Bottom line up front: Burn recharge is too long and should be reduced.
On my unhastened fire/ice tank, Burn recharge went from 10 seconds (Live) to 40 seconds (Test), an 300% increase. When combined with reduced Burn effect time and damage, this removes Burn as the crown jewel of the Fire tanker power set.
(I repec'ed my fire/ice tanker with several variations of hasten and Burn recharge enhancements, to no avail. In the end, I only restored my tanker's lethality by dropping Burn and Fiery Embrace in favor of Hasten and a couple of ice attacks.)
I won't say the Burn on Test is useless since it could be used as a situational power to keep baddies away (similar to the way I used Burn on my blaster). Since my tank isn't squishy, however, I'd rather keep my enemies close and personal. For me, then, the new Burn is a castrated power not worth the time or slots. 
I can live with the reduced damage...However, the increased recharge time is to long...We, as fire tankers need it for Immob protection as well...It needs to come up more often..Lastly, The Fear AI on Burn as it currently stands, is unacceptable...Roll back the AI to Issue four and decrease the recharge time some and the power can still be useful but not "unbalanced"...
I have one other question. Are you Devs actually reading these posts? How many unhappy people is it going to take to change your minds? You are losing players and Issue five is going to keep that up. Let me tell you something. I could have gotten into any MMO out there including WoW. You know why I didn't get into WoW? It is because of how much Blizzard nerfed Diablo:LoD rendering many of my characters in that game useless...I no longer play Diablo:LoD and I don't own WoW....Now think of that as a correlary for CoH and CoV...Get the picture? You guys are really dropping the ball here. Some tweaking and balancing may have been in order but your Nerf axe is being used way to much to be acceptable. Not just in burn but across the board. I've been on the test server and let me tell you something bub...ISSUE FIVE IS NOT FUN!!!!!!
If Issue five hits as is without any fixes I'm letting my account run out and I am not renewing it. If you can see from the posts I am not alone in this.
And you know all we get from you developers when we state we are thinking of quitting the game over these changes?!?!? Smug comments like "Oh, we'll see how many people will still be around and you will still be here and eating your words." Or comments to that effect. Which, really, show a total lack of respect to your player base. Shame on you...I haven't had this game that long...But I've enjoyed what was to be had in issue 3. Some things perturbed me in Issue 4. But enough was still good that I didn't complain, much...But now you are going from relatively minor nerfs to game breaking power set [censored]! Please rethink this. I have really loved this game and it will pain me to quit it because of all the hours I have invested into my toons. However, If I can't have fun playing this game any longer I will quit and so will a number of others. I'm also sure all of us who are disenchanted with your game will be more then happy to spread all the bad publicity about your products as we are able to...This isn't a threat. Just a plain statement on what is going to happen. Do us all a favor and show us that you actually give a load of dung about your player base. Right now it isn't happy and you guys don't seem to care one bit!!!!
The fear component has to be changed -- with all three of the effects on test right now (fear, increased recharge, and lower damage), Burn becomes an unnecessary power... but that's MAINLY because of the fear component...
The damage and recharge changes are fine, but ONLY if fear is removed (or adjusted to level BELOW what is on live now)
One more thing, if you travel around the city, count the number of Fire Tanks vs. all other ATs -- granted, Fire Tanks are easy to spot -- I think the changes to Burn are population control -- I would say almost everyone (or a large percentage of people) has at least one alt that is a Fire Tank... I don't know if you can say that about any other AT...
Remember, they (the Devs) can see the numbers -- they know there are a lot of Fire Tanks and I think they are trying to do something about it...
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So why are the AOE CHANGES not enough to "fix" the effectiveness of the fire tank? I sure hope you get done changing power sets soon, I really hate the bull crap that this is not working as we imagined before. Then why did you let the issue get released? What is the point of beta? or releasing on test server? I believe if you want to see people use test server to really test out powers you should allow keybinds that let people select their character levels and sell all enhancements for free.
Well at least my tank is 50. No need in actually leveling him anymore. Too bad I have to respec a fine character due to an afterthought. Keep up the fight guys.
