Ember - Tweaks I hope people would like

[Azamagon]

Ember topics pop up almost every day, mainly because of World on Fire (WoF).

Some people think that WoF is by far the lamest low-level killer ability in the game, due to its completely passive nature.

Some people think that WoF is fine as it is, with the arguement that she doesn't scale well. They often also mention Equinox being capable of doing something similar, but two wrongs don't make a right you know? (And Equinox needs a look at anyway, but that's another topic)

Personally, I'm somewhere in between; I understand the concern (or rather, boredom) of blazing through low-level missions with 0 issues, but at the same time I actually like WoF's passive nature, because it gives her an interesting playstyle on higher levels, where you move around like crazy and use your guns a lot, while WoF does passive CC.

So, my intent with this thread is to alter 2 things of Ember:
1) Less, but not entirely removed, passive playstyle (and thus, slower at low-level autoclearing)
2) Improve damage scaling

To do that, I'd first like to approach Ember's kit by analyzing the abilities and their mechanics first:

• WoF - Deals flat moderate damage, can proc Heat, attacks passively and automatically any enemy within range, even through walls. Augment adds reliable CC. Due to the flat automatic damage, it is great for lowlevel speedclearing, but its useage is mainly for automatic CC on higher levels. Its automated killing works well with Accelerant-spam too (which can be casted while aimgliding, allowing her to keep moving), which increases WoF's killing potential to decently high levels. Only when you get overwhelmed with huge numbers of enemies, WoF's flaws start to show, so using Accelerant and/or Fire Blast to gain breathing room appears as a good option, but this only really occurs on higher levels.
• Accelerant - Stuns enemies in a radius and increases their Heat damage taken, while buffing Ember's cast speed. In itself, a stable ability with good synergy, no complaints there. The augment adds Fire damage and castspeed to herself and allies, but ironically this augment's bonus can combine into compound elements (Blast, Gas, Radiation), making its enemy-debuff-synergy potentially wasted, which just feels wrong.
• Fire Blast - On its own, this skill is not as bad as people make it out to be; Its blast causes a heatproc and pushback. All in all, somewhat meager, yes, but it's not useless either.
  A problem I've noticed though, is that this pushback effect hardly ever occurs if enemies are already heat-procced before (thus creating a bit of a problem, synergywise, with WoF). The damage is neglible, but good for gaining some room in a pinch.
  Then, it leaves a fire ring which is generally rather useless as it is, due to providing no real utility, as well as being rather useless against ranged enemies (since you have to go in the midst of enemies for the ring to be of use, but then you likely push them away with the blast), as it requires tampering a lot with enemy line of fire and such.
  I haven't tinkered with its augment, but last I heard, it didn't even work! If it did work, I guess it could find a decent use against melee units / for chokepoints. Maybe. But even then, it feels very limitted.
• Fireball - This ability is really meager, with 2 tiny niche uses; Onehanded casting and long range. These two strengths are generally negligible though, due to how WoF works and with the common fighting ranges in WF. Augment is a hassle to use, but is not weak if used in a coordinated way (and has the same "compound" issues as Accelerant's augment).
  It's sad how the ability that requires the most active useage (i.e. aiming, projectile-prediction, only a small AoE etc) is also the least rewarding ability in the kit. That's not just a problem with Ember, no, but just pointing this issue out.
• Passive - This is (mechanically) a really stupid passive, promoting a kamikaze kind of style, highly unfitting for the somewhat frail 'frame in question.

So, these are my proposals:

• World on Fire - I can find two decent ways to go about WoF's issues:
  
  Approach 1 - The simple approach
  To reduced its lowlevel easymode killing (at least to some extent), its flat damage is first nerfed down from 400 to something like 100 - 150 or so.
  Then, ALSO make it deal 10% (or w/e appropriate number) of the target's CURRENT health as damage.
  These are very simple yet effective changes to the ability, which fixes most of its problems, without making far too radical changes to it either.
  
  Approach 2 - The more complex approach
  To slow down the automatic killing, but keep (or even improve its power) -> Now spawns flames on the affected enemy. This flame lives for a handful of seconds and attaches to the enemy, dealing constant flat Heat damage (with a DPS similar to, say, as if it was the current WoF split only between 2 targets), could have the same heat-proc-chance as now (35% chance per tick, affected by Power Strength). If the affected target dies while the flame still has duration left, the flame will remain at the enemy's deathlocation. If a new enemy wanders into the flame, it will attach to that target instead.
  However, WoF spawns these flames rather slowly, at a rate of only, say, once per second, on random enemies in the WoF-radius. An enemy can only have one of these flames on them at a time. WoF can reapply a flame on an enemy which already has the flame on it (effectly just refreshing its duration), but it prioritizes to place flames on enemies who do not have a flame on them already.
  On cast, 5 flames (sort of similar to now, but overall more potent) are applied to random enemies in the radius, giving it a strong reason to be recasted frequently in enemy clusters.
  
  The damage of the flames don't necessarily need to do ONLY flat damage though, but I'll leave its damagevalues and scalability out for now. The important part is that its target frequency is slowed down a whole bunch, which leaves room for its damage possibilities to be vastly improved.
  
  Notes;
  * How is it slowed down in automatic killing? Due to flames only spawning at a rate of about 1 per second, Ember simply blazing through a room at high speeds means she will likely miss to kill a lot of enemies.
  * How is WoF better at higher levels? Mainly with the aid of her other abilities, their synergies can certainly bring a lot of hurt. Further, if the flames can do their full work, the total damage of WoF is more or less doubled (but distributed between fewer targets). The initial cast, spawning 5 Flames, also makes it nice to recast frequently, at any level. Even further, due to the slower flame-creation rate, the damage could also get some scalability, if needed.
  * How is WoF still "unchanged"? Its style still remains; It can still be used as an automated and passive CC / killing tool, but it won't be as easy as now due to the slowed flame creation rate.
  
  Sure, this is not the only way to go about WoF's issues. One could also simply lower its flat damage by a lot, while giving it some "current health" damage scaling or something (or remove a bit of armor on every tick, etc), but I think my slight revamp was a slightly more interesting approach, because with the spawned flames being capable of lingering in the world, it could possibly give it some more tactical uses if you play well.
   
• Fireball - Enemies struck by Fireball (wether directly, or by its AoE, doesn't matter) are debuffed with "Combustion" for X seconds (could be visualized as fiery cracks on their bodies, coloured by your Warframe energy). If an enemy dies while Combustion is still on them, they will die with an explosion. The damage of this explosion is 50/50 Heat/Blast, and the damage value is based on the enemy's max health! Further, an idea could be that this explosion's Heat-component could have a 100% proc-chance, making Fireball highly potent both in regards to damage and CC.
  
