Doctor Proctor
First Post
I'm that way too. I play a Defender in one game, and a Sorcerer in another. With the Defender I'm constantly trying to learn the abilities of allies and monsters in order to set up beneficial situations and avoid potential pitfalls. With the Sorcerer, I've assembled a lot of abilities that go together in powerful combinations...such as my 1-2-3 Fortitude attacks (one reduces Fort by 2, the next by 6, and the last is a Fort hitting Daily that will finish the enemy off if need be) or the several abilities that create ongoing damage, and the Utility that increases all instances of ongoing damage by 10.
As for the OP though, I think you're being a bit short-sighted here. You keep talking about this scenario as if there's one monster and the Wizard in the encounter. Rarely will things be that simple...
With an imobile zone effect, whether or not it's SOT or EOT damage, you lose flexibility. What are you dropping the zone for? To protect an ally? What if the ally moves, or is forced to move? Or was it to keep monsters out of an area, like dropping a wall of fire in front of a hallway? What if they say "Screw it, let's just go in rather than stay here getting pelted by Twin Strike".
A mobile conjuration, of the type that Flaming Sphere represents, gives you a lot more options. Yes, the monster has to consider what the Wizard will do with it, but that's the point! If the monster stays put, he will suffer damage. If it moves, then it might suffer damage if the Wizard moves the sphere. But maybe the Wizard won't, in which case the monster might've moved to a poor position for no reason. But then again, maybe that's what the Wizard wants it to think... These are the sorts of mind games that a Controller should be engaged in.
Additionally, what does the ally situation look like? When my group played KotS we ended up combining the Iron Tooth encounter, which is BAAAAD if you haven't played it. Yet, we actually ended up defeating it pretty easily, mostly due to the Wizard's excellent use of Flaming Sphere. My Fighter had Blackiron armor (Resist 5 Fire/Necrotic) and we had a Tiefling (Resist 7 Fire at the time), which meant that the auto-damage for flaming sphere did very little to us. 1 or 2 damage a round usually.
The Tiefling and I pushed Iron Tooth into a wall, and the Wizard used his Flaming Sphere to stay adjacent to Iron Tooth and one of his lackeys, while also partially blocking a Hallway to keep other enemies from coming through (they couldn't get past the sphere and through our other allies without taking several OA's, and stopping to fight our allies on their way in would've led to taking auto-damage, which led to a lose-lose scenario for the DM in that situation).
Between two bodies (the Tiefling and I), the Sphere and my Mark, Iron Tooth was stuck and being subjected to a surprisingly large amount of damage each round. He went down pretty fast, and 90% of the reason was the control that the Sphere was offering...control which really wouldn't have been there with a simple zone damage effect.
