If I eliminate minions, what extra should I give controllers?

[Plane Sailing]

The at-will cantrips are alot of fun, even in battle.

I would love to play a wizard myself mostly to see what I could do with the cantrips - I agree that they seem like a lot of fun, although they depend a bit on imagination of the user (which might be this chaps problem - lack of inspiration about how to use them).

And with spells like Flaming Sphere, I really do pack a punch when I need to.

The sustainable dailies are the only wizard spells that seem to have some real oomph to them.

I also strongly recommend picking up a Mnemoinc Staff from the Adventurer's Vault. It lets you swap prepared spells for a different spell in your book. This has made a huge difference for me in playing my wizard, as now I can often pull out just the right spell for the situation.

Don't use adventurers vault, but I wonder how wizards would fare if they were just allowed to have access to either of their two daily attacks at any power level? Rather than allowing them to prepare one or the other, just let them choose at the point of need? That would give the wizards more versatility than the other classes, but probably not too much considering the generally lower effectiveness they have...

Also, I've amassed a large collection of rituals, which have at times been very useful.

Rituals are the big disappointment in the PHB. They should have stacked it with a lot more rituals of all kinds (especially at the lower levels). Plus wizards should get a ritual every odd level rather than two every 5 levels.

It might be interesting to allow wizards to cast a ritual in combat by expending a healing surge along with making the check (and possibly making the check itself more difficult)

Cheers

 

[mischa84]

I know what your problem is: A bunch of minions that get killed with one single action. Thats not what they're supposed to do. They are supposed to fill the battlegrid and hamper PC's movement. To flank PC and give the other monsters combat advantage.
But somehow it ends very bad because they're hanging around in bunches with a sign: AOE here!

Like last week when my Eladrin wizard noticed those nice guys held someone captive. (I got to say: before that session i waited always for the right time to use my daylies (that never came) so i wanted to make a move.)
So my Eladrin Wizard used his Action Point to call his Freezing Cloud. I didn't know that I aimed at 3 Minions.

I don't have that much experience with minions in 4e but it seems minions should be placed carefully. Don't group them! Even if a minion is cherishly devoted to your main NPC don't let it sit too close.
The best place to avoid AOE is between enemys.
This sounds a little bit crazy but my group would kill me if i think about friendly fire. (Perhaps because i have a magic Staff (+1) and +4 Intmod and they didn't care too much about Fortitude and Reflex?)

This said I would answer your question with: If you really want to play no more minions give your Wizards additional effects or pump up the damage-dies. This would make him a little more striker if you need one.

 

[burntgerbil]

Make More Utilities !

Honestly, I feel like with or without minions, the Wizard needs about twice the available utility spells to truly feel "Wizardy". These would be like dailies, in that he can "book" two of them, except the wizard cast both. I think that getting two useful utilities at 2nd, 4th 6th and so on, the wizard would have a lot more mobility and control over the battlefield.

So much of 4e's wizard is tied up in damage, that his cool non-damaging effects are really not present. Understandably, they probably overcompensated for the flying, teleporting, scrying death bringer. But I would love to see more use of effects like 3.5's PHB2's Regroup and Rock to Mud.


EDIT : Also, so much of older editions reliance on wizards was in the ways that they could rescue the party or cleverly solve a riddle or trap or provide a diversion - something with no set mechanics that relied on smart players and DM's and their understanding of eachother. There is little design space for this in 4e - you can do it all by skill challenges.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I don't have that much experience with minions in 4e

I've decided that minions after 4th level are not much more than over-valued free xp in a combat. As soon as auto-kill powers become available they are just toast.

I just use normal creatures, elites and solos for everything.

 

[burntgerbil]

I meant to clarify by saying that wizards should have twice as many utilities as normal people do - so at 30th lvl they have something like 16 / day.

I have found minions to be useful in very few encounters. One example of where they shone was a Kruthik lair. There was a hive lord, 4 adults and 24 hatchlings(Minions). They only seem to be useful in gross overestimates of the book's guidelines for them. And then in those numbers, they could be too much of a challenge for the party.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

In our Thunderspire campaign the wizard is still the pre-eminent damage dealer.

She rarely drops anything on her own, but what she does do is make it possible for the strikers to drop things on their own.

Hitting two or three guys for fifeteen damage a round lets the controllers do their job much more effeciently.

On the other hand, I've found Thunderspire to be so - hmmm - grindy that I've allowed dailies to refresh every milestone. That the wizard feels free to use the reliable dailies makes things much better for her.

So... maybe let the Wizard take a feat that let's him spend an action point to refresh a daily from his spell book during a short rest?

 

[yesnomu]

I think we will have to wait for Arcane Power.

I'd be disappointed if it won't have updated (and upgraded) Wizard powers.

I certainly hope it won't just have more and better powers - I specifically hope it will have new, improved, versions of the powers the class' already got.

Prepare to be disappointed, I'd be very surprised if they changed existing powers in AP. That's what errata's for.

To the OP: I think the minion-clearing-only aspect is exaggerated, but you might consider adding small status effects into the pure damage spells if you don't use any. Like Scorching Burst doing Dex extra damage if hit enemies move without shifting, or Shock Sphere slowing the main target. Small boosts like that.

 

[Wraith Form]

I don't have that much experience with minions in 4e but it seems minions should be placed carefully. Don't group them!

Many of the minions I've seen get bonuses when they're within 'x range' of each other, often adjacent. So to be more effective, they have to group.

 

[Quartz]

However, I've noticed many people theorising that 'minion clearing' is one of the big roles of the wizard as controller.

What about all those monsters such as the Goblin shaman which have 'divert attack to X' powers? Perfect for minions. Think of all the times in films when a character grabs another and uses the other to take the incoming attack. That's a minion biting the dust.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, at the risk of restarting all the debates about tough minions there is a lot of support for a 'tough minion' rule. The way I do it is just assign a "toughness" factor to minions. Damage below that only bloodies them, but once they are bloodied, the next hit always kills. Thwarts cheap minion clearing, but doesn't make the minions very much stronger. Once in a while a melee guy will only bloody one, but if you give them say around 10 toughness at lower levels it works pretty good.

To be honest the other issues people have with wizards seem to me to be more a combination of perceptions based on other game systems and older editions of D&D. Wizards WERE the premiere super flexible character for sure. It is less true now. Other people seem to be fixated on the fact that the wizard isn't "enough of a controller".

My answer is "so what"? It is what it is. In odd/1e/2e fighters did nothing but swing a sword, they had basically no other abilities AT ALL, yet people rarely complained. As for what other games do, it just isn't relevant. If it isn't fun for you, then you SHOULD change it, but a reset of expectations is perhaps in order. All 4e classes are nearly equal, you don't get to be the prima donna as a wizard anymore...