Abuses the shield gating mechanic to become incredibly durable, while also being able to effectively nuke large groups of enemies, fully strip armor in an Area of Effect (AoE), and easily replenish your own energy.
The Long:
With max heat, Immolation (2) will grant you 90% Damage Reduction (DR), and with max [Adaptation] stacks you receive another 90% DR. Combined, this reduces all damage you take by 99%, meaning you take 1% damage from enemies.
Now that we only take 1% damage from enemies, we can effectively use shields as method of negating damage. This is where [Brief Respite] and Arcane Aegis come in. These work in tandem to constantly generate shields, to where even if they drop to 0, you gain enough back during your initial shield gating invulnerability to trigger the lesser shield gating effect.
This also means that while Arcane Aegis is active, you become (for all intents and purposes) immortal for 12 seconds. That's of course assuming anything has enough time to attack you before they start frantically flailing about, only to become a pile of smoldering ashes carried away on a Kubrow fart moments later.
Spellbind and its augment, in addition to an already good ability strength (more so when considering [Ember]'s passive), allows you to easily maintain energy. Very often you'll find that a single Spellbind will give you 150+ energy at the cost of only 6.25 energy.
Spellbind also gives the added benefit of removing status effects and making you and all allies who snort your magic fairy dust temporarily immune to new ones.
Stat Breakdown:
Why 68% Duration?
Duration isn't an important stat for [Ember] as her abilities either don't use it, or have a very long base duration to begin with. However, that isn't to say duration doesn't have its use though. By having some duration, you get 10 seconds with both Spellbind (mainly for it's status immunity) and Inferno (which helps grow and maintain your passive). If you don't think 10 seconds is long enough, feel free to tinker with the build until you find a more comfortable amount. However, you'll likely find it's more than enough, and that too drastic a change could cause a loss in performance overall.
Why 175% (190%) Efficiency?
High efficiency is really good for Ember, as she's a frame focused on ability use. This should be mostly self-explanatory, but as your abilities cost less, you can use them more often. This is also part of the reason you get so much value out of Spellbind's augment.
The reason we use max rank [Fleeting Expertise] and [Streamline] is that, although the UI doesn't display it, the actual cap for efficiency is 190%.
However, this bonus efficiency only applies when your duration is below 100% and only effects the energy drain cost of channeled abilities, such as Immolate. As Immolate's energy drain gradually increases the longer you stay at max heat, having the lowest drain possible is very helpful for energy management (though arguably not necessary).
Why 145% Range?
I find that range is a tragically undervalued stat for [Ember]. At 145% range, you have 36 meters of range on Fire Blast and Inferno, which is more than enough for most tilesets and a nice Quality of Life (QoL) for open worlds (Plains of Eidolon, Fortuna, Cambrian Drift).
As for Fire Blast, this ability strips 100% of enemy armor permanently in an area around you if used at max heat. With the added range, you strip more enemies, which means more things will burn to death. (Please note that line of sight is required for Fire Blast and that sometimes hit detection can be janky, sometimes not stripping armor when logically it should have.)
Inferno benefits from range for largely the same reasons that Fire Blast does. (Inferno also requires line of sight, but is far more forgiving than Fire Blast, often hitting enemies behind closed doors as camera angle/view is used.)
Because of how the energy cost of Inferno is calculated, and taking our high efficiency in to account, even if you hit 20+ enemies with a single cast, it will only ever cost a maximum of 25 energy. This is because the energy cost per target caps at 10 targets, each adding 2.5 energy for a total cost of 25 energy. This means that the more things we can hit beyond those 10 initial targets, the more value we gain from a single cast. Also, by having 40 meters of range on Inferno and Fire Blast, you're increasing the effectiveness of [Ember]'s passive, which boosts her ability strength by 5% for every enemy burning within 50 meters. Very often I'll have an additional 100%+ ability strength from just her passive alone.
Lastly, having extra range increases the cast range and AoE of Spellbind, making it easier to hit the 4 target requirement to receive energy back.
Why 199% Strength?
Higher strength means you do more damage with your abilities, while also greatly improving the energy received by Spellbind's augment. While you don't necessarily need a lot of strength as [Ember] because of her passive, having more is a nice QoL and helps her abilities scale well in to Steel Path. After you've stripped the armor from a horde and watched them burn to death in seconds, you'll see what I mean.
Ending Notes:
You can use just about any arcane in your second slot, I swap between Avenger and Energize a lot, depending on what I'm in the mood for.
The status immunity granted by Spellbind is great, but sometimes (especially against infested), you'll still take a bit of toxin damage. Because of that, it can be really beneficial to bring a weapon that can heal you back up, such as a melee with [Healing Return]. Unfortunately, this still leaves you susceptible to random one shots by high level toxic ancients, so always be cautious around them. You can also just use a [Panzer Vulpaphyla] (with [Hunter Recovery]) to gain passive healing from spores (and a nice damage boost too), which is probably the most effective option.
As this was my first public guide/build for Warframe, please let me know what you guys thought and where I could improve, and seeing as you made it this far, thanks for reading my TED Talk.
