# Arcanist playtest



## OnlineDM (Jul 15, 2011)

I've just started leafing through the Arcanist playtest article that just went up. The main thing that jumped out to me is that Flaming Sphere now deals damage to enemies that END their turns adjacent to the sphere, rather than those that BEGIN their turn adjacent. So much for auto-killing minions!

I don't mind, though; Flaming Sphere is still a ton of fun.

What other changes are of interest in the article?


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## the Jester (Jul 15, 2011)

My PH isn't handy, but is _chill strike_ (Encounter 1) new?


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## Kzach (Jul 15, 2011)

OnlineDM said:


> I don't mind, though; Flaming Sphere is still a ton of fun.




The thing I don't like about this change is that it's completely altered the functionality of the spell. I don't mind balance nerfs but this has turned the spell on its head rather than just tweaking it for balance purposes.

I'd actually argue that the change has more of a controller feel to it now since you can put it somewhere and everyone will most likely move away from it, whereas moving away from it was a secondary concern given that the damage has already been done. All it's really good for now is clearing areas you want access to as few enemies will ever want to end their turn next to it.

They've also added school keywords to more spells. This, for me at least, spells the death of the wizard. The mage was already (IMO) a superior option and this just adds insult to injury.


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## DracoSuave (Jul 15, 2011)

Kzach said:


> They've also added school keywords to more spells. This, for me at least, spells the death of the wizard. The mage was already (IMO) a superior option and this just adds insult to injury.




The base spell lists mostly just added 'evocation' onto everything.  So, sure, Evokers are walking away grinning madly.

But... for the most part, it depends on your build.  If you're a wizard specializing in pushing, you'll go enchanter.  If you're not specialized in a particular group of effects, wizard's still the better choice.  And Staff of Defense is still really good.

And enchanters can't orbizard, whereas orbizards can Sleep, Deep Slumber, and Legion's Hold now at epic.

Wizards can choose four cantrips now instead of just having four cantrips.  Nice quality of life change.

They cleared up completely how power replacement works for wizards at higher levels. 

Wand of Accuracy still sucks, but hasn't it always sucked?


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## Karmic_vegeance (Jul 15, 2011)

I can't say I'm entirely surprised that Prismatic Beams got nerfed - it did seem to overshadow the other choices for level 15 dailies - but it was so nice imagining a Close burst 6 attack against enemies with that kind of firepower via Resounding Thunder and damage keyword shenanigans. Oh well, at least the update reminded me I have Shunt Between Worlds to look forward to.

Also, they cleaned up Arcane Gate's keywords - no longer is it a teleportation power that does not teleport.



> The thing I don't like about this change is that it's completely altered  the functionality of the spell. I don't mind balance nerfs but this has  turned the spell on its head rather than just tweaking it for balance  purposes.



To be fair, most spell effects seem to have changed to end of turn - even the zone made by Cloud of Daggers hits at the end of the turn, not that you needed less of a reason to take Cloud of Daggers anyways. It's more like turning the class on its head if anything.



> My PH isn't handy, but is _chill strike_ (Encounter 1) new?



The power itself isn't, but it didn't have a *Miss:* line in PH1. The new rider doesn't change much anyways, it was already a fantastic power beforehand.


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## Kzach (Jul 15, 2011)

DracoSuave said:


> The base spell lists mostly just added 'evocation' onto everything.  So, sure, Evokers are walking away grinning madly.




I hadn't looked through all the spells. But I'm assuming that eventually they're going to have all the schools covered at which point the mage, no matter their specialisation, is pretty clearly the winner.

The orbizard will still be a powerful option, no doubt, but it is also a very specific build with very little variation making it, quite frankly, a little boring. It also requires an Int/Wis split which is exceptionally rare for racial bonuses, leaving ones choices again, limited.

But with the mage, secondary stats are pretty much up to the whim of the player. At most you need to qualify for whatever feats you want in the future, and even then, there are numerous feat paths you can take for quite a bit of variety.

