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Not to mention, cloth armor often have better enchantments than the AC-boosting armors. Robe of Contigency (iirc) lets you teleport and spend a healing surge when hit by an attack, as an immediate reaction 1/day!

Displacer. Once a day, the enemies have to roll twice and take lowest for the encounter.
 

I have to say I think a lot of these are over-reactions. There's a point at which these sort of revisions become little more than change for the sake of change, rather than actually fixing something that is imbalanced. And at that point, these things become punishments for creativity.

Whereas I am glad to see pretty much every single one of these fixes, so that I don't have to feel bad for taking non-broken choices when making characters, or have to think up ways to deal with my friends playing characters using such options. :)

Note that the Avenger change was how they were supposed to work from the beginning.

These kind of sweeping changes are exactly what is needed for the game to remain sustainable, and shows their devotion to the game.

I can understand the fear about knee-jerk reactions - one reason I'm critical of how they handled their skill challenge errata and the addition of the expertise feats - but all these changes seem well-thought out and reasonable. Complaining about them because your character doesn't get to be as broken just... isn't a good reason to complain, in my mind. Complaining that an ability like Storm Pillar is 'pointless' because you can't abuse things to damage an enemy a dozen times with your at-will power, which is clearly against the intent of how it was supposed to work in the first place... yeah, I've got to disagree with that accessment.
 


These kind of sweeping changes are exactly what is needed for the game to remain sustainable, and shows their devotion to the game.

They should not be needed in the first place. Even if you agree that the Avenger was overpowered with an extra 2 AC, then the Avenger should've been built this way from the start.

Sweeping changes on this scale are bad because they show that whatever review process they have in place, is failing to catch things like this before their product is released.

When you look at something like this, you can't also go and say, "But they can't foresee every problem," because it's not like this was hidden or some sort of CharOp monster. Much like taking Fullblade or Execution Axe is a must have for the class to be on par with other strikers, taking Leather Armour Proficiency was a staple.

What makes this particularly painful is that the barbarian, an already powerful melee striker class with more options and more damage than the avenger, just got a massive AC boost prior to this avenger nerf. That shows a distinct lack of consistency in their review process. They obviously have no yard-stick or else these two classes wouldn't have such a large disparity between ability. Barbarian is clearly the superior of the two.
 

They should not be needed in the first place. Even if you agree that the Avenger was overpowered with an extra 2 AC, then the Avenger should've been built this way from the start.

Oh, I agree that it would be far better to have everything perfect from the get-go. But in the absence of that happening, I think it better to fix mistakes rather than leave them in place!

When you look at something like this, you can't also go and say, "But they can't foresee every problem," because it's not like this was hidden or some sort of CharOp monster. Much like taking Fullblade or Execution Axe is a must have for the class to be on par with other strikers, taking Leather Armour Proficiency was a staple.

I think you vastly underestimate how much a product can change through release, and how easily it ease for small unintended elements to slip into it (like writing a class feature to help cloth armor, but it ending up working for all light armors).

Would I love it if they caught all the problems before hand? Yes, absolutely. But not fixing the problem when you have the capability and the knowledge of the mistake, that would be genuinely frustrating behavior. This isn't ideal, but it is a vast improvement over what you seem to be suggesting, which is that once something is printed it is set in stone, no matter how much it breaks the game.

What makes this particularly painful is that the barbarian, an already powerful melee striker class with more options and more damage than the avenger, just got a massive AC boost prior to this avenger nerf. That shows a distinct lack of consistency in their review process. They obviously have no yard-stick or else these two classes wouldn't have such a large disparity between ability. Barbarian is clearly the superior of the two.

Oh, agreed. I'm very bothered by the recent barbarian AC boost. I'm very hopeful that it will be addressed in the next month's errata, when they will be dealing with primal power and other recent releases, as this errata dealt with prior projects.

If they leave it as is... well, I'll be upset at what I see as poor game design on their part. But leaving one broken element is not an excuse for allowing others, and I'd much prefer they fix 5/6 things I feel they did wrong, rather than leave them all in the game indefinitely.
 

These kind of sweeping changes are exactly what is needed for the game to remain sustainable, and shows their devotion to the game.
Exactly. If people like Kzach are unhappy about the changes it's a sure sign, the changes have been for the better :)

Cheers!
 

Not. Happy. Jan.

I feel likewise. In particular, the sheer number of magic items they downgraded from at-will to encounter, or encounter to daily, sticks in my craw. Magic items are already too f***ing boring as is. They're trying to remove any reliable use of these things.

Y'know, I'm fine with invisibility rings not working forever anymore, but what, it was overpowered to be able to throw a grabbed foe once per encounter? Now you have to use up your daily magic item shenanigans to get any value out of the item.

I am definitely not using magic items as written in my own campaign. Unfortunately I have to put up with them in the game where I'm not DM.
 

Most of the at-will/encounter changes have been because of being able to do overpowered things with 'em, annoyingly enough. Like at higher levels using multiple copies of an item for multiple encounter powers (Swiftshot & Quickdraw, for instance). And Bloodclaw and Reckless were just way too much, even if I do think they overnerfed Reckless.

More and more I like my idea of having most item powers be:
Item: You may use one item power per encounter (two at paragon, three at epic)

Still have some at-will stuff (Acrobat Boots) and daily stuff (Keoghtem's Ointment), but then the rest can be per encounter like:

Power (Item): Free Action. Use when you hit with a melee attack. That attack deals +5 damage.
Power (Item): Standard Action. You and an adjacent ally gain resist 10 to all damage until the end of your next turn.
Power (Item): Free Action. Use when you hit with an attack. This attack bypasses any resistance (but not immunity) of its targets.
Power (Item): Free Action. Use this power when you hit an enemy with a melee attack. Push the enemy 1d4 squares after applying the attack's effects.

That and give out more conditional but always on bonuses like:
Property: Your attacks ignore any resistance of 5 or less.
Property: Increase the penalty you inflict by marking to -4 when an enemy attacks an ally adjacent to you.
Property: Your improvised melee and unarmed attacks are treated as +3 Proficiency weapons that deal 1d8 damage.
Property: When an attack would knock you prone, you can make a saving throw to avoid falling prone.

With most items preferably being a property and item power.

I'll get to test that out in my game that starts this Sunday, but I imagine it'll take me a while before I know if it helps.
 

Just a note: Why change each barbarian at-will power to allow versatile weapons to be used? Why not just simply rule which versatile weapons can be considered one-handed or two-handed weapons? I was thinking thats was already the official rule.
 

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