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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MrMyth" data-source="post: 5425308" data-attributes="member: 61155">In another thread, the discussion came up that the new version of Magic Missile was simply better than any other single-target wizard At-Wills, and the Mage getting it for free was a substantial boost to their power level. Ironically, when we originally saw the new form of the MM, I had found myself defending it as 'not useless', yet now find myself on the other side of the argument - that while a decent power, it is on par with most other At-Wills.  I'm splitting this off from the <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-discussion/299148-ive-managed-avoid-essentials-until-now.html" target="_blank">other thread</a>, since it was a pretty significant tangent from the main point. Those who find the math meaningless or the debate pointless can feel free to ignore this thread. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Now then, on the actual discussion... Just to be clear, here are the claims which I am disputing:    Just to be clear, I do think MM is useful, and certainly versatile. It comes in handy in some very specific situations - when a character is at penalties to hit, or weakened, or the enemy is out of range of other options. In those cases, the mage does have an edge.  Most of the time, Magic Missile will provide around the same average damage as most other At-Will powers, and thus be of around equal use for the simple goal of 'eliminating enemies'. Unless you can know for sure that an enemy's hp are in low-mid single digits (which is pretty hard to do), then MM is just as good a choice - but no better - than most other At-Wills.  In other situations - such as when you have bonuses to hit or damage - Magic Missile begins to fall behind. The more optimized - or even just higher level - a character gets, the less effective MM will be in terms of raw damage, compared to other options.   Well, yes, that was generally my point. With the same average damage, they are usually of the same benefit in terms of simply dealing damage. In some specific scenarios one or the other will be more useful, but there is rarely any guarantee you'll know which before the dice are rolled.  Sometimes you will miss with Phantom Bolt several times in a roll, and would have been better off chipping away with MM. Other times, you'll hit twice in a row, and save two actions you would have instead spent on MM. Neither of these examples proves one At-Will better than the other.   The thing is, again, some numbers are better for MM, some are worse. It's easy to say "MM wins when the foe has 14 hp" while ignoring that it is less useful if the opponent has 15 hp, and it takes 3 MM to kill the foe. What about at 8 hp, where the At-Will's edge in potential damage is more significant?  But let's look at your numbers again. I'm not sure why you assume the cleric has a 0% chance of kill an enemy in one shot, but otherwise the math is right. The MM team had a 55% chance to kill the enemy in 2 actions, or a 45% chance to kill the enemy in 3. Correcting for the cleric's chance to kill, the other team has: a 25.6% chance to kill in 1 action, a 25.9% chance to kill in 2 actions, a 22.8% chance to kill in 3 actions, an 11.4% chance to kill in 4 actions, a 7.6% chance to kill in 5 actions and a 3.4% chance to kill in 6 actions (and a few more diminishing returns in later rounds). Now, the question becomes, is that 1/4 chance of it taking 4+ rounds worth the 1/4 chance of it only taking one attack?  Well, maybe yes, maybe no. But the fact those odds are so close is my point - the advantages and disadvantages are about the same. MM isn't automatically the better choice. By those numbers, on average, MM will kill in 2.45 rounds, and another At-Will will kill in ~2.75 rounds. MM has the slight advantage - for 11 hitpoints. If we run the numbers for an enemy with 10 hp, the numbers draw close to even. If the enemy has only 8 hp, other At-Wills pull ahead... ...but, worth noting, the difference between all these choices is relatively small. And that's my main point - they all come out pretty close to even. Using Phantom Bolt instead of MM isn't a mistake, and the Wizard without MM isn't any worse off than the Mage who gets it for free.   I got the sense, for the most part, that your argument wasn't "MM has the most DPR", and more "enemies regularly end up in the range where MM's reliability is more important than the extra damage of At-Wills". If you are trying to claim that MM is the best because it wins the DPR race... then I think I have to disagree even more.  Yes, at level 1, with no bonuses at all, MM has a higher average damage. But it takes so little to shift that difference. Combat Advantage alone brings the DPR basically even. You mentioned earlier Gauntlets of Blood and Arcane Reserves - just one of those basically brings the damage even, and both of them lets other options pull ahead.   Again, the point isn't that using MM is useless - just that it isn't any better than other options.  In this scenario, you set up successfully another foe to kill. But as we showed earlier, that comes out about even to attacking it normally instead, and having a chance to kill it outright.  Sometimes the enemy will be at the hp where MM is the better choice. Sometimes the enemy will be at the hp where a different At-will is the better choice. You don't generally know, beforehand, if the enemy is at 8 hp or 11 hp. Honestly, it's hard to tell if it is at 6 hp or 19 hp.   "Best choice", again, is the problem here. We've shown that for enemies who aren't in 'instant-kill' range, it is essentially the same as using any other At-Will. (At least for characters without combat advantage or any extra bonuses to hit or damage, who are better off with other At-Wills).  For enemies that it will kill instantly, yes, it is the best choice. But you just don't know that accurately if enemies are in that range, and enemies staggering around in isolation at single digit hp, in my experience, is not something so common as to happen one in every three rounds.  Is having it, for free, a benefit? Sure. But not a huge one, and a low-level Mage who never casts Magic Missile at all will be almost exactly as effective as one who casts it multiple times every encounter.</blockquote>

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