This thread is getting more and more ridiculous. I don't mean to attack you, KarinsDad, this isn't personal or meant to be malicious. But it appears to me that you're literally just arguing to argue now, and becoming increasingly silly with your points.
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Yes, you win. Given those two stipulations, Scorching Burst IS clearly better.
This seems like Snark, just to be Snark, regardless of your original qualifier to the contrary.
I'm a Wizard. I want to do area effect damage on occasion. I want to do a lot of it when given the opportunity. Sure, I could take Winged Horde and I basically suck at it at lower levels.
Why? Several reasons:
Area effect At Will powers are best used after Area Effect Encounter powers with one exception, Minions. So unless I think there are minions, I'm going to want to do as much control as possible or as much damage as possible as quickly as possible. It's all about Action Economy and Winged Horde at low level does little to affect Action Economy. Encounter powers, they tend to do more control and more damage than Winged Horde. So as a general rule, I won't typically be using too many At Will powers on rounds one through three. Sometimes, sure. But mostly, the earlier rounds are about putting the controlling and damaging smack down on as many NPCs as possible and that means Encounter powers, Area Effect Encounter powers if I can manage it.
In latter rounds, four through six generally, my Wizard is now low on Encounter powers. On the other hand, there are typically fewer targets to attack at this point as well. So, if I have the chance at At Will Area Effect, I'm going to take it. If I don't, I'm going to instead try to help the group with a single target At Will that hampers or moves a monster how I want it handled.
So by the time I get around to using my At Will Area Effect power, there are fewer monsters (the 4 with Winged Horde will be a rarity if the DM isn't just rushing the Defenders) and managing just 2 with Scorching Burst will outshine Winged Horde in later rounds.
Yes, Winged Horde might target a few more monsters than Scorching Burst. But, this is not guaranteed. A decent DM will throw interesting encounters at the group with difficult terrain and Artillery or Controllers from multiple directions and possibly a few Brutes or Soldiers. Skirmishers should be rushing in and trying to avoid the Defenders. It's not just a game of the Front Line is holding off all of the monsters, so it's easy to target them all.
The only time Front Line holding the line seems to happen is in a dungeon with smaller rooms. Once one gets into encounter areas of 7x7 or greater, it becomes increasingly difficult to hamper the monsters.
I also want to do control like White Lotus Riposte to encourage the monsters to go attack someone else. White Lotus Riposte does not work with Winged Horde.
Because I want a decent defense, I will probably take Armor Proficiency Leather Armor at some point.
Because I want to do damage, I'll probably take Weapon Focus at some point. I might take Dual Implement.
But I will rarely take Enlarge Spell. Decreasing the damage on several foes in order to typically get one extra foe and once in a while get two extra foes seems counter productive at the expense of a feat. It does work well with Winged Horde, but rarely does something great for Scorching Burst or most other Area powers that are typically not Enemy Only. A feat dedicated mostly to a single At Will power seems extravagent.
On the other hand, I might sometimes take Enlarge Spell if the Defender has a Resist 5 or 10 fire. I have no problem dropping fire around the Defender and targeting a bunch of foes if the Defender is partially protected.
I have already stated that Winged Horde looks like a real good option at mid-Paragon and above. But, I don't see it as that great at Heroic. There, my Wizard is still scrambling to fill in all of his feat gaps and wasting time on Enlarge Spell Winged Horde is counterproductive. There are just too many good feats that I would rather take. And, not all of them are necessarily combat feats. I might want to take a Familiar. I might want to take Linguistics. I might want to MC in order to gain a specific skill more than gain a cool combat ability. The concept of "the only good design is a combat optimized one" is not a concept that meshes 100% with my roleplaying style.
And as long as Scorching Burst does ranged smack down damage slightly better than Winged Horde in most situations, that's good enough. Sure, the drop the OA of foes is nice. But, it doesn't completely control most foes. Mostly, it prevents an occasional attack or an occasional +2 to hit. It's fairly soft control most of the time.
