Fire Blast - too weak in the Helminth, too weak on Ember.

[Traumtulpe]

Fire Blast sounds good on paper - up to 100% armor removal. That's good, right? Well it's not true.

Fire Blast can only ever strip 100% armor when Ember is at full heat gauge. Well Ember doesn't ever want to be at full heat gauge. It drains 10 energy per second, that's aweful. And in the Helminth? You can't ever be at 100% heat (it defaults to 75%) so you don't ever get 100% armor removal.

In a world where Terrify and Tharros Strike exist, the current iteration of Fire Blast makes no sense. It is obsolete in the Helminth, and it is one of the big reasons Ember goes unplayed. Armor strip is 100% or bust, and this makes Fire Blast a bust.

You need to change this. You should totally uncap Fire Blast, allowing it to strip 100% armor even below 100 heat.

As for the Helminth, I'd suggest defaulting to 0 heat in this case - meaning a 50% armor strip at base, reaching 100% at 200% ability strength. Since, you know, Terrify exists and has a base value of 60%, with some minor limitations. Or compare to Tharros Strike, removing 50% armor and shields for 1/3 the energy.

TLDR; There is no excuse for Fire Blast being this bad, it makes it obsolete in the Helminth and hurts Embers viability. And fixing is involves no risk and extremely little effort. Do the right thing.

[Chewarette]

Doesn't <100% only means you need 2 casts to remove the armor completely & forever ? It's hardly as garbage as you make it sound, especially considering you will have to cast it frequently to not reach 100 Heat anyway.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Chewarette

[Traumtulpe]

3 minutes ago, Chewarette said:

Doesn't <100% only means you need 2 casts to remove the armor completely & forever ? It's hardly as garbage as you make it sound

That's 150 energy thank you very much. Tharros Strike does the same for 50 (+many other things), Terrify for 75 (+ignores LoS).

[MaxTunnerX]

1 hour ago, Traumtulpe said:

Fire Blast sounds good on paper - up to 100% armor removal. That's good, right? Well it's not true.

Fire Blast can only ever strip 100% armor when Ember is at full heat gauge. Well Ember doesn't ever want to be at full heat gauge. It drains 10 energy per second, that's aweful. And in the Helminth? You can't ever be at 100% heat (it defaults to 75%) so you don't ever get 100% armor removal.

In a world where Terrify and Tharros Strike exist, the current iteration of Fire Blast makes no sense. It is obsolete in the Helminth, and it is one of the big reasons Ember goes unplayed. Armor strip is 100% or bust, and this makes Fire Blast a bust.

You need to change this. You should totally uncap Fire Blast, allowing it to strip 100% armor even below 100 heat.

As for the Helminth, I'd suggest defaulting to 0 heat in this case - meaning a 50% armor strip at base, reaching 100% at 200% ability strength. Since, you know, Terrify exists and has a base value of 60%, with some minor limitations. Or compare to Tharros Strike, removing 50% armor and shields for 1/3 the energy.

TLDR; There is no excuse for Fire Blast being this bad, it makes it obsolete in the Helminth and hurts Embers viability. And fixing is involves no risk and extremely little effort. Do the right thing.

I agree, its terrible both on ember and in helminth lmao. Its only good on trinity so that she finally has some damage/something interesting to do with her infinite energy :D

Edited August 2, 2023 by MaxTunnerX

[DeckChairVonBananaCamel]

This is all as far as i can tell without having time to test for myself:

Yes, fire blast CANNOT achieve 1-cast 100% armour strip, however it does maintain 2-cast stripping all the way down to 67% strength.
This allows you to combine intensify (or umbral intensify) with overextended for a ~47m 2-cast strip.
Terrify CAN reach 1-cast at 167% strength, but loses 2-cast at 83%, this means that you cant use strength as a dump stat anywhere near as much as with fire blast (it also decreases the number of enemies it can effect as strength goes down).
Tharros strike's ability to strip armour gets wrecked on any build that dumps strength, losing 2-cast the moment you drop any strength, and needing 200% for 1-cast.

