I want frontline damage crusader to be more viable.

[PaladinSaad]

I understand that he's a jack of all trades, but he's just not very exciting to me in any fashion. I think at least one of his paths should provide some solid damage without having to build an entire team around him, and I don't think he has that right now. Banneret is great but it doesn't fulfill the power fantasy that I enjoy, a frontline distributor of holy wrath. I would gladly take a path where I can sacrifice some of his healing or tankiness for more damage. Or, I think removing one part of his aggressor setup loop would be nice. i feel like it's too much hassle to get the +30% dmg going when I could do other impactful things in the same amount of turns or less. I've tried the burn synergy comps, but it just feels like something is missing.

[thorin.hannahs]

The burn synergy comps just aren't that powerful from what I have experienced (disclaimer I don't like dance teams and avoid some heroes like they are the plague). Bonnie gets powerful with sprawl trinkets and the execute off of aggressor just hasn't been clicking. Radiance is indeed too slow. As for making him a traditional damage dealer I'm not particularly sold on that because that isn't what he do. Maybe give Reap burn?

I think changes need to be made to Bonnie and Vestal to get a more cohesive burn comp going. Vestal causing burn when hit could feed into Aggressor executes as well as stack more burn for Bonnie without sprawl trinkets.

[Remove Sniper from TF2]

Wanderer does good damage with smite on combo-targets

[RopeDrink]

The burn synergy comps just aren't that powerful from what I have experienced (disclaimer I don't like dance teams and avoid some heroes like they are the plague).

It's up to you what you play or prefer, but mobility is extremely strong, and people are probably too used to Alchemist, which has the same DoT effect as Arsonist: +33% Piercing, +10% Crit, along with other things. If it's considered better, it's often because it's a lot simpler to execute and doesn't require much investment at all, whereas Flame has more considerations.

PS. Forgive my maths. It's Christmas, so I don't care about 900% accuracy at the moment.

Plague Doctor:

Two blight options (excluding Cause of Death), and one flame skill:

Plague Grenade.
Usable from two, against two (AoE).
Up to 9-12 (x2) flat. No combo synergy.

Noxious Blast.
Usable from three, against one (single):
Up to 12-18 flat. Combo = Piercing.

Magnesium Rain.
Usable from two, against all (AoE).
Up to 6-9 (x4) flat. Clears corpses.

Runaway:

Six flame options (excluding Backdraft).

Firestarter.
Gives chosen target 6-9 flaming damage on their next two hits, including AOE attacks - up to 24-36 (6-9x4). For example, you can Firestart a Plague Doctor and have her use Magnesium Rain for 24-36 + 24-36, then have PD use the second proc on Plague Grenade for up to 9-12 (x2) + 12-18.

Controlled Burn.
Usable from three, against anyone (single):
Up to 9-12 flat - then, apply 6-9 (flat) to the chosen rank every turn for three turns (up to 27-39 total). Can do more if enemies are pulled or pushed through the chosen slot each turn.
(Due to being a fire-and-forget skill that ticks away while you do other things, RUN can stack additional sources on top).

Firefly.
Usable from two, against three (single):
Up to 9-15 flat, or 18-24 AoE/Combo.

Searing Strike.
Usable from two, against two (single):
Up to 6-9 flat, or 12-18 Combo.
(This is more of a melee bread-and-butter @ 3-6 / 4-7 strike damage).

Dragonfly.
Usable from two, against two (AoE/Mobility):
Up to 6-12 (x2) flat. Chance to add combos.

Ransack.
Mobility/pull that can combo into +9 flame damage.

------

CRU can complement many of RUN's playstyles by being able to swap Zealous into a front or back-rank flaming AoE, burst/burn via movement (eg. Lance + Ransack), passively gain free executions by simply hitting a burning target, and more. Or, you can forget all of that and focus on raw damage by having someone generate combo tokens and let CRU slap them upside the head for free damage boosts via Smite.

The problem is that -- on paper -- brainlessly spamming grenades as an Alchemist gets nice and simple gains, typically more than brainlessly spamming equivalents (eg. static Firefly, or mobile Lances). All you have to worry about is keeping the PD pinned in R3/R4, and voila. The downside is PD only has Nox if moved into R2, and next-to-nothing in R1 (as Alchemist), whereas CRU + RUN are built for movement and flex.

Runaway is a versatile dancer that can casually beat PD if you're willing to batter foes through Controlled Burn, set juicy AoE's with Firestarter (etc), but if all you're doing is spamming Firefly (like you would an Alchemist), then a Plague Doctor will invariably win over time.

Firefly is better against single targets than P-Grenade -- hits harder (raw+dot) and can be used against 3 targets instead of 2. Nox does more DoT damage single-target, but can only be used against the front two, so Firefly wins when you want to hit that lone R3.

Plague Doctor can synergize with FLA + GR (Rain, Punish, Dart, etc), and RUN can synergize with CRU + VES (Zealous, Lance, Judge/Smoldering, Aggressor, etc) -- excluding multi-dot functionality (eg. OCC's Malediction), which is inverse "Firestarter", seeing as you're using a per-hit debuff on an enemy instead of a per-hit buff on a friend.

Overall, RUN+CRU have perfectly strong synergies, but it's not as brainless compared to, say, spamming Acid Rain onto Plague Grenades. Even if you're playing Banneret (Zealous CRU) like an Alchemist PD, you will need to move forward for smites once the back-rank is dead, whereas the PD can simply swap to Nox -- and even the recent change to RUN makes it impossible for her to Ransack R1 (if that is the only surviving enemy).

Either way, RUN was solid - even before the buffs - and having CRU + possible VES usability on top helps to spice things up, but at the end of the day, it's just easier to use Alchemist and the equally easy synergies (FLA/GR).