Explain to me why are these feats good?

[Schmobutzen]

Hi there,

I really don't understand why are these feats viewed as good, better: the best?

Scimitar dance
HBO
all opportunity feats
all critical feats (because they trigger in 5 to 10 percent of the rolls and that means in one of 3 encounters!

Just two examples: Scimitar dance. The damage you will deal with it is, in regard to the hitpoints of the opponents just silly. Combat lasts about 10-15 rounds, minimum the half of it you will hit, that means 5-8 times you will deal an amount of 40-60 damage. This is just nothing compared to the HP's of the monsters.

Second example: HBO! Opportunity attacks? Most of the monsters are intelligent enough to avoid it. Granted, it will give you then a little boardcontroll. But that is it. HBO is useless.

I don't see it.

MfG
Dirk

 

[Prestidigitalis]

I suspect some people like Scimitar Dance because the minimum damage so allows them to avoid that horrible feeling that they wasted a turn.

As for the OA feats, they could be great, or a trap. You're right, there won't be very many OAs, because the smarter monsters won't walk into them.

...unless, of course, they do. And whether they do is a DM decision.

 

[Gloombunny]

If you hit with 50% of your attacks, then Scimitar Dance is doing damage equal to your Dex mod on half your attacks, and Weapon Focus is doing 2 damage on half your attacks. If your Dex is 16 or more, that makes Scimitar Dance better than Weapon Focus, no? (At epic, it needs to be 18 or more, of course.) If you hit more than 50% of the time, that tilts the numbers back towards Weapon Focus... but it's not like you have to choose one or the other. Most players would love to take Weapon Focus twice if they could, and Scimitar Dance/Hammer Rhythm are the closest you can get.

Heavy Blade Opportunity is handy for paladins who have a high Charisma and a mediocre Strength. When swordmages come out it'll be nice for them too. It doesn't seem that great for fighters to me, unless your enemies have a habit of provoking OAs from you while you're also adjacent to a minion.

 

[Klaus]

Dex-based character with Two Weapon Fighting, Weapon Focus (scimitar) and Scimitar Dance and Dex 21 will, on a missed attack with his scimitar main weapon, deal 5+2+1 = 8 points of damage. I don't know if a magic weapon's enhancement bonus would factor in, but if it does the damage at those levels (minimum 11) would be 11.

As for the OA feats, when I DM I consciously provoke OA when the monsters aren't reallly smart. And several powers give you OA, like Viper's Strike (warlord 1).

 

[Cadfan]

Scimitar Dance is great because of math. Lets say that you're a ranger. You attack twice per round with your default attack. You hit with about half of your attacks. That means you're basically adding your dexterity modifier to total damage dealt per round. That's probably much better than Weapon Focus would have given you, and in any case you can take both feats and add the damage boosts together.

Heavy Blade Opportunity is DM dependent, but why not take it? Even if all it does is make your opportunity attacks more scary, that makes monsters less willing to provoke, even if they want what they could get from it.

As for the critical feats, well, it depends what they do, and what character class you are. A daggermaster gets critical hits on an 18+. Rangers get more of them because they make more attack rolls than other people, as do wizards. And some critical hit feats provide bonuses that are just so great that its worth taking them even if they only come up every other fight. Plus, at epic tier you can increase your critical hit range to 19+ with a feat. I don't consider these feats to be must-haves, but some of them are nice.

 

[FadedC]

Heavy blade opportunist is great for classes that normally have weak attacls of opportunity. Monsters will normally happily run circles around these classes because they don't fear their attacks. If this feat stops them from doing that, then it's doing it's job.

 

[jaelis]

Dex-based character with Two Weapon Fighting, Weapon Focus (scimitar) and Scimitar Dance and Dex 21 will, on a missed attack with his scimitar main weapon, deal 5+2+1 = 8 points of damage.

It would only be 5 points of damage. Other bonuses to damage don't apply, per the RC.

But still, as other's have pointed out, if you hit about half the time, then that's about as good as a feat that adds +5 to damage.

But you do have to use a scimitar, of course. A warhammer gives +1 damage per [W], while the scimitar's high crit is only a flat +0.5 or so (pre-mastery). So on a many [W] attack, a hammer would still be better (and you'd save a feat.)

You could compare to getting +1 to hit with a longsword, too. The same idea will apply: for high-damage attacks, the longsword will be better.

But of course, rangers don't get a lot of high-damage attacks. As a result, scimitar dance is quite nice. Go Drizz't!

 

[Felon]

I agree with the OP on scimitar dance. Like the fighter's cleave attack, I'd prefer it if they just said something like "kill an adacent minion" rather than "do so little damage that only a minion will take notice".

 

[s-dub]

Sadly if you attack and miss a minion even with this feat you won't kill it.

There are only a few ways to get extra damage in 4E via feats so you should take advantage of them.

 

[Stalker0]

There are only a few ways to get extra damage in 4E via feats so you should take advantage of them.

I agree. You guys are rightly pointing out that the amount of extra damage your dealing isn't much compared to the hitpoints of high level creatures. Well here's the thing...that damage has to come from somewhere!

Even if you are going doing +2-3 extra damage per swing, well over the course of a fight that could be 20-30 extra damage, and that might be one less swing a fellow party member has to do.

Its also important to look at the team as a whole. The fighter gets scimitar dance, the wizard gets a +1 damage to his energy type feat, the rogue takes backstabber, etc. Individually isn't not a lot, but together it adds some real damage.