Ember Changes : Update 22.12.0 Feedback

[Jaffawer]

WoF nerf... meanwhile max range maiming strike Atterax macro is still a thing.... well then. I personally find people running with Attrerax more annoying than WoF Embers.

[Aimop95]

I was of the mind we could give the range back to Ember, BUT make it so that it does significantly less damage the further away it is from Ember. That way she can't kill low level content but retains her CC capablities.

If that's off the books, than maybe we could double how many targets WoF initially targets (I think it's 5 enemies at any time).

[Altre]

I personally tested the range of WoF with a max range VS high power build and neither seemed effective. I feel there needs to be a middle ground. Range seemed to have a bit of an advantage due to using the ability augment for CC, but a damage build has NO range. What's the point of the ability doing damage if it can't hit anything that's not within melee range?

Maybe slowing the percentage counter down by a quarter or third would help. Maybe make the range decrease to two-thirds, rather than half and do the same with damage. Maybe make it undulate or pulse back and forth to half distance/double damage, then back to the original output at a reasonable pace with increasing cost. Or, like Volt and others, just make the damage decrease at further ranges and increase the range a little so that it has high damage in the center and marginally lower damage at the edges.

Edited February 11, 2018 by Altre

[VentusVero]

Not sure what DE was aiming for (what did DE want to achieve with the WoF nerf and does anyone at DE think they got there?).

WoF is seemingly useless for me now. You need 250% range to just get a 'decent' range and the effect is 3 mod slots used up just to get your number 4 ability barely outside the range of a primed reach whip, not to mention your tanking the strength. 

Exactly what is WoF supposed to achieve now, a 'run into melee aura' or something? What part of that is in keeping with DE's "first caster damage dealer'? 

At 250% range, WoF is back up to 37.5 meters for the first couple seconds, then shrinks with the % down to 18m (3 mods to get to 250% mind you) and accelerant is 50 meters. 37.5m in the couples seconds and the rest of the time your working with 18m (or 7.5m if you use no range mods). I'd rather the % damage increase was a secondary fire you triggered, so i could just have a decent range at reduced damage, instead of decent damage if and only if im rubbing my face against the mobs face.

In testing with a sniper rifle (zoom tells me range) a 100% WoF couldn't kill enemies at 20m out (250% range. %100 strength on earth), but was able to get 17-18m, so it appears to half the range.Without mods, the range is 15m, so after 100% shrink, you need to practically holding hands (7m) to see any use, might as well use the 5m ring from fire blast.

Ember simply isnt fun anymore. 2 of her 4 abilities require you to be in melee range on a frame that doesn't boast lots of armor, health, shields. Is there a point to playing Ember now unless your target is particularly weak to fire (fireball/accel spam!). 

Funny side note: with 34% range the ability drops to 2.5m and it was funny/difficult to even get that close to enemies for long enough for it to proc a hit on them from WoF. 

 

I can only hope DE missed the mark of whatever they intended (because if this was the limit of their problem (they didn't like how effective WoF was before I guess?) solving, things look bleak).

 

 

 

 

Edited February 11, 2018 by VentusVero

[KaeseSchnitte]

Ember is still basically a one-trick pony, arguably even moreso now, as her already poor lategame viability has tanked quite a bit, which fixes nothing of the things DE wanted to adress and also doesn't help her out in any of the areas she was lacking. I want to see her reworked completely and turned into something more akin to Nidus (Natural Synergy between abilities, Survivability, Potency, Damage Potential, Caster playstyle, AoE focussed).

[caidros]

I love embers design and the idea of setting the world on fire but ember cant do that. Ember should be a glass canon. But right now she has more glass than gara. Please DE make ember an end game frame. If you have to rework her whole kit then so be it. Her 2 is in a good place. I think her 3 should cover an area and not just a ring but its also good. 1 and 4 need the most reworking. I understand you want to stop boring playstyles but you shouldnt nerf a frame just to achieve this. You didnt even solve the problem you only made players use a different frame  for the same purpose. To sum things up make ember a fun, high damage and end game frame please. 

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

What if over time, embers wof ability started dealing fire damage to her, for the sake of the passive, and accelerant sent that damage out in aoe. Iv always wanted accelerant to be for Ember with fire procs what molt is for everything on saryn...imagining that enemies hit with exploding molt are taking damagw they dealt....i guess nyxs absord is more apt.

