Is Painful Oath Too Painful?

[Black Knight Irios]

Well, Marked Scourge is a secondary stat, for one, where as Oath is not.

I think the errata changes over the past year have shown that primary stats boosting attacks or damage are too powerful. I would think this is true of Painful Oath. Secondary stats are far more balanced.

Also add in the radiant, the most common vulnerability in the game. Scourge is just damage.

MS uses a secondary ability but if you are a STR/WIS Fighter they are either identical or a +1 apart. Not a big deal.

PO adds the radiant keyword which in turn allows some other things to work but the raw damage added is roughly the same as MS adds.

Lots of good discussion here regarding question 1A.

Not so much regarding question 1B.

Take the feat!


Back to avenger's are still weak or are on par with the other strikers now.
To be honest I haven't seen many avenger builds at WotC CharOp that claimed outrageous DPR. OTOH, I have seen rangers, rogues, dual wielding fighters, barbarians and who knows what else. Some of those builds are no longer viable or were nerfed some time ago. To conclude this arguement I would want to see some hard evidence. Like (at least) 3 different melee builds for each melee striker class. With at-will dpr calculated at lvl1/6/12/16/24/30 and additional infos like nova turn, build strenghts and weaknesses. ATM we are talking about what we guesstimate is going on which is not a very solid base for deciding wether class x is fine or not.

 

[Budalic]

So... did you just say that 3 feats for +1 attack and +5 damage is equivalent to one feat for +5-6 damage?

First it's +2 attack and +5 damage.

Second, it is better when you have, on average, 3 attacks per round

Third, it isn't my point. My point was that Ranger is better isolationist than Avenger, at least damagewise (And if you are at least 2 sq from nearest melee party member, than control aspect doesn't matter that much).

If 5 damage per hit is what it takes to bring an avenger up to the average striker's damage level, then he's not exactly tickling his foe while he's got him isolated.

The CharOp board lists standard, non-optimized, striker DPR as 20/40/60 (per tier). That's about 12.5% at the start of paragon, assuming starting 18 wis. And the precentage is slowly increasing towards lvl 30.

It's standard for powers to trade raw damage for crowd-control power. The avenger just has that built in to the base class.

If we follow your line of logic, then any power that trades damage for limiting a foe is a tactic that doesn't work, and I don't really think that's true.

Damage is only thing that ends fights. Crowd control has 2 functions: 1) Increasing damage from your party and 2) decreasing damage your enemies deal. Avenger with low DPR doesn't do either efficiently.

Only viable tactic for that kind of avenger is taking elites or high level enemies out of fight. So, if you face a single powerful enemy with some weaker ones almost all the time, than it pays of. Still, controllers can do that better.

So yes, Avenger needs to do damage and actually is still a bit below par. However, Avenger will be the best striker in Radiant Mafia group, so it's OK. Warlock and Assasin nead buffing more, anyway.

Sorry for my bad english, not my native language.

 

[TarionzCousin]

The CharOp board lists standard, non-optimized, striker DPR as 20/40/60 (per tier).

Do you have a link to this?

Sorry for my bad english, not my native language.

No problem. Where are you from?

 

[Aulirophile]

Damage is only thing that ends fights.

+46 (70-75 with self-buffs) to intimidate while inflicting -8 to will says otherwise. Intimidatomancers are to be feared!

 

[Saeviomagy]

First it's +2 attack and +5 damage.

I thought you were increasing an existing hit bonus by 1 point, isn't that right?

Second, it is better when you have, on average, 3 attacks per round

Yeah, well that's a big issue with multiattacks and damage boosting feats and items across the entire game. It pretty much is the source of all the striker imbalances that exist.

The CharOp board lists standard, non-optimized, striker DPR as 20/40/60 (per tier). That's about 12.5% at the start of paragon, assuming starting 18 wis. And the precentage is slowly increasing towards lvl 30.

Dropping 12.5% damage to gain somewhere in that vicinity in hitpoints seems reasonable. And if the isolation element is subverted, that usually means the avenger gets a damage boost to compensate.

Damage is only thing that ends fights. Crowd control has 2 functions: 1) Increasing damage from your party and 2) decreasing damage your enemies deal. Avenger with low DPR doesn't do either efficiently.

12.5% less damage is far from "low" dpr. Across what's supposed to be a normal fight, it's half a round's damage.

Only viable tactic for that kind of avenger is taking elites or high level enemies out of fight. So, if you face a single powerful enemy with some weaker ones almost all the time, than it pays of. Still, controllers can do that better.

