How will superior implements work?

[rangda]

Except that the powers spellcasters are using were DESIGNED with that in mind. You're fixated on the size of damage dice and you aren't looking past that. Spellcasters are doing fine. They are quite effective. In fact I would say they were almost a bit on the high side on day 1, especially at higher levels where conditions and other effects still predominate over raw damage. Talk to people who are experienced at playing beyond 15th level and they'll gladly tell you the same thing I've observed, that wizard you don't think much of is suddenly a very bad dude you don't want to mess with.

Hmmm. Interesting. My experience in LFR and in two campaigns (one that ran to L11 and one that is currently at L14) and a few epic one shots contradicts your observations.

It's been my experience that the wizard is pretty gimp (playing one up through L11), largely because WotC has overvalued controller abilities and undervalued damage dealing. The most common wizard controller effect is to deny terrain to both sides of the battle which has had limited effectiveness in the modules I ran him in (H1-H3, some of P1). The controller role has been greatly devalued in the game because there are too many classes that do high damage (ranger, avenger, barbarian, storm sorcerer) and too many classes /w powers that assist the damage dealers in dealing catastrophic damage (bard, cleric, and others I'm sure we haven't tried yet).

As an example, consider the current L14 party I'm running through Scales of War:

Fighter /w ex-axe
Avenger /w fullblade
War Chanter Bard /w bastard sword (notice the trend)
Storm Sorcerer
"pacifist" Cleric

This party is capable of turning pretty much any of the boss fights into 2-3 round affairs (maybe 4 or 5 if they fight a dragon that manages to stun most of them for a round), and has been since they went paragon (go go War Chanter).

In the last boss fight (Telicanthus/Pennel from SoW 9) it went like this:

round 1 got into position

round 2 (death & destruction)

bard spends action point, party is now +CON hit/dam (5) until EoNT, uses a power that lets party do +CON damage party is now +5/+10
cleric uses Remorse hands baddies vulnerability 10 (party is now effectively +5/+20)
storm sorcerer uses primordial storm, action points for thunder leap, uses timeless lockett for 3rd attack with another random encounter power. Manages to roll a 1 once, but does 219hp damage to Pennel and 176 to Telicanthus (I remember those ugly numbers)
avenger attacks with CA using 4w daily with tempus channel divinity for +crit dice on hit, Pennel dies with massive overkill damage, action points to use random 3w daily on Telicanthus
Fighter uses (I think 2 encounters on Telicanthus, who has now gone from ~325 hp to 50 or so)

round 3 Telicanthus dies before he gets to go and it's time to clean up the 1-2 random monsters left.

This same group of players ran through a L25 one shot and managed to kill a ~1,000hp solo dragon in less than 3 rounds (bloodied him in round 1). With that sort of damage output dazing the monsters is useless, it makes more sense for the party to just take them out and not waste time on silly controller powers.

Now obviously they can't do this every fight but they have a huge can of whoop-ass in their pocket, and it's somewhat repeatable every other fight.

With this sort of combat compression ANY power that does not do damage is greatly devalued, and that genie is already out of the bottle if the party wants it. The only way to avoid it is to intentionally detune the party.

My experiences in LFR locally & at Gen-Con have echoed this, characters are generally pretty tuned for high damage output and combats get greatly compressed. I had a warden /w longsword at a recent LFR game and half of the table snickered.

As for implement users, I do think the warlock is way down on damage output, as a single target striker his damage needs to be much higher. The sorcerer as a single target striker lags a bit behind the melee strikers, but the storm sorcerer compares favorably as they do less damage to a single target but can do a more damage overall if they can make effective use of areas (donuts and growing the bursts/blasts help there). Wizard damage is gimp but it's not the role (IMO the controller role is currently broken and needs to be fixed as I stated above). Haven't played with the other PHB 2/3 implement users so cannot comment on those.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

At Epic level most any Wizard daily is an encounter winning power on its own. Having a GOOD wizard build will cut your resource utilization drastically. I really don't know about SOW and how its encounters are designed but really if they're anything like the modules WotC is publishing I think a better standard might be established. Maybe I'm a bit "different" as a DM, but I'll eat super high damage output parties for lunch in my games (and have regularly). If you can't establish dominance of the battlefield itself, you're in trouble...