Fire blast has by far the greatest range of the 3 abilities, and benefits the most from +range mods, however requires line of sight.
Terrify affects only ~35% of the AREA of fire blast, but ignores line of sight.
Tharros strike has an extremely small cone, covering only about 5% of the AREA of fire blast, but does ignore line of sight.

Fire blast is also unaffected by duration, meaning you can DUUUUUUMP the crap out of that stat and still have effective armour stripping. This allows you to very easily counter the 75 energy cost with the classic streamline+fleeting expertise combo.

 

TL:DR

Terrify has the easiest to achieve 1-cast strip, but doesnt really play well with dump stats and causes enemies to run away.
Fire blast requires at minimum 2 casts, needs line of sight, but has better compatibility with lower strength/duration builds (and also contributes to condition overload).
Tharros strike has the worst mass armour-stripping ability, but has low cost and regenerates health.

[Traumtulpe]

That's a lot of words to say: Tharros Strike is very powerful but limited AoE. It's the armor strip of choice against single targets or when grouping enemies.

Terrify is the armor strip of choice against groups of enemies, when using AoE abilities, and in particular when you don't need LoS.

Fire Blast is the ability you don't use because 150 energy (before mods) for every group of enemies simply isn't competetive. That it requires LoS would be a tradeoff if it could achieve 100%.

[SneakyErvin]

For Ember it doesnt really matter since Fire Blast isnt the reason why you wanna sit at full heat eitherway, that is due to Immolation in order to keep maximum damage reduction at all times. She really shouldnt have any energy problems with any build since her augment allows for a silly amount of energy potential. And due to her passive it isnt like you need to invest in strength, so you can easily grab augment, archon vit, fleeting and streamline, some range and then whatever you want, likely primed flow and just go to spam city with her #4 and Fire Blast as needed.

For others yeah Fire Blast isnt exactly useful, but at that point few armor strips from Helminth are since you have easier access to it from the operator. Something that doesnt require you to be in their face or scatter the enemy all over the map unless you waste a mod slot for it. Easiest way to increase AoE killing potential from Helmnith is still Breach Surge since it scales so well with enemy health and your weapon damage, plus it syncs well with the operator if you need to pop out to strip something for some reason.

[Chewarette]

2 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

That's 150 energy thank you very much. Tharros Strike does the same for 50 (+many other things), Terrify for 75 (+ignores LoS).

Tharros strike is also 9m vs 25m for Fire Blast, then Fire Blast also burns (which totally doesn't synergize with Ember's passive), I'm not sure what your point is really.

Should we give 100% armor strip to all Warframes abilities under the excuse that Tharros Strike has it ?

You'd have a point if Fire Blast was exclusively dedicated to stripping armor. But it's not, so I really fail to see the point of comparing apples with potatoes

[Traumtulpe]

9 minutes ago, Chewarette said:

But it's not, so I really fail to see the point of comparing apples with potatoes

Let me ask you then; What is your point?

Are you saying Fire Blast is good the way it is? It shouldn't be changed? Or are you just contrarian because you're bored?

The fact is, in all the time since Embers rework, I've never seen anybody use Fire Blast. It's a Helminth ability for gods sake, and nobody is using it. Nobody. I tried putting it on a number of Warframes, and I've always come to the same conclusion (has has every other player in the game, it seems!) - this just isn't worth using.

I have seen a single Ember player, in a fissure mission, once. I had Ember Prime and sold her for credits because of how underwhelmed I was.

[Chewarette]

2 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

Let me ask you then; What is your point?

Are you saying Fire Blast is good the way it is? It shouldn't be changed? Or are you just contrarian because you're bored?

The fact is, in all the time since Embers rework, I've never seen anybody use Fire Blast. It's a Helminth ability for gods sake, and nobody is using it. Nobody. I tried putting it on a number of Warframes, and I've always come to the same conclusion (has has every other player in the game, it seems!) - this just isn't worth using.

I have seen a single Ember player, in a fissure mission, once. I had Ember Prime and sold her for credits because of how underwhelmed I was.

Ok cool, so we're talking about anecdotal evidence. If we go into that direction, then most of Helminth abilities are garbage because everyone and their mother are using Eclipse or Roar.

