4E Power Build: Wizard Super-Blaster

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Dec 04, 2009 5:39 pm

So, because all editions of Dungeons and Dragons worship Critical Existence Failure, it's generally assumed that targeting one opponent with two attacks is better than targeting two or three opponents with one attack. But what about targeting five (or more!) foes with one attack? While you will end up killing an individual enemy slower, you will wipe out the opposition more quickly. And if you could actually make it so that you were targeting five foes at once twice, well... Thus we get to the goal behind our Super-Blaster Mage: to create a blast as large as possible to catch enemies in it for massive damage.

This build will specifically ignore saving throw shenanigans, because that subsystem just Doesn't Work, especially if you abuse it like you can in 4E. So in the interest of proving just how useless the Seeker / Warlock / Sorcerer really are, I shall present to you an alternate ranged 'striker' build. It vastly exceeds standard or medium-optimized characters of those builds in damage while still being a controller.

Detailed Summary:

Wizard powers form the backbone of this build, though there are a couple of very useful Druid options (especially in late-paragon/epic) that fill in the weak gaps of the Wizard. But the main reason Druid is included into the build for the level 5 daily summoning power, Summon Fire Beetle. This power will be retained for the rest of your career due to its ability to blast foes without consuming actions. This power requires a lot of coordination with your party; for added help we will be using Mark of Storm + Rushing Cleats to ensure that enemies gets nudged around the battlefield as much as possible to gather enemies into a convenient location for blasting with our other powers. However, you MUST get used to using minor actions to delay the fire beetle in case it's in a bad spot for blasting, because your fire beetle does much more damage than monsters do to the party.

Battle Engineer is used solely for the Fleeting Dweomer power, which is used for many reasons. The biggest one is to let us use Resounding Thunder on all of our attacks. A close second is to allow us to use our Mark of Storm feat while letting us switch to a Frost Quarterstaff for extra damage and combat advantage. An even closer third is to let us use the downright overpowered Echoes of Thunder feat. At paragon, if you hit 5 enemies in a blast with it you gain a +10 bonus to damage until the end of your next turn. This bonus damage stacks with itself. And of course there's the +INT damage to all of your attacks, which of course is kind of amazing that it's actually the LEAST of your reasons to want this power. Battle Engineer doesn't give us much else but you didn't need much else to begin with, didn't you?

Archmage is picked for the Epic Destiny in order to spam extra wizard dailies. At level 21 you should easily be using a persistent wizard power along with your Fire Beetle and your Standard Action attack--there's no reason why you shouldn't be getting 4 blast attacks a turn. That said, Demigod is an acceptable alternative as always if you have a short workday.

At level 5, we will get a +1 Lightning Quarterstaff; at level 10, we upgrade to a +2 Lightning Quarterstaff. At level 13 we go to a +3 Frost Quarterstaff and use that for the rest of our career, using Fleeting Dweomer to add the Thunder keyword to all of our wizard powers.

Despite having Druid on the character sheet, we are going to avoid using Wild Shape due to the inability to use wizard powers. When our character gets Salves of Power, all of them will go towards replenishing Summon Fire Beetle; wizard powers get used up as normal, at least until epic where Arcane Mastery will allow our character to spam daily powers. This remains the case until late in paragon, where Quick Wild Shape will be abused to let us use Wizard powers AND quickly command our Fire Beetle summon.

Deva Wizard|Druid / Battle Engineer / Archmage
Stats: STR 8, CON 12, DEX 12, INT 18, WIS 18, CHA 10. All level-ups go into intelligence and wisdom. If you're starting at a higher level you may want to put the 13 into dexterity instead--that way you can afford Wizard Implement Expertise in epic. Deva is picked strictly for the bonus to intelligence and wisdom and for the highly useful Memory of a Thousand Lifetimes power. I looked for another race with this stat combination, but apparently only pretty races get a boost to intelligence at all. You gotta love that D&D racism. Constitution is given a slight priority for the most part to make our Beetle summon a bit more durable and to give us an extra healing surge.

