Hotwired

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It became apparent that Burn was the trump power...with it, a Tanker needed to do nothing else. He could lay down a Burn patch and Taunt foes in and out of it. The damage was so great that the Burn patch itself would do the defeating; the Tanker only needed to hit Taunt.

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In my experiance, this is simply not true. Sure, Burn makes short work of minions but dropping a boss and some LTs with Burn alone is painfully slow. Most AVs acctually recover health faster then Burn does damage so I need to make sure I have a scrapper or blaster on my team. Of course I can't really use Burn on a team because all of the squishies will probably end up dead if I do.

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The question has come up - "what's the point of Burn now?" Well, it still offers Immobilization defense (we're actually going to increase that duration). And Burn does do a lot of damage. Taunt alone might not bring mobs into Burn continually, but stunning, holding, immobilizing mobs in Burn is just plain devastating.

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The real answer to that question: "There is none". In order to for Burn to do any damage, I need to have a controller on my team and as previously stated, Burn is no longer a good idea when teamed. The only effective benifit is the imob protection when solo. That's not good enough to waste a power and slots on.

More importantly, the power that made Fire Tanks fun and unique is no longer fun.

Edited to add the following... just for good measure....
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4. The Burn change is a little too inconsistent with the role of a Tanker. A Tanker wants to keep aggro, not chase them away. Though it makes sense in terms of AI (bad guys fleeing damage), the power becomes not very useful for the Tanker. We'll probably be making a change to that soon.

In other words, I've said in the past that we weren't going to look at damage and that we weren't going to add any aggro to Tanker attacks. Well, I think I need to put my thinking cap on and come up with some solutions to the points above. I can't thank all the Tankers enough for sharing their thoughts & ideas.

Now - the change to Burn can happen relatively quickly - but the other stuff needs internal testing. I don't want to rush something out over the holidays. That testing will be a priority post Thanksgiving - so I'll keep you posted next week on the status.

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One of the things I've enjoyed about CoH is the variety it provides. I have 3 characters that I play pretty regularly and each one provides a completely different experience.

When I want to group, I break out my dark defender. He is all about working with the group dynamic to try to keep everyone alive. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't but it's always a challenge and it's fun.

I usually play my electric blaster solo. It's like a chess match. I have to use the environment, I have to use all of my powers and I have to anticipate the AI's next move. It takes forever to get through a mission, he's often knee-deep in debt and it's fun.

But sometimes I want to play checkers rather then chess. That's when the fire tank comes out to play. He has what you might call an unconventional build. No hasten, no acrobatics, no combat jumping. In fact, his only travel power is flight (it's a concept thing). I also play him mostly solo. No herding, no power leveling, I use him to collect badges and follow story arcs. He runs around like a mad man, Combustion, Burn and then all three Fire Swords until the boss or LTs are finished. By that time the minions that have not run away have dropped and he moves on. It dosn't require a lot of thought or strategy but it's fun.

Some sets are over powered... So what, it's fun.