Grading Daily Powers

[Herschel]

Some can be situational, but so good. I've found for Swordmage's Burning Blade is just rocking, but that's generally when it's used during big encounters and a +3 Strength bonus and a TacLord usually about. With low strength and/or a small number of baddies (or ones with controller abilities to freeze you) Frost Backlash is better.

 

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

Came late to this party but it's an interesting read and I thought I would chime in:

Not mentioned yet, but Armour of Agathos has excellent minion-killing abilities.

Cheers

Armor can kill minions like no other power except possibly sphere. Coupled with the curse powers (especially fey) you can sometimes run into a clump of minions, cursing the one with the lowest initiative, each minion automatically dies when it's turn comes due and then when the lowest init minion dies you can use the curse power to teleport into another group. It doesn't happen often, but in one minion heavy encounter my level 2 warlock killed 7 minions and delivered an additional d6+2 dmg to one non minion in a single round. It also causes automatic curse damage once per round so one creature is taking 2d6+2 which is pretty signifcant automatic damage. Coupled with eyebite and the temp hitpoints you can frequently hang in adjacent to even a BBEG for several rounds. In a big battle armor can be a dominating outcome changing power. Free d6+2-3 adds up. In paragon levels you can combine armor with winter touched and lasting frost making every creature adjacent to you give up combat advantage and take 5 additional damage from the armor d6+8 and combat advantage against multiple targets is very powerful and other pc's in the party can take winter touched and also gain combat advantage. If you have a wizard using cold powers or a rogue with wintertouched the benefits only multiply.

Depends what you're fighting. If you're fighting non-Large opponents it often cuts off flank, which could matter quite a bit to the rogue.

it only cuts off flank if your party fails to work in a coordinated manner. Whenever possible pc's should approach monsters from the corners (this is good defensive and offensive strategy) and it always allows wizards to attack with bursts, blasts, zones and spheres without putting the party in the area of effect.

My player's named the party wizard's Flaming Sphere Bob. They picked out a bright orange d20 to be Bob's mini, and he stays with their character's minis, never in a dice bag. I expect he'll soon start getting a share of the loot from one encounter every day. I think we know what their opinion is.

Kind of sums it up in a nut shell. No other level 1 power does as much damage as sphere. It's nearly always the encounter defining power. I've seen people argue that sleep is it's equal or superior but it's simple not the case, sleep sometimes has almost no impact on an encounter. Any encounter that sphere appears in is greatly changed by sphere. I would conservatively say sphere does a minimum of 100 damage in 90% of the encounters I have seen it in. If you get a good placement with high init you can easily deliver 50dmg on round 1 (my wizard has astral fire and a +1 staff so it's putting out d4+6) but even without that +2 if you drop sphere in a clump of 4-5 critters you get 26-32.5 average automatic damage and an attack that hits for a very respectable 2d6+4. Admittedly after sphere is in play it's hard to get more than 1-2 creatures on any given round because our dm plays the monsters with a fair level of intelligence, but over 8-10 rounds of battle this is still a very impressive amount of damage.

I'm not denying the potential damage over the course of several rounds, or the nice temp HP's. I'm just saying, that's not exactly what's expected of the Warlock. I expect him to do concentrated damage, per his role. And all other powers are more in line with this role. If I'm the Cleric giving him the Lance of Faith bonus, I expect him to put that to good use with a big attack, not some wussy minion killer that the Wizard already has covered in spades. I also don't want the Warlock to be running into the middle of three brutes (or skirmishers) just to do a bit of controller-like damage to all of them, only to get mauled. I have more important people to heal like the Defenders.

