Iterative Attacks - Reining the Ranger in a bit

[The Eye]

I've been noticing a lot of the current optimization threads revolve around the fact that the Ranger has a number of powers which allow him to make iterative attacks, with no penalty to any of the attacks. In the case of something like Blade Cascade, this can generate huge amounts of damage that more than outstrip any other class. It's almost always better to roll twice than roll once with a bonus.

So I've been wondering if anyone has had any ideas about pulling this back a bit. My first impulse is to give a cumulative penalty (-2?) to each attack after the first, but I'm no good at optimization math. I'm sure that such a penalty would get Blade Cascade more in line with other powers (especially with optimized characters), but I don't know about other powers.

Is this a workable fix? Does it completely gimp two-weapon Rangers?

 

[Halivar]

Is Blade Cascade an encounter or daily power?

 

[keterys]

Daily. It's stupid mostly because it lets you attack until you miss and you can target more than one creature.

A helpful bonus from a warlord/cleric to hit, maybe someone to help cover an accidental 1, and you might hit for 80W + 40*normal bonuses before it ends. Stupid.

 

[Aegir]

As a Daily I don't think its broken at all; in fact since it makes you alternate between primary and off-hand (thus possibly having to use a weaker magical weapon half the time in later levels), as well as the fact that the game is balanced so that a d20 hit chance is on average somewhere in the 40-60% range, stacking tons of hits I don't think would happen all that often.

Now, if the ranger waits and gets himself a huge attack bonus from his Warlord buddy or something and then uses it to shred a boss... more power to him; thats exactly the sort of thing that 4E was designed to promote.

 

[keterys]

The off hand will probably be just +1 hit less than the primary, if at all - and yep, get flank, have the warlord use his daily to give you +7 to hit, and your 50% miss goes to 5%.

Which is why you have some ability to reroll when you get that 1, so that you can potentially get your 40 hits in, hence my point.

 

[Ipissimus]

From reading in another thread, Blade Cascade is a 15th level Daily power. And Ranger's a striker class, and it can only be used in melee. From another thread, a ranger's duel wield only extends to one-handed weapons and I'm willing to assume none of those have reach.

I think you're vastly overestimating the power's usefulness. We've seen some solo monsters of about that level with HP edging towards 1000 and they'll be much harder to hit than your average grunt. As an area effect, you might hit up to 8 monsters once before you roll low. Or, you might miss the first shot and have wasted it.

Now, yes, if you're really, really, REALLY lucky, there is a potential for the ranger to do an insane amount of damage. But then, that's what strikers are supposed to be about. Hopefully, the other strikers will get the same love.

 

[Halivar]

If it's daily, I don't see why you want to nerf it. If you want it to be perfectly balanced, then you need to re-designate it to be encounter or at-will. At-will's are supposed to be stupid-powerful, especially for strikers.