How to save Ember

[Valgaarv]

We all know that Ember rework is objectively a disaster, now she can still doing low level content walking or afk while in end game she sucks because of her bad energy economy and poor CC ("but you can stun with accelerant" yes but Accelerant stuns enemies for one to five seconds, depending on the enemy; the stun length is not affected by Ability Duration. so you have to spam it and do nothing else during all the mission). So i have some ideas to bring her back from the ashes:

Fireball: decrease full charge time from 2,5 to 2 seconds and it can be reduced to 0.8 with flash accelerant and natural talent (rigth now, this skill it´s tooo slow for what it does, in 2 secs you can shot 3 times a vaykor hek and kill any bombard/heavy gunner in front of you)

Accelerant: always stun all the enemies for 5 sec. (not 1-5)

Fireblast: Fire Frigth augument strips 35% of enemies armor and can reach a 70% cap with power strength mods (change it´s name to meltdown)

World on fire: Starts at 100% damage and 50% range, after 6 seconds the damage decrease to 50%, it´s range increase to 100% and it´s energy cost increase by 50%

 

The actual nerf has proove that the only way to stop players to go AFK or walk through low level missions is to delete WoF and create another ability, so with this changes ember loose some of her  WoF damage and gets her CC back and another utility for end game content.

Edited February 22, 2018 by Valgaarv

[GinKenshin]

they just need to not be lazy and actually rework wof (and her other abilities?) and not just slap some stats and cheap mechanics and call it a day 


just wanna point out that when did changed these frames they asked themselves "is this fun" which is a Q every dev should ask about their game and a good step, but I'm pretty sure they didn't ask that when they changed her, since they even say it's to give a chance to newbies to see some enemies

[pavlo555]

Rework her ground up. Her abilities and everything. She is clearly not designed within their philosophy

[An8rchy]

6 minutes ago, GinKenshin said:

they just need to not be lazy and actually rework wof (and her other abilities?) and not just slap some stats and cheap mechanics and call it a day 


just wanna point out that when did changed these frames they asked themselves "is this fun" which is a Q every dev should ask about their game and a good step, but I'm pretty sure they didn't ask that when they changed her, since they even say it's to give a chance to newbies to see some enemies

Completly agree here, and i do have to add
I had fun wiht old Ember, i just couldnt deal with high lvl missions cuz ember is squishy 

Shes a glass cannon yes, but whats the purpace of it if any lvl over 50 i start getting 1shoted

THAT right there isnt fun, so why dont they work on a power that increases her survivability, so it isnt permanent and she keeps the role of glass cannon *cough* overheat *cough*

[xXDeadsinxX]

Honestly, they should really rework all of her abilities. As @GinKenshin said, Ember’s rework seemed like it was very rushed which they didn’t think about. 

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

I'd like them to make WoF a small melee range aura that reduces projectile damage, and burns melee range enemies.

While toggled on, it also makes your first ability deal damage in a wider radius while a percentage of the damage bypasses armor. 

[_Mannaroth_]

I just don't get, why it seems to be that hard, to fix the trouble with Ember.

As far as I see, there are three major complaints about her:

1) She's able to cheese any low level content.
2) Her WoF promotes a passive play style.
3) She doesn't scale well with higher level enemies.

To solve these problems, it requires only two (imo quite obvious) changes:

Make WoF scale with enemy health and add a simple ramp-up mechanic!

To explain: Cutting the damage of WoF down to 50 (or even 25%) + something like 1% of enemy max (or probably 2% current) health (which does not scale with ability strength!), allows her to deal significant damage also at higher levels, while on the other hand reducing damage to low level enemies.
1) and 3) solved. For point 2) (and partly also 1)) simply add a ("overheat") Counter to her WoF - just like it is atm but let it start with 25-50% range. For every other ability being used, 10% range are added to WoF, which start to decay at a rate of 1% per second down to the starting range.
That means, if you want to use WoF with it's maximum range, you constantly need to use your other abilities - therefore, a more active play style is rewarded.

Important note: The numbers here are just examples to illustrate the idea - how the final values would look like, is up to DE. I would only suggest to reduce the energy cost of WoF to the value before the last update (or even lower), since you have to spend more energy anyway to keep it going at full range.
(Plus: The ramp-up mechanic could also be used as Ember's passive and her other abilities could also scale with it as well. But atm I don't have enough time to work out a more detailed concept.)

I think, this simple approach could change Ember back into the heavy damage-dealing glass cannon, she was intended to be.

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

18 hours ago, _Mannaroth_ said:

Make WoF scale with enemy health and add a simple ramp-up mechanic!

To explain: Cutting the damage of WoF down to 50 (or even 25%) + something like 1% of enemy max (or probably 2% current) health (which does not scale with ability strength!), allows her to deal significant damage also at higher levels, while on the other hand reducing damage to low level enemies.
1) and 3) solved. For point 2) (and partly also 1)) simply add a ("overheat") Counter to her WoF - just like it is atm but let it start with 25-50% range. For every other ability being used, 10% range are added to WoF, which start to decay at a rate of 1% per second down to the starting range.
That means, if you want to use WoF with it's maximum range, you constantly need to use your other abilities - therefore, a more active play style is rewarded.

This actually sounds great. It does fix all of the problems while giving the ability to scale.

• Making WoF only deal a % of max (or current) health will prevent the speed running Embers from rushing through passively while scaling damage on enemies at higher levels.
• The overheat counter allows them to keep the range they 'depend' on for survival (I've never depended on Firequake, personally. I build for Accelerant) while forcing them to have an active playstyle.

I do agree that her energy cost should be lowered back to what it was before, and it probably should not affect enemies through walls.

 Also, if we go with 2% of current health, only if absolutely necessary they may be able to add in an additional scaling benefit for high level, interactive combat. Make the damage it deals burst damage for the one second that Overheat is at 100% to 10% of max health instead with no chance of fire proc to all enemies in range, and this affect can happen no more than once every (5-10) seconds.

Example: If the enemies have 1000 health the standard damage would deal 20 damage at max per tick with a chance of fire proc, so a total of 90 health over 7 seconds if fire procs (assuming the fire proc damage wasn't resisted), and less as the health drops (since it's based on current health-she has other abiltiies dealing damage as well so this is good). Once Overheat reaches 100% WoF would cause a burst dealing 10% of max health to all nearby enemies (not modifiable by Accelerant?), which in this case would be a flat 100 damage to these enemies. With the other abilities she casts to get the Overheat up, this could be enough to finish enemies off, or just get a nice start on the new enemies coming in range.

The thing I like about this is that it encourages active use of her abilities to be the glass cannon everyone claims her to be but also rewards that active play in all levels of content. Of course this would energy costly, so would only really occur in hectic combat so the mechanic wouldn't likely be too spam-able. 

[SixDimensions]

Bump to save and Ember's player's sanity