December Rules Update Available

[Mengu]

I think I'm getting similar results to Elder-Basilisk and Elric with my calculations.

The break even point between True Arrow Style and Twin Strike oscillates between 60% and 70% hit rate through heroic tier. Looks like most of the time, True Arrow Style will be better, especially against the tougher opponents. The difference deepens a bit more in True Arrow Style's favor if you use some cheap Eagle Eye Goggles.

If you have a consistent way to get prime shot/called shot (or frost cheese), then at paragon, the break even point can jump to about 50% or 55%.

At epic it seems to stay in that same 55% range.

Basically, the more damage you do with you quarry or attribute, the better True Arrow Style is.

And when you examine what happens past the break even point, the damage values don't stay close, the tougher the opponents are, the more significant a gain True Arrow Style provides.

Since it looks like they managed to introduce a power (with the benefit of 1 feat) that's better than Twin Strike, I'd say something is wrong with the combination that needs examining.

 

[Stalker0]

Wohooo!

They fixed shifting! No more stupid polearm gamble / threatening reach tricks!

I must have missed this one. What did they change about shifting?

 

[DracoSuave]

I must have missed this one. What did they change about shifting?

Instead of only preventing OAs from shifting out of an adjacent square, it's now preventing all OAs regardless of trigger.

 

[Artoomis]

...It's annoying that there's no separate "just the new updates" document posted, since there are 73 pages (!) of errata.

I am not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but the top right-hand side of page three starts the "old updates" - so they do seperate out the old form new.

 

[keterys]

I am not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but the top right-hand side of page three starts the "old updates" - so they do seperate out the old form new.

The problem is they do that for every single book, so you still need to go through almost every page.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Also careful attack is better if you use not a d10 weapon. and don´t take lethal hunter.
And for a small ranger careful attack may be better than twin strike. Also if your enemy has something like damage reduction you may be better off with careful attack.
also it allows a bow ranger a good melee attack. Maybe even with an urgrosh or a parrying dagger/spiked shield in the offhand.

I believe it is still inferior for most damage oriented builds, but other builds will be able to make use of it i am sure.

 

[Elric]

Things I didn't like in this update: changing abilities to work based on secondary stats instead of primary stats.

Main example is Pennant of Heaven's Armies, the invoker daily from DP. Clearly the bonus to defenses equal to Wisdom mod had to go. However, changing it to based on Int means that the power is now useless for any Con-based invokers who took it. Since the difference between primary and secondary attributes tends to be only around a +1 modifier, this causes problems with builds at little effect on balance for the builds with Int as a secondary stat.

If it's reasonable for Int-builds, it's reasonable for Con-builds, and the bonus didn't really need to be reduced by 1 once it didn't apply to defenses.

I hope this doesn't set a trend. They did the same with the Holy Emissary (DP)'s action point feature, but at least there you'd expect everyone who takes that path to have Cha secondary, so it won't cause the same issues. Was this Paragon Path really too good in any case?

Honored Foe (DP) was made to only work with a Paladin's marks. While other classes (Wardens come to mind) have an easy time marking multiple targets, the feat is above the power level for a feat on Paladins too. Having it only work once a round would have been the obvious solution (and would parallel the fix to Marked Scourge).

 

[Tallifer]

The ranger in our party likes Careful Strike for when he wants to use a piece of Magical Ammunition on one particular opponent. It uses less of his precious magical arrows than if he used Twin Strike against one foe to ensure a hit. He had for example one Arrow of Forbiddance left, and he used Careful Attack to help him hit the evil necromancer in the middle of his ritual circle to keep him from escaping. Magical ammunition is like having an extra low-grade encounter power.

 

[beverson]

The problem is they do that for every single book, so you still need to go through almost every page.

I don't know if you noticed, but they also bookmarked the pdf, so you can jump right to the first page of each book's changes, which gets you right to the new changes immediately.

 

[keterys]

Nice - the bookmarks didn't display by default in the way I displayed it, so that was good to know