Edited February 12, 2018 by (PS4)WINDMILEYNO
Edot

[Windy_Wind]

Add Overheat mechanic back to  Ember from the old day and I'll be happy.  As it stands right now, WoF  is garbage.

Edited February 12, 2018 by Windy_Wind

[Hypernaut1]

I don't know, I used WoF in today's sortie and i  was able to adjust. It doesn't perform THAT much differently.  If you think it's useless now, then you must've thought it was useless before.

[akira_him]

if you want to CC you have to spam accelerant now, which is sad

at least give her some sort of melting armor mechanics either on her fireball or WoF and give her back old overheat as passive, tbh how often you see a fire proc from an enemy

Edited February 12, 2018 by akira_him

[Terrornaut]

1 hour ago, Hypernaut1 said:

I don't know, I used WoF in today's sortie and i  was able to adjust. It doesn't perform THAT much differently.  If you think it's useless now, then you must've thought it was useless before.

Those are my applause hands you got. The energy drain is a bummer sure and I'd like one or the other two go, but, its manageable.

51 minutes ago, akira_him said:

if you want to CC you have to spam accelerant now, which is sad

at least give her some sort of melting armor mechanics either on her fireball or WoF and give her back old overheat as passive, tbh how often you see a fire proc from an enemy

I can drop a herd of almost anything in a few shots/strikes after with 3 pox, accelerant, and a decent or good weapon with some heat damage on it. Some heat damage - it doesn't even have to be a heat weapon.  If Ember had armor melting mechanics, which I would love, she would be broken and basically poop on everyone but Banshee and Nidus and do what Ash can do to ST and small groups but to AOE...which is basically what she can do now with a bit of work and maybe 2-3 seconds of setup.

[Altre]

It just occurred to me that ember could kick butt if fire in damage 2.5 would have some sort of alloy armor reduction capability (specifically alloy). I feel that fire damage itself from WoF could be lowered so that it'll kill up to level 20 quickly, but have little damage on higher content while providing an armor debuff to high armor units. I'd like the range back. The increased cost is ok and I don't feel that it should insta-kill everything.

The damage from her 1, even charged, didn't appear marginal (I'll test more today). Being a damage ability, I'd like it to actually kill enemies or do something beneficial since it's a small directed attack. Her 2 is fine, it does what it's supposed to. Her 3 has always felt underwhelming to me. I wish it did more. Maybe give damage reduction from physical projectiles and negate cold debuffs while in the circle? On 4, I really just want the speed of the size reduction slowed or make the minimum size a little larger than half with less damage output. Add that alloy armor debuff and I think she'll have a solid place for higher content.

To lower her ability to cut through lower content, I still think making her damage from WoF radiate rather than shrink is the best way to go. Have it shrink to ~20% for enemies only 50% or so of the way in the affected area.

Edited February 12, 2018 by Altre
Censorship?

[GenericPotato]

After a little playtesting I can conclude that she needs to have the range thing reworked, and the energy penalty needs to be removed, Ember is way too energy-hungry now. 

I constantly find myself looking for energy, throughout the survival, and got panicky at the end due to the lack thereof. Apologies for the rusty gameplay, currently halfway through my midterms.

Edited February 12, 2018 by GenericPotato

[Sorise]

Why not give WoFire the Discharge treatment and revert the range and energy drain back to the way it was and have the damage range lower over time instead. Others in squad (new players included) benefited from it's cc. Why ruin that cc?

World on Fire more potent at it's center(after 15 or so seconds). Like a damage cone getting smaller and smaller, while the skill keeps it's original range and energy drain.

Another tidbit would be that WoF's damage range is increased in the direction Fireball is shot. Either a cone shape or a rectangle shape. Also more explosions happen in that direction.

Enemies hit by fireball also has extra explosions on him and happens fast.

Also, ring of fire knocks down and causes more WOF explosions on enemies hit by it for a short time and it happens fast. So many xplosions like a typical transformers movie.

W/ accelerent active, the more enemies are hit by any ability or heat damage, the more damage all her abilities do on those enemies hit by those attacks.

That way, world on fire keeps it's range, Embers keep their survive ability and everyone is happy.

Also, accelerent should be an aura and increase Embers armor per enemy hit w/ WoF.  Basically draining the enemies of their armor and giving it to Ember inflaming her body melting many bullets that come near her.

Ember can gather fire from enemy corpse into her one to form a huge fireball that decimates enemies.