Helminth is a garbage system to begin with, it has nothing to do with Fire Blast. Fire Blast is the main technique to be used on Ember, and even if she's not regularly played nowadays, she remains pretty powerful, specifically THANKS TO Fire Blast.

I don't really care about Helminth which is just a garbage content that was aimed at giving an excuse to DE to not balance abilities. "Ballistic Battery sucks ? Well just replace it with Eclipse, we don't want to rework it". But I'm only contradicting the part of your post that says Fire Blast sucks on Ember as well, which I disagree with. Does Lull suck on Baruuk or Fractured Blast suck on Citrine ? No. But you won't see anyone Helminthing those into their Warframes, so they should suck right ?

No. Those techniques synergize very well with the Warframes' original design & setup. Same goes for Fire Blast which is probably the best technique Ember has today. Ember is not that played, but I can guarantee buffing Fire Blast to 100% armor strip at 20% strength will not increase her use-time tenfold. It will likely not change much in that case, because Ember has other issues that make her underwhelming.

[Traumtulpe]

20 minutes ago, Chewarette said:

Does Lull suck on Baruuk or Fractured Blast suck on Citrine ? No. But you won't see anyone Helminthing those into their Warframes, so they should suck right

Yes they do. Lull is only used on Baruuk so he can activate his 4. The ability itself serves no purpose, as you can see from people modding him for 13% duration. Fractured Blast sucks because it's one of those abilities that get nerfed by 50% in the Helminth - that's the sole reason nobody uses it.

20 minutes ago, Chewarette said:

Ember is not that played, but I can guarantee buffing Fire Blast to 100% armor strip at 20% strength will not increase her use-time tenfold.

The suggestion was that she would be able to fully strip at 0 heat given that she has 200% strength (the passive would help with that). Would that make Ember suddenly the meta? Absolutely not, but it would be something. At least you could use her augment to put Heat damage on your guns, strip all their armor and be effective that way all the way to level cap. I wouldn't have sold her prime for credits if she could do at least that much.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Traumtulpe

[sunderthefirmament]

1 hour ago, Traumtulpe said:

That's a lot of words to say: Tharros Strike is very powerful but limited AoE. It's the armor strip of choice against single targets or when grouping enemies.

Terrify is the armor strip of choice against groups of enemies, when using AoE abilities, and in particular when you don't need LoS.

Fire Blast is the ability you don't use because 150 energy (before mods) for every group of enemies simply isn't competetive. That it requires LoS would be a tradeoff if it could achieve 100%.

Fireblast is bad, I'm not going to lie.  But not for the reasons you're describing.  It's the wonky LoS on it that just kills it for me.  I like that we have multiple Helminth options for armor strip with varying stat requirements.  And let's be honest, Terrify has some baggage too.  Yeah, it brought my Maimquinox back to life on Steel Path.  But if I don't catch every stripped target in my nuke, I have to run off and hunt them down.

 

To be clear, I'm in favor of improving Fireblast, particularly its LoS checks.  I'm also in favor of changing Ember's ramp up energy costs on her 2.  She's strong and I'm glad she got a rework, but the variable energy drain is really awful to play around.

[Traumtulpe]

I don't get some of the people on this forum.

"Hey, there's this thing nobody uses because it's just straight up worse than a similar ability. We could make them roughly equal, with each having their tradeoffs!" "No, I don't want that! I agree that nobody uses the ability, but we shouldn't do anything about it. In my head the ability is beautiful the way it is - of course I don't use it either though."

Edited August 2, 2023 by Traumtulpe

[Chewarette]

8 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

I don't get some of the people on this forum.

"Hey, there's this thing nobody uses because it's just straight up worse than a similar ability. We could make them roughly equal, with each having their tradeoffs!" "No, I don't want that! I agree that nobody uses the ability, but we shouldn't do anything about it. In my head the ability is beautiful the way it is - of course I don't use it either though."

You're asking for another "one click full armor strip". Also let's be real here : you've already said that two techniques are anyway better at it than Fire Blast, so you're asking for a buff that wouldn't make you use it.

Furthermore, you have to understand that asking for buffs, and getting buffs, is not always a net positive. In your case, let's admit that DE sees your post, think it's an awesome idea, and then implement it. Guess what ? Ember will still be a low tier Warframe because this buff won't do S#&amp;&#036; (neither for Ember or Helminth's version), but then Ember enthusiasts will never get another more serious rework, because DE won't rework her abilities every day.

