Monday 10 October 2022

Warframe: Ash and Ember

Sounds like a great duo, but they are two completely different warframes!

Ash

This old school ninja was once readily available from... I don't recall where... but now you actually need to get out on your Railjack and do defense and survival runs out in the proxima regions of Venus, Neptune and Pluto for his parts. His passive that improves the bleed proc is one of the better ones on offer so melee is his domain, but his skills almost require their augment cards.

He has a lousy inbuilt shuriken, lesser invisibility compared to the other stealth frames, and a teleport to enemy but his final ability of "blade storm" is great. It lets him first "mark" enemies (each costing more energy, but less if you are in stealth) and using it again sends shadow clones out to do multiple finishers (true damage) on ALL marked enemies which is quite impressive and most useful in sortie style missions that force your weapon type to one you don't have ranked or forma-ed. With Ash, it doesn't matter because this ability can do the killing for you, from stealth!

That last point is the sole reason he remains in my stable, but for the vast majority of missions that let me bring my Steel Path conquering weapons, I still prefer to bring my Loki, who thanks to Archon shards now has the base stats of an Inaros Prime that regenerates health.

Ember

Collected from Sargas Ruk on Saturn (shoot his glowy bits when they are exposed) Ember is quite the pyromaniac, to the extent that she gets bonus defenses and power when she sets herself on fire (and she gets more power for each enemy on fire nearby)! The hotter your gauge the better it is, unless you've maxed it out in which case your energy is going to deplete rapidly. Outside of that, her other abilities almost sound like standard D&D magic spells of fireball (which encourages spamming), fire wall (radial knockdown with armor strip) and summon meteor comet. Everything will be on fire, and it will be good.

As long as her self immolation is running, Ember is somewhat protected but its a very slippery scale and one that accentuates her thirst for energy. The basic fireball in particular, which enjoys a combo bonus if you cast it in quick succession will drain you very fast so expect to run out of steam because the flip side is holding back, which doesn't sound like what a pyromaniac would do... :P

2 comments:

  1. Back in the day, heavily armored enemies were actually rather hard to kill, so Ash's shuriken with its armor stripping ability was in high demand. He eventually got reworked to increase his personal killing power, rather than being a "stealth support" frame, and armor and damage got re-worked too, so armor isn't quite as big a deal as it used to be, so it's pretty rare to see Ash in use anymore. I always preferred Loki and/or Ivara to him.

    Ember has always been squishie. Little less so after her re-work, but .... She was good in low levels as an "area denial" frame with her #4. After her re-work she's a bit less "fire and forget" but now (IMO, anyway) something of a PITA to use, especially considering how squishie she it.

    She's another that is rarely seen in use.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for your insights pkudude99! Totally agree that Ember is quite squishie though there are more PITA frames around...

      Ash I'm really just keeping as a clutch for when a mission demands a weapon type I don't have but otherwise yes, I too prefer the other stealth frames over him.

      His shuriken armor strip isn't even by default, you need to get the augment mod and waste a slot on it. Blergh!

      Curious to know what you've been plugging archon crystals into though. Obviously mine is all in Loki, and mostly all blue ones.

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