"Nerf" World On Fire by making Ember stronger

[DeadScream]

Hey ! 

Playing a lot of Ember, I think I understood why many players would be against a WoF "nerf", mostly because this strong ability is close to be Ember's only survival chance on high levels. 

 

But the low-mid level issue still stands here : walking on a straight line and making everything burn with zero effort is a bad thing. It makes people lazy, other players tired, and most of game's content useless. 

 

What I suggest : 

On World On Fire :

Mostly keep the ability as it is, but make all explosions occurences prioritize enemies who are in the camera's line of sight. Available unused occurences only happen if no enemy appears on the player's screen but then prioritize Ember's line of sight. And then, if no enemy appears in one or another line of sight, and ONLY in this situation, explosions will go full ability range as they currently do, but at a lower rate (like 40-50% of what it currently does).

On the same time, it would make the ability way more powerful on focused areas (more explosions if more enemies in your line of sight), while being less painful for other players in low-mid level missions. 

 

On other abilities : 

- Holding #Fire Ball while WoF is active could make all explosions focus in a 5m large, 25m long corridor in front of Ember, resulting in a very strong attack similar to fire Hyena's thing

- Make accelerant give a heat damage buff to Ember's weapons, regardless of it being augmented or not. 

- Make status chances of all Ember's abilities stronger when she is inside the fire ring of her fire blast, while also reducing their energy costs.

 

On her passive : 

- Keep her current passive, but add something for it to be less situational (same could go for a lot of other warframes passives, imho)

- Ember now builds a heat aura depending on how many enemies are in her vicinity : in a 25m zone around her, each enemy gives 4% to her new passive. The heat aura grows from 0,5m to 10m depending on the %. All enemies who enter the heat aura have 10% to 80% chance at being set on fire and panick. Ember gains 1% to 20% power strenght boost depending on the heat aura's %.

- Overheat : If the heat aura hits 100%, overheat is activated for a duration of 10 sec. Overheat gives 100% chance to make enemies take fire and panick in a 10 metter area around Ember. On a last note, Overheat sets Ember on fire and triggers her other passive, resulting in a strong energy replenishment at the cost of some shields loss. 

 

This rework post may be similar to my previous one, but I think it implies less cruel changes for Ember players. Yet again, on WoF's topic, my goal is to make it less of a pain for other players by the way of a weaker AFK-bility while also making it more high level - viable. 

 

What do you think ? 

 

With Love,

Edited March 19, 2017 by DeadScream
clarification

[Cyborg-Rox]

What doesn't nerf you makes you stronger

[DeadScream]

Just now, Cyborg-Rox said:

What doesn't nerf you makes you stronger

.-. is it the new warframe slogan ?

[Dawn11715]

Isnt that more of a buff? Is the explosions still happen if theirs no one in your line of sight, then theirs the same amount of kills.

Wouldnt it be better to nerf its range or the frequency of the explosions?

The buffs to her other ablilitys are pretty good though.

[Rolunde]

WoF is incredibly boring (outside of "higher level" content you can literally go AFK) and looking at some of the Reworks done by DE (Mesa, Saryn, Ash) I'm kind of surprised it hasn't gotten an overhaul like that yet. 

Something I think could be done with it is:
 Make it no longer an AFK Toggle on ability, but one you actually use like her other powers.
 It would then hit every enemy within range with the damage but also with a 100% chance to proc Ignite (the Heat Damage status effect) and then have the "panic" duration of that scale based on Ember's Power Duration. 

This would give her stronger CC ability that would still keep the damage delivery too, but make it something you have to actually bother to press a button for more than once per mission. =p

DE probably wouldn't want to rework the f/x but I think having the enemy "burst into flames" when it is cast would be pretty cool.

Cheers.
~R~

[TentownsRaid]

Her ult just needs to be changed back into a dura ability and they need to add some synergy with her other abilities. Due to right now Wof is just a lazy ability that doesn't do much later on. Having it as a concentrated cone "due to having a fov option" is not a bad idea other then that I see very few issues with it.The synergy ideas need some work though.

[-N7-Leonhart]

Three words: Line of sight.

[Kuestenjung]

34 minutes ago, Rolunde said:

WoF is incredibly boring (outside of "higher level" content you can literally go AFK) and looking at some of the Reworks done by DE (Mesa, Saryn, Ash) I'm kind of surprised it hasn't gotten an overhaul like that yet. 

