Arcanist playtest

[Klaus]

No, the purpose of the controller is to control the enemy, not turn your party into triple striking rangers. Things that push, pull, daze, immobilize, etc. exert control. Zones also exert control by making it less attractive to remain in an area. The objective of the controller is supposed to be more utilitarian than striking. But with the zones the way they were, people just got too used to using their wizards as strikers, and now everyone is going to complain. It's to be expected, but I'm glad for the changes.

Mengu is right. Controllers can deal great damage, but it's main purpose is to influence the battlefield: scatter foes that are bunching up against an ally, bunch foes up to set up the perfect fireball (either from an ally or from an action point), hinder the enemy's big guns, etc.

 

[Talok]

Flaming Sphere is going to do very little damage now. It just makes opponents move. The ongoing attack is less effective than most at will powers. It is now a very situational power and complete crap.

Stinking Cloud has lost a stack of damage and the ability to block line of sight. It is now just an OK power instead of a good power. It has been nerf way harder than the updated Rain of Steel.

The BloodMage Bolstering Blood ability was always marginal as monsters have stacks more hit points than fragile wizards. Now it is single target and even more pointless. Only useful if you have a source of temporary hitpoints.

Destructive Salutation was an awesome power when it stunned, now it only dazes it is weak. The daze effect in my opinion is less than half as potent as stunning.

I always thought the Wizard had the best dailies, no more.

Thanks WotC my generalist BloodMage is now retired.

What did you expect. WotC seems to change their mind about what powers and classes are supposed to do on a montlhy basis.

 

[Zaran]

Heh, yeah. I think nerfing something because it auto-kills minions is a bad idea, simply because so much out there already auto-kills minions.

I can understand how having minions be virtually ignored by some builds and some parties can be a bad thing for the game, but... honestly, guys, that ship has long since sailed. And Wizards are hardly the main culprit. Certain auto-damaging PP features and Epic Destiny features essentially make a character immune to minions (see Archlich, just off the top of my head. "Come within 3 squares of me, you're dead").

Yeah, Minions are there there to die in droves to wizard spells. Like they did in other Editions. There has never been an encounter where I have felt that the wizard removed the fun by wiping out the minions. It's always fun to watch half the monsters removed from the map. They also fail to mention the fact that Flaming Sphere just didn't auto-hit the enemy. It auto-hit allies too. So there was a bit of balance to it built in.

 

[MrBeens]

Also not happy about the grab bag of nerfs. I mean, they nerfed Cloud of Daggers? I haven't seen anybody actually take that spell since the days of pure PHB I.

Something about the Wall of Fire change in particular rankles me. I think it's mostly that they took something incredibly simple (start your turn in the wall or enter the wall, take damage) and added something else to track ("Wait, did this guy already take this damage this turn?")

The various changes from 'start of turn' to 'end of turn' were predictable, but are still disappointing. Flaming Sphere, a fan favorite that has survived since the original publication of the Player's Handbook, is now a much, much, much less attractive option. The only good news I can think of is the fact that this is a playtest. Maybe if we complain loud enough, we can get some of these changes rescinded? Or, at the very least, get some buffs in exchange for the countless nerfs? The Scorching Burst < Freezing Bursts has always bugged me.

And while I'm sure I'll be in the only person in the world to complain about this, I'm disappointed and confused as to why they took the Fear keyword out of the Prismatic spells. Most people will interpret this as a buff, because undead and constructs will no longer be immune to these spells. But I have a build that needs a Fear spell, and they were top pick. It's really, really, weirdly hard to find a Fear spell, these days. Or a decent one, at any rate.

Anyway, the constant changes to parts of the game that already worked fine continues to rankle me. I keep making characters I really like, only to have the rug pulled out from under them on key powers or elements. I'm honestly considering picking up another system to play for a while, just to get away from the whole, "Oh, your character who was awesome a month ago sucks now, sorry about that" thing.

EDIT: I initially misread Wall of Fire. It seems the 'adjacent' damage has no limit, which is nice, and which helps. I'm still worried that an enemy can get pushed through the Wall of Fire, take its damage, and then on its own turn, waltz right through it without taking damage again. It just breaks immersion apart for me. I'd feel a lot better if it was once per round instead of once per turn, I think.

Also, I must admit that it's not all bad. Half damage on a miss is nice. Not great, and I'm not sure why it has suddenly become the Wizard's shtick to deal half damage on Encounter powers, but even those who are disappointed in these changes (like me) have to agree that this is a buff.

You are getting round and turn mixed up.
A turn is per creature a round is one full cycle of initiative. With wall of fire you get pushed into the wall, you take damage, when your turn comes up you take damage, on someone elses turn you get pushed back in you take damage again.
This is to stop someone with a massive slide effect moving someone in and out of the zone to do multiple damage on a turn.
It works exactly how you want it to.

The adjacent damage has not been changed. It has always been limited to once per round as it only works on starting your turn next to it.

