Can one of the lead designers of D&D please stand up and clarify "Rain of Blows"?

ThirdWizard said:

This is how Rain of Blows played out in my last session:

Human 2H Fighter 20 Str wielding a Greatspear +2, Power Attack, Action Point with a Warlord giving +2 to hit, with flanking. +20 to hit. Every once in a while he might miss.

Damage: 1d10 + 5 (str) + 2 (enh) + 3 (power attack) + 3 (warlord). 1d10+13 damage.

All attacks hit. That's 4d10+52 damage. That's 74 damage average. If you want maximum, that's 92 before critical dice.

This is all from my actual game this past Saturday, not theorycraft.

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I am this players, but it took the right race (human), the right feat(action surge), our tactical warlord, and me actually having an action point to use for the bonus to hit to get that high. The damage was also split between to creatures.

Doctor Proctor: all very true, my fighter only has 12 CON, getting 15 DEX and 15 WIS for some of the polearm feats is not easy.

thejackal917 said:

Doctor Proctor: all very true, my fighter only has 12 CON, getting 15 DEX and 15 WIS for some of the polearm feats is not easy.

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Yeah, I don't think it's a coincidence that they gave the cool spear feats to the Eladrin, rather than the Elves. It would be much easier to meet those requirements with an Elf, but then you miss out on soooo much. I recently played as a 16th level Eladrin Fighter wielding a Great Spear in a one off, and he was AWESOME. Definitely not as "sticky" as my Dragonborn Guardian Fighter, but very fun to play. Especially since there's a really wicked Daily in Martial Power that actually requires you to be Eladrin to get the bonus. =)

If your hit chance is 50%, then your static bonuses need to be roughly equivalent to 3W (3W+staticx3 vs 6W+staticx2) to equate the encounter 3 to a good daily 9 from the ranger.

If your hit chance is higher (which is common, for a fighter), just multiply 2W+2static by the appropriate amount. 75% is a lot more common for a fighter who is likely to use the ability once he has combat advantage or a similar bonus, which means that 1.5W+1.5static needs to equate to 4W.

So 2.5W ~= 15, so static needs to be around 10.

Even at higher level, this power still outputs crazy damage - among other things a single crit (10% chance per extra attack) will recover you 6W right off the bat before even considering. So if you're comparing 2 5W attacks (fighter daily 29) to 3.5 1W attacks, you need to recover 6.5W (~42) from 1.5static and, say, 15% of a 39 crit, so static ~= 24 to equal the level 29 daily's damage potential. The 29 daily is restricted to two targets required (only 5W to one target), but it also does half damage on miss.

Rain of Blows _blows_ away No Mercy, the level 29 fighter daily that single targets for 7W.

I hope that the fact that level 3 encounter power compares to dailies for as long as you possess it is illustrative.

The real trick, of course, is to Force the Battle so that RoB does 2W each, _then_ go nuts with it Over and over, if you're a demigod.