Why arn't Controllers Sexy

[firesnakearies]

This discussion is why controllers are underestimated, I think.

This.

Also, all of the times that your allies could get into slightly (to highly) more advantageous positions in the melee, but choose not to because they don't want to provoke OAs. Dropping a Winged Horde on a big mass of your allies and enemies all tangled up in melee together is almost like granting your allies the ability to shift their speed on their next turn.

Or preventing the damage that allies would otherwise take when they do choose to provoke in order to get to targets that they want more, or get into flanks, and so on.

It's controlling the battlefield. You make it easier for you and your allies to move around into the perfect positions you want, and harder for the enemies to get flanks and prevent movement through the threat of multiple OAs.

It's also denying the enemies one of their most effective means of making themselves "safe" from your AoEs. If all you're throwing around is Scorching Burst, enemies can just intermingle themselves in the midst of your allies, and pretty much guarantee that you're not going to nuke them. With Winged Horde, you can keep blasting the largest concentration of enemies no matter how mixed up with your party they are. Which again gives your allies a positioning advantage, as they no longer need to worry about standing any particular place in order to clear the way for you to AoE stuff.

Some people are all about the biggest damage numbers possible, but for me, I play controllers like controllers.

 

[Mengu]

I think that unless the property is worded specifically to say that you have to be attacking with that weapon/implement, they both apply if you have two different magic weapons/implements in your hands.

So the Master's Wand of Magic Missile + Petrified Orb combo should work, and be legal. But you'd have to be casting through the orb, as that's a specific stipulation of the superior implements.

Sorry to keep dredging this up, but wouldn't that mean then that we can use subtle weapon or vanguard weapon in the off-hand to gain the benefit? I don't see any Avalanche Craghammer + vanguard spiked shield wielders. Could this be done? Could a halfling rogue use a goblin totem dagger in main hand and subtle dagger in the off-hand to get the subtle bonus? I thought it was ruled that none of these work, not that I seem to be able to find any reference to it. Am I crazy?

 

[Aulirophile]

Sorry to keep dredging this up, but wouldn't that mean then that we can use subtle weapon or vanguard weapon in the off-hand to gain the benefit? I don't see any Avalanche Craghammer + vanguard spiked shield wielders. Could this be done? Could a halfling rogue use a goblin totem dagger in main hand and subtle dagger in the off-hand to get the subtle bonus? I thought it was ruled that none of these work, not that I seem to be able to find any reference to it. Am I crazy?

Adventure's Vault, page 56, is the rule you're looking for.

Many weapons have properties that provide a
constant benefit. To gain the benefit of a weapon’s
property, you must be wielding the weapon. Unless
specified otherwise, a property affects only the
weapon to which it’s attached. For example, a +2 cunning
dagger, which bestows a –2 penalty to an enemy’s
saving throws against your weapon powers, affects
only powers that are delivered using that weapon.
You couldn’t hold the weapon in your off-hand and
gain the benefit of the property on powers delivered
using a main weapon.

 

[Victim]

True, the PHB wizard is underpowered. But wizard with Arcane Power and with all DDI support was so strong they had to nerf it. First with orb of imposition march nerf and then by nerfing enlarge spell this month (no enlarged dailies; but the real focus of erata was nerfing swordmages and sorcerers which multiclased into wizard).

At paragon levels, wizard encounters seem to soar above most other controllers in PHB only. A power like Prismatic Burst just blows the competition away.

 

[keterys]

Adventure's Vault, page 56, is the rule you're looking for.

The problem is dual implement spellcaster, which lets a caster use both implements for one attack.

 

[KarinsDad]

Also that. But I doubt the break point is that big. Let us assume you can always hit 1 more enemy with Winged Horde because it is enemies only (reasonable assumption and in fact I'm not giving myself as big an advantage as actual play has led me to believe I would have, assuming enemies are there to be hit, Winged Horde can and will hit more of them then Burst will without hitting your melee allies).

It's still burst 1. I agree that one can often hit one more opponent, sometimes 2 more opponents with Winged Horde.