Even though minion removal is not what's expected from the warlock, it still helps achieve battlefield superiority for the party. It seems unlikely he'll use armor if he's got +2 to hit (or maybe he'll use an action point and get two spells off). The mistake is in thinking armor is not effective at killing bigger creatures. Put a curse on a BBEG and move next to him with armor on and they invariably try to retreat from you. How many creatures want to "hang in there" taking 9+ automatic damge per round. If you hit him with eyebite before moving adjacent then he's got even more problems as getting rid of you is very hard and you have the bonus temp hit points to offset what ever damage he is dishing out. You are in effect both doing the striker role (you're probably averaging 15 damage per round vs 1 creature) and also doing some defending in that you're now tying up a bbeg. If along the way you happen to get next to a minion or two and fry them for free, that's just another bonus. Saying you have more important targets to heal is just silly if the warlock is dominating a BBEG and killing minions at the same time, healing him is not a waste of resources. People undervalue armor because they feel the damage is minor but it's not only pretty significant it also guarantees curse dmg. If you assume normally you hit about half the time, armor doubles the impact of curse.

How are you calculating those expected damage values? If you hit with Phlegethos, your average damage is 3d10+1d6(curse)+4+10(ongoing fire) = 34 points (ignoring crit). On a miss, the average damage is 10 points. Those 34 points are a lot of concentrated damage on a BBG.

how did you come up with average damage of 10 on a miss? In any event, this is 24 initially and then 5 and 5. approximately half the time. So the average expected damage from flames would be 17'ish.
In those same 3 rounds armor can pretty reliably do 6d6+6 to that same target (pretty much every time because of no to hit roll) which is 27 dmg almost every time. Armor also adds ~12 temp hit points AND could easily have delivered another 3d6+6 or more to other targets in the same 3 rounds. Plus it's still active and can continue to deliver more damage. I understand the reasoning for wanting to concentrate heavy damage on one target but armor actually out performs flames even at that. Unless the initial att of 3d10+d6+4 kills the creature outright, there's very little benefit to flames compared to armor. If the initial att does kill the bbeg I would say he's not much of a bbeg anyway.

I realized that I was forgetting about the ability to take a double move, doh. If monsters didn't have the ability to do that, then web would be an amazing power than it is as it would always immobilize anything slower than speed 10. Still at least it provides an barrier to speed 5 creatures who are unwilling to run or who are starting more than 2 squares away. It would be a lot more effective if there was a way to inflict mass slow or mass daze on a group which would render them unable to to safely move through the web.

planting a fighter at the edge of the web can greatly enhance the spells effectiveness. Thunderwave also works very handily in conjuction with web. It's still pretty weak compared to other spells but it can be effective. In 3.5 web could be used to cover an escape but 4e removes the web as soon as the caster is out of range so it's a lot less effective in that regard.

On closer review of the wizard, I'm still wondering how effective he is in his role of a controller. Our party's wizard has been nothing more than an wimpy striker with above average minion killing capacity and rarely disrupts the monsters plan of battle.

If he was too effective the game would be ruined. His role is not to score the heavy hitter damages like rogues and warlocks, but to grind down the enemy hit points and kill minions. He's more of the set up man than the closer. If a wizard gets off a burning hands into a clump of bad guys and kills a minion while putting 13 dmg on a pair of goblin warriors, then the rogue gets flanking on one of the goblins and dishes out a 20dmg attack the goblin is down, there's also a minion gone and the other goblin has been whittled down as well. Wizards can't "dominate", they just help control. Zones, AoE, minion removal are all part of control. I think if you kept a spread sheet of who puts out more damge in the course of a campaign a wizard or any striker the odds are pretty good the wizard will come out on top. The striker obviously will have done more concentrated damag which has it's benefits but minion removal is critical to parties surviving. That wimpy minion goblin cutter can be the guy who gives the bugbear strangler flanking and kills a pc. 4e is a pretty tactical game. The pc's are usually outnumbered and the monsters usually have 2-3 times the hit points of the party at the start of a major encounter. One of the most important things the pc's must remember is to minimize the number of attacks that bad guys get, in any manner possible. If a wizard could do 25 dmg to a bbeg or kill 4 minions with stinking cloud on round 1, the stinking cloud is vastly superior. If you let the 4 minions all get an attack or two, they've added 10-20dmg to the party on average and the game is balanced enough that mistakes that let monsters deliver more damage are how parties get TPK'd.

I did the math to see how Weapon of the Gods compares with Spiritual Weapon. Assume that a given enemy grants CA half the time to a PC who is seeking to gain it.

Expected damage of Weapons of the Gods: .65(3.5 + ally damage).

