Ember Changes [Post 15.11.0 Megathread]

[ArbitUHM]

Okay, so I've been trying to play ember in different ways and really it's all boiled down to the fact that she just doesn't fit the role she's been wedged into. Her skills all are radial AoE and benifit from her getting up close and personal with her enemies. But her armor is lacking (better but still lacking) and her health/shields don't let her take a hit. That's saying nothing of how gimped World on Fire's become. <snip>

 

This is what I don't get about so many of these complaints about the WoF (and general Ember) changes.  For high level content, what did WoF previously do?  In my experience, maybe I'd kill lancers or something but the heavies would happily tank it and kill me.  The skill provided either extremely unreliable or nonexistent CC.  The only thing it was good for was trolling low-mid level content, where you can copter around and everything is so weak they die as soon as they see you.

 

The new WoF adds reliable CC.  With +60% or so power strength, you can rely on WoF causing fire procs on nearly everything in range, and you have Accelerant for those few that manage to avoid it.  Along with the expanding fire ring on Fireblast and the fixed Accelerant, Ember has three sources of scaling CC now whereas before she had to rely on Accelerant alone.

 

Who cares how long WoF lasted before if it didn't provide anything besides mediocre damage?  Maybe WoF doesn't do everything you want it to do but IMHO it is way better.

[Jeetza]

I thought this was going to be just a straight up Buff. But apparently, Buffing her survival means a punishment for her World On Fire. Making it Toggleable is awesome, but also including duration is an absolute kick in the teeth.

^, Does anymore need to be said? 

[Djego27]

Well I hope there will be still room for some adjustments.

 

WoF

 

I think nobody is really happy with the current semi toggle state:

 

- the toggle on minus duration builds is pointless, it runs only like 5-6s and when you switch it on you want that 6s, else you would have just used fireball

- duration builds are punished by higher energy use, beyond the current limitation of duration builds on Ember what make them more or less pointless outside soloing low level interception without spamming energy restores, because the lack in desperatly needed power strength and range to handle level 40+

- you tend to overstock on energy because of the constant drain doesn't prevent you from picking up extra energy orbs that you would have not needed in this momemt

 

-> Make it a true toggle without duration(removes duration mods) or make it a duration skill again(increase the base duration a bit to 12-15s) to make duration builds a bit more rewarding. Both options would be better than the current state of WoF.

 

It still needs a small amount(2-3% of the armor/shield added to the damage) of the target to help with the scaling, where Ember has still big issues. Another thing would be Infested. By design Ember should be very good vs Infested(and it actually is, however only on low levels), her AOE damage transforms her into a trinity for Ancient healers, the knockback of fireblast becomes compleetly pointless by the aura of ancient healers and takeing them down with direct damage against multiple of them(level 78 eximus, 34 waves into a defence) solo is next to impossible because of the massive damage reduction you suffer. A fire damage proc(being in panic) should prevent them from giving out the damage reduction and reciving any damage reduction(as a general thing for all infested). Currently Ember is just to limited in high level infested situations because you can't split them up, knock them back, archive anything with AOE dps or deal with multiple ancient healers with your own dps. This mechanic actually would give Ember a very good niche and make her far more useful in high level content.

 

Also WoF focuses on closed turrets in corpus missions like mad, make it ignore them or just destroy them that you don't waste all that ticks on a target that takes zero damage.

 

Fireball frenzy

 

Fireball frenzy needs a rework, put it on Fire blast to apply the buff as AOE or allow it to be applied by the AOE of fireball at least, currently hitting a teammate directly is next to impossible in current gameplay because they don't stand stillif it is not a mesa and fireball is not hitscan. Another thing is the duration, what is far to short given that the mod only makes sense in negative duration builds with high power, make the base duration 2-3 minutes to make it more reasonable(for all damage arguments) and give you the ability to do something else instead constantly running after your teammates to add a new buff every 15s. Another thing is that when it combines with other elements it becomes pointless again, since it prevents it stacking with accelerant. The fire damage should stand alone on weapons and abilitys to benifit form accelerant.

 

One more thing would be that sidearms as well as melee weapons lack a 2. fire mod like blaze or wildfire(that is not a event mod but can be aquired by normal gameplay). Stacking fire with multiple mods is farily required for the frame to work at high levels and while primed heated charge did help more options for melee and sidearms would be good.

Edited February 4, 2015 by Djego27

[--Q--Guther]

This is what I don't get about so many of these complaints about the WoF (and general Ember) changes.  For high level content, what did WoF previously do?  In my experience, maybe I'd kill lancers or something but the heavies would happily tank it and kill me.  The skill provided either extremely unreliable or nonexistent CC.  The only thing it was good for was trolling low-mid level content, where you can copter around and everything is so weak they die as soon as they see you.

