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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kinneus" data-source="post: 5535616" data-attributes="member: 48215">WARNING: This post may descend into whiny nerdrage. Reader discrection is advised. So I'm trying to build a back-up Defender in case my current character (the only Defender in the party) dies (which has a pretty good chance of happening in our next combat... facing the big bad guy with only two healing surges to rub together and no surgeless healing at our disposal). I decided to go Hybrid Wizard/Swordmage and take the Master of Flame Paragon Path and a Flaming Weapon. Now he can increase the radius of all of his blasts and bursts by 1! Sure, he's not the greatest Defender, and fire resistance/immunity will give him a headache, but it looked like a lot of fun to play, just blanketing huge swaths of the battlefield with flame. I was super stoked to play it (sorry, I had to). But then I noticed that, after yesterday's update, the text for Flaming Weapon mysteriously changed in the Character Builder and the Compendium. It now specifies that it only changes untyped damage dealt by the weapon into fire damage. This, of course, makes the Flaming Weapon useless to implement users about 99% of the time. And it invoked in me a flaming, fiery nerdrage for crushing my beloved new Hybrid character literally the day after I made him. Now, this isn't an official errata yet, but Flaming Weapon now cites the DM's Kit as a source, which makes me nervous. What I want to know is: 1) Why make this change? Why is it okay for a Rogue, Fighter or Ranger to effortlessly turn all their attacks into Fire attacks, but implement-users have to blow all their Paragon feats on Arcane Admixture to achieve the same? 2) It's not just the change that bothers me. The change, in a vacuum, I can understand and appreciate. It's the waffling. When I first started playing 4e, the common wisdom was that weapons like Flaming Weapon or Lightning Weapon don't add keywords to a power. It wasn't until later when errata was issued and the Rules Compendium stated that adding a damage type adds a keyword that this became explicitly okay in most groups. It felt like implement-users were finally given permission to start specializing in damage types in fun and flavorful and mechanically powerful ways. And then... this. 3) This is the big one... why was this change made only to Flaming Weapon? Why are Githyanki Silver Weapon, Lightning Weapon, and Frost Weapon unscathed? I mean... FROST WEAPON! The source of Frostcheese, the 'broken combo' that has existed untouched since 4e's debut. Why? WHY? RARGH NERD SMASH!!! Phew. Sorry. I just needed to get this off my chest. Anyway, there's a chance I'm just jumping at shadows, but somehow I don't think so. It's that new rules source citation that worries me. Does anybody have the DM Kit? Would they be willing to check it for me? This issue also puts me in a moral quandry. It doesn't just gimp my hypothetical replacement-character... it also seriously messes up the Dragon Sorcerer in our group. His build was literally built around Flaming Dagger, and this change would seriously hurt him... like inflict a -2 to attacks and -4 to damage on almost all of his attacks sort of hurt him, just for starters. So do I bring this to the attention of my DM? The DM's a cool guy, but he's also very by-the-books, so I don't think he'd be willing to houserule flaming weapon into the way it was before, simply because he's not into house rules in general. I'm leaning toward keeping my mouth shut for the time being, at least until it's published as "official" errata... and praying that this is all some horrible, Flaming Weapon-nerfing dream I'll wake up from tomorrow! [/melodrama]</blockquote>

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