Upcoming Ember Changes

[CeePee]

To be entirely fair, Accelerant is a significant enemy damage resistance debuff. Of course, in comparison to things like Rhino's Roar or Molecular Prime...the debuff only applies to heat/fire damage. It does stack REALLY well with World on Fire, which is clearly what DE intends. But the debuff component is likely only really going to benefit Ember herself rather than the entire team. Unless there's more than one Ember around, or teammates happen to have a lot of heat/fire damage on their weapons.

(Don't get me wrong - I hate this round of changes, for the most part. But Accelerant itself is okay.)

 

Accelerant is not okay, you spend 50 energy for maybe for a maximum of 10 enemies in the whole room and the enemies are dead in a few seconds from your World on Fire even without Accelerant.

 

Yes, Accelerant adds a crapload of damage but it doesn't justify the energy cost because the enemies are already dead.

[GTG3000]

Accelerant is not okay, you spend 50 energy for maybe for a maximum of 10 enemies in the whole room and the enemies are dead in a few seconds from your World on Fire even without Accelerant.

 

Yes, Accelerant adds a crapload of damage but it doesn't justify the energy cost because the enemies are already dead.

WoF stops killing stuff like that at lvl 30, and a little CC goes a longer way there than a damage boost. It's really nice that way, since you can get a bit of a breather. 

To be entirely fair, Accelerant is a significant enemy damage resistance debuff. Of course, in comparison to things like Rhino's Roar or Molecular Prime...the debuff only applies to heat/fire damage. It does stack REALLY well with World on Fire, which is clearly what DE intends. But the debuff component is likely only really going to benefit Ember herself rather than the entire team. Unless there's more than one Ember around, or teammates happen to have a lot of heat/fire damage on their weapons.

(Don't get me wrong - I hate this round of changes, for the most part. But Accelerant itself is okay.)

You don't need to repeat that tenth time, you already said it better than most of us could.

Also, I'm not quite clear on it - does it increace damage if heat is used as a part of Blast or something like that?

Edited December 30, 2013 by GTG3000

[Engelheim]

Also, I'm not quite clear on it - does it increace damage if heat is used as a part of Blast or something like that?

ONLY fire damage. Which means it's rubbish for most weapon load outs.

[Acyl]

ONLY fire damage. Which means it's rubbish for most weapon load outs.

So basically just Ignis and anything with fire damage mods, right? In practical terms, fire mods are probably the only thing we can count on, and you can't exactly tell your team "HEY, EVERYONE EQUIP FIRE MODS, OKAY?". Making it only a fire resistance debuff is cute for concept terms, and obviously DE did that intentionally to distinguish it...but I'd much prefer it to be a universal damage resistance debuff. It's hardly going to step on Molecular Prime's toes. They're clearly very much in love with their new elemental damage system, though...

Accelerant + World on Fire has a particular place right now as a boss killer, of course. And the change does acknowledge the fact that on higher difficulty, World on Fire alone doesn't kill things fast enough. I can understand the thinking here. I'd rather they have addressed it differently, but at least they're looking at that.

Right now DE also seems to be aiming to play up her damage plus crowd control aspect - Accelerant's stun, plus the better fear effect on Fire Blast. Arguably Ember's text description has always mentioned that she should have crowd control capabilities.

Granted, any crowd and territory control Ember has right now pales in comparison to the likes of Vauban, Nyx, maybe Frost, and even with the Accelerant damage boost, Ember's still lagging way way way behind the likes of Nova. I don't expect Ember to be better at crowd control and better at damage than the specialist warframes who focus entirely on those things, but still...

It might help if DE more clearly articulated what they're thinking for Ember, mind you. Right now we're just sort of flailing around here.

Edited December 31, 2013 by Acyl

[Phoenix86]

tbh i find Accelerant amazing... combined with Blind Rage + Focus with a little bit of Fleeting Expertise it can dish out incredible dmg with weapons like Ignis and Ogris against both Infested and Grineer...

 

It is not optimized but it worths its slot way more then fireball or fireblast

[Engelheim]

tbh i find Accelerant amazing... combined with Blind Rage + Focus with a little bit of Fleeting Expertise it can dish out incredible dmg with weapons like Ignis and Ogris against both Infested and Grineer...

 

It is not optimized but it worths its slot way more then fireball or fireblast

Ogris can't gain a damage boost from Accelerant.

Edited December 31, 2013 by Engelheim

[Makya]

Ogris can't gain a damage boost from Accelerant.

Hellfire + Wildfire might disagree.

[EelPlus]

Hellfire + Wildfire might disagree.

If you include mods, we might as well stop talking about Ogris and Ignis altogether and talk about weapons in general, in which case adding Heat is generally less desirable than adding one of heat's combined elements.