And even then, the orbizard only has one schtick (at least this was the case last time I looked, which admittedly was a long time ago), usually only viable once a day. One of the most powerful features of the wizard (spell choice on resting) is maximised as a mage, making any school choice a winner.

On the whole, I think the mage is a far more versatile and powerful choice than any build of wizard and once all the schools are represented in the powers, I see little to no reason to make a wizard over a mage.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 15, 2011)

OnlineDM said:


> The main thing that jumped out to me is that Flaming Sphere now deals damage to enemies that END their turns adjacent to the sphere, rather than those that BEGIN their turn adjacent.



Hah! I totally called it here.


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## blalien (Jul 15, 2011)

OnlineDM said:


> The main thing that jumped out to me is that Flaming Sphere now deals damage to enemies that END their turns adjacent to the sphere, rather than those that BEGIN their turn adjacent. So much for auto-killing minions!




As a DM with a wizard player, that spell always annoyed me.  The minions, although perfectly healthy and of sound mind, stand there knowing they are only seconds away from fiery death.  What is going through their heads?  Are they regretting the decisions that led them to this point?  Do they wish they had a chance to make peace with their loved ones?  Do they ever consider just walking away from the flaming sphere?

I like the flavor of this rules change.  No longer is the giant ball of fire strutting its stuff next to a bunch of goblins going, "I'm going to DESTROY you...pretty soon!"  Now there's a ball of fire in the way, and any goblins with a lick of sense will go around it, possibly into the path of the twin-striking ranger.  The goblins die either way, but at least they go out with dignity.


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## DracoSuave (Jul 15, 2011)

Kzach said:


> I hadn't looked through all the spells. But I'm assuming that eventually they're going to have all the schools covered at which point the mage, no matter their specialisation, is pretty clearly the winner.




Unless you're not specialized.  The upside of schools is that their effects are focused.  The downside of schools is that their effects are focused.  If your controller philosophy is 'Push all the things' then mage is superier.   If your controller philosophy is 'Grab-bag of effects' then arcanist is superior. 

If you're not specializing in pushes and forcing attacks, then does bonuses to pushing and forced attacks actually matter?  No.  But that extra defense DOES.



> The orbizard will still be a powerful option, no doubt, but it is also a very specific build with very little variation making it, quite frankly, a little boring. It also requires an Int/Wis split which is exceptionally rare for racial bonuses, leaving ones choices again, limited.




Int/Wis isn't exactly hard to come by.  And for defensive players, neither's Int/Con.  And last I checked, the absense of Int/Wis hasn't exactly made orbizard less mighty since the game was released.



> But with the mage, secondary stats are pretty much up to the whim of the player. At most you need to qualify for whatever feats you want in the future, and even then, there are numerous feat paths you can take for quite a bit of variety.




That's an unfair comparison.  Comparing the mage to one build of wizard is deceiving.   Both the mage and the arcanist have the same requirement for attributes.  But an invoker and a staff wizard are equally as beholden to constitution.



> And even then, the orbizard only has one schtick (at least this was the case last time I looked, which admittedly was a long time ago), usually only viable once a day. One of the most powerful features of the wizard (spell choice on resting) is maximised as a mage, making any school choice a winner.




If you're going for (you suck, save ends) abilities, there's Sleep, Deep Slumber, Legion's Hold right there off the top of my head, which is three encounters reduced to nothing by the Orbizard builds.  

Those are the enchanter dailies, which enchantment specialization does absolutely nothing for.  Do they force movement?  No.  Do they force an attack?  No.  School bonuses are doing absolutely positively NOTHING here.  Orb does something.



> On the whole, I think the mage is a far more versatile and powerful choice than any build of wizard and once all the schools are represented in the powers, I see little to no reason to make a wizard over a mage.