  Augment changed (due to the slight redundancy with Accelerant's augment);
  "Implosion" - Enemies in a 5/6/7/8 meter radius from the impact location of Fireball are dragged into the middle of the Fireball's impact location.
  This brings great synergy with the ability itself (mainly due to its newfound debuff), but it also works very well with Fire Blast's new additions...
   
• Fire Napalm Blast - Multiple changes:
  * The blast wave's damage is vastly increased.
  * The pushback of the blast wave is now guaranteed.
  * EDIT: Enemies are hurt by the ring of fire, even when they are inside the ring (not just when touching the actual ring)
  * Enemies struck by either the blast wave or if hurt by the ring of fire, are debuffed with "Napalm" (Note: The ring of fire will continuously reapply this debuff if the enemy remains in the fire), for X seconds. The Napalm debuff has 2 powerful effects;
  1) It causes any Heat-proc on the affected enemy to deal this Heat-damage in a moderate AoE around itself. This AoE-damage also spreads the Napalm-debuff to new victims, however, this AoE cannot proc Heat by itself (so the effect won't spread very far unless you keep applying Heat-procs to all affected enemies).
  2) All Heat-procs of the enemy ticks twice as fast!
  
  EDIT: Inspired by @mank7
  * Allies (Ember herself included) shooting with weapons through the ring of fire grants some moderate bonus Heat damage (doesn't combine into compound elements). This bonus applies to Fireball too.
  * Shooting a Fireball through the ring of fire causes the Fireball to get further empowered, the Fireball now also debuffing enemies in its blast-radius with the Napalm-debuff, as well as creating a small lingering sphere of fire at its impact-location (this lingering fire sphere has the all same properties and debuffs as the Fire Blast's ring of fire, but is smaller).
  
  Augment remains as is, but has one simple (but awesome) addition; The 100% Heat-proc-chance also applies to the Napalm's Heat-proc-AoE-effect!
  
  What that means, is that since Napalms's AoE further spreads the Napalm-debuff to nearby enemies by default, coupled with the augment to now also causing the Heat-AoE to proc Heat, it can cause a very violent chain-reaction of Heat-procs! Due to how Heat-procs work though, the damage will continuously diminish, but the CC would have seriously strong potential. Note that this extreme CC is held back a bit by Napalms other debuff effect; Faster Heat-ticks. So it has to be handled properly, or complemented with a bunch of Napalm-empowered Fireball-casts.
  
  This means that the augment would provide some serious chokepoint power with the ring of fire, and the blast wave (due to enemies being pushed away, likely into other groups of enemies) can also create CC-points wherever you move them over to, although not as lingeringly as the ring of fire, and even further so when taking Napalm-empowered Fireball's range into your advantage. Combine it with Fireball's scaling damage and/or its enemy-moving augment and well... I guess you can see the potential!
   
• Accelerant - Unchanged
  The augment, however, gets a change: Its Heat damage bonus does NOT combine into other elements (otherwise, the synergy with the base effect of Accelerant is lost)
   
• Passive - I have 2 main ideas of passive replacements:
  1) Heat-procs from Ember can stack... but that'd possibly be too strong.
  2) Give her something that aids her casterstyle, such as: When Ember applies a Heat-proc on an enemy, Ember gains 1 or 2 energy (which works even while WoF is active).

Aaand there ya go! Far more scalability, quite a bit less passive playstyle, along with a much more potent and versatile skillset.

While my ideas are far from perfect, the point is; Ember has a LOT of potential to be a fun and devastating damage dealer and CC-Warframe, and that WITHOUT being almost entirely dependant on just WoF and Accelerant. Just apply some creative and powerful debuffs on Fireball and Fire Blast, tone down WoF's attack frequency (but make it more potent when it DOES apply to a target) and Tadaaa! :D

What do you think?

Edited October 5, 2017 by Azamagon

[(PSN)CrimsonAxure]

Yeah, Ember's abilities don't even seem like fire abilites sometimes. It's just cast ability and see them die, not cast ability and see them BURN. I like the fire proc idea with Wof

Edited September 21, 2017 by (PS4)PS_90210

[(XBOX)Demon Intellect]

That's a huge nerf to WoF. Currently it does 3 to 5 pillars per second. That's nerfing it by 80 percent.

[Azamagon]

Just now, (Xbox One)Demon Intellect said:

That's a huge nerf to WoF. Currently it does 3 to 5 pillars per second. That's nerfing it by 80 percent.

In "rate of fire" (oh the puns), yes. But each pillar can become way stronger due to this. And if they kill a target, its lingering effect can latch on to a new enemy, so a single WoF-flame in the middle of an enemy group could actually kill them all, more easily so if Fire Blast (not even accounting for the Violent Fire debuff) is brought into the picture too. Or Fireball's augment. There are more options to utilize this new WoF effect, despite its firerate-nerf.

That said, nerfing it to one flame per second is maybe overdoing it. Maybe a firerate of 1,5 per second, or even 2 per second, could maybe be the right speed, what do I know?. But its current firerate, combined with its current damage, -IS- part of what makes it so brainlessly good at killing low level stuff, which is what people are complaining so much about (and what I'm trying to help fix, while still keeping it as a relevant ability in her kit).

My suggestions are pretty much just brainstorming, really. Meant more as a way to spark some ideas on how to reduce the reliance on WoF, while making her other abilities better (mainly Fireball and Fire Blast), so she is more engaging to play.

[Andaius]

WoF is NOT a "Passive". You actually have to turn it on for one, for second it actively drains your energy and stop you from regaining it by any means besides the RNG of energy orb pickups.  I've seen this proposal before I think in another of the endless Ember threads. Nerfing WoF and making her more like boring Nidus "build up stacks" by spamming the same powers over and over doesn't make her "better" then she is now.

3 hours ago, (PS4)PS_90210 said:

Yeah, Ember's abilities don't even seem like fire abilites sometimes. It's just cast ability and see them die, not cast ability and see them BURN. I like the fire proc idea with Wof

her 3 and 4 have fairly good chances to proc heat and her 2 increases that damage. I don't see where your getting that from.

[Azamagon]

1 minute ago, Andaius said:

WoF is NOT a "Passive". You actually have to turn it on for one, for second it actively drains your energy and stop you from regaining it by any means besides the RNG of energy orb pickups.  I've seen this proposal before I think in another of the endless Ember threads. Nerfing WoF and making her more like boring Nidus "build up stacks" by spamming the same powers over and over doesn't make her "better" then she is now.