 

[mudbunny]

As has been said above, please send your feedback to WotC. It is the best way to make sure that what you have said is heard.

I will also be sending this up to WotC, but the surest way to make sure your feedback gets directly to the team working on it is to send it directly to WotC.

 

[Riastlin]

I don't have a problem with them trying to keep wizards from doing striker level (or greater) damage. After all, they're controllers, not strikers. What I am more concerned about though is nerfing effects like stun, daze, etc. From what it sounds like (I have not had a chance to read the article yet), this is in part what was done with the play test.

My problem with this is that while stunlocking solos leads to very boring and trivialized encounters, stunlocking a standard critter is not such a big deal. Sure, it sucks for the bad guys but they can manage it if need be and this sort of thing is exactly what controllers were supposed to do. By reacting to the problem with solos with an across the board nerf, they've pretty much eliminated the appeal to these types of powers.

What's worse is that most DMs worth their salt (at least if they had even a modicum of time to prep encounters rather than being forced to run published encounters only, and only as they are written) are already taking care of the problem with stunlocking solos. We are using a variety of methods from a) giving them an immediate saving throw when hit with the effect (even if a save would not normally end the effect) to b) giving them powers to remove one effect (even if they might not be able to otherwise act) to c) giving them saves at the start of their turns to d) having stun treat them as dazed and dazed cause them to lose 1 action to e) just flat out making them immune to stun and/or daze. In other words, solos are getting better able to handle the stunlocking by DMs spending just a bit of time to give them an added trait or two.

DMs who have done this have enabled the powers to retain their strength against standard (and even elite) critters while reducing (though not necessarily eliminating) their effect on solos. It seems to me a pretty good compromise. With as long as combats are anyway, and with as long as turns can take, I don't even really mind if that brute gets stunned for a round or two. It just seems like good tactics. Now it could be that I just have not yet seen how obscene these powers can get even against standard critters, but it just seems to me that if we give solos a defense against them then it should usually be fine for the rest.

 

[Riastlin]

Just a reminder: this is a Playtest article. If you don't like something about it, send your feedback to WotC! That's the whole point of it being a playtest!

Don't you be bringing your logic in here. How are we going to rant and rave with your logic staring us in the face??

 

[MrMyth]

You've never seen Stinking Cloud or Flaming Sphere be overpowered? Then all I can say is you've never seen them used properly and proactively.

And agreed that Class feats seem to be a thing of the past. I also think that the orbizard and staffizard (i.e. the best two IMO) are competative with the mage and the others aren't.

Yeah, I saw a wizard in an LFR mod completely solo the final encounter via an Enlarged Stinking Cloud. People keep mentioning that this was all done to save minions, but I think they might be overlooking the fact that encounter-long auto-damage to multiple enemies is effective whether minions are present or not.

Overall, I'm fine with the approach they are taking. Many of these powers were in need of fixing - inasmuch as they were powers that often trumped many other options. Balancing that out does tone down the wizard's daily powers - but the wizard is getting boosts to encounter powers, which seems a decent trade-off. I think in the long run, wizards will remain about as effective, but won't quite have as much ability to just singlehandedly end a fight on their own.

 

[MrMyth]

I thought this was the whole purpose of the controller?

The purpose of the controller is to inflict status effects that hinder enemies, or to attack multiple enemies for average damage. Status effects that shut down a combat, or dealing striker-level damage to multiple enemies (via sticking them in auto-damage zones that can hit them multiple times) was a bit much.

The concept of flaming sphere was very in keeping with the wizard's role: "We'll create a big ball of fire that hurts enemies, so they will be forced to keep moving away from it, thus letting the wizard influence their actions indirectly!"

But because of how it worked, it instead turned into, "It doesn't matter how the enemies react to the flaming sphere, since the wizard can move it next to them and it burns them at the start of their turn either way. So instead, they don't change their behavior at all, and instead multiple enemies just take lots of automatic damage throughout the encounter."

With the adjustment, it returns to the first concept, one actually in keeping with the wizard's role. It is absolutely less powerful, sure, and I get how some folks will be bothered by that. But it is also most definitely a more appropriate - and balanced - power for the wizard.

 

[MrBeens]

Yeah, I saw a wizard in an LFR mod completely solo the final encounter via an Enlarged Stinking Cloud. People keep mentioning that this was all done to save minions, but I think they might be overlooking the fact that encounter-long auto-damage to multiple enemies is effective whether minions are present or not.

Overall, I'm fine with the approach they are taking. Many of these powers were in need of fixing - inasmuch as they were powers that often trumped many other options. Balancing that out does tone down the wizard's daily powers - but the wizard is getting boosts to encounter powers, which seems a decent trade-off. I think in the long run, wizards will remain about as effective, but won't quite have as much ability to just singlehandedly end a fight on their own.

You can't enlarge dailies - it only works on encounters and at wills.