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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EasyT" data-source="post: 4592309" data-attributes="member: 64282">Mearls, thank you for posting. Always good to see devs participating in a discussion and giving us a peak behind the scenes.But I have a hard time getting behind your argument. While I really like the idea that a controller is the opposite of a leader, I don't see support for the belief that Scorching Burst might be slightly below baseline. It seems widely regarded as the best Wizard at-will power, nearly reaching "must have" status and generally accepted as one of the best 1st level at-will powers in the game. And while it's good that Vanguard's Lightning provides incentive for enemies to behave in a certain way, thus playing more towards the new vision of what constitutes a controller, why must this incentive take the form of extra damage on top of the kind of damage already dealt out by another controller's at-will power?  Said another way, if Wizards were made to deal damage over an area, and it was decided that this is not what should define the role of controller, why give a new controller even more damage over an area than a Wizard? Why not instead have the new power deal less damage up-front? Or have a range of 5 instead of 10? Or basically let Scorching Burst shine over Vanguard's Lightning in any single way?I can't help but compare to the Druid's at-will powers Chill Wind and Call of the Beast. Both are area powers that do more to control the enemy's actions than Scorching Burst, but they balance this by dealing less direct damage (or even no direct damage in the case of Call). They do a great job of meeting the new definition of controller without taking away from or overshadowing the Wizard. I applaud these Druid powers for this accomplishment. As a general rule of thumb, I would think and hope that a new class's powers would be created with an eye towards not completely overshadowing an existing class's powers. Every class should be able to shine in their own way. And while the idea behind the role of controller may change, it seems that this could be done without taking anything away from the Wizard. Perhaps the Wizard is the controller the specializes at doing area damage from a distance, and does this better than any other controller? Wouldn't this allow the Wizard to retain his own unique style while leaving plenty of space for other controllers to grow into the new vision for that role?</blockquote>

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