Magical Item Wishlist

+1 and +2 Lightning Quarterstaves (L5 and 10)
+3, +4, +5, and +6 Frost Quarterstaves (L13, 18, 23, 28)
+1 to +6 Staves of Ruin (L3, 8, 13, 18, 23, 28)
+1 to +6 Vanilla Magical Armor (L1, 6, 11, 16, 21, 26)
+1 to +6 Cloak of Distortion/Timeless Locket. Depends on how long your workday is. If it's a short workday then at level 14 and beyond you want Timeless Lockets. (L4, 9, 14, 19, 24, 29)
4 Salves of Power (L10)
2 Iron Rings of the Dwarf Lords (L14)
Casque of Tactics (L5)
Siberys Shard of the Mage (Heroic, Paragon, and Epic) (L2, 12, and 22)
Gloves of Ice (L10 and 20)
Rushing Cleats (L7)

Feats:

1: Implement Expertise: Quarterstaves
2: Weapon Focus: Quarterstaves --> Retrained to Mark of Storm at level 5
4: Enlarge Spell
6: Hybrid Talent: Druid Armor Proficiency --> Retrained to Commanding Form at level 20.
8: Weapon Focus: Quarterstaves --> Retrained to Echoes of Thunder at level 12
10: Student of Artifice
11: Resounding Thunder (will be useless for one level until we get Fleeting Dweomer)
12: Lasting Frost (will be useless for one level until we upgrade to a frost Quarterstaff)
14: Wintertouched
16: Weapon Focus: Quarterstaves --> Primal Summoning Expertise at level 21
18: Dual-Implement Spellcaster
20: Quick Wildshape
21: Arcane Mastery
22: Weapon Focus: Quarterstaves
24: Hybrid Talent: Druid Armor Proficiency

Feat Explanation:

The choices for levels 1 to 4 should be obvious. Enlarge Spell is picked when it is to ensure that you have a Siberys Shard, a Staff of Ruin, and Weapon Focus to make up for the lost damage. Mark of Storm is picked right after the character gets a Lightning Quarterstaff for extra sliding shenanigans, which will be quickly augmented by Rushing Cleats at level 7. Druid Armor Proficiency is picked up just in time to upgrade to +2 armor, which we will be using for the rest of our lives. Weapon Focus is picked up again for a damage boost at level 8. Student of Artifice is picked solely to qualify for Battle Engineer.

Because Resounding Thunder, Lasting Frost, and Echoes of Thunder are so useful they are picked up ahead of time in a 'less power now for more power later' sort of deal. Echoes of Thunder is especially sweet, regularly giving us a boost of +10 or more to damage. Wintertouched is picked up for a sorely-needed attack boost. Weapon Focus is picked up yet again. By level 18 Dual-Implement Spellcaster will provide a very large damage boost. At level 20 we will be using the Commanding Form/Quick Wildshape combo to allow us to easily move our summon across the field without disabling us from using wizard powers in the same round. This level will see a drastic reduction in AC for this level, which is unfortunate but will pay off next level with a huge damage boost.

Level 21 sees our largest boost in power yet; with the Archmage class feature and Arcane Mastery we can drop our biggest Wizard daily every encounter in addition to be able to spam additional standard actions in a round with our Fire Beetle. At this point we switch over from Rushing Cleats to Boots of Eagerness for yet another minor action.

Powers:

At-Will: Winged Horde (not in character builder, it's in D381 Wizard Class Acts), Fire Hawk
Enc 1: Icy Terrain
Daily 1: Flaming Sphere
Utility 2: Shield --> Retrained to Warding Wind at level 5 or 6 depending on how your DM rules the order of operations for level-ups. Retrained again to Shield at level 10.
Enc 3: Call Lightning
Daily 5: Summon Fire Beetle
Utility 6: Wizard's Escape
Enc 7: Twist of Space
Daily 9: Grasp of the Grave
Utility 10: Animal Clan --> Retrained to Illusory Wall at level 19; this would be retrained at level 21 because it becomes pointless after you get Primal Summoning Expertise but levels 20 and 21 are already busy. Illusory Wall is a powerful utility as it is.
Enc 13: Prismatic Burst --> Replaces Icy Terrain
Daily 15: Evard's Dreadful Mist --> Replaces Flaming Sphere
Utility 16: Wall of Stone
Enc 17: Crushing Titan's Fist --> Replaces Twist of Space
Daily 19: Evard's Black Tentacles --> Replaces Grasp of the Grave
Utility 22: Unseen Beast
Enc 23: Rain of Fire Needles --> Replaces Call Lightning

Powers Explanation:

Winged Horde and Fire Hawk are a beastly combination of At-Wills. Winged Horde is a will targetting, party-friendly, psychic-keyword ranged burst which as a rider effect prevents enemies from taking opportunity attacks. Combined with Resounding Thunder and Enlarge Spell you have a 7 x 7 area that only targets enemies; that's crazy-good for an At-Will. Fire Hawk is a ranged attack that does damage and does even more damage if an enemy takes an action that could draw an OA. So they can only shift and can't take ranged attacks unless they want to suffer a large amount of extra damage.