Something I think could be done with it is:
 Make it no longer an AFK Toggle on ability, but one you actually use like her other powers.
 It would then hit every enemy within range with the damage but also with a 100% chance to proc Ignite (the Heat Damage status effect) and then have the "panic" duration of that scale based on Ember's Power Duration. 

This would give her stronger CC ability that would still keep the damage delivery too, but make it something you have to actually bother to press a button for more than once per mission. =p

DE probably wouldn't want to rework the f/x but I think having the enemy "burst into flames" when it is cast would be pretty cool.

Cheers.
~R~

Sounds like a reverse for me, to make WoF what it used to be, before DE made it a toggeable.

 

[DeadScream]

34 minutes ago, -BM-Leonhart said:

Three words: Line of sight.

Kind of yeah

1 hour ago, Dawn11715 said:

Isnt that more of a buff? Is the explosions still happen if theirs no one in your line of sight, then theirs the same amount of kills.

Wouldnt it be better to nerf its range or the frequency of the explosions?

The buffs to her other ablilitys are pretty good though.

In the op I said "if no one is on the screen, it goes full range but with a lower rate" but not sure if it is good english or not lol

 

41 minutes ago, TentownsRaid said:

Her ult just needs to be changed back into a dura ability 

Not sure if it would be that good, dura-abilities allow their caster to replenish energy as much as they want to, so basically WoF would become even more endless than it currently is. For the rest of your post, I agree with you.

[Dawn11715]

1 minute ago, DeadScream said:

Kind of yeah

In the op I said "if no one is on the screen, it goes full range but with a lower rate" but not sure if it is good english or not lol

My bad, missed the lower rate part. I still think their should something else though, like a timer of 2 or 3 sececounds after the enemy enters the area of effect.

[DeadScream]

19 minutes ago, Dawn11715 said:

My bad, missed the lower rate part. I still think their should something else though, like a timer of 2 or 3 sececounds after the enemy enters the area of effect.

I totally agree, my post lacks details (except for the passive part) but mostly because i'm not a game developer ha ha. If it was only me, all abilities should be restricted to line of sight, and same thing for enemy auras. Most of the balance in this game is impossible because things are too big. 

[Baterial]

IMO Ember is not useless it high lvl missions why?

1. Firequake augment 100% to knock down replenishes every second

2. Flash Accelerant multiples uutput damage from WOF

[DeadScream]

Just now, Baterial said:

IMO Ember is not useless it high lvl missions why?

1. Firequake augment 100% to knock down replenishes every second

2. Flash Accelerant multiples uutput damage from WOF

This thread is about balancing Ember so she becomes less AFK-destroy-everything-and-never-let-any-teammate-kill-anything in lower levels, and more destructive on higher levels without needing an augment to be viable. 

And here again, I honnestly think Ember is viable in high levels. I just think she could be balanced better and have some strong features to make her less boring to play. 

[Djego27]

I would not like the LoS change for 2 reasons.

1. While LoS sounds like not taking away much, by the way LoS works in warframe makes it not that great. Gpull became literally pointless with the LoS change, compared to pulling stuff from a direction without LoS even in normal use. Even yesterday I was just scratching my head in a infested defence since the AOE explosion of Acid shells apparently also uses the LoS of the target, what means if you kill a charger at one side of the pod the 2 of this side will also die by it, while the charger on the other side of the pod, literally next to it behind a 0.5m wall will take no damage at all.

2. I would made it a fair bit inferior for it's main purpose of CC at high levels, since you can CC targets you look at easily with fire ball or your weapon, while WoF helps to not get shot in the back that often.

I for myself would just reduce the damage of WoF to 50(or whatever is appropriate to make it work at low levels similar as high levels primary as CC tool) and just make fire procs while WoF is active scalable. So you get the normal CC form WoF as it is now and have to shoot stuff with fire modded weapons for actual damage(same as it is now at higher levels with the frame). In return your fire procs just scale with fire damage you put into them, what give fire on it's own better scalability and is in line with how you deal(actually quite high) damage at higher levels.

While I like the idea of that boss like fire wave, it is probably better to add this with a augment like on Frost where Ice Wave Impedance significantly changes the ability from a bit of damage and CC to being incredible powerful CC, especially in combination with Nova(both slows stack).

