Your Weekly Ember Fix Proposal (TM)

[xarvh]

INTRODUCTORY RANT
Hey DE!
Ember main here. ^_^
Thanks for the wonderful game, which made me waste enjoy so many hours of my life! Luv <3 ya.

I'm not going into why Ember needs a fix. The sheer number of proposals is a testament about how badly the community wants it.

Game design is super difficult, even more so for a game the size of Warframe, and I have no delusion that I can make a better job than you, but I had a lot of fun writing this down, and it's only right that I inflict it upon the larger world.
Also I did my homework: I read the other proposals, I asked people, I crunched numbers and I think I have something that makes sense. I think.


DESIGN
When thinking about the changes I'd make, I considered these points:

• Fun = Effectiveness: Ember does the most damage when the player is fully and actively engaged.
• Ember should not ruin the game for others, especially newbies.
• Change as little as possible, because developer time is a scarce resource.
• All four abilities get used.
• There is no single way of modding her.
• Ember is about fire. She's there to burn stuff.

What is Ember's role, her specialty? What is she really good at?
The way I see her, Ember is a glass cannon.
She does not have defense, nor cc, nor utility, nor armor stripping: every single one of her abilities is about dealing as much Heat damage as possible.
To stay alive, she relies on movement and killing enemies before they can damage her.
High-Duration builds should excel at taking down lesser enemies, so that Ember can focus on the larger ones (this is what I loved of World on Fire!)
Low-Duration builds are pure nukes.

Like other proposals before mine, I want Ember to be able to build up her heat, and then use it against her enemies.
This worked really well for Nidus, and I think it could work with Ember.
Credits to @DarkRuler2500 for picking a really cool name for the stacks counter, which I totally stole.


OK! WE GET IT! WHAT IS THE #$%!@# PROPOSAL!?
Sorry. Here it is:


Passive: Overheat
Ember has a Overheat counter, going from 0 to 100.
Overheat increases at a rate of 4 per second per enemy in Affinity range that is suffering a Heat proc.
Overheat also decreases automatically at a rate of 4 per second.

I pulled the increase and decay rate out of my a@# mind, they need to be adjusted via playtest, because it's where most of Ember's balancing will happen.
Regardless, the idea is that Overheat can be built quickly, and decays quickly.
Unless the player keeps proccing Heat, Overheat will decay from 100 to 0 in 25 seconds.
Building Overheat is easy, but it requires the player to stay active.


Passive: Burn
Ember inflicts (Overheat * 4) Heat damage per second to any enemy within 1m range, with no Heat proc.
 

Damage has been calculated so that with 100 Overheat and Accelerant, a level 50 Charger should die before attacking Ember twice.
Fluff-wise, Burn is the result of the Overheat decay described above.


1: Ignition
Toggled ability
Energy cost: 25 initial, then 3 Energy/second
Adds Heat damage to all her weapons attacks.
Works exactly as her current Fireball Frenzy augment, if it was cast on herself.

1 Augment: Fire Frenzy
Extends the benefits to allies in 10m range, adjusted for Ability Range.


2: Accelerant
Same as now.


3: Fire Blast
Same as now.

3 Augment: Immolation
All allies hit by the blast gain the Burn passive, with the difference that this damage has guaranteed Heat proc.
Duration is 20 seconds, modified for Ability Duration (ie, same as the fire ring).

Allies get some defense from close range attackers, and can help Ember build up her Overheat.


4: World on Fire
Energy Cost: 75
The ability releases Ember's accumulated heat, reducing her Overheat and dealing massive damage around her.
Once triggered, Ember cannot interrupt it: the ability lasts until Overheat reaches 0 or until dispelled by a Nullifier.

The ability removes Overheat at a rate of (12 / Ability Duration) per second.
Each point of Overheat removed in this way inflicts (Current Overheat * Ability Strength) to any enemy within 15m (adjusted per Ability Range).
Under no circumstances will this damage proc Heat.

Overheat reduction *adds* to the normal Overheat decrease, which means that shorter bursts will be more efficient than longer ones.
Negative Duration can be used for very powerful and short bursts, while high Duration will result in the ability being sustained for longer periods, possibly indefinitely if there are enough enemies.
Unless the player works hard to keep Overheat up, WoF damage will degrade quickly.
With high Duration, WoF *can* be used as it is used now, however it can be sustained only if the player actively procs Heat.
The damage is intended so that with 100 Overheat, 300% Str, min Duration and Accelerant:

• Overheat will go from 100 to 0 in about a second
• The total damage will be roughly enough to kill a lvl 130 Ancient
   

4 Augment: Melt
Damage from World on Fire ignores 50% of the target armor, modified by Ability Strength, capped at 95%.
 

This is intended to make Ember viable vs higher level armored units.
Ember does not strip armor because she is not about that. She is about dealing damage.
Ember will need about two-three casts, all with 100 Overheat, 300% Str, min Duration and Accelerant to take down a lvl120 Bombard.