Icy Terrain is almost lackluster by comparison. However, with Enlarge Spell the difficult terrain + prone effect is significantly more useful; if used on an enemy at the far end of the spell it prevents them from closing in on a hit. Flaming Sphere is used to help with the group damage problem. It will put your damage at 'Striker Level' for a good long while. Shield is significantly more useful than Warding Wind (a +4 bonus versus a +2 bonus) but since the Hybrid rules require at least one utility power from each class we switch over to Warding Wind for awhile so we can have Wizard's Escape, then switch back to Shield at level 10.

Call Lightning is used for autodamage and alongside the Mark of Storm feat will be used as our minion-killer--as of Monster Manual 2, minions are significantly more dangerous, having their damage boosted anywhere from 50 to 100%. At level 5, we pick up Summon Fire Beetle and keep it for the rest of our careers. As I mentioned in the foreword you need to be very careful with this summon; if you do then you can do a lot of damage. Winged Horde's rider effect will be especially useful now, so allies can disengage from the enemy without drawing OAs while you can use your fire beetle to blast away. Wizard's Escape saves your bacon; it negates an attack and allows you to teleport. With the Hide Armor you now have your survivability goes way up. Twist of Space teleports, slows, and targets enemies only. You will be using this power a lot to move enemies into the blasting zone for your Fire Beetle.

Grasp of the Grave is so powerful it's almost unfair. It's an enemy-only autodamaging zone (sadly, not a damage roll or it'd be even more overpowered) that automatically dazes enemies. When you get it it will be a 7 x 7 area and when you get Resounding Thunder in three more levels it will be 9 x 9. It doesn't even require you to sustain it to boot. Animal Clan is picked up to give you some much-needed control over your Fire Beetle summon for occasions when you can't easily get your ducks up in a row, forcing you to either damage a party member--which is quickly becoming untenable due to your skyrocketing damage--or going without the damage altogether. It becomes completely useless once you get Primal Summoning Expertise, so it will be retrained into the berserkly powerful Illusory Wall, a utility good enough to be an encounter power.

Prismatic Burst is a simple, but great encounter power. A 9 x 9 ranged burst that blinds. Evard's Dreadful Mist replaces Flaming Sphere, which packs a lot of great effects into one--it's a sustainable 9x9 zone that blocks line of sight, immobilizes, and attacks an enemy once a round. Wall of Stone is another berserkly useful utility power, able to shut enemies out of the fight for several rounds without even giving them the courtesy of an attack roll. Crushing Titan's Fist is normally a mediocre power but in your hards it becomes a 9 x 9 square that immobilizes and creates a zone of extra-difficult terrain that costs 5 squares of movement per tile to cross. Even if it misses it will lock enemies from closing in with you. Unseen Beast at level 22 lets you turn invisible until the end of your next turn for the rest of the encounter when you change into beast form. You can Wild Shape to and fro as a free action every round. So this gives you encounter-long invisibility. Finally at level 23 we replace that frankly outdated Call Lightning power with Rain of Fire Needles. All that particular power does is just do damage twice. Yawn.

If you have a short workday (3 combat encounters or fewer between extended rests) then instead of replacing Grasp of the Grave/Flaming Sphere keep it for the rest of your life depending on whether you want to autodaze or do extra damage. If that's the case, here's how your workday goes from now on starting at paragon:

1st Encounter: Grasp of the Grave/Flaming Sphere + Summon Fire Beetle
2nd Encounter: Use two Salves of Power. GotG/FS + Summon Fire Beetle
3rd Encounter: Use a Salve of Power. Use your highest-level power + Summon Fire Beetle/GotG/FS

You can of course switch it up, but the idea is to have 6 daily attack powers spread out over 3 encounters. Of course if you have four or more encounters in a workday feel free to replace GotG/Flaming Sphere with a higher level one.

Build Suggestions
Something that would increase the number of minor actions you had in a round would be helpful. So would something that increased the distance you slid enemies. I'm not sure what to put for the Tattoo, Head, Arms, and Waist item slots. Any suggestions would also be helpful.

shau · Post by **shau** » Sat Dec 05, 2009 6:36 pm

Winged Horde is a will targetting, party-friendly, psychic-keyword ranged burst which as a rider effect prevents enemies from taking opportunity attacks. Combined with Resounding Thunder and Enlarge Spell you have a 7 x 7 area that only targets enemies; that's crazy-good for an At-Will.

Yes it is. Wizard's has a good thing going with the whole put their crappy articles behind a subscription wall but then publish super powered powers that you drool over. I heard fighters just got a new encounter stance that trades AC for Damage. Not much good for fighters but archers will pretty much cut off their own balls to get it.