That just nitpicking about the "passiveness". It's an ability, yes. It drains energy and blocks energygains other than orbs, yes. But besides that and requiring to move around (which everything else requires too), it's not exactly a very active ability. So it's still a rather passive-esque kind of ability.

Why are you calling this rework Nidus-like though? It's nothing of the sort. All the suggested changes to the abilities are very straight-forward and work well on their own, but far better when combined (via NATURAL thought-through synergy, in constrast to the forced ones a la Saryn). Also, the only ability that would need a bit of "spam" would be Fireball, to apply its debuff on more enemies (and Accelerant, but that one was already like that anyway). WoF is still the same "passive" ability it always was, and Fire Blast only needs to be "spammed" if you can't funnel or group enemies correctly, but its debuff can spread out far and wide from its original castpoint if used properly, with just a single cast.

[(XBOX)Demon Intellect]

All I think is that WoF needs to just do a percent of the enemies total health/armor/shields. That way it's good in late game content but isn't going to 1 shot low level enemies.

[(PSN)CrimsonAxure]

20 hours ago, Andaius said:

WoF is NOT a "Passive". You actually have to turn it on for one, for second it actively drains your energy and stop you from regaining it by any means besides the RNG of energy orb pickups.  I've seen this proposal before I think in another of the endless Ember threads. Nerfing WoF and making her more like boring Nidus "build up stacks" by spamming the same powers over and over doesn't make her "better" then she is now.

her 3 and 4 have fairly good chances to proc heat and her 2 increases that damage. I don't see where your getting that from.

Most of the time i see enemies getting one shotted by Wof, i don't see the heat procs very much, or i'm just not seeing it

[mank7]

Thank you for posting some interesting ideas, your post was well written, and I think your ideas would make the frame more interesting.

Quote

Fireball - Enemies struck by Fireball (wether directly, or by its AoE, doesn't matter) are debuffed with "Combustion" for X seconds (could be visualized as fiery cracks on their bodies, coloured by your Warframe energy). If an enemy dies while Combustion is still on them, they will die with an explosion. The damage of this explosion is 50/50 Heat/Blast, and the damage value is based on the enemy's max health! Further, an idea could be that this explosion's Heat-component could have a 100% proc-chance, making Fireball highly potent both in regards to damage and CC.

Augment changed (due to the slight redundancy with Accelerant's augment);
"Implosion" - Enemies in a 5/6/7/8 meter radius from the impact location of Fireball are dragged into the middle of the Fireball's impact location.
This brings great synergy with the ability itself (mainly due to its newfound debuff), but it also works very well with Fire Blast's new additions...

I think this is a great idea, the damage the ability would deal would scale well at higher levels of content, as well as make it more interesting, and make it far more worth using than at present. I don't really have any more feedback, regarding this idea, I think it's great.

Quote

Fire Blast - Multiple changes:
* The blast wave's damage is vastly increased.
* The pushback of the blast wave is now guaranteed.
* Enemies struck by either the blast wave or if hurt by the ring of fire, are debuffed with "Violent Fire" (Note: The ring of fire will continuously reapply this debuff if the enemy remains in the fire), for X seconds. Violent Fire has 2 powerful effects;
1) It causes any Heat-proc on the affected enemy to deal this Heat-damage in a small/moderate AoE around itself. This AoE-damage also spreads the Violent Fire-debuff to new victims, however, this AoE cannot proc Heat by itself (so the effect won't spread very far unless you keep applying Heat-procs to all affected enemies).
2) All Heat-procs of the enemy ticks twice as fast!

I'm going to disagree with the blast wave damage being increased, in my opinion, it's not really the point of the skill, maybe you disagree, not super important. Good insight regarding pushback, I agree. Violent fire should be renamed NAPALM - just sayin, napalm sticks to people and burns vigorously, and trying to get it off just gets it stuck to more of you.

I think the WoF changes you propose would improve how the ability scales, however, I'm not sure it makes WoF much more interesting, but what you suggest would be an improvement.

I'll share some of my idea's, they're definitely not as refined as yours, but hey, maybe they'll give someone inspiration.

Fire Blast:

• Projectiles passing through the ring of fire receive an additional X% bonus fire damage, improve the team-play effectiveness of ember, improve her scaling, I think this is an interesting change that adds some diversity to her play style, whilst fitting her theme and playstyle.
• Enemies passing through the ring of fire are hit by the high duration DoT, passing through again refreshes duration.

World on Fire:

• A potentially interesting mechanic might be that the original cast of the ability primes the enemies and enables ember to actually hit them with her ult, so you can't just run around infinitely, it'd be a very long duration buff, but basically ensure that ember can't just run around clearing rooms, as she must recast her 4th ability, possibly encourage using it more intelligently.
• WoF is now reliant on line of sight
• High targeting affinity for the targets ember is attacking
• WoF now has a minimum range, so enemies that are close might be completely unaffected, force ember players to focus on keeping their distance from the enemy.

Obviously all the changes I propose for WoF would require changes to the energy requirements or increases to the damage, as they're all nerfs. I personally like the idea of ember trying to maintain a distance from the enemy, and being rewarded for it,

 

 

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

Is this still going?

[Azamagon]

8 hours ago, mank7 said:

1) Thank you for posting some interesting ideas, your post was well written, and I think your ideas would make the frame more interesting.

2) I think this is a great idea, the damage the ability would deal would scale well at higher levels of content, as well as make it more interesting, and make it far more worth using than at present. I don't really have any more feedback, regarding this idea, I think it's great.

3) I'm going to disagree with the blast wave damage being increased, in my opinion, it's not really the point of the skill, maybe you disagree, not super important. Good insight regarding pushback, I agree. Violent fire should be renamed NAPALM - just sayin, napalm sticks to people and burns vigorously, and trying to get it off just gets it stuck to more of you.

4) I think the WoF changes you propose would improve how the ability scales, however, I'm not sure it makes WoF much more interesting, but what you suggest would be an improvement.

5) I'll share some of my idea's, they're definitely not as refined as yours, but hey, maybe they'll give someone inspiration.

Fire Blast:

• Projectiles passing through the ring of fire receive an additional X% bonus fire damage, improve the team-play effectiveness of ember, improve her scaling, I think this is an interesting change that adds some diversity to her play style, whilst fitting her theme and playstyle.
• Enemies passing through the ring of fire are hit by the high duration DoT, passing through again refreshes duration.

