Ray of Frost and Cloud of Daggers; Red Headed Stepchildren of Wizard At-Wills?

[mlund]

You're double counting the Wis bonus. Cloud does 1d6 + Int when it hits (d6 +4 in above example) then wis at the start of the target's turn. So...9.5 vs 9 is the real comparison. Pretty comparable. The trade off is a bit of board control vs extra range and the virtues of a force attack (which aren't so pronounced as they were in 3x of course).

You're right. That's totally my bad on the double-counting.

If you want to squeeze out more damage you need more Wisdom or synergy from your team's abilities to move the enemies back through that area. Things like the Fighter and Rogue's force-move powers or Thunderwave have good synergy with Cloud of Daggers.

The fixed damage isn't a result of a miss. It happens, whether you missed or not. Cloud of Daggers does not have an entry for "miss" at all in fact.

Cloud of Daggers says, quite clearly "Wizard Attack 1"

"a missed attack never damages a minion"

Any effect of Cloud of Daggers is from an Attack source. This is why the matter is dubious in my mind. I see a strong argument that since Cloud of Daggers is an Attack if it misses it deals no damage to a minion with any of its effects regardless of whether the damage comes from a "Miss:" or "Effect:" label.

The only thing that really persuades me the other way is that if you used a similar effect on an area and didn't attack when you initially laid down the wall / column / cube / whatever any minion would still automatically die by entering the area of on-going effect.

- Marty Lund

 

[The Grackle]

"a missed attack never damages a minion"

no, "Damage from an attack or from a source that doesn’t require an attack roll destroys a minion. If a minion is missed by an attack that normally deals damage on a miss, however, it takes no damage."

Cloud of Daggers damages w/o an attack roll (creatures that enter the AOE or start their turn there), it does not deal damage on a miss.

 

[Graf]

Thunderwave definitely hits allies.

... the virtues of a force attack (which aren't so pronounced as they were in 3x of course)...

They're both force effects actually. Makes an easy comparison.