 

Made it here? Thank you for your patience. ❤

Edited February 28, 2018 by xarvh

[Thralak]

I really like this a lot, seems more in line with the more recently release frames.

[Olianu]

I'll be honest, I would miss fireball, especially with its new Napalm effect in this rework you thought for ember.  And I was ready to put up my dukes about another "Old Ember wasn't bad because..."

However.

After I actually read through it, this would be a change to Ember that would not mind in the least.  And it does seem like it would be fun to use.  I think it shows that you actually do care and like this frame outside of World on Fire spamming.

[Shiroihasu]

This. I would play this. I would MAIN this.

[Terrornaut]

Worthwhile rework.

I really appreciate the overheat and burn passive mechanic.  It definitely emphasizes what she already needs to be doing currently as far as dealing damage goes, so it wouldn't be a stretch for some playstyles.  Casting Fireblast (wish it would just go away) should give add guaranteed heat procs for her burn for the duration though.

Ignition is basically just augment or double accel+flash accelerant, which frankly would be insane.  Ember would pretty much be uncontested by most damage frames at that point, with high power strength, 1+2+flash accel and standing in a fblast for the hell of it.  Throw any outside buffs in and she'd be like old chroma, armor be damned, and anything at near any level that doesn't have armor is dead always.  Even if they don't want Ember to have defensiveness, they probably don't want her having this much kill power.  Also, it suffers from redundancy and isn't very fun, unless it added functional behavior to her attacks.  I'd prefer the current fireball over this.

WoF reminds me strongly of old+new Miasma. For better and worse.  I would be fine with it I suppose, if the augment wasn't a must for high level encounters (but then again may not be as reliant on corrosive status with it).  At the same time, if we aren't going to have lasting CC, or Mobility, or no-los area damage, I guess we'd better have furious damage.

Fireblast, up the status chance on it or make it 100% guarantee for one proc and then after that, status/sec.

This got me thinking about her 1 being meaningful.
Ignite:  Ember infuses her attacks with fiery devastation, adding firey blasts to her attacks that scale off of weapon damage and her overheat rating.

Mechanics:

Spoiler

For 5 seconds*(power duration), if it added, a 3m*(power range) + 0.05*(overheat stacks) aoe blast with 10%*(power strength) of ranged/melee attack damage (thus would scale off of crits, headshots, weapon damage buffs etc) with 15% status chance*(power strength) for heat proc to all attacks, basically you'd get a baby aoe multishot. 

The size modifier would add 11m with 200% range and 100% overheat and deal 20% of original damage as heat in a 11m area.  Numbers are whatever as always, and who's going to have 200 range and 200 power at the same time but, listed for number purposes.  Accelerant with 200% power strength would be fairly scary.

10-20% extra damage and 30% status doesn't seem like much, but consider that its per shot, it can add up.  Taking a shotgun, lmg, or sniper or opticor or something and turning it into a blast cannon would be...very satisfying gunplay.

My only quarry is how to make this scale better for launchers and aoe weapons, which Ember highly benefits from anyway (though really everyone)

I ran with an attica for a long time with thunderbolts even though it was terrible because it was so much fun, and when the astilla finally came around, it was everything I wanted for a long time.  I run with launchers though, and this kind of gameplay is highly effective and entertaining.

[xarvh]

@Terrornaut I understand your concern, but Ember can already add exactly the same amount of damage: the only difference is that rather than giving the buff to herself, she can give it only to teammates. That is, provided that the you can hit your teammates with the fireball as they bounce around.
This change to her 1 just allows Ember to use it on herself, and the augment allows her to use it on teammates without having to aim at them.

[xarvh]

@Shiroihasu thanks for the positive comment, here's your 50 plat. XD

[TwilitAngel]

I really like this. Only things I could come up with were simple in comparison.

Passive: Ember deals more damage to enemies on fire.

WoF: Ember sets the area around her on fire slowly spreading outward then fading away.

