What's broken/overpowered? What's weak?

[Shalimar]

Wintertouched: Perfect feat for the fire elemental slayer rogue? I don't get this one.

Lasting frost: Any target hit with a power of the cold descriptor gains Vulnerable Cold 5 until the end of your next turn.

Perfect for a ranged rogue to get combat advantage for sneak attack. Get a frost shuriken, hit it the first turn, hopefully before it acts so you can sneak attack it, activating Wintertouched. Now the creature takes 5 extra damage from cold on top of the sneak attacked shuriken damage. Each round that it hits it renews the combat advantage and vulnerability to cold. As a magic thrown weapon the shuriken returns to your hand as a free action after each attack. Thats before you figure in the at will power, or daily like blinding barrage which hits close burst 3, if you had already used a cold area attack to give them vulnerability you could do major damage.

Sly Flourish = W+CHA+Dex = 1D6+9
Sneak Attack = +3d6 at Paragon
Cold Vulnerability = +5
Magical Weapon Bonus = +3
So 4d6+17 a round at range

Yea, the pay off for Wintertouched isn't there until paragon tier, but you don't need the feat until then either, just retrain an earlier feat at the same level you get a paragon feat.

 

[Mengu]

Lasting frost: Any target hit with a power of the cold descriptor gains Vulnerable Cold 5 until the end of your next turn.

Interesting. It still feels a bit odd to have a feat that gives you a bonus for using a certain type of magic weapon, but I guess I now see where they were going with it. Are there any Lasting Fire or similar weapon traits?

 

[Xfer83]

Lasting frost: Any target hit with a power of the cold descriptor gains Vulnerable Cold 5 until the end of your next turn.

Does it say anywhere that using a frost weapon with a power counts as using a power with the cold descriptor?

 

[Chibbot]

Something interesting that I noticed, don't know it it's over or under powered, just a neat synergy (assuming I'm reading it right, which is a big assumption!)

A paragon-tier warlord with the heavy blade opportunity feat gets to use an at-will power in place of a basic attack for opportunity attacks, provided that the power has the Weapon keyword.

The at-will power Commander's Strike lets an ally of your choosing make a basic attack with a bonus to their damage.

Commander's Strike has the Weapon keyword, and it lists no range, or conditions. Simply, an ally of your choosing makes an attack.

So, if I'm understanding this correctly, in this situation, any provoked opportunity attack for the warlord (i.e., any time that the warlord is allowed to take an opportunity attack against a foe) could potentially be translated into a basic attack (with bonus damage) by any ally on the battlefield, against whoever they threaten.

Its a pretty sweet combo, I think.

 

[Sojorn]

Something interesting that I noticed, don't know it it's over or under powered, just a neat synergy (assuming I'm reading it right, which is a big assumption!)

A paragon-tier warlord with the heavy blade opportunity feat gets to use an at-will power in place of a basic attack for opportunity attacks, provided that the power has the Weapon keyword.

The at-will power Commander's Strike lets an ally of your choosing make a basic attack with a bonus to their damage.

Commander's Strike has the Weapon keyword, and it lists no range, or conditions. Simply, an ally of your choosing makes an attack.

So, if I'm understanding this correctly, in this situation, any provoked opportunity attack for the warlord (i.e., any time that the warlord is allowed to take an opportunity attack against a foe) could potentially be translated into a basic attack (with bonus damage) by any ally on the battlefield, against whoever they threaten.

Its a pretty sweet combo, I think.

Check Commander's Strike again.

It specifies a target that must be in melee range of the warlord, because of the "Melee" keyword.

Nothing in the power or the feat lets you change the target of the OA. So it's a commander's strike with the provoking creature as the target. An ally of your choice makes a basic melee attack against the provoking creature.