World on Fire:

• A potentially interesting mechanic might be that the original cast of the ability primes the enemies and enables ember to actually hit them with her ult, so you can't just run around infinitely, it'd be a very long duration buff, but basically ensure that ember can't just run around clearing rooms, as she must recast her 4th ability, possibly encourage using it more intelligently.
• WoF is now reliant on line of sight
• High targeting affinity for the targets ember is attacking
• WoF now has a minimum range, so enemies that are close might be completely unaffected, force ember players to focus on keeping their distance from the enemy.

Obviously all the changes I propose for WoF would require changes to the energy requirements or increases to the damage, as they're all nerfs. I personally like the idea of ember trying to maintain a distance from the enemy, and being rewarded for it,

 

 

1) Thanks, that's very nice of you to say :)

2) Glad you like it!

3) The blast damage being raised is indeed not all too important, that's actually a remnant of a different idea I had (more to that later)
Napalm is a good name alternative, I think I might use that actually!

4) I think the "kill enemy = the flame becomes a lingering fire"-thing might make it quite intersting. Playing around in chokepoints (something she already has strengths in, due to the ring of fire from Fire Blast) can lead to these flames + ring of fire doing some cool interactions.

5) Fire Blast

• Weapon damage if shot through - This could definitely work. This would give her an innate non-augmented way to increase her weaponry's heat damage, to synergize with Accelerant's debuff. Nice. Some might say it diminishes the value of Accelerant's augment, but considering the "clunkiness" of how the Fire Blast would boost weapon damage, I hardly think that the augment would be looked at as a waste of modspace.
  Further, something I like about this idea is that the current dissynergy which exists inside the ability (blast wave pushes enemies AWAY from the ring, making it rather poor as a chokepoint ability against ranged units) would be alleviated somewhat by this weaponboosting; The blast wave pushes enemies away from you and the ring, yes, but leave the enemies perfectly outside the ring for you and your allies to shoot at them easily with boosted damage. The more I'm pondering about this, the more I like it! I'm gonna add this idea for sure!
  
  ... wait a minute ...
  You just inspired me greatly here!
  What if: Shots, or at the very least Fireball, which go through the ring of fire not only grants some Heat-damageboost, it also causes your weapons to place the Napalm-debuff on struck enemies! This completely counters the ability's own dissynergy and makes the (honestly rather lame) ring of fire a REALLY interactive part of her kit! Thanks for inspiring me into this idea! :D
  
  Another idea would be to have a Fireball passing through a ring of fire also be empowered to spawn a small lingering sphere of fire at its impact-location too with all the powers of the ring of fire. Now... that would be a fun (albeit forced) synergy!
   
• The ring of fire's DoT is a neat way to go about (and I wouldn't oppose it), but that was kind of the intention I had with World on Fire though. And having two skills do this effect (which could become quite cluttered, visually), well, I guess I'll leave that out for now. Not a bad idea though, especially if the flames from WoF is not welcomed. Also, if the ring of fire were too great from a pure damage-regard, the innate ability's dissynergy (blast pushing enemies away from the ring) would get even more irritating against ranged units.

World on Fire
Before I go on about the ideas here, I want to make something clear here: I'm not out to simply nerf WoF. I'm not a "nerf-crusader", I like all abilities to be relevant, at all levels of gameplay. Including WoF. But it DOES have issues of extreme ease-of-use, which is all I wanted to tackle, really. Now, onto your ideas:

• This would be too much of a nerf imo. The charm of the ability IS its passive attacking, which many people (me included) finds fun, due to how it allows you to use parkour and weaponry so well alongside of it.
• LoS - This would be completely fine, imo. It simply removes some of its cheese, while still allowing it to be used for actual fighting.
• Hmmm... is what you mean here: "if I attack these enemies (with what btw?), they should be prioritized for WoF"? While that wouldn't be aweful per se, it would indeed be a nerf for her defensive capabilities, which I think might be a bit too harsh (as she is quite frail).
• 1st, this doesn't really nerf her cheesiness of blazing through levels. 2nd, it seems ... random? I mean, yeah, it would actually incite some synergy between it and Fire Blast's knockback (but anti-synergy with its ring and with melee, which needs all the emphasis it could get), but still, it feels rather random to me. It's not bad per se but I just can't see the point.

So yeah, sorry, can't agreed with anything other than the LoS-nerf here.

Now onto those old ideas I had:
One version I had of buffing Ember in ways similar to my original post was to actually change around the effects of Fireball and Fire Blast a bit. What I mean:
* Fireball has the Heat-proc-AoE-debuff and leaves behind a small area of lingering fire at its impact location (basicly, moving the "ring" of fire to Fireball). Its augment is now instead to grant 100% Heat-proc chance for the lingering fire
* Fire Blast has the knockback blastwave with higher initial damage, and debuffs enemies with the Death-explosion debuff (WoF can have the Heat-speed debuff), but no longer has its ring of fire. Augment is now "implosion", reversing the effect of the knockback (pulling enemies in, rather than pushing them away).

The good thing about this rework is that they are easy to remember: Fireball grants AoE Fire, Fire Blast grants AoE Blast. It also moves the lingering fire over to an ability where it makes more sense mechanically (as Fire Blast's knockback and ring of fire kind of has some dissynergy right now), as putting lingering fires in the environment is more useful when it's placeable at range.

The things I don't like about this version is that Fireball would then still remain as a rather meager ability, all things considered (at least unaugmented). Further, Fireball is cheap, yet would not be the ability promoted to be used often (especially not when augmented). Fire Blast would also have a really strong debuff (scaling deathsplosions), but it's so easy to apply due to the ability's big AoE-effect, further it would be promoted to be spammed often, despite being more expensive.

However, all my concerns and issues could be alleviated now, via the Fireball interaction of Fire Blast (spreading the Napalm-debuff and creating small lingering area-fires if shot through the Fire Blast's rings)

 

[mank7]

2 hours ago, Azamagon said:

5) Fire Blast

• Further, something I like about this idea is that the current dissynergy which exists inside the ability (blast wave pushes enemies AWAY from the ring, making it rather poor as a chokepoint ability against ranged units) would be alleviated somewhat by this weaponboosting; The blast wave pushes enemies away from you and the ring, yes, but leave the enemies perfectly outside the ring for you and your allies to shoot at them easily with boosted damage. The more I'm pondering about this, the more I like it! I'm gonna add this idea for sure

Yeah, this was one of the reasons I like the idea of projectiles passing through the RoF getting a slight buff, the lack of synergy sort of gives it an identity crisis, and also only makes it a half decent ability against melee units, the AoE on the ring is so small that ranged units just stand outside shooting you, this makes the damage component of the ability rather obsolete. Now maybe you'll say that that's the intrinsic point of the ability, but I think that makes it rather lackluster on average, and only really useful against infested.

