Why is Firestorm the best 19th level control spell?

[DemonLord57]

Actually, check out Arcane Rejuvenation. It makes them much sturdier than clerics, especially with Toughness.

No it doesn't. It means that once per day, you can keep yourself from dying by gaining some hp. You still have less hp than a cleric, less healing surges than a cleric, less access to healing than a cleric (they can heal themselves with their spells), and less access to non-provoking powers. And don't mention Toughness, as anyone can take it, which includes anyone you would compare against.

If you want to be "sturdy", don't play a wizard. This doesn't mean you can't survive as a wizard, simply that you won't stand up to hits without a lot of serious effort, and you'll still not be "sturdy", just less squishy. You can bring yourself up to about striker level squishiness, but you're still a squishy.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Actually, check out Arcane Rejuvenation. It makes them much sturdier than clerics, especially with Toughness.

Let's see - if we have a cleric and a wizard with equal Con... and say that we "factor in" the Arcane Rejuvenation as hit points:

Cleric: 12 + Con + 5 * level
Wizard: 10 + Con + 4 * level + level + Int mod = 10 + Con + Int mod + 5 * Level
=> Difference: The wizard with Arcane Rejuvenation has Int mod - 2 more hit points than the cleric, since the wizard will easily have +6 - +8 in Int, it means 4-6 hit points more, right? That's nice - but that's only a peak performance. Let's see the total hit points:

Cleric: (12 + Con + 5*level)*11*Con mod
Wizard (10 + Con + 4 * level)*6*Con mod + level + Int mod

...and now you see that the wizard is still squishy - he can only - in a bad spot - rise to the cleric's level to save himself once per day.

Whereas the cleric can outperform the wizard in control several times per day. And that's my problem with it - doing somebody else's job in a bad spot? Cool, because it means no class is "needed". Being better than him in a bad spot? Bad, because that's the time, where a player really deserves to shine with his role.

Cheers, LT.

 

[DemonLord57]

I still disagree with you that clerics can be better controllers than wizards in a tight spot. They have plenty of buffing and debuffing, but almost exclusively on one creature. Let's examine the powers of the cleric.

Powers that have AoE:
Encounter 1: Divine Glow
Daily 5: Consecrated Ground
Daily 9: Blade Barrier, Flame Strike
Encounter 13: Mantle of Glory
Daily 15: All, to an extent
Encounter 17: Enthrall, Thunderous Word
Daily 19: Firestorm, Holy Wrath
Encounter 23: Healing Torch
Daily 25: Sacred Word, Seal of Protection
Encounter 27: Sunburst
Daily 29: Astral Storm

This looks like quite a list. However, let's look at what really makes a controller a controller. Not AoE alone, but the ability to "guide" or "control" the enemies actions.

Powers that have control (providing some sort of deterrence or barrier, forced movement, and effects that stop actions, not just damage)
Daily 9: Blade Barrier, Astral Defenders (AD is somewhat weak deterrence)
Daily 10: Knights of Unyielding Valor
Daily 15: Holy Spark, Seal of Warding (in both, control is weak)
Encounter 17: Enthrall, Thunderous Word (these are both quite nice, and a wizard might like to pick one of these up)
Daily 25: Sacred Word

As you can see, the list of what actually exerts control is much smaller, and mostly within the dailies. I could go into what control spells the wizard has, but that would be a long list. Suffice it to say that he has one on most levels that he gains a power. He even has minor control in his at-wills.

An argument could be made for the other conjurations being considered control, but they provide even less deterrence, as they can be moved through or even into without penalty.

 

[Zurai]

How is "If you stand here you take damage" not deterrence?

 

[WhatGravitas]

(these are both quite nice, and a wizard might like to pick one of these up)

I think, for me, that's summing it up - if you, as controller, look at powers of other classes and can perhaps do better control by multiclassing, something is askew.

And the more I think about it, I think the problem isn't that the cleric gets equally good or somewhat better control powers, but that the wizard doesn't get anything to really make him more than the sum of his powers.

If you're playing a cleric, you'll have Healing Lore, Channel Divinity, and Healing Word to ensure that - even if another class snags your powers - you keep being the best leader. Strikers have their striker features (Quarry, Curse, Sneak Attack). The wizard, however, has nothing driving that control home - he's only his powers.

