radius have an increased chance of suffering Heat status via an additional roll to afflict the weapon's Heat proc at a rate of 50%*str of the original weapon status rate. This means weapons with a high status chance but large number of elements can benefit from a greatly increased likelihood of a heat proc, but weapons with pure heat and a low status chance aren't significantly impacted. The proc still scales off the weapon's base Heat damage. If the weapon has no Heat damage, or cannot proc, there is no additional effect.

 

The current state of things:

  Ember is a damage frame, first and foremost, with the only value for the party being the damage she provides. At present, she doesn't do a good job of providing damage. Thus, she doesn't do a good job. Her abilities have low damage, poor scaling, and unreliable mechanics, and she doesn't provide effective support to other damage sources. The overheat mechanic is interesting and novel, but mostly just a pain in the butt to pay any attention to, and drains energy like nobody's business.

The intended goal:

  Increase the damage Ember can do, provide additional fire-related supporting damage, and increase the proc rate of Heat weapons and abilities, further scaling the damage Ember can do over time, making her competitive with existing Damage and Damage Support frames.

[Leqesai]

[NinjaZeku]

4 hours ago, NezuHimeSama said:

Fireball: No real changes necessary. It is a 1.

The one thing that actually needs changing, and you skip over it.

I don't like this topic very much.

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

19 hours ago, NezuHimeSama said:

Ember is in a really bad place in terms of her kit right now.

This is just not true, this opinion by large i find to be in the minority. Im not a fan of Ember's change from a burning fire to a more explosive meteor shower styled warframe, but to say shes bad or even in a bad place when there are still many who love to play her, No. Start any conversation simply asking "is ember bad?" In a public space, and most are going to say no

Shes more than capable of holding her ground, and her kit plays well together

19 hours ago, NezuHimeSama said:

there is no place in the game where she makes genuine sense to use over anything else.

This is like asking why use sevagoth over valkyr

Its less about meta, more about style of play. Ember is for those with a fire fantasy, and is into being explosive.

19 hours ago, NezuHimeSama said:

Fireball: No real changes necessary. It is a 1

Back when energy was more balanced, and weapons werent so op, sure, it made sense to have a trash little fireball ability to cast when your energy was low and you were out of options. Was a nice little way to keep yourself safe for low cost

The game has moved so much further away from that style of gameplay. You are 10x better off just resulting to melee or jumping into your operator than to use that ability, as it offers 0 protection in comparison to your other completely free options. It makes the ability Beyond Useless

So no, if anything needs changing, this ability is it. Instead of a last stand type of ability, first abilities need to be amplifiers now, designed to increase the performance of other abilities, weapons, movement, whatever

Not just be a poof of sparks

19 hours ago, NezuHimeSama said:

Overheat: The damage reduction by default is bad, because of course it is, % damage reduction in general is a mess to balance, always has been, always will be.

I was reminded DE is not balancing the game around endurance modes, its balanced around the end of content level (which currently is sortie as steelpath hasnt been counted as endgame yea, said so by DE themselves). With that in mind, % damage reduction is more than okay and is easy to balance around 

The rest of the changes, while they work, it doesnt make them necessary. Infact they arent really necessary at all. If you dont need to use fire blast, chances are that means there arent enough enemies around for you to need damage reduction, and it should be deactivated for the time being.

When you need it, activate it, then turn up the heat on your enemies to give yourself more protection

[Raarsi]

12 minutes ago, (PSN)Frost_Nephilim said:

So no, if anything needs changing, this ability is it. Instead of a last stand type of ability, first abilities need to be amplifiers now, designed to increase the performance of other abilities, weapons, movement, whatever

You mean like those augments that some frames have for their 1 like Ember and Frost that give all allies a buff to deal a damage type beneficial for them?

I kinda agree with everyone that's responded though in that Ember's just fine for the most part.  In fact, I usually pick Ember over more popular high-damage frames like Saryn when it comes to a frame that I need to decimate everything quickly since it's a lot more straightforward to work with.  Sure, it might be the absolute #1 best option, but it still gets the job done.

[selig_fay]

5 hours ago, Raarsi said:

You mean like those augments that some frames have for their 1 like Ember and Frost that give all allies a buff to deal a damage type beneficial for them?

I kinda agree with everyone that's responded though in that Ember's just fine for the most part.  In fact, I usually pick Ember over more popular high-damage frames like Saryn when it comes to a frame that I need to decimate everything quickly since it's a lot more straightforward to work with.  Sure, it might be the absolute #1 best option, but it still gets the job done.

It costs an augment slot. If the ability just gave fire damage to weapons instead of fireball, it would be much more useful and extremely boring.

[Raarsi]

3 hours ago, selig_fay said:

It costs an augment slot. If the ability just gave fire damage to weapons instead of fireball, it would be much more useful and extremely boring.

Pretty sure that augment does give fire damage to weapons for all allies in affinity range, which in turn buffs her damage because of her passive and I believe makes it the best of those versions of augments.

