* Increased the recharge time of Burn (about x4. Decreased its damage (about 25%). Also, current iteration of the AI has mobs fleeing Burn asap, and cannot be taunted back.
Messed around with this a bit on Test server. This info will be most useful to folks who have such tankers, useless otherwise:
1. Burn actually takes (a bit? a few seconds?) *longer* to come back than Ice Patch which, untweaked, lasts 30 seconds and recharges in 40 (with a 10 second downtime, natch). Therefore, what you’re looking at with Burn is a 10 second uptime followed by a 35-second downtime, whereas it’s pretty much perma now.
2. Damage-per-tick is reduced 25%. I can still take out a pack of white-cons with one burn… but I’ve got flame burst (or whatever it’s called) running in there too, so YMMV.
3. The info in #1 and #2 = net reduction in damage output of 81.25% in perfect conditions. Pretty nasty. One recharge reduction in Burn gets it down to where it’s coming back as “fast” (air quotes) as Ice Patch, and in theory going 3 dam/3 rch rdx would get you to the point where you could “open” and “close” a fight with Burn, at the cost of probably another 5-7% damage, net (ie.: the tics would each do about half what they do on Live right now, and you’d get the burn out about a third as often.
3a. At THIS point, the power shifts from a ‘must have’ to a ‘if it suits my playstyle’. I think, at this point, if they stopped here, it would be a GOOD move toward balancing the power. Seriously. I dunno if I’d keep it or not — it’d be neither better nor worse than other powers available to me in my Primary and Secondary, and I think that ultimately, that’s sort of what you want your power sets to be. I’ve played around on live with this change by simply firing off Burn only when Ice Patch comes up, and the effective change is that I can take the same baddies down — it just takes longer — about as long as any OTHER tank, especially with the proposed i5 changes. Perfect, right?
But of course, they didn’t stop there. 🙂
4. Absent any compelling reason to stick around, any baddies on the Burn patch will take about one second (three ticks) of damage, then (when I’m ALONE) run back out to ranged attack distance and shoot at me from there. I know they kind of do that in i4, but it’s NOTHING like it is now. Triple-layered taunts (Taunt and two different attack punch-vokes) didn’t keep them ON the patch and couldn’t bring them back (best part: they back up JUST far enough to be out of range of your local punchvokes! 🙂 ) I’ve heard that if you’re fighting with a team the baddies also change targets, but I haven’t had a chance to test that yet — hoping Amorpha (or whoever) will want to to pick up some non-debt with me in the near future and find out.
This part really makes it a bit stupid for most tankers to take Burn: the mobs basically start acting like they do with Rain of Fire — scatter — last thing in the world a tank wants. Now, I happen to have Ice Patch, which will keep them from running away so this fear-change is a ‘meh’ for me, but other than that SPECIFIC build, there’s literally no other secondary power in any tanker set that makes Burn worth it — plan to perma-team with a controller with group-holds or immob, I guess.
It certainly seems to mess up the whole “Moth to a Flame” tactic — though, frankly, if I were a mob with any sense (big assumption) and the ground around the guy started flaming and damaging me … taking five steps back and pulling out my gun would seem like a *smart* thing to do.
I’m surprised a bit that an explicit Taunt won’t pull them back, and, yes, it’s not clear, since it drives folks *away*, why any tanker would choose it.
Oh, I can still sure the fiery burst attack to get everyone on me… honestly, with the powers I have, this whole thing doesn’t change anything but my damage output — it slows me down a bit — doesn’t change a thing.
The fear thing is a Dev “Realistically, why would anyone stand in a fire?” response.
Well… sure.
Realistically, why would any sane person fight someone who can fire bolts of energy from their hands from 150 yards away? Or go toe to toe with someone who can tear a 200 lb chunk of asphalt out of the ground and hurl it at you?
Answer?
Riiiight.
Realistically, a lot more attacks (anything that clearly involves a lot of kinetic energy) should do knockback. In Issue 1 and 2, a lot more attacks DID do knock back — thing is, KB is cool in a table top game, and SUCKS when you actually have to run after the dude you just knocked across the street. People bitched, and realism went… to a secondary position.
Realism is fine — in a game, balance ‘fun’ is probably more… fun.