Arcanist playtest

[Gortle]

Seeing that they nerfed several spells this way, I don't like this at all. The way I see it, this has been done to protect minions, but it reduces the wizard's damage output, which could lead to (more) combat grind. I'm going to ignore this change for my games.

Also, why didn't they just state that in general, walls and zones only deal damage once per round (or per turn, if you prefer) to a creature? That eliminates the ping-pong of death issue without having to nerf update multiple spells.

The Blood Mage got nerfed again? Oh dear. Destructive Salutation could have kept a stunned UENT plus the ongoing damage effect on a hit.

Minions have heaps of problems anyway. A wizard can have area burst 2 damage effects from level 1 - at will and ally friendly. I have a Valorous Bard in the party. Adding minions makes the encounter easier, they are just nice pouches of temporary hit points. Virtually every class has a way to attack at lest 2 per turn. You should not consider the changes a protection for minions, they are not.

I agree with you on that the rule should be walls and zones only deal damage once per round/turn The changes to the Flaming Sphere make it an appalling daily.

Destructive Salutation was very strong but so are a lot of other spells. Stunning until end of encounter was always a joke with the changes to the saving throws. A daze effect on a level 19 daily for a wizard is just not strong enough to be wroth taking. They should have reduced the damage or remove the enemy only instead if they wanted to weaken it.


Come on WotC, balancing powers is OK but making powers useless just annoys the players!!!

 

[Gortle]

Spot on. In most cases leaving the zone is not a loss of any kind to the monster.
If they do stick with the end of turn effects there needs to be an effect on leaving the zone, giving the enemy a choice to make other than not get effected and continue as though the zone is not there.

Hey when are these forums going to get a like button or voting up and down like StackOverflow ???

 

[Gortle]

Yes, you are correct, but you are committing a fundamental error. You are theorycrafting. The situation you describe is a BLANK SLATE battlefield where there is no terrain, no circumstances which might make the goblins desire to be HERE instead of THERE, etc.
....
The point is that in the real world when the goblins are trying to crowd through the door that lets them flank the fighter in his covered position then dropping a flaming sphere in that area and chasing the goblins away ain't a bad idea and can be VASTLY more tactically advantageous than just trying to kill them outright.

I'd argue that the blank slate battle field is much more common than a battle field with a choke point. Sure regularly the game is played in a confined space but
1) more often than not the terrain that is there can be easily avoided by one side or the other. The inititive roll can do it half the time.
2) many parties are melee heavy and want to get every PC involved. Having one defender hold a point while one ranged controller pings the enemy is very slow and boring for the rest of the PCs. The players will simply refuse to play that way.

The the other key wizard characteristic apart from controller is Area Of Effect spells. Any number of the area at will spells will be awesome if the goblins are packing into a corridor. The goblins won't keep doing it against a wizard. Evaluating Flaming Sphere in this situation is moot.

Now, consider a situation where a bunch of artillery monsters are bombing the party from a position you cannot get to. The old Flaming Sphere really does nothing here. The DM is going to just leave the monsters in their relatively secure location knowing that moving them is pointless. With the NEW Flaming Sphere the DM has a meaningful choice, stand around in the inaccessible location and take damage or move and risk being engaged by the party melee characters. In this case the NEW FS may actually perform better. It won't be much worse in any case.

Not true the old Flaming Sphere forces them to move apart - which they should do anyway against a wizard. You are tripping over your own logic here. You are assuming that the old flaming sphere always gets to do it's damage. Sometimes that is true for a single monster but regularly it is not, simply spread out the monsters, make use of walls, spread around the PCs (it's not party friendly), force the PCs to move quickly, stun the wizard etc.

Notice that this also conforms with what Balesir is saying too, if you move damage to EOT and you WANT to keep the power at the same level then you'd be advised to increase the damage or add some other effect.

Agreed, especially important for some of the other zones that were more marginal in the first place.

However the 2nd consideration still exists, the damage may simply not be enough to ever motivate the enemy to move at all, but there's no general way to determine that. FS is unlikely to exert much control at higher levels as 1d4+int damage may be trivial (even with some boosts), but then again it is a level 1 daily and isn't intended to be a go-to spell at higher levels. Chances are you'll swap it out at the first power swap and may even retrain it sooner than that.

Yep, some monsters can just soak up the damage. There are better things to do at higher levels.

 

[Gortle]

I've always seen Control as managing the battlefield to help keep your party alive long enough to make the bad guys dead first. Damage of course is a part of that (according to the role description), but often it isn't.

"Sleep" when used correctly can be nearly an auto-win for the party, and it does no damage on it's own at all. That's control.

Yes but you need some items and specific build to get it to work well. It is not that good at 1st level because of that. 75% of monsters that you hit won't fall asleep. I only tend to use it when I am getting good tactical value from the slow affect.

 

[Gortle]

How is that relevant to start-of-turn or end-of-turn damage?


Yes, they can attack and move away. End-of-turn doesn't prevent that. Neither does start-of-turn (unless it actually kills them). But end-of-turn encouraged them to move away, something start-of-turn was unable to do.