I would not add raw fire damage to the weapons, since I think it is one of the things that make Ember interesting that modding and weapon choice is vastly different then on other frames, I would however like a buff to base status chance of weapons while accelerate is up so more weapons would be useful on the frame.

Standing in the fire blast ring never was a good idea outside of revives(where it can provide the little bit time you need by the knock back and fire proc at the edge). In my opinion the hole ring should burn and it should work more as a area denial tool that you can put around a pod to slow down chargers while killing ancients that are stuck around a corner or putting it behind you in front of a door, so enemies from this direction are significantly slowed down and have less chances to shoot you in the back while you deal with other stuff.

As for the passive, I do not think it adds a lot to the frame, then again most passives don't do that. I for myself would rather see a effect scale with how much targets you could put a fire proc on around you since this would give status weapons more meaning on the frame again, but then again this is just my opinion.

2 hours ago, DeadScream said:

This thread is about balancing Ember so she becomes less AFK-destroy-everything-and-never-let-any-teammate-kill-anything in lower levels, and more destructive on higher levels without needing an augment to be viable. 

And here again, I honnestly think Ember is viable in high levels. I just think she could be balanced better and have some strong features to make her less boring to play. 

Ember is quite viable at high levels, the issue is mostly that the frame is to gear depended compared to other frames(for specific weapons, mods, rivens to make some status weapons workable and arcanes to add extra punch and survivability) because while it scales better then other frames with gear the starting point is a lot less ridiculous so it takes far more effort to put into it. It also produces far less broken result then for example Mirage with AOE weapons or Saryn with AOE gas or stuff like scalable enemy HP damage with acid shells(what is good in my opinion), because 45% damage of the target HP on death is quite questionable on a frame that can keep up a permanent 50% HP reduction on stuff, combine it with nova and it just becomes insane to a point where it makes the old mag look like a joke(I do remember a mag that outdid mesa in T4D for dps and dominated high level corpus excavations while being the star in corpus L100 corpus sorti, because SP simply did scale, no matter if the target got 100 or 1.000.000 shield, it did exactly the same).

I for myself think people that use fire quake and talk about dps are fairly funny outside of actually having them in my Sorti, then I hate them with passion, not because they do low damage but because I can do no reasonable head shot damage with them around as Ember.

This is a extra armor L100 sorti mobile defence on Uranus, head shot + fire + crit accelerant spamming Ember vs fire quake Ember, while being handicapped by that mod on top of it.

There is no big trick to hit hard with Ember, just bring energy restores, a weapon that scales exceptional well with crit/head shots or status in combination with fire damage and stack power strength(arcane and primed mods for extra damage as much as you can).

Edited March 19, 2017 by Djego27

[shyguyk]

What if they made it like resonating quake where its energy drain goes up the longer you use it

[Rolunde]

6 hours ago, Kuestenjung said:

Sounds like a reverse for me, to make WoF what it used to be, before DE made it a toggeable.

 

 

Hmmm... that's a good point since I highly doubt DE would reverse something like that, it'd almost be like saying they made a mistake and we know DE don't make mistakes, eh?! ;-)

But, since the Ash rework, there is a hybrid option such as we see now with Bladestorm. Toggle it "on" mark your targets and then press again to blow them up.

Now, where I think this could work better (more satisfyingly) with Ember than it feels with Ash is that where Ash still "enters Bladestorm" Ember could just ignite all the marked targets and keep doing what she do. That way it's like it is now where it doesn't put the brakes on Ember, but it'd still have to have manual control. 

I suppose DE could frown on that idea because they thought that letting Ash remain active during b.s. was "too op" but come on, right now WoF already requires vastly less activity/engagement by the player than Bladestorm ever did. =p

~R~

[Somb3rBivalve]

There are 2 big things ember needs for me:

1. She needs some way to make players participate with her ult. Right now you just turn it on and it kills stuff for you.
2. She needs a reliable way to trigger her passive.

I'm kind of mixed on changing WoF to line of sight. I feel like even with this, there isn't that much participation involved because you just have to look at people. I would be more ok if turning on WoF meant you would also be lit on fire (this fire could only be put out by turning off the ult). Then, if you had the line of sight thing AND the lit on fire, then you would have to look at enemies and look at your health bar to make sure you don't die.

[RunningTree3]

18 hours ago, Kuestenjung said:

Sounds like a reverse for me, to make WoF what it used to be, before DE made it a toggeable.

 

I would also agree and say that WoF should have gone 'the other way' when it was changed.

