*Disclaimer: I deliberately do not use gems that increase enchantment effects, or enchantments that scale with durability. That is from personal choice because I consider them problematically unbalanced. Keep that in mind for what’s described below.
I started playing in february, so I don’t know how burn has worked historically in the game.
The current state of the “burn” ailment is underwhelming to the point of uselessness. Even with a 75% increase to burn damage, 25% increased burn buildup, and combining with infection, I still can’t reach burn damage numbers that has any impact (For the entire duration a total average of 200-300). The duration is also currently short enough to be laughable. Comparing this to the shock ailment which deals higher damage instantly and also chains to more targets, or freeze which is a very strong crowd control and increases physical damage, burn is very unsatisfying and underwhelming.
This is how I would fix it:
Significantly increase the cap for burn buildup
Right now, the difference between minimum and maximum burn damage related to buildup is very low, and reaching the maximum buildup is easily done in only 1-2 hits. I suggest significally increasing the cap so that higher buildup causes higher damage ticks, and also results in a longer duration before it expires. This would increase the effective damage of the ailment, while also requiring the player to stay active and “keep the fire going”, rather than promote a “poke and run” playstyle. This would also give room for new enchantments, for example “Increase maximum burn buildup X%”.
By “significantly increase”, I really mean significant, maybe 3x or even 5x the maximum buildup that we can currently reach.
Let me know what you think of this, or feel free to share your own thoughts and ideas.