Also: The damage spells are also sort of control: Minion control is important, as well as softening up targets to allow the strikers to work optimally. Plus: The cleric has stuff he can sustain over a long term - that's serious control by allowing you to set up no-win situations (stay here and get whacked by damage or go out, hence scatter, and get whacked by us).

Cheers, LT.

 

[DemonLord57]

I think, for me, that's summing it up - if you, as controller, look at powers of other classes and can perhaps do better control by multiclassing, something is askew.

And the more I think about it, I think the problem isn't that the cleric gets equally good or somewhat better control powers, but that the wizard doesn't get anything to really make him more than the sum of his powers.

If you're playing a cleric, you'll have Healing Lore, Channel Divinity, and Healing Word to ensure that - even if another class snags your powers - you keep being the best leader. Strikers have their striker features (Quarry, Curse, Sneak Attack). The wizard, however, has nothing driving that control home - he's only his powers.

Also: The damage spells are also sort of control: Minion control is important, as well as softening up targets to allow the strikers to work optimally. Plus: The cleric has stuff he can sustain over a long term - that's serious control by allowing you to set up no-win situations (stay here and get whacked by damage or go out, hence scatter, and get whacked by us).

Cheers, LT.

Okay, I guess if the wizard has mastery over the wand or the staff, the bonuses are either easy to duplicate or not very useful for maintaining your role, but the orb is amazing at doing that. There is no other way to duplicate a *you fail your saves... forever* effect. There are also the feats that you can get, which are quite useful.

The more you say, though, the more I realize that I may just be comparing what I consider to be the best wizard with clerics, and not the wizard in general. I guess you're right, the wizard class as written can have its job (2 out of 3 paths) duplicated by the efforts of the rest of the team. I'd say that the wizard still maintains the best power selection for doing his job, but many parts of his job can be duplicated by others with certain powers.

However, if the wizard is built for the control I was emphasizing, there aren't enough powers to duplicate that effect, and the orb makes him all the more potent.

I think that the Spellbook class feature would be infinitely more interesting if it made the wizard more like a sorcerer; They have two options, and they can only cast one, but they can choose which one at the time of casting, not at the start of the day when they prepare spells. Or maybe allow them to cast one additonal spell per day or something to make it actually useful. The spellbook was useful in 3.5 partially because you had tons of spell slots. If you only have 3 spell slots, there's not much versatility gained from the spellbook.

In any case, most of the features do seem pretty useless. The wizard still does have the best power selection to do his job, but with effort and the right powers, yeah, the party can do a reasonable job of duplicating a controller.

 

[Old Gumphrey]

The problem with this line of argument is that control is defined as dealing lots of damage to lots of bad guys. Plus if you've got enemy-only fire cooking in an 11x11 area (easily half the area of your average battlefield size) that is really good control, even if you're not immobilizing something. You're cutting off 110 squares from enemy movement only; your friends can walk through it just fine, cast spells out of it, whatever they want. If that's not control, nothing is.

At this point the only reason I can see to go wizard over cleric is to twink an orb wizard and pass out -7 on saves in the paragon tier. After further analysis, staff and wand are somewhat laughable compared to the orb.

I'm just confused, I mean, what is the balance reason for a cleric to get not only control powers, but really awesome control powers? The wizard doesn't have a single heal in its entire arsenal, and very few party buffs.

In PHB 2 there is supposed to be a class that's like cleric but "more spellcaster-y"; so I can't even imagine how much better than the wizard that class is going to be.

Long live CoDzilla.

EDIT: PS, clerics can just multi wizard and take Archmage.

 

[WOLead]

No - and that makes Meteor Swarm even more piddly. However, Closing Spell is nice, but has two huge flaws compared to Firestorm - very conditional and less useful area. I don't think it stacks up well, unless you're out of other spells and in the midst of a group of monsters - but then, if this happens, you are still worse than the cleric simply because you are too squishy in that situation - not enough hit points.