I'm not sure about the helmet and arms slot, but for the tattoo you want the Tattoo of the Long Battle. It gives you a bonus to damage equal to the amount healing surges you spent since your last rest every time you hit with a daily. Fire Beetle at least hits every round, and maybe your auto-damage zones do as well depending on how you understand "hit." It's super cheap too. There are a lot of good belts out there that don't really add to your theme but are nice. Diamond Cincture (sp?) is great for defense. Healer's Sash is so good its pretty much mandatory that somebody in the party takes it.

I haven't read the summon rules yet. It's PH2 right? I got super depressed with the idea of having a summoner ever since I saw how terrible the Beastmaster ranger was. Are there any summoners worth playing now?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Dec 05, 2009 7:40 pm

shau wrote: I haven't read the summon rules yet. It's PH2 right? I got super depressed with the idea of having a summoner ever since I saw how terrible the Beastmaster ranger was. Are there any summoners worth playing now?

The value of summoning varies really wildly. Some classes have shitty summoning, other classes have summoning that rules.

The basic idea is that summons use your defenses and also burn a healing surge for extra hit points. Which makes them kind of squishy but still quite valuable. The biggest thing they have going on is action trade. There are a couple of exceptions but generally all summons have an opportunity attack and a standard action attack. Unfortunately, as a controller (all controllers have summons, the cleric also gets a couple) your standard actions are better than what summons get so it's kind of a waste.

What you want to look at is summons that have some kind of rider effect like daze, have an off-action attack you can spam (for example, the Invoker gets a level 9 summon with attacks that can be used as a minor action), or has an Instinctive Action line. The druids specialize in instinctive action summons. Basically, if you don't issue any command to a summon they automatically take an action in accordance with their nature. For the fire beetle, it's 'blast as many enemies as possible at once' and if they can't do that they try to look for an enemy.

So it's obviously very dangerous which is why this character is outfitted with several ways to move enemies into the right spot and also let allies get out of the way. However, instinctive actions do not take up actions. So like I said for the three-encounter workday you can do something like Winged Horde + Sustain Minor wizard power like Evard's Black tentacles + Instinctive Action every encounter. So not only do you get three attacks during a round but you also affect a wide number of enemies.

I wouldn't try out this build at low levels (like anything before level 15 or so) unless you're with a party that knows what they're doing. Even with Mark of Storm and Winged Horde there is going to be some non-negligible risk involved. Friendly fire is extremely dangerous in this edition. So you're just going to have to get used to burning minor actions to order your summon to heel sometimes.

shau · Post by **shau** » Sat Dec 05, 2009 11:09 pm

I wouldn't try out this build at low levels (like anything before level 15 or so) unless you're with a party that knows what they're doing. Even with Mark of Storm and Winged Horde there is going to be some non-negligible risk involved. Friendly fire is extremely dangerous in this edition. So you're just going to have to get used to burning minor actions to order your summon to heel sometimes.

I think it works pretty good early levels if you just made a few tweaks at the beginning and then retrained later. Usually, to be good at heroic level you want to have either:

1. A shit hot at will. (twin strike, astral sign)

2. Super powerful encounter tricks (maybe the old rain of blows fighter)

3. Combat winning dailies (Sleep, Consecrated ground)

4. Super high defenses and a way to make enemies attack you (really talented fighter, DM consent).

Or some kinda combination of the above (and of course no fatal weaknesses).

Really, one and four are going to be the most noticeable, simply because those ones are on all the time. You have 1 (I think, I don't know either of those at wills.) If you don't, you can just take Cloud of Daggers at the beginning and be okay, especially if your DM remembers the old wording of Cloud of Daggers and lets you enlarge it.

The other thing you have going for you is your powerful and long lasting wizard dailies, so you have 3 somewhat as well. Take Flaming Sphere unless something better is out there now. Then get one of those swapping staffs at level 2. Now you can have two encounters in which you hit for 1d6 plus int and autohit for 1d4 plus wis plus int so you are at striker level many times. Assuming you are not getting better out of your current at wills.

At level 5 you get a new daily. That can be Fire beetle if you want, but if it is too hard to control just take wall of thorns for murder pinball or a more docile summon. Or swap out your flaming sphere for a Giant Toad or something and take Stinking Cloud or Grasp of the Grave. At level 6 or seven you get another staff and start substituting the next power if that is allowed. You hold on for a Salve of Power if it is not.

At this point you drop an autodamage daily every encounter even with the 4 encounter schedule and you combine it with a powerful at will. It took till level 7 or so, but that's really everything you can expect from a heroic character. And it only really cost you a couple items, both of which will be useful and one of which you probably need anyway, and some retraining.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Dec 05, 2009 11:41 pm

The Mnemonic Staff got a nerf, too.

shau · Post by **shau** » Sat Dec 05, 2009 11:55 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:The Mnemonic Staff got a nerf, too.

