Living Proof - Burn patch should punch-voke, not terrify
When I was 14, my grandparents' visit displaced me on Christmas Eve so that I spend the night on a couch in the porch, warmed by a nearby electric heater sitting on the rug. Somewhat miraculously I stirred from sleep at 3:00 am to witness rivulets of flame surrounding the heater in a 2-foot radius burn patch. Still half-asleep, I thought that if I turned off the heater, that would turn off the flames. So I reached over to the red-hot heater with my left hand and badly burned my fingers. That woke me up in a hurry!!! By then the smoke from the burning rug was choking me so that I couldn't breathe, so I scrambled out of bed to the door to gulp in some fresh air, then started hollering to wake up my elder relatives, who quenched the flames and called the fire department.
What does this have to do with City of Heroes? From my firsthand experience, one's first reaction when surrounded by a burn patch is to try and shut it off rather than to run. It's become a common-place claim that the Burn power should evoke fear (e.g. "well, wouldn't YOU run away if you were burning?"). But how does Burn differ in this regard from Blazing Aura (which also burns any enemy nearby but has the opposite punch-voke effect to taunt enemies closer)? Likewise, all the Fire/Fire secondary powers scorch/combust/incinerate/etc. foes with flames, and these all punch-voke rather than scare off enemies.
Think about it logically. Most foes would have no clue in the moment that the burning is coming from the ground - all they'd know is that the hero attacked them and now there's flames in every direction. The natural foe reaction would be to take out aggression on the hero who caused the problem, in hopes that by "turning the hero off" that would also "turn off the flames". That was my exact same reaction when surprised by a similar situation at age 14 - my first reaction was to "attack" the source of the problem.
Moreover, it terms of game play, it makes so much more sense for tanker powers to "draw in" aggression, rather than scatter aggression through terror in the direction of teammates whom the tanker is trying to protect!!! If the Burn power is corrected so that it attracts aggression towards its initiator, then the fire tanker will still need to stay and survive long enough in the burn patch for the power to have much effect - which again is appropriate behavior for a tanker.
By contrast, turning Burn into a fear power is "highly illogical" - especially coupled with the major damage reduction and recharge increase threatened against Burn for issue 5. Fixing things so that Burn attracts aggression not fear (similar to Blazing Aura) would mitigate these major effectiveness reductions by balancing the Burn power.