The Ember Post-Patch

[Sparrohawk]

So, I've been to-ing and fro-ing about suiting up an Ember and setting things on fire, but I haven't heard much on how useful it is post-patch, with the few updates it got. The Crash Course fella mentioned he might post some updated impressions but before that comes along: is it even remotely good, or failing that, fun post-update? I could play it for pure fun value (because, fire), but there's a limit on what my min-maxing alter ego will allow.

[Syllabea]

If standing in the middle of a bunch of infected, or any enemy for that matter, placing high-damage rings of fire around and watching things drop sounds fun: Ember is the frame for you.

[FlanShark]

You'd be wise to observe the numerous threads in general discussion or players helping players, all of which cover the following main problems with ember:

- world on fire's targetting is so random as to be useless; it does far too much damage when it hits and hits far too rarely

- fire blast is great but the power duration mod has no effect on it, more importantly nor does the power strength mod

guessing you're already aware that fire damage is useless vs corpus and poor vs grineer (though overheat and fire blast are *great* for dealing with rolling murderballs

Edited April 16, 2013 by FlanShark

[Gyran]

guessing you're already aware that fire damage is useless vs corpus and poor vs grineer (though overheat and fire blast are *great* for dealing with rolling murderballs

I really don't know where you're coming from with this one. I've been ranking up an Ember and so far I've yet to have any of the skills seem ineffective against any type of enemy. Earlier today I was doing a defence mission against the Corpus and my fire skills were tearing through them no problem.

[Grilleds]

I really don't know where you're coming from with this one. I've been ranking up an Ember and so far I've yet to have any of the skills seem ineffective against any type of enemy. Earlier today I was doing a defence mission against the Corpus and my fire skills were tearing through them no problem.

Initial damage works fine. However the only corpus enemies that can be set on fire are the crewmen, who have almost no health to begin with, and fire blast doesn't hit osprey's as far as I can tell. All Corpus also take reduced damage from fire, including the crewmen. Mostly only noticeable in higher level missions, or when using either of her first two skills. Could be wrong, but I think that fire damage is greatly reduced vs enemies that have shields as well.

 

Grineer also take half damage from fire. But as far as I can tell, none of them are immune to the DoT element of getting set on fire other than the Grineer Commander. Ember is pretty much just as viable vs Grineer as Volt is in terms of damage, but lacks his utility skills. The higher power pool can make up the difference though, but I still prefer Volt due to his Electric Shield.

 

Ember is undeniably awesome vs Infected though.

[krisp]

Ember is bad and poor.

 

the first skill is a damage over time. A DOT. In a game where monsters die in under a second. I'm sure my 75 slow-&#! damage per second will be really noticed through my wave of multishot elemental destruction of doom coming from my rifle. Yes, I'm including ancients here.

 

The second skill only has applications as a joke skill. Look at me I'm ember, I'm touching my enemies to death. Touchy touchy! There's no point in spending 50 energy for poor damage reduction and damage that requires me to tank melee hits (which is not a good idea) in order to deal it.

 

The third skill is the only good one, and it's hillarious when you can set it next to a cryopod and watch everything die. What's less hillarious is when mobs become far too strong for the 200 damage to do much. Then you pretty much have to either stack them or rely on the cryopod to hold them in place. Not to mention that stupid donut aoe.

 

And finally, the ultimate is a short-range pile of &#! that misses half the time, has a ridiculously long cast time, runs out before you even notice it and doesn't do enough damage when it matters.

 

I'm kinda pissed I wasted a reactor on it really. It's a squishy warframe that needs to be up close yet has no gap closers and a poor man's mitigation skill.

[cmhill]

So... Based on what almost everyone has been posting, expect revisions on this Warframe and others?

It can't hurt to farm Ember and the others for when/if they patch them. At least that's my train of thought. I'm crafting as I complete sets.

Still sucks to hear what seems to be the negatives outweighing the positives.

- cmhill

Edited April 16, 2013 by cmhill

[GratuitousLurking]

So... Based on what almost everyone has been posting, expect revisions on this Warframe and others?