If, and ONLY if, you specialize in a type of effect supported by your schools.  If you're looking to generalize, the school bonuses only help one or two of your powers at best, and that's not going to help you as much as, say, Staff of Defense, which is always on.  Or Tome of Readiness, which is versatile as hell.

As well, mage schools have no feat support, whereas wizard implement mastery does.  

And even in some specialized cases it's not so easy.  Mage illusionists are better debuffers, but orb illusionists get their effects to hit something more often.  Is getting brutal on your evocation spell more DPR than being able to make a miss a hit?  

The comparison is not as simple as you make it out to be.


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## Viking Bastard (Jul 15, 2011)

This is the last CC article? We're not getting the Warlock, Ranger or Paladin?


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## Neonchameleon (Jul 15, 2011)

Kzach said:


> And even then, the orbizard only has one schtick (at least this was the case last time I looked, which admittedly was a long time ago), usually only viable once a day.




Strictly false.  You miss the Orbmaster's other power.  The extend the effect line of an at will power.  Which makes Cloud of Daggers, Freezing Cloud, and especially Storm Pillar huge winners for an orbmaster.  And then there's the specific Orbmaster powers...



> I see little to no reason to make a wizard over a mage.




I have a big one.  Ritual caster.  Mages don't get it.


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## Kzach (Jul 15, 2011)

DracoSuave said:


> If you're not specializing in pushes and forcing attacks, then does bonuses to pushing and forced attacks actually matter?  No.  But that extra defense DOES.



You're focusing a lot on the enchanter. There are several other schools... not only that, but the mage gets the benefit of several school bonuses, not just one.



DracoSuave said:


> Int/Wis isn't exactly hard to come by.



Erm, I just said it is... how many races have an int/wis stat bonus? I can only think of two off the top of my head.



DracoSuave said:


> That's an unfair comparison.  Comparing the mage to one build of wizard is deceiving.   Both the mage and the arcanist have the same requirement for attributes.  But an invoker and a staff wizard are equally as beholden to constitution.



Deceiving? Whom am I deceiving? Orbizard is really the only effective wizard build. You can have blasters, sure, but there are better blaster classes out there.



DracoSuave said:


> If you're going for (you suck, save ends) abilities, there's Sleep, Deep Slumber, Legion's Hold right there off the top of my head, which is three encounters reduced to nothing by the Orbizard builds.



Ok, well, like I said, it's been a long time since I've actually looked into it all so it seems they've gotten a bit more effectiveness. I don't actually see that as a good thing given that, even after the nerf, stunlocking still exists and is retarded.



DracoSuave said:


> If, and ONLY if, you specialize in a type of effect supported by your schools.  If you're looking to generalize, the school bonuses only help one or two of your powers at best, and that's not going to help you as much as, say, Staff of Defense, which is always on.  Or Tome of Readiness, which is versatile as hell.



Again, the mage gets the benefit of several school bonuses, not just one. And again, I suspect that all schools are eventually going to be represented on all spells, giving the mage player a much greater variety of choice with spells that are affected by their school bonuses.

And, again, the mage not only gets to swap out their encounter powers, but they eventually can put EVERY spell in their spellbooks. Forget every other class feature, that alone puts the mage way over the wizard in terms of versatility, and in this game versatility = power.



DracoSuave said:


> As well, mage schools have no feat support, whereas wizard implement mastery does.



We both know they will eventually have feat support. It's just a matter of time.



DracoSuave said:


> The comparison is not as simple as you make it out to be.



Nor is it as complex as you make it out to be.



Neonchameleon said:


> I have a big one.  Ritual caster.  Mages don't get it.



I'll happily forgo a benefit that sees little to no use in any game I've ever run or played in, for even the weakest benefit of the mage.


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## DracoSuave (Jul 15, 2011)

Kzach said:


> You're focusing a lot on the enchanter. There are several other schools... not only that, but the mage gets the benefit of several school bonuses, not just one.