Prior, it was like Renewal: it drained energy over time and had a duration limit.

The 'other way' WoF could have gone is duration-only. Example: For 100 energy it might last 10 seconds unmodded. Maybe allow stack casting to create multiple instances running at the same time!

For one, this at least raises the "maintenance threshold" -- instead of having just 1 energy and still get to keep WoF alive, you need to save up energy to feed it and keep it running.

Edited March 20, 2017 by RunningTree3

[RunningTree3]

2 hours ago, Somb3rBivalve said:

She needs a reliable way to trigger her passive.

I think a lot of this comes down to Environmental hazards needing to be more prevalent too. Apart from invasion and ship sabotage tiles, I can recall only the Ceres tileset having any fire hazards.

The bonfires during The Silver Grove were great if they could be brought into Earth tiles.

I would also love to see explosive barrels leave some fire hazard patch behind.

[Chewarette]

World on Fire should just be ... something else. Maybe something like Maim ? Everyone in range gets a burning status, and after stacking enough Fire damage (either through this passive or by using other spells or even fire-weapons), Ember will unleash this stacked power and annihilate everything all around.

Her passive is nice but really too situational. She should have a Fire Status duration/chance increase and heat damage increase as passive. As of today her passive is unusable : if you can swim in Napalm flames, that means the Napalm is low level so it's likely to be dead in the next second. If the Napalm is high-enough for you to need the damage boost of Ember's passive, well a single tick of these flames will kill Ember anyway.

Edited March 20, 2017 by Chewarette

[Justice_Ember]

Please leave Ember alone, the whole "problem" is about matches being public, not about abilities.

[DeadScream]

1 hour ago, zzzNitro said:

Please leave Ember alone, the whole "problem" is about matches being public, not about abilities.

The whole problem is the game being completely unbalanced. 

However if you read the OP you will see my suggestions would make Ember more interesting and, in fact, more powerful than what she is currently. 

 

And also, this is a multiplayer game. I see no reason why things shouldn't be done in a way where other players can play, while keeping them powerful enough for a good solo experience.

[Djego27]

17 hours ago, Rolunde said:

Hmmm... that's a good point since I highly doubt DE would reverse something like that, it'd almost be like saying they made a mistake and we know DE don't make mistakes, eh?! ;-)

A lot of people wanted it because pressing that 4 all the time at least at lower levels hardly did make much sense and the long cast animation + very short runtime(7s in my case) made it like Russian roulette if you get one hit killed during the cast animation at high levels to a point where I actually hardly used it at all there.

12 hours ago, RunningTree3 said:

I would also agree and say that WoF should have gone 'the other way' when it was changed.

Prior, it was like Renewal: it drained energy over time and had a duration limit.

The 'other way' WoF could have gone is duration-only. Example: For 100 energy it might last 10 seconds unmodded. Maybe allow stack casting to create multiple instances running at the same time!

For one, this at least raises the "maintenance threshold" -- instead of having just 1 energy and still get to keep WoF alive, you need to save up energy to feed it and keep it running.

It was actually duration only before the change. What did mean you had to use a high duration and 175% efficiency build with energy siphon at lower levels(worked pretty much like it does now with a bit less range and power strength) while the ability was actually much much worse at high levels then it is now where it works fine as a CC tool without locking you very often in a cast animation what was quite lethal in itself before they added a cast speed buff to accelerant about halve a year before WoF changed to a toggle.

[Justice_Ember]

12 minutes ago, DeadScream said:

However if you read the OP you will see my suggestions would make Ember more interesting and, in fact, more powerful than what she is currently. 

Thing is, it took me 9 Formas to have viable endgame Ember, and she has received at least 2 "patches" in the last 2 years, so no, your suggestion does not make her more interesting, and even if it is more powerful it still trashes the standar and hardcore Ember player.

As a final thought I'll repeat this: The problem people have with Ember occurs on public matchmaking, nowhere else. That's the root of the problem.

[Rolunde]

37 minutes ago, Djego27 said:

A lot of people wanted it because pressing that 4 all the time at least at lower levels hardly did make much sense and the long cast animation + very short runtime(7s in my case) made it like Russian roulette if you get one hit killed during the cast animation at high levels to a point where I actually hardly used it at all there.

 

Ah, yes, slow cast animations are the death of fun.

And often the Warframe =p

Cheers!
~R~