What are the most worthless feats (Heroic)?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Far Throw can actually be a pretty decent feat for a dagger/shuriken armed rogue. It will often let you attack an enemy from outside range of his light source, where you can get CA more easily. Not exceptionally useful in general, but you can certainly build a decent little attack routine around it.

Surprise Knockdown isn't that great. Maybe at higher levels.

TWD is not bad, but it has lost some of its shine now that defensive weapons exist. You can just carry a parrying dagger in your off hand and get the same benefit without taking a feat.

I think people are selling the Channel Divinity feats a bit short. Some of them are not worth much, its true, but some are modestly useful powers and the fact that you can trade a feat for a power is the key. Melora's Tide for instance provides some healing, everyone can use more healing and it doesn't even use up a surge. Moradin's Resolve isn't bad either, there are a LOT of large creatures out there. Pelor's Radiance isn't bad either if you happen to fight undead fairly often. Harmony of Erathis is also perfectly good, the conditional on it is so easy to meet it might as well not be there, so it is basically a +2 stacks with anything bonus to one of your allies attacks.

That said, about half the Channel Divinity feats are pretty much useless due to the super restrictive triggering conditions. Sehanine's Reversal for instance, just about never going to come up in practice. I would advise simply loosening the triggering conditions on some of them, like Sehanine's Reversal might be OK if you could trigger it on say any ally in range making a save, or Raven Queen's Blessing would be good if you could trigger it on any ally dropping an enemy to 0. It won't make them awesome, but they don't have to be awesome powers since they are basically extra powers.

I don't think Dodge Giants is worthless either. Again, large foes are not at all uncommon and it is an untyped bonus, so it will stack with other bonuses.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I think that every character in our campaign has taken Skill Focus at least once by 8th level. I know my two characters have.

Passive Perception 25 FTW

DS

 

[cmbarona]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Dragonborn Senses yet. It's a neat concept, but the bonuses aren't strong enough for me to be interested, especially with so few ways to make dim light rather than bright, and so many ways for enemies to make bright light themselves.

 

[WalterKovacs]

Long Jumper - worthwhile IF you intend to use jump to travel over the squares of foes (which a rogue may want to do)

Rogue is definitely a class I would take it with ... if not for them geting a better variant as a utility power at level 2. In general though, it's a power that makes jumping an option more so than making jumps better. Could also be good for a TWF ranger [or melee beastmaster] as it can get you over the front lines, and give you flanking potential or let you get to artilery. It's value depends in part on the encounter areas. If the enemy front lines tend to be hard to get by, the option to leap over them could be nice. Combined with the elven racial feat that ensures you always get at least an 8 [unless it's a 1] to Athletics checks, it can make jumping a useful mode of movement, especially if there is difficult terrain around that would otherwise slow you down.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Dragonborn Senses yet. It's a neat concept, but the bonuses aren't strong enough for me to be interested, especially with so few ways to make dim light rather than bright, and so many ways for enemies to make bright light themselves.

Starlight and moonlight counts as dim light i think, so any rogue would be advise to take it...

 

[Obryn]

Personally, I don't like any of the "On a critical..." feats unless there's some way to increase the amount of criticals. (like the insane Righteous Rage of Tempus). Mostly, the bonuses are boring and easy to forget.

I agree that most of the Channel Divinities are pretty poor. I think the Raven Queen's is good, though. Still, I suppose I should compare them to the "+1 to a die roll" effect you normally get with Channel Divinity against non-undead.

I guess in both cases I should look at these as free actions I wouldn't get otherwise...

-O

 

[Akaiku]

Secure encampment. It gives you +5 stealth and perception when long resting. While nice, the -3 total from the palidin sleeping in plate with 8 dex will make the enemies still hear him clinking. So your spotty characters are not surprised when the gm decides to interrupt your long rest. You are still bad off. Similarly, if a gm pulls that kind of thing regulary, the party will actually secure their camp normally, with cover and such makeing the sneaking either the badguy rolled high and slit your throat, roll up a new character, or the enemy did 1/4th your max hp with their suprise attack, comince murdering.