One and a half school's worth of bonuses is a far cry from several.



> Erm, I just said it is... how many races have an int/wis stat bonus? I can only think of two off the top of my head.




Orbizard thrived in a world without any int/wis races.  It's not as important a point as you make it out to be.



> Deceiving? Whom am I deceiving? Orbizard is really the only effective wizard build. You can have blasters, sure, but there are better blaster classes out there.




I disagree.



> Again, the mage gets the benefit of several school bonuses, not just one. And again, I suspect that all schools are eventually going to be represented on all spells, giving the mage player a much greater variety of choice with spells that are affected by their school bonuses.




Again, 'several' and '1.5' are not even in the same ball park.  A mage doesn't even get the full benefit of a second school... only one minor additional benefit.



> And, again, the mage not only gets to swap out their encounter powers, but they eventually can put EVERY spell in their spellbooks. Forget every other class feature, that alone puts the mage way over the wizard in terms of versatility, and in this game versatility = power.




So long as all those encounter spells do the same basic thing, sure.  Again, see above.  1.5.  Not 'several.'  And... Tome of Readiness can do the same thing, swapping in the MIDDLE of combat.

THAT"S versatile, son.



> We both know they will eventually have feat support. It's just a matter of time.




Eventually.  And when it does, I'll re-evaluate that point at that time.  Until then... I'm going to base things on how they are now.



> Nor is it as complex as you make it out to be.




No, of course it isn't -that- complex.  All you need to do is look at things outside the number of features and look at how flexible and useful those features are.



> I'll happily forgo a benefit that sees little to no use in any game I've ever run or played in, for even the weakest benefit of the mage.




I'm surprised, Staff of Defense is pretty good... it's a second Shield spell every encounter.  Orb of Deception is pretty good... it's like an extra attack every encounter.  Tome of Readiness is pretty good.

And mages as summoners?  No.

The only one that doesn't really measure up is Wand of Accuracy.  And that's more because wands suck than because WoA sucks.


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## Gortle (Jul 15, 2011)

OnlineDM said:


> I don't mind, though; Flaming Sphere is still a ton of fun.
> 
> What other changes are of interest in the article?





Flaming Sphere is going to do very little damage now. It just makes opponents move. The ongoing attack is less effective than most at will powers. It is now a very situational power and complete crap.

Stinking Cloud has lost a stack of damage and the ability to block line of sight. It is now just an OK power instead of a good power. It has been nerf way harder than the updated Rain of Steel.

The BloodMage Bolstering Blood ability was always marginal as monsters have stacks more hit points than fragile wizards. Now it is single target and even more pointless. Only useful if you have a source of temporary hitpoints.

Destructive Salutation was an awesome power when it stunned, now it only dazes it is weak. The daze effect in my opinion is less than half as potent as stunning. 

I always thought the Wizard had the best dailies, no more.

Thanks WotC my generalist BloodMage is now retired.


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## Peraion Graufalke (Jul 15, 2011)

OnlineDM said:


> The main thing that jumped out to me is that Flaming Sphere now deals damage to enemies that END their turns adjacent to the sphere, rather than those that BEGIN their turn adjacent. So much for auto-killing minions!
> 
> I don't mind, though; Flaming Sphere is still a ton of fun.




Seeing that they nerfed several spells this way, I don't like this at all. The way I see it, this has been done to protect minions, but it reduces the wizard's damage output, which could lead to (more) combat grind. I'm going to ignore this change for my games.

Also, why didn't they just state that in general, walls and zones only deal damage once per round (or per turn, if you prefer) to a creature? That eliminates the ping-pong of death issue without having to nerf update multiple spells.

Scorching Burst got no improvement at all. Why not give it a minor control  or debuff effect so it's not strictly worse than Freezing Burst? 

Fire Burst didn't get half damage on a miss. There are other evocation spells that lack this, but at least they have got ongoing damage. Am I missing something here?