It can't hurt to farm Ember and the others for when/if they patch them. At least that's my train of thought. I'm crafting as I complete sets.

Still sucks to hear what seems to be the negatives outweighing the positives.

- cmhill

Eh. It's less she sucks and more she's extremely overspecialized. Doesn't help her 'ultimate' is laughibly bad in comparison to all the other frames and everyone's gotten way too used to just spamming 3 on Infested missions. Ember's a tough one to learn but don't be surprised if yer relying a lot on Fire Burst. Fireball and Overheat both got buffed recently, which are good steps in the right direction IMO.

[ValhaHazred]

My level 3 fireball MURDERS high level Ancients and whole packs of Chargers. It is admittedly less useful against other factions. I still love you Ember!

T3T

[MoonicusMaximus]

Ember is a crowd-control monster for Infested.

 

Fireball is kind of meh. The damage is DoT, and it's fairly low, and despite being an AoE as well, doesn't have the same strengths that would make it useful for 25 energy. You're better off saving for Embers only 2 useful skills.

 

50 energy gets you an Overheat, which reduces all incoming damage while active and provides a constant area of effect around you. I've waded through swathes of charges, leapers and runners with Overheat on, just swinging like a fool, and come out clean. The damage reduction can be useful in a pinch, but otherwise shouldn't be relied too heavily upon because it doesn't make you a solid tank like Rhino's iron skin.

 

Fire Blast is what makes Ember such a beast versus Infected. A ring of flames that, as said before, just kills everything that comes in. Hilariously good when placed in doorway chokepoints and around a defense map cryopod. It can save you from being mobbed as well. Easily her best skill.

 

World on Fire is in a bad place right now. It does high damage, but the mechanic itself is a mystery; you can be standing right next to a group of infested ancients and nothing will happen. And for 100 energy and 3.5 seconds of vulnerability, you would think the skill would actually work. I expect something to get fixed about WoF in upcoming patches.

[Dasmir]

Ember is a crowd-control monster for Infested.

 

Fireball is kind of meh. The damage is DoT, and it's fairly low, and despite being an AoE as well, doesn't have the same strengths that would make it useful for 25 energy. You're better off saving for Embers only 2 useful skills.

 

50 energy gets you an Overheat, which reduces all incoming damage while active and provides a constant area of effect around you. I've waded through swathes of charges, leapers and runners with Overheat on, just swinging like a fool, and come out clean. The damage reduction can be useful in a pinch, but otherwise shouldn't be relied too heavily upon because it doesn't make you a solid tank like Rhino's iron skin.

 

Fire Blast is what makes Ember such a beast versus Infected. A ring of flames that, as said before, just kills everything that comes in. Hilariously good when placed in doorway chokepoints and around a defense map cryopod. It can save you from being mobbed as well. Easily her best skill.

 

World on Fire is in a bad place right now. It does high damage, but the mechanic itself is a mystery; you can be standing right next to a group of infested ancients and nothing will happen. And for 100 energy and 3.5 seconds of vulnerability, you would think the skill would actually work. I expect something to get fixed about WoF in upcoming patches.

 

If you are talking about CC everything a EMBER can do a NYX can do it BETTER even against INFESTEDS..

Edited April 17, 2013 by Dasmir

[MoonicusMaximus]

If you are talking about CC everything a EMBER can do a NYX can do it BETTER even against INFESTEDS..

Nyx can preoccupy groups with her ultimate, that much is true, and it's incredibly effective.

 

However, in many circumstances, a Fire Blast works much better; trickling or ungrouped enemies won't be hit by Nyx's Chaos but can still draw in new ones, but you will still have to shoot to actually kill a majority of those stuck in the Chaos. A fireblast will outright kill everything that touches it, and stun what it does not, without the need for using ammunition.

 

Both are great 75 energy skills. I just prefer the Embers, as it's more of a fire-and-forget ability and area denial while Chaos is extremely helpful in holding back big clusters of Ancients. I played an Infested Defense map earlier with a Nyx on my Ember; everything up to 15 was just so easy with her on one side and myself on the other.