 

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

Most of this has been covered but here's my .02 anyway:
Long Jump and Sure Climber are pretty poor especially if you consider taking a skill focus as an alternative.
Most of the Channel Divinity stuff is awful. Melora's tide is pretty strong. A Zap cleric with 18 wis gives regenerate 6 (regenerate 11 if beacon of hope was used previously in the encounter). If you time these right and use them on pc's who are 12/13 hp below bloodied you're guaranteed to get 2-3 rounds or more of pretty significant healing. 3 rounds of 11 regen is 33hp's and can change the outcome of a combat.

Wintertouched is possibly the most abusable feat in the game. It clearly doesn't come into it's own until level 11 but after that there's a lot of pain lurking in that one feat. Consider the rogue with wintertouched who either has a wizard in the party with Lasting Frost and a few cold spells, or he himself is carrying a frost weapon. Suddenly every opponent is taking 5 extra damage from every swing, plus granting combat advantage and taking automatic sneak damage. The combo becomes truly broken if you have a multiclass rogue warlock using armor of agthys and a frost weapon. Automatic d6 + 5 + con + 2d8 (about 19.5 automatic damage to one creature per round and 10.5 to each additional that the rogue can get next to) and +2 to hit and +5 dmg on the normal ATT. Couple this with a wizard using frost powers and the +5 dmg rapidly adds up. Throw in burning blizzard and you're getting another pt of damage on every attack.

I use astral fire with my eladrin wizard and a lot of fire based powers. Over the long haul +1 damage is going to add up to dozens of creatures that die 1-3 rounds earlier than they would have thereby avoiding the extra attacks that they would have inflicted on the party. Flaming sphere, burning hands, scorching burst, fireshroud all get multiple uses from +1 dmg nearly every time I use them. I would estimate astral fire probably adds 5-15 damage to every combat our party is in.

Defensive Mobility is good for zap clerics, wizards and rogues.

all the critical hit stuff is way too weak.

fast runner is very valuable if you play in a dangerous campaign or you're regularly facing bad guys who will run away if they seem likely to die (sometimes carrying treasure, or a key clue in completing a quest) it's very difficult to "catch" anyone who even has a one round lead on you in this game. If the leader of the bandits flees the battlefield when there are still a couple of his lackeys standing and thereby making it more difficult for the party to disengage he will frequently get away because stopping to make a ranged attack extends his lead on you by 8-10 squares. How do you find out who sent him? How do you get his magic sword? Our DM is pretty crafty/dangerous and this feat can be worth it's weight in gold both as an escape mechanism and in making sure that the prize doesn't escape. It also makes my wizard less afraid of gnolls.

 

[Mengu]

I'm not terribly fond of CD feats and critical hit feats, but there are exceptions.

In my game, the paladin's Armor of Bahamut (a critical hit feat and a CD feat) has prevented more damage than multiclassing into Cleric could have healed last session. In 3 encounters, it prevented a total of 21 or so points of damage spread across three encounters, 12 points of which are coming from a greataxe crit.

Kord's Favor also can come into play more often than once per day, and is especially nice for a battle cleric who often needs to heal himself.

Melora's Tide is pretty useful for just general healing without surges.

There are quite a few FR CD feats I like too.

Berronar's Salve is handy if your DM likes to frequently use challenging encounters where one or more PC's drop unconscious.

Chauntea's Blessing is about as good as divine mettle, so it's pretty handy for any non-paladin chaneller.

Glittergold's Gambit is increadibly helpful for making those important daily powers hit.

Power of Amaunator is pretty fantastic for divine AoE's, since you decide to use it after you see how many targets you hit.

 

[NMcCoy]

Call me silly, but I created a critical hit feat (with DM approval) for my thunderwave-centric wizard, that lets him push two additional squares when he crits with a push power. I like feats that increase fun moments in the game, even if they aren't terribly powerful from a tactical standpoint.