I admit that the +3 to hit is only a crude estimation as we should really calculate the probability of the AC penalty + CA existing at the same time to find the average bonus to hit which is made tricky since a hit with weapon of the gods makes it more likely that the next attack will hit. In any case, I'm pretty sure that the true bonus lies between 2 and 3 so we'll assume the upper level for now.

Expected damage of Spiritual Weapon = .6(5.5 + ally Damage).

A 2-handed maul fighter with 18 str, a +2 weapon and weapon focus is going to be doing 14 damage per hit which gives us 11.7 expected damage for Spiritual Weapon and 11.375 expected damage for Weapon of the Gods. If we adopt the pessimistic view of Weapon of the Gods' to hit bonus, the expected damage drops to 10.5. If we give Weapon of the Gods to a twin strike using archery ranger then it clearly out damages Spiritual Weapon. In addition, Weapon of the God is esentially a free action which gives it a head start on Spiritual Weapon.

You're discounting the fact that if you miss with weapon of the gods, ALL the other pc's get no advantage. Spiritual weapon grants combat advantage to the whole party regardless of the type of power they are using. There are alot of powers that don't attack AC, for instance warlocks and wizards will get +2 to their ATT vs a SW target but no benefit from the creature hit by weapon of the gods. SW also grants a pretty significant ATT as a minor. d10+wis+implement is ~3 times as much damage as d6. Weapon of the gods can only be used if the cleric moves or starts adjacent to the weilder. If weapon of the gods is put on a melee weapon that person can be immobilized which would block it's effectiveness. Weapon of the gods is also more limited by the layout of a battle. If there's a bbeg in the back row he may have cover or if wotg is on a melee weapon he may be unreachable. SW can fly unimpeded to the target (speed 10) and attack with no danger to the party + grant combat advantage to every party member. Obviously the best use for wotg is probably a rangers bow. What if your party has no ranger? I saw someone suggest that SW could be avoided by delaying but the cleric could ready an action or delay as well so that's really no defense at all and would actually increase the power of SW since the target is now basically immobilized. CA is about twice as valuable to a party as -2ac and the -2ac only happens if the weapon weilder hits. Hard for me to understand how wotg can honestly be compared favorably to SW.

I admit to being surprised to how good Weapon of the Gods appears to be. I suppose that I overlooked it before because it wasn't very flashy and enchanced a party member rather than being an awesome attack for the cleric. I would guess then that Weapon of the Gods is better as long as you have a ranger or 2 handed fighter in the group while Spiritual weapon is better if you have a rogue or warlock.

This makes a lot of sense, but your party wizard zap cleric also benefit from SW. It seems to me that only a ranger is truly benefiting from WotG more than from SW as putting the power on a melee weapon increases the chance that it will be ineffective. Bottom line, everyone in the party benefits as much or more from SW and repeated d10+implement+wis for a minor is much better than d6 for free. The chance of putting the -2 AC on mulitple targets is greatly offset by the fact that when you miss there is no penalty applied and even -2AC on multiple targets won't help half the party in most cases.

And weapon of the gods only gets better if you have multiple people targetting AC. If you've got a twin strike ranger, 2h warrior, and a rogue, then that -2 AC really starts to kick in

Especially if it's used with something more serious, like another daily. Like Cascade of Blades.

I agree that it gets better if you have more people targetting AC, there's also a slight synergy bonus in that sometimes you'll get both the -2AC and CA (though there are other powers that grant -2AC to targets so it's possible to lose some synergy as well) but in the grand scheme of things most parties of 4-5 will have at least 2 characters who are not benefiting at all (wiz, cleric, warlock) from wotg or benefiting far less (rogue). You're still discounting that frequently there will be no benefit granted because the ATT(s) missed, SW has a far greater chance of helping more attacks per round.

 

[keterys]

Spiritual Weapon doesn't technically follow a target at all as written, so some of its effectiveness will depend on how the DM rules that one. In some games, it requires both a move action and minor action to give its combat advantage since an enemy can freely move away from it. In other games, it autofollows. Anyone seen anything official on that one?

