List of Broken Powers

[Wednesday Boy]

...the original version of GotG...

What is GotG? ("Geturn of the Gedi"?)

 

[Destil]

What is GotG? ("Geturn of the Gedi"?)

Grasp of the Grave.

 

[Puggins]

Moment of Glory trumps Astral Condemnation for general utility in a big way.

Send your 4-man level 3 party against 5 4th level orcs and astral condemnation will produce a modest advantage that will mitigate less than 20% of the damage against the party. Moment of Glory, on the other hand, would push that encounter well into the trivial range.

Basically, moment of glory works as a win button in any daily mix of encounters (including against solos, where it mitigates a hefty percentage of the damage that astral condemnation does), while astral condemnation really only becomes way-powerful against sparsely supported solos and elites.

 

[Dausuul]

Eh, I've never been a huge fan of 'enemies only' damage, especially for zones. That was what was wrong with the original version of GotG as well, and notice they did errata that. Party friendliness can be OK for low damage AoEs, it gives the character a way to avoid friendly fire at the cost of a bit of damage. When applied to zones though it just seems like tactical training wheels to me. Especially when the power in question does high damage. Seems kind of useless to complain about though, I think the design philosophy has basically shifted to "lets not make the players actually work out good tactics so they can use this stuff, lets just make it enemies only" which I think sucks.

I like the approach where divine magic discriminates between friend and foe, while arcane magic doesn't. That seemed to be a theme at the start of 4E, but they may be drifting away from it.

 

[Mapache]

Okay, what about Fountain of Flame (Wizard Daily 1), 3d8 damage and creates a damaging zone that lasts until the end of the encounter. Now, I can deal with the damage and zone, but its ENEMIES ONLY damage!

Seriously? It's a 3x3 non-movable zone. Just stay out of it, or move through it once and suck up the flat five damage if you have to. Flaming Sphere is way better because it's mobile and has a damage roll, even though it hits allies too.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I actually think Luring Strike (Swordmage lvl 1 At-Will) is broken the other way. Getting to shift 2 squares is no reason for it to be a (W) only power.

Another one power that is underpowered is Staggering Smite (Paladin Encounter lvl 3) The first level Divine Pursuit is better than this power as it targets Fortitude instead of AC and the Paladin gets to shift next to the target after the push.

I am starting to think that we won't see these powers being fixed anytime soon. I have an itching suspicion that WotC is no longer supporting anything that isn't Essentials. Everything we have seen lately has either been wholly Essentials or just been giving lip service to the cClasses.

I have rarely seen WOTC bother to fix weak powers, and I am good with that. If it is weak, I jsut ignore it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Chocolate Mousse loves enemy-only damage:

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I like the approach where divine magic discriminates between friend and foe, while arcane magic doesn't. That seemed to be a theme at the start of 4E, but they may be drifting away from it.

Yeah, that seems to be true. I guess with enough new powers getting tossed out there month by month it is inevitable that the lines will blur eventually. I think at this point even a wizard or sorc can pretty well find party friendly powers for most slots. They may not all be the best choices, but so it goes.

 

[KarinsDad]

I actually think Luring Strike (Swordmage lvl 1 At-Will) is broken the other way. Getting to shift 2 squares is no reason for it to be a (W) only power.

Another one power that is underpowered is Staggering Smite (Paladin Encounter lvl 3) The first level Divine Pursuit is better than this power as it targets Fortitude instead of AC and the Paladin gets to shift next to the target after the push.

Nearly all first level At Will powers are the equivalent of a MBA or RBA plus some minor extra effect. Luring Strike is more or less identical to the Fighter's Footwork Lure.


And Staggering Strike is more likely to hit than the same level Call to Arms which requires 2 slightly easier hits to do 2W damage.

These are nowhere near underpowered powers. They're pretty average.

Are they the best powers at those levels? Probably not. But, they don't totally suck either.


Staggering Strike is less useful than Divine Pursuit, but I would opine that Divine Pursuit is a bit overpowered for its level, not that Staggering Strike is underpowered. I think it would be better if the levels of those two powers were switched, not that the powers themselves need any changing.

In other words, if WotC had not added Divine Pursuit to the game at all, nobody would be saying that Staggering Strike was underpowered.

One other thing to note is that Divine Pursuit was added in Divine Powers and Staggering Strike is from the PHB. WotC is notorious for adding bigger, better, badder powers in splat books. This is just a more egregious and noticeable example of it.

 

[Pseudonym]

Seriously? It's a 3x3 non-movable zone. Just stay out of it, or move through it once and suck up the flat five damage if you have to. Flaming Sphere is way better because it's mobile and has a damage roll, even though it hits allies too.

In and of itself, its nice but not an encounter breaker. The one time I recall it coming close to that description was in an Encounters session when the zone was coupled with two knights using Hammer Hands to keep pushing people in to the zone, but that's more of a situational thing than a flaw in the power itself.