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

16 hours ago, Raarsi said:

You mean like those augments that some frames have for their 1 like Ember and Frost that give all allies a buff to deal a damage type beneficial for them

Percisely or simply just make it impactful to gameplay

- Fire a stream of hot lava that enemies leaves behind a stream on the floor (it will create a circle of it beneath the feet of an enemy you hit). Enemies who are in the lava burn for twice as long and lose extra armor and shields each time you land a heat proc on them

- Hitting enemies with a fireball increases the amount of heat procs the enemy can be affected by to 100, and causesthe enemy to take more procs per proc. So if you hit them with 1 proc, it can instead say 3

- The range and damage of fireball increases the more enemies who are around her and are on fire, including you. At 10 or more enemies who all have 10 or more heat procs per enemy, this ability can deal up to 100,000 damage in 5 seconds with just 1 fireball, if modded correctly. 

 

Not the best examples but are a start. Just have no room for trash abilities in this game anymore

[Raarsi]

10 hours ago, (PSN)Frost_Nephilim said:

Percisely or simply just make it impactful to gameplay

Technically it can be even without the augment.  Makes for a quick and simple way to put burn stacks on enemies from range if you don't have heat damage on your primary or secondary weapons (or don't have enough status chance on them), which ramps up her passive for more damage on Inferno.

Honestly, this whole thread is starting to feel like a "mountains out of molehills" kind of argument, especially when frames like Inaros still exist.

[selig_fay]

Inaros is in order where it is. It has Blind, Heal, more Heal, and useless 3 and this is the only frame that Mecha Mods on SP comfortably uses, because, my god, the dog has 20K hp.  Inaros is medium, but far from bad. It is better to evaluate Hydrond.

[(PSN)Frost_Nephilim]

2 hours ago, Raarsi said:

Makes for a quick and simple way

A quicker and simpler way is casting fire blast or her 4th. Since its easy to keep your energy near max

 

So yes, its still useless

[NezuHimeSama]

Fireball is a onehanded ability that stuns a small AOE on impact for a short period. Perfect to make a save place to reload, and using it doesn't interrupt reload anim.

It doesn't need to be made into the best ability in the game. It serves a purpose, and serves it well. Unlike Ember as a whole.

Ember is a damage output frame that has poor damage output. That's why she's in a bad place. It's not about playstyle, it's about play effectiveness. Just because there are worse frames doesn't make ember good. Because there are better frames at everything ember does, she is bad.

Thinking about this again, I think if anything, this would be too conservative, and doesn't even bring ember to the level of meta dps frames currently.

50% DR, even in lich missions, doesn't allow ember to take hits, and it takes too long to build to whip out quickly. It only becomes useful at 80%+, which can't be reliably maintained at all without expending energy at 90%. Fireblast isn't reliable as CC either, both because it's slow, and because it tends to just not hit things when it should, making it pretty trash to use, and is only good for armor strip or reducing overheat.

 

The recommendations stand. The 20% heat can be buffed to 30% if it ignores Faction damage and only scales off damage on hit, including for proc.(which heat already does.)

[Leqesai]

19 hours ago, NezuHimeSama said:

Fireball is a onehanded ability that stuns a small AOE on impact for a short period. Perfect to make a save place to reload, and using it doesn't interrupt reload anim.

It doesn't need to be made into the best ability in the game. It serves a purpose, and serves it well. Unlike Ember as a whole.

Ember is a damage output frame that has poor damage output. That's why she's in a bad place. It's not about playstyle, it's about play effectiveness. Just because there are worse frames doesn't make ember good. Because there are better frames at everything ember does, she is bad.

Thinking about this again, I think if anything, this would be too conservative, and doesn't even bring ember to the level of meta dps frames currently.

50% DR, even in lich missions, doesn't allow ember to take hits, and it takes too long to build to whip out quickly. It only becomes useful at 80%+, which can't be reliably maintained at all without expending energy at 90%. Fireblast isn't reliable as CC either, both because it's slow, and because it tends to just not hit things when it should, making it pretty trash to use, and is only good for armor strip or reducing overheat.

 

The recommendations stand. The 20% heat can be buffed to 30% if it ignores Faction damage and only scales off damage on hit, including for proc.(which heat already does.)

Still going on about this?

I would have figured you'd burn out by now.

[LillyRaccune]

Quote

Still going on about this?

I would have figured you'd burn out by now.

[(PSN)rexis12]

20 hours ago, NezuHimeSama said:

50% DR, even in lich missions, doesn't allow ember to take hits

It's absurd that the concept of a game where 50% DR isn't enough.

25% DR in other games is considered broken.

[NezuHimeSama]

Blame damage scaling and the chaotic nature of Warframe.

[Leqesai]

11 minutes ago, NezuHimeSama said:

Blame damage scaling and the chaotic nature of Warframe.

Damage scaling and the chaotic nature of Warframe haven't lead you down the road of completely misunderstanding Ember's kit and effectiveness... That's on you, my dude.