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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 6306267" data-attributes="member: 18">This isn't the thread for a detailed discussion of it, but as a point of order, from a long-time 4E DM, basically everything Blackbrrd is saying here is either outright untrue or at least severely misleading. In brief:1) Contrary to the apparent assertion, AoE in 4E is the weakest AoE in the history of D&D by a vast margin.2) Damage-centric AoE in 4E is only valuable in certain specific encounter designs. Which apparently Blackbrrd's DM loves, but which are not "how it is". (Control-centric AoE has wider applications)3) Spammable AoE does far less damage than Blackbrrd suggests, in practice, unless your DM is playing bizarrely and stacking monsters for you (you are not going to hit 4 non-minion monsters with a spammable AoE with any regularity in a normal campaign). His damage comparisons thus appear to be between Encounter or Daily AoE and At-Will Single-Target. Which is very misleading.4) You don't have to kill every enemy to win combats in 4E, any more than other editions, unless your DM is treating things like a computer game - the whole "OMG AOE4EVER" fallacy relies on this silly business.5) The levels of optimization discussed are vague and nonsensical, but even if we believe them, that is still BY FAR the best situation in any modern edition of D&D (i.e. 3.XE or later)! So the complaints here ring very false!6) Combats only "drag on" if your DM insists you have to grind down every last enemy, and insists on throwing big, HP-heavy encounters at parties he knows the party aren't good at handling them.*4E has tons of problems (much as I may like it), and combat taking too long can be one of them, but that has nothing to do with "optimized vs unoptimized", and this stuff about AoE is just laughable nonsense (and entirely specific to Blackbrrd's DM, I suspect).* = I totally understand the preference of some people for "hard-static" encounter design and so on, but 4E is not designed on those assumptions, and a DM who tries to run it like it is will experience problems, just as one would trying to run 2E is a skill-centric game and so on (it's not impossible, but you're fighting the system either way).EDIT - I should mitigate this criticism by pointing out that Blackbrrd DOES say "In the 4E campaign I am in...", so whilst his language seems to be more absolute/sweeping about 4E, he is being specific there. If he was in my campaign, I can assure you that he would not have the same opinion on the value of damage-centric AoE spells.</blockquote>

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