Why would you have to be in the midst of a group of monsters with Closing Spell? Yes, the spell is conditional, in the fact it needs to be the last Daily Spell available to use though. I just don't get why you say it has a less useful area? And for competing with a Cleric's survivability? Blur, Greater Invisibility, Fly.

Or he could just use Legion's Hold, which *is* a better control spell. Furthermore, I don't think the special abilities of the Paragon Paths/Epic Destinies should influence the power choice that much. If they're so powerful that the entire class has to be changed, they're too powerful and destroy design space - because if they're already taken into account, it's hard to create more Paths/Destinies later on.

On Legion's Hold, one of the arguments for Clerics being a better Controller then a Wizard was about damage.
The special abilities limited to just one class should be addressed though. Say Archmage which is only available to Wizards, and not MCed Wizards. I cannot find a way for a Cleric to regain or reuse a Daily power, while the Wizard has built in ways limited to themselves. Varying from Spellstorm Mage's level 11 Storm Spell, Archmage's Spell Recall, Archspell, and Shape Magic, and the Epic level feat Arcane Mastery.
You don't start being able to regain use of Daily spells as a Wizard Controller, but the options come by often as a choice for them.

Well, yes - but then you could also talk about Blade Barrier + Firestorm. Also very painful, because you can potentially force people to stay within the firestorm. And if people don't do that, you can still push them back with Thunderous Word (which, by the way, does more "controllish" movement of enemies than most wizards).

Cheers, LT.

I mentioned the Elemental Maw and Wall of Fire specifically for the damage it could do. If its the effects a Controller grants over an AoE area is what makes a Controller a Controller, then you can ignore. A few people think that AoE damage and killing a target hard and fast is the way things should go for a controller. Setup correctly, an enemy at most can take 3*(3d6+Int) + (6d6+Int +3d6+Int) damage and at minimum another 3d6+Int damage on their next turn as they start prone and dazed in a cell of Wall of Fire. Unfortunately, only creatures in a 5x5 area have a chance of taking that much damage.
Blade Barrier can't prevent a person from leaving Firestorm's Sustained Effect. At best, the Cleric may get a chance to use Thunderous Wave on an enemy to blast them once back into the Firestorm effect and possibly through Blade Barrier. Just once though.
Thunderous Word is an encounter power, while Thunderwave is At-Will.

 

[WhatGravitas]

I just don't get why you say it has a less useful area?

Sorry, my fault - mental mix-up, I thought it was a close, not an area burst.

You don't start being able to regain use of Daily spells as a Wizard Controller, but the options come by often as a choice for them.

But a lot of these things is tied up in Paragon Paths, the Epic Destiny, and feats. So the wizard gets worse powers because they get these very good things, meaning these things are making the wizard a true controller?

Cheers, LT.

 

[DemonLord57]

The problem with this line of argument is that control is defined as dealing lots of damage to lots of bad guys.

Okay, with this definition of control, yes, the cleric has some nice control spells. They hardly have a full list of them, but they do have plenty of AoE.

Plus if you've got enemy-only fire cooking in an 11x11 area (easily half the area of your average battlefield size) that is really good control, even if you're not immobilizing something. You're cutting off 110 squares from enemy movement only; your friends can walk through it just fine, cast spells out of it, whatever they want. If that's not control, nothing is.

Again, at this point (at least level 19), I don't consider 1d10+Wis+other stuff to be a sufficient deterrence, especially for the elites and solos. Elites at this point have around 350-450 hp, and solos are around 900. This does around 15 or so damage per round. Piddly.

If you consider the action advantage produced from *stopping* opponent's actions being essentially that your team gets more turns, (an abstraction to demonstrate the advantage that is not entirely analogous, as you rarely stop all of the enemies' actions with control) your party can crank out a lot more damage than this.

I am not saying that Firestorm sucks. It is in fact quite good against minions, and as I said does provide some deterrence. It also gets better the more enemies you face. It is a good damage power, one of the best in the PHB. However, it is not, IMO, a control power.

EDIT: PS, clerics can just multi wizard and take Archmage.

Not that it matter that much, but no they can't. The multiclassing section states that they count as a member of the class for the prerequisites of feats and paragon paths. It says nothing about Epic Destinies.