Why was Burn changed?

[Solarverse]

Originally Burn was a pure DoT, I don't recall it starting off with having Burst upfront with a few tics of DoT after. If I recall, it started off as a bunch of fast tics without the front loaded damage.

 

Anyone remember what the reasoning behind this was?

[Call Me Awesome]

I think the original idea behind the change was due to the "fear" changes that were made which made the mobs run out of the Burn patch so it only did a tiny fraction of it's damage potential.  The damage was frontloaded because the new fear effect made Burn useless.

[Crysis]

6 hours ago, Call Me Awesome said:

I think the original idea behind the change was due to the "fear" changes that were made which made the mobs run out of the Burn patch so it only did a tiny fraction of it's damage potential.  The damage was frontloaded because the new fear effect made Burn useless.

Exactly this.

 

You used to be able to stack Burn as well pre-ED I think.  I remember being a Fire/Ice tanker, pulling the whole map to a dumpster and dropping several stacks of Burn and Ice Patch to kill the whole map.  

[SeraphimKensai]

Oh the fun times of loading 400 wolves or freaks into a burning dumpster.

[Sailboat]

4 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

Oh the fun times of loading 400 wolves or freaks into a burning dumpster.

The game was basically a dumpster fire back then.

[catsi563]

yeah it was pretty much the fear effect combined with its use as dumpster oven to cook freaks and wolves. so they added the fear effect so people coulndt keep mobs trapped in it and they front loaded the damage with an initial burst. its still an effective door blocker tool mind you but its not the farm implement it used to be

[Solarverse]

Yeah, that makes sense. I honestly couldn't remember why it was changed. I knew they added fear, but never thought about them having to change it to front loaded damage to compensate for teh fear mechanic added to it.

 

Not that it matters much, but I kind of miss seeing all those numbers fly. I kind of wish they would drop the fear and reverse it back to the DoT it once was. However, that's a needless change, but I would still love to see those numbers fly again.

[Call Me Awesome]

Heck, you used to be able to stack an entire map's worth of mobs into a single space by using a corner pull and leaving just enough room for one mob around the corner.  They'd all jump into that same spot and you could unload with a single target attack and hit every one of them.  Seismic Smash with 6 Nuc HO's back when they were 50% Acc/Dam enhancement and ED didn't exist would one shot Minions & LT's leaving only Bosses to smack a couple more times.  Fun times one shotting a couple hundred mobs.

 

I remember the old Drek map and herding up every mob on the map, then dropping them all in a few attacks.  I could clear the entire thing in about 10 minutes, then came Nerfageddon with aggro caps, target caps, the GDN and ED.  It was a long road until the Invention system appeared about 5 years later.