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there is nothing he cannot defeat, even outlandish things like +10 enemies are possible because burn is autohit,
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Burn is NOT auto-hit, it has a 95% accuracy which scales down as you fight higher and higher level enemies. A +10 will take dramaticly less hits from burn during it's duration. It has been this way for at least two issues.
Now, on to my issues.
Burn already took two hits on test. A maximum of 10 baddies being hit at once, [understandable] and the increased fear effect. Well, my perception from testing felt like fear was increased. There isn't really any concrete way to measure it, since the fear effects seem to be so random. So we already hit les bad guys and more of them run.
Now you feel the need to reduce the damage and increase the recharge? These are the FIRST changes you should have made instead of the mobs hit cap and the fear effect. We are tanks, our job is to hold bad guys close and keep their attention while the team hits/debuffs/holds/nukes/shoots/etc. Fear is the last effect a tank should have on mobs. Yes, burn was over powered, but adding fear is completely counter-intuitive to what a tank should be doing.
Please take out the fear from burn. Please please please.
Its hard to determine the effect of the damage and recharge changes due to the fear bug(?). My guess is that they are fine. IMO Burn should complement tanker secondaries not replace them. Burn should raise a toon's dps just enough to scale properly.
That said, the fear effect on test makes the power considerably less useful than either Temperature Protection or Rise of the Phoenix.
THANK GOD you finally fixed this wildly overpowered power. I praise you 
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Ok, I finally decided to test my Fire/EM Tanker on Test to see the changes for myself...Nova Red L32 Fire/EM Tanker
{snip}
So, what I realized while fighting Levels 30-34 in Croatoa is that I had to rely on Consume much more than before. Running the same 5 toggles I have been just doesn't cut it even with Stamina 6 slotted with +++ SO's.
An interesting thing to note was that I was never in any real danger until the size of the mobs at +2 (L34) increased beyond a few minions and a LT or two.
Even Con Bosses take a long time to kill, even using Burn to get some ticks.
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Just wanted to say that I was on test again last night with my 38, and noted roughly the same as the above poster. This time I was in the back end of Brickstown. It seemed like the Fear has been changed slightly.. they still all scatter immediately, but they were far more likely to come back into the flames then they were when I did my initial I5 testing. There was always at least one who wouldn't, and usually at least 3 out of a spawn of 8 even cons. The Lt's seemed particularly likely to stay outside the fire, interestingly enough.
The new recharge really hurts, even with permahasten it's not possible to use it as part of an 'attack sequence' of any sort (I tested with no recharges slotted into the power itself). As a result, the secondary attacks, HUGE end hogs, get used much more. I haven't had endurance problems like this since my early 20's. I found the damage of Burn to be quite decent on the mobs who came back in, but was only doing 40-80ish to those who ran (hard to tell for sure as Burn ticks don't show up in combat log). This is with Burn six-slotted for damage.
I think that the damage could stand to be reduced even further but the recharge needs to be rolled back 10-15 seconds. The Fear would be much more acceptable if it didn't kick in until about a second into the Burn damage, this is particularly true for fliers who practically teleport out of the burn patch and often take two or fewer ticks of dmg. I'll never think that Fear was the right choice for this power, but there are ways t make it less of a burning slap in the face.
I agree with many of the posts that I have read on this particular thread. I think the developers are going too far not only in this change but in all of the changes in their efforts to balance the playing field. I have been playing this game for a long time, and have enjoyed it immensely. Unfortunately, the majority of my ongame friends have decided to quit this game due to the non-ending nerf fest that happens every time their is an update. Increasing the fear was bad enough, but now that you are decreasing the damage of burn and increasing the recharge rate basically makes the fire tank a wimp. Please reconsider the severity of these changes.
Yeah true, i've gotten too tired of the devs ruining a game that used to be fun. Its like all they want to do now is piss people off with their "vision of balance". I wanted to play a "super" hero not a sidekick want to be hero! So what if there are people herding 30-70 guys and able to kill them all by themselves, they are having FUN! and still paying their monthly charge. The key is FUN!!! You guys should be giving people even more power to make them stronger or new powers and adding new content. Nerfing powers and making everyone weak is not fun it just pisses people off. My subscription runs out this month so me and my other two friends will NOT be renewing. So this is my last post. Hope you had fun ruining a perfectly fun game devs.