If needed, energy can drain as you charge it.

People want their flaming roosters back. It was an awesome look.

Edited 11 hours ago by Sorise

5 hours ago, GenericPotato said:

After a little playtesting I can conclude that she needs to have the range thing reworked, and the energy penalty needs to be removed, Ember is way too energy-hungry now. 

I constantly find myself looking for energy, throughout the survival, and got panicky at the end due to the lack thereof. Apologies for the rusty gameplay, currently halfway through my midterms.

Looks like my suggestion above would be a great help to you :)

Edited February 12, 2018 by Sorise

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

I was right at the front off the mob with pitchforks to have WoF reworked, but I don't think DE did it the right way.

It needed to contribute something that helped her at higher levels, while lessening it's effectiveness at lower levels.

I've seen many good ideas for how it could've been done. My thought, keeping it as WoF rather than flat out replacing it, is remove the damage it deals directly entirely. Increase it's cost per second, and make it apply a debuff on affected targets (for a set duration) that changes interactions with her other abilities on them since DE likes synergy. Below are suggested interactions pending better options.

• Fireball, including the napalm effect, deals a portion of it's damage as Finisher damage to debuffed targets.
• Accelerant will deal moderate heat damage, and lower enemy accuracy greatly for a short time after the stun wears off.
• Fireblast's wave removes a % of armor from debuffed enemies hit for each second they are affected by Fireblast's status proc.
• (In case you want more...) As long as a debuffed enemy is standing within Fireblast's ring of fire, Ember gains the benefits of her Ignition passive (does not stack with multiple casts or multiple enemies).

Alternately, WoF could just become a self buff that activates all of these affects on her abilities without the need to be in range of enemies, but at a much higher cost per second.

Edited February 12, 2018 by (PS4)Riko_113

[(PSN)TertulSee]

Here’s a sum up on all the changes that I saw from other threads on the Forums. I’m sorry for advertising my own post but I think it’s appropriate. I hope it can inspire some conversation.

 

[YalcDaGamer]

wow I did not know her first ability could be charged now. thanks for the tip. Personally I think they just need to rehaul Ember. A massive rework not just a tweak.

 

[Zyneil]

with ember in her current state. I've decided to not use her... at all. I'm not even going to waste time rebuilding her. it just doesn't feel worth it to me considering I spent so much time farming and upgrade the mods for my current build. (sigh)

[Duckhard]

i fking hate this update! my last warframes i be building and most used last week and having fun used a lot of formas are just Banshee, Ember and Chroma and just DE get ride all those favorite frames for crowd control ? like WTF is going on? DE are pushing people to OverPowered warframes to waste forma and a lot amount of Platinunm? and athis is a waste of mastery and time for me now.

[Hosanin]

Anyone else remember the Valkitty Ult rework not too long ago? This is kinda going over like that, just a whole lot worse. Yeah, initially people were upset about the increased drain but found a way through it. Ember doesn't have that luxury though. Unless you want to spend most of your time focusing on resetting the ability just to keep your CC going, or watching to see if you have enough energy to reactivate and hold off the incoming wave, this update is a MUCH bigger fail.

I get why it was done, I'm guilty of nuking lower levels with her, but that was mainly for Prime farming and speed runs for various things. I'm mainly a solo player but do help friends and do the odd PUG but always ran CC unless it was a speed run on low level mobs (fissures).

Is this change bad? Yes and no. Her other abilities are great, just WoF is now dead. I get the whole toggle on and off idea as was done with Valkitty but this is overkill. Remove the range nerf and it will be a great and manageable ability again. I'm not saying completely, just maybe instead of 50%, make it something more like 75%. That way we can still hit something before our Orthos Prime with max range does lol

[Almagnus1]

IMO there should be two changes to Ember that would probably salvage this rework:

1) Fire Blast also becomes a bullet shield (like Volt and Frost's ability)

2) Firequake reverts WoF to the prior version, but reduces the damage of WoF by half (or more), so you have a CC aura that doesn't do a whole lot of damage.

Both changes would solve a lot of the survivability issues of Ember, but also give players an interesting choice with WoF.

[Altre]

2 hours ago, Almagnus1 said:

IMO there should be two changes to Ember that would probably salvage this rework:

1) Fire Blast also becomes a bullet shield (like Volt and Frost's ability)

2) Firequake reverts WoF to the prior version, but reduces the damage of WoF by half (or more), so you have a CC aura that doesn't do a whole lot of damage.