 

The new WoF adds reliable CC.  With +60% or so power strength, you can rely on WoF causing fire procs on nearly everything in range, and you have Accelerant for those few that manage to avoid it.  Along with the expanding fire ring on Fireblast and the fixed Accelerant, Ember has three sources of scaling CC now whereas before she had to rely on Accelerant alone.

 

Who cares how long WoF lasted before if it didn't provide anything besides mediocre damage?  Maybe WoF doesn't do everything you want it to do but IMHO it is way better.

 

I cannot find any mod slots for anything more than intensify (30%)

 

Care to share yours?

[CapedBaldy]

I feel like the only reason to use Ember now is to Fireball Frenzy and Accelerant for massive damage. She's usable without Fireball Frenzy, yea, but she doesn't really fulfill a good niche. I mean, Nova's better for top damage, Ash is better for raw damage. Accelerant is nice CC, but a good team composition will always have dedicated CC frames that's much stronger and longer lasting and offer other forms of utility. You could say she's a damage and CC combo, but Nova does that damage job so much better and the CC aspect is arguably just as good.

 

Hey, at least fireball frenzy buffing is a niche only she fulfills.

[CapedBaldy]

Quick bump to see if anyone experiencing what I've experienced with Accelerant.

 

Accelerant stun mobs, okay that's fine. However, some mobs are stunned for shorter than other mobs, making it unpredictable and unreliable. I've failed a defense mission because of this. Has anyone ever observed the same thing?

[Ryjeon]

Quick bump to see if anyone experiencing what I've experienced with Accelerant.

 

Accelerant stun mobs, okay that's fine. However, some mobs are stunned for shorter than other mobs, making it unpredictable and unreliable. I've failed a defense mission because of this. Has anyone ever observed the same thing?

 

This may be occurring. I've used Accelerant as a hard cc for months and never noticed this behavior before. Now I sometimes think I may spot a unit coming out of the daze earlier than expected but I tend to re-apply it so liberally in tense situations it's hardly noticeable. The reliability definitely changed on the patch when Nullifiers were introduced to the void. Prior to that it was an absolute stun that disabled every enemy consistently no matter what attacks they were doing.  Now sometimes heavy units may not be dazed if Accelerant is used during certain parts of their attack queues. Also Attack Drones released by Fusion Moas cannot be dazed at all. Those Attack Drones are now absolutely deadly to Ember. All in all I think it's still a delightfully powerful ability. When it was a spammable supreme crowd control it was borderline overpowered in the same way Radial Blind used to be. I could keep a T4 Defense locked down as long as I wanted.  Now it's still strong but it has some significant counters (Nullifiers, Attack Drones). I hope this means that it doesn't become lined up for any more nasty nerfs like Radial Blind received. But I guess it already has and that's what we're now working with.

Edited February 5, 2015 by Ryjeon

[CapedBaldy]

Having some hard counters here and there is fine, but I really don't like the come out of stun earlier than expected part. I thought I've found a good niche for Ember but it turns out that the CC she brings is unpredictable and unreliable, so that turns me away from using her.

 

I guess it's back to the drawing board for me.

[Soul.Fire]

This may be occurring. I've used Accelerant as a hard cc for months and never noticed this behavior before. Now I sometimes think I may spot a unit coming out of the daze earlier than expected but I tend to re-apply it so liberally in tense situations it's hardly noticeable. The reliability definitely changed on the patch when Nullifiers were introduced to the void. Prior to that it was an absolute stun that disabled every enemy consistently no matter what attacks they were doing.  Now sometimes heavy units may not be dazed if Accelerant is used during certain parts of their attack queues. Also Attack Drones released by Fusion Moas cannot be dazed at all. Those Attack Drones are now absolutely deadly to Ember. All in all I think it's still a delightfully powerful ability. When it was a spammable supreme crowd control it was borderline overpowered in the same way Radial Blind used to be. I could keep a T4 Defense locked down as long as I wanted.  Now it's still strong but it has some significant counters (Nullifiers, Attack Drones). I hope this means that it doesn't become lined up for any more nasty nerfs like Radial Blind received. But I guess it already has and that's what we're now working with.

Those Attack Drones are absolute death on anything that's not either inside of a Frost Snow Globe or a Rhino using Iron Skin, and they even whittle IS down in about 5 seconds flat. Not sure what you'd do about those, as I'm thinking that Ember's stunning ability is like most stun abilities against warframes themselves were when I first started, i.e, if you weren't on the ground you couldn't be stunned/thrown around. And I thought Radial Blind had been nerfed, I just can't seem to figure out how/what's making it non-effective. I liked one of the poster's idea for Accelerant, kinda mixing it's ability with Overheat would definitely be nice as it would give Ember at least a little survivability while allowing her to keep her CC/Utility and team synergy.