That said, Combat advantage does not stack and melee combatants are easily able to get combat advantage. -2 to AC does (all penalties stack), so the only loss of synergy is once everyone hits on a 2... at which point no one really cares as much anyways. So SW helps certain parties more than wotg helps certain parties. One costs an action every round and a standard action up front, the other doesn't. That's pretty important too.

WotG can also affect multiple opponents when used with close and area attacks or multiple target melee and ranged attacks.

 

[Korror]

Always good to have more people chime in with their opinions.

Came late to this party but it's an interesting read and I thought I would chime in:

planting a fighter at the edge of the web can greatly enhance the spells effectiveness. Thunderwave also works very handily in conjuction with web. It's still pretty weak compared to other spells but it can be effective. In 3.5 web could be used to cover an escape but 4e removes the web as soon as the caster is out of range so it's a lot less effective in that regard.

I've tried to get my party to use web by giving them a special trinket that let them cast web once per day but they are still reluctant to use it. The main problem is that the player who was playing a wizard decided that he really wanted to play a swordmage and abandoned the class. My group never really had problems with minions so I had to resort to lowering the minions XP cost in order to balance the encounter levels (shhh don't tell them). They had more an enough effect ways to remove minions (twin strike, cleave, sword burst) that he felt that he wasn't contributing. I'm not sure that the wizard has more ability to prevent the NPCs from attacking until he hits around level 15. But of course, I haven't gotten up to that level yet as my party is just now hitting the end of heroic tier.

 

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

I'd say you're underestimating Confounding Arrows: it's really an A+ power. It inflicts a Daze effect on up to 3 enemies even if all shots miss. That's very potent!

stun is potent, daze is moderate. A melee creature can still charge and deliver a basic attack.

Blade Cascade, on the other hand, does a maximum of 10W+5Static, so maybe 150 points of damage if all 5 attacks hit. That's impressive, but there's plenty of foes who aren't going to be stopped by that. If 2 of the 3 hits from Confounding Arrows hit, the foe is stopped.

stopped is relative. If a foe has 200-250HP, I'm not sure if stunning him for a round or two average is better than putting instantly into bloodied. On the other hand I wouldn't count on hitting all 5 times very often.

My point is, at the top end, Blade Cascade is 10W+5Static, and Confounding Arrows is 5W+3Static and Stunned (Save ends). Do you really think 5W+2Static damage - likely not much more than 90-100 points if all the dice come up maximum - is equivalent to Stunned (Save Ends)?

I honestly thinking bleeding wounds is the best of the three in a lot of cases. With confounding being the second best. Confounding would be a lot better if it said "a dazed target that is dazed again is stunned". Stunning steel which isn't covered seems like it might be better than any of the others, since any hit is stun. really unsure what the benefit of adding immobilized to stun is since save ends both, this power is probably best if you can reach two creatures. Do a lot of people play two weapon rangers compared to bow rangers?

Hmm, I think you're right about Confounding Arrows. I usually rate stun powers higher than B- so I'm not quite sure why I gave it the low rating. One thing I think that prevents it from being an A level power is that you have to decide how many shots to allocate to each target before you see if they hit. Optimally, you'd want to have 2 hit and then the third directed at a secondary target but you have no guarantee that you'll hit with the first two which forces you to allocate all 3 shots at the target you want stunned. Still, I'd say it's a B+ on a secondary look.

does it say you have to define your targets before any attack rolls are made?

As for Blade Cascade, I believe it's still the most damaging daily even after the errta. I'll run the math when I have time but I think with good preperation (getting CA and other party members to apply penalties to AC) it does enough damage to kill or get close to kill a normal level 15 target and, as Keterys has put it, dead is the ultimate status effect.

I think on average you'll get less than 3 hits. I guess if you have elven accuracy this number might change (but you're adding another power to the mix). If your normal chance to hit is 50% and you have CA and some other bonus worth +2 you're looking at 70% hit. You drop to roughly 50% chance of getting 2 or more hits right away. Even if you bump this up to 80% you're below 50% by the 3rd hit. With elven accuracy you can pump this up but there's a decent chance you'll fail on the very first roll... hardly the most damaging daily.