Ok, Burn changes and Changes in general. First, I totally understand where the devs are coming from. We all know Fire-tanks are way too powerful. 100% Fear? Well...I get that a guy would run out of a fire to be more realistic, but then your average guy would also continue to burn from fire on his clothes and hair and skin... An average guy would probably not attempt to go toe-to-toe with a superhero in the first place. If the Devs want to make the game more "realistic" then they have to A.) Make the WHOLE game more realistic, or B.) realize that "realistic" inside a fantasy world of their own creation is a very loose term that they have full reign to create an otherwise abnormal standard to judge "Realistic" by.
If they're making all these changes for the sake of balance, then they really need to think about what that means. Balance every characer to have the same abilities (Eliminate the creativity process) so that everyone can solo, or Make every AT a "Single function team member" thus forcing teams to have one of every AT in a team in order to function (Enter 9 year old blaster named "Blastyyerbuttdood123!!" to harass the team into quiting)
As you can see there are MANY variables related to changes of this magnitude.
But here's the REAL problem. Theft. Robbery. Fire tanks have just been robbed.
You go to a car dealer and see a Station wagon and a Sports car. You ask "How much for each of these?" The Dealer says "They are the same price" so you buy the sports car. The Dealer points out that "The experience of driving it may vary in time" (Hm....sounds like it might slow down, or speed up a bit) A few months down the road you are sleeping in bed, dreaming of your sports car. All the guys at the office are jealous. All the ladies want to ride with you. But...the dealers have been doing a little research. They have determined that the sports cars they have sold are just too fast. So in the night they steal your car, and replace it with Station wagon, but to help maintain the illusion, they leave the body of the sports car over the frame of the station wagon. And in the mail, they send you a comic book, which reads "We're stronger then ever..."
All the time you took driving, and more importantly the reason you made the purchase are now being mocked. You have been robbed of your time and money. It feels like a con. We'll sell you this, but first you have to sign an agreement that says you don't actually get to keep what you bought, as long as we replace it with anything we feel like replacing it with, including nothing at all.
In the end it's not about the changes. It's about the timing of the changes. The game has been out too long to make such a huge change to the most commonly played AT.
I've already lost 43 good friends that cancelled their accounts because of i5. I said to them that the changes weren't yet in, and may not go forth. They should wait and see. They said that at this point, they just didn't care. At the least they were aware that the company they had been paying for enterainment was willing to screw them at anytime, and eventually it would happen, if not now, then later.
Best case scenario, the devs realize it's the community that makes the game, and stops making drastic changes that make players cancel subscriptions (I thought they wanted to make money, not rule a fantasy world with an iron fist, silly me)
Middle ground solution here would be to let every account with a AT that has been drastically changed to have a full AT Respec.
i.e. I have a 50 fire tank, I get to go into Character Creation, make a new look, choose a new AT, New name, new powersets, Slots all the way up to Level 50, a full set of enhancements. For every HO on the original character, I get to choose another HO that would benefit the new AT and all the INF on the origianl would transfer to the new one. All the temporary powers saved up, all the badges that the Original had would transfer over to the new one. And while we're at it, the new Level 50 would get dropped into Outbreak so they could pick up the isolator badge which most long term players never got the chance to get.
Worst case scenario The changes go through, and everone is given yet another respec to deal with the nerfs. Except of course that there will be no way to respec a fire tank to make them worth playing. I guess those people can play their blaster....or quit. 
If it moves, KILL IT! If it doesn't move, prod it with your toe so it looks like it's moving then KILL IT! http://www.sexysuperherosyndicate.com/
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I agree with many of the posts that I have read on this particular thread. I think the developers are going too far not only in this change but in all of the changes in their efforts to balance the playing field. I have been playing this game for a long time, and have enjoyed it immensely. Unfortunately, the majority of my ongame friends have decided to quit this game due to the non-ending nerf fest that happens every time their is an update. Increasing the fear was bad enough, but now that you are decreasing the damage of burn and increasing the recharge rate basically makes the fire tank a wimp. Please reconsider the severity of these changes.
