Grading At-Will Powers

[Mengu]

+2 to an ally's attack is quite good, but sacred flame's ability to give a save is practically on par with a utility power in its own right. The temporary hit points can also be a surprising amount of proactive healing. That said, I did almost make this change myself because lance of faith is more consistently useful, even if I like Sacred Flame more.

I see these powers as being even because I find about equal use for both. Strictly speaking, Sacred flame looks better on paper, but just as often, the urgency of having to take a target down, makes me want to use Lance of Faith, both for the slightly higher damage, and bonus to hit.

So, I set Deft Strike where it was based on the theory that Nimble Strike was more useful - you can shift 1 before or after the attack, and it's a shift instead of a move. Deft Strike's best use is for getting flank then moving back out, as far as I can tell... which is very good, but I set it 1 lower because it provokes and movement is only before the attack.

I find myself using Deft Strike a lot because it basically means I can move 8 and attack. This lets me avoid opportunity attacks as I circle around the battle field. The other great use is being able to shift away from one opponent (like a minion), and go engage another. The mobility granted, is a huge advantage for getting the position I want. Also first round of combat, it lets me get a good angle, and maybe drop my opponent into short range of my thrown daggers. Being able to move 2 squares and toss a dagger during a surprise round is quite handy.

I'm not seeing Riposte Strike at all - the target can just not hit the rogue again, and it's a strength-based attack that won't get extra sneak attack (cause you already hit). I mean, it's good certainly, but better than the other rogue at-wills? Maybe I'm missing something here.

I think you're right on this one.

Hellish Rebuke is easier to trigger and Dire Radiance targets Fortitude, the best defense of the melee types you'd likely best want to use it on. So I dropped it 1.

I see. I still like it as much as Hellish Rebuke, because Hellish Rebuke makes the opponent hesitate to attack you. Dire Radiance makes the opponent hesitate to approach you, which can protect other party members near you.

 

[KarinsDad]

My problem with Cloud of daggers is that is becomes a simple minion killer once you pass a few levels. It'll only deal Wis mod more damage than the other at will. At level 7+, it'll be 3-5 more damage and auto-minion kill. I could use SBurst for area, RoF for 1 turn slow, MM for range, IA for -2 to attacks etc.

Also take the feats into consideration

Ray of Frost is great with the 2 cold feat combo (wintertouch+lasting frost). If you hit you get +2 to attack and +5 damage for cold attacks. It'll be great when all your enc and dailies are done. And not all brutes high high Forts. And those speedy skirmishers and lurker have terrible Fort.

Thunderwave with Arcane Reach and Resounding Thunder gains some range. Add solid sound for defense help.

Illusionary Foes is psychic right? Psychic lock = -4 to attack.

Yup, feats help. Inescapable Force and Solid Sound can help Cloud of Daggers.

But with regard to the 3 (core) single target At Will Wizard powers, nothing really changes that much at high level. They still have the same range, they still do about the same amount of damage.

As for Fort, sure, some creatures have low Fort. Some. It's ~18% with better Fort than Reflex (give or take, I have not calculated it for all creatures).

That's less than 1 creature in 5 with better Fort than Reflex. That means that the +2 to hit you are talking about for WinterTouch (which does not occur until turn #2, the creature has to be hit with cold on turn #1 in order for WinterTouch to affect it on turn #2) merely negates most of the difference between Fort and Reflex for 4 out of 5 creatures (and the difference for these 4 out of 5 creatures is closer to 3 than 2 due to the 1 in 5 creatures which are more susceptible to Fort bringing down the average).

WinterTouch is an entire feat whose purpose is to put cold spells on par with non-cold spells with regard to "to hit", but only if the Wizard takes the Lasting Frost feat as well. Without Lasting Frost, WinterTouch totally sucks. WinterTouch is also worthless for the first cold attack against each creature. It doesn't kick in until attack #2.

So sure. Lasting Frost will give +5 damage. Compared to +Wis to damage hit or miss for 10 character levels of Cloud of Daggers. Two feats, just to get Ray of Frost on par with Cloud of Daggers.

That sounds like a lot of feats just to get in the same ballpark.

Let's take a simple example.

50% chance to hit. 11th level Wizard with +2 implement, 21 Int and 15 Wis (i.e. the Wizard never bumped up his 1st level 14 Wis, this favors your POV). We'll ignore the 1+ better Fort 1 in 5 creatures and consider it a wash with the 3+ better Reflex 3 in 5 creatures (and the fact that WinterTouch does not give a +2 bonus on round one) for simplicity.

Cloud of Daggers does 50% x 3.5+7 + 100% x 2 = 7.25
Ray of Frost does 50% x 3.5+12 = 7.75

With a gimped Wisdom Wizard with zero feats, Ray of Frost with two feats does slightly more damage. One would expect two feats to do more than this.