One interesting idea would be that enemy projectiles passing through the RoF also get a flame buff, however embers accelerant would place a buff on her and allies that allows them to absorb fire damage, as well as enabling embers passive. This would potentially give fire blast a double edged sword element, though I feel that the synergy with accelerant would be a little forced. Ember absorbing fire damage could potentially be an innate ability of hers, which means you could screw your team, which I find entertaining, but it would make Fire Blast very interesting. Alternately, giving enemies fire damage could instead be a defensive element coupled to accelerant, whereby it gives fire absorb to you and allies, whilst giving fire damage to the enemies.

2 hours ago, Azamagon said:

World on Fire
Before I go on about the ideas here, I want to make something clear here: I'm not out to simply nerf WoF. I'm not a "nerf-crusader", I like all abilities to be relevant, at all levels of gameplay. Including WoF. But it DOES have issues of extreme ease-of-use, which is all I wanted to tackle, really. Now, onto your ideas:

• This would be too much of a nerf imo. The charm of the ability IS its passive attacking, which many people (me included) finds fun, due to how it allows you to use parkour and weaponry so well alongside of it.
• LoS - This would be completely fine, imo. It simply removes some of its cheese, while still allowing it to be used for actual fighting.
• Hmmm... is what you mean here: "if I attack these enemies (with what btw?), they should be prioritized for WoF"? While that wouldn't be aweful per se, it would indeed be a nerf for her defensive capabilities, which I think might be a bit too harsh (as she is quite frail).
• 1st, this doesn't really nerf her cheesiness of blazing through levels. 2nd, it seems ... random? I mean, yeah, it would actually incite some synergy between it and Fire Blast's knockback (but anti-synergy with its ring and with melee, which needs all the emphasis it could get), but still, it feels rather random to me. It's not bad per se but I just can't see the point.

I'll clarify my stance on the current WoF, I think it's a fine ability, the scaling sucks sorta, so it's really great for low level content, and not so great at higher level content, but generally I think it's just a boring, almost passive ability that does damage in an AoE. I'm personally opposed to this, so my proposed changes are geared towards changing that slightly. All my changes would correspond with a damage buff to WoF.

• I mean WoF would still be passive attacking, you'd just have to recast it, and do so intelligently and be more mindful of your energy, which would make WoF more situational. It's not a great idea, I just thought I'd give it more context.
• LoS, I think this is the simplest and best change, but it would have to correspond with a damage increase for sure.
• It's a good point about about WoF prioritizing the enemies you're shooting at, sort of weakening her defensive capabilities, hadn't thought of that.

I quite like the idea of fire blast procing Napalm, if it was a buff that influenced the whole team, I'd say that the probability of it proccing on ally attacks should be reduced. The numbers need to get played around with, maybe the chance of it proccing on enemies is the inverse of the used weapons base attack speed? It's definitely a great idea.

[Azamagon]

1 hour ago, mank7 said:

1) Yeah, this was one of the reasons I like the idea of projectiles passing through the RoF getting a slight buff, the lack of synergy sort of gives it an identity crisis, and also only makes it a half decent ability against melee units, the AoE on the ring is so small that ranged units just stand outside shooting you, this makes the damage component of the ability rather obsolete. Now maybe you'll say that that's the intrinsic point of the ability, but I think that makes it rather lackluster on average, and only really useful against infested.

2) One interesting idea would be that enemy projectiles passing through the RoF also get a flame buff, however embers accelerant would place a buff on her and allies that allows them to absorb fire damage, as well as enabling embers passive. This would potentially give fire blast a double edged sword element, though I feel that the synergy with accelerant would be a little forced. Ember absorbing fire damage could potentially be an innate ability of hers, which means you could screw your team, which I find entertaining, but it would make Fire Blast very interesting. Alternately, giving enemies fire damage could instead be a defensive element coupled to accelerant, whereby it gives fire absorb to you and allies, whilst giving fire damage to the enemies.

3) I'll clarify my stance on the current WoF, I think it's a fine ability, the scaling sucks sorta, so it's really great for low level content, and not so great at higher level content, but generally I think it's just a boring, almost passive ability that does damage in an AoE. I'm personally opposed to this, so my proposed changes are geared towards changing that slightly. All my changes would correspond with a damage buff to WoF.

• I mean WoF would still be passive attacking, you'd just have to recast it, and do so intelligently and be more mindful of your energy, which would make WoF more situational. It's not a great idea, I just thought I'd give it more context.
• LoS, I think this is the simplest and best change, but it would have to correspond with a damage increase for sure.
• It's a good point about about WoF prioritizing the enemies you're shooting at, sort of weakening her defensive capabilities, hadn't thought of that.

4) I quite like the idea of fire blast procing Napalm, if it was a buff that influenced the whole team, I'd say that the probability of it proccing on ally attacks should be reduced. The numbers need to get played around with, maybe the chance of it proccing on enemies is the inverse of the used weapons base attack speed? It's definitely a great idea.

1) Exactly, it has only ever really been good against Infested with its current design. Letting allies have Heat-damage-bonus on ranged attacks would make it more faction-allrounded, which is why I thought it was such a good idea (I've editted in the idea in the OP btw).

2) Eh, I feel there is no need to tack on so many things on Ember (specially not MORE on Fire Blast). Also, I feel that it would shift her style too much away from her aggressive style and become too potent in the defensive area. Not a bad idea at all, but I think dealing directly with specific elements is something that doesn't fit well in Warframe (because the elements of enemies are not distributed well, for example, look at how many enemies that can deal Heat damage versus which can deal Cold damage...), and less so on someone like Ember. As an augment, MAYBE, but nah.
Also, that passive she has is, frankly, situational garbage. One shouldn't cater to that passive too hard unless done properly (I think I only saw @Thaylien do an interesting and workable take on it, but that's the ONLY one so far)

3) It's fine to think the passiveness is boring, but many people like it (me included). I want a middleground on it; Passive, yet something you can play around with a bit, to make it feel a bit more interactive (which the lingering-capable flames could provide a bit). A thought I had before (but scrapped, due to issues with mobility and Fire Blast etc) was that the flames spawned by WoF did NOT cling on to enemies (but simply spawned in the environment, spewing out deadly fires), and possibly moveable with Fireball and/or Fire Blast or something, so you could "correct" bad spawns and such. But it felt too messy to go that route.

• I understand, but it still would require constant recasting, essentially making the "passiveness" to it kind of pointless.
• Yeah, can't really argue with that  :P
• It's easy to overlook such a thing.

