Major wizard upgrade

[keterys]

It's pretty easy to shift out of chilling cloud and not taking a penalty to attack, and vs. Will is often considered a benefit

 

[Destil]

This is what I posted on the Dungeon/Dragon errata thread for the topic:

Winged Horde is way too good. It's a reasonable difference at heroic, but once you can take Psychic Lock (since you can't admixture psychic) it's over the top.

To balance against scorching burst it should deal either 1d4 or Int damage. 1d4 lets you still use enlarge spell, which makes it just better than burst at paragon and about even in heroic. Int means you can't and they'd be on par, though Scorching Burst is a bit weak.

In the end I'd say Int damage is best, since it leaves the design space open for a (non-psychic) burst 1 dealing 1d4 that only hits opponents for mass minion sweeping with Enlarge Spell.

Hitting Will is an advantage too, but that's a problem with monster design, not this power.

 

[eamon]

It's pretty easy to shift out of chilling cloud and not taking a penalty to attack, and vs. Will is often considered a benefit

Fair enough. We have a wizard using chilling cloud; and it's a double edged sword: shifing out often means not respecting a defenders mark, and, of course, there's not always space, you may need to give up your flanking position, you may be immobilized, etc. It works OK, anyhow; and a will-targeting power that's basically the same but without the -2 penalty would be less attractive.

Psychic lock can make the version in the article a lot better; but then, lasting+frost+wintertouched can help chilling cloud.

Granted, the power in the article looks better - but not by a huge amount. I'd say it's the enemies-only line which should go; without it, it's powerful, but situational (and quite comparable to the invoker power), as-is, it's too good.

I'm not a huge fan of damage becoming stat-mod-only fixes: the problem with these is that they slow down the game and contribute to grind. Particularly if the effect is mostly defensive (i.e. OA prevention and possible a -2 to attacks). The wizard that picked chilling cloud in our campaign, for instance, did so at first level. I wonder if he would do the same at 15th, say... A certain amount of base damage per hit isn't a bad idea (it also makes the minion/non-minion difference a little less extremely noticeable).

In any case, we don't need another chilling cloud - that power already exists ;-).

 

[Destil]

After posting this what I really want is that 1d4 (no Int) enemies only burst 1 lightning damage at will vs. reflex. Arcing Lightning is one of the less generally useful energy kickers, but it's fantastic for spells that you're mostly expecting to kill minions with. You can enlarge spell it, and you can add thunder if you want a ranged burst 3 enemies only for paragon, which wold be pretty awesome.

Re: Removing enemies only. It's still better than scorching burst (no AO and psychic are both bonuses), which makes me unhappy, but the damage could then easily be 1d4+Int (as it stands I think the most damage it could have is 1d4 with no int bonus, but even that breaks at paragon).

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

I think that Winged Horde would be fine if it targeted all creatures in burst rather than enemies only. That it's unconditionally better than Scorching Burst even after this is a feature, not a bug.

WotC is starting to address the core problem of controllers: that they don't actually control, unless they use their encounters or dailies. IMO what they really need are at-wills that do little or no damage, and have real control effects.

 

[eamon]

After posting this what I really want is that 1d4 (no Int) enemies only burst 1 lightning damage at will vs. reflex. Arcing Lightning is one of the less generally useful energy kickers, but it's fantastic for spells that you're mostly expecting to kill minions with. You can enlarge spell it, and you can add thunder if you want a ranged burst 3 enemies only for paragon, which wold be pretty awesome.

Sure, but it's very minion-centric. I like minions, and this kind of power risks making them almost redundant.

Re: Removing enemies only. It's still better than scorching burst (no AO and psychic are both bonuses), which makes me unhappy, but the damage could then easily be 1d4+Int (as it stands I think the most damage it could have is 1d4 with no int bonus, but even that breaks at paragon).

I think scorching burst is acknowledged as a sub-par design. Compare, for instance, with the invoker's at-will. In any case, a new at-will doesn't necessarily need to be comparable to scorching burst, for me.