Burn would be great if it worked like Glue Arrow and any enemy who touched it "caught on fire." The burning animation already exists (it's used by Melt Armor). It would need to be coded so that the enemy can only catch on fire once per individual burn patch (easy enough, IMO). You might keep some damage in the actual pet animation since the enemy is, in fact, standing in a fire, but the majority of the damage could be moved to the burning effect.
That's a good alternative. However, a lot of the times I've noticed that things run away from the burn patch and come back just outside its radius, making doing aoe damage tougher for a tank/brute/scrapper/stalker. No power should deter your aoe damage defense set, when said power is a part of that defense set, because of an avoid affect. I would much rather prefer disorient than avoid, and you could keep its radius small at 8' if you put up a disorient effect or a built-in Hand-Clap(9.536s Stun (mag 2), +9.536s Stun (mag 1) (50% chance) PvE only). Disorient isn't hard to imagine on a combustion-like power, since Flashfire and RoTP are good examples of fire doing this in aoe. Burn could certainly use a better animation to rationalize a stun effect. I'm hinting at how it should look if you were to burst out of confines as strong heroes do. (similar to the power-up animations of the Fire and Plasma Shield)
RoTP is great in concept. But the DoT is centric in one area and it also scatters mobs! On top of that, they're mostly disoriented so they're NOT comming back into the RoTP pet for more damage. (Just like Burn's avoid) I can't stand that an aoe/resist centric defense set has powers that disrupt that aoe potential with knockback or avoid. Take that off, please. Knockup. Making those changes alone will make Fiery Aura do more damage because it will have more reliable DoT with no counterproductive avoid/knockback.
Change Burn into a front-loaded PBAoE with a slightly larger radius akin to Shield Charge.
Add high immob resistance (not protection) to Fire Shield, Plasma Shield and Blazing Aura then rule it off as all the fire/heat destroying the immob, so with all of it working in unison most immobs will only stop you for a split second.
Add a short duration self damage buff to Rise of the Phoenix OR change the knockback to knockdown/up, so that your return is powerful. Increase the recharge/remove the stun if needed for balance (RotP, Fiery Embrace, Burn and Fire Sword Circle for returning to the land of the living with a BANG).
Increase the accuracy of Consume OR add a small heal per target OR front load the endurance gain.
That is all I can think of that would make a Fiery Aura character feel more stable/balanced to me, when compared to other sets.
I am the Blaster, I have filled the role of Tank, Controller and Defender
Sometimes all at once.
Union EU player! Pip pip, tally ho, top hats and tea etc etc
2 things I'd do to fix fiery aura.
First- Rise of the Phoenix. Give it an "Energize" treatment where it doesn't exactly break the cottage rule but it sure bends it.
The general concept is give the power the duality of Howling Twilight from Dark Miasma.
If activated when dead, the power acts as it always has. Restores HP, Damage, KB, Stun, Unaffected Status. Reduce the Damage to around shield charge levels, reduce the recharge to 240s.
If you activate the power while still alive. You get say 3/4ths the damage of tanker shield charge. Knockdown instead of KB, no stun, no unaffected status, no HP restored. Since its a tier 9 on 240 second timer, give it a small +Res to all OR +HP for 20 seconds. I figure the +HP could act something like frostwork where it doesn't actually provide a heal, but will give you more HP no matter what. (i.e. say you are at 1500 of 2000 HP and get a 20% boost you wouldn't heal any of that missing HP but would end up with 1800 of 2400 HP effectively getting 300 more HP than you started with)
Second - Up the damage on consume. The recharge doesn't seem like it is going down anytime soon. Lets make it at least hurt when you use it. Currently its what 17.8 Base damage at level 50? At the very least bring it up to the level of dark consumption or soul drain.
If RoTP and Consume were changed I really don't think burn would need to be messed with at all. You get what damage you can out of it plus its some nice mitigation.
I'd like to see the Mez Holes closed of course but I'd like to see Burn offer something close to the Immobilization Protection we have now. Have Burn grant the user a decent slow, -dam, -res and -tohit debuff resistance for a short period of time. If a player is suffering -res, against say Romans, Burn would lower the amount the player is debuffed by. Adding -Res to burn as an attack would be really cool but I doubt Castle would do that.
I wanna be greedy and suggest the same abilty be added to Fiery Embrace. 30 seconds of average -debuff resistance isn't gonna overpower the set but it would help the set manage a wide range of dangerous situations.
Thematically I don't feel it's much of a stretch that this fire I summon, purifies me and burns away my ills.
If you want to see a recharge reduction for Consume, then it either has to do less damage or none at all. I would like to see it dropped down to 60 sec base recharge, do no damage at all, be auto-hit for end recovery, and add a small slow component that requires a to-hit check. Consume can slow your foes then drop Burn for more toasty critters.
But I don't think any chages are gonna come to Fiery Aura for a whille.
Burn is a victim of being nerfed to nigh uselessness. The RUN AWAY component it inspires in all non-Robotic or non-AV class enemies. The smallness of the burn stack itself. Lighted Oil Slick arrows are a REAL burn, not this puny little campfire Fire Armor's burn produces.
It almost makes you wish Burn was like a Res build-up instead of a pretty useless offensive power. Fiery Armor is such wet paper sack armor that being able to click a Resistance build-up to take a large alpha strike would be nice. (I deleted my last /FA. It's just so horribly weak, you have to have a different scrapper or tanker meatshield to hide behind. All for a second build-up power)
Phoenix is great because it's the only self-res that you REALLY USE A LOT. /Regen, /WP, /DA...pfft, why take your revive? But Fire Armor *needs* their corpse nuke revive since they're corpses so often.
Maybe turn Burn into a floating fireball pet that scorches, combusts and spits fire...like a fireball version of the Warshade fluffies :P It'll burn you up!
If there is an official thread for giving Devs/Castle ideas on how to change/fix a powerset, let me know. Otherwise I'm looking for other's ideas while projecting my own.
The following changes I think will up the playability of Fiery Aura in general gameplay on Villain and hero side, while also upping the damage with changes to certain powers.
- Consume: RES (Endurance, Recovery) +69.2%* for 30s. Recharge Time: 60s* (It should be on par with Energy Aura's and Elec Armor's +END moves, considering Fire has no inherent RES End Drain so they need Consume more often)
- Temperature Protection: RES(RunSpeed, RechargeTime, FlySpeed, JumpHeight, SpeedJumping) +69.2%* for 10.25s, +0.15 Recovery for 10.25s
(Temperature Protection should insulate you further and help keep warmth in, thus added recovery rate)
- Burn: -10.38 Terrorize*, Immobilize for 100s. RES(Terrorize*, Immobilize) +103.8% for 100s. Flames(minion class pet): Radius: 15'*, Remove Avoid* Max Targets: 10*
(This will make Burn's DoT far less avoided and reliant enough to take for an attack rather than just mez protection. The only other route is to make Burn immobilize or slow if it keeps the Avoid on the Flames Pet)
- Rise of the Pheonix: +8.308 KnockUp* (Changed from Knockback. Knockback + Stun makes most of the DoT avoided
* = ammendment to value or power mechanic