4) I actually made it so Napalm could only be spread by Fireball, so as to not let your allies mess with Ember's infernal capabilities too much. Boosting Heat-damage felt like a good enough benefit for your allies, imo.
I also added an extra (albeit forced) synergy there: Casting Fireball through a FB's ring of fire not only empowers the Fireball to debuff enemies in its blastradius with Napalm, but it would also create a small sphere of lingering fire, with the same properties as the FB's ring of fire. This would further alleviate some of the dissynergy within FB, because you could now spread small chokepoints from a distance without having to move away from your current spot, nor would it potentially blast away enemies from that point (via recasting FB at that location). I rarely like forced "hidden" synergies, but this one I actually like a lot.

Also, I have to say thanks again for this inspiration. It made me able to solve that last nagging dissynergy-issue I had with Fire Blast, WITHOUT requiring a total revamp of neither Fire Blast nor Fireball :)

[SenorClipClop]

Ember is simple and effective. Reducing WoF cheese is fine, but I for one enjoy that as one of the original classic Warframes, her design is simple. I know that newer Warframes and revisitings of older ones are adding complex effects and synergies, but that isn't to say that all Warframes need it. Just like Frost is pretty simple, Ember's simplicity isn't a bad thing, and her kit isn't really that limited beyond the obvious (Heat damage is resisted by Armor).

That said though, some reduction of low-level cheese and the addition of some scaling (beyond Accelerant I suppose) would be good additions. The simplest fix I can see to both of these issues would be to reduce WoF's base damage and add percent-Health damage. This would mitigate its ability to passively instakill low-level enemies (although let's face it, anything with flat damage will kill the lowest of 'em immediately) and it would let the ability contend with higher-level enemies by chunking their health a little harder. This would also keep her weakness vs. Armor, which is pretty fair and workable with what we can take in a loadout.

[Azamagon]

1 hour ago, SenorClipClop said:

Ember is simple and effective. Reducing WoF cheese is fine, but I for one enjoy that as one of the original classic Warframes, her design is simple. I know that newer Warframes and revisitings of older ones are adding complex effects and synergies, but that isn't to say that all Warframes need it. Just like Frost is pretty simple, Ember's simplicity isn't a bad thing, and her kit isn't really that limited beyond the obvious (Heat damage is resisted by Armor).

That said though, some reduction of low-level cheese and the addition of some scaling (beyond Accelerant I suppose) would be good additions. The simplest fix I can see to both of these issues would be to reduce WoF's base damage and add percent-Health damage. This would mitigate its ability to passively instakill low-level enemies (although let's face it, anything with flat damage will kill the lowest of 'em immediately) and it would let the ability contend with higher-level enemies by chunking their health a little harder. This would also keep her weakness vs. Armor, which is pretty fair and workable with what we can take in a loadout.

Yeah, I mean doing simple changes would be fine by me too. I might've gone a bit "too far" with the complexities (at least on Fire Blast), but I honestly think the suggestions aren't THAT complex.
The TL;DR
* Fireball causes a scalable deathsplosion-debuff
* Fire Blast makes heatprocs tick faster and spread around like crazy, along with shooting through the fire-ring also boosting you and your teams' firepower (quite literally) and empowering Fireball to spread lingering fires on the map.
* WoF is better at killing individual targets, but doesn't attack different enemies as frequently.
* Passive changed to fit her aggressive style, w/e the passive may be (many options, really)

That's the gist of it. Is that really too complex?
She'd still be able to be played as a very simplistic Warframe. Nothing is stopping you from just spamming the abilities and using them as they are today (only WoF would be slower, really). But she would have hidden little gems that makes her more rewarding if you use her abilities right, particularly useful on higher levels.

And, while I can't disagreed with your WoF proposal (I've said similar suggestions for it in the past, actually), that would still only fix WoF's issues. Fireball and Fire Blast would still be REALLY lackluster abilities and only tweaking WoF wouldn't exactly increase the useage of those 2 abilities much. Tacking on simple buffs to Fireball and Fire Blast is the bare minimum that's needed, imo. Something that rewards Fireball's "effort", and something that makes sense of the combination of Fire Blast both creating a ring of fire and a knockback blastwave. The passive also need to be less kamikaze-oriented.

Which is exactly what I've tried to do here. Sure, on Fire Blast I might've made it in a slightly more complex manner, but the rest is really simple stuff.

[SenorClipClop]

9 hours ago, Azamagon said:

Yeah, I mean doing simple changes would be fine by me too. I might've gone a bit "too far" with the complexities (at least on Fire Blast), but I honestly think the suggestions aren't THAT complex.
The TL;DR
* Fireball causes a scalable deathsplosion-debuff
* Fire Blast makes heatprocs tick faster and spread around like crazy, along with shooting through the fire-ring also boosting you and your teams' firepower (quite literally) and empowering Fireball to spread lingering fires on the map.
* WoF is better at killing individual targets, but doesn't attack different enemies as frequently.
* Passive changed to fit her aggressive style, w/e the passive may be (many options, really)

Don't get me wrong, your ideas are really good ones. (Especially the "shoot through Fire Blast ring idea, I want that.) All I'm saying is that she doesn't strictly need any of this.

[mank7]

On 9/24/2017 at 12:16 AM, SenorClipClop said:

Don't get me wrong, your ideas are really good ones. (Especially the "shoot through Fire Blast ring idea, I want that.) All I'm saying is that she doesn't strictly need any of this.

The point isn't that ember is a weak frame, the point is that the majority of the frames in the game should be interesting and unique as it makes the game better. The reason for holding these conversations is that we want warframe to be as great as it can be, not just "good enough".

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

I hate the "fine as is" argument.

[SenorClipClop]

On 10/1/2017 at 3:05 AM, mank7 said:

the point is that the majority of the frames in the game should be interesting and unique as it makes the game better. The reason for holding these conversations is that we want warframe to be as great as it can be, not just "good enough".

Maybe I wasn't being clear enough with what I was saying. I'm not saying Ember's "fine as is" or that "she's good enough already and doesn't need love". I'm not getting at that. What I'm saying is that a Warframe doesn't need to be complex or complicated to be good, effective, fun, interesting, etc. A Warframe's kit can be simple and still be excellent.

Across our roster of 33+ Warframes (and near-endless build paths) we have varying levels of simplicity and complexity. Harrow, our newest frame, has reasonably simple powers but requires fairly complex gameplay. As Harrow, you need to effectively manage your buffs, positioning, timing and situational awareness. Saryn is another complex Warframe, though the complexity is more within her array of abilities, needing to use them in multi-step combinations (or work in some weapon play) to pull her big damage. Oberon is similarly complex, with each of his abilities doing at least 2 things. Enemy placement and ally awareness are very important for Oberon, and a good Oberon will constantly need to be thinking and managing.

