Ember

[Maka.Bones]

I think this is my 11th post discussing rework ideas/concepts/arguments, so i'm going to go straight to the point: Ember's abilities need to be more specialized/focused.

The root of all the issues I see with ember, isn't her survivablity, or the WoF range nerf, or her stats... it is that all her abilities, basically do different versions of the same thing, instead of each ability doing ONE THING WELL--none of her abilities are particularly individually strong at any one thing... coupled with energy costs, and casting animation delays, this results in Ember's kit lacking in overall effectiveness.

I would like to see ember's damage abilities specialize in single-target damage, instead of auto-kill abilities. But also improve on her AoE CC, and her weapon buff abilities. Instead of making all her abilities do a little of everything, but badly... make each ability specialize on ONE THING. It would be more effective to consolidate all the separate things that her current abilities do. Then assign those separate things to stronger versions of the existing abilities, that focus on doing 1-2 things at one time. I don't want to have to spam all my abilities to effectively CC enemies, or kill a single target. I want to use ONE ability, for ONE desired result. 
 

I hope they rework her fireblast, her WoF, her PASSIVE, change accelerant to also buff other damage types (or not need constant spam) and generously buff her fireball's damage....

 

 

More thoughts on this, in the comments below.

Edited June 21, 2018 by Maka.Bones

[CreamedSoda]

I've had a idea for world on fire for a while which would be your team benefitting from the pillars of fire spawning around them as well. Think of it like Mesas shooting gallery, CC for multiple people off one ability. In return remove the initial damage and make it simply proc fires with 100% and possibly giving it something similar to fireballs lasting effect as a chance. Example, the Excalbro on your team gets a pillar off on top of a enemy it has a 50% chance to cause the AoE effect and proc heat even more for about 3-5 seconds. 

[Maka.Bones]

Elaborating on the post:

Passive: You could make this actually useful for general gameplay, and not require self-harm to use. Pablo says he hates the "self harm, to buff" mechanic, and yet this passive isn't reworked? ... why not?

1)Fireball: Staggers, damages, buffs damage, doesn't do enough damage to kill in one cast. ....Please just make fireball do tons more damage. Stagger/blast proc is fine on impact.... Napalm is great, but it would be much more useful if all the potential damage was condensed in a much shorter span of time.

• The damage buff from charging fireball, would also be much more effective if the damage increase was exponential, not just additive. 

• Honestly how TF does a 300% power str, charged fireball-to-the-face of a lvl 50 (non-infested) enemy with accelerant debuff, not kill the dude? Forget about auto kill abilities, a headshot fireball should melt anything outside of bursas, raptors, or Nox. I seriously doubt it's too unreasonable of a request.  If it can't easily kill lvl 40-50s, how do you even expect this to be a viable damage option at higher lvls?  Yes, I want to be able to melt lvl 100 faces. This is a must, for fun's sake. 
• The augment:  While the buff is nice, accelerant can already do this. A better augment would be to buff fireball's crit chance. This is a damage ability, not a buff.... capitalize on it's damage potential. 

2) Accelerant: Potentially her best ability... (it also happens to be the only ability that doesn't outright damage enemies) but it still does a lot of things.... stuns, buffs weapon damage, increases cast speed, and debuffs enemies .... It would be more useful if the damage buff was universal.  So please pick one, or two effects, and focus on strengthening those things. 

• People already like to rely on it as an enemy debuff || damage buff (I also like the stun, but the stun wouldn't be necessary if her 3rd, and 4th, were more proficient at CC). But either way either focus on damage, and allow it to buff multiple damage types. Or focus on it's CC capacity, and increase it's duration & effectiveness. 

3) Fireblast: Knock down, stagger, panic, damage, damage buff.... it's trying to do too many things at once, but--unlike accelerant--it doesn't even do one thing well.  It's basically a worse version of WoF, but with more range, and a damage buff--which doesn't make this any less redundant, and a pain to use. 

• Please either make this AoE damage/damage fields, or AoE CC. Please one or the other, but specialized so that it's actually effective.
• This ability had a lot of potential for effective CC, or lingering fire damage fields, but because it does too many things, it does none well. Please just focus on capitalizing on it as CC or as AoE damage fields. Forget the added fire damage bonus, just add compile that buff with accelerant instead. No need to add more stuff that's not particularly strong in its own, limits movement, doesn't offer survivability, can't make the most out of existing CC effects (because the effrct duration is too short), and can't benefit from stat changes.

4) WoF: It was nerfed because it was auto-killing too many things, but now it's best use (CC) is hugely impaired. 

• As an ult, I think ember would benefit much more from this ability if it focused on it's capacity to be a versatile CC ability, and provide overall support to her other abilities. The only reason people even used it to kill enemies, is because fireball & fireblast were ineffective/inefficient at killing enemies. If her damage output elsewhere is fixed, then we wouldn't need to use this as a damage ability. 
•  If it dealt any damage, I would suggest a build up via some sort of thermal counter. Then released/expended, so the damage itself isn't abused. Though Idk why they didn't just do the same thing they did with banshee's 4
• Alternatively it could provide a pseudo avatar-state, where it buffs all her other abilities, and provides infinite energy, for a limited time that's based on a "overhear/thermal" gauge.