The Ember Rework from Someone Who Hasn’t Played With the Ember Rework Yet

That title up there is a pretty weird one, isn’t it? How can I sit here and judge a rework for Ember when I haven’t even really played Ember since said rework? I’ve judged Ember in the past (especially since she was one of the earlier Primed frames I built) but I’ve never claimed to main Ember or really play her in any meaningful way.

That being said, I have a clan mate who always liked Ember and has a very nice magenta and gold colour scheme for her, matching all the other female magenta and gold-coloured Warframe Articulars in his ship. An Ember that he regularly uses and has a ton of Forma in, and is often seen using his Ogris with 1.6% accuracy. I can’t judge, I’ve got similar obsessions with Volt.

When he originally saw the Ember rework shown on a Dev Stream, he didn’t seem too happy. He felt like much of Ember’s strength had been nerfed and that he was losing out on both of Ember’s original play styles – the old World on Fire build where you nuke a whole map but slowly AND the less obvious Accelerant build in which Embers would buff their team mates, giving Ember the tiny little niche of being the only frame capable of reducing casting speed times.

Well, you’ll be happy to hear that, after the Old Blood update, this guy is still playing Ember. I actually don’t know how much he likes the Ember rework because he hasn’t really said much about it. But he IS playing Ember on the regular and there’s a lot of fire going around. In fact, there is a constant stream of meteors hitting the ground whenever he’s not playing Ember.

And that’s where I come back to this, because my experiences have been two-fold: there’s a lot more Embers around and there are a lot more meteor strikes now. If anything, Ember’s World of Fire is more explosive and more commonly used than Vauban’s Orbital Strike, and it’s far more damaging as well. Vauban has the issue where he needs to balance strength, duration AND range to make sure he actually hits plenty of enemies, but Ember’s flaming powers are a little more fire-and-forget and just as visually impressive. Ember also somehow managed to get damage reduction as an ability and got a nice new passive where she gets more ability strength based on how many people she sets on fire.

From what I’ve seen, Ember by far got the better end of the deal. While Vauban has utility, Ember gets damage, survivability and a hint of tankiness, more damage, some neat augments and a rework FOR AN ENTIRE STATUS TYPE.

Yes, with Ember’s rework, we got a rework of Heat damage as well. Heat procs now temporarily strip up to 50% of an enemy’s armour. Which has been a pretty nice buff for a variety of weapons, particularly the Ignis. My old, somewhat mediocre corrosive and heat build is now suddenly pretty damn good, but heat on its own is still strong, making it the second best base status effect after toxin damage.

So yeah, at the end of the day, the Ember rework does look pretty darn good. I just need to get around to playing Ember myself.