Spiritual Weapon doesn't technically follow a target at all as written, so some of its effectiveness will depend on how the DM rules that one. In some games, it requires both a move action and minor action to give its combat advantage since an enemy can freely move away from it. In other games, it autofollows. Anyone seen anything official on that one?

I would say it definitely doesn't follow the creature, you have to move it. This definitely weakens it but it's still pretty powerful, and I would say more valuable on average than wotg but party composition is definitely a factor here.

That said, Combat advantage does not stack and melee combatants are easily able to get combat advantage. -2 to AC does (all penalties stack), so the only loss of synergy is once everyone hits on a 2... at which point no one really cares as much anyways. So SW helps certain parties more than wotg helps certain parties. One costs an action every round and a standard action up front, the other doesn't. That's pretty important too.

I didn't realize all penalties stack. I agree the action cost is significant especially as clerics need their minors for healing word but there are a lot of rounds where a zap cleric can fire off a ranged attack without moving and get a second attack off with this power. Delaying or readying a move action to follow a creature with the SW defeats any planned escape a creature can plot other than a double move away from battle which has it's own utility. Not many powers let a zap cleric get a second attack per round. The added bonus of CA for the entire group is pretty strong, especially if you have a rogue. getting CA is agreeably not very difficult but this power allows you to gain CA on the controller/leader in the back row from round one and for anyone who wants to pound him. Suddenly your wizard, warlock, ranger and rogue can all reach out and touch the guy in the back with CA while his row of soldiers is still on it's feat, could change a battle quite a bit if you thrash the orc eye of gruumsh in the first two rounds before cutting your way through 5 raiders, a berzerker and 6 warriors for instance.

WotG can also affect multiple opponents when used with close and area attacks or multiple target melee and ranged attacks.

agreed but how potent is this? you're likely trying to concentrate damage onto one target anyway so having two or three to choose from has a diminished ROI.

Always good to have more people chime in with their opinions.

thanks.

I've tried to get my party to use web by giving them a special trinket that let them cast web once per day but they are still reluctant to use it. The main problem is that the player who was playing a wizard decided that he really wanted to play a swordmage and abandoned the class. My group never really had problems with minions so I had to resort to lowering the minions XP cost in order to balance the encounter levels (shhh don't tell them). They had more an enough effect ways to remove minions (twin strike, cleave, sword burst) that he felt that he wasn't contributing. I'm not sure that the wizard has more ability to prevent the NPCs from attacking until he hits around level 15. But of course, I haven't gotten up to that level yet as my party is just now hitting the end of heroic tier.

If you really want to focus on control you have to sort of commit to it. Personally I think this opens the door to a vastly underpowered party because the damage wizard is exponentially more valuable to the party. Sphere alone is one encounter per day that the wizard can semi dominate. Our campaign is pretty dangerous. I think we've played through about 9 levels (4 the first time and 5 the second) We've never lost a pc in a combat involving sphere and I think that says something. Relative to other powers sphere is sort of a no brainer. Pretty much the best level one power of any PHB1 class.

 

[keterys]

I guess I don't quite understand the discussion over Spiritual Weapon vs. Weapon of the Gods. They're both A powers, which basically means they're amazingly good and both worth taking. Depending on your party one might be more worthwhile than another, but no matter what your party will be happy to have one of them. Even if no one in the party targets AC except a single ranger who only uses twin strike, WotG still just a bucket of added damage over the course of the combat. Rogues will hug any cleric who has spiritual weapon, and ranged folks will probably cheerfully high-five. It's all good.

 

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

Curse of the Golden Mist / D
Fireswarm / C-
Tendrils of Thuban / B-
Thirsting Maw / C

Fireswarm is probably better than a C-, it's possible to combine it with some sort of immobilization power and inflict pretty solid damage but in any event it's nothing special.

