What are the most worthless feats (Heroic)?

[Mal Malenkirk]

Expended Speelbook rocks if you use it with the mnemonic staff.

Some spells are too situational to be kept on the book but are very powerful in the right circumstances. The mnemonic staff lets you take advantage of that (By swapping a prepared spell for another) and the expended spellbook makes it even better. Without that staf... it's not very useful.

Weapon Focus: Come on, now. For many classes, it's meat and butter. A fighter is going to use his weapon over and over again. Having weapon focus at some point is a no brainer. Most fighter take it fairly early. In the level 12 game I am running everyone has it except the wizard and cleric. That's 4 out of 6.

Far shot is damn useless; it applies to weapon who already have extreme ranges. Far throw is much better. If you throw daggers, a range of 7 instead of 5 is very sweet.

Astral Fire : A laser cleric almost always use radiant attack, some of them area effect. And many of the cleric spell that aren't radiant are fire! No brainer, the majority of laser cleric I have seen take it. Similary, the Dark Pact warlock in one of my campaign took Dark Fury at level 1. Necrotic + Psychic? Yes please. Only poison was missing for him to be 100% happy.

 

[Fredrik Svanberg]

To me, any feat or class feature or power that requires that someone makes a critical hit is useless.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Expended Speelbook rocks if you use it with the mnemonic staff.

Some spells are too situational to be kept on the book but are very powerful in the right circumstances. The mnemonic staff lets you take advantage of that (By swapping a prepared spell for another) and the expended spellbook makes it even better. Without that staf... it's not very useful.

Is said staff from Dragon? I looked in the PH and AV1 and can't find it - something like that would be awesome to give the wizard in my campaign as treasure, as he took expanded spellbook for fluff reasons.

 

[Gruns]

Av104

Is said staff from Dragon? I looked in the PH and AV1 and can't find it - something like that would be awesome to give the wizard in my campaign as treasure, as he took expanded spellbook for fluff reasons.

Adventurer's Vault, page 104

Later!
Gruns

 

[Smeelbo]

The Channel Divinity feats seem sub-par to me, but I haven't played a cleric or paladin yet.

Skill Focus - Generally speaking, you can be good enough at a skill without needing this.

I disagree strongly on this. If you've ever considered a feat that removes a -5 penalty on a skill check, such as Secret Stride, then Skill Focus is almost certainly a better choice, as it almost cancels the penalty, and applies when the penalty does not, and stacks with the penalty removal feat if necessary. It's almost as good a "roll twice" feat, and most of those are paragon tier. If you rely on Stealth, then Skill Focus: Stealth is a good choice. If you do a lot of stunts, then Skill Focus: Acrobatics is valuable. Skill Focus lets you operate about half a tier above your level, DC-wise.

Far Throw - I've never found the ranges on weapons to be a major factor in my games.

For thrown weapon powers that apply effects, it can be quite valuable.

Anything That Gives a Situational Bonus:

Defensive Mobility + Artful Dodger + Nimble Reaction can easily yield +8 AC vs Opportunity Attacks, meaning that shifting is for weenies, and you can romp among your enemies almost freely. Situational bonuses can be quite useful if you play to the situation.

I agree that Alertness is weak.

SvanbergTo me, any feat or class feature or power that requires that someone makes a critical hit is useless.

At the Heroic Tier yes, but not at higher tiers. First, some Paragon Paths and Epic Feats can increase the chance of critting, and as fights get longer, critical activated powers essentially act like encounter powers.

That said, Agile Hunter, Dodge Giants, Far Shot, Light Step, Precise Hunter, and Sure Climber look sub-par to me.

Smeelbo

 

[Bolongo]

The Fighter in my campaign gets some mileage out of Long Jumper. But that's only because he refuses to carry a missile weapon. Instead he jumps up and smacks fliers with his axe...

My pet peeve is all the elemental damage spells. Not that they're useless in themselves, but the prerequisites mean that if you want them you have to spread your stats around enough to gimp yourself.

 

[Klaus]

Wintertouched - At the Heroic tier, it only affects Magma Beasts. At Paragon, it gets better.

 

[deleteme123456]

The real question is, what's the worst Channel Divinity feat? 'Cuz they're all bad (except RRoT, you may now excuse yourself from this discussion). I vote for Sehanine's Reversal, although RAW you could use it to inflict "dying" on an enemy within 5, IF you roll a natural 20 while dying. I personally try to get into a place where I have to make death saving throws (this is why I have leaders) and even then, I try not to take feats which require that I roll a natural 20. Yes, I could use it for stunned, or dazed, but I still have to roll the natural 20. Ioun's Poise was already mentioned, that's a good runner-up candidate.

Other bad feats I didn't see mentioned above:

Ritual Caster is another one--most parties start with someone who gets this for free: Cleric, Wizard, Bard (others from PH2, I can't recall)...

Two-weapon fighting would be bad if Two-Weapon Defense didn't exist. Which is why I'm annoyed that Tempest fighters get TWD for free--they get to skip an otherwise medoicre feat.

 

[doctorhook]

I've come to the conclusion that future editions of D&D need to include slots for "utility" (read: non-combat) feats, the way 4E has included slots for Utility powers. Since you get Utility powers automatically, people choose them, use them, and love them; if those utility powers were mixed in with attack powers the way similar effects were in previous editions, the simple fact is that a lot of potentially useful powers would get bypassed in favour of Attack powers. I think the same applies to feats, and some of these feats would never appear in this discussion if they existed as "utility feats".

To that end, I'd love it if the game was balanced for getting a new feat at every level. And I would especially love it if it was balanced so that every character got their first multiclass feat for free at 1st level; feat-based multiclassing and pseudo-multiclassing (for example, weapon mastery feats or multiclass-only classes like Spellscarred) go a long way towards making similar character concepts distinct -- an Eladrin Wizard/Swordmage is quite different from an Eladrin Wizard/Artificer. (I'd like to see the multiclass feat mechanic include racial feats, too! These could allow, for example, a Dragonborn to "multiclass" into the Dragonborn bloodline, and become more "Dragonborn-y".)

If you'd like to discuss this with me, kindly fork it over! I'm getting a bit off-topic.

 

[Bolongo]

Wintertouched - At the Heroic tier, it only affects Magma Beasts. At Paragon, it gets better.

At Paragon, you can combo with Lasting Frost to make it affect anything.

But at Heroic, yeah, it's pointless.