I house-ruled my Flaming Sphere to end-of-turn damage over a year ago. It worked so much better for what we wanted it to do. Forcing monsters to move "all over the place" is exactly what we wanted the controller to accomplish. Especially into places where the strikers could nuke them. Teamwork FTW!

I appreciate your points. Most of what you are saying has reasonable sense to it, but I'm going to disagree.

Punting the monster into the wizards zone with pushes and slides is a fun part of 4th ed. If the damage is end of turn there is little damage value in that tactic anymore. There goes your teamwork.

Strikers all have excellent movement powers they don't need the controller to help with their placement, just a sticky defender.

The damage from movable zones is far from automatic. You are wrong to assume otherwise. See above post.

Forcing monsters to move is rarely worth a standard action for a PC.

If the position is that key then the monsters will soak up the damage. Many of them have the hitpoints. Crank it up a notch if you want the damage to make them move. Add in 5 ongoing fire damage.


Blaster is a valid build for a wizard, pure controllers won't take many of these damaging zones anyway. Many PCs don't still strictly to their role. Leave them alone and let the blasters have their fun. Don't take away there fun for the sake of controller purity. Don't water down spells that aren't a problem.

Compensate if you have to weaken powers.

More generally making zones spells once per round and at the start of the turn would be a much simpler fix than erratering each one. It would make game play faster too.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'd argue that the blank slate battle field is much more common than a battle field with a choke point. Sure regularly the game is played in a confined space but
1) more often than not the terrain that is there can be easily avoided by one side or the other. The inititive roll can do it half the time.
2) many parties are melee heavy and want to get every PC involved. Having one defender hold a point while one ranged controller pings the enemy is very slow and boring for the rest of the PCs. The players will simply refuse to play that way.

The the other key wizard characteristic apart from controller is Area Of Effect spells. Any number of the area at will spells will be awesome if the goblins are packing into a corridor. The goblins won't keep doing it against a wizard. Evaluating Flaming Sphere in this situation is moot.

Most battlefields (and just considering all the various ones I've designed, many 100's certainly) I don't think it is easy to generalize. There are a few types. You will have some which are effectively tunnels, some with a choke point the PCs pass to enter some more open area (entering a room through a door), some with dispersed series of obstacles (like trees in a forest), those with disconnected or semi-disconnected areas linked by choke points or marked off by unfavorable terrain, and some rather uncatagorizable ones.

Most decent encounters will at least contain areas favorable to the enemy to occupy (cover, concealment, advantageous zones or terrain) and other areas of the map that act as transit points. Another common situation would be one where the opposition is tactically divided in some fashion and restricting their movement can allow them to be defeated in detail.

Many of these situations present an opportunity to use something like FS purely to motivate the enemy to move. Simply restricting the places where they can safely end their move and occupying a square can be enough to cause a turn of delay, on top of getting in some attacks (and getting effectively a minor action MBA-like attack every round isn't shabby in and of itself, lets not forget that). Other zones and walls clearly are better suited to denying larger areas, but Stinking Cloud for example is still perfectly effective there, the enemy will probably go around it and if they dive in they're likely to cross in one round anyway regardless of when the damage happens.

Not true the old Flaming Sphere forces them to move apart - which they should do anyway against a wizard. You are tripping over your own logic here. You are assuming that the old flaming sphere always gets to do it's damage. Sometimes that is true for a single monster but regularly it is not, simply spread out the monsters, make use of walls, spread around the PCs (it's not party friendly), force the PCs to move quickly, stun the wizard etc.

Possibly. The new FS also makes them want to move apart though. The point is moving is more advantageous with the new FS, and control in the case of FS is all about getting things to want to move. There are of course various other countermeasures, but what makes them more effective before than they are now. Stunning always made the FS go away.

Punting the monster into the wizards zone with pushes and slides is a fun part of 4th ed. If the damage is end of turn there is little damage value in that tactic anymore. There goes your teamwork.

I'm not seeing that. Sure, you can't yo-yo anymore. The damage from zones was already plenty good without that. You can still push a guy into a zone and he takes damage, it is once per turn on first entry. You just can't get the old slide 3 and double dip anymore. The general tactic is still highly valid.

 

[Gortle]

A lot of that terrain is nice fluff but is really not that important in actually play. For example a group of monsters standing in a circle that gives out +2 to hit is a poor tactic against most parties. Apart from cliff and wallls terrain is rarely stronger than that.

Even fighters have plently of ways of moving the monsters around if it is important. Footwork Lure/Come and Get It. It is just not strong enough effect for a controller to gently encourage movement with an optional out and modest damage.

Sure, you can't yo-yo anymore. The damage from zones was already plenty good without that. You can still push a guy into a zone and he takes damage, it is once per turn on first entry. You just can't get the old slide 3 and double dip anymore. The general tactic is still highly valid.

Some of the zones do do damage on entering, but Flaming Sphere doesn't. Changing it to end of turn does negate this tactic.

 

[keterys]

Flaming Sphere never dealt damage on entering.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Flaming Sphere never dealt damage on entering.

BINGO!! So if you move that guy into the range of a Flaming Sphere he can just step away on his turn if damage comes at the end of the creatures turn and it takes no damage.

 

[keterys]

True. Which is a very good change to the power, and I thoroughly approve.