Mearls on Controller design and At-Will balance

[eprieur]

I'll also point out that my S. Burst doesn't completely trump Cloud of Daggers (which is only an OK power anyway)... CoD will still autokill a minion unless the minion somehow slides... but my S. Burst auto-damage is at end of turn, so the minion could move out of the zone.

With no feats to improve damage (but assuming a +1 weapon/implement), assuming an 18 stat, the PHB sburst deals near striker-level damage if you have 2 or more targets, even handicapping the wizard to a 55% chance to hit vs ranger 60% [using longsword, and we know that reflex is roughly equal to AC - 2.5, so we'll give the ranger an edge here] vs rogue 75% (dagger, combat advantage from stealth + deft strike).

I got SBurst at 9.35 for 2 targets, and approximately 14.0 for 3 targets.
Twin Strike with longsword is 9.54 [assuming both swings against your quarry]
Deft Strike 10.875

For comparison, a fighter's melee basic attack (again with a longsword, 60% to hit) is 5.7.

So I'm not nuts about adding damage to SBurst without taking some away, although I have talked to players who say they'd rather have 1d6+int and no control effect and just deal a lot of damage. (Personally I think they just want to be strikers. ) Another comment was that the enemies could easily avoid the extra damge, to which my reply is that you at least force the enemies to move, and if you're lucky/smart/teamwork, you make them take an OA or waste their entire move shifting.

Your calculations seems off.

9.35 is the number you get if you don't take account the critical damage. The number you really are looking for is 9.6dpr.

I could try to check all your numbers but here is the main thing you have to see with this. Wizards have a grand total of 1 feat they can choose in the heroic tier that add damage. Rogues, Rangers, Fighters, etc, all have 3, 4 and 5 feats they can choose. Each of those feat add 0.5 to 1dpr. You do the calculation.

For rangers, just going from using a longsword to a bastard sword is a 1.3 DPR increase with twin shots once you factor everything else.

Hunter quarry to D8 is nearly 0.9 dpr increase with twin shots.
Weapon focus = 1.2 dpr increase with twin shots.
Two Weapon Fighting = 0.6 dpr increase.

The same is true for rogues, etc.

The wizard got only 1 feat, weapon focus with staff or one of the thing that add to damage with a type of damage and those 2 don't stack anyway.

That feat will add 1.1 dpr with 2 targets, 0.55 dpr with one. But that's it.

I mean let's say we have something like a "GreatStaff of Whatever" that requires 1 feat, that staff is a weapon that increase all spells die by 1 category. D6 become D8, etc. That's 1.2 dpr increase with 2 targets, 0.6 with one, etc.

We could probably create tons of feat to give choices to wizard equivalent to the other classes but somehow the creators of the game decided that in the player's handbook wizard feats should be sparse and far between. Unless they count each individual feat like Raging Storm, Astral Fire, etc, to be "different" but none of them stack anyway.

That's one of the main reason wizards cannot hope to touch striker dpr atm.

 

[Tony Vargas]

You know, it occurs to me that warlocks also lack a die-type boosting feat for thier curse - oh, sure, they do get a feat that boost the pact boon.

But, you /could/, if you wanted to enable some munchkin-pleasing stacking-bonus action, add another set of elemental feats that increase die size "when you use an arcane power with the _____ keyword."

That would give warlocks the 'missing striker feat' and give wizards a way to boost thier damage potential, to a degree very similar to a martial character taking a superior weapon.

Of course, it's not like martial characters have quite the range of power effects that arcane ones do, so it'd only be fair to let walrods start creating something along the lines martial blade barriers, too....

 

[deleteme123456]

In general, I figure there should be some sort of implement focus / implement mastery that works like weapon focus / weapon mastery ... we'll see what kind of love arcane power gives.

The warlock doesn't need as much help as people think, since a lot of his spells are 1d6+mod+1d6 curse+[1d6+mod (if X happens)]. The trick is making it so that X happens, or making the enemy waste a turn by not letting X happen.

The wizard... well, get your teammates to clump the enemies and let hell break loose.

And yes, my above calculations did omit criticals for simplicity, but in general, this helps the strikers a little more than the wizard, but the wizard has (at level 1-10 anyway) a better chance of critical, for hitting 2-3 targets.

 

[eprieur]

I had never really looked into warlock before but yeah, strangely warlocks have a much much better control spell with Dire Radiance then what wizards have. With a +1 damage feat and 20 consti you would do only 7.2 dpr with it if the target doesn't move toward you but if it does, you would do 13.5 dpr, or 14.59 with prime shot which is more then respectable for a lvl 1-2 striker.

Does the monster know it's cursed? Will it fall into the "trap" most of the time or no?

 

[Mengu]

Does the monster know it's cursed? Will it fall into the "trap" most of the time or no?

The monster does know it's cursed, but it's easy enough to draw most melee monsters toward you. One Tide of Iron push can force the enemy to choose between taking damage the extra dire radiance damage, and attacking.

 

[DracoSuave]

All this proves is that Wizards aren't strikers and don't have sneak attack or hunter's quarry.

Missing the point, really.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

A lot of these pure DPR stats seem non-sense to me.

Pure numbers that don't reflect what I experience on the battle field.

Many flaws exist.

