ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

As we all know, heat beam runes are a little lackluster when comparing them physical wilds. You can have a piddiling burn damage... or a nice all resist boost. So, me and bpat thought of a couple of potential buffs:

1. Simply reduce the cooldown so that it is up more often. This coupled with bpat's changes to how undead handle runic saturation would be a pretty nice buff to the already buffed undead.
2. Additionally burn a beneficial physical effect from whomever you hit with it.
3. Apply a "powers burn" debuff that reduces powers (phys, spell, mind) on enemies hit.

Not sure how useful it would be to make it burn a physical effect, but that could be useful for when you have a blocking enemy or what not. Reducing enemy power though sounds like it could be useful.

I'm more of a fan of bpat's previous idea, making it a flameshock stun instead.
Cooldown is an issue that needs to be addressed either way since most runes have no reason to have higher cd than wilds.

What about biting gale and acid wave runes vs mental and magical wilds?

Freeze is pretty solid as a status effect and acid wave at least disarms (besides magical effects are so rare that acid runes become more of a situational pick anyways), meanwhile heat beam just... applies a weak burn effect.

Not to mention, Biting Gale applies a Wet effect - which is useful when you are trying to apply a Stun Debuff on enemies.