Blinding barrage is broken?
It's a daily, a rogue is a striker, it's not OP. My ranger single shots enemies each pop with a daily routinely. Spreading damage around is good and blinding enemies, but not THAT good. It's a daily, for frig's sake. Oh wait, I guess because essentials people don't have any it's not fair that o-classes can, you know, actually do something spectacular once a day.
Our DM never once complained that it was OP in the three years our rogue has been using it. In fact, I don't think he's even commented on it once, other than to flourish up some interesting fluff to give it some colour. That's what D&D is SUPPOSED to be like. Now it's just...whoah, these dudes are blind for a turn? Wow, colour me impressed. I'd rather two enemies were bloodied or two dead or one solo dead, because that's the way 4e works. Dead is the best condition. Blind? For a round? not so much. I bet 1/2 the rogues will retrain out of it. This is notwithstanding the fact that there will be some other new daily that will take its place, and the whole rat race of people calling it to be nerfed will start over again. Weeee, ain't it fun!! I DO like balance, but not more than picking effective powers and options to make my character viable at his job, heroic even. A rogue daily that essentially amounts to throwing dust in the eyes is something I could presumably do in real life, without any training whatsoever.
Yeah, real impressive for a "striker" daily there. And it's not with sand, it's with a throwing dagger he's hitting all those guys. In the eyes. Now it's only Dex damage? Puhleeeze.
As for Snarling Wolf Stance, I used it twice before it was nerfed, and my DM started to think, hmmm, yes this is quite possibly too good for a l5 daily considering how many MBAs it can generate. Thing is, post-nerf, it's not really that good. I retrained it out because I like dailies that kill stuff faster, not those that spread around damage. My task as a striker is to kill the high-value targets quickly, not parade around in the middle of melee screaming "hit me" with my immediate interrupt, which, by the way, is much better used with Disruptive Strike and so on. (I currently have three immediate action powers as a hybrid warlord).
I never disagreed that SWS needed to be reined in, I just thought it was underhanded and slimy for them to publish a book with the exact same errata for the EXACT same power, except the ranged version, less than a month after I spent good money on that book. Which, indidentally, has gathered dust on my shelf ever since. Let's save the rain forest a bit, and skip out on buying these pre-obsolete books, shall we? I don't like wanton waste, and that's what wizards does with their splat books. It's called pre-planned obsolescence in capitalism, look it up if you don't believe me. The only galling thing is the ridiculously low threshold on the half-life of these books that some of you appear to be willing to tolerate. I'm not.
As for your other comments Re : Balance. If two things are perfectly balanced, yes, there is homogeneity there. All things are not created equal, nor should they be. Part of what makes your character special is the combination of flavor vs effectiveness. Finding the right balance there is somewhat subjective, but there will always be more powerful options and unlike Mao, I don't believe in culling the best and brightest, keeping the best down for the sake of not offending the weak.
We have a player who plays a druid in our game, level 12, and hasn't even chosen a PP yet. He could barely care about the game, enough to read the links about optimizing his guy. Well, guess what, he plays the game and can't hit anything, and when he does, he barely does any damage and you can just tell it's not a fun experience for him.
Every time I've made a character for a new player, taking their suggestions or even just tweaking their stats and powers around a bit, they've come to realize I was right (all I did, really, was look up the ratings in the char op guides and pick ones that went along with the flavour and weapons desired). Optimizing implies there are stronger and weaker options. If there weren't, just give us pre-rolled characters and call the game Pokemon instead of D&D.
I actually enjoy picking up those combinations that merge well together but aren't eggregiously broken or begging for a house rule, because I want to play a game that works for all parties involved (including the DM). But being in a mixed party with characters who built their characters badly is...somewhat, well, annoying. It's like being teamed up at school with weak or fat kids in a group. I used to be the fat kid that nobody wanted to team with. Now I've fixed those problems and optimized myself. I don't see why I shouldn't wince when I see pathetic swordsmen get slaughtered, even more so when they team up with me and aren't pulling their weight. Yes, I am an elitist.
"The fields are littered with the corpses of middling swordsmen." -Octavian, Rome (HBO).
Easy for WotC to fix though, they just need to say 'Done. It may not be perfect, but it'll do'.