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I never though of using the term 'nerf-fest', but how appropriate! I just love how some people seem to be saying "yeah, burn got nerfed.....that'll show those uppity fire tanks". I don't get it. Fire tanks are barely tanks at all. A friend of mine has termed fire tanks as 'scrappers with hit points'. Why would anyone consider the nerfing of our 1 decent power as necessary because we are too powerful? I always thought that fire tanks were squishier than other tanks on purpose......and the trade off was that we could do more damage. Was that not the case? I am really tired of hearing about 'balance'. After reading through almost all the threads for I5, I find very few people in favor of all the nerfs. If the majority of the paying customers (us) don't like the changes, why are they being rammed down our throats? I am really tired of investing time in a character that I enjoy playing AS IS and then being told, sorry we are changing your powers. If you had told us 6 months ago (last time you 'fixed' burn) that it was going to be ruined in the next big update, we might have thought twice about rolling a fire tank at all!
This whole nerf*me*baby*1*more*time thing has me so bummed about CoH in general, so I've been playing WoW again.
It pretty much takes away all a Fire Tankers offensive capability.
I didn't feel that Burn was so over powered, and then the new Fear affect in Burn makes it pretty much unusable.
So adding this on top ... eh .. wha???
I4 is a pretty fun version of the game, and I was having fun playing my fire tanker, but with this looming over my head I've almost lost interest in this game.
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Changes -
Increased the recharge time of Burn. Decreased its damage.
This thread is for you to provide feedback to the Devs on the above issues. You are allowed to post ONCE in this thread. Make it count! If you post more than one time - the extra posts will be removed.
If a dev responds this count will be reset.
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On the one hand, I can see that since Fire Tanks now have defenses roughly equal to those of Invulnerability, you might want to scale back Burn so they use their Secondaries, like 'normal' Tankers. As opposed to say, nerfing their defenses proportionately.
I can also see how you might not want Fire Tankers to be 'one trick ponies' with Burn any more.
On the other hand, don't forget that Burn (and Fire Shield, and Icicles, and Mud Pots)are Primary powers and should be powerful enough to act as primary 'offensive defenses' for Tankers. These powers should be enough to reliably remove the threat of white minions.
I agree with Burn's Panic effect, it makes sense to me. But it also makes sense that Burn inflict a DoT upon those it damages. Enemies should run out of the patch, and be defeated shortly thereafter by the fact that the have been caught afire themselves.
You might also consider adding a 'fear shiver' effect to Icicles and upping the damage of Mud Pots and Fire Shield so that they are as impressive in effect as the other powers in their respective Tanker primaries are.
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
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No longer matters I guess. I'm tired of reading how the developers have no skill in developing something positive for the game / archetypes and instead can only chop away at something that was genuinely fun. All 15 of the original group of players to which I belonged are now gone...myself included. Both my account and my girlfriend's account end in September.
Way to go "DEVELOPERS." Way to develop a game.
~ Jonathan
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I think Jon speaks for A LOT of us that you seem to want to ignore, and no worries we'll head over to WOW. I've said it before in some other "we're planning to nerf you" forums, we, the players, will just quit your game as you take away abilities that we already have. See you in World of Warcraft guys!
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THANK GOD you finally fixed this wildly overpowered power. I praise you
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Was burn causing you problems? Were you on playing a minion who got burned to ash by a fire tanker and thought it unfair?
I truly do not understand people who get mad when one particular type of hero can do something they cannot. My fire/ice tanker gets so close to death because of his lower resistances that it's only burn's damage that saves him.
Okay, now you nerf burn. My tanker dies with much greater frequency. Do I have to start playing him the way I do my blaster? Pull some baddies, take 'em out and then pull some more? I've done that. I did it all the way to level 50 and now I want to play a tanker. I want to be able to stand toe-toe with a mob of baddies and be the guy left standing.
