I kinda feel like the tooth paste is out of the tube regarding burst damage, and to an extent raid buffs because burst damage in games is good, like really good. And by 'good' I mean really effective at reducing at reducing enemy HP to 0. And ways to make burst damage stronger will always be sought after.

If PCT were in like another type of game like a turn based game then the painting mechanic would essentially be like skip your current turn in exchange for an incredibly high damaging spell on your next turn. So PCT could something cheesy like skipping their turn over and over again until they have enough damage to defeat their enemy in one turn. The intentional downtime becomes inconsequential if you know when you can get away with it. A way to combat against this playstyle would be to make it so that PCT can only skip half their turn, and so they have to use the damage the built from painting on their current 'turn' which have a a bunch of different numerical solutions that won't completely eliminate the playstyle, but make it less cheesy.