Complexity is fun and exciting in characters, but simple characters can be just as entertaining. Let's look at Excalibur. He has a dash, a blind, an AoE burst and an energy sword with directional damage. Excal at base is very simple (his augments get into different complexities, but these are optional), and he's tons of fun. Frost and a few other classic frames are similarly simple and entertaining, well-designed without the complex mechanics that later frames have. I lump Ember in with this group of simple, classic Warframes. I'm totally down for augments that make her gameplay more in-depth, but her base abilities are simple and straightforward, which I really enjoy. When I cast Fireball, I don't really want to be thinking about applying debuffs and doing another specific thing to optimize my plays. I just want to set that enemy on fire. Furthermore, keeping a Warframe simple means that you can add complexity into your loadout from other sources. Currently I'm running a full-melee Ember with a low-range Firequake build and the Twin Basolk, which requires a lot of management, but only in the combination of my Warframe and weapon.

In short, I like complex mechanics, but I also like simple Warframes. Complex mechanics make a character fun, but I don't see them as a requirement for having a fun character. I really dig Ember's classic simplicity, and I like adding complexity to her loadouts through other means. Giving Ember more options for complexity would be awesome, but making complexity part of her base abilities would make her more about micro-management, which I'm not really interested in when playing Ember.

Edited October 2, 2017 by SenorClipClop

[Azamagon]

6 hours ago, SenorClipClop said:

Maybe I wasn't being clear enough with what I was saying. I'm not saying Ember's "fine as is" or that "she's good enough already and doesn't need love". I'm not getting at that. What I'm saying is that a Warframe doesn't need to be complex or complicated to be good, effective, fun, interesting, etc. A Warframe's kit can be simple and still be excellent.

Across our roster of 33+ Warframes (and near-endless build paths) we have varying levels of simplicity and complexity. Harrow, our newest frame, has reasonably simple powers but requires fairly complex gameplay. As Harrow, you need to effectively manage your buffs, positioning, timing and situational awareness. Saryn is another complex Warframe, though the complexity is more within her array of abilities, needing to use them in multi-step combinations (or work in some weapon play) to pull her big damage. Oberon is similarly complex, with each of his abilities doing at least 2 things. Enemy placement and ally awareness are very important for Oberon, and a good Oberon will constantly need to be thinking and managing.

Complexity is fun and exciting in characters, but simple characters can be just as entertaining. Let's look at Excalibur. He has a dash, a blind, an AoE burst and an energy sword with directional damage. Excal at base is very simple (his augments get into different complexities, but these are optional), and he's tons of fun. Frost and a few other classic frames are similarly simple and entertaining, well-designed without the complex mechanics that later frames have. I lump Ember in with this group of simple, classic Warframes. I'm totally down for augments that make her gameplay more in-depth, but her base abilities are simple and straightforward, which I really enjoy. When I cast Fireball, I don't really want to be thinking about applying debuffs and doing another specific thing to optimize my plays. I just want to set that enemy on fire. Furthermore, keeping a Warframe simple means that you can add complexity into your loadout from other sources. Currently I'm running a full-melee Ember with a low-range Firequake build and the Twin Basolk, which requires a lot of management, but only in the combination of my Warframe and weapon.

In short, I like complex mechanics, but I also like simple Warframes. Complex mechanics make a character fun, but I don't see them as a requirement for having a fun character. I really dig Ember's classic simplicity, and I like adding complexity to her loadouts through other means. Giving Ember more options for complexity would be awesome, but making complexity part of her base abilities would make her more about micro-management, which I'm not really interested in when playing Ember.

I totally understand your PoV here.

Looking at my suggestions, Fireball and moreso Fire Blast might've become too complex (at least if you wanna use them optimally). The change to WoF (and Accelerant being mostly untouched) is simplistic enough though.

So, if I may ask; Do you have any ideas, for Fireball and Fire Blast mainly, on how to make them better as individual skills while also naturally synergizing with the rest of the kit, or at least making sure that no ability is "obsolete" (like Fireball, mainly, is now) ? I'd gladly appreciate any help!

[SenorClipClop]

4 hours ago, Azamagon said:

I totally understand your PoV here.

Looking at my suggestions, Fireball and moreso Fire Blast might've become too complex (at least if you wanna use them optimally). The change to WoF (and Accelerant being mostly untouched) is simplistic enough though.

So, if I may ask; Do you have any ideas, for Fireball and Fire Blast mainly, on how to make them better as individual skills while also naturally synergizing with the rest of the kit, or at least making sure that no ability is "obsolete" (like Fireball, mainly, is now) ? I'd gladly appreciate any help!

Thank-you for your understanding! Like I said, your ideas are really cool and I'd be down for seeing them as additions to Ember's kit options. On another note though, I've had a few of my own ideas about changes to Ember, based on a lot of the discussion surrounding her of late. I'll introduce my points based on the common critiques of her aspects, then explain.

• A passive that relies on taking damage. Ember gains 10 Energy/second and +35% Ability Strength when affected by Heat status. This is okay.
  • The amount of Heat damage that needs to be taken is minimal in order to gain large amounts of Energy. I've regularly been able to regen considerable energy while sustaining only some Shield damage.
  • It's not meant to make or break Ember. Players can build around and try for wacky self-damage strategies to get Energy, but these are a lot of effort for results easily got from other sources.
  • Unless you're a god, are perma-invisible or have a guardian angel Nezha, damage is inevitable and Heat isn't rare. 
  • These points said, including a bit of Heat resist with the passive would be nice so players in high levels aren't as cautious about Heat damage. Also, I believe active WoF blocks regen from this passive, and I would be interested to see what it'd be like to have it otherwise. Taking heat (pardon the pun) while in ult could reward Ember with sustain to her damage. As long as this couldn't be cheesed too much, I think it'd be cool.
• Fireball doesn't do anything. Ember has synergy based on her element, but no direct ability synergy. (I bring these up in the same point because my imagined solution ties these both together.)
  • Comparing it to the skillshots of other classic frames (Shock, Freeze, Shuriken), it's pretty fair. Personally I'm finding it really effective at all levels of play right now, but that's because I'm playing melee-only Ember and Fireball is the one effective tool I have for keeping the enemy CCed at range while I close the gap. My use is situational. I know that Freeze is used very rarely at high levels, and Fireball shares that description. Frankly, firing your weapon is more effective.
  • To fix this, we could add some direct ability synergy. I want to avoid scaling put on Fireball because it's cheap and spammable, and it shouldn't deal too much damage. Perhaps to match Frost and Volt, Ember's 1 could synergize with her 3 in some way. These are just spitball ideas, but perhaps either Fireball could deal more damage when cast from within a Fire Blast ring, or casting Fireball at an existing ring could send out another heat wave from it.
• World on Fire allows players to effortlessly cheese low levels, but it falls off as a damage tool in high levels. Ember's ability scaling (outside of Accelerant) leaves something to be desired. My favourite idea to fix both of these issues is to decrease the base damage of WoF's explosions, but make up for that by adding percent-Health damage.
  • For example, we could lower the current 400 damage to ~300, but also have it take 10% of the enemy's current Health. NOT percent of max health, since that would make her ludicrously strong and turn her into even more of an AFK-bot. Armor would still reduce that damage, since Ember's weakness vs Armor is thematic, fair and easily worked around with options outside of her abilities.
  • At low levels, this would ease off Ember's instakill potential at least a little bit, with that Health percent being pretty low.
  • At high levels, the change to WoF would help tear through the initial chunks of enemy Health, to a point where the percent-Health damage would be eclipsed by the flat damage. Percent of current Health would still run into a point where it couldn't scale well, but having an indefinitely-scaling passive damage ability would be ludicrously OP.
  • WoF would function in exactly the same way, without any need for Ember players to alter their gameplay.