The Blood Mage got nerfed again? Oh dear. Destructive Salutation could have kept a stunned UENT plus the ongoing damage effect on a hit.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 15, 2011)

Looks to me like it's more change just for the sake of change.  I don't remember any of these spells being overpowered or stepping on anyone else's toes.  

I think they change stuff just to make it seem like a change was needed to start with.


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## Dice4Hire (Jul 15, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Looks to me like it's more change just for the sake of change.  I don't remember any of these spells being overpowered or stepping on anyone else's toes.
> 
> I think they change stuff just to make it seem like a change was needed to start with.




I am quite unhappy with the changes actually and my group has gone back to paper only. It has been a good change. Nice to mnow what I see in the books is the rule.

Still, I would prefer a few powerups in some phb classes.


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## MrBeens (Jul 15, 2011)

Peraion Graufalke said:


> Seeing that they nerfed several spells this way, I don't like this at all. The way I see it, this has been done to protect minions, but it reduces the wizard's damage output, which could lead to (more) combat grind. I'm going to ignore this change for my games.
> 
> 
> Scorching Burst got no improvement at all. Why not give it a minor control  or debuff effect so it's not strictly worse than Freezing Burst?
> ...




Selective quote 

Cloud of daggers got changed to end of turn too. Makes this spell much worse now.

I think fireburst not getting changed is an error, as they use that spell as an example in the intro


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## Zaran (Jul 15, 2011)

Peraion Graufalke said:


> Also, why didn't they just state that in general, walls and zones only deal damage once per round (or per turn, if you prefer) to a creature? That eliminates the ping-pong of death issue without having to nerf update multiple spells.




Right, I was wondering why they didn't make this change with Blade Barrier when they nerfed the Cleric up.  If this was on their mind for so long this should have come up before we got to the Wizard.

I thought the Class Compendium's purpose wasn't to Nerf the PHB classes.  I thought it was to reprint the PHB classes in updated form so that people would not have to rely on DDI for updates.  I was hoping that the Arcanist would get boosts to make them more comparable to the Mage because like many in this thread, I feel the Mage's advantages outweigh the fact that don't have free rituals.


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## Zaran (Jul 15, 2011)

Kzach said:


> We both know they will eventually have feat support. It's just a matter of time.




Actually have you seen any Essentials based Class feats?  I think Class Feats have been cast off for class features gained as the eClass levels.  They just haven't shined a light on it.


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## Kinneus (Jul 15, 2011)

Also not happy about the grab bag of nerfs. I mean, they nerfed Cloud of Daggers? I haven't seen anybody actually take that spell since the days of pure PHB I.

Something about the Wall of Fire change in particular rankles me. I think it's mostly that they took something incredibly simple (start your turn in the wall or enter the wall, take damage) and added something else to track ("Wait, did this guy already take this damage this turn?")

The various changes from 'start of turn' to 'end of turn' were predictable, but are still disappointing. Flaming Sphere, a fan favorite that has survived since the original publication of the Player's Handbook, is now a much, much, much less attractive option. The only good news I can think of is the fact that this is a playtest. Maybe if we complain loud enough, we can get some of these changes rescinded? Or, at the very least, get some buffs in exchange for the countless nerfs? The Scorching Burst < Freezing Bursts has always bugged me.

And while I'm sure I'll be in the only person in the _world_ to complain about this, I'm disappointed and confused as to why they took the Fear keyword out of the Prismatic spells. Most people will interpret this as a buff, because undead and constructs will no longer be immune to these spells. But I have a build that needs a Fear spell, and they were top pick. It's really, really, weirdly hard to find a Fear spell, these days. Or a decent one, at any rate.

Anyway, the constant changes to parts of the game that already worked fine continues to rankle me. I keep making characters I really like, only to have the rug pulled out from under them on key powers or elements. I'm honestly considering picking up another system to play for a while, just to get away from the whole, "Oh, your character who was awesome a month ago sucks now, sorry about that" thing.

EDIT: I initially misread Wall of Fire. It seems the 'adjacent' damage has no limit, which is nice, and which helps. I'm still worried that an enemy can get pushed through the Wall of Fire, take its damage, and then on its own turn, waltz right through it without taking damage again. It just breaks immersion apart for me. I'd feel a lot better if it was once per round instead of once per turn, I think.

Also, I must admit that it's not all bad. Half damage on a miss is nice. Not great, and I'm not sure why it has suddenly become the Wizard's shtick to deal half damage on Encounter powers, but even those who are disappointed in these changes (like me) have to agree that this is a buff.


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## Neonchameleon (Jul 15, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Looks to me like it's more change just for the sake of change.  I don't remember any of these spells being overpowered or stepping on anyone else's toes.
> 
> I think they change stuff just to make it seem like a change was needed to start with.



You've never seen Stinking Cloud or Flaming Sphere be overpowered?  Then all I can say is you've never seen them used properly and proactively.

And agreed that Class feats seem to be a thing of the past.  I also think that the orbizard and staffizard (i.e. the best two IMO) are competative with the mage and the others aren't.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 15, 2011)

Neonchameleon said:


> You've never seen Stinking Cloud or Flaming Sphere be overpowered?  Then all I can say is you've never seen them used properly and proactively.
> 
> And agreed that Class feats seem to be a thing of the past.  I also think that the orbizard and staffizard (i.e. the best two IMO) are competative with the mage and the others aren't.




Give me a scenario where those two spells are overpowered.


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## Neonchameleon (Jul 15, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Give me a scenario where those two spells are overpowered.



Any time you have a lot of minions.  I've seen Stinking Cloud wipe out a 5*4 column with just the use of a move action in addition to the vast amounts of damage it did as it was cast.  Any time you have a confined space that you can prevent the monsters leaving.  I've dropped Flaming Sphere into a barracks, fighter and swordmage blocking one door and storm pillar blocking the other.  There were no survivors despite theoretically overwhelming odds.  The only question was whether the two defenders would fall to melee when both had IIRC superior cover and ordinary concealment.

For that matter, _textbook_ tactics involves combining a flaming sphere on one side of a couple of monsters with a knight on the other.  The monsters try to move and the knight smashes them down.  And they are taking hideous auto-damage.  This still works.

An extra auto-hitting damage roll per turn moves you into twin striking ranger territory while adding even more control than you normally have by blocking squares.  Two extra such rolls per turn move you into ranger daily territory for damage.  With lots of bad guys or environments where they can't spread out both spells are simply sick.


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## Kobold Avenger (Jul 15, 2011)

I told them that I felt the Arcanist needed free magic missile and the Arcanist spellbook needed to be like the Mage's spellbook, otherwise there's no reason to ever be an Arcanist.

Also I feel there needs to be something that makes the different implement masteries feel more different, other than once per encounter.  And Wand of Accuracy still sucks.


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## Mengu (Jul 15, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Give me a scenario where those two spells are overpowered.




Stinking cloud was stinking powerful. Once it's out there, You hit a creature with a push/slide power, it takes damage from your attack, and you push it into stinking clout, it takes damage, then it starts its turn in there, it takes damage. It's not twin strike, it's triple strike, with two of the damage rolls not even requiring a to hit roll. You start building a party around it so everyone has a push/slide power, and it gets crazy.


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## Zaran (Jul 15, 2011)

Wizard spells that automatically kill minions?!  They must be nerfed!


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## Mengu (Jul 15, 2011)

Kobold Avenger said:


> And Wand of Accuracy still sucks.




Wand of Accuracy is great. It's wand support that sucks. Poor power riders, poor feats, poor superior wands, poor magic wands, etc. They need to start putting dragonheart string, phoenix father, or unicorn hair in their wands, so maybe they'll work better.


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## Klaus (Jul 15, 2011)

Just a reminder: this is a Playtest article. If you don't like something about it, send your feedback to WotC! That's the whole point of it being a playtest!


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## Kzach (Jul 15, 2011)

DracoSuave said:


> I'm surprised, Staff of Defense is pretty good... it's a second Shield spell every encounter.  Orb of Deception is pretty good... it's like an extra attack every encounter.  Tome of Readiness is pretty good.



Erm... you got confused somewhere along the line there. I was referring to Ritual Casting.


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## Kinneus (Jul 15, 2011)

Zaran said:


> Wizard spells that automatically kill minions?! They must be nerfed!



Heh, yeah. I think nerfing something because it auto-kills minions is a bad idea, simply because _so much_ out there already auto-kills minions.

I can understand how having minions be virtually ignored by some builds and some parties can be a bad thing for the game, but... honestly, guys, that ship has long since sailed. And Wizards are hardly the main culprit. Certain auto-damaging PP features and Epic Destiny features essentially make a character immune to minions (see Archlich, just off the top of my head. "Come within 3 squares of me, you're dead").


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## Neverfate (Jul 15, 2011)

In LFR I've personally seen Flaming Sphere and Stinking Cloud dominate encounters. They're very easy to build around. Having not read the article, I'm just glad to hear that it's got a lot of nerfs. Wizards always struck me as more competent strikers than some striker classes (and sadly still might have been true if it weren't for the Class Acts Assassin article a couple weeks ago). Wizards remain a strong choice either way compared to almost any other controller, save for Invokers.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 15, 2011)

Mengu said:


> Stinking cloud was stinking powerful. _*Once it's out there, You hit a creature with a push/slide power, it takes damage from your attack, and you push it into stinking clout, it takes damage, then it starts its turn in there, it takes damage. *_It's not twin strike, it's triple strike, with two of the damage rolls not even requiring a to hit roll. You start building a party around it so everyone has a push/slide power, and it gets crazy.




I thought this was the whole purpose of the controller?


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## Xeterog (Jul 15, 2011)

Kinneus said:


> EDIT: I initially misread Wall of Fire. It seems the 'adjacent' damage has no limit, which is nice, and which helps. I'm still worried that an enemy can get pushed through the Wall of Fire, take its damage, and then on its own turn, waltz right through it without taking damage again. It just breaks immersion apart for me. I'd feel a lot better if it was once per round instead of once per turn, I think.




Think you have Turn and Round backwards.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 15, 2011)

Mengu said:


> Stinking cloud was stinking powerful. Once it's out there, You hit a creature with a push/slide power, it takes damage from your attack, and you push it into stinking clout, it takes damage, then it starts its turn in there, it takes damage. It's not twin strike, it's triple strike, with two of the damage rolls not even requiring a to hit roll. You start building a party around it so everyone has a push/slide power, and it gets crazy.




Does anyone realize that enemies and push, pull and slide PC's?  I have had instances where enemies were pulling, pushing, and sliding us into our own zones.


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## DEFCON 1 (Jul 15, 2011)

Klaus said:


> Just a reminder: this is a Playtest article. If you don't like something about it, send your feedback to WotC! That's the whole point of it being a playtest!




Just wanted to remind everyone of Klaus' reminder.  Send in those reports!

By the way... how many of you are still sending in reports from the Scoundrel playtest?  I know that usually when one of these articles gets posts there's like 4 days of furious ranting... but these playtests are still active past that.  If you really care about the functionality of these powers, make sure you continue to look at them being used and send WotC your reports.  Otherwise, your complaints here on the boards accomplish nothing.


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## Neonchameleon (Jul 15, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Does anyone realize that enemies and push, pull and slide PC's?  I have had instances where enemies were pulling, pushing, and sliding us into our own zones.



Of course.  But you do realise that in these cases

1: You get to decide whether to bring out the zones.
2: You get to decide where the zones are.


