Magic Missile

[Steelwill]

I think the whole debate about DPR is a big red herring. At the end of the day, MM is now a very different beast to almost all other attack powers.

Trying to compare the old with the new solely on the basis of damage output is like trying to compare a car to a motorbike and saying a motorbike is better because its faster! What about passenger capacity, all whether capability, the ability to tow. There are many factors in a deciding which is best.

To say "Its not as good because it doesnt do as much damage" (whether true or false) is just an incorrect way to assess the change. It ignores the utility auto-hit brings to the power.

To me, at the end of the day, its the preference of the user. Im not convinced MM is in any way an inferior power now, but I am convinced its different.

Ok, well what about people who are reporting that in addition to doing less damage, it no longer works properly with a good amount of gear and feats and other build options that the old one did, that in play it is boring to use as its a declaration only without any other part for the wizard player to play, or that auto hit flies in the face of initial 4E design goals that made all attacks roll to hit? There have been many more complaints than simply damage output being lower.

 

[Gradine]

Ok, well what about people who are reporting that in addition to doing less damage, it (A)* no longer works properly with a good amount of gear and feats and other build options that the old one did, that in play it is (B)* boring to use as its a declaration only without any other part for the wizard player to play, or that (C)* auto hit flies in the face of initial 4E design goals that made all attacks roll to hit? There have been many more complaints than simply damage output being lower.

*Letters added by me

A) Word of God has nixed that first interpretation of the rules (this will likely be errata'd soon).

B) Somewhere along the lines players have come to some expectation that unless they're rolling dice they aren't doing anything. Especially in combat. I guess I can understand that sentiment in concept, but in this case what you gain (immediate, nearly unblockable damage) is far more beneficial than what you give up (rolling a few marked polyhedral stones.) There are more than a few strikers who would give up a limb (or at least a little finger) for auto hit damage.

C) I don't think it's necessarily going against 4e's design goals; there are plenty of things in 4e that do auto-damage. And even if it were, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. There were a lot of 4e design goals that, after years of playing and testing, have shown in desperate need of revision. Some have taken a lot longer than others, but just because something is new doesn't make it bad.

There are always jokes about 4e's errata... about how they're quick to fix something that's too good but don't ever bother fixing things that are worthless. If Magic Missile was almost completely outclassed by other Wizard at-wills (and it's generally agreed that it was), why not change it? Make it something more unique, more special? Nobody's arguing that it's now too good, so how can the change be a bad thing?

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'd have prefered to see Magic Missle given multiple d4 missles rather than go the auto-hit route. Auto-hit does invoke the classic spell, but so do multiple missles. Both would have been OK, too.

It's jut that doing damage to one target, however dependably, just isn't high on the list of things that make a great controller.

 

[Black Knight Irios]

There's now a build that can use a Master's Wand to deal around 1,900 hp in one round (per day).

I wanted to say the very same thing but I like to add the damage can't be attributed to MM alone, there are other items and powers involved.

Nobody's arguing that it's now too good, so how can the change be a bad thing?

A change can be good, bad, OP or just ok. Just b/c no one says its OP doesn't make it automatically good. WotC likes to errata with a big blunt object that (often) makes something that was OP useless. MM is a different story.

I personally don't mind the change, I don't play a wizard, I don't think I will play a wizard. And I don't have room for the new MM in other builds I'm running.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Does this build involve using more than one free action attack in one round?

If yes, then sorry, this is disallowed by the recent update!

 

[Istar]

No, you don't get to add any of that stuff.


Yes, there's a reason it's not a damage roll any more... that reason being 'you don't get to add any of that stuff.'

If you could, it would be the most powerful at-will for wizards in the game, and it'd be a reason to paragon multi for sorcerers.

You got to do something about your new JB moto, its very.....

disturbing !!!

 

[Black Knight Irios]

Does this build involve using more than one free action attack in one round turn?

If yes, then sorry, this is disallowed by the recent update!

AFAIK, no, this build (1925.234 Damage Nova Round with New Magic Missile ) is conform to the latest errata.

And it is one free action attack power/turn.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Does this build involve using more than one free action attack in one round?

If yes, then sorry, this is disallowed by the recent update!

Pretty much any of those kinds of builds rely on some series of questionable rules interpretations.

The new MM actually IS pretty dubious in many ways from a rules standpoint. There is for instance no viable argument from RAW that it is an attack at all at this point. That opens up several cans of worms in and of itself.

As for the whole "auto-hit is awesome", meh. No not really. The new MM is distinctly weaker than the old version. At least the old version could be optimized quite a bit in a straightforward fashion. The new one really can't be optimized in any straightforward fashion and is just flatly worse by pretty much any objective standard.

So, by argument of 'fixing' something the update failed. By the standard of not fixing things that aren't broken, the update failed. It was a lousy change. There'd have been nothing wrong with creating an auto-hit at-will wizard power, there was just no reason to remove a perfectly good working power to do it and at least if you're going to make a new power make one that is not worthless.

 

[Maximilia]

I don't like it because it's not fun to me. Yes, maybe it comes down to rolling little plastic things and seeing if they say I hit or not (although I never had a problem hitting anything really), but regardless of why... it's not fun for me. As soon as I level, I'm speccing out of it since our DM did say we should go with the errataed rules where we can.

 

[DEFCON 1]

It was a lousy change. There'd have been nothing wrong with creating an auto-hit at-will wizard power, there was just no reason to remove a perfectly good working power to do it and at least if you're going to make a new power make one that is not worthless.

See, I disagree... purely from a history of D&D / sacred cow standpoint. You could make a whole new power that does what the new MM does now... autohit and all that... but then people would comment that this new power is more like the classic MM than the current MM is. As Essentials is deliberately trying to evoke the '80s D&D experience... having an "all-new" Magic Missile clone standing next to a power that is known as Magic Missile but is less like it... seems counter-intuitive. If you wanted to evoke the classic feel of Magic Missile... why bother retaining the PHI Magic Missile spell that isn't serving your needs? Quite frankly... if given the choice of creating an all-new spell that autohits and leaving PHI MM as is... or changing MM to autohit and make an all-new spell that duplicates what PHI MM does... I'd go with the latter. It's just naming convention after all... and for my money, retaining some of the spirit of classical D&D in the 4E game is cool when you can do it.

And as far as the all-new MM being worthless... I'd disagree on that as well. I can't speak for other people... but I know in my games, minions are often left on the board (especially ranged minions) because they are lodged in places that are too difficult to get to, and if the wizard craps out on a couple attack rolls, she moves on to other targets (especially ones that are grouped up or need debuffs on them quickly). Having an automatic minion-killer means even the hardest-to-reach opponents can get taken out with the point of her finger. That elf archer minion in cover up in the tree that might have only a 40% chance to get hit (and thus gets ignored, because the PCs would rather attack easier opponents and be more assured of not wasting potential damage), can get popped quickly and the others can now move on without taking that incessant 10-20 archery damage each round.