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[Sir Brennen]

I think part of the problem is there's still a lot of mental baggage surrounding what defines a wizard from previous editions. Magic Missile and Fireball are still signature spells for the class, but don't necessarily lend themselves to the 4E Wizard's new role of controller. Looking through the power list it seems to me that more focus was given to simply converting a lot of the core Wizard spells of previous editions, and the actual controller concept was squeezed in where it could be.

Also, something that's been a bit overlooked in this thread is the fact that there are two Wizard builds in the PHB - a Control Wizard and a War Wizard.

The War Wizard is defined as the damage guy, much more of an old school blaster. So perhaps we don't need to redo the at wills like Scorching Ray or Magic Missile, as they support this build just fine.

There just seems to be need for more powers which support the Control build, on par with the new Invoker abilities we've seen.

Also, a quick glance through the Wizard's powers, I don't see any which gain a benefit for selecting one build over the other, unlike some other classes. Perhaps making the builds based on a class feature (like Rogue Tactics. Of course, then we'd have to give a name to this feature. Something, like... I dunno... "schools". ). Then add a slight damage kicker to certain spells for the War Wizard build, while push/pull or ongoing conditions kickers could be added to some for the Controller build.

Heck, you could even just have War Wizards add a flat +1 damage to damage spells and Control Wizards get a +1 push on damage spells.

This way, you could have the Wizard with a Controller role, and secondaries of either Striker or Defender depending on build/power selection.