So, where's the problem?
The link you provided shows that the wizard is among the top damage dealing classes. You happened not to be that wizard one day. That happens. But, again, overall, if your wizard isn't among, if not the top damage dealing character in the group, that's on the player.
And, how is "move away or take more damage" once in a blue moon for Witchbolt. That's exactly what it does. As far as "target the wizard" goes, well, again, that's on you. Cast the spell on something engaged with an ally, and, I dunno, move back? If the baddy comes after your wizard, he eats opportunity attacks from your allies - again, exactly what this spell is supposed to do. Never minding that you're an abjurer and hitting you and then you failing the concentration check is pretty low percentage as well.
So, we have a spell that forces a choice - either move away (thus removing you from the fight for a time), move to the wizard (thus causing even more damage from opportunity attacks) or ignore it and eat the automatic damage. Again, not sure what the problem is here.
1) The example I provided in the link doesn't actually illustrate that the wizard is a top damage dealer.
If we look at this, we see the example of a DM that is either so generous that I wouldn't want to even play in his campaign (i.e. foes almost always fail saving throws, the wizard's familiar always makes his stealth roll and even the non-stealthy PCs almost always make their stealth rolls), or a player so lucky that he should go buy lottery tickets as per my analysis here:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...o-Suck-in-5E&p=7551528&viewfull=1#post7551528
So yeah, using that example for anything at all is extremely suspect and even beyond anecdotal. It's an example of a person posting a so obviously biased example to illustrate a point, that s/he only illustrates that the example was biased. When the odds of someone making all of the rolls are 1 in 210 (I didn't even count how often his fellow PCs made stealth rolls, just his familiar, his attack rolls, and his foe's missed saves) and the odds of doing the type of damage that s/he claimed are 1 in 26 in the same example, then yeah, don't listen to that person. It's a trap! That doesn't happen 99.9% of the time in an adventuring day at most tables.
2) I'm really surprised that you would state the virtues of Witch Bolt as a control spell. It too is often consider by many to be: It's a trap!
So the wizard has to be within 30 feet to cast the spell, however the spell states:
So, backing away is a bad idea. Backing away beyond 30 feet means that the spell ends and the wizard for a first level spell slot did 1 more point than a Fire Bolt spell (assuming he hit). So, the wizard has to stay within movement range of nearly every monster in the MM.The spell ends if you use your action to do anything else. The spell also ends if the target is ever outside the spell's range or if it has total cover from you.
And, if his allies (assuming more than one) are between him and the target, the target got a cover bonus to the wizard's attack. Plus, other NPCs can attack the wizard, at 30 feet his target can use ranged attacks on him, the wizard himself cannot go behind total cover. Plus, the player of the wizard doesn't want to use this on a goblin. He wants to use it on the BBEG to do constant damage. But, BBEGs often have high AC, so yeah. It's just generally a bad idea the vast majority of the time.
3) You are correct that Arcane Ward provides the wizard with protection versus losing the Concentration, but it still does so at the cost of a resource. Pros and Cons. This too is a bit of a trap. Having played an abjurer, I know from experience that the player can easily go into situations where he thinks that he is safer than other wizards and finds out that no, targeting an NPC and bringing the wrath of multiple NPCs down onto the wizard can easily suck down his Arcane Ward and just end up with the wizard getting wrecked because he was out in the open taking damage. In the case of Witch Bolt, it's a bit of a double whammy. The wizard cannot regenerate Arcane Ward with another abjuration spell without dropping the Witch Bolt, he cannot cast other spells that require an action to cast, etc. He's standing out in the open picking his nose.
So the wizard casts witch bolt, his allies may or may not get opportunity attacks on his foe (or use their OA on foe 1 which allows foes 2 and 3 to run past), one or more foes decides to attack the wizard which might bring down his arcane ward, and on the next round, the wizard can use his action to automatically do 1 point more on average than if he cast Fire Bolt. Sure, the damage is automatic as opposed to a roll, but having foes in your face and having no action remaining and most likely having your arcane ward depleted hardly seems like control to me. It seems like the wizard is in trouble. This sounds like the exact opposite of control.
Oh, and I grant you that there are scenarios where foes cannot get to the wizard like the fighter holding a doorway. But in many of those scenarios, the foe can move to total cover to get away from the spell. The fighter gets an OA, but the foe would have taken auto-damage the next round anyway.
Last edited: