Wizards, nerfed or not?

[TheSleepyKing]

Our 5th level wizard has used fireball three times now. In each case it has been laughably useless, typically doing about 12 damage to each of 4 foes. It was hardly worth doing in the grand scheme of things. As an encounter power it would have been OK, but a daily? The benefit of doing small damage to a large number of foes is over-rated in my experience.

That's my experience as well. Yes, if the stars are properly aligned, the Wizard can do more damage than the other classes, but in practice that only happens when the DM deliberately makes it so. Heck, as DM I tend to throw in bunched minions just to make the Wizard feel good about herself.
More to the point, I think 4e Wizards have a narrative problem that makes them seem less effective than they may be in practice. Fireball is a good example -- you hurl a huge, snarling ball of flame only to find that, if you're lucky, you've just bloodied those level 1 kobolds. Wizards in 4e rarely get to execute satisfying "finishing moves", mostly they just weaken enemies slightly to make it easier for the other characters to do the killing. Does this make them "nerfed"? I don't know, but it does make them less satisying to play in my experience.

 

[Cadfan]

Plane Sailing-

1. I've run H1, H2, and H3, and for what its worth, I am completely convinced by my experiences there that Burst 3 is noticeably different from Burst 2. Even if it just ropes in one extra enemy, that's going to be a noticeable difference.

2. Yes, using Fireball properly often involves the Wizard winning initiative. Since that's an ongoing issue with many of the Wizard's spells (area of effects are easier before your allies engage), our Wizard took Improved Initiative very early in his career.

3. Stinking Cloud is a good spell. I'm not going to talk it down much. It might even be better than Fireball. I don't have a problem with that conclusion, I just think its worth noting that Fireball is still really good. As I said before, even Fireball, a spell often regarded as underpowered, actually deals more damage in a generic combat situation than any other equal leveled attack that doesn't deal its damage over time.

4. Stinking Cloud does more damage, but you probably should subtract damage left undone if it messes up the melee character's charge lines and they have to hang back. Stinking Cloud can deal out serious pain if the party can manage to capture the bad guys so that they're exactly inside the cloud while the party is exactly on the outside, but that can be pretty tough. Sometimes a simple, easy, extremely large fire and forget spell is what you need.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Plane Sailing-

1. I've run H1, H2, and H3, and for what its worth, I am completely convinced by my experiences there that Burst 3 is noticeably different from Burst 2. Even if it just ropes in one extra enemy, that's going to be a noticeable difference.

That's interesting, and potentially encouraging to hear!

I've run H1 and I'm halfway through H2 (I wasn't planning to use H3 as I wasn't inspired by the premise).

H1 had quite a few minions around, but I don't think I've seen any minions in H2 - what do you recall about the minion situation in H2 and H3?

Cheers

 

[Aexalon]

Both classes which are still in playtest and not released yet.

Currently there is only one controller class.

Preview != Playtest. At this time, only the Barbarian and the Artificer have been released as playtest classes. Invoker, Warden, Bard, Druid and (soon?) Sorcerer are previews of the actual classes.

 

[Cadfan]

That's interesting, and potentially encouraging to hear!

I've run H1 and I'm halfway through H2 (I wasn't planning to use H3 as I wasn't inspired by the premise).

H1 had quite a few minions around, but I don't think I've seen any minions in H2 - what do you recall about the minion situation in H2 and H3?

Cheers

H1 has plenty of minions.
H2 has... none? I think?
H3 has around 10 fights involving minions. Some are very creative.

But I don't consider the wizard's job to be only minion squashing. I just found Burst 3 to be noticeably better than Burst 2 because H3 has some really large rooms.

Its made me resolve to use larger areas more often. I liked what I saw in terms of maneuvering.

 

[Celtavian]

re

Wizards are still useful and potent.

But they are a shadow of their former selves as far as previous conditions go. There is very little tactical gameplay for a wizard now. Their spells just offer the tactical options of old wizards nor the ability to boost the party and make them stronger.