These ideas I had sound like more bandaids compared to this. Ember was my first and only Prime for awhile way back. I love her, but I always had a problem with her ult. It never felt like one to me. Fire popping up out of the ground at random enemies near you? Pretty meh, but I was using it just to run around watching everything die since that's what she was good at. With her recent fix, I thought, "Wait a minute... doesn't fire spread? This fix makes it feel like her fire is going out since it shrinks." Kind of sad. I'm just repeating myself, but I really like the suggested changes from the OP. ^^ +1

[Lunarez]

The idea is kind of neat and I really like it. But I feel that Ignition lacks a bit of synergy with Overheat and could use a bit of tweaking so that she doesn't rely on status weapon to bring the overheat guage up. How about adding Overheat on weapon hit/kill while Ignition is active? Or maybe adding base status chance to the weapon too would be nice.

[Shiroihasu]

@xarvh
"iz good product. 10/10 would buy again."

Detailed feedback and concerns :
I'm mildly concerned with how quickly ember would gain temperature in certain scenarios, which could potentially lead to people just running around with an ignis/ember combi like people always have and stunlocking large blobs of enemies until you finally one-shot them... Though the increased energy cost, which scales exponentially if you do go full power strength, might solve this issue at least to some extend

It's generally well balanced and interactive even if you min-max it to clear the whole room in under a second.

( Now gimme my plat. D:< )

[xarvh]

@TwilitAngel Thanks! =D

@Lunarez I want Ember to be effective with a wider range of weapons, and I think that adding Overheat on hit would favor too much high ROF weapons.
Adding it on kill would make it easier to build it up with low level enemies, but much harder on high level ones; to make her scalable we want the opposite: enemies that can survive longer a Heat damage-over-time will contribute more to Overheat, while enemies that die quickly will not. In this way Ember won't be able to abuse World on Fire on lower levels, stealing all kills from the n00bs, but she will be able to use it more often on higher levels.
Also, since we count the number of enemies on fire, many low-status weapon will be viable, since they need to proc only once. Once an enemy is on fire, whether you procced Heat once or 10 times doesn't matter.
Does it make sense?

@Shiroihasu It is a valid concern.
The idea is that Overheat, on higher levels, is not there to limit World on Fire, but just to keep the player active.
World on Fire is limited by Energy and by Duration.
300% Str requires Blind Rage, which will diminish your Efficiency no matter what, and if you want to keep Overheat up via Ignition, you won't be able to access Energy restores / Trinity EV and such, because you have a channeled ability up.
This said, I fully expect that the build up / decay rates would need to be adjusted.

[strikeflow]

Love her overall theme, her 2 passives over heat and burn and these suggestions certainly encourage a very active play style with ember. My only worry is that this further reduces her ability to play passively. I know DE doesn't like passive play styles either but I know many people (inluding myself) who, from time to time, just enjoy hitting max ranged WoF and watching things melt.

[GeoffFromAccounting]

I did have an Ember idea rattling around my brain for a while, but I think I like yours better. I haven't really got much to add to this other than: DE make this a thing please.

[xarvh]

 

@strikeflow Yes, an important point of the proposal is to force the player to play actively.
I understand that having an afk frame can be useful, I just don't want that frame to be Ember!


@GeoffFromAccounting Thanks!

Edited March 1, 2018 by xarvh

[TKDancer]

2-3 casts of a 4(with a passive that needs to be maxed for each) that exists only to do damage to kill 1  120 gunner doesnt sound very appealing

[Scytze]

Legit stuff, she should be all about heat procs like saryn is about gas/ toxic 

[TKDancer]

11 minutes ago, Scytze said:

Legit stuff, she should be all about heat procs like saryn is about gas/ toxic 

thing is, just like saryn she'd fall short vs armor

 

idk why OP thinks armor removal shouldnt be her thing

 

why not reason it as her melting armor?

[(PSN)Fairfied]

On 2/28/2018 at 9:39 AM, xarvh said:

 

4 Augment: Melt
Damage from World on Fire ignores 50% of the target armor, modified by Ability Strength, capped at 95%.
 

This is intended to make Ember viable vs higher level armored units.
Ember does not strip armor because she is not about that. She is about dealing damage.
Ember will need about two-three casts, all with 100 Overheat, 300% Str, min Duration and Accelerant to take . ❤

I like ideas that think along these lines. Ember has always been terrible against mid and high level enemies and now she’s even worse.  All she offered was fire quake, which was unreliable and not that effective, and now its worthless (range and energy expenditure nerfed to the ground).

Couple of problems with the idea though, does it really make sense that it have this effect?  Also what about corpus?  Strip shields?