But, most fights are not 50 NPCs on 5 PCs. It's typically 5 on 5, possibly 5 or 9 or so with minions (maybe more in a massive minion battle). With a good DM who does not bunch up foes, 1 foe more with Winged Horde is a reasonable outcome, but more on a consistent basis (when casting Winged Horde is better than doing an Encounter power or something else) shouldn't be extremely common.

1d6 average is 3. At level 1, with no magic items, this gives up 7 damage for a normal Wizard with Burst, 3 for Winged Horde. Hit two enemies with burst, 3 with Winged Horde. 9 vs 21. Well and good! Scorching burst wins on damage (and damage only, Winged Horde is still superior control).

Now we just keep upping the static mods.

12 vs 23
15 vs 25
18 vs 27
21 vs 29
23 vs 31
26 vs 33
29 vs 35
32 vs 37
35 vs 39
38 vs 41
41 vs 43
44 vs 45
47 vs 47! Whee.

So +13 (without int) to tie under the best case scenario for Scorching Burst. Gensai Wizards will have that at late heroic/early Paragon. All of them should have it during epic. Various builds will get it sooner.

Must be the advanced math. How many static mods give +13 where it is not ability score and this can be done At Will? Let's do more realistic math here.

12 vs 23 +1 implement
15 vs 25 +2 implement
15 vs 27 level 8 ability score
18 vs 29 +3 implement
18 vs 31 level 14 ability score
21 vs 33 +4 implement
33 vs 48 level 21 ability score plus Epic class bonus plus second d6
36 vs 50 +5 implement
36 vs 54 level 27 ability score
39 vs 58 +6 implement

Sure, each +1 bonus from something else like a feat gains 3 on the left column and only 2 on the right column, but there are not too many static ones of those without some type of super optimized specialized build (i.e. ones that occur every time, a player might get 2 such feats, magic items are more rare), most are dynamic bonuses handed out by Leader allies and those are better used with Encounter or Daily powers as a general rule.

The table above is same number of foes 3 vs. 3 (you messed that up in your math). With 3 Winged Horde foes vs. 2 Scorching Burst foes, it becomes:

12 vs 16 +1 implement
15 vs 18 +2 implement
15 vs 20 level 8 ability score
18 vs 22 +3 implement
18 vs 24 level 14 ability score
21 vs 26 +4 implement
33 vs 38 level 21 ability score plus Epic class bonus plus second d6
36 vs 40 +5 implement
36 vs 42 level 27 ability score
39 vs 44 +6 implement

And this only holds true typically in the first half of an encounter. As encounters wind down and players start using more At Will powers, there are fewer foes and hence, fewer opportunities to get 3 foes with Winged Horde and 2 with Scorching Burst. As an example, in the final round when there is only typically 1 foe or in cases where artillery is attacking from multiple angles, then each of these spells can get at most one foe.

EDIT: Oh, hitting more targets ups your crit chance. Not factored in, but it'd change things a bit (in Winged Horde's favor).

Yup, especially with more powerful implements. It's hardly a bump going from 3.5 damage to 6 damage at level 1 for every 60th foe hit in the 3 foes attacked vs. 2 foes attacked case.


I agree that Winged Horde is better at late Paragon and Epic levels for a wide variety of reasons. It probably makes sense to switch over to it at some point in time. But, Scorching Burst is often better at Heroic and early Paragon levels.

My Gensai Wizard static mods are over 50. -int brings that to the high 40s.

Could you post these wonderful +50+ static modifiers to damage that your PC has and which the vast majority of Wizards can acquire?

Or is this just one set of supped up optimization Wizard class with a specific race and specific Paragaon Paths and specific Epic Destinies and specific feats and specific magic items that can pull this off?

 

[KarinsDad]

Five things:

First, no OAs means no flanking, and thats pretty good benefit. Lot of lurkers can be neutralized by this at-will. Also, a lot of skirmishers has some flanking abilities.

This is the main advantage of Winged Horde. There are definitely foes that gain significantadvantage when flanking.

Course, good PC positioning can prevent flanking as well as can Fighter's Marks (sure, you can Flank me, but I get an attack against you when you do so) and many other game abilities.

