Grading At-Will Powers

[keterys]

Cloud of Daggers also deals damage on a miss, like Reaping Strike. This really adds up over a long solo fight, for instance.

All of the wizard at-wills are good. It's pretty cool like that.

 

[Minigiant]

Cloud of Daggers also deals damage on a miss, like Reaping Strike. This really adds up over a long solo fight, for instance.

3-7 damage on a miss vs things with 100-400 HP. At least Reaping Strike uses your main attribute.
Retrain Cloud of Daggers before you hit paragon.

 

[keterys]

Very good point about retraining - obviously, some powers are better at certain levels than others. I'd say it's probably best to rate them on their 'best' point, much like rating powers like Thunderwave and Cloud of Daggers assumes you're actually putting points into Wisdom.

 

[Leatherhead]

On the Rogue abilities:

Why no love for Sly Flourish? Do people not realize it can be used with a ranged weapon unlike Piercing Strike and Riposte Strike?

Oh, and there any errata on Riposte Strike yet? Because there doesn't seem to be any range limitations on the riposte interrupt attack.

 

[Thanee]

Hmm... thought Sure Strike is more useful, but after rereading it looks like it's really not, since the Fighter does not even have to hit in order to mark an opponent.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Klaumbaz]

RogueDeft Strike - 5
Piercing Strike - 5
Riposte Strike - 4
Sly Flourish - 4

Deft strike - 7 move, strike, and shift/move away...Very effective in combat practice

Piercing strike - 8 As mentioned, +8 to hit (with dagger) at level 1 vs reflex is very nice.

Good question about riposte strike. I could see tossing your dagger (requires light blade to use it's effects) at your enemy if they shifted away before they attacked you. (even better if you had cover and could stealth attack with it).

Sly Flourish - 6 adding in that extra 2-4 damage is worth an average weapon roll.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Careful Attack (Ranger) and Sure Strike (Fighter) should be graded -1: never take under any circumstance. These feats are usually outperformed by a basic attack (dependent on your ability score mod and other damage bonuses your attack might have). See this thread for the numbers: Analysis

 

[Xzylvador]

I <3 Cloud of Daggers. And any control wizard should. Wis and Int are probably going to be 18 and 16 (or the other way around) if not higher. This makes it do better damage than magic missile, full damage to swarms (without hurting adjacent allies by blasting), slide powers to put other in the square and do some damage, auto minion kill and a good way to block a door opening... it's nice.
Thunderwave's my second favorite, not because I think it's awesome. I hope never to use it, 'cuz it means I'm being hit. But it is very nice to push everyone around you away (especialy with arcane reach, point it toward yourself as you're not affected by your own close attacks) and then get out of trouble without wasting a move-shift and move-run without standard action.
Ray of frost is so-so. Sure, it smells like at-will control, but really slow still means that with run+charge if it's 6 squares away it can still attack. (If your DM rules run+slow don't work together, it's still 4 squares. With the "short" range of RoF, this means that most of the time he can easily reach the front-line fighters of the party...) Probably with the feat that causes cold vuln it becomes better, but still I'd prefer the cloud.

...Sure Strike (Fighter) should be graded -1: never take under any circumstance. These feats are usually outperformed by a basic attack (dependent on your ability score mod and other damage bonuses your attack might have). See this thread for the numbers: Analysis

On a non-human I -might- agree, but as a human this will always be one of my 3 at-wills. Fighters aren't there to damage, they're there to be sticky. With heavy blade opportunity, you get +2 (sure strike) + wis + probably a +2 from combat reflexes (or whatever that feat was called) to attack on OA's. These OA's aren't there to damage but to make sure that ugly brute stops moving past you to hit the squishies you're protecting.

 

[Baumi]

Wizard:
Ray of Frost: I don't like the Slow Effect from Ray of Frost to much, but if you are playing a cold-mage with the appropriate feats it can become quite good.

Magic Missile is underrated in my opinion. The Range 20 can really help in the beginning of a combat, the damage is very good and sometimes you just need a damaging power for just one enemy. Also you can use the cheap gauntlets that adds damage to a basic attack. If you play a Wizard with primarily Area Attacks, then it is good to have at least one power that can help you out without hurting nearby friends...

Cloud of Dagger is a superbly anti minion power, but for some reasome I simply don't like it even though I play an Orb Wizard myself.

Scorching Ray & Thunderwave are both superb and every Wizard should take at least one of them!

Overall I find that the Wizard is the only class where I really have problems deciding which of the awesome powers I should take.

Fighter:
Cleave: Great Minion Killer ... if you lack a controller or just want to hack Minions to pieces, then take it!

Reaping Strike: It's a bit meh for me since it is only good if you miss and even then it's not too much damage for a REAL opponent. Still, if you have a two handed Weapon and only one enemy then it is surely better that a Basic Attack. One more problem ... it sucks for one-handed Weapon Fighters.

Tide of Iron: A must for every Shield Fighter! For everyone else absolute useless

Sure Strike: It would have been an good alternative to the other At-Wills if you would have kept the Strength for damage, but without it ...

While the Fighter have some interesting At-Wills, he mostly have no real choice which to take and humans have to take one at-will that they don't really need (at least till the martial handbook is out).

 

[Tervin]

Within a few hours I set out to try and test out Commander's Strike properly. An 18 Int tactical warlord with two strikers in the party should mean plenty of times when that is a really good option.

Till I have seen it fail in that setup, I will not say it is a weak at-will. And I think this goes for a lot of the powers. It is all about what the rest of the character and the party as a whole is like, which means it is no real point in rating powers in a vacuum.