Edited March 1, 2018 by (PS4)Fairfied

[xarvh]

@TKDancer The proposed WoF is an area effect. If you have 10 lvl120 bombards, all 10 go down.
There are ways to go beyond that: Corrosive Projection, Rhino's Roar, Nidus Tether, Octavia's Amp...
You can also go for a Corrosive/Heat Ignis Wraith to take down the armor even further.
TBH I see it as an opportunity to get creative.
The people at DE are really good at game design, and yet even them often make mistakes that break the game balance, so I prefer to stay conservative in the proposal.
Besides, I don't want her to be OP, I just want to be able to use her effectively in sorties.

Armor is an even messier issue in Warframe, the way it scales with level is insane, so again I'd rather stay conservative.
I prefer ignoring armor to stripping it simply because Oberon does it already and I don't want to duplicate it: it gives a different flavor to the ability.

@(PS4)Fairfied The way I imagine it, she overheats the armor, cooking the enemy inside it. So you have a point, maybe "Melt" is not the best name. "Grill" would be more appropriate but doesn't sound as good. XD
Regarding shields, they scale up with the same speed as health, so I don't think that there's anything specific needed for them, they don't give the same insane damage reduction that armor gives.
 

[Terrornaut]

32 minutes ago, (PS4)Fairfied said:

Couple of problems with the idea though, does it really make sense that it have this effect?  Also what about corpus?  Strip shields?

Corpus don't have nearly as much health and armor as grineer and are pretty much done once you get past shields.  A mag proc will make short work of them with what damage Ember will do after. I've found it generally balances out between Grineer and Corpus, when she's built to properly and quickly address either at high levels.  Robots are just more of a prob because less panic time.

[dreadgame]

I like this. Makes ember unique and not just a copy paste of existing abilities.

What I like about this is that she remains the fragile frame she is right now but with her overheat passive playing with that fragility could be engaging since if done right you get rewarded with damage which could provide an alternative to the corrosive meta. 

This gives her some viability in the higher levels so I won't mind losing firequake over this. 

[xarvh]

Hey @[DE]Danielle, how much actual interest is there in DE to improve Ember?
Are the devs and designers satisfied of how she's doing now?

[Maka.Bones]

First of all, I really enjoyed reading this. Thanks lol

I was excited to read this at first, but i'm honestly not sure that I'd like your suggested playstyle for ember. I'm about to be very critical of your suggestions, but I in no way mean any of it in a negative/rude/mean tone. I actually appreciate, and respect you for making another suggestion because Ember is one of my favorites as well, and my second most used warframe atm. So if you're sensitive to criticism, please don't continue to read anymore. 

 Tbh, i hate to say this but this suggestion would make her worse to play in my eyes.  By the way, ember has several different ways to crowd control... Her fireball for one, is a decent one. So is accelerant, and the heat proc from WoF, as well as the firequake augment. Fireblast also knocks down any enemies who aren't already affected by heat proc, or accelerant. 

My reasoning:

 It seems that you're mainly focusing ember's kit around her WoF... In your mind it would work as a nuke? Well from that kit, it sounds like it because accelerant doesn't apply burn, and fire on weapons would just add to their current elemental damage. Which leaves fireblast to be the only practical way to apply the burn effect--you might have missed that. 

You said it would play like nidus, but nidus can maintain a full stack, if the player works for it. This kit wouldn't allow it.  She would be more like a firework... would be useful for bursts of damage, every now and then... but in order for it to work for ember, she would need to get the majority of the kills. So if your teammates are getting most of the kills, you'd never even be able to do the burst part of it. 

More details on each ability:

Passives: Interesting concept, and sounded fun at first. Btw Overheat used to be ember's 4th ability. So the guy whom you thought you stole the name from, probably took it from someone else too lol. 

Ignition: If it's just a weapon heat buff, I would miss old fireball. The napalm fireball gives, has more uses than just added heat bonus. Heat buff would meld with other elemental damage already modded onto our weapons, which might make our corrosive weapons proc less... would be a pain to play with. It might be nice, if the amount of heat damage *HUGELY* scaled with power str (something like  +1000% heat, at 300 power str). If that were the case, the overwhelming damage would null out that heat is inefficient against most enemies (corpus, grineer, and corrupted) even when including the elements that heat also creates (radiation, gas, blast). It would make ember really useful for eidolon hunts, which is kinda cool, but again it would only be useful if the damage increase was overwhelming. 

Accelerant: This is actually a CC as well, and the augment gives all of her weapons heat damage. In your kit, yeah it might be ok as is... but the augment would need to be changed, since she no longer would need casting speed, and her 1st, would already be giving her weapons heat damage.