Second, winged horde is very likely to hit twice as many enemies (enemies only).

Not likely. I hit 2 foes with Scorching Burst a lot of the time. Most PCs try to shift out of flank and boom, 2 are available. I don't know about your games, but I can get 2 foes in a Scorching Burst at least 75% of the time if my fellow players are playing smart.

How often are 4 foes out of 5 in a 3x3 section? Not if the DM is doing his job well.

Third, you'll probably just hurt more allies with enlarged scorching burst. enlarged winged horde, on the other hand...

Enlarged Winged Horde is a joke when considering damage. A normal Scorching Burst on 2 foes will typically average more damage than a 5x5 Enlarged Winged Horde on 4 foes because of the -2 per die.

No doubt, it does take the OAs away for a larger group of foes. But if the OAs have little meaning in the encounter, than taking them away has little meaning as well.

Fourth, WH attacks will, and thus is usually more accurate.

This is generally misleading. The chance to hit in MM and MM2 of Will over Reflex is something like +0.5. This is hardly a blip.

Fifth, when your elemental empowerment genas wizard has +10 static modifeir bonus to damage (i. e. paragon tier), the +5 from your int means a lot less.

EDIT: Fifth point ninja'ed by Aulirophile.

Not everyone plays elemental empowerment Gensai Wizards.


No doubt. Winged Horde is good. It is just not a hands down winner over Scorching Burst anymore. Both have their niches and both are effective.

My only claim is that Scorching Burst is now viable for several reasons for some builds and groups.

One of them being that Winged Horde is a Dragon Magazine power that is not allowed in all campaigns. Scorching Burst is probably allowed in nearly all campaigns.

Claiming that Winged Horde is always better is a fallacy.

 

[renau1g]

I've played a genasi blaster wizard (he's level 4 now) and I've yet to be able to not use scorching burst because an ally is in the way. My other at-will is thunderwave (storm genasi to trigger the racial power) and I don't feel like I'm less effective by not having Winged Horde. I also have burning hands and have caught quite a few enemies in it, then my defenders rush up to get between me and the enemies I blasted. Having shield also lets me usually block an attack if I do get in trouble.

 

[keterys]

Some static modifiers that are pretty common, fwiw:
Dual Implement Spellcaster (+1 to +6)
Item Bonus (Staff of Ruin) (+1 to +6)
Dragonshard (+1 to +5)
Weapon Focus (+1 to +3)

If you're focused on doing thundering AoE, this is also an option:
Superior Implement: Quickbeam Staff (+2 to +4)

If you're doing that Genasi bit, that's another +4 to +9

There's a couple of items you can pull off some other bonuses with - also, if you're grouped with certain leader types, a burst 3 enemies only early on can easily be better than some encounter powers. Folks grouped with my Inspiring Warlord are quite used to a +6 or so bonus to all damage rolls.

That only gets +39 without the leader or +45 with the leader, though, so I'm less sure on the 50 static modifier.

 

[Aulirophile]

It's still burst 1. I agree that one can often hit one more opponent, sometimes 2 more opponents with Winged Horde

No, no it isn't. It is burst 3 (minimum burst 2, for a smart Wizard). Tell me you can reasonably guarantee you will hit no allies but every single enemy with a burst 2 (5x5). You can't.

And Staff of Ruin+ anything else (Weapon Focus) makes Winged Horde pull ahead. I didn't even have to add any other feats/PPs/EDs or anything (results the same, just happens sooner). Yes my +50 is highly optimized because he he is basically a striker. And? That is basically equivalent to a Sorcs bonus damage. What are they? Oh, yeah, AE strikers.

And we never said it was always better. We said "If damage is what you are going for, given the tools available to a Wizard to increase his static mods and enlarge his spells, an enemies only AE will hit more targets, and therefore have higher average damage, by early Paragon. Plus, Winged Horde actually has a controlling element, which wouldn't be a terrible thing to pick up while playing a controller." All of which is undeniably true.

@Keterys: I know, but he wanted to know where the rule was for stuff like why Vanguard didn't work in the off-hand, so I showed him.