Can We Talk About Ember? Because I've Got A Bone To Pick With De Over Her Kit.

[Ryjeon]

Embers description should be: "A nightmare for not gunplay and movement focused players, the 2. best scaling dps frame(first is mag, miles ahead but also only under certain conditions) with a rather vertical learning curve and without any kind of safty net for others."

 

My biggest issues with Ember is that it is a perfectly working skill based dps frame in a game full of broken scaling mechanics(getting one hit killed by instantly and ulimited respawns is bad, armor/shield/aura mechanics that are only ok if you bypass the hole mechanic with aura/status or ability use is plain horrible), hillerious drawbacks for host/solo and tons of bugs and lag, what is even more deadly then getting one hit killed by high level units all day long(yeah your CC takes 1 second to affect the target that can kill you 3 times till this point at high levels since we can't fix that long sessions build up tons of lag, even for hosts, gg).

 

Edit: Ember is not a bad frame, it is just that the frame does only shine at high levels(80+, full armor/shield/no hard CC vs Infested) or solo where at the same time the game really punish you for useing a glass cannon dps frame.

 

Yeah, any conversation about balance goes out the door when you have to account for every level of play in this game. My issue with the current game balance is that if you are optimizing for the 40-minute plus zone then you are effectively unbalancing the first 40 minutes by overgearing and therefore subjecting yourself to trivial gameplay and boredom. It's a lose lose situation at this point. Either you're bored initially but well-prepared for later waves. Or well-balanced early, but unprepared for later waves. In an online public setting it's hard to tell what sort of condition it's going to be as far as ally preparation and intentions.

 

Sure I can go ahead and just pick a frame I'm comfortable with and always be prepared: http://i.imgur.com/KtjIvVa.png . But it still seems like an inelegant solution to a bloated system. And it's bad enough that endless missions are the only way you can access the high level dense with Eximii gameplay. And you always have to deal with that 20 minutes of dead time where the enemies just aren't a real presence. I wish they would at least give us high level alerts the way they used to. Before they rebalanced enemy levels enemies used to go up to level 130 on Pluto alerts which for the time was a real test of your equipment. Nowadays I see Pluto-Ceres alerts and don't even bother unless it's an interception because those at least challenge my mobility.

 

So I'm not disagreeing with you. You bring up a real good point that strikes a chord with what's so dissatisfying about the current balance. I'd like the challenge to be more accessible in terms of time spent.

Edited June 26, 2015 by Ryjeon

[RealPandemonium]

It's interesting to see how some players, confused and dissatisfied with the current state of balance, ask for buffs to their favorite weapons while others just want the game to be easy (either for farming efficiency or just because they want a powertrip without putting in any work) and actually embrace powercreep.

 

DE is in an unenviable position feedback-wise.  I hope they can do better in the remainder of this "year of quality."

Edited June 26, 2015 by RealPandemonium

[Archwizard]

Frame descriptions have pretty much never been accurate and this goes doubly for frames that have had numerous revisions since their description was written (probably before the frame's design was even finalized.)

 

True, but in Ember's case it managed to remain apt after Damage 2.0; one gets the impression they made sure Heat damage was more effective on Cloned Flesh and Infested specifically so they could keep her description true. Ember was released as the melee hard-counter (to oppose her elemental opposite as the ballistic hard-counter), and that's the only thing that has remained remotely consistent about her through some of her drastic (and yet, somehow not drastic enough) changes.

 

The flame wave is only on Fire Blast because a gaggle of vocal non-Ember players relentlessly campaigned for it on the forums; DE didn't really think it through.

 

I supported the knockback/knockdown suggestions because Ember needed a stronger defensive mechanic (and having Fire Blast not scale with any sort of range anymore, even for the initial blast, sounded ridiculous), not simple jealousy of the Eximus gimmick. Spamming the effect in-place for flat damage was never a hard sale (especially given how poorly direct-damage skills scale in Warframe - and Fire Blast is Ember's weakest), and if I wanted it for CC, there are many frames with more varied toolkits. She needed something after they tore out Overheat.

 

Of course, I also envisioned it more as an augment, with baseline status guarantee in the circle, but... c'est la DE. The fact that it was switched is probably because of the "relentless campaigning", but I expect the Eximus wave would have been added in some form eventually regardless.

Edited June 26, 2015 by Archwizard

[NikolaiLev]

Well she used to have survivability in the form of her old 2, which made her very interesting to play as she was a melee-range brawler-caster.  But they threw that out in favor of the far more boring Accelerant, instead of replacing her equally boring Fire Blast (which is now at least kinda neat since it now has a radial expanding ring of damage).

 

They should combine Accelerant and Fire Blast and give her back Overheat.

 

Or, you know, fix modding so she doesn't need Accelerant and thus fix all flat damage abilities.

Edited June 26, 2015 by NikolaiLev

[RealPandemonium]

Well she used to have survivability in the form of her old 2, which made her very interesting to play as she was a melee-range brawler-caster. 

Overheat was just used as godmode by lazy players.  It was the same "invincible turret" style of play that's plaguing the game these days.  Accelerant forces you to pay attention in order to survive at medium range, and that's a good thing.