Imaro said:
Okay, let me address a few points. Given that there is no sign on a minions back that says "Minion" how do you ever determine if they are minions, you could again hold onto your daily and still blow it on a minion. Also given that minions are constructed to viably threaten PC's...why does it matter if you use your dailies to kill them. You still reduced the number of attacks that can come at your party. In fact even if 20 more goblins come rushing into a room...you still reduced the number of attacks you have to deal with. I think alot of people are missing this very important point...You have reduced the number of actiona against as well as the amount of damage in a quicker span of time that can affect your party as a whole.
As far as the power level of monsters...what about elites or other types that are as powerful or moreso than the PC's . I think you are making a very general and broad assumption that I do not believe (especially looking at the kobolds vs. 1st level PC's) will not necesssarily be true. But we'll see on June 6th.
But, you're assuming that the daily power is an area affect. If a daily simply does scads of damage to a single target, then blowing it on a minion actually doesn't make things any faster. You haven't reduced the number of attacks against you any more than if you had used an at-will power.
Only solos are actually more powerful than a PC. Even elites won't be. One elite is still only 2/5ths of an encounter. Remember, that encounter, presuming its an appropriate level encounter and not way above the party, assumes that the aggregate of all actors will still be weaker than the entire party. An elite might be close to a single PC, but, still will likely be weaker since you're supposed to have three other actors there. The elite might be twice as powerful as the regular monster, but, he's still not more powerful than a single PC.
Actually, powerful is the wrong word. Durable is probably a better word. It should never be to the point where the baddies can kill the PC's as easily as the PC's can kill the baddies. This is the primary mistake that was made in 3e. Baddies did too much damage. You absolutely HAD to kill the baddies as fast as possible, because if you didn't, you died. Letting a baddie get two or three full attacks on a PC meant a dead PC, barring emergency healing.
We know that this isn't true in 4e. The PC's are considerably more durable for one and the monsters do less damage each for another.
Again, you are making assumptions here that aren't based in what we know. You assume that daily powers affect multiple targets, and that you can catch large numbers of targets in area of effect powers as well. Neither of that is necessarily true. You also assume that all the actors in a given combat will be known a the beginning of the combat, allowing the players to optimally decide when to use their dailies. You also assume that dailies will always be effective as well, when we've seen examples like Sleep, where it has been less then stellar. You also assume that dailies do damage.
There's a whole bag full of assumptions there and none of them are really rooted in any concrete examples.