Up the Wizard's Wisdom to 19 (which at level 11, many PC Orb Wizards will have 19 or even 21) and it becomes 9.25 CoD damage vs. 7.75 RoF. And, there are other ways to get Combat Advantage which puts Ray of Frost back into the Fort saves sucks category again (60% x 3.5+7 + 100% x 4 = 10.3 vs. 50% x 3.5+12 = 7.75).

Ray of Frost is the weakest of the At Will single attack powers and needs feats to help it out. The Slow is practically irrelevant to the conversation. It hardly affects combat at all compared to killing a minion nearly every time CoD is used against one.

All in all, Cloud of Daggers is better for most applications than Ray of Frost and this is especially true for levels 1 through 10 (and still better than Ray of Frost for levels 11+).


Note: Sure, Slow can help in conjunction with other powers like ones that create Difficult Terrain. But, Slow for one creature rarely does anything when most powerful creatures have ranged attacks.

 

[Ulthwithian]

A few comments, here.

One is that people really should note what their assumptions are regarding the play conditions. This does affect certain powers, and especially the arguments for or against them.

Take, e.g., the argument of MM vs. other Wizard At-Wills. Some people say that the longer range is a reason to favor it. However, the question is whether that longer range actually comes into play, and this is a question of the game you're in, not the power itself. As for myself, I believe that in the first game I ran, the ranges never really got above 10 (I'm working on this). Just one example of how other factors can change the assessment of a power.

As for Commander's Strike, it might need a bit of 'set-up', but granting the same kind of set-up as the other powers (i.e., Wis mod with Cloud of Daggers, etc.), it really deserves at least a 6 if not 7. Some of the factors include:

1) Good Int on Warlord.
2) Fighter as Defender.
3) Multiple decent allies to use with it.
4) Reach weapons.

I think the Warlord in my group is almost the poster-boy for using Commander's Strike. He's an Eladrin Tactical Warlord whose primary weapon is a Longspear. If nothing else, Commander's Strike reads for him, "If you can poke an enemy adjacent to the Fighter, let the Fighter mark him."

As for the objection that the Warlord is gimping himself, I'm not seeing it. By straight damage, the Eladrin actually does the most damage with his basic attack and at-wills, due to Eladrin Soldier. However, given his Int (18), any party member who attacks with melee attacks will do more damage with their basic melee attack than the Warlord will do with his other At-Will.

(Side note: There's also a Dragonborn Cleric of Kord wielding a Bastard Sword in the group.)

Other abilities of Commander's Strike is that it allows more uses of attack buffs (such as that from Righteous Brand) that have a set duration. Also, if you have a melee striker that missed with his attack on his turn, thus not getting his per-round 'extra damage' (Sneak Attack, Quarry), Commander's Strike allows another shot at it.

There's also a true sense of teamwork built by Commander's Strike. I've seen multiple high-fives (in one session) between the Warlord and another party member due to the use of Commander's Strike. This is never a bad thing.

 

[Branduil]

An average Ranger has dex 18. At first level, basic does 1d10+4(9.5) and Twin Strike does 2d10(11), at 8th, when you get 20 dex, you will generally have weapon focus and a +2 weapon, making basic 1d10+8(13.5) and Twin Strike does 2d10+6(17), at 14th when you get 22 dex, you should have weapon focus and a +3 weapon, making basic 1d10+11(15.5) and Twin Strike does 2d10+10(21), at 21st, when you get 24 dex, you should have weapon focus and a +5 weapon, making basic 2d10+18(29) and Twin Strike does 4d10+16(38).

All of this is without quarry which also favours twin strike. Starting with 20 dex makes the basic slightly better, but not enough, and if you lose your magic weapon the basic attack gets a lot closer, but the basic attack will only ever be "better" as a bow ranger if you're without magic weapons, haven't taken weapon focus, aren't shooting your quarry, are below level 21 and have at least 22 dex.

How are you coming up with those damage bonuses?

 

[Danceofmasks]

From a quick glance, it's just attribute bonus, feat bonus, and enhancement bonus.

For instance, weapon focus = +3 damage per hit at epic tier.

If you're wondering about the numbers in the brackets, they're average values.
Average for a D# = (#+1)/2. i.e. average for D10 = (10+1)/2 = 5.5

 

[med stud]

A few comments, here.

One is that people really should note what their assumptions are regarding the play conditions. This does affect certain powers, and especially the arguments for or against them.

Take, e.g., the argument of MM vs. other Wizard At-Wills. Some people say that the longer range is a reason to favor it. However, the question is whether that longer range actually comes into play, and this is a question of the game you're in, not the power itself. As for myself, I believe that in the first game I ran, the ranges never really got above 10 (I'm working on this). Just one example of how other factors can change the assessment of a power.