[krisp]

Nyx can preoccupy groups with her ultimate, that much is true, and it's incredibly effective.

 

However, in many circumstances, a Fire Blast works much better; trickling or ungrouped enemies won't be hit by Nyx's Chaos but can still draw in new ones, but you will still have to shoot to actually kill a majority of those stuck in the Chaos. A fireblast will outright kill everything that touches it, and stun what it does not, without the need for using ammunition.

Sorry but I can't bear to watch you defending a donut aoe that only does 200 damage against one of the most broken skills in the entire game that lets you solo wave 40 of defense missions and turns any non-boss fight into a joke. I understand that the extent of your Ember experience is Io but 200 damage is way too low for the higher level missions where stuff actually matters.

 

Did I mention it isn't affected by power strength.

[Celestiae]

Nyx and Ember should not fight. They should be friends. Nyx throws chaos and all the enemies go murderface on each other, then Ember drops the bomb on them and helps them get it done faster. It's a crazy 1-2 punch.

[flunkymomo]

I really don't know where you're coming from with this one. I've been ranking up an Ember and so far I've yet to have any of the skills seem ineffective against any type of enemy. Earlier today I was doing a defence mission against the Corpus and my fire skills were tearing through them no problem.

They do half damage and corpus have the least amount of melee centric units meaning you need to go to them and not wait for the infested to come to you. he was using hyperbole. the ember is ineffectual against corpus but it's not useless.

[flunkymomo]

Ember brings 0 utility to the table. there's some joke of a hint/tooltip that shows up in mission loads saying 'superheated air opens up surprising crowd control opportunities' and yet the weakest enemies at higher levels simply walk through 2 layered rings or you use it on anicents and they stop animating correctly but can still attack and move at their normal speed.

 

Damage frames won't be good frames until

a)you can reliably upgrade your powers to do damage comparable and in excess of what ANY FRAME can do just by shooting a gun.

b) offensive utility is added to skills

[FlanShark]

I really don't know where you're coming from with this one. I've been ranking up an Ember and so far I've yet to have any of the skills seem ineffective against any type of enemy. Earlier today I was doing a defence mission against the Corpus and my fire skills were tearing through them no problem.

 Well, the problem is lack of any mechanism for scaling.

Even if the power strength mod applied correctly to both initial and DoT elements, that's still only another 30% which is rapidly outstripped by monster health (and indeed damage) scaling.

However that is a general game problem at the moment, applicable to basically every power that does damage. 3 ranks of a skill card, optionally +focus card (5 v gradual ranks). It's just not enough scaling for the range of difficulties they have in the game :)

Ember specific fixes imho:

-make fireball guide-able a la mass effect power projectiles, possibly increase the size of the projectile's collision box, compress existing DoT into a shorter duration

-inherent riskiness of using overheat for anything other than protection from grinder balls and latchers. imho: remove armor component, add stagger immunity, also reduce knockdowns to staggers.

-continuity mod should add ticks to fire blast DoT, focus mod should affect both initial slam damage and DoT, reach mod should also correctly apply to both parts

-reduce damage of world on fire hits by 80%, increase max number of targets by 500%, reduce base radius. possibly allow it to hit the same individual monster twice? Adds real utility as a boss dps add, probably makes it OP against ancients and other non-boss elites :)

 

thoughts welcome :)

Edited April 17, 2013 by FlanShark

[Soulfighter]

My level 3 fireball MURDERS high level Ancients

 

define high level

 

 

 

Nyx and Ember should not fight. They should be friends. Nyx throws chaos and all the enemies go murderface on each other, then Ember drops the bomb on them and helps them get it done faster. It's a crazy 1-2 punch.

 

 

No. It's a one punch K.O and ember is just punching the guy on the floor afterward.

Edited April 18, 2013 by Soulfighter

[Sparrohawk]

Talk about a mix of opinions :P

 

I'll put it on the backburner until I farm up the parts, then we'll see how she rolls. By that point 1 or 2 patches would have come out XD