In any case the whole thing essentially illustrates what I've been saying. Tossing more damage on top of existing damage bonuses devalues powers who's primary purpose is not dishing out damage. Even if you believe implement users are behind it is bad game design to dump a heap of extra damage on top of them. What's the point of having casters if their modus operandi is exactly the same as weapon users???!!! Come on guys. Think about it.

Now maybe this brings up a case for superior implements that have benefits that are NOT damage oriented. I don't know, my experience is high level wizards are pretty darn effective when used properly and warlocks are a lot less of a case of being gimped than they are a case of a lot of people don't seem to be able to build a good one because they ARE fixated with damage output and that's not the best path to a really effective warlock. Sorcerers by design blast things and I haven't seen one in action yet in my game (this week hopefully will have a new player bringing one in, should be interesting). Invokers I can't say a thing about yet.

 

[rangda]

At Epic level most any Wizard daily is an encounter winning power on its own.

Some of the epic wizard powers are indeed good, but making a class gimp for 20 levels to give it cool stuff for 10 is not good game design.

Having a GOOD wizard build will cut your resource utilization drastically.

This I totally disagree with. You cut resource allocation by reducing monster actions. Wizards reduce monster actions a bit, but not nearly as much as a minimaxed party just killing them. In my prior example the party took out ~600 hp spread across 2 boss monsters in ~2.25 rounds. Daze/immobilize/prone/slow (pretty much what a L14 wizard would have access to at that point) doesn't mean much when the monsters have been reduced to two actions each by pure damage output.

I really don't know about SOW and how its encounters are designed but really if they're anything like the modules WotC is publishing I think a better standard might be established.

Pretty similar to the published modules, which is to say they suck. (I've been VERY, VERY disappointed with SoW.) I totally agree with you that better combats can be designed. It's been my experience that encounters don't put pressure on a party until the number of nonminion monsters outnumbers the party by at least 40%, i.e. 7+ nonminions for a 5 person party. WotC instead prefers to have "scary" solos that get eaten up. However, to get these numbers with useful monsters you're looking at a fight that is at least +2 levels over the party, possibly +3. Hard to do every fight. (As an aside, War of the Burning Sky appears to get it as far as encounter design, their combats look much more challenging. But my party wants to finish SoW before I can run that.)

Maybe I'm a bit "different" as a DM, but I'll eat super high damage output parties for lunch in my games (and have regularly). If you can't establish dominance of the battlefield itself, you're in trouble...

Easy enough to do, toss several controllers at them in every fight. Monster controllers are far superior to PC controllers. Daze+prone, daze+immobilize, stun, use greens only, all make players lives miserable. The problem is that isn't FUN for the players (and having fun is the whole point); doing it once in a while is OK, doing it every fight is not. Dazing a player means far more than dazing a monster; dazing a monster means essentially nothing as they all get a good basic attack which they can still make, and few have minor action powers. Many PC classes, however, make extensive use of minors and some lack a good basic attack.

In any case the whole thing essentially illustrates what I've been saying. Tossing more damage on top of existing damage bonuses devalues powers who's primary purpose is not dishing out damage.

I totally agree with you, my point is I think it's too late. The powers have already been devalued to the point of near worthlessness IMO. That train has already left the station.

I've played pretty much nothing but wizards in D&D for 30 years, but I just haven't seen enough usefulness from the controller role to justify it in a tuned party (since the PHB2 has come out anyway).

IMO they need to give controllers some teeth; controllers should get restrained effects at high heroic instead of immobilized, there should be a paragon power that prevents monsters from using recharge powers, daze should be more common, area stun until EoNT should creep in at high paragon, area domination should be doable at low-mid epic, etc.

In terms of implements they should IMO work just like weapons. In 4.5/5.0 I'd like to see them reduce monster AC's by 2 across the board and make proficiency bonuses +0/+1, then you do the same thing with implements. And for damage they've got to either shrink the die range for [w] powers or make implement powers do and vary it for implements.