 

[entrerix]

maybe not a mistake

rogue v ranger attack

rogue with 18 dex makes a sneak attack using a shortsword dam = 7-22 (3d6+4)

ranger w/18 str and two longswords makes a twin strike, dam = 2-16 (if they both hit, 2d8 plus NOTHING... no strength bonus on this hit)

was rogue meant to have this much more damage output than the other striker? The rogue has more skills and does more damage than the ranger (though the rogue needs combat advantage, this is pretty easy to do if there is a fighter in the party - just flank) in fairly normal circumstances

 

[Zaruthustran]

maybe not a mistake

rogue v ranger attack

rogue with 18 dex makes a sneak attack using a shortsword dam = 7-22 (3d6+4)

ranger w/18 str and two longswords makes a twin strike, dam = 2-16 (if they both hit, 2d8 plus NOTHING... no strength bonus on this hit)

was rogue meant to have this much more damage output than the other striker? The rogue has more skills and does more damage than the ranger (though the rogue needs combat advantage, this is pretty easy to do if there is a fighter in the party - just flank) in fairly normal circumstances

Well, to be fair, if you're adding sneak attack to the rogue you should add hunter's quarry to the ranger. Especially since hunter's quarry is non-situational damage (it simply works), unlike sneak attack.

So 3d6+4 vs. 2d8 + 1d6. Still in favor of the rogue, but only barely.

And, again, sneak attack isn't always applied.

 

[Chibbot]

Check Commander's Strike again.

It specifies a target that must be in melee range of the warlord, because of the "Melee" keyword.

Nothing in the power or the feat lets you change the target of the OA. So it's a commander's strike with the provoking creature as the target. An ally of your choice makes a basic melee attack against the provoking creature.

Ah, I suppose you're right.

Oh well. I still think its a neat idea.

 

[WhatGravitas]

What about Meteor Swarm vs. Astral Storm?

One of these two is either too good or pretty bad.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Kraydak]

What about Meteor Swarm vs. Astral Storm?

One of these two is either too good or pretty bad.

Cheers, LT.

In that vein, there are also a bunch of higher level upgrades that barely (or not at all) deserve the name. As noted previously, the fighter's Steel Serpent Strike (enc 1) is strictly better than Dance of Steel (enc 3). Stinking Cloud (wiz daily 5) compares well to Cloudkill (wiz daily 19). Same damage, Cloudkill is bigger (burst 5 vs 2) but you can move Stinking Cloud faster (6 squares vs 3).

On a different note, if they wanted to avoid "Dodge" type inferior choices, they did it really, really poorly. Take the peculiar case of Careful Attack (no stat to damage, +2 to hit) vs Twin Strike (no stat to damage, 2 attacks), both ranger at-wills. At first glance, you would expect them to be equal if you need a 19 or a 21 to hit, Careful Attack better if you need a 20 exactly and Twin Strike better at all other times. We already clearly have a lemon of an ability on our hands.

But it gets wierder, in a large part due to the removal of crit confirmation rolls. If, say, you need a 19 to hit then you expect the same number of hits from both skills, but half of Twin Strike's hits will be crits while only a quarter of Careful Attack's will be. On the other hand, Twin Strike will occasionally (1/100 rounds) get a double hit, only one which will be able to take advantage of 1/round damage (such as Hunter's Quarry).

What does it all mean? If you need 19s to hit, Twin Strike is substantially better than Careful Attack (10% better with no feats/magic gear, 30% in the epic tier with a vicious +6 longbow, weapon focus, devastating critical, lethal hunter). It gets worse though. If you need a 20 exactly, assuming you have a level appropriate, +six siders on crit magic bow, and take weapon focus, devastating crit and lethal hunter then by the time you get a +2 weapon Twin Attacks is better!

If you need a 21 to hit, then Careful Attack beats Twin Attacks due to crits, if you need a 22 to hit, they are roughly even (depends on gear/feats) and at 23+, Twin Attacks dominates.

So:
A) Careful Attack is an awful choice. Never take it. Never let a friend take it. It makes 3e's Dodge look good.
B) The removal of crit confirmation rolls means you have to be *very* careful comparing different abilities if you need something near a 20 to hit.