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## Neonchameleon (Jul 15, 2011)

DEFCON 1 said:


> Just wanted to remind everyone of Klaus' reminder.  Send in those reports!
> 
> By the way... how many of you are still sending in reports from the Scoundrel playtest?  I know that usually when one of these articles gets posts there's like 4 days of furious ranting... but these playtests are still active past that.  If you really care about the functionality of these powers, make sure you continue to look at them being used and send WotC your reports.  Otherwise, your complaints here on the boards accomplish nothing.



I barely remember what changed with the Scoundrel.  Very little IIRC?


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 15, 2011)

Neonchameleon said:


> Of course.  But you do realise that in these cases
> 
> 1: You get to decide whether to bring out the zones.
> 2: You get to decide where the zones are.




Thing is this has the old lob the fireball in the middle of the party scene.  Creatures don't all hang out in the back and set themselves up for zone spells.


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## Mengu (Jul 15, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> I thought this was the whole purpose of the controller?




No, the purpose of the controller is to control the enemy, not turn your party into triple striking rangers. Things that push, pull, daze, immobilize, etc. exert control. Zones also exert control by making it less attractive to remain in an area. The objective of the controller is supposed to be more utilitarian than striking. But with the zones the way they were, people just got too used to using their wizards as strikers, and now everyone is going to complain. It's to be expected, but I'm glad for the changes.


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## Klaus (Jul 15, 2011)

Mengu said:


> No, the purpose of the controller is to control the enemy, not turn your party into triple striking rangers. Things that push, pull, daze, immobilize, etc. exert control. Zones also exert control by making it less attractive to remain in an area. The objective of the controller is supposed to be more utilitarian than striking. But with the zones the way they were, people just got too used to using their wizards as strikers, and now everyone is going to complain. It's to be expected, but I'm glad for the changes.



Mengu is right. Controllers can deal great damage, but it's main purpose is to influence the battlefield: scatter foes that are bunching up against an ally, bunch foes up to set up the perfect fireball (either from an ally or from an action point), hinder the enemy's big guns, etc.


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## Talok (Jul 15, 2011)

Gizella said:


> Flaming Sphere is going to do very little damage now. It just makes opponents move. The ongoing attack is less effective than most at will powers. It is now a very situational power and complete crap.
> 
> Stinking Cloud has lost a stack of damage and the ability to block line of sight. It is now just an OK power instead of a good power. It has been nerf way harder than the updated Rain of Steel.
> 
> ...




What did you expect.  WotC seems to change their mind about what powers and classes are supposed to do on a montlhy basis.


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## Zaran (Jul 15, 2011)

Kinneus said:


> Heh, yeah. I think nerfing something because it auto-kills minions is a bad idea, simply because _so much_ out there already auto-kills minions.
> 
> I can understand how having minions be virtually ignored by some builds and some parties can be a bad thing for the game, but... honestly, guys, that ship has long since sailed. And Wizards are hardly the main culprit. Certain auto-damaging PP features and Epic Destiny features essentially make a character immune to minions (see Archlich, just off the top of my head. "Come within 3 squares of me, you're dead").




Yeah, Minions are there there to die in droves to wizard spells. Like they did in other Editions. There has never been an encounter where I have felt that the wizard removed the fun by wiping out the minions. It's always fun to watch half the monsters removed from the map. They also fail to mention the fact that Flaming Sphere just didn't auto-hit the enemy. It auto-hit allies too. So there was a bit of balance to it built in.


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## MrBeens (Jul 15, 2011)

Kinneus said:


> Also not happy about the grab bag of nerfs. I mean, they nerfed Cloud of Daggers? I haven't seen anybody actually take that spell since the days of pure PHB I.
> 
> Something about the Wall of Fire change in particular rankles me. I think it's mostly that they took something incredibly simple (start your turn in the wall or enter the wall, take damage) and added something else to track ("Wait