Our discussion on the usefulness of wizards aside, what everyone is complaining about in this thread (and I agree with them) is that caster powers are designed around the concept that [w] powers are doing d6/d8, maybe the odd d10 here or there. But the reality is that you're hard pressed to find a melee type that isn't on d10/d12 and high crit (and those extra dice really add up if you can get the crits). Even if the wizard is the most uber class in the game, that's not going to help out the warlocks and single target sorcerers of the world who should be on par damage wise with the melee strikers (rogues excepted) but aren't.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Its not even necessarily throwing controller monsters out there, its also a matter of having more depth to encounters than simple "kill them before they kill you". Not that simple straightforward encounters aren't fine, but they need to be mixed up with other stuff. More sophisticated encounters can easily demand that the party thwart some action the enemy can take NOW vs "we'll just beat them all to death in a couple rounds anyway so who cares".

I think overall the "issue" with 4e and melee attacks for damage vs controller type effects is you easily get into this arms race with the DM where the players tune their PCs to crank out more damage and the DM simply makes encounters with more tougher monsters. The WotC supplied adventures seem to feed right into that for the most part since they don't contain much else in the way of encounter design. The game, as I've discovered, plays pretty well and most of the problems people report don't surface much if the DM is creative enough to take things in a somewhat different direction. Make the players do things besides constantly attack all the time and increase difficulty that way. The problem is the very design of the game keeps pushing towards higher damage output because most everyone is caught in the arms race and that's what players think they need. It IS what they need apparently in the majority of games. In MY game though what I really don't want to see is every player eating that crack. It just doesn't make a better game.

 

[Felon]

In any case the whole thing essentially illustrates what I've been saying. Tossing more damage on top of existing damage bonuses devalues powers who's primary purpose is not dishing out damage. Even if you believe implement users are behind it is bad game design to dump a heap of extra damage on top of them. What's the point of having casters if their modus operandi is exactly the same as weapon users???!!! Come on guys. Think about it.

Don't kid yourself. Folks have thought about it plenty. In fact, we actually take a stab at qualifying our positions. Seriously, when I tell you that I've played a warlock and spent a year trying to find a way to make it do something impressive, and that doesn't happen to jibe with your passive observations with a 'lock in your group, you see fit to tell me that it's just a matter of me needing to pay attention to my damage output? Is it some kind of hubris that compels you to believe that your indirect familiarity with a warlock trumps someone else's firsthand experiences meticulously sifting through the character builder? Think about that.

"Modus operandi" is largely associated with "role" in 4e, and to its designers' credit, they seem to be pretty good at making different classes with the same role feel distinct from each other. As strikers, a ranger and a barbarian can both do a lot of damage, yet play differently. Giving a warlock a superior implement that increases its damage output to the superlative levels one expects of a striker doesn't suddenly make it ubiquitous. It just lets it meet a baseline that it's currently falling below. It still has the same schtick as before.

The only way to support the notion that implement-users already have their edge is to qualify what that edge is. So far, that hasn't been demonstrated, just asserted. The damage discrepency, OTOH, is readily demonstrable.

Now maybe this brings up a case for superior implements that have benefits that are NOT damage oriented. I don't know, my experience is high level wizards are pretty darn effective when used properly and warlocks are a lot less of a case of being gimped than they are a case of a lot of people don't seem to be able to build a good one because they ARE fixated with damage output and that's not the best path to a really effective warlock. Sorcerers by design blast things and I haven't seen one in action yet in my game (this week hopefully will have a new player bringing one in, should be interesting). Invokers I can't say a thing about yet.

The impression given here and in previous posts is that you draw conclusions about classes by watching what people play at your gaming table. If so, check out what Wikipedia says about inductive reasoning and see if you think this approach qualifies as a strong induction. Personally, I recommend spending quality time with the Character Builder. As skeptical as I was about it, it turned out to be a great investment for the purpose of character analysis. Of course, that's just a foundation. The next step is to experience it in play to see if it gels.

As to superior implements doing something other than extra damage, I'm open to the idea if it gives implements an edge over weapons, but the big problem is that damage bonuses are just so darn nice and incremental.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Don't kid yourself. Folks have thought about it plenty. In fact, we actually take a stab at qualifying our positions. Seriously, when I tell you that I've played a warlock and spent a year trying to find a way to make it do something impressive, and that doesn't happen to jibe with your passive observations with a 'lock in your group, you see fit to tell me that it's just a matter of me needing to pay attention to my damage output? Is it some kind of hubris that compels you to believe that your indirect familiarity with a warlock trumps someone else's firsthand experiences meticulously sifting through the character builder? Think about that.

