What are Avengers doing since SOC got nerfed?

[Holy Bovine]

Student of Caiphon, a warlock Paragon Path that among other things, gave you a critical range of 18-20. It is a favorite PP for crit-fisher builds among character optimizers. A crit-fisher being any build dedicated to raising their critical range and maximizing critical damage.

Student of Caiphon has now been changed such that the improved critical range applies only to warlock powers. This invalidates the idea of multiclassing into warlock just for the improved crit range of this PP.

Hey - thanks for the info! I couldn't for the life of me figure out what SOC was supposed to stand for. I can see why it was changed though - clearly meant for warlock powers only from what I've read.

 

[Turtlejay]

Maybe jumping on this guy for excessive cheese is unwarranted. After all, WotC has published a handful of crit range increasing PP's and this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as cheese goes.

My Urgosh wielding Fighter got a pretty hard nerf, and I didn't feel he was overpowered at all. High powered, not even optimized, and in no real sense overpowered.

Also, placing a hard limit on retraining because or errata seems kind of mean spirited. If you don't like the player's options, say so. Don't resort to passive-agressive sabotaging of his character to get your way.

To clarify, yes Avengers using these crit expanding PP's is cheese, but it was *accepted* cheese up till now. I agree with Destil and others, the rest of these PP's will be shored up now, it is only a matter of time. But that is not the Avenger's fault.

Jay

 

[Flipguarder]

I'm much more comfortable with the daggermaster path, because it severly limits an avengers basic damage by forcing him to use a dagger instead of a full blade with the high crit property.

The next problem I see is half-elf daggermaster avenger with twin strike. 4 attack rolls with an 18-20 crit range is about as good as we can get now. Bonus if you wield a spiked shield.

 

[BobTheNob]

Also, placing a hard limit on retraining because or errata seems kind of mean spirited. If you don't like the player's options, say so. Don't resort to passive-agressive sabotaging of his character to get your way.

Yes, it might be a little harsh, but that is the DM's call.

I will state straight out of the mark that I for one am not a fan of cheese builds. It irks me when people put together toons of no real game flavor in order to have some game crushing, cookie cutter, number monster(just how many avenger/warlocks can there be in the world?) with no real definition of what the character actually is. I believe the fluff around the character is just as important as the numbers.

I think its a bit of a betrayal of the game to a degree. Cheese builds almost never have a sense or a place in the game, its just that (mechanically) they work out of all proportion, which is why WOTC is errata-ing them. Its not that hard to spot when a build is cheesy (and the OP's was infamous) and I think players should take a bit more responsbility for NOT pushing the envelope just because its there to push.

As a long term gamer and player (some 20+ years now) we have been through this and luckily my group is just too mature to resort to this crap. We have seen that cheesing just wrecks the experience for everyone except the cheeser. The end result being that inevitably non-cheesers become marginal and encounters dont work.

I stand by my earlier post that the OP's DM should (IMHO) offer a free re-spec(including a new PP pic) in order that his character can be brought back to feasibility, but that it in honor of this generosity, perhaps the OP could also consider a non-cheese option when re-specing.

Preventing cheese is just as much the responsibility of the player base as of the DM.

 

[frankthedm]

I think allowing the player to rebuild the PC is the only fair thing to do when a rule that's critical to that character gets changed.

For Someone who just chose the power because it seemed solid, that is fair and reasonable, but if the player's power cards are a Net Deck culled from charop, This poster has the right idea...

For this campaign, I've told him, "You live by the cheese, you die by the cheese." He only gets one free nerf-retrain throughout his character's career. It put the burden for preventing cheese off of me and back onto him.

Preventing cheese is just as much the responsibility of the player base as of the DM.

Also agree on this. DMs should not be waiting around for wotc to fix the problem.

 

[Felon]

First they nerf using Leather Armor...

Now, after already picking SOC in my current campaign,
they nerf it so that only Warlocks powers get the 18-20
crit range.

I critted 6 times in last Saturday's session. I have 2 weapon
opening so I actually made a big difference in the 2 encounters,
dealing very nice damage. 3 of the crits were on rolls of 18....

Our DMs already know about the nerf and are discussing it. I've
asked them to let me rechoose a Paragon Path. They are now
thinking it over...

Wish me luck - look where I'll be if they won't let me drop SOC.

What is everyone else doing with their SOC builds now?

Is everyone switching their Avenger/SOC builds to Radiant Servant?

Thanks for any input.

I'm trying to put my finger on what I find so adorable about this post. I guess it's partially the way that he just assumes everyone's on board with him. He doesn't explain what SOC means, and there's a tacit implication that without access to 18-20 crits, the character is in dire need of reparation. Use the word "nerf" enough times? There's something about an unjustified sense of entitlement that just gives me a natural high.

What do we do without access to the Caphion paragon path? We sigh, tell ourselves the party's over, pick another paragon path, and get on with our lives.

 

[Destil]

Actually. I think daggermaster may stay. Student of C. was showing up in lots of very broken looking builds, right? It was possible for most classes to get radiant damage on their attacks (weapons that add the keyword, even works with weplements).

Daggermaster isn't as prone to abuse, though I still dislike it on implement attacks (since the idea of it being fine with the small base die goes away). Ideally I'd want to see it only work with weapon attacks, since that doesn't screw rogues at all and keeps that restriction in place.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Well, I'm not sure daggermaster doesn't need "restricting". Sure, its probably balanced for classes that give up weapon die to use a dagger (such as an avenger), but I'm not so sure for classes like soreceror and other arcane classes whose damage isn't dependant on weapon dice. For them, just like student of caiphon, it seems simply like a pure boost.

Now, whether or not WoC's decision regarding SoC has anything to do with such builds having a pretty specific magic equipment allotment figured into it, I don't know. The fact that the entire build depends on having gear (typically a weapon) that makes all your damage radiant does, at least to me, up the cheese factor of it.

 

[Akaiku]

Strange question... Why do all of you who seem to hate any build that is multiclass and synergistic? And then allow them?

Why not just outright ban multiclassing so everyone can be 'pure build x'?

And no hate for stupidly unpowerful options either? If enough people pick bad builds, the person with a decent build looks cheasy op.

For some of these gm's... Why let players pick their character details anyway? You don't like what they pick apperently, just veto it!

 

[Zaran]

Strange question... Why do all of you who seem to hate any build that is multiclass and synergistic? And then allow them?

Why not just outright ban multiclassing so everyone can be 'pure build x'?

And no hate for stupidly unpowerful options either? If enough people pick bad builds, the person with a decent build looks cheasy op.

For some of these gm's... Why let players pick their character details anyway? You don't like what they pick apperently, just veto it!

I don't mind multiclassing if it fits your character concept. If you design a character purely on mechanics though... yeah I'm going to scrutinize that seriously. Just the fact that an Avenger who is fanantic to their deity would also make a pact with some other entity has major implications to me. The game should be about roleplaying. Not about how much damage you can squeeze out of the system. One of my players asked if he could multiclass into 2 classes with his warden. He said that she was connect to the spirit world (thus a multiclass into shaman) and because she is a shifter and so in touch with the spirit world she may flip out sometimes and wanted to be able to do the barbarian rage kind of thing. To me that sounded just fine. He wasn't doing it because of some powerful comination that he found with the 3 classes. Now he is the kind of person that can maximize the usage of his abilities but that's secondary to his concept.

I would think hard before I answered if one of my players said they wanted to switch paragon paths because a certain ability got nerfed. In my opinion,you should pick the paragon path that fits your character as much as for the powers you get so I just might make them stick with the path they chose especially since I would want to design my adventures subplots around those chosen paths.