Fireblast: as is, it already gives weapons some added fire damage, but it honestly doesn't feel very significant of an increase in damage. I only use this skill situationally--and very rarely at that--but the augment you suggested was nice for the kit.  I did like the augment concept. 

WoF: This ability, as you suggested it.... Feels lacking. Like I said before, it feels like she would be a firework... or a literal bomb. It would only be nice, if she could build her burn stacks fast... so without the augments, her kit would be incomplete for new players; they wouldn't have any efficient/practical way of building stacks without the fireblast augment. Especially since you'd suggest removing heat procs from WoF... Heat procs are one of the original ways that ember can defend herself, and survive better. 

Quote

4 Augment: Melt
Damage from World on Fire ignores 50% of the target armor, modified by Ability Strength, capped at 95%.
 

This is intended to make Ember viable vs higher level armored units.
Ember does not strip armor because she is not about that. She is about dealing damage.

^That was my favorite idea, though I wish it was an augment for accelerant instead. 

In conclusion, yes you'd use all the abilities... ok.  But you'd literally be limiting the kit to be a synergy between fireblast (a very expensive cast btw) and wof upon maxing the stacks.... and a splash of accelerant once in a while, which would get expensive with WoF--ignition would just become a toggle, that everyone would want to keep on at all times. Ember's build is also lacking space for many more mods... adding another augment into the mix, would mean she has less space for other things she'd need.. in other words, you can't really have the power strength necessary for endgame sorties, while also using her augments. Not only that, but in sorties 2-3 having WoF only be a nuke would also kill her survivability. Endgame players wouldn't be able to build her for full power str/low duration like you suggested... Because they would also need to include all the different augments. Since without the augments, her passive wouldn't be practical to build up/use. I'd pretty much ignore it, as I already do with the current passive. Also, even with high power str, ignition wouldn't really be useful anymore. That would basically punish players who enjoy building power str, or who want to max efficiency. In addition to that, what's the point of having WoF as a nuke, if I can do the same by using accelerant and spamming fireblast? Also, if your thoughts were to remove her capacity for CC, that would just make her even more fragile... CCs are the only way she can feasibly survive as she is right now. Nidus doesn't need them, because he has an overwhelming amount of hp, and neither does rhino because of ironskin, however both of them still have powerful CCs. Ember doesn't have any tankiness anymore, and without any CCs, she wouldn't be able to mitigate damage. Especially the case, if her WoF is meant to only work as a burst /nuke, and doesn't get any heat procs anymore (or firequake). 

If you did read all of this, thanks for taking the time to read my overly-analytical breakdown/discussion of your suggestions lol. I'm sorry for being overly critical, it's just that I really liked some of your thoughts, and I wanted to like it, but I didn't. So I wanted to explain to you things that you might not have considered. 

Edited March 5, 2018 by Maka.Bones

[TwilitAngel]

@Maka.Bones After reading your counter arguments, I'll have to agree. I do like this concept, but possibly with some tweaks here and there. As you mentioned, this new passive wouldn't have a reliable way to stack up in her kit. I liked the suggestions so much, it completely flew over my head.

I just had a possible interesting idea for this though. Keep Fireball as is, but possibly tweak the napalm that lingers to scale with duration. There would be probably other things to tweak about OP's idea, but I do like the theme they are going for.

PS: If anyone knows the game God Eater, I kind of imagine this ultimate looking like when Hannibal floats up in the air and pulses fire if you break the scale on his back.

Edit: If anyone knows League of Legends, what if her ult worked like the reworked Swain? It functions the same way as it does now, but there is a second cast to it. To prevent early running through killing everything instantly, the first cast has a flat damage without power str scaling on damage, but the second cast does. Could also make status chance scale with str. This way, the new passive can be used a lot more effectively using WoF's first cast to go around proccing heat. Probably reverting her recent change to halve range and double energy & damage.

Another idea would be to remove Fire Blast and make her current WoF into her 3rd ability, then make OP's suggestion into her new ultimate and give it a new name. (Yes, the Excalibur treatment.)

Edited March 5, 2018 by TwilitAngel
Another thought

[Maka.Bones]

46 minutes ago, TwilitAngel said:

Could also make status chance scale with str

WoF's status chance already stacks with power str. But I like your idea of making the damage it does, synergize with the suggested passive instead. As well as replacing current third, with WoF, and adding the new ability OP suggested as the 4th. That would be really cool.

Swain-like form also sounded fun, though harder to implement in-game I think.

And yeah, I also like current fireball. It's fun to use, even though it's not always practical

 

Thank you for your reply btw! ^^

Edited March 5, 2018 by Maka.Bones