Does it matter that my tanker can take out the mob from melee range with all villains attacking him when my blaster had to hit and run and snipe to have the same effect? No, it doesn't matter, they're different heroes. Different heroes should have to defeat villains in different ways.
So instead of just sitting there on the sidelines watching a fire tanker with burn doing his thing and getting upset about it, perhaps you should concentrate on how to have fun with your AT. If you don't like fire tankers and their powers, don't team with them. I don't like that energy blasters constantly knock foes out of my melee range with knockback, but I don't beg for knockback nerfs, and I certainly wouldn't celebrate the neutering of knockback; I know way too many blaster who depend on it when they solo to keep them alive.
Oh yes, soloing. Not a big solo player myself. I like to team with people I know, my SG, etc. I also like knowing that if nobody I know is on at the moment, or if they're playing alts at a different level than me, that I can solo without playing russian roulette with a pickup team. No AT should ever be forced to team.
Oh, and just on the off chance this generates some reply to the effect of, "shows how much you know, I PLAY a fire tanker and think burn is WAY too powerful!" May I make this humble suggestion: don't take burn. Problem solved.
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Play mostly on Guardian, some on Protector.
(Eagerly awaiting dev responses to the overwhelming disappointment most players have shown to proposed changes)
Burn is now useless as an offensive power, and the fear factor is the cause. Scale the fear back to I4 levels or simply remove the fear totally. Combat jumping now has more utility than burn, a primary set power!
The changes you have made to the recharge and damage are resonable based on my testing and should be all that is needed to bring this power to where I believe it should be.
If it is your goal to impose a vision upon the players, and part of your vision is to remove the ability of fire tanks to use burn for offense, then simply remove the damage component or remove the power altogther. To leave it in it's worthless form would be sloppy work and reflect a lack of respect for your customers.
Burn had become a frustrating power to use and now it is just plain useless. Fire tanks are a pain to solo with and can't even contribute in a group now. What kind of msg does it send to your user base when you nerf an AT month after month after month? We can only take so much, and this is crossing the line.
And WOW nerfs just as much .... played it from beta..Just so funny to see peop;le thinking joining another mmo they will get away from nerfs..I mean i respect if not having fun by all means.. quit, but to to throw other MMos as a threat is silly. Id like to see you make a Invul/scrapper on WOW. Its a different genre. Like saying im going to Italian cause chinese sucks..(thats food by the way). Now once a new super hero games shows up then maybe leaving can be a threat.. Till then.. holds no water
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Other MMO's such as WOW just does not do it for me, and the guy was just venting which I can understand with the exception of bashing Dev's.
The change to Burn made it a non fun power to use. So many changes to this game is taking the fun out of it little by little.
Changes like suppression that put you in slow motion was a bad move and one of the many changes I cant stand. I hate being in slow motion.
Once they reduce Dark Servants to 1 in I5 along with the AOE debuff, reduction in hold durations, and cones I will have less fun playing my Dark Defender. Is he still effective sure but less fun none the less.
So to say these changes will bring about more fun is one I can't agree with. Every issue thus far has caused a decrease in the fun factor. The content does not bother me since I enjoy the ride up with a different hero each time. Sometimes I focus on TF's, badges, or Story Arcs and even trials.
It's like the XP change with Kraken, man I use to love farming those around lvl 36 but now that place is ghost. It was just a fun event to look forward to but now that's gone.
After everyone of my characters hit 50 I had another one lined up and ready to go. For me its about the next power, more slots, more ability. Any reduction to those takes away from looking forward to get so and so power.
What will Fire Tankers look forward to now is the point. What will Regen scrappers look forward to? Or Dark Defenders, etc
To sum it up yes I still have fun playing the game but it's not as fun as it was before. If issue 5 hits it will be even less but I hope Im wrong.
Ask yourself why people would rather street hunt, or power lvl instead of doing missions and start from there. Thats vision.
The approach of discouraging street hunting and power lvling is not the right method.
