Is Painful Oath Too Painful?

[cignus_pfaccari]

The typical complaint from people looking at avengers is that they don't do enough damage. I disagree, but, hey, Painful Oath gives them a nice bump you'd be silly to pass up.

Based on my experience, they do. The (suboptimally-built) ranger outdamages my pursuit avenger.

The avenger hits about 50% more often or so, but the hits do significantly less damage per hit, more than enough that their damage output winds up being relatively low. Yes, they have extra-damage abilities, but those are either fairly low-output (Unity) or occur at the DM's whim (Pursuit and Retribution).

Painful Oath gets their damage back up to where it's actually competitive and/or respectable.

The best part is referring to the extra damage as being gamma radiation (being both radiant and necrotic).

Brad

 

[sigfile]

The paragon-tier avengers I've seen in play (all two of them) have been crit-happy monsters. When one out of four attacks results in max damage + an extra 2d12 brutal 2 + a free basic attack + 10 ongoing, it's hard for me to say "Yeah, they really needed that bonus damage feat."

YMMV, of course.

 

[Black Knight Irios]

The paragon-tier avengers I've seen in play (all two of them) have been crit-happy monsters. When one out of four attacks results in max damage + an extra 2d12 brutal 2 + a free basic attack + 10 ongoing, it's hard for me to say "Yeah, they really needed that bonus damage feat."

YMMV, of course.

Just b/c you have seen two probably well made avengers doesn't mean that all avengers deal a boat load of damage. If you played in a party with CharOp players you would probably conclude that all classes are broken whatever.

For an average player it's nice to have a simple damage boost w/o needing to know every little bit about his class and options or resort to the concept of the crit fisher.

For your crit mongers it's just icing on the cake.

 

[sigfile]

CharOPers? Nah. Jagged weapons and the "crit a lot" paragon path are just really attractive options for a class that gets two opportunities to crit a round.

I just figure that frequent bonus crit damage needs to be factored in when comparing avengers to other strikers.

 

[Black Knight Irios]

CharOPers? Nah. Jagged weapons and the "crit a lot" paragon path are just really attractive options for a class that gets two opportunities to crit a round.

I just figure that frequent bonus crit damage needs to be factored in when comparing avengers to other strikers.

Both the Jagged weapon enchantment and a PP clearly are paragon tier "features". What do you tell the avengers at lvl1-10? True, painful oath is a paragon feat as well - so that doesn't change anything for the heroic tier.

Still many other builds as opposed to a class (avenger) start to work with their full power beginning /w paragon tier and some mid-paragon tier.

Nowadays many classes get feats for dealing more damage why should avengers be excluded. Even with this upgrade I think they still can't rival the multi-attacking rangers.

Therefore, I fail to see the OPness of painful oath.

 

[TarionzCousin]

CharOPers? Nah. Jagged weapons and the "crit a lot" paragon path are just really attractive options for a class that gets two opportunities to crit a round.

I just figure that frequent bonus crit damage needs to be factored in when comparing avengers to other strikers.

The Warlock Student of Caiphon PP that allowed radiant attacks to crit on 18-20 was nerfed in the Dragon Compendium. Now it only works on Warlock powers.

There are still other factors that enable an avenger to crit on a 19-20 though: jagged weapon, Cleric PP radiant servant, loaded dice, etc.

 

[sigfile]

One was a SoC. The other (now both, I think) is an Ardent Champion. With a Jagged Weapon, an Ardent Champion crits on a 19-20 and when they roll doubles on the d20 attack dice. At level 16, they get a free basic attack once/round when they crit.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

One was a SoC. The other (now both, I think) is an Ardent Champion. With a Jagged Weapon, an Ardent Champion crits on a 19-20 and when they roll doubles on the d20 attack dice. At level 16, they get a free basic attack once/round when they crit.

This also depends on the avenger player's luck.

I think I've rolled doubles that would hit on Oath attacks maybe 3x in my avenger's lifetime. I also had a disturbing habit of rolling 19-20 less than 10% of the time.

Brad

 

[Stalker0]

The paragon-tier avengers I've seen in play (all two of them) have been crit-happy monsters. When one out of four attacks results in max damage + an extra 2d12 brutal 2 + a free basic attack + 10 ongoing, it's hard for me to say "Yeah, they really needed that bonus damage feat."

YMMV, of course.

I'll agree with this. Now I will say that the bow ranger still takes the cake for as far as strikers, so I don't even include them in the discussion.

I have seen rogues and avengers in my game, and the avenger seems better overall to me. They do great crit damage, have some wonderful dailies, and are a lot tougher than the rogue.

 

[Samir]

Avengers were pretty lackluster in Paragon/Epic tiers until D382 came out. Now, with Painful Oath, they're probably pretty close to Rogue DPR.

So no, in the hands of an Avenger it's not overpowered; it just lets Avengers catch up to other strikers where they're lagging the most, in Paragon.