So, Wintertouched...

[Klaus]

... only has merit with paired with Lasting Frost (paragon tier). Then why is Wintertouched a heroic tier feat? The only creatures affected by it would be Magma Beasts, the only MM creatures with vulnerability to cold (sidenote: apart from undead's vulnerability to radiant, some eladrins' vulnerability to necrotic, and mummies and treants vulnerability to fire, there are next to no creatures with any sort of vulnerability).

Since only fire creatures have resistance/immunity to fire, what if Wintertouched worked on such creatures, instead of those with vulnerability to cold? What if it was in addition to the latter?

 

[Drakhar]

One of the swordmage dailies give vulnerability to the element of your choice.

 

[Mahali]

... only has merit with paired with Lasting Frost (paragon tier). Then why is Wintertouched a heroic tier feat?

It's definately not worth a paragon level feat. You can always retrain a featto get both at 11.

 

[yesnomu]

... only has merit with paired with Lasting Frost (paragon tier). Then why is Wintertouched a heroic tier feat? The only creatures affected by it would be Magma Beasts, the only MM creatures with vulnerability to cold (sidenote: apart from undead's vulnerability to radiant, some eladrins' vulnerability to necrotic, and mummies and treants vulnerability to fire, there are next to no creatures with any sort of vulnerability).

Since only fire creatures have resistance/immunity to fire, what if Wintertouched worked on such creatures, instead of those with vulnerability to cold? What if it was in addition to the latter?

The problem is that it's rather worthless in heroic, and not at all bad in Paragon with LF. There isn't much you can do to make it less of a dog in heroic without making it possibly too powerful later on.

CA with cold vs. fire resistant enemies would be a huge boost to cold powers in general, and would be way too powerful for Heroic (possibly even Epic, that is permanent CA vs. Tiamat and any number of other dragons, for example). You could make that change and bump it up a tier or two, I guess.

 

[Nymrohd]

Wintertouched seems to be an intented combo that can get from powerful to horrible broken (as in the hands of a rogue with a frost weapon who no longer needs anything else to maintain CA). IMHO not one of the best design decisions.

 

[yesnomu]

Wintertouched seems to be an intented combo that can get from powerful to horrible broken (as in the hands of a rogue with a frost weapon who no longer needs anything else to maintain CA). IMHO not one of the best design decisions.

Eh, I dunno. CA's not that hard to get anyway if you have melee buddies to flank with, and there's an opportunity cost for those two feats and magic weapon. You could get, say, a Footpad's Friend dagger from the AV and two nice rogue feats from MP instead, and I bet you wouldn't be much worse off.

 

[Milambus]

... only has merit with paired with Lasting Frost (paragon tier). Then why is Wintertouched a heroic tier feat? The only creatures affected by it would be Magma Beasts, the only MM creatures with vulnerability to cold (sidenote: apart from undead's vulnerability to radiant, some eladrins' vulnerability to necrotic, and mummies and treants vulnerability to fire, there are next to no creatures with any sort of vulnerability).

Since only fire creatures have resistance/immunity to fire, what if Wintertouched worked on such creatures, instead of those with vulnerability to cold? What if it was in addition to the latter?

I seem to recall an interview somewhere (a podcast I believe) that said they didn't introduce vulnerabilities until late in 4e's development, and because of that most of the monster authors didn't know that they could use it on their creatures.

I wonder if we'll see more vulnerabilities coming out in MM2.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Wintertouched just seems like a silly feat in general. As a feat on it's own, it's totally useless, and it makes up for that by being a super-power feat when combined with lasting frost. That puts it fairly heavily at odds with at least one design principle supposedly used for 4e.

Lasting frost itself is a bit problematic: it would be fine if there were similar feats for other elemental combos, but there simply aren't. Where are the obvious elemental feats for dealing ongoing damage with fire and acid attacks for instance? As is, 90% of the time a caster who's intent is to cause damage will be very well served by taking solely cold spells and picking up both feats. The only time he's going to be any worse off is when he meets a frost resistant or immune foe, and that can hardly be taken to be a balancing point.

 

[Marakesh]

There are all these builds I see citing wintertouch / lastingfrost as working with frost weapons and yet the feats themselves say "powers that have the cold keyword." If they didn't work with melee weapons that would be more reasonable.

 

[chaotix42]

I'm pretty sure that when you use a cold/fire/etc. weapon with a power, that power gains the appropriate keywords. Thus, every power used with a frost weapon has the cold keyword.