Motherfucker. You know, this nerfing thing in 4e is really pissing me off. It's one thing to have your character constantly compromised because new and better shit is always coming out. It's another to open your character builder and realize the character you made just doesn't fucking work anymore because of a nerf. And these are happening all the time. I wonder how many characters in reserve I have to fix due to this shit.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Dec 06, 2009 7:06 am

shau wrote:
Lago PARANOIA wrote:The Mnemonic Staff got a nerf, too.
Motherfucker. You know, this nerfing thing in 4e is really pissing me off. It's one thing to have your character constantly compromised because new and better shit is always coming out. It's another to open your character builder and realize the character you made just doesn't fucking work anymore because of a nerf. And these are happening all the time. I wonder how many characters in reserve I have to fix due to this shit.

You know actually, that stuff angers me way more than the constant power creep. Nerfing things that are merely "very good" and not actually game breaking pushes the game from something that I take a mild, intellectual curiosity in to something that I can't be bothered to read.

If the rules in the books can't be relied upon to mean what they say, I just can't be fucked. The fact that the game itself is too boring for me to play it for more than a single afternoon is moot at that point. The instability of the ruleset is so confusing and infuriating that I won't even play it that much.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 3:33 am

I wouldn't mind the rampant nerfing so much if it wasn't for the fact that that's all the errata does.

There has yet to be an errata that makes something go from 'bad' to 'good', which is why I'm so

with stuff like Bloodclaw nerfs. The Bloodclaw nerf didn't suddenly make 85% of the shit in the magical item compendium interesting; all it did was make people look at Radiant and Frost weapons again.

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 12:24 pm

I can understand only nerfing from a theoretical point of view. After all, there are many items and powers to choose from. If you just remove the few that are too good people are free to choose from all of the decent ones and can disregard the crappy ones.

Of course this only works when you only have a few outliers, stinks when you do it incrementally and stinks even worse when, contrary to a MMORPG, you can't just silently patch it but have to get your players to read the errata. Looks like 4E basically continues with their "like a MMORPG, with all of the bad but none of the good"-theme.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 2:19 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:
shau wrote:It's one thing to have your character constantly compromised because new and better shit is always coming out. It's another to open your character builder and realize the character you made just doesn't fucking work anymore because of a nerf.
You know actually, that stuff angers me way more than the constant power creep. ... The instability of the ruleset is so confusing and infuriating that I won't even play it that much.

This was precisely the thought process that made me stop playing MMOs entirely.

shau · Post by **shau** » Tue Dec 15, 2009 11:22 pm

Speaking of nerfs, fleeting Dwoemer is nerfed to daily. So is life transference and Healer's Sash. Grasp of the Grave is nerfed and so is potent restorables, so clerics never mc to artificer anymore.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Tue Dec 15, 2009 11:27 pm

What's the deal with the frost weapons? I've an uber min/maxer dragonborn coldbreath user who's obviously setting up some major cheese.

I dunno how you can stomach dumpster diving so much, but I yield to Lago's l33t skillz here.

What's he up to? Anything (hah) a GM can do to slow it down beyond perpetual daze?

Any news on when/if Gloves of the Healer are nerfed? Auto-nonsurge healing on every action is a bit much.

DragonChild · Post by **DragonChild** » Tue Dec 15, 2009 11:37 pm

What's the deal with the frost weapons? I've an uber min/maxer dragonborn coldbreath user who's obviously setting up some major cheese.

Heroic Feat: Wintertouched: Gain combat advantage against foes vulnerable to cold.
Paragon feat: Lasting Frost: Enemies hit with cold attack (a frost weapon counts) gain vulnerable 5 to cold.

sake · Post by **sake** » Wed Dec 16, 2009 12:29 am

shau wrote:Speaking of nerfs, fleeting Dwoemer is nerfed to daily. So is life transference and Healer's Sash.

Could have been worse, at least Dwoemer is still a pretty attractive option even as a daily, they could have changed it to the other most common houserule for it; making only last till the end of your next turn.

The Healer's Sash nerf made me a little sad, they almost made it possible to play without a damn leader class. They also seemed to have decided that double weapons should be a 'trap' option inferior to dual welding in every way.

Still no OoI nerf, of course. That won't happen till the PHB 3 or arcane power 2 when they bother to add another wisdom based class feature for wizards.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Wed Dec 16, 2009 12:43 am

I kinda figured it'd be cheesier than +5 damage and +2 to hit, although that is pretty good.

Footwork Lure/Polearm Momentum got nerfed though (or more accurately, they fixed Footwork Lure to close a loophole).

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Wed Dec 16, 2009 12:44 am

sake wrote: Still no OoI nerf, of course. That won't happen till the PHB 3 or arcane power 2 when they bother to add another wisdom based class feature for wizards.