Both changes would solve a lot of the survivability issues of Ember, but also give players an interesting choice with WoF.

I agree with this. It's something so simple, yet pertinent to making the frame fun and relevant. DE, I know we ask a lot, but would this be too much?

[Foefaller]

I have actually enjoyed the changes so far, which was somewhat surprising. Swapped Firequake with Flash Accelerant and while it is more intensive, the more active playstyle is something I have a lot of fun with. My only beefs are that the charge time for Fireball is too slow, and Fire Blast's FX need tweaks to make it clear where/when you get the damage buff from firing through it.

However, I do agree she could use a boost to her survivalbility, and I feel the best way to do that is the one place that was overlooked; Her Passive. Right now it's uselessness is on par with Oberon's old "tame wild kubrows" passive, especially considering how fragile she is and how powerful the enemies that do inflict heat procs are; trying to proc it regularly will get you killed more often that benefit you. 

I would like to see her passive change to instead of proccing off of her getting procced, but her proccing enemies, or if that's too easy to do, by the number of active ability effects (with Fireball getting a napalm effect, everything she does now technically has a duration, augmented or not) which result in a stacking buff that includes Damage Resistance and probably something else, like damage or energy.

[Cornelius.EE]

They really need to address Ember changes. I posted more feedback on the Warframe Changes Feedback Megathread. Here is the post.

Quote

Please consider further feedback on Ember. Here is what I have after one week of testing the changes. I also posted a detailed evaluation of the WoF change earlier in this thread.

1) Fireball:

• The fact that the residual flames can proc Heat is nice and can give some extra CC, but the duration is a little too short to be used effectively for area denial. Making the duration modifiable by mods would make this much more useful.
• The charge effect is fun, but the damage is too weak to be useful. Fireball requires direct aiming, and I can usually deal way more damage with my gun in the same amount of time. Fireball's primary function is emergency single-target CC while reloading or moving. Ember is an energy-hungry frame (now even more so), and using Fireball to directly supplement weapon damage is very inefficient. The charge mechanic could be made useful if:
• Charging extends the duration of the residual flames
  AND/OR
• Charging increases the buff from Fireball Frenzy (given that it's already hard to hit teammates that are moving like Roborovski hamsters who've had too much caffeine, I think this would be fair in terms of difficulty/reward)

One minor annoyance voiced by teammates was that the Napalm-like flames hindered their vision whenever they received the Fireball Frenzy buff. Perhaps the flames can be made more transparent? I think that'd be useful, especially for players who don't want to give up using brighter energy colors - Fashionframe and all that

2) Accelerant:

- This is by far Ember's best and most unique ability (when the augment is used). No complaints here.

3) Fire Blast:

• The damage buff is very welcome, but still not enough to make the ability useful. With a 244% strength build, Flash Accelerant provides +122% heat damage to the whole team and Fireball Frenzy provides an additional +244% to everyone other than Ember. An extra 50% is not worth it given Fire Blast's high energy cost and the restriction of shooting through the ring. Restricted mobility means death at high levels, and the ring's unmoddable radius does not help. Please remember that heat damage already needs special circumstances (e.g. 4xCP when dealing with Grineer and Corrupted) to be useful compared to other elements.
• Fire Blast has the following problems _{(keep Snow Globe in mind for comparison, since it is conceptually similar)}:

1. Does not knock back targets that are on fire (unlike Snow Globe)
2. Range is not moddable (unlike Snow Globe)
3. Damage buff in not moddable (to be fair, slow % is not moddable on Snow Globe either, but see below)
4. The flames create no barrier without the augment since the ring damage is negligible at higher levels (Snow Globe slows everything in its range while active without needing an augment; also, Snow Globe can deal finisher damage that scales with enemy health)

• Please consider implementing at least some of the following to give players a reason to build for and use this ability:

1. Make the damage buff scale with power strength (from a QoL perspective, an icon with buff strength would also be appreciated)
2. Make ability and ring radius scale with power range (modding for range would not make this OP because the blast is already line-of-sight-limited, and sacrificing strength for range hurts Ember's other abilities)
3. Transfer the augment's function to the base ability, but make status chance scale with ability strength
4. Change knock-back mechanic so it works on enemies that are animation-locked (e.g. on fire)

4) World on Fire:

I've already discussed this at length in previous posts, but here goes:

• I mostly agree with the motivation behind the change: WoF was OP below lvl 50 or so, required little effort to use at those levels, and made other players feel irrelevant
• However, I have a serious problem with how this was addressed, because the change hurts Ember's high-level viability, especially with high-strength builds

Energy drain is now excessive. Even running WoF episodically leaves much less energy to refresh buffs on teammates. This is a problem because:

1.  Even though this wasn't the most popular way of using Ember, her most effective builds for sorties involved high strength, Flash Accelerant (optionally also Fireball Frenzy) for team DPS buff, and CC from WoF (without Firequake)
2. So under some circumstances (e.g. 4xCP, viral + heat weapon builds), Ember could give a better DPS buff than Nova or a Rhino of comparable power strength, while with the same build also providing decent CC from WoF heat procs (not Firequake)
3. Now Ember can either be a good but very finicky DPS buffer (much weaker than Banshee or even Octavia under most circumstances) OR a sub-par CC provider (with low strength, high efficiency, Overextended, and Firequake). She cannot do both good DPS and CC at the same time anymore, and that was the only thing that previously made her even remotely worth using above lvl 80 (of course I'm just talking in terms of effectiveness; there are other reasons to use a frame such as fun, aesthetics, etc.)

The energy drain would have been restrictive but manageable on its own, but combined with the reduced range, it really kills Ember:

1. The reduced range is not enough for reliable CC anymore while the increased damage, which was supposed to compensate for this, is still predictably irrelevant at the levels where CC becomes useful
2. Using Overextended works, but kills Ember's strength, which her other abilities require to be usable. This also necessitates the use of Firequake because of the reduced WoF status chance. Firequake usually reduces team DPS (see my previous posts) and is therefore sub-optimal [EDIT: to be clear, this is an issue when primarily using guns, not melee]
3. Without Overextended, toggling WoF on an off to preserve range still allows for good CC. However, the activation cost means that Ember does not have enough energy to keep buffing allies, which again means she has to choose between CC and buffs

Please consider implementing at least some of the following changes. These still keep WoF from killing everything at low-levels, while keeping it viable in sorties and beyond:

• Revert range and energy drain changes. Make damage fall off with range
    OR
• Revert range and energy drain changes. Make WoF always do zero damage beyond half-range
• Keep the range and energy drain changes, but reward players who play actively but making weapon kills slow or reverse the counter
• If insistent on keeping the new mechanics, please at least dial back the numbers a bit. Making the energy and range penalties start at 15s (or even making the initial timer affected by mods) or capping the range penalty at 33% instead of 50% would go a long way.

Please, there are ways of correcting WoF without making Ember (as much as I hate to say this) objectively one of the worst frames in the game. Also (and this is specifically addressed to the members of the Dev team who came up with these changes), what is the deal with making so many of Ember's ability mechanics unaffected by mods? One of the main attractions of this game is customization in terms of both playing style and cosmetics. Good design = balanced game without artificial/arbitrary restrictions. There are ways of making something not OP without putting it in shackles!

 

Edited February 18, 2018 by Cornelius.EE

[SeolTreoir]

On 2/17/2018 at 6:36 AM, Almagnus1 said:

IMO there should be two changes to Ember that would probably salvage this rework:

1) Fire Blast also becomes a bullet shield (like Volt and Frost's ability)

2) Firequake reverts WoF to the prior version, but reduces the damage of WoF by half (or more), so you have a CC aura that doesn't do a whole lot of damage.

Both changes would solve a lot of the survivability issues of Ember, but also give players an interesting choice with WoF.

 

On 2/17/2018 at 8:46 AM, Altre said:

I agree with this. It's something so simple, yet pertinent to making the frame fun and relevant. DE, I know we ask a lot, but would this be too much?

yep, I'm quoting this too... I remember "old Ember" from 2014/2015, I was taking a break during her "tanky phase" I think, but I adore Ember in concept - CC or Glasscannon fire wizard. 
I honestly think if Firequake got a rework now, on top of what she already has had done, where it increases range but cuts damage dealt - it'd be beautiful.  It'd be like an additional max rank Overextended with an additional CC proc.

having Fire Blast act like Frost and Volt would just be plain sexy lol.

and her first ability's charge up needs to only take 1 full second.  "one-thousand-one" is more than long enough in a fast-paced game like a sortie in Warframe.