This is really a matter of party composition: sure the controller can use single target status effects to nullify a foe... but then who's taking care of the horde? Or vice versa.

And it doesn't have to be elites or high level enemies: it can be any foe that might have a disproportionately high effect on a battle, which is a situation that happens in every single fight ever (with the possible exception of a fight against homogenous foes in an open field, and even then you're likely to find the situation occurring).

 

[TarionzCousin]

This thread is churning along fine without my adding something to it, but I'm going to do it anyway.

The best thing about playing an Avenger* is getting to roll two d20's for every attack vs. my OoE target. Not missing with a Daily Power every single time! is worth doing less damage overall.

*Besides having a room at the mansion and often seeing Scarlet Witch in her pajamas.

 

[Budalic]

Well, I'll try to respond to a lot of things here, so:

Do you have a link to this?

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Look under Baseline DPR guide section. Note that second set of numbers is for optimised builds.

Also note that higly cheesy Twin Striking Dilettante Crit-fishing Avenger is right behind Arcane Slashers in terms of DPR at level 30. But only at high-epic.

As for Radiant Mafia, I saw that term couple of times at CharOp boards. Search there, it should be a group build.

No problem. Where are you from?

Bosnia and Herzegovina.

I thought you were increasing an existing hit bonus by 1 point, isn't that right?

No, since normal Prime Shot doesn't work with melee powers.

Dropping 12.5% damage to gain somewhere in that vicinity in hitpoints seems reasonable. And if the isolation element is subverted, that usually means the avenger gets a damage boost to compensate.

Avenger looses OoE when he/she gains damage boost, tough. And Barbarian has similar HP, yet a lot better DPR. The same goes for isolationist ranger.

This is really a matter of party composition: sure the controller can use single target status effects to nullify a foe... but then who's taking care of the horde? Or vice versa.

Avenger also can't deal with horde, and some strikers have both better DPR and control than avenger, like rogue.

And it doesn't have to be elites or high level enemies: it can be any foe that might have a disproportionately high effect on a battle, which is a situation that happens in every single fight ever (with the possible exception of a fight against homogenous foes in an open field, and even then you're likely to find the situation occurring).

Yes, but is that situation worth the DPR loss? IMO, not.

I'm not trying to point out that avengers are bad class, only that most other strikers are (or were, before painful oath) better. The designers obviously feared that the roll twice mechanic would be too powerful, so they severely limited damage of Avengers encounter and daily powers EDIT: and at will damage, too (Just compare Avenger and Barbarian). So, Painful Oath lets them catch up for the cost of a feat tax.

And finally, like Saeviomagy points out, the difference isn't great. It's the 4e after all, and no character is useless. Still, I think that Painful Oath is too yummy to pass it.

 

[Aulirophile]

No, since normal Prime Shot doesn't work with melee powers..

Assuming you guys are discussing Prime Punisher... yes it does.

 

[Samir]

Assuming you guys are discussing Prime Punisher... yes it does.

"Normal Prime Shot," by definition, doesn't include Prime Punisher. Normal Prime Shot doesn't grant you a +1 attack in melee.

Thus, you spend 1 feat to get +1 attack (Prime Punisher), 1 feat to get another +1 (Prime Quarry), and 1 more feat to get +5 damage (Called Shot), for a total of 3 feats for +2 attack and +5 damage.

I think most of Budalic's points are spot-on. A rogue will have equivalent defenses, better DPR (before Painful Oath), and much, much better control elements. Where Avengers are sliding and teleporting targets around on a regular basis, Rogues are dazing and stunning them.

I think the errata changes over the past year have shown that primary stats boosting attacks or damage are too powerful. I would think this is true of Painful Oath. Secondary stats are far more balanced.

The errata changes have shown that primary stats boosting attack are too powerful, and these have been nerfed. I don't recall any once-per-round damage-boosting feats being nerfed.

Also, for the majority of characters, their secondary stat ability mods are the same or 1 less than their primary.

 

[Budalic]

The errata changes have shown that primary stats boosting attack are too powerful, and these have been nerfed. I don't recall any once-per-round damage-boosting feats being nerfed.

Also, for the majority of characters, their secondary stat ability mods are the same or 1 less than their primary.

I think that main problem are feats like Slashing Storm and Marked Scourge. Prior to Dual Strike and Marked Scourge nerf, fighter (defender) could have DPR comparable to Ranger.

Why did the designers decide to publish Slashing Storm? + Wis to damage on two best and most suported classes? Sounds insane.

Incidentally, that makes fighter multiclass even sweeter for Avenger, as if things like Rain of Steel weren't good enough.