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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EarthSeraphEdna" data-source="post: 4989618" data-attributes="member: 49309">The entire Essentials line of articles of Dragon Magazine strikes me as wholly unnecessary and of noteworthily low quality. Would any of you be familiar with how "official" video game strategy guides are inevitably of lower quality and provide less useful information, hints, and tactics compared to the free walkthroughs on GameFAQs? The exact same phenomenon happens here.There exists an assortment of "Handbooks", useful and practical guides for creating and playing a character of a given class, be it a sorcerer or a paladin, available on the official CharOp board, whose content is even color-coded and spans the full breadth of all 30 levels. Despite this, WotC insists on churning out "Essentials" articles which provide much less, and moreover, worse information on how to craft and play a character of a particular class than these Handbooks (i.e. extremely overvaluing Constitution, mixes of odd and even ability scores for level 1 starting arrays, 14 Intelligence for a Tactical Presence warlord, disregarding Commander's Strike for a Tactical Presence warlord, stating that Devastating Strike is "the cornerstone at-will attack for most barbarians" [even though Whirling Slayer barbarians cannot use it], completely ignoring the existence of double weapons for Tempest Technique fighters, recommending Sure Strike for a sword-and-board fighter, etc.) and which are part of what those who have subscribed to Insider are paying for. If the articles are about optimization anyway, why recommend subpar options?Tell me, would you rather consult a stock market advisor who does pro bono work and is known for being wise and knowledgeable in his or her field of expertise, or one who charges for his or her work and offers shoddy guidance that is more likely to lose you money than earn it?Yes, the Essentials articles provide feats, powers, paragon paths, and so on. However, Dragon Magazine happens to have a series of articles meant for the sole purpose of providing crunch for players, and that would be Class Acts. What WotC should do is nix the entire Essentials line and include a link to a CharOp Handbook or two in the introductory page of each Class Acts article. It reduces the work that their writers have to exert, it frees up pages for the current issue, it gives a well-deserved shout-out to the hard-working (and paying) community to increase their PR, and it refers readers to substantial and useful guides, so why are they not doing it?I thoroughly cringe at the prospect of them releasing a "Player's Strategy Guide", full of oh-so-wise hints and tricks on how to "optimize" a character, next year. The fact that one of the characters on the cover, presumably a ranger, is wielding a pair of khopeshes over, say, scimitars or bastard swords, is an omen of things to come. Mark my words, a build for this particular character shall appear in this book, and at level 11, they shall state something along the lines of "This is what we have been waiting for. Since the khopesh is a heavy blade and an axe, we can take the Deadly Axe paragon feat and add 2d8 damage to all of our critical hits, and we can reroll 1s on that damage too!"Edit: I feel I must emphasize the part where they recommend Sure Strike for a sword-and-board fighter, along with 15 Strength, 14 Constitution, 14 Dexterity, 8 Intelligence (indeed), 14 Wisdom, and 10 Charisma for a starting array, pre-racial modifiers.Edit: Here are a few examples of CharOp handbooks that are much more substantial and much more helpful than the Essentials articles that WotC lovelessly and uninformedly puts out: <a href="http://community.wizards.com/charop/wiki/Fighter/Handbook" target="_blank">http://community.wizards.com/charop/wiki/Fighter/Handbook</a><a href="http://community.wizards.com/charop/wiki/Warden/Handbook" target="_blank">http://community.wizards.com/charop/wiki/Warden/Handbook</a><a href="http://community.wizards.com/charop/wiki/Barbarian/Handbook" target="_blank">http://community.wizards.com/charop/wiki/Barbarian/Handbook</a><a href="http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19649038/Pillars_of_Faith_and_Facestabs_The_Paladins_Handbook" target="_blank">http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19649038/Pillars_of_Faith_and_Facestabs_The_Paladins_Handbook</a><a href="http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/20123797/The_True_Magus_A_Wizards_Handbook" target="_blank">http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/20123797/The_True_Magus_A_Wizards_Handbook</a></blockquote>

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