[Acyl]

If you include mods, we might as well stop talking about Ogris and Ignis altogether and talk about weapons in general, in which case adding Heat is generally less desirable than adding one of heat's combined elements.

I suspect that DE probably thought about that when creating Accelerant - and they may think that having interaction between a warframe's powers and elemental damage mods on weapons is interesting. And that might be true, from a sort of conceptual point of view. It's an interesting idea.

But it might not be a practical one. And there's a point where trying to be too clever and fancy is going to get in the way of actual gameplay and effectiveness in the field. Especially compared to, say, Rhino's Roar, which is a straightforward damage output buff, and Molecular Prime, which is a straightforward resistance debuff. In comparison, you have to jump through a hell of a lot more hoops to make use out of Accelerant.

Since I don't have Ignis, I have been messing around with just putting Fire mods on my regular weapons and using those with Accelerant. I guess it works, kinda, but ennhhh, I dunno. Not sure if it's worth the trouble. Especially since these days, I see few other people using flat out Fire mods - as you correctly point out, most folks who use it are using it in combination. Sure, it's nice that I'm boosting my damage, but it's probably usually doing jack-all for the team despite being a debuff placed on enemy targets. I understand why they'd want to distinguish it conceptually from Molecular Prime or something, but I can't help but wish it were a universal damage resistance/damage taken debuff instead of just to Heat/Fire.

Edited December 31, 2013 by Acyl

[GTG3000]

Well, one could argue that a premade team sure could agree to take fire mods, and have roles...

Point is, there isn't a terrible amount of frames that need any agreement done before the mission.

Accelerant feels really nice while you can still kill stuff quickly enough, and it works exceptionally well with Ignis, but it does not give Ember quite the same survivability that she still needs for other skills, nor does it actually fix those other skills enough.

[CeePee]

I've tried and tried to make some use of Accelerant but there's no way to get it working with Embers other skills.

 

Only way to make Accelerant useful is to max our power efficiency and power strength, which in turn reduces the power duration. Lowering duration means World on Fire becomes useless and you're only using Accelerant. And don't even mention Fire Blast, that skill has close to no uses apart from a few choke points. But duration makes it useless too.

 

Speccing for World on Fire means you'll be killing everything with World on Fire and using Accelerant is wasting your precious energy, making Accelerant useless.

 

I still can't see how Scott thought this would make Ember any better, the skill doesn't fit into the flow of Ember in any way.

 

Embers ultimate moves with Ember, meaning Ember moves too. Accelerant is a skill that affects only a few enemies around and when they die, the effect is gone. World on Fire does so much damage that using Accelerant in a normal game is a waste of energy. Going to a Survival or Defence means you are using your best weapons and Penta/Ogris are oneshotting enemies up to level 100, meaning Accelerant is again useless.

 

I'll repeat how you can make Ember working again, making your players happy:

 

1) Fireball 25 energy

- Adds a ground dot aoe, similiar to napalm, sticks to enemies and allies. This is your area of denial attack, because Fire Blast gets removed. The dot has a 50% chance of fire proc, making this skill very, very useful.

 

2) Overheat 50 energy

- Fire aoe around melee range like it used to be, 40% damage reduction that only affects health. Scales up to 91% with maxed out Power strength mods.

 

3) Accelerant 75 energy

- Stuns enemies when cast, continues as an aura that adds fire damage done to affected enemies around Ember. This change for Accelerant is needed to make Ember a moving damage dealer like she's meant.

 

4) World on Fire 100 energy

- Stays as awesome as ever, just like it's now.

Edited January 1, 2014 by CeePee

[Makya]

Refreshing a previous mention of Overheat.. 

This is a screenshot from a PM I sent to him, asking about Overheat and Ember overall.

 

Edited January 1, 2014 by Makya

[CeePee]

Scott is a knucklehead but he'll have to budge eventually, Ember can't stay like this :<

[Makya]

Scott is a knucklehead but he'll have to budge eventually, Ember can't stay like this :<

Ember may change once again, though I doubt she will ever have a DR effect again.

[Othergrunty]

Just tried Ember for some Infested survival in the Derelict set.

 

Well i definetly miss the ability of being able to keep infested at bay by burning them in close proximity. In some cases they stayed completely unaffected by Accelerant because unlike overheat, it doesn't stunlock their attack animation, or they were outside it's effective range but in your face 1 second later.

So without any real survival help the infested Runners managed to whack away my shield and health in 3 or 4 hits. Very nasty when you try to get a Flameblast or World on Fire down since you are trapped in the animation.

[merryfistmas]

I just got back into warframe and have been using ember a lot since she was my favorite frame when I stopped playing and I'm kind of disappointed with the direction tey're going with her.

 

Accelerant is just really lame, there are much better/fun CC abilities and the damage amplification is almost useless since it only effects the enemies in the initial radius. I've been hoping for an ability with damage amp on ember for a long time but the way it's implemented just doesn't work.