For example:
Instead of removing something like Kraken farming or power lvling in PI try an increase to mission XP. Implement a special bonus for mission XP on 6 to 8 man teams. Keep increasing the mission XP bonus to the point where more people decide hey I lvl faster if Im on an 8 man team doing missions. But thats not how it was done, they took away the fun stuff like Kraken and said now you have to do missions.
So what if people hit 50 faster, there are plenty other heroes to create and restart the journey.
How about a simple survey asking why would someone rather power lvl instead of doing missions. I have not even seen a survey unless I decide to cancel my subscription. To late by then althougth the forums can be used as well.
At some point vision should include feedback from customers. Want to build a successful MMO, what are customers asking for.
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So many good posts!
The bottom line is Dev's YOU need to listen to your customers (remember the cutstomer is always right....well mostly lol)
But seriously we want more... or at least what we had to begin with please stop taking things away from a game that was already a really fun game to play, hell my girl her son and my son all play together but if you keep making this game Less fun to play and believe me and the hundreds of paying customers whom have taken a great deal of there time composing these posts think your "nerf bat" is in NO way FUN.
If this constant nerfing keeps up its back to FPS for me.
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and no worries we'll head over to WOW. I've said it before in some other "we're planning to nerf you" forums, we, the players, will just quit your game as you take away abilities that we already have. See you in World of Warcraft guys!
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I agree. I have said in the past that the costumers are in a pissing contest with the developers. Where in the world does a business allow this? And instead of listening to the cries and anguish they cause, they wreck your toons even more. Now I do not know about WoW but I did hear that Guildwars is AWESOME. Maybe time to to check out a new game. This truly is a bummer though because I truely love COH. I Love playing with My main toon The FiZ. I just accomplished lvl 30 with him and he is really fun, FOR NOW. I recently changed from a three month payments to one month for one reason, I5. Just incase it is time to flee. What a BUMMER.
For a Tanker to protect a team, it must be able to survive. Burn helped mitigate the incoming damage by defeating those villians in melee. Invulnerable Tankers have defense (Invincibility) to mitigate the damage, Stone has healing (Rooted) to mitigate the damage and Ice has, well whatever you all get around to giving them some day.
With the recharge raised and the damage decreased, along with the scattering AI of the villians, Fire Tankers don't have a way to mitigate the damage except to scatter them to force them to switch to range damage, which is still incoming damage. It also makes it easier for scattered mobs to turn their attention elsewhere.
I don't play a Fire Tanker, but I think these changes have made it much more difficult for them to be a Tanker.
Been playing for well over a year. Still love the game and still happy. I have a fire tank at level 49
1) I agree that Burn damage needed to be reduced. It was fun to be very powerful, and it was nice to have one "more powerful than most" hero in my arsenal, but I can understand the importance of AT balance.
2) I think that the taunt changes will require tanks to stay more focused and cycle through powers. Perhaps that's good.
3) The AoE damage changes are unsettling to many players including myself, but I can see how they help control the pace at which most players will move through missions or street sweeping. I think it would be GOOD if the number of foes affected by your AoEs would increase with level (like flight speed increases for example). At lvl 50 I really want to feel powerful. Maybe AoEs could affect about 5 foes at LVL1 and gradually increase up to 25 or 50 foes at LVL50. Powers picked up at intermediate levels would affect a number of foes appropriate for that level. Just a thought.
4) I dislike the fear increase because I believe that most tank powers should either increase aggro, do damage or both. To me that is the nature of tanks. While it makes sense that foes would run from fire... this is TANK fire (not just everyday fire). I think it is logical for it to make the foes burn with rage (aggro) rather than fear... It would make sense to me if some of them ran 2 steps away (out of melee range) and stayed aggroed at that range while others stayed in the fire. I don't think any of them should run away. But that is just my opinion. I think it would still be fun if they constantly ran in and out of the fire (thereby taking half as much damage) I would still enjoy burn as a low damage AoE or as a damage/disorient power but not as a power that overrides taunt and scatters foes. Maybe a little tweaking will make it more fun.
I think the good thing is that a less fun Burn will probably encourage more variety in fire tank builds.
After several changes to controllers I have started enjoying spectral terror which I never would have used on live 6 months ago...
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