A Blaze Restrained – Ember and Chroma Nerfs and an Opinion

In the recent Shrines of the Eidolon update, there was a ton of buffs to both weapons and Warframes. There were also some nerfs though. Mainly in the form of Chroma and Ember, two rather popular Warframes, one of which is due a Primed frame and one of which is currently unvaulted for a short period of time.

Chroma’s nerf changed the way he used his buffs. Basically, the way his abilities worked, he would multiply both his armour and his damage by a certain amount (based on how much shield and health damage he’d taken) and this multiplication would happen AFTER all other mods. This would mean you’d do absurd amounts of damage. Combined with the fact that Chroma is also nigh unkillable as long as he keeps his buffs up and the point that Digital Extremes had specifically spoken about this huge amount of damage being a calculation bug that would be fixed one day, I can see why it happened.

But it wasn’t a complete nerf for Chroma. While he may have had a damage nerf, he received quality of life changes to be able to keep his abilities up more easily, with the ability to move more easily while using one’s elemental breath and, more importantly, Vex Armour being re-castable even while active. Sure, Chroma is no longer 1-shotting Eidolon limbs, but he can still 2-3-shot them. And a change in builds mean that team mates can benefit more from Chroma’s formerly rather selfish buffs as well. Chroma could maybe do with an extra little buff to regain some tankiness, but to complain that he’s useless is a bit of an overreaction.

Ember on the other hand, she was the frame that seemed to cause the most uproar. Her fourth ability, World on Fire, was changed. The old version consisted of just activating World on Fire and ignoring it while it slowly drained energy, instantly killed any <50 enemy it hit and reliably stunning all enemies the fiery explosions hit. It was a cheap, easy ability that had very little interaction for anyone involved. World on Fire was changed to start off with high range and medium strength, and over time it shrinks in range, increases in energy costs but sharply increases in damage.

As compensation, Ember got buffs to her Fireball (with a charge mechanism) and her ring of fire, giving both her and team mates extra heat damage on their weapons.

Like Chroma, a lot of people complained about the World on Fire changes. Probably more so. People were screaming that Ember was useless.

Well, not really. Really, Ember’s new World on Fire is easy to work round. All you do is deactivate and reactivate World on Fire once it drops down to minimal range and efficiency. You can’t just turn on World on Fire and forget about it and completely destroy every enemy within 100m, even through walls. Sure this doesn’t work on sorties, but with its augment (which still does the exact same thing of guaranteed knocking down enemies), you’re still getting a lot of crowd control.

You see, World on Fire is a boring ability that doesn’t really allow others to interact. The scenario I wrote about in my Frost/Ember fan tale was a genuine issue for a while, until drop rates on reactants were buffed. But at the same time, you take an Ember into an Exterminate, a Survival or a Defense, and you may find yourself no longer even seeing enemies, because World on Fire kills them all at a high range. Sure, that’s not a problem when you just want to get a mission done, but imagine how it feels like as a newer player, watching everything explode and die with no effort from Ember herself? And heck, there are more interactive ways to nuke a room of enemies using a wide array of other frames anyway.

I’ll admit though, the current changes don’t really fix Ember’s problems with World on Fire. But I don’t know what will aside from a complete ability rework, which will just enrage even more people. People will complain that they can’t press 4 and kill or stun everything and just go on with their lives. People want the easy farm, but really Ember just felt too easy.

I don’t really have a solution for this, aside from maybe giving Ember even more damage in her abilities, to give her incentive to use them all. It’s all rather swings and roundabouts, to be honest.

You know what I’m more pissed off about though? Volt’s Discharge duration got nerfed, from 12 seconds to 6 seconds. Still, I work my way around that. My standard build has enough duration that I can at least milk 10 seconds of stun from my Discharges…

That sounded weird.