 

World on Fire looks really cool and it's strong. I took a break from this game a while ago so I don't know if it's had any changes since damage 2.0 but it seems much better than before.

 

Fireball seems to move faster and actually do damage now but it's still a single target damage spell in most situations. Not great but at least it isn't worthless anymore.

 

I absolutely hate fireblast as a power and I always have so I'm not going to say anything else about it.

 

Overall, ember has gotten worse as far as functionality goes. The effects on her powers look a lot better though.

 

EDIT: Been playing more and fireball seems like a very good skill, especially against corpus (kills shield ospreys really well).

 

Damage 2.0 seems to have helped her damage but there are warframes that have similar or better damage with more utility.

Edited January 4, 2014 by merryfistmas

[Phoenix86]

The more i play Ember the more i think FireBlast needs to be fused within World on Fire and Ember gets a new #3 like Rhino had.

 

A feedback about Accelerant:

 

The dmg multiplier on Heat dmg is nice but i would extend it to all the "composite elements" that have Heat in it (Blast, Gas and Radiation)

this way the skill would turn way more useful then now...

 

(for balance porpouses you could cut in half the bonus give to these elements since they are only 50% Heat)

[Kagazuru]

1) Fireball 25 energy

- Adds a ground dot aoe, similiar to napalm, sticks to enemies and allies. This is your area of denial attack, because Fire Blast gets removed. The dot has a 50% chance of fire proc, making this skill very, very useful.

 

2) Overheat 50 energy

- Fire aoe around melee range like it used to be, 40% damage reduction that only affects health. Scales up to 91% with maxed out Power strength mods.

 

3) Accelerant 75 energy

- Stuns enemies when cast, continues as an aura that adds fire damage done to affected enemies around Ember. This change for Accelerant is needed to make Ember a moving damage dealer like she's meant.

 

4) World on Fire 100 energy

- Stays as awesome as ever, just like it's now.

nice set. Good if it goes that way

[LukeAura]

I've tried and tried to make some use of Accelerant but there's no way to get it working with Embers other skills.

 

Only way to make Accelerant useful is to max our power efficiency and power strength, which in turn reduces the power duration. Lowering duration means World on Fire becomes useless and you're only using Accelerant. And don't even mention Fire Blast, that skill has close to no uses apart from a few choke points. But duration makes it useless too.

Fireblast has guaranteed fire DoT procc, which will stun a lot of enemies, and deal large amounts of fire damage. It's a perfect combo with Accelerant for a 1-2 radial mass target nuke. It's main issue is wonky damage on corpus(likely targetting heads), and any cover in the way even waist high, will block all the damage. It just seems worse than it is because half the time it's not doing the damage you'd expect from it. 

[CeePee]

Fireblast has guaranteed fire DoT procc, which will stun a lot of enemies, and deal large amounts of fire damage. It's a perfect combo with Accelerant for a 1-2 radial mass target nuke. It's main issue is wonky damage on corpus(likely targetting heads), and any cover in the way even waist high, will block all the damage. It just seems worse than it is because half the time it's not doing the damage you'd expect from it. 

 

Which means getting rid of the bad skill (Fire Blast) should be considered, it's far too similiar to World on Fire, but a lot worse.

[GTG3000]

CeePee, health-only DR isn't going to work that well with overheat.

[CeePee]

CeePee, health-only DR isn't going to work that well with overheat.

It's not supposed to make ember a tank, it's there to soak up damage so you don't get instagibbed by stuff like poison. Also it should have immunity to disruption like before and it would be great.

[GTG3000]

It's not supposed to make ember a tank, it's there to soak up damage so you don't get instagibbed by stuff like poison. Also it should have immunity to disruption like before and it would be great.

Well, at the point where poison can kill you that fast you'll still need a Trin to keep you alive, and that kinda throws the whole need of DR out of the window anyway. Without shield-DR you're basically healthtanking, and we all know how well it goes.

Although it would be an improvement from what we have now.

[CeePee]

Well, at the point where poison can kill you that fast you'll still need a Trin to keep you alive, and that kinda throws the whole need of DR out of the window anyway. Without shield-DR you're basically healthtanking, and we all know how well it goes.

Although it would be an improvement from what we have now.

 

Scott doesn't want Ember to be a tank and I'm fairly sure it'll never go back to the old way.

 

Having Overheat with Fire proc would help Ember survive in melee range, just enough to pop that charge attack.

[Brasten]

Scott doesn't want Ember to be a tank and I'm fairly sure it'll never go back to the old way.

 

Having Overheat with Fire proc would help Ember survive in melee range, just enough to pop that charge attack.

However we know Scott is wrong. Has been increasingly wrong with each Nerf to Overheat. And Ember will continue to be dysfunctional until he stops fighting it.