Making Burn Work Again
by Captain Spud

Caveat: This isn't a normal build guide. Instead of reviewing individual powers, which isn't really necessary for a Fire/Fire tank since every power is pretty obvious in how it works and doesn't contain many surprises, I've decided to present this mostly as a short essay where I present my various experiences and conclusions for your consideration.

First, a story.

I created Lindsay Lohan in the late stages of I3. My friends felt like running some fresh lowbies for a change, but I couldn't think of anything interesting I wanted to try. I'd never played a tank past the tutorial, so on a whim I rolled out a quick Fire/Fire, gave her the first silly name I could think of, and started incinerating Hellions.

I got her to about level 10 before I realized how utterly wrecked she was. I'd piled everything she had into Fire Shield and wasted slots on useless pool powers. She was a great damage sponge, but she really sucked to play. I shelved her for a couple months.

After a while, I tripped over a guide for making a Burn tank. The author talked about the insane damage potential of Burn, and as I was between alts at the time, I figured I'd give her another shot. I pulled out her free I4 respec, started picking up the requisite pre-18 Tauntbot powers, and headed for Boomtown. I spent three days at work idly moving her from one green spawn to the next, her Burning Aura slooooooowly whittling away at the swarms while I watched movies and served customers. I've had worse grinds.

And on the 18th level, she wrecked house. Burn was everything I'd read about and more. I'd run into a mob, drop a patch, and just watch them collapse. It was a thing of beauty. Once she was legal to enter Dark Astoria, Lindsay Lohan jumped from level 21 to level 28 in something like three days. She was an absolute blast to play, and unhindered would've been my second level 50.

Then I5 hit. Because of the lovely people we call Farmers, who abused Fire Tanks as an easy way to slaughter entire missions in one attack, Burn was hit with not one, not two, but three huge nerfs.

1. The attack's damage was cut. Not a huge deal, playing a burn tank never really required much player input anyway, so hitting the Burn button three times instead of once per mob while watching a movie wasn't a big deal.
2. The global AoE target cap was introduced. Again, not a huge deal. As a solo tank all this meant was that I had to herd three spawns instead of six before pausing to immolate them. Between these two changes, Burn was adequately nerfed to slow down the mad level dash I'd been working on, a change I wouldn't have objected to considering how truly overpowered it used to be, especially considering it was a power for Tankers, who aren't supposed to be damage dealers. However, the devs didn't end it there.
3. The devs added a special Fear effect to Burn. Now, they CALL it Fear, but it isn't really. Fear powers in CoH are effectively a soft hold, stopping the target from moving or attacking most of the time. If the devs added a true Fear effect to Burn, it would go from broken to "why bother playing any other build". But no, we got a different type of Fear. Basically, enemies don't like standing on a burn patch. After a tick or two of damage, they freak out and run off the patch.

Needless to say, Fire tank players were pissed. Overnight we went from dreadnoughts who could cut a swathe through any pile of enemies to glorified tauntbots who caused absolute havoc, and couldn't even take much of a hit as compensation. I ran one mission with Lindsay, figured the devs had taken all the fun out of an awesome build, and then I picked up my toys and went home.

I shelved Lindsay for over eight months. I waited through I6 for the devs to come to their senses and take out the fear effect, but it never happened. At some point, after I'd gotten both my main villains to 40 and was waiting for I7 to let me further them, I got bored again and decided to give Lindsay one more shot.

The New Fire Tank

People still play Fire tanks. They have decent resistances, and they still have more offense than any other Tank set. But nobody takes Burn. Dropping a burn patch makes any aggro you've managed to gather run around in a panic, which is not what most Tanks and Brutes are looking for. Brutes take Fire because Fury turns it into a fairly potent AoE damage aura; Tanks take Fire because it has a hefty damage buff for Fiery Melee.

I wasn't happy with running a simple tauntbot. I knew I could never return her to her former glory, but I still wanted the strongest AoE offenses I could get. And I absolutely wanted Burn to be one of my primary damage dealers.

So, the build. My AoE damage happens through Burn, Fire Sword Circle, and Combustion. (Breath of Fire is another option, but as it requires you to be outside the bunched mobs, it's hard for a Fire tank to pull off well.) I also have a pair of decent single-target attacks in Fire Sword and Scorch. The damage is relatively slow and requires a large surrounding mob to be worth the effort, so you need some pretty powerful defenses to keep you alive while you're knocking down the bad guys. The shields are maxxed out, Healing Flames keeps me green, and the Leaping pool provides the Knockback and Immobilization resistance Fire lacks. The Knockback resistance is especially important, as a fire tank needs to stay absolutely still in the center of a mob to be effective.

So... does it work?

Tough question. The quick answer is "sort of". It definitely doesn't work as well as it used to. That said, if you work at it, the build is pretty solid for tearing through swarms of bad guys. With my level 33 build, I can solo at the 2nd difficulty level (basically just big swarms of yellows and whites) pretty easily. Aggro two mobs, run around a corner so they'll bunch on you, then start the fireworks.

Now, the key to the build for me was figuring out a way to use Burn with the fear effect. It took a lot of experimentation, but I think I've got it. When everyone sees the new Burn for the first time, especially old-school Burn tanks, they think it makes enemies run away, which causes chaos and results in the guys you were supposed to be controlling killing your teammates. My advice is to fire it off a few times and watch how the enemies react. There are two important things to observe, one of which you'll only see if you're grouping.

1. The enemies don't lose aggro. An enemy hit with a Burn Fear doesn't de-aggro when it runs. It's completely the opposite-- once it flees the patch, you're still likely the last entity that hurt it, and for the most damage, PLUS the inherent Gauntlet punchvoke that makes your attacks matter more for aggro calculations. All this adds up to mean that enemies fleeing from Burn will still be quite cross with you when their feet cool down, even though they seem to be milling all over the place.
   
