Good on paper, bad in play.

[Kzach]

I think the fighter utility power "Boundless Endurance" sounds awesome, but in practice has proven to be close to useless.

As a daily, I have to pick my moment to use it which severely limits its worth. Not only that but as a defender, I'm doing my level best to sticky the bulk of the opponents to myself, or at least the big baddy. This means I get hammered, flanked, outmanoeuvred, etc.

By the time Boundless Endurance kicks in, the last thing I want to do is remain bloodied, so of course I might get one tick out of it before I get healed up. And of course, I can get knocked down before it has a chance to do anything at all.

In practice, I'm far better off with No Opening. This would've saved my character from dropping below or close to zero three times so far that I can recall. Whereas out of five largish encounters, I've managed to get all of 4 hit points regeneration out of Boundless Endurance.

Even as an encounter power, I'm not sure I'd take Boundless Endurance over No Opening. At no level can I think where I would want to remain below bloodied for long enough for it to have any substantial effect. Now, if you're completely out of healing surges, down to your last hit point and the cleric is dead, then I could see it being a decent power.

Discuss.

 

[ac_noj]

Have your healer delay so that they go after you but before the monsters. That way the monsters attack and bloody you, then you get regen, then the healer tops you off. Repeat.

 

[MrBeens]

Boundless Endurance is a stance, which means it stays active until the end of the encounter or you use another stance.
You can turn it on when you are not bloodied and you won't get any regen, but it will start as soon as you are bloodied. If you go back above bloodied the stance is still active, and will continue to apply regen every time you are re-bloodied.

 

[DLichen]

Sleep is the number one underperformer for me. To get the vaunted unconcious effect: You first have to hit with the spell, then the opponent has to fail their save against slow, and then they get saves to wake up.

As a daily, saving it for a solo when unconsciousness would be good is unwise since they have high saves and high defenses and slowing one guy isn't really a good use of your time when it misses. Yeah, if it hits, your party can often autowin with coup de grace, but it's a gamble. Whereas using it on a medium sized horde is a good use, but if they are minions, you're often better off blasting them. So it functions the best against small groups of monsters with hp, which is fairly specific.

Compared to flaming sphere which is good against almost everything (except fire resisting creatures obviously), lasts the whole encounter, and deals a good amount of guaranteed damage.

 

[DracoSuave]

Sleep is the number one underperformer for me. To get the vaunted unconcious effect: You first have to hit with the spell, then the opponent has to fail their save against slow, and then they get saves to wake up.

Don't underestimate slow.

You are Wizard. Improved Initiative is practically mandatory for you. Get the drop on them. Sleep them. They're slowed, so they don't get that chance to close in on you before they drop. Sure you don't get -all- of them, but you usually get enough that you're happy.

 

[keterys]

The fighter in one of my games has Boundless Endurance and has had great use out of it - she just has the healers hold off a little while it's up.

 

[Mengu]

While you're regenerating, just tell the healers to give you temporary hitpoints rather than actual healing. You have to keep a good balance of getting hit and staying around 25-45% actual hitpoints. It's not easy to do but it's quite rewarding. Works especially nice if you are a Dragonborn with Dragonborn Frenzy, and stay bloodied the majority of combat. It's also handy to have abilities that block damage occasionally (like Unbreakable, or some item powers) so you can avoid going down, and linger around 15-20% hp's if needed.

 

[Bagpuss]

By the time Boundless Endurance kicks in, the last thing I want to do is remain bloodied....

You don't have to remain bloodied, you only have to be bloodied when you enter the stance the regeneration then last until the end of the encounter (5 minutes) or until you change to another stance.

Perhaps it doesn't look good in play, because you aren't playing it correctly.

To me infinite healing for the remainder of the encounter seems pretty good.

Doh! Seems they have given it an unnecessary errata.

Not as good as it once was, but now so long as you remain in the stance the regeneration will kick back in every time you drop down to bloodied, until the end of the encounter.

It's like Regeneration but with a ceiling of half hit points rather than full hit points.

 

[Shabe]

As a GM i haven't really had a chance to look at the powers on paper before I've seen them in action.

Good ones:
Flaming Sphere - (Wizard Daily)
Divine Glow - (Cleric Encounter)
Combat Challenge - (Fighter Class feature) In conjunction with thuderwave and dragon breath
Enfeebling Strike - (Paladin at will)
Infernal Pact (Temp hit points) - (Warlock Class feature)
Shield of Faith - (Cleric Utility - Daily)
Beacon of Hope - (Cleric Daily)

Can't think of any really bad ones and boundless endurance has seen use.
As i dm for 6 players there are quite a few monsters on the battlefield so AoE powers seem quite good as the melee monsters try and crowd the players.

**edit** I've just realised another reason why combat challenge seems so powerful in my game, the dragonborn has two blast 3 powers, this i understood, but i've just realised that the warlord keeps using commanders strike allowing the fighter to keep two monsters locked down at a time, damn out tacticed by the warlord...

 

[Plane Sailing]

Boundless Endurance is a stance, which means it stays active until the end of the encounter or you use another stance.
You can turn it on when you are not bloodied and you won't get any regen, but it will start as soon as you are bloodied. If you go back above bloodied the stance is still active, and will continue to apply regen every time you are re-bloodied.

Quoted for importance!

I wonder whether the original poster missed this? It isn't clear in the original post whether he did or not.

Certainly the fighter in my campaign is finding this utility absolutely fantastic - a real life saver and tactically vital.