As for Commander's Strike, it might need a bit of 'set-up', but granting the same kind of set-up as the other powers (i.e., Wis mod with Cloud of Daggers, etc.), it really deserves at least a 6 if not 7. Some of the factors include:

1) Good Int on Warlord.
2) Fighter as Defender.
3) Multiple decent allies to use with it.
4) Reach weapons.

I think the Warlord in my group is almost the poster-boy for using Commander's Strike. He's an Eladrin Tactical Warlord whose primary weapon is a Longspear. If nothing else, Commander's Strike reads for him, "If you can poke an enemy adjacent to the Fighter, let the Fighter mark him."

As for the objection that the Warlord is gimping himself, I'm not seeing it. By straight damage, the Eladrin actually does the most damage with his basic attack and at-wills, due to Eladrin Soldier. However, given his Int (18), any party member who attacks with melee attacks will do more damage with their basic melee attack than the Warlord will do with his other At-Will.

(Side note: There's also a Dragonborn Cleric of Kord wielding a Bastard Sword in the group.)

Other abilities of Commander's Strike is that it allows more uses of attack buffs (such as that from Righteous Brand) that have a set duration. Also, if you have a melee striker that missed with his attack on his turn, thus not getting his per-round 'extra damage' (Sneak Attack, Quarry), Commander's Strike allows another shot at it.

There's also a true sense of teamwork built by Commander's Strike. I've seen multiple high-fives (in one session) between the Warlord and another party member due to the use of Commander's Strike. This is never a bad thing.

There is also a helmet that have the effect that every time you grant someone a basic attack, that person gets a standard action instead. That can be really nice with Commander's strike.

 

[Puggins]

Interesting how much of the response centers around the wizard at-wills. So, both cloud of daggers and thunderwave I assumed that you would have a respectable Wisdom, just for one clarification. Best to assume a power will be used to its best effect:

Probably because the wizards have by far the most combinations available for their at-wills. A human non-wizard basically chooses one power NOT to take. A human wizard still has an ample amount of choices. This will change soon, hopefully. Even the wizard could use one or two more for variety, and the rest need three or four.

Cloud of Daggers: Highest damage at-will, Autokills minions and autodamages others, extra damage to swarms, provides a chokepoint, has synergy with other movement powers

The utility is primo. Little things like swarm vulnerabilities help differentiate powers.

Magic Missile: Longest range, gains bonus damage from bracers of perfect shot, can gain extra attacks with a warlord

I'd consider it a reasonable choice IF you grouped with a warlord that used those specific powers. But that makes this highly situational. Bracers of Perfect Shot just don't cut it as a magic item choice for the wizard, IMO.

Ray of Frost: Lower damage, slows. Problem is that its primary intended target's best defense is likely Fortitude, and the power has no additional effect under many circumstances (ie, when slow doesn't matter)

Hmm, I came at it from a different angle- the beauty of this power is that the creatures that most rely on speed (lurkers and skirmishers) would be most vulnerable to this power. And, frankly, slowing a brute so that it has to pound the fighter instead of you is extremely desirable.

Scorching Burst: Only At-Will Area power. Otherwise lackluster, but this is a very big deal.

Very, very big- seems to me it allows the wizard to perform one of his primary functions without using any of his encounter or daily powers on isolated groups. I might change my mind later, but this is the star of the show for now.

Thunderwave: Only At-Will that does not provoke. Hits a good sized area and pushes potentially _very_ far. While less respectable at low level, being able to push as much as 8 squares later with an at-will makes this the best at-will for _control_.

Certainly can't argue there, and I'll definitely experiment.

Illusionary Foes: Most reliably effective secondary effect.

And only attack vs. will, which brutes hate, by and large.

 

[keterys]

I'll add a clear disclaimer shortly, but I'm assuming that we're considering the power if built to use it or in a party that it works well. This is important because when building new powers I can't go "Well, my party doesn't care about the difference between range 5 and 20, so it's okay for me to make a class have Lance of Faith... but range 20".

So, powers that are based on ability scores (Wis, Str, etc) assume you are increasing those scores at every ability bump and have a respectable amount. Assume that if you take riposte strike you're not a halfling trickster rogue with str 8. Etc.

Anyhow, lot of good stuff, I'll work back through and update the initial post shortly. I may switch to ranges since getting a consensus is not likely.

I'll also start up a thread for Encounter powers shortly, cause this is interesting to me at least

 

[The Little Raven]

Cloud of Daggers also deals damage on a miss, like Reaping Strike.

Technically, this is not true. It has an Effect that occurs regardless of a hit or miss (the spell actually has no miss effect), which is a very important distinction to make because of the minion "take no damage from a miss" rule.

 

[keterys]

Heh, yes. I figured that was covered by the comments about autokilling minions and pushing people into/through it for extra damage.

Curious, I can't check right now - if you hit a swarm with this, do you trip the vulnerable for the initial damage and for the Effect?