If you drop tendrils on a group and hit 2 or more creatures, it's pretty much guaranteed to do more damage than blade cascade. And it immobilizes them. I'm not sure why you give daze a better rating than immobilize. Personally I like immobilize better unless the creature is a "leader" with minor actions that pump it's followers or inflict penalties on the pc's. Coupled with actions that push, pull, slide, shift bad guys tendrils can be devastating. It doesn't even have to hit every round to keep creatures immobilized. They need to make a save or else they're locked down and even if they have a huge bonus to saves like an elite or solo you get a chance to pin them down again before they escape. You can couple this with wintertouched and lasting frost which makes it easier to sustain and a lot more painful for those that are in it, some might call this a brutal combo.

Renew the troops also seems like at least an A- (I would say A or A+) as it deals 3W dmg and might easily heal 100hp's of dmg without using surge. Pretty mighty. Even a miss is likely worth 50-70HP's of healing without a surge. I disagree that all the damage will be concentrated on 1-2 characters as usually by this level the monsters are delivering some blasts and bursts. The melee types seem to use more surges than the ranged types in 4e but we rarely leave an encounter without everyone getting hit, saving this power until everyone has 15-20 dmg doesn't seem that difficult. Even if it only heals 3 pc's a healing surge plus cha for a fighter is likely worth 26+ for a fighter by level 15+ throw in another 22 or so for the other two and you're looking at 70'ish healing at worst on a hit. Character hit points are about twice as valuable as monster hit points so 70 healing is roughly equivalent to 140 dmg in terms of winning encounters.

Bigby's Grasping Hands / B-
Blast of Cold / C
Otilukes Resilient Sphere / B
Prismatic Beams / B+
Wall of Ice / A

Bigby's Grasping Hands deserves extra points just for its humorous nature. Sadly the fact that it needs a minor action to sustain means that it competes with other cool wizard powers.

Once a wizard has deployed a cool daily that persists, worrying about using another daily with a minor seems silly. This is 2 attacks at 2d10+int every round and immobilize. If neither creature escapes it's 4d10+20ish automatic damage for the price of a std action. If one creature escapes you can hit it with the hand with a move action (2d10+10) and then slam it against the other with a std on the same turn. This gives the possibility of delivering 4d10+20 to one creature and 2d10 to another. Plus immobilizing them both. This is ongoing blade cascade like damage. Even if both creatures escape you get to use move actions as ATT so you can take two attacks without burning up any powers. The benefit of sustainable powers is that you get to keep doing "encounter or daily power" dmg without using up any of your resources. trust me when you're delivering 6d10+30 dmg 3-4 rounds after the spell is cast, you're going to be thinking wow this is a nice spell. Lets not forget you're "grabbing" two creatures who are forced to use their move action to try and escape or take the guaranteed damage. I find it hard to believe you won't trade your std and a minor for two creature held and 4d10+20 per round. (incidently the +10 is based upon me assuming you're working with a +6 or +7 stat and a +3 implement (there's also the possibility of other feats, increasing this but 10 static seemed reasonable at level 15). No real use vs a solo.

Blast of cold should be tossed out compared to the others.

Otilukes is ok if it hits but kind of weak when compared to the others at this level. Anything worth putting inside can probably cut it's way out in a relatively short time though this is effectively fixed duration stun that removes a monster from the battle for a while while the party gets busy on other targets. While this is a benefit, it has no real affect on a solo other than delaying the encounter a couple rounds. Very surprising to see it compared favorably to the hands. If you miss, you get almost no benefit, just one immobilized save ends, no damage, no residual. If you hit you basically remove a level equivalent bad guy for 3-6 turns depending on it's att power. I popped open the MM and looked at the table of monsters by level. I looked at githyanki gish and salamanders to see how the sphere might hold up in terms of duration vs a 15th level monster. The gish can break out in about 3-4 rounds depending on if it is willing to expend it's AP. The salamander archer is likely to stay held 5 rounds though a little luck has it out in 4. So roughly half the time the power removes one bad guy for 4 rounds, good not great. Slightly less than half the time vs a soldier because soldiers have high reflex and soldiers are really who you want to grab up a leader or a controller makes a nice second choice. Meanwhile hands is probably putting out enough damage to more than bloody 2 creatures in the same time and once the shell is open hands are still working the bad guys over. More importantly hands almost never fail to deliver. Because they persist you keep getting grab after grab (immobilize after immobilize) which can brutalize a group of powerful melee creatures. It's sort of a toss up which is better if sphere hits because removing a bad guy for a few rounds can help the party get control of the situation but roughly half the time sphere does nothing while hands keep filling the room with the sound of clapping ogre heads...