These are some ideas. Some I'm more dedicated to (mostly to the WoF idea), others are moreso musings. Let me know what you think. :)

[Azamagon]

On 2017-10-02 at 8:19 PM, SenorClipClop said:

• A passive that relies on taking damage. Ember gains 10 Energy/second and +35% Ability Strength when affected by Heat status. This is okay.
  • The amount of Heat damage that needs to be taken is minimal in order to gain large amounts of Energy. I've regularly been able to regen considerable energy while sustaining only some Shield damage.
  • It's not meant to make or break Ember. Players can build around and try for wacky self-damage strategies to get Energy, but these are a lot of effort for results easily got from other sources.
  • Unless you're a god, are perma-invisible or have a guardian angel Nezha, damage is inevitable and Heat isn't rare. 
  • These points said, including a bit of Heat resist with the passive would be nice so players in high levels aren't as cautious about Heat damage. Also, I believe active WoF blocks regen from this passive, and I would be interested to see what it'd be like to have it otherwise. Taking heat (pardon the pun) while in ult could reward Ember with sustain to her damage. As long as this couldn't be cheesed too much, I think it'd be cool.
• Fireball doesn't do anything. Ember has synergy based on her element, but no direct ability synergy. (I bring these up in the same point because my imagined solution ties these both together.)
  • Comparing it to the skillshots of other classic frames (Shock, Freeze, Shuriken), it's pretty fair. Personally I'm finding it really effective at all levels of play right now, but that's because I'm playing melee-only Ember and Fireball is the one effective tool I have for keeping the enemy CCed at range while I close the gap. My use is situational. I know that Freeze is used very rarely at high levels, and Fireball shares that description. Frankly, firing your weapon is more effective.
  • To fix this, we could add some direct ability synergy. I want to avoid scaling put on Fireball because it's cheap and spammable, and it shouldn't deal too much damage. Perhaps to match Frost and Volt, Ember's 1 could synergize with her 3 in some way. These are just spitball ideas, but perhaps either Fireball could deal more damage when cast from within a Fire Blast ring, or casting Fireball at an existing ring could send out another heat wave from it.
• World on Fire allows players to effortlessly cheese low levels, but it falls off as a damage tool in high levels. Ember's ability scaling (outside of Accelerant) leaves something to be desired. My favourite idea to fix both of these issues is to decrease the base damage of WoF's explosions, but make up for that by adding percent-Health damage.
  • For example, we could lower the current 400 damage to ~300, but also have it take 10% of the enemy's current Health. NOT percent of max health, since that would make her ludicrously strong and turn her into even more of an AFK-bot. Armor would still reduce that damage, since Ember's weakness vs Armor is thematic, fair and easily worked around with options outside of her abilities.
  • At low levels, this would ease off Ember's instakill potential at least a little bit, with that Health percent being pretty low.
  • At high levels, the change to WoF would help tear through the initial chunks of enemy Health, to a point where the percent-Health damage would be eclipsed by the flat damage. Percent of current Health would still run into a point where it couldn't scale well, but having an indefinitely-scaling passive damage ability would be ludicrously OP.
  • WoF would function in exactly the same way, without any need for Ember players to alter their gameplay.

These are some ideas. Some I'm more dedicated to (mostly to the WoF idea), others are moreso musings. Let me know what you think. :)

Passive - We definitely disagreed here. Her passive is so incredibly situational it's to the point of being non-existant. Yes, despite Heat-damage being relatively "common". It simply doesn't fit her. And giving her Heat damage resistane is a complete no-no. You should know why.

Fireball - You compare to Freeze (a somewhat meager ability), Shock (a decent-ish CC-skill) and Shuriken (a horrible flat damage ability). All those ALSO need improvements, you know?
That said, your idea (retrigger the blast from Fire Blast if casting Fireball on the ring), is interesting... but how does that fix Fireball? It just adds a very forced synergy (something that should be avoided as much as possible), a synergy that is made pointless by simply recasting Fire Blast again... well, unless you wanna save a tiny bit of energy. Neither does this fix Fire Blast's ring from being useless by default.
Sorry, but I feel this idea doesn't do much to help those abilities, really.

Avoiding scaling on a cheap ability is moot. I mean look at Mallet (ok, it's extreme), Smite or Mind Control. Or even downright simply powerful and constantly useable abilities like Landslide, Virulence, Spores, Slash Dash, Hall of Mirrors, or great CC/utility skills like Pull, Desiccation, Quiver and Condemn.
Also, being afraid of making a FIRE-based frame's first ability strong is, imo, kinda silly.

WoF - Your approach (nerf the flat value, add scaling value) is something I wouldn't oppose (I've suggested it in the past too). But 300 damage is honestly still too high. Bring it down to 100 or 150, then it'd REALLY nerf the lowlevel easymode, while the softening damagescalability and CC are what makes it valuable.
Also, yes, I fully agreed on it dealing with current health, as max health would indeed be far too good considering its easymode mechanics.
So yeah, that'd be good. But it still wouldn't be particularly interactive (not directly at least, as it still allows her to be mobile in a unique way), but I guess that's fine?

You know what. I'll actually add in this in the OP as the "simple" approach in regards to changing WoF.