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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Goumindong" data-source="post: 4723481" data-attributes="member: 70874">1. Yes its marginally better and its margin is increasing. That is the definition of exponential gain.2. You do not offset the potential gain by the possibility that you would fail to be able to use it. Remember: As you "exactly calculated", the chance that you are unable to use the power is reducing at a negative marginal rate. And the payoff from using it on a more important hit is increasing at an increasing marginal rate"Over time" as in "over time in the battle" not as in "over levels". Your last hit point is increasingly marginally more valuable than your second to last, just as your 1001th hit point is decreasingly marginally more valuable than your 1000th hit point.This means that hits that take away more life, or restrict actions(preventing you from taking away enemies life, prolonging the encounter thereby costing you and your friends more life) are increasingly marginally more costly than those that don't. As you shift your payout from "anything i can take because i might not be able to use it" to "anything i want because the bonus is so high i can nearly turn a critical into a normal hit" its marginally utility is increasing.Only if your +4 ensures that you can use the power on that encounter power that goes off early, which it can't. The argument that i stated was that there is a bit of "stopping an attack early has an increasing marginal value" but that it was offset by the chance you might stop something better later.Now if the better comes immediately, then your return is strictly linear in raw hit points and actions. But as you remember from our discussion above, the attacks that do more damage and restrict actions have increasing marginal cost, so your expected return on the block has an increasing marginal return when the chance of a block is increased in a linear fashion such every point of con you put into it has an increasing marginal returnO.K. So lets cover some things1. If high damage powers come sooner there is an increasing marginal return on con2. if high damage powers come later there is an increasing marginal return on con so long as you are able to judge what is and what isn't a high damage attack. Well, since the power lets you judge after damage has been rolled, i think we have a pretty easy way to determine what is and isn't a high damage attack.This is only true if1. You don't have any clue of what the enemies defenses are2. You don't have any clue of what you rolled(which only happens if your DM isn't playing by the rules)and falls to the big irony of3. As you increase your dexterity, the uncertainty inherent in the system is reduced further.Higher damage has an increasing marginal utility, especially early in the round. With a +4 the wand is useful 1 in 5 times, and with a +5 its 1/4 times... But wizards make a lot of attack rolls especially with their AoE dailiesIn the same 5 encounters a +4 Con staff will likely block 3-4 hits and the +1 will block maybe 1 or 2(unless the wizards is the focus of every attack in an encounter for 4 rounds per encounter) You have your wizard absorbing roughly half the hits of an entire 5 encounter day to make your 3-4 hits work from the plus 1. No, the math assumes there is an increase in utility for holding something roughly 7-10 rounds and then after that, as i've noted it doesn't matter because you're way beyond the ability to pump anything else. Once again, using made up numbers doesn't get you anywhere. How do you pump 6 wisdom and 3 con? You have a total of 6 points to allocate over your entire career in leveling up. You have literally no way of making a 20 wisdom 16 con wizard without having 13 or less intelligence. Just because the marginal utility is increasing does not mean it has to increase forever and it does not mean that the utility you get out of adding a new one at a lower value is greater than the marginal utility of the one that is already increased.Remember, you don't care if the marginal utilities are increasing when you're choosing between each one, you only care which margin is better at that point in time.An opportunity cost is "the value of the next best thing". So the inverse opportunity cost would be "the value of the next best thing which is the value of the thing that you were doing originally"Which is the value that we were discussing the entire time.Are you sure you know what you're talking about here?Your strawman is appreciated, but i never, nor did anyone else, mention raising wisdom over int.Read the power again, and then read the RAW again. It is a free action, but you can use it after the roll.It might not make sense to you, but uncertainty, especially known uncertainty has real value.Its a blast, of course you have an ability of targeting the creatures, i just showed it to you!P.S. There is a level 18 ring that lets you move your vision 1 over and many many abilities that let you or others move their line of sight originating.Also, you can create the wall.Or you can see them and then move behind a wall already made because that is what smart people do to avoid attacks.If everyone takes wintertouched and has cold powers. Otherwise one guy takes vexing flanker(or distance advantage), or they use your encounter powers that grant CA(or theirs) and its almost useless.Well then, this would be a good reason to give it to the other builds then...1. I never said they should get equal treatment(though wizards did when they wrote all those design articles saying "we wanted to make all builds about as good as other builds")2. What i did say was "you're wrong, they do indeed get a benefit"</blockquote>

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