Prismatic beams... a tiny shadow of the damage of hands other than you might catch 2-4 targets initially. Odds are pretty good only 1 target gets pounded. Once again daze is not overwhelming for many creatures. It does inhibit but immobilize can do far more since it cripple melee creatures while daze cripples neither ranged nor melee types.

Wall of Ice is what you have all been waiting for. A wall 12 can completely surround two adjacent squares. It does 4d6 to each creature attempting to break the wall down and doesn't even require an attack roll. Aside from blade cascade, I'd say this is the most powerful level 15 daily.

Wall is pretty solid, you can couple this with the winter touched and lasting frost combo to up it's power and Pain. Using a physical wall you can even encircle a couple of large creatures. In a 10' wide hallway you could completely crush a medium size group of monsters by running the wall down one side of a hall and closing off both ends with a double thickness, the amount of damage the group will take before they get out it very impressive. the W's represent the 12 squares of the wall of ice, the O's represent 4 monsters walking down a corridor.

|WW|
|WW|
|WO|
|WO|
|WO|
|WO|
|WW|
|WW|

I'm unsure which is better wall or hands because in various situations either could be better. In wide open geography wall has greatly decreased impact while hands seem to remain constant regardless of situation, but are ineffective against a solo where wall could trap a dragon with a stone wall as the 4th side.

my take on wizard powers.
Bigby's Grasping Hands / A
Blast of Cold / C-
Otilukes Resilient Sphere / B
Prismatic Beams / B
Wall of Ice / A

 

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

I guess I don't quite understand the discussion over Spiritual Weapon vs. Weapon of the Gods. They're both A powers, which basically means they're amazingly good and both worth taking. Depending on your party one might be more worthwhile than another, but no matter what your party will be happy to have one of them. Even if no one in the party targets AC except a single ranger who only uses twin strike, WotG still just a bucket of added damage over the course of the combat. Rogues will hug any cleric who has spiritual weapon, and ranged folks will probably cheerfully high-five. It's all good.

Agreed. I didn't look at the current ratings, I felt it was implied that WotG was rated higher, I honestly think that SW is better more often but clearly it's ambiguous and I can accept that it's situational enough to call it a wash.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Spiritual weapon grants combat advantage to the whole party regardless of the type of power they are using. There are alot of powers that don't attack AC, for instance warlocks and wizards will get +2 to their ATT vs a SW target but no benefit from the creature hit by weapon of the gods. SW also grants a pretty significant ATT as a minor. d10+wis+implement is ~3 times as much damage as d6.

Just wanted to say that Spiritual Weapon at 5th level makes Mordenkainens Sword for wizards at 9th look a little sad. granting CA to your mates as against attacking vs Ref instead of AC? Doesn't look like much of a contest

 

[Plane Sailing]

I'm not sure why you give daze a better rating than immobilize. Personally I like immobilize better unless the creature is a "leader" with minor actions that pump it's followers or inflict penalties on the pc's.

I can't speak for others, but the potential for charge attacks notwithstanding, the big benefits for daze to my mind are
a) grants CA
b) can't take immediate actions (no OA from him)
c) can't do one of his fancy attacks as charge only allows a basic attack

(also, isn't there a rule about charge needing a minimum distance? If you are 1 sq away from him and he is dazed, he can neither attack you nor charge you, and if he moves/shifts closer he then doesn't have the attack available.

Immobilise, on the other hand, seems highly situational to me. Unless you've got one of the following situations:
a) it is flying
b) it is in a damaging area (e.g. wall of fire)
c) it is a melee only creature and you have a ranged-heavy party

it doesn't turn out to be much use - it doesn't hinder combat capability one iota if it is currently engaged in melee, and your fighter, paladin, warlord, rogue and 2wf ranger probably want to be engaging him in melee anyway.

Just my thoughts.
Cheers