Why is burn so useless?

Agidyne

Agidyne

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Anybody else notice how bad the special condition burn is? I have felt this way for a majority of the time I have been playing the Pokemon TCG. back in the day I had a burn deck with Blaziken from Platinum, Heatran lv. X and Full Flame stadium (back when me and my friends played unlimited). It was an alright deck (nothing special). Since then, I have always wanted there to be a viable burn mechanic (besides Flareon ex from way back). Burn is 20 damage in between turns based on a coin toss. The fact that it is based on a coin toss makes it less reliable then poison, not to mention there are many cards that have been printed that make poison do more than one damage counter in between turns (don't even get me started on hypnotoxic laser/virbank). 20 damage is decent, especially for a special condition, but I still think it's just not enough to be viable. On top of all this, there are hardly any cards that even cause the special condition burn anymore.

Maybe I am just too much of a fanboy for fire pokemon, or maybe it's just a bad critique ( I am still a novice since I have only been paying attention to the meta game for about a year or two now) but I think something must be done about burn. I had an interesting idea of a rule change for the special condition: burned pokemons attacks do 10 less damage. This would be to attempt to mimic the effect of burn from the pokemon VG.

Let me know what you guys think. Personally, I find burn to be easily the weakest of all the special conditions.
 
One of the main problems with burn, is that it is evident that PCL is trying to discontinue the condition. Notice how ALL XY-on cards cannot inflict burn. The main problem with the viability of burn is that something can do it better - and that something is poison. Considering there is a 50/50 chance of inflicting 20 damage, however poison can do that or more guaranteed. The other thing that makes poison superior is that you can calculate it in your damage maths, unlike burn which is unpredictable.
 
I always felt that burn should at least done 20 damage guaranteed, with the same support that poison gets, in the same that the difference that separates paralysis and sleep is a coin flip. I felt burn was always a needed counter part to something that happens every turn. Maybe this is to balance the effects of attacks that do damage based the conditions on them. back then, a Pokemon could get 150 easy damage on every card in the format. (remember how powerful Flarados was). Maybe its for the best.
 
It would be interesting if they made burn somewhat similar to the VG. Maybe it could still flip for damage between turns but also causes the pokemon's attacks to do 20 damage less or something like that. It would make defensive decks a bit more viable.

Could be something along the lines of, Hard Charm + Jamming Net + Burn is 60 less damage. If you include attacks that also reduce incoming damage like Entei AT, you could have a total of 110 less damage from the opponents EX pokemon.
 
I bet the only chance for burn is because there are so little pokemon that give a burn effect I think it should be like it definately gets berned and 4 more damage counters so then it will be a bit more usable.
 
There was actually a Volcarona from DEX that experimented with mechanics much like how Virbank City Gym increased poison damage, but the extra damage of burn never really got it to kick off without a reliable way to burn. It doesn't help that only a few sets later, tremendous poison support was released.
 
If burn does come back, which I hope it does, there should be a card thet has an attack that does 20 base for burn, but 40 if heads (similar to toxicrak ex's attack, or the new aromatisse's attack) Imo, that's the only way to make burn playable again.

Also a item similar to hypnotoxic laser Would be nice, with the same attack but be called like numbing blowtorch that paralizes and burns with a stadium similar to virbank, called like cinnabar island that makes all coin flips for burn heads or somethin'
 
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TheLunaticHypno said:
Also a item similar to hypnotoxic laser Would be nice, with the same attack but be called like numbing blowtorch that paralizes and burns with a stadium similar to virbank, called like cinnabar island that makes all coin flips for burn heads or somethin'
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That'd be super broken (lasers are too powerful anyway), primarily as paralysis can't be removed.
 
An item that burns and confuses would be pretty funny. Though that idea kind of makes me want them to make a tool that makes the pokemon's attack inflict some type of status condition.
 
TheLunaticHypno said:
Also a item similar to hypnotoxic laser Would be nice, with the same attack but be called like numbing blowtorch that paralizes and burns with a stadium similar to virbank, called like cinnabar island that makes all coin flips for burn heads or somethin'
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No.

Hypnotoxic Laser should not exist. It does and we have adjusted as best as we can, but it is far too strong an Item, especially for the card pool in which it was released. Besides, if you wish to discuss card flavor, a "laser" should probably inflict Burn with a chance of Confusion. You know, like what you would risk with an appropriately powerful real life laser. XP

Burn suffers because it is redundant. We already have a mechanic to place damage counters between turns; it might be weird but Fire attacks should just inflict Poison like how Ice flavored attacks inflict either Sleep or Paralysis to fake the video game Frozen condition. Possibly "Poison" could be renamed to something neutral.

In general though Special Conditions are not all that effective in the Pokémon TCG. Years ago when [C] Energy in an attack cost would yield approximately 10 points of damage, the-powers-that-be realized that same amount of Energy justified flipping for certain Special Conditions but automatically inflicting others because they are not all the same. If you want Special Conditions to matter more, consider that originally they shut down many Pokémon Powers and later most Poké-Powers (each precursors to Abilities). That made Burn that failed to do damage more effective.

Besides... Burn is still probably better than Confusion. You want to talk about a Special Condition being nerfed, Confusion used to require a coin flip in order to retreat out of it and this was when a player was allowed to Retreat as many times per turn as wanted (so long as it wasn't wasting time; no infinite retreating to stall =P). If you failed your Confusion Retreat Check... you couldn't try again. You also had to discard the Energy to Retreat before flipping to see if it worked. Seriously, Confusion used to be the overall best Special Condition. Now? It is mostly a joke unless a deck is totally unprepared.
 
Spoonfairy said:
Giving Burn a damage debuff to the afflicted Pokemon would be really interesting if you ask me.
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I don't think that pokemon would change a special condition that they have had for years. I feel all special conditions aren't as good as older times. Almost all poke-powers back then couldn't use it if it was affected by a special condition.
 
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