A Stupid Idea for An Ember Rework

When I first started playing Warframe, I was always in awe at the pretty flaming Warframe with the fiery Mohawk and the cool flaming explosions that would kill most enemies on the map. As I continued playing Warframe, I realised that I was seeing less and less of Ember, and that map nukers often ended up being Mesas or Equinoxes or Saryns. These days, I don’t see Ember at all, and I’m the one nuking an entire map with my high range and duration Volt build.

So what happened to Ember? Two things happened. Firstly Ember got hit with some odd nerfs, like World on Fire’s energy cost and damage growing over time and its range shrinking over time (meaning you need to reset World on Fire occasionally). Secondly, I realised that Ember in general kinda struggled after about level 40 when most enemies become more heavily armoured and have more health.

But that’s no good.  Ember shouldn’t be stuck in low level missions! Here are my ideas on how to rework Ember.

The first biggest change would be to revert World on Fire’s changes. At the very least get rid of the shrinking range, because that range does go very small and it’s called “WORLD on Fire”, not “patches in small room on fire”. Really, the damage should start at 100% as well and increase upwards. The energy drain isn’t really that bad, so that can stay.

Accelerant, Ember’s second ability, is actually pretty good as it is, but it could do with some tweaks, perhaps also buffing movement speed and reload speed? The massive wall of flames should also deal a bit more damage – after all, it’s the same wall of fire that Arson Eximi do but it’s nowhere near as awesome.

Frankly, the same could be said for Fire Blast. On paper, Fire Blast is pretty cool, it’s a ring of fire that does damage and also gives weapons fire damage if you shoot through it, but it’s a tiny little ring and the whole ability just seems mediocre. The ring of fire should be a pillar of fire, a wall of fire or even a massive ball of fire. Big and burning and terrifying. And really, it should linger a little longer and do more damage as well. The fact that shooting through Fire Blast adds heat damage can stay, because that’s cool, but it would be nice if it scaled in some way.

Ember would also need a new passive though. There’s no real reliable way to set yourself on fire in Warframe and Ember isn’t really tanky enough to be able to run into Bombard explosions and Napalm fire patches. But she still needs some sort of fiery passive. Really, I feel like Ember should be able to heal over time when she’s set on fire, or perhaps have a built in fire resistance passive. That way, Embers aren’t forced to bring self-damage weapons to be, well, good. At the very least, if we are forced to keep the “being on fire” passive, Ember should get a huge boost to way more stats, not just ability strength.

I’ve left the last major change until last. Because Ember’s Fireball is pretty shit. Even with the ability to charge it. It’s a ball of fire, it’s not very interesting and it seems weird to just throw a ball of fire when Frost is throwing snowballs and Volt shoots lightning from his hand. My suggestion for Ember’s Fireball replacement is simple: Make Ember fire an Ignis-like flamethrower from her hands. Maybe not exactly the same as an Ignis but certainly with similar stats, perhaps draining energy instead of being a one-time ability. It wouldn’t be an exalted weapon but it’d be more useful than what Ember has now.

So yeah, that’s how I think an Ember rework should look like. Way, way more fiery.