So of course, there are some counter-arguments - by the way, if you don't want counter-arguments, post your ideas on your fridge rather than an online forum -, but mostly because Ember enthusiasts would rather her problem to be fixed at the core, instead of band-aid-slapping a 100% armor strip on Fire Blast, disregarding the fact it's still affected by LoS or other glaring issues that make her not much played nowadays.

[KitMeHarder]

38 minutes ago, sunderthefirmament said:

To be clear, I'm in favor of improving Fireblast, particularly its LoS checks.

It was stealth improved a decent while ago (IDK if that still stands). As an ability it's now as reliable as it can be (... given all the problems with LoS in general).

[sunderthefirmament]

5 minutes ago, KitMeHarder said:

It was stealth improved a decent while ago (IDK if that still stands). As an ability it's now as reliable as it can be (... given all the problems with LoS in general).

It still feels really unreliable.  When I use an ability, I want it to perform how I expect it to perform.  Fireblast feels like rolling the dice.

 

It could be true that it was improved, but it's still too hit-or-miss for my taste.

[MaxTunnerX]

57 minutes ago, Chewarette said:

You're asking for another "one click full armor strip". Also let's be real here : you've already said that two techniques are anyway better at it than Fire Blast, so you're asking for a buff that wouldn't make you use it.

Why dont you speak for yourself? If fireblast stripped all armor, I would definitely use it more than terrify. I would only keep it for mobile defense etc where I dont want enemies near me.

Edited August 2, 2023 by MaxTunnerX

[KitMeHarder]

1 hour ago, sunderthefirmament said:

It still feels really unreliable.

You used to be able to go to the Ballroom simulacrum, stand in the middle of 20 heavy gunners and 5+ wouldn't get hit. Now, you can stand in the middle and and all 20 are hit every time. As much as I don't like Fire Blast/Ember, I give credit where credit is due and FB meets my expectations for a LoS ability now. And that's about the upper max that you can get with LoS abilities (some rare exceptions are better like Collective Curse, but I'd guess that's because it's using the LoS+"enemies aware of you" logic that the wiki says abilities like Radial Blind have.).

AKA I'm guessing any problems you have with FB, is really just problems that all LoS abilities have in this game (of which there are many), so not really FB's fault. Have you used/tested it in recent times?

 

Also, overguard prevents it from proccing heat (the ability armor strip still works).

Edited August 2, 2023 by KitMeHarder

[Birdframe_Prime]

5 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

Hey, there's this thing nobody uses because it's just straight up worse than a similar ability. We could make them roughly equal, with each having their tradeoffs!

Because even if you buffed it to another one-tap, people still wouldn't play Ember overall.

As DEPablo pointed out, these changes make next to zero impact on usage long term. Even ones that make a frame hit A or even S tier don't see more than a 1% permanent shift in their usage. For multiple reasons, including the simple one that the frames highest in usage are there for a reason, such as AFK farming strats, already being S tier for longer, or having the right combination of things that players want.

Ember has more wrong with her than just a simple lack of one-tap armour strip.

A better fix for using it would be to give her a similar buff to Grendel and just make the full Overheat not cost energy, just like his meatball mode. That way you solve that function of not wanting to be at full damage reduction, damage buffing and armour-strip potential in the first place, and the play style becomes more frenetic by players actively wanting to build up the rate that Overheat charges, using her abilities more actively.

If DE feel it necessary to nerf the interaction a little, then give the charge increase from her 1 or 4 less effect, or make casting her 3 reduce it to a fixed rate again, so that players strip then have to cast to charge back up quicker. Then buff Fire Blast by having it strip Shields as well.

Make it a trade-off instead of a drain; sure you can be at full DR and full Ability Damage as long as you like, but the second you want to deal some real damage against protected enemies, you've got to hit 3 and that'll make you briefly more vulnerable and deal less damage with your main damage ability.

That way more people would find Ember's actual play style more accessible and play her more.

It still wouldn't really change anything, but it would be a better solution than whining that her Helminth is weaker than other ones.

