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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WalterKovacs" data-source="post: 5576264" data-attributes="member: 63763">(a) The ranger could take both ... they do stack(b) You can't build an entire party around Prime Punisher and Called Shot, but you can build an entire party around Wintertouched/Lasting Frost. The 'easiest' solution is to just not make frost weapons trivially easy to get, not necessarily ban the feats. If everyone has the combo (and some can even forgo the lasting front feat, they still benefit from the vulnerability one way or the other) it's not just one person getting +5 damage to their attacks, it's everyone. There is a problem when EVERY weapon user's charOp has these feats pop up.  Tons of stuff in PHB1 was too cheesy, and they are STILL errata'ing it. How long before they got to the orbizard? Again, headman's chop needs you to get someone prone (which ranged people in your party have to deal with, and isn't trivially easy). Doing cold damage with your attacks means owning a frost weapon. Hardly "building your entire character and playstyle around". If you had to actualy take cold attacks, instead of getting a single weapon that makes ALL your attacks cold, I'd buy the argument. As it is, it's 2 feats and a weapon to get (nearly) permanent combat advantage and bonus damage, which extends to any other party members with cold weapons and/or attacks (which is something that the other feats you mentioned don't do). Which also means that someone grabbing frostcheese doesn't have to change their playstyle at all, they can even invest in the other dpr boosting feats to go along with it. Like knocking people prone to get Kulkor and headman's chop, etc.  There's another way to bypass cold resistance with a frost weapon ... turning it off. Unlike someone that ACTUALLY specializes in cold damage, the frost weapon user not only gets to benefit with all powers, instead of having to pick from the smaller group that have cold already, but they also have the ability to stop dealing cold damage if they want to deal more damage. They get the best of both worlds.  (a) They aren't mutually exclusive. It's possible to get both.(b) It doesn't address the fact that a frost cheese party or even a couple of characters, greatly boosts the effect. Everyone dealing cold damage gets the +5 damage from a single characters feat (or multiple people take the feats so even if one misses, someone else will hit before the cold vulnerability drops off). (c) The frost feats for a spell caster (or even somone like a swordmage or blackguard) that has actual cold powers is one thing. But "owning a weapon" isn't much of a theme.(d) One class getting a pair of feats that gives a dpr boost that is comparable to a feat available to every class that doesn't seem equivalent.   It does actually encourage a style of play (unlike frost cheese), it's more reliable for a player, and it doesn't require on a DM allowing it work. Those are all good things. However, it is still not as powerful as frost cheese. You can grab a couple extra feats and get the combat advantage/even bigger boost to prime shot benefit and get a better to hit bonus, but you still don't have the ability to extend the bonus damage to your allies. And you actually have to "pay" for your specialization in a more specific way. Instead of giving up other options for your weapons, you have to put yourself at risk.  All the energy based stuff was a bit whacky out of the gate. The fact that they made it better for weapon users with an elemental weapon than for spell casters who would have to limit their options to be able to benefit seemed like a pretty big oversight. Especially because, outside of say the wizard of the spiral tower, there wasn't an implement option for changing the damage type of powers consistently. So stuff that would, at first glance, look like a feat for magic/implement users ... was instead a feat taken by fighters and rangers and rogues. And weapon users, between superior weapons, and other support, are already far ahead of implement users in terms of support.   True, it's probably easier/easiest for the DM to control the frostcheese problem by controlling access to items. If WotC would actually get the whole item rarity thing fixed, it would be much easier for DMs to do that. [Also, after the whole flaming weapon update in the DM's kit, there may be some more stuff coming down the pike]. As for Monster HP going up 5 times as fast as player's DPR ... well, that would mean that if the fights normally take 5 rounds, they are scaling at the same rate, since the DPE would go up at the same rate as the monster HP. If the fight's take longer, that's actually better for the PCs, if shorter, better for the monsters. In either case it would "pull" things towards 5 rounds of combat. Although at epic, unless you're an essential character, you have 4 encounters (or the power point equivalent) and 4 dailies, so your at-will DPR is either only being used for part of the fight, or is being supplmented with minor action attacks, immediate actions, etc.</blockquote>

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