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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Felon" data-source="post: 3603975" data-attributes="member: 8158">Here's what the warmage has going for it:1) Armored Mage--With the Battlecaster feat, I wouldn't even need need mithral.2) Warmage Edge--Lots and lots of ways to make that little bit of damage go a long way.3) Improved Spell Access--Gains a few spells not on the sor/wiz list (ring of blades, flamestrike, blade barrier, fire seeds), and gains some spells at a lower level than sor/wiz  (fire shield, ice stomr).4) Flexible Casting--Only a warmage can exploit all of the options of the Energy Gestalt tactical feat at will. Screw Energy Substitution. Don't need it.That's all great, but I find playing one very frustrating nonetheless. The spell list doesn't have all the blasting I could want. For me, blasting is largely an AoE affair. Here's how the spell list really pans out for me:1st levelVarious orb spells with aggrivatingly short rangeMagic Missile (the only long range zap)Hail of Stones (the only AoE, with annoying 1 round casting time)Bunch of other crap I don't care much about2nd levelScorching Ray (everyone loves it, but again the range can be an issue)Melf's Acid Arrow (low damage, long range, no SR)Bunch of other crap I don't care much about.No AoE worth mentioning.3rd levelFireball (the linchpin of the entire class)Lightning Bolt (for when your allies get in the way of your linchpin)Who cares about the rest?4th levelBlast of Flame (big, broken conjuration AoE spell)Evard's Black Tentacles (root spell that gets old with DM's and other players real fast)Various orbs for single-target blastingWall of FireA few others I don't care about.From a distance, the class appears to be an AoE nuker steeped in evocation. But when I got close (by playing it) I realized it packs mostly point-blank spells that zap single targets or small clusters, and is at least as much of a conjurer as it is an evoker. I'd get a lot of that functionality out of a duskblade. Fireball is actually the exception, not the rule. All of that would be forgivable, but the idea that I really don't get to choose what kind of warmage I am is not.The problem here is that the warmage was the first class of its kind. Take a look at the dread necromancer and the beguiler. They both get more spells than the warmage, and they get a more generous aportionment of Advanced Learning. I really hope we'll eventually see some alternate class feature for the warmage that lets them trade off some of their other features for spell list customization. I don't want to have to choose between Channeled Pyroburst and Energy Spheres and Firebrand.Playing an evoker will also allow me to get some essentials that will facliitate blasting indirectly, such as True Casting and Assay Resistance for bypassing SR, and stuff like Fly, Regroup, and Dimension Jumper for positioning.</blockquote>

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