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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5044422" data-attributes="member: 82106">No, I think paranoia is largely not required with 4e expansions and power books. Not that there is literally NO increase in power with new books but its very slight and the main effect is a LOT more build choices. Martial Power and AV1 did introduce some material that was a bit OP, but they did a good job of errata on it. PHB has a pretty limited selection of items sadly too, so AV1 is a really big plus to have. OTOH there are perfectly good reasons to want to stick to the core books, just don't hobble your game in the process. I know my players started to feel a bit constrained until a couple more books came out.My views on the various implements may be a bit different than most, but I tend to look at things more from a perspective of tactical principles vs individual numbers.Staff of Defense: This is the weakest of all the implements. It is purely defensive. Defense doesn't help you wrest control of a fight and win. Its not a bad thing on its own, but it has the least overall effectiveness on the average. Really only useful for a wizard that is going to go up front and blast away with close spells.Wand of Accuracy: Pure offense. From a straight conceptual standpoint this is the strongest. It is untrue that it is only good for single target spells. All spells need to hit and there will OFTEN be a key enemy you want to make sure you hit even when the spell is an area effect. The dex/int overlap thing IS non-ideal but even having a 14 dex and not boosting it ever again is fine, +2 is +2 regardless of if you're level 1 or level 30. In fact its when its hardest to hit that pluses are worth the most.Orb of Imposition: This one is harder to rate. OoI obviously is attractive in terms of "locking down" monsters, but that is NOT its only use. Just imposing a save penalty on almost any condition when that condition is hampering the enemy or extending a spell effect by a round when it is giving effective battlefield control is golden. Its quite easy to argue this is the best IM, though Wand of Accuracy does give it a run for its money. In many ways they are doing largely the same thing.Given the good melee power of your party I just don't see Staff as a particularly good choice.I personally think you're focusing too much on damage output with your spell load too. Even with doing the most possible damage you can do a wizard does poor damage on the whole. People that have played "striker wizards" have been pretty uniformly disappointed in the result. At least take one of Scorching Burst or Icy Terrain. TWave you will really just basically never use from experience in this type of party. You just can't get in there with it and pushing a few enemies back a couple squares really isn't much control. Your going to find basically your only at-will use choice is CoD (or SB if you're human) 99% of the time. Same with Icy Rays vs Fire Shroud. FS looks nice in theory and you'll use it a fair amount, but the damage you can do is frankly not that impressive. Icy Rays will do less damage but when you need a monster to stand still, which happens a good bit you'll be thankful for it. Plus OoI or WoA will work well with it.At least do yourself the favor of taking ONE real control spell. Things do get better at 5th when you can roll out Big Stinky since it uniquely combines a nice control aspect with a lot of damage.Level 7 is a good one to use to pick up a pure damage spell. Winter's Wrath is pretty marginal so you might as well pick up something like Fire Burst or Lightning bolt. Level 9 is pretty much a shoe in for Wall of Fire, though Ice Storm isn't bad. WoF plus Spectral Ram = baaaaad wizard!</blockquote>

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