"Modus operandi" is largely associated with "role" in 4e, and to its designers' credit, they seem to be pretty good at making different classes with the same role feel distinct from each other. As strikers, a ranger and a barbarian can both do a lot of damage, yet play differently. Giving a warlock a superior implement that increases its damage output to the superlative levels one expects of a striker doesn't suddenly make it ubiquitous. It just lets it meet a baseline that it's currently falling below. It still has the same schtick as before.

The only way to support the notion that implement-users already have their edge is to qualify what that edge is. So far, that hasn't been demonstrated, just asserted. The damage discrepency, OTOH, is readily demonstrable.


The impression given here and in previous posts is that you draw conclusions about classes by watching what people play at your gaming table. If so, check out what Wikipedia says about inductive reasoning and see if you think this approach qualifies as a strong induction. Personally, I recommend spending quality time with the Character Builder. As skeptical as I was about it, it turned out to be a great investment for the purpose of character analysis. Of course, that's just a foundation. The next step is to experience it in play to see if it gels.

As to superior implements doing something other than extra damage, I'm open to the idea if it gives implements an edge over weapons, but the big problem is that damage bonuses are just so darn nice and incremental.

Hey, whatever. Obviously you're just so totally superior in your knowledge of the game that I am a fool for daring to use my experience at the table DMing hundreds of sessions of 4e in the last year and a half as a basis for anything. Come off it. Differing opinions exist in the world and just because you have a perfectly legitimate claim to yours, which I have in no way denigrated, does not invalidate what others of us have seen. I mean how do you explain the lack of this issue in all the games I've run? Different styles of play obviously produce significantly different results. I could sit here and list a whole bunch of factors which I think are likely to explain that. All I ask for is that if you're going to analyze the game you consider all of that instead of taking your experience as the be all and end all, because it isn't.

And you are totally correct. Damage bonuses are the easy crack that every player will get addicted to when they get handed out like candy. Its the easy thing for WotC to just keep adding them to the game (requires very little effort or even actual understanding of how the game plays on their part). They're the easy thing for DMs to hand out. They don't improve the game as much, in my experience, as other things. I've found that those other things just basically amount to running a game that isn't damage focused. Its probably not the easiest game to run. Maybe it takes a DM with a certain style to do that. I don't know. I suspect it could be done by most DMs but it seems to be something the system subtly discourages (and less and less subtly when it throws in more and more high damage boosts).

I'm also not arguing that WotC hasn't favored giving more damage to weapon users since the game started. They have. It was better balanced at the start than it is now. I'm just not convinced its necessary to make the overall situation worse by piling on another round of them. Implement users are doing OK. Lets stop the craziness here and now. In any case its pretty much irrelevant what either one of us thinks about the matter, whatever is going to be released in PHB3 is going to come. Personally I just hope it ISN'T more damage boosts.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I must say that my own experience with wizards is significantly different from rangda's - I haven't played one, but in the group I've DM-ed from lvls. 1 to 6, the wizard usually dishes out as much damage as the striker (a 2 weapon ranger) and often as much as the rest of the group combined (the above ranger, a laser cleric, a taclord and a chaladin). Sure that damage is spread between a bunch of targets, but it allows the rest of the party to take them down in fewer hits and clears away those pesky minions which would otherwise be giving the main baddies combat advantage and the like. Certainly no one in my gaming group thinks the wizard is deficient in the damage dealing department - but that may in part be because we really aren't optimizers, and our ranger is the most casual player of the group and therefore lacks all the static boosts most strikers swear by.

More importantly IMHO is that the game I play in, we have seriously felt the lack of a controler - back when we were a starlock, a rogue, a strength cleric and a shield fighter, minions were a serious annoyance. Now that we have an invoker and I've swapped my starlock (which I was very diappointed in the mechanics of) for a chaos sorceror, things are running much more smoothly.

Now, this may be a case of YMMV, or it may be a case of different players/groups enjoying different things. Certainly I've had a different experience with the Starlock than described above - I for one think that the Warlock (even the Starlock) is really rather deficient as a striker, especially in comparison with the PH2 arcane strikers, which in many ways are better strikers AND controllers than warlocks are - my starlock certainly pales in comparision to my sorceror on both counts.