Having some hard counters here and there is fine, but I really don't like the come out of stun earlier than expected part. I thought I've found a good niche for Ember but it turns out that the CC she brings is unpredictable and unreliable, so that turns me away from using her.

 

I guess it's back to the drawing board for me.

I have noticed that too, and that's just one more thing in the long list of things that has made me quit playing her.

[--Q--Guther]

• Removed the initial radial damage of Ember’s Fire Blast, damage and the Heat proc now occur on the shockwave as it expands.

 

 

what to make of this? fireblast used to hit everything in a small radius, with or without LOS.

 

now fireblast loses the initial cast damage, meaning if you're going to use heat proc for instant CC after throwing accelerant, get ready to eat bullets before your growing wall of fire hits them.

 

even then, there's no guaranteed panic proc.

Edited February 5, 2015 by Guther

[RealPandemonium]

 

• Removed the initial radial damage of Ember’s Fire Blast, damage and the Heat proc now occur on the shockwave as it expands.

 

 

what to make of this? fireblast used to hit everything in a small radius, with or without LOS.

 

now fireblast loses the initial cast damage, meaning if you're going to use heat proc for instant CC after throwing accelerant, get ready to eat bullets before your growing wall of fire hits them.

 

even then, there's no guaranteed panic proc.

 

They seemingly aren't even reading the feedback anymore.  You can't rely on the initial fire proc for CC as the wave isn't instant, as you said, and is limited by line of sight.  You also can't headshot with the initial damage anymore, lowering the ability's damage potential.  The fire ring is now all but pointless now that we can't trap enemies in it.  Sure, you can stack a bunch on top of each other and leave it as a point defense (lol) but what's the point of that if the waves also push enemies away from the ring? 

[traybong111]

I'm completely dumbfounded. Like...was removing initial damage on Fire Blast a demanded thing? Was it on people's radar?? Was it something everyone wanted Fire Blast to do? 

 

Oh right, it wasn't. People wanted duration removed from WoF. People wanted Fire Blast to have innate panic proc and a more interesting augment. 

 

I'm not even mad anymore. I'm just tired. 

 

This kick to the face, when Fire Blast was becoming really interesting and fun to use for me...this really hurts. 

[RealPandemonium]

I'm completely dumbfounded. Like...was removing initial damage on Fire Blast a demanded thing? Was it on people's radar?? Was it something everyone wanted Fire Blast to do? 

 

Oh right, it wasn't. People wanted duration removed from WoF. People wanted Fire Blast to have innate panic proc and a more interesting augment. 

 

I'm not even mad anymore. I'm just tired. 

 

This kick to the face, when Fire Blast was becoming really interesting and fun to use for me...this really hurts. 

I'm guessing they did this because the wave was behaving inconsistently.  However, all this did was make the ability somewhat better for damaging distant targets while making it much worse for both damaging and ccing close-up targets.

Edited February 6, 2015 by RealPandemonium

[traybong111]

I'm guessing they did this because the wave was behaving inconsistently.  However, all this did was make the ability better for damaging distant targets while making it much worse for close-up targets.

 

You're right, the wave's damage could be a bit funky when the initial blast had procc'd fire on stuff (more noticeable with range mods on I think, I've seen the wave do absolutely nothing to contacted enemies as well). 

 

So instead of actually fixing the wave and how its damage/proc interact with the initial blast, they simply removed the initial blast and left nothing but the wave. So it's more like Heatwave, not...Fire Blast...?

 

Well, it's DE we're talking about, that makes much more sense now. Thank you. 

[RealPandemonium]

You're right, the wave's damage could be a bit funky when the initial blast had procc'd fire on stuff (more noticeable with range mods on I think, I've seen the wave do absolutely nothing to contacted enemies as well). 

 

So instead of actually fixing the wave and how its damage/proc interact with the initial blast, they simply removed the initial blast and left nothing but the wave. So it's more like Heatwave, not...Fire Blast...?

 

Well, it's DE we're talking about, that makes much more sense now. Thank you. 

I proposed that the wave should start outside the fire ring.  That way it could operate as it does now but without @(*()$ing up how the ability originally operated.  

Edited February 6, 2015 by RealPandemonium

[Aimop95]

I don't know what you guys are complaining about, but I like this new fireblast change.

 

everything around me lights on fire now.

[RealPandemonium]

I don't know what you guys are complaining about, but I like this new fireblast change.

 

everything around me lights on fire now.

Except it takes time to reach those nearest you, does less damage, and won't affect enemies at all if they are partially obscured by environment objects, including the ones nearby.  

 

Just because relatively few people appreciated the nuances of the ability doesn't mean it's ok to rip them out of the game as part of a quick fix for people who didn't even like Ember outside of the shiny factor.  