[Traumtulpe]

13 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Because even if you buffed it to another one-tap, people still wouldn't play Ember overall.

As DEPablo pointed out, these changes make next to zero impact on usage long term. Even ones that make a frame hit A or even S tier don't see more than a 1% permanent shift in their usage. For multiple reasons, including the simple one that the frames highest in usage are there for a reason, such as AFK farming strats, already being S tier for longer, or having the right combination of things that players want.

Ember has more wrong with her than just a simple lack of one-tap armour strip.

A better fix for using it would be to give her a similar buff to Grendel and just make the full Overheat not cost energy, just like his meatball mode. That way you solve that function of not wanting to be at full damage reduction, damage buffing and armour-strip potential in the first place, and the play style becomes more frenetic by players actively wanting to build up the rate that Overheat charges, using her abilities more actively.

If DE feel it necessary to nerf the interaction a little, then give the charge increase from her 1 or 4 less effect, or make casting her 3 reduce it to a fixed rate again, so that players strip then have to cast to charge back up quicker. Then buff Fire Blast by having it strip Shields as well.

Make it a trade-off instead of a drain; sure you can be at full DR and full Ability Damage as long as you like, but the second you want to deal some real damage against protected enemies, you've got to hit 3 and that'll make you briefly more vulnerable and deal less damage with your main damage ability.

That way more people would find Ember's actual play style more accessible and play her more.

It still wouldn't really change anything, but it would be a better solution than whining that her Helminth is weaker than other ones.

There is so much to unpack here, but first of all a 1% shift in usage is actually pretty major. Many frames have less than 1% usage overall with Ember Prime sitting at 0.61% as one of the least popular primes.

So, why isn't Ember popular? She's got an armor strip, she's got 90% DR, she's got a nuke. Doesn't she have all the good stuff? Well, no, she's got nothing really in fact. The armor strip doesn't strip all armor on command, as others do. The 90% DR isn't on command and/or permanent either, as others are. And her nuking is honestly pathetic, you can't even ESO with her, which is where you'd most want to nuke things.

Where would you bring Ember? ESO is out, levelcap is out, general Steel Path is... in, barely, but you could do much better. Fissures? She can do that, but again, this is pathetically easy content and other frames do it better (faster). So the issue with Ember is that she doesn't do anything well. Nothing at all. This means there is no incentive for anybody to get Ember. Whatever your goal is, you probably want another frame.

Another very important point about usage - there is a lot that matters here apart from a frames abilities and power. If a frame is crap at release and becomes "good enough" 3 years later, very few people are going to care. But release it "good enough" and people will get it when it's new and it might become their favourite. Grendel is actually stupidly overpowered now, but he is extremely late game, has a very steep cost, another barrier in the form of really quite crappy missions for his parts (I've done them solo first try, spare me the git gud pls), he's not a prime (non-primes have lower usage for a variety of reasons), and he's a fat dude with disgusting sound effects and vomit related abilities.

Balance by popularity is completely misguided and doomed to fail for this reason; You have to balance for balances sake - and if 10% of your players want to play Wukong simply because they are from China then let them goddamn it!

If you wanted to make Ember actually more used, you could simply swap her 4 and her 1. Suddenly she's good in ESO. It's that easy. Next make her armor strip actually go to 100% without jumping through hoops. Now she can be used at level cap by the few people wo would care (and her Helminth becomes viable)! Now do the same for her 90% DR - Wow, she's good on basic Steel Path all of a sudden! Lastly, instead of punishing her for building up heat give her a reward. Maybe an explosion for the accumulated damage and brief invincibility or something.

[DrBorris]

13 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

Well Ember doesn't ever want to be at full heat gauge.

But she does want to be at full heat because that is where she gets the full armor strip.

Like... that's the gameplay loop, trying to sustain a high heat meter for good DR and cast Fire Blast whenever you hit 100 to strip the room. It is by design that she have a frantic and spammy playstyle where you are 'fighting' your meter. If there isn't a reason to be at high heat, then the reasons to engage with the mechanic go away (just the DR isn't enough to keep it relevant).

