poor rational for "updating" Magic Missile?

[Nifft]

I'm very interested to hear how a power that is an automatic hit never hits.

Please continue.

Because it never hits. The damage is an Effect, not a Hit.

Come over to the Whoops! Browser Settings Incompatible WotC CharOp forum if you have any more questions.

Cheers, -- N

 

[KarinsDad]

Hmm.

White Lotus Riposte is useless with the new Magic Missile, because the new MM never hits.

Again, you picked a feat that worked great with the old one, and it is useless with the new one.

The new one is clearly confusing even for people who "understand the game system" far better than lowly me, who was dumb enough to use the old version for 12 levels.

-- N

Good points.

No worries though.

They will errata Magic Missile to say: "Even though it is an effect, consider Magic Missile to be an automatic hit." or some such.

 

[Dungeoneer]

Because it never hits. The damage is an Effect, not a Hit.

So, if it doesn't hit, it must miss.

Therefore, it is useless for killing minions. That sucks.

The good news is that it's a great power if you're marked by someone, as it will never trigger their mark.

 

[ourchair]

Is, "we like it the old way" a good enough reason to change a rule that isn't "broken"? It seems to me that changing a rule "just because" can cause frustration with players.

I like the classic 'always hit' magic missile more, even if my experience with it is limited to videogame adaptations of 2e/3e D&D, but I agree with you 1000%, it's a piss poor set of reasoning.

To think that almost every piece applied to the ruleset has been applied with judicious balance in mind, this kind of reasoning basically says, "Well, okay not ALWAYS." and provides the kind of chink into their design ethos that lets more 4e haters pile on the hate. ("See, it's not balance! It's dumbing it down!")

 

[Nifft]

They will errata Magic Missile to say: "Even though it is an effect, consider Magic Missile to be an automatic hit." or some such.

Just like they errata'd Arcane Bolt, which was published months ago, right?

Good luck with that.

So, if it doesn't hit, it must miss.

That's entirely wrong. The power deals damage as an Effect. You can neither hit nor miss.

It's like being in an Aura. The Aura never hits, it never misses, yet it deals you damage every round.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Aulirophile]

I think people are overreacting to this change.

First of all, virtually nobody took the original 4E Magic Missile. The main reasons to take it were either someone who did not understand the game system, or someone who took a Human Wizard. Possibly.

So, who cares if they changed a power that virtually nobody took?

Now, it has a reason to be taken, especially in Heroic level. It's an auto-single minion kill. Automatically. It can be used to help whittle down a hard to hit foe. The Defender locks the foe down and the Wizard auto-damages it.

Magic Missile, at least at Heroic level, now has a meaning in life.

Now, combine it with White Lotus Riposte.

With an 18 starting Int, that's 10 automatic points per round against a foe attacking the Wizard. 10 auto-damage is a fairly strong incentive to attack anyone other than the Wizard at low level.

And there will be some long range encounters where the Wizard can auto-ping a foe from 20 squares away at the beginning of the encounter while everyone else who does not have a bow cannot.

Even the normal 6 points of damage at level one against a foe can be very useful to bloody a foe, or take a foe out when it is close to those boundaries.

There are some nice feats that work with this as well. Forceful Defense, Solid Sound, Inescapable Force.

And finally, even at higher levels, this is a power that is worth taking. At mid-Paragon and higher, most PCs should be using their 4 Encounter powers and even a single Daily power most encounters. That's 4 or 5 rounds before the At Wills have to be pulled out. By this point in an encounter, an auto-hit power will sometimes be more useful against foes that are nearly dead than a power that may or may not hit, even if it does almost 1.5 times as much average damage. It will be worth it to have one At Will that hits every time. Even if it does not kill a heavily wounded foe, it allows an ally to kill that foe with a single attack.


Personally, I think this is a smart move on the part of WotC. They finally gave Wizard players a reason to take Magic Missile.

All White Lotus Feats require a hit. New MM does not Hit (no auto-damage power ever hits). So that's out. A lot of the other stuff you mentioned doesn't work either.

 

[Marauder_POV]

I was going to retrain my bard out of magic missle(as the dillatante power) but using one of the later feats you can use your dillatante power as a basic attack with a power.

always hit ranged daily power anyone?

 

[OSEZNO]

So, if it doesn't hit, it must miss.

Therefore, it is useless for killing minions. That sucks.

The good news is that it's a great power if you're marked by someone, as it will never trigger their mark.

All of these are false.

It doesn't miss, it's an affect that doesn't require a roll to deal damage.
It still kills minions (attacks that miss never deal damage to a minion, this never misses.)
All PC marked target attack features would still be triggered if an enemy used MM and visa versa. (combat challenge, divine challenge, warden's fury, etc.) MM is still an attack, it has no attack roll and doesn't hit or miss, it deals its damage as an effect.

 

[Otterscrubber]

I was initially puzzled by this change as well, however, upon further thought I feel the new/old version more-or-less fits better with the controller aspect of the wizard class...

It is now a "minion-killer", and as mentioned above, sometimes it is exactly what is needed to remove an obstacle and clear a path for the strikers or the defenders

Well we have made a house rule in our campaign where we give minions 1hit per tier. Not a hit point, but a hit. My DM has ruled that if you do 30hp of damage that counts as 2 "hits". We did this as we felt it was kind of weak to have paragon level minions (like a cyclops) go down in a single hit. I personally think it should be 20hp damage makes 2 "hits", but oh well. So MM is not necesarily a minion killer in ours either, unless the minion has already been hit once.

But in any case I do find this troubling. I didn't mind when in 4e spellcasters now had to roll to hit, because at least with at-will powers they never ran out of them. Now they are changing their tune and not being consistent with their design. I seem to recall other caster classes had access to magic missile. Does this mean that warlocks and sorcerers will also have an auto-hit at will option? Perhaps the ranger at-will Careful shot should be a low damage auto-hit as well? This is going to open a door that will be hard to close and raise all sorts of question. I definitely think having a power that will never fail to hit changes a lot. Sure it doesn't do as much potential damage as before, but sometimes you need a hit to drop someone in a special circumstance. Sometimes we face foes that we just can't hit and that is why we can't beat them. But with this it is possible that you can take out anyone if you can slow them up with other team members.

 

[Obryn]

I'm very interested to hear how a power that is an automatic hit never hits.

So, if it doesn't hit, it must miss.

You're being snarky here, but he's right.

It never hits, and it never misses. It simply deals damage, much like the secondary effect on Cleave. It's not a hit, because there's no attack roll, and there's no Hit line.

Therefore, it is useless for killing minions. That sucks.

Nope. Just like the secondary effect of Cleave, it will auto-gank minions. It can't miss - it just deals damage.

The good news is that it's a great power if you're marked by someone, as it will never trigger their mark.

You'll never suffer the -2, and you'll never suffer a "hitting an ally" consequence of a Mark. But you are still making a Ranged Attack, you're still prone to Opportunity Attacks, and you're still affected by any "attack an ally" mark effects.


Personally, I think the change is kind of neat. I am actually intrigued by this power now. I think it's still just a 3rd choice, mind you - but it was before, too; you'd be crazy to take this over Winged Horde, for example. It's something different, and something which has some neat applications.

-O