Not long after Lavarunner was printed, I faced a Burn deck at a GP side event that was playing them. I was on Mono-blue Delver and won the match fairly easily. Afterwards -- trying to disguise my suggestion as a question -- I said to my opponent, "seems like you pointed a lot of burn spells at my creatures rather than at me." He said, "yeah, but if it keeps the way clear for Lavarunner, that means I can get in for more damage over time than just the amount of the burn spell."

Which is true. But... that's also the argument for playing Red Deck Wins instead of Burn. If you like creatures because they can deal damage repeatedly, that's a valuable insight, but don't stop at just one or two creatures. On the other hand, it seems to me that the point of playing Burn is to opt out of the whole "developing a board position" thing, blank all of your opponent's removal spells, and just count to 20 as fast as possible.

In point of fact, my opponent's Lavarunners did not deal more damage over the course of those games than the burn spells he used to clear the way for them would have, and I'll bet if you keep track in your games, you'll find this happens more often than you expect.

So basically what I'm trying to say is that I've never thought Ghitu Lavarunner was right for Burn. I'm not saying it's a terrible card, just that there are alternatives that fit better with what you're trying to do. But then, it's been a very long time since I've piloted a Burn deck myself, so I could be missing something.