Edited February 6, 2015 by RealPandemonium

[geninrising]

Except it takes time to reach those nearest you, does less damage, and won't affect enemies at all if they are partially obscured by environment objects, including the ones nearby.  

 

Just because relatively few people appreciated the nuances of the ability doesn't mean it's ok to rip them out of the game as part of a quick fix for people who didn't even like Ember outside of the shiny factor.  

Yeah, unless they fix the wonky LOS Ember is just utterly lost at this point.

[RealPandemonium]

Yeah, unless they fix the wonky LOS Ember is just utterly lost at this point.

She isn't lost, she's just S#&amp;&#036;ted on and somewhat worse than she was before the changes.  It's the players who suffer the real loss with the portent of dark days to come in terms of content revision.

[Aimop95]

Except it takes time to reach those nearest you, does less damage, and won't affect enemies at all if they are partially obscured by environment objects, including the ones nearby.  

 

Just because relatively few people appreciated the nuances of the ability doesn't mean it's ok to rip them out of the game as part of a quick fix for people who didn't even like Ember outside of the shiny factor.  

The LoS needs work, no doubt about it, they should make it more like Excal's Flashbomb LoS. but I think if they fix that, fireblast will be pretty much set to go.

 

At least the way I use it, which is generally a cc tool. They get pushed away and set on fire, plus the ring of fire prevents melee enemies from getting close, which works fine for me.

[RealPandemonium]

The LoS needs work, no doubt about it, they should make it more like Excal's Flashbomb LoS. but I think if they fix that, fireblast will be pretty much set to go.

 

At least the way I use it, which is generally a cc tool. They get pushed away and set on fire, plus the ring of fire prevents melee enemies from getting close, which works fine for me.

So you're OK with them arbitrarily ripping out one of its mechanics (arguably the central mechanic) which has been present for years for no reason?

[Aimop95]

So you're OK with them arbitrarily ripping out one of its mechanics (arguably the central mechanic) which has been present for years for no reason?

Yes, because I actually can CC when I hit 3 now. I never saw anything useful come out of fireblast until the eximus aura had been added. Out of all the abilities Ember had ever had, that one seemed the strangest and the most wonky. It was a circle of fire that required you to run up to enemies, and often times enough, was a very high risk skill to use because you were so close to enemies.

 

with this at least when you run up, you push them away and give yourself breathing room while setting them on fire. I don't know what usefulness fireblast had prior to the recent changes, but they didn't impress me (or many other people apparently, as it was one of the skills most people harped on) until DE tweaked it. 

[Soul.Fire]

Yes, because I actually can CC when I hit 3 now. I never saw anything useful come out of fireblast until the eximus aura had been added. Out of all the abilities Ember had ever had, that one seemed the strangest and the most wonky. It was a circle of fire that required you to run up to enemies, and often times enough, was a very high risk skill to use because you were so close to enemies.

 

with this at least when you run up, you push them away and give yourself breathing room while setting them on fire. I don't know what usefulness fireblast had prior to the recent changes, but they didn't impress me (or many other people apparently, as it was one of the skills most people harped on) until DE tweaked it.

Unfortunately when they started tweaking things they completely broke World on Fire and it still isnt fixed. Such penalties, so horrible X.X

[RealPandemonium]

Yes, because I actually can CC when I hit 3 now. I never saw anything useful come out of fireblast until the eximus aura had been added. Out of all the abilities Ember had ever had, that one seemed the strangest and the most wonky. It was a circle of fire that required you to run up to enemies, and often times enough, was a very high risk skill to use because you were so close to enemies.

 

with this at least when you run up, you push them away and give yourself breathing room while setting them on fire. I don't know what usefulness fireblast had prior to the recent changes, but they didn't impress me (or many other people apparently, as it was one of the skills most people harped on) until DE tweaked it. 

It's nice that you like the new functionality, but just because people overlooked the usefulness of the previous incarnation doesn't mean it should go away.  They can coexist without interfering with each other, so there is no conflict here.  The removal of the initial damage is a straight nerf to the ability and a sign that DE doesn't know their own game well enough.  Also, enjoy trying to CC enemies that are right next to you but have their leg behind a crate or railing; they won't even be affected by the wave and will walk right through the ring with impunity.

Edited February 6, 2015 by RealPandemonium

[Aimop95]

It's nice that you like the new functionality, but just because people overlooked the usefulness of the previous incarnation doesn't mean it should go away.  They can coexist without interfering with each other, so there is no conflict here.  The removal of the initial damage is a straight nerf to the ability and a sign that DE doesn't know their own game well enough.  Also, enjoy trying to CC enemies that are right next to you but have their leg behind a crate or railing; they won't even be affected by the wave and will walk right through the ring with impunity.

Which is why the LoS needs to be fixed of course. I didn't say it fireblast was perfect as it was now.