Yeah, It's pretty sad to see they still haven't nerfed that. It's ridiculously broken. Really with all the save penalty shit I think they just need to chnage the base rules on saves and say that a natural 15-20 automatically succeeds, regardless of penalties.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Dec 16, 2009 2:03 am

The fleeting Dweomer nerf hurt more because of losing the Thunder keyword rather than the loss of damage.

Current there's no way to add the Thunder keyword to wizard attacks unless you do some extremely complicated cajiggery with a a bow. So... build needs to be redone. But not a whole lot. There's a swordmage PP (Malec-Keth Janissery) out there that adds typed damage to all of your attacks as a level 16 class feature, which would re-attache the thunder keyword but would bump the Echoes of Thunder/Resounding Thunder combo up a few levels.

And if/when MKJ is up on the chopping block we can just go back to MCing Artificer again, wait for them to release some new kind of weapon that adds the Thunder keyword, and then tag in Icebound Sigil. Which will stratify our build towards something boring and plain (because instead of occasionally mixing it up every few encounters with another blasting power we'll do Salve of Power + Icebound Sigil + Summon Fire Beetle + whatever) but it won't really affect the overall power of the build, especially at epic.

What really pisses me off about this change is that it has effectively eliminated the STR/INT ranger build. Thanks, you stupid fuckheads. It barely even hurt my build at all but you just booted off Genasi and this build as one of the viable ranger races.

I fucking hate this edition sometimes.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Wed Dec 16, 2009 2:06 am

Sometimes? Heh.

A Man In Black · Post by **A Man In Black** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 6:38 am

sake wrote:They also seemed to have decided that double weapons should be a 'trap' option inferior to dual welding in every way.

They're fine for whirling barbarians, who now get access to 2h-only attacks. The double sword is still a trap, though.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 7:25 am

Double-axes are quite good if you were going to dual-wield axes with the same property (and since I know some DMs who don't allow the Frost/Subtle combination it's quite possible), since you lose out on about 2-4 damage depending on tier at the cost of being able to use two-handed weapon expansion options and saving some cash. And if you're using the wealth-by-level guidelines I posted earlier the price savings are pretty huge and with magical item slot inflation in 4E that's quite a huge concern.

They're also okay if you don't have the option to wield one-handed weapons in your offhand but you're using heavy blades because you're a half-elf bard/avenger or a hybrid-classed ranger--because the classic option of Longsword + Shortsword just doesn't fucking work in 4E--which is important for you if you're playing in epic. Fucking Weapon Expertise requirements.

I don't mind the fact that they're doing extensive errata, I just do mind the fact that they A) ignore some of the more blatant shit like Orb of Imposition and charge-stacking B) go after things that aren't overpowered and end up completely ruining character concepts like the Tempest Fighter C) more importantly don't use the opportunity to boost underpowered/trap options. I think everyone by this point has given up on implement paladins, Starlocks (soon to be any warlock), pre-epic Beastmaster rangers, Assault/Ensnaring Swordmages, Thaneborn barbarians, Shamans, Ruthless Ruffian/Artful Dodger rogues, Artificers.

The only attempt I've seen to rescue an underpowered option were STR/CON non-Battlerager fighters, who weren't exactly underpowered--they just lagged behind old-style Polearm Fighters, Draconic Pushfighters, Tempest Fighters (who are now the worst fighter variant) and Battlerager fighters. Inspiring Warlords were rescued not because of any specific changes but they just piggybacked on top of Bravura/Resourceful warlords.

But really, most of the work 4E is doing is just pissing in the wind. For example, they could right now errata Twin Strike and all of the various stupid minor-action encounter attack powers at the cost of destroying the ranger class--but then that would just mean that fucking wizards and invokers would be the go-to class for DPR. The game just ends up more boring without fixing the imbalances.

It's just so much easier to boost the underpowered options than it is to nerf the overperforming ones. The entire 3.5E/Pathfinder debacle should be clear evidence of this.

A Man In Black · Post by **A Man In Black** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 9:44 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:C) more importantly don't use the opportunity to boost underpowered/trap options. I think everyone by this point has given up on implement paladins, Starlocks (soon to be any warlock), pre-epic Beastmaster rangers, Assault/Ensnaring Swordmages, Thaneborn barbarians, Shamans, Ruthless Ruffian/Artful Dodger rogues, Artificers.

I'd be curious to hear why some of these are trap options. (Mostly because reading your analyses is more interesting than doing the research.)

