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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5432306" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, KD, obviously we have different tactical analysis of the situation. I disagree with your numbers. You say the -2 does little, mainly because it doesn't come up much, but any "doesn't come up much" argument cuts both ways. Tactical advantage is made up mostly of small little incremental advantages and I'd also point out that at low heroic where this kind of thing matters at all it will be more significant since you WILL be using at-wills all but one or two rounds per fight. In a 6 round fight at 4th level you have 2 encounter powers, that's it. Maybe you pop your daily and that makes 3 non-at-will power uses. So you WILL be making 3-4 at-will attacks in each of those encounters at that level (say 7 encounters). Some encounters will go more than 6 rounds too. I'd say you generally make 30 at-will attacks per level, declining to maybe 20 at low paragon. If one in 10 of those is able to foil an attack due to a -2, that's 2-3 times per level right there. If the added control effect will stop an attack even ONCE every 10 uses, which I think is quite low, you will again save 2-3 attacks per level. That's significant. Lets put this in perspective, if a character gets attacked say 5 times per encounter vs AC a +1 AC is only going to help 1 time in 4 encounters. So by your measure it is basically worthless. I don't think there is anyone out there who would leave a +1 AC lying on the table. Not unless they got something reasonably good for it. Again, it is small advantages that add up. 4e doesn't put giant hunks of meat on the table where you get huge benefits from any one thing and if you do it is usually considered broken.And with things like Storm Pillar, you really underestimate the utility. It isn't about dropping it to do damage. I mean that's great and all and it has utility in that respect, but the fact that you can block a square is actually pretty valuable. Remember, the damage is enemy-only AND it blocks a square. So I can drop it into a spot that prevents an enemy from flanking my ally ALMOST ANY TURN. Beyond that even in open terrain if I drop the thing in front of an advancing foe I can force him to go around it, and unless he wants to take a serious amount of damage he's going WAY around. That's excellent. It takes him 3 extra points of movement on a blank field to get around that, which makes it as good as slow. ANY amount of terrain at all, a couple of bits of difficult terrain, or dropping it at a corner the enemy has to go around makes it MUCH better than that. I don't need a corridor to use it effectively for control, that is a total myth. I hear all these 'marginal control' arguments about many at-wills, but the argument basically always amounts to 'on a blank map it doesn't do much in many situations', which is true, but it is also not nearly the typical situation.</blockquote>

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