First of all, if you focus on at-will, you can't claim you are comparing the DPR of characters. Just the DPR of some at-will. In practice, most fights last about 5 rounds and typically my 5th level wizard only do at-wills for two or three of these rounds. Only in extremely long sluggathon does the DPR of the at-will approximate the average DPR of the character. For my 5fth level wizard, about 50% of the time my attack isn't an at-will. This will keep increasing.

Last session, first fight, first round I caught 3 guys in a burning hands. Then the opposition spread around us, but who cares, fire shroud caught four of them. Then the rogue used his positioning strike, the fighter used tide of Iron, and what do you know, three more guys with scorching burst. Fight was over by round four. Next fight includes flames shpere so your DPR calculation would need to include that, wouldn't they?

And it's not nearly the record. So far it is hitting 4 guys out of 5 thanks to action surge and inflicted 12D6+20 (thanks to shadowfell glove combined with bruning hand). Actually, one of these was a critical and I hit two more with the scorching burst that same round. Can't rememeber the total damage, but it was quite satisfying for level 3. An hindsight calculation tells me the average would be 90 which seems close enough.

It doesn't alway work, of course, but it's what a wizard strives for. It's what tactics should be geared to set up.

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Another flaw in typical DPR analysis is that a lot of theses characters used for comparisons are monkeys. Take the DPR output of a 4th level ranger with 20 STR who is using two waraxes with weapon focus, improved quarry and two weapon fighting focus. Does his impressive DPR includes the fact that he's gonna get KILLED?

All offense and no defense means johnny will get slaughtered.

When I am DM I have no qualm in ganging on the frontline warrior with top damage and low defense.

Typically, a real TWF ranger, one who sees action in a campaign where the DM doesn't play favorite or fudge extensively, will do a few of the following;

Sacrifice a more extreme STR to get a good DEX
Sacrifice some offense to get a weapon that has defensive bonus
Sacrifice some offensive feats to get feats that improves defense (Armor feat if he has low dex, TWD etc.).

I don't care about the DPR of the monkey TWF ranger that exists only to prove a point and is never seen on the battlefield...

That was an extreme case, of course, but most of the DPR kings presented for analysis are more fragile than their standard counterpart. You should duck them a 10% to 20% penalty to DPR on the basis that they will almost never be the last man standing in tough fights. High offense and middling defense is a bad mix; it makes them targets. You can expect to waste more rounds making death saving throw than most other builds. DPR is nice, but DPF (Damage per fight) is much better. Real DPR would be the total damage dealt in the fight divided by the number of rounds. If you systematically computed real fight value, I bet you'd be surprised of the result. Getting knocked out or forced to withdraw really hurts your numbers.

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In practice, most rogues will forego a sneak attack rather than put themselves in an untenable position that will see them be torn apart in just one round. Most DM not affraid to hurt a players feeling will routinely have monsters grabbing the archer. Most defenders that opted for the executioner axe instead of a shield will drop below zero much more often than their shield and board counterpart over their career etc. Typical DPR analysis do not reflect the reality of the combat.

Same is true for wizard, of course. My wizard gets attacked a lot in my campaign due to his love of close blast and burst. He just happens to be built to take it. He doesn't have 20 int, he doesn't even have (or can qualify) for the fire damage spell feat but hey, he has never dropped below 0 and his defenses are the best in the team overall. The rogue can't say as much.

 

[Nail]

In short, Marking =/= Wall of Fire when it comes to control.

You may have missed my point.

Marking is a class ability.

Wall of Fire is a Daily attack 9.


...there's clearly a difference there that's not related to "controll".

So let me try making my point again:

What is the Wizard class ability that defines her as a "controller"?

 

[Hambot]

That was a good post Mal. Pays to remember context rather than simplifying things to easy math. I think the assumption that wizards were deliberately "nerfed" is wrong.

I remember the preview implements article where they stated different implements would really change a wizards abilities. Only orbs really ended up doing this in the end. I believe the wizards powers were changed the most leading up to publication, so they erred on the side of caution knowing that things could be patched easily later in AP or even with equipment.

I mean seriously, the wand of accuracy power smells heavily of something that was depowered last minute.

I expect to see optional implement mastery features in AP that can be taken instead of those in the PHB which have been designed carefully over the last few months. This is a far safer approach than cranking existing at-will powers due to multiclassing complications. New at-will powers better than the existing ones have the danger of increasing at-will power levels without offering a big range of equal options, because people would only pick the new powers.

 

[MwaO]

Ah, I see your point. SB is better as an at-will, just not as much better, in your estimation, as the 'cost' of "one of two at-wills" vs "one of upto 16 feats." Of course, there are a /lot/ more feats to choose from than at-wills, too. But that's very much a value judgement, and one that's hard to quantify or argue.

I'll stand by the assertion that a power that's worth having 1/encounter is well worth having on tap every round.

Sure. But you don't need SB as an at-will to accomplish that. What does SB actually do? It does low damage in a burst. You don't need to do damage in a burst, it isn't even an option. You need to do damage in a burst, odds are that there are better choices due to encounter/daily powers.

There are situations where Thunderwave or Cloud of Daggers might be your best choice even if you have similar encounter powers - a close blast to shove your opponents together for an AP burst could rate more highly than a close blast with a strong effect. Ditto for Cloud of Daggers and swarms or when you want to create a choke point to block off minions.

The only reason to use Scorching Burst in that kind of situation is that your other burst powers are too good and you don't want to risk wasting them for some reason. Having a Scorching Burst once per encounter would be useful. Having more than one is icing on the cake, but cake without icing is still cake...