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 10:26 am

I can do Implement Paladins easily enough. Paladins as a concept, pretty much blow no matter what you do. The concept is that they are tougher than other characters and dish out less damage and draw fire. So basically they are supposed to be contributing like a Wizard, in that they are slowly grinding enemies down but through the use of their actions they are reducing the ability of enemies to defeat the party in the meantime. They are incredibly bad at this, because all their powers are single target and short range, and there's no really compelling reason for any enemy to bother attacking them.

But even within their idiom there is something that they have to do: they need a (level appropriate) weapon as well as heavy armor and a shield. If they want to take any implement-based laser powers, they need an implement in addition to the sword. Not instead of but literally in addition to because all their at-will powers (that a grind character will by definition be using a lot of), require access to weapons. So if you're 14th level, having any implement powers had better be really good - because it's costing you your Ring Slot to keep a secondary Implement level appropriate so that you can use it.

So without the implement you'd have some level appropriate miscellaneous item in addition to your sword, platemail, and cloak. And presumably it would be something totally fucking awesome like Boots that gave you an extra action surge or a Ring that let you ignore an attack. But even if it was something random and weaksauce out of the PHB like a Ring of the Dwarven Lords, you'd still have an extra Healing Surge for having the ring instead of the holy symbol. So at the very minimum, those implement powers would have to be so much better than the weapon powers that the difference was enough to make you willing to give up at least a healing surge just to bask in the awesome.

And yes, at this moment you're probably saying "But wait! Doesn't that mean that balancing implement powers is basically impossible, because a player could take any amount of Implement Powers up to all of their Daily and Encounter powers or just one, and they pay the same cost in loss of misc. equipment either way?" And well, um... yeah. 4e D&D made a lot of decisions that are broken on first principles. Naturally, if our 14th level Paladin was balanced trading his healing surge to upgrade 1 Encounter Power, he'd probably be overpowered (relative to a Paladin, so whatever, but still) if he upgraded all four Encounter and 3 Dailies to Implement Powers. And if he was on even ground trading that healing surge to upgrade all 7 of his use-limited powers, he'd still suck if he only upgraded 1.

But it's not even an issue, because none of the implement powers are actually any better at all when contrasted with Weapon powers of the same level. Most of them are a little bit worse.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 10:26 am

Sure.

Starlocks were screwed from the beginning. Like paladins did, their primary stats for their powers are Charisma and Constitution. You know, the stats that don't contribute to AC. For a class that doesn't have heavy armor proficiency or an alternate-AC stat. And still uses intelligence for the stat for rider effects.

Warlocks in general are sucking, especially compared to wizards, mostly because the damage boost they get from Warlock's curse just doesn't keep up with the damage inflation D&D is going through. Warlock's curse does 10.5 damage at epic once per round. An 18/18 Genasi Wizard can with Elemental Empowerment do 7 to 9 damage per attack. The Wizard also has better AoE attacks, too. Not to mentional encounter-long sustainable powers (most of the Warlock's are just 'save ends', which stink).

Pre-Epic Beastmaster rangers just chew. Archery and Melee ranger powers do multiple attacks and get various equipment-based damage bonuses. Beast powers generally do one attack and don't get damage bonuses. In epic, however, there are expansion options that let beasts take extra attacks as minor actions so they become tbe best variant again (but not by a whole lot). I mean, as a melee ranger at level 7 you can have 3 off-action encounter attack powers, meaning that you can spam 3 attacks for three rounds if you. The beastmaster ranger is lucky to get a power that lets them get in two attacks--one for the beast and one for themselves.

Assault Swordmages and Ensnaring Swordmages are just inferior to Shielding Swordmages. Shielding Swordmages, especially in paragon, can prevent so much damage that they can get enemies to attack just them (20+ damage at level 1) and as an icing on the cake get extra healing surges. Constitution is a better rider stat for powers than Strength is, too. The only advantage Assault Swordmages get is that they don't have to burn a feat on Intelligent Blademaster and they can qualify for Weapon Expertise at epic.

Thaneborn barbarians use STR/CHA. While there are a couple of very good powers that use this effect, A) Unlike STR/CON or STR/DEX barbarians they can't get heavy armor or add their secondary stat to AC and B) Charisma is a worthless stat for qualifying for weapon feats.

Shamans have no reason to exist as a leader variant. Artificers do more damage and had out bigger bonuses, clerics heal and debuff harder, and Warlords hand out huge amounts of attacks and bonuses. They just suck, even when factoring in Primal Power.

Artful dodger rogues have worse powers, worse feat qualifications, and worse multiclassing than STR/DEX rogues. Ruthless Ruffian rogues are basically pointless. Their At-Will Rattling power sucks (you'd never use it over Piercing Strike, for instance) and their weapon does less damage than the Brutal Scoundrel rogue, being an attack point behind. Their feat qualification was also pretty brutal (though not as bad, since they weren't as wedded to STR for some dumbass reason) for the Blugeon Mastery feat. Now Brutal Scoundrel rogues are already pathetically falling behind on the DPR race --a STR/CON fighter could easily match their damage just in the basic book, with expansion options only making this worse--so there's just no reason to be one. For a brief moment of time rogues used to be good as a melee striker because they could load up on status-effect powers but with the release of the druid and the buffed-up wizard they're pointless even for this. Those classes do more control and deal more damage to boot.

Artificers suck only because they're behind on expansion material. If we just restrict the classes to basic PHB material then they come out quite favorably. But that doesn't change the fact that they're behind. The nerfing of Battle Engineer (their best PP) also hurts them a lot. There's just basically no need to pick an Artificer.

There are also some other marginal classes out there: Invokers, especially at higher level, are very much outclassed by wizards, even non-OoI wizards. Paladins are still at the bottom of the defender heap but they're not as completely worthless as they once were. Avengers, especially post-errata, only do modestly more damage at higher levels than non-strikers. Sorcerers are just worse at ranged blasting than wizards and rangers but are still better than the fucking Warlock and Seeker. But I wouldn't facepalm if someone at my table wanted to play those.

If someone wanted to play the aforementioned Real Loser classes I would definitely try to get them to play something else.

Incidentally, do you want to know what the 'good' classes are?

Rangers, both archery and non-archery. They have multiple attacks, which in 4E means their damage gets inflated to the stratosphere.

Razor clerics are modestly worse than laser clerics but they're still the best healing classes, both because of their class-based healing boosts, some kickass powers (hellooooo Stream of Healing and Laser Cheese Zone), and the ability to add stats to their healing.

Warlords. Bravura Warlords at low levels, Battle Captains at higher level; oh LORD Battle Captains at higher levels. At epic you can easily and contemptuously push your friends off of the RNG. I might one day post a 'vanilla' hybrid Battle Captain/Cleric, since the only weakness of the Warlord class is that they don't have great At-Wills.

If your DM is forcing you to make a defender get a Polearm fighter (either Polearm Master or Warpriest), a Son of Mercy Wildblood Warden, or a Shielding Swordmage.

You can be a Supercharger Swordmage, which unfortunately relies on some dodgy mechanics--abusing effects that grant damage when you teleport and taking advantage of the fact that your Swordmage Aegis has the 'teleportation' keyword.

Druids are pretty nifty, too. I mean, I'd still want a Wizard more but Druids can do some very impressive things--especially at epic.

Wizards, Wizards, Wizards. There are several wizards variants. You can do the AoE blaster wizards, which means ignoring loser powers without rider effects like Fireball and stacking on Resounding Thunder and Enlarge spell. You can do summoning wizards (at lower levels MC'ed or Hybrid'd with Invoker or Druid since they don't get good summons here). You can do the Thunderglaive wizard, which relies on snagging Polearm Momentum from Fighter, White Lotus Riposte/Master Riposte, Arcane Implement Proficiency: Heavy Blades, and stacking on pushing items to knock enemies prone and push them away 6-12 squares. Or you can just be a cheesy bastard and grab an Orb of Imposition Wizard. The build took a hit with the nerf of Earthroot staves and some other item, but they left certain -2 save penalty PPs intact, Spell Focus, Cunning Staves, and Illusionists' gloves intact.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 10:38 am

The STR/CHA paladin class also has some serious anti-synergy going on.

The class design makes me completely think that there was no underlying principles for class design. I mean in the PHB you have the wizard class who has just one motherfucking power that relies on a secondary stat and the warlock class who does three non-interchangeable schticks. But the class that got screwed the most over was the paladin, especially the STR-variant. Though pre-paragon CHA paladins took it in the shorts pretty hard, too, because of their fucking lack of a decent basic attack.

I say paladins are playable right now because there are actually enough powers out there right now so that you can ignore all of the strength-based and implement ones and just play a weapon-CHA/WIS paladin. CHA/WIS hospitaler paladins, especially with that one feat in Divine Power that gives you wisdom in temporary hit points when a marked foe attacks you, are actually pretty good, especially in a one-encounter workday and with a liberal interpretation of Divine Sanction.

A Man In Black · Post by **A Man In Black** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 11:27 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:If your DM is forcing you to make a defender get a Polearm fighter (either Polearm Master or Warpriest), a Son of Mercy Wildblood Warden, or a Shielding Swordmage.

Maybe I'm not seeing it, but what's so special about Son of Mercy as compared to any +wis-to-damage PP like Pit Fighter or something? Is it just that it doesn't require multiclassing?