That said, I wouldn't be opposed to only needing 90% meter for a full strip as having to micro-manage being at exactly 100% takes me out of the loop. And/or reduce the base drain on Immolation to something a bit more reasonable so you aren't instantly punished for being at 100%. But saying...

13 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

And fixing is involves no risk and extremely little effort. Do the right thing.

... while ignoring the gamelplay aspect of Ember's heat meter isn't fair. Overbuffing Fire Blast does have risk, Ember is one of the very few frames that demands you engage with a unique playstyle. Making it so you could ignore heat when using Fire Blast would remove most of the reason to engage with heat. Enhancing Ember's ability to interact with the heat meter, making engaging with the meter more rewarding, to me those avenues are far more interesting than making Ember play more like other frames (by making her abilities work like other abilities).

Also can we talk about how Fireball has direct overlap with Inferno? Both abilities serve the same purpose outside Fireball having a lower energy cost ceiling. They are both abilities that you cast on one-to-many enemies that deals fire damage, leaves a DoT, and builds heat meter. Giving Fireball something, anything else to give it a purpose has a lot more potential to make Ember a better frame than making her (imo) less unique by over-buffing Fire Blast.

 

As for the Helminth perspective... eh. It has a niche as a strip option on low-strength frames, and the range is superior to the other strip options. The ragdoll associated with Fire Blast has led me to not use it as a Helminth more times than its inability to hit 100% strip has.

 

I also think it is not fair to disregard an armor strip that isn't 100%. Stripping 75% of an high level enemy's armor is still taking away around 75% of their EHP. 75% less EHP can indeed still be a dummy amount of EHP, but that is still an effective 4x damage multiplier.

Edited August 2, 2023 by DrBorris

[--Leyenda-yight6]

hace 6 horas, KitMeHarder dijo:

You used to be able to go to the Ballroom simulacrum, stand in the middle of 20 heavy gunners and 5+ wouldn't get hit. Now, you can stand in the middle and and all 20 are hit every time.

It still fails sometimes, it's like there are holes in the fire blast.

[Traumtulpe]

1 hour ago, DrBorris said:

I also think it is not fair to disregard an armor strip that isn't 100%. Stripping 75% of an high level enemy's armor is still taking away around 75% of their EHP. 75% less EHP can indeed still be a dummy amount of EHP, but that is still an effective 4x damage multiplier.

If you've ever been to level 9k (it's quite fast in Disruption and the circuit), you'll know that removing 75% armor is the difference between 99.9999% damage reduction and 99.999% damage reduction (not exact numbers).  The difference is purely academic. Even removing 95% armor makes no practical difference on the tougher enemies (Corrupted Heavy Gunners).

[DrBorris]

27 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

If you've ever been to level 9k (it's quite fast in Disruption and the circuit), you'll know that removing 75% armor is the difference between 99.9999% damage reduction and 99.999% damage reduction (not exact numbers).  The difference is purely academic. Even removing 95% armor makes no practical difference on the tougher enemies (Corrupted Heavy Gunners).

1. Balancing the game around anything above level 300 is actually dumb.

2. That doesn't change what I said... damage reduction is a BS number that doesn't properly communicate the number that matters. TTK, a linear function of EHP, is something that has direct gameplay implications and as such should be the numbers we reference when talking about damage. Stripping an enemy's armor by 75% (approaches) a 4x damage boost (as levels increase). It is not purely academic, it is four times faster time to kill, that is more than most damage buff abilities give you.

 

I fully understand that 4 times faster when the base is forever is not noticeably impactful, but again, trying to balance the game around those levels is just stupid. Looking for difficulty or achievement through number-go-upping enemies to infinity at the cost of the gameplay identity of the game is a slippery slope to even more broken balance than what we have now. If you start trying to balance a Warframe around level 1000+ you will sacrifice their identities at "lower" (SP 300 being low in this case) levels, the levels the vast majority of players spend their time in.

Edited August 3, 2023 by DrBorris

[Traumtulpe]

46 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

I fully understand that 4 times faster when the base is forever is not noticeably impactful

That's quite the understatement there. Anyhow, can you come up with a counter point? As in, if Fire Blast could strip more armor with more ability strength (as is the standard for armor removing abilities), how would that make anything worse? Because it sure would make a bunch of things better.