4E is almost entirely based on damage. So the wizards do damage with some minor effect that is sometimes helpful and sometimes useless.

Overall, they do pack a bit more of a wallop than other classes and have more nifty tricks, but still aren't like they used to be.

But they are still wizards and have powers that other classes do not. Hopefully with the complete Arcane, they'll have some feats that allow wizards to expand their repertoire. They could use some options. Their feat choices are pretty weak right now. Their spell options are pretty limited.

Remember when Fireball was a must have? Now Fireball is one of the worst spells you can take as a wizard. The best spells are sustainable and mobile. If you have the option between an AoE fireball or a sustainable spell like Flame Sphere, it's better to take the Flame Sphere because it will do more damage over the long haul. Which is a change from previous editions.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Its made me resolve to use larger areas more often. I liked what I saw in terms of maneuvering.

One of the things that is a quandary for me in 4e - there is so much that supports and works well with large areas and lots of manouvering, and then the fighters have class abilities which locks down all movement around them! So far in my games the fighters have exerted far and away the most 'controller' effect on the battlefield bar none, and it only the weeks when no fighter is present that interesting dynamic, fluid battles have been taking place. Once fighters get into the mix everything pretty much gets bogged down into stationary combat around where the fighters decide to go.

Have you found any good ways of avoiding that problem?

 

[CapnZapp]

4E is almost entirely based on damage. So the wizards do damage with some minor effect that is sometimes helpful and sometimes useless.

I thought 4E was a conditions game.

That is, if you're thinking about how save or dies have been replaced with straight damage, you're right of course.

But generally, mere damage isn't that impressive (unless, like, you're doing really impressive amounts of damage! ). Instead, it's conditions like stunned or dazed that really win the day.

Right?

 

[Cadfan]

One of the things that is a quandary for me in 4e - there is so much that supports and works well with large areas and lots of manouvering, and then the fighters have class abilities which locks down all movement around them! So far in my games the fighters have exerted far and away the most 'controller' effect on the battlefield bar none, and it only the weeks when no fighter is present that interesting dynamic, fluid battles have been taking place. Once fighters get into the mix everything pretty much gets bogged down into stationary combat around where the fighters decide to go.

Have you found any good ways of avoiding that problem?

There are a lot of little ways to fix this. The easiest is to just have more monsters than the Fighter can control in a round, and to make sure that they don't all charge the Fighter. The Fighter can only really keep track of one or two enemies at a time.

Another easy solution is to just charge the Fighter with a Brute enemy in the first round, and then, after he's engaged, have the skirmishers pop out of hiding.

We were recently doing the arboreal encounters in H3.

Spoiler

There are certain arboreals that can go invisible as a minor action if they are three spaces away from an enemy. The Fighter obviously wrecks this plan. But fights with these types of arboreals almost always involve some soldier types, so I had the sneaky ones hide until the soldiers engaged, and then jump out. This meant that the Fighter, who naturally engaged first, was stuck fighting the tough melee bad guys who wanted to stay up close, while the rest of the party was trying to deal with the invisible hit and run guys. Eventually the Fighter won free, locked down one of the invisible ones, and slaughtered it. Which was great for the Fighter, and the monster in question got to do its trick.

I look at it like this- if the monster gets to do its trick, and then a character's power wrecks the trick and the party slaughters the monster, then everything went as it should.

 

[Dausuul]

Once fighters get into the mix everything pretty much gets bogged down into stationary combat around where the fighters decide to go.

Have you found any good ways of avoiding that problem?

Why is this a problem? To me, that's a feature, not a bug. It's why being a fighter is cool.

It doesn't freeze up the whole battlefield - fighters can only lock down stuff adjacent to them, so if you're in a reasonably open space, some enemies can maneuver around the fighter. And monsters with the ability to shift more than 1 square, or daze/stun attacks, can escape the fighter's grip, albeit with some pain. There's also the option to shift-then-charge.