2. The enemies aren't actually running away. Whenever Burn pulses, it does two things: it burns each target in its range, and it issues a command to that unit's AI to walk directly away from you until it's off the burn patch. It'll take another tick while it's leaving the patch, then it's out. How is this not running away, you ask?
   
   The mob comes back.
   
   Once the mob has left the patch, the AI command to run is gone. The unit will stop fleeing, turn around, and re-enter "Kill Lindsay Lohan Mode". If it's a "Prefers Range" unit, it'll shoot you from its safe position. If, however, it's a Prefers Melee unit (Warwolves) or a Doesn't Care unit (Council troopers, DE, etc), once it's off the patch, it's still within melee aggro range. Either of those baddie types will decide within that range to turn back around, re-enter melee range, and start kicking you in the face. It'll take one tick of damage while re-entering, one to four while kicking you, one while it's processing its second "Get Off The Burn Patch" command, and one while exiting. That's four to seven ticks of Burn's still-quite-good AoE damage to up to sixteen surrounding enemies. And then, once they flee this time, they'll come back again.

Burn fires off a total of (last time I checked) 18 ticks of damage before it fizzles out; figure that on any particular Burn patch, melee enemies will be on the damage patch for two full "Run Back In" processes, plus the initial patch-drop fleeing for 2, and a little bit on the end when it burns out for maybe another 2. That means that on any given Burn patch, you'll average about 12 ticks of damage per enemy out of a possible 18. That's still not too bad. And as an added bonus, the time it doesn't spend frying is spend running around like an idiot instead of attacking you, which means that Burn finally makes sense as a power in a Tank's DEFENSIVE primary-- it's a damage mitigation power, kinda like a really gimpy Ice Patch, that keeps the enemy moving around instead of killing you. Dropping Burn doesn't just harm your opponents, it actually helps a bit to keep you alive. Neat, huh?

Tips and Tricks

Alrighty. I already gave you a general concept for the build. Your defenses are solid enough to keep you alive until the mobs get tired and fall down. Your AoEs are good enough to work through a white or yellow crowd in about a minute. You can handle oranges and reds, but I don't recommend playing on Invincible simply because the XP-over-time ratio with an AoE build is much much better with weaklings than with solid targets giving more XP per kill. You're a quanitity killer-- the quality of your kills becomes a non-issue once you kill enough of them.

Here's the general procedure I use for soloing missions:

1. Run through a couple mobs, totalling about ten to fifteen bad guys. Stop in each spawn long enough for Blazing Aura to fire off a tick, which will Punchvoke the spawns into following you.
2. Once you have aggro, you need to cluster them. Run back where you came from and HIDE. Simply hiding around a corner is fine-- hiding in a tiny nook between stacks of crates is better. Hide in the tiniest space you can.
3. Wait for the enemies to follow you. Wait for ALL of the enemies to follow you. This includes stragglers. Just stand there and let the early arrivals kick you-- you can take what they're dishing out.
4. Once all the enemies have rounded the corner and are in the smallest bunch you can manage, fire off your two AoE clicks. Pop Fiery Embrace first if you have it and it's charged.
5. Burn.
6. Spam Burn and your other attacks until the bad guys fall down.

And that's pretty much it. Most enemies are herdable in this way, choosing to close the last three feet to melee you once they round the corner. Ranged units are trickier-- stuff like Rikti Drones and almost all Nemesis troops have really terrible or nonexistant melee attacks, and will shoot you from two feet away. This makes them a pain to herd, as they prefer to try to line up a shot instead of following you. Hiding in a tiny, inaccesible nook is very important against large numbers of Prefers Range enemies, as it will force them to get close to shoot you.

Teaming

Most of that soloing advice is pretty useless on a team. Any team bigger than 3 is going to have much faster ways to kill things than to wait for you to herd them and sloooooowly melt them. On a team, you're basically back to being a plain Taunt Bot tanker who sponges damage for the team. This is fine. You can still fire off your AoEs, they just aren't going to be very effective. But then, damage isn't really your concern on a big team. Take one for the team and leave the killing to the Blasters.

A quick note on what most people consider the best trick for a Burn tank. Ask most players how to use Burn to its fullest, and they'll tell you that you just need to team with a Controller. They'll keep enemies locked down with their AoEs, which will let Burn eat them alive.

This does not actually work in practice.

Simply put, Controllers and Dominators DO NOT take their AoE immobilizes. They're just not useful for much and not really worth the power slot. I've played Lindsay Lohan for three levels since her reincarnation, and teamed with maybe twenty Controllers in that time. Each time I ask if they have their immobilize, and every one, all twenty, said no. No Control set, with the exception of Grav (which can pull off a really sweet Pseudo-hold with Wormhole and Crushing Field) is ever going to have its AoE Immob. Past that, the AoE hold isn't up often enough to formulate a regular strategy around it, and most of the soft control options don't have enough geography control to keep the swarms from spreading out. If you regularly team with a Controller, definitely encourage them to take their AoE immob, as it will probably double the speed at which you can Burn things to death. Just don't expect to pull the combo off with a pickup Controller.

Conclusion

And that's pretty much everything I have to say about the Modern Burn Tank. I'm really enjoying Lindsay Lohan again; not as much as I used to, but she's definitely not the unsalvageable heap of suck I thought she was. In teams she's a very capable damage sponge, and solo she's a quick enough AoE hazard zone to make just-under-scrapper XP progress. I expect that Lindsay will likely be my 2nd hero to hit 50 someday, which is a pretty decent upgrade from two months ago when I tried to delete her but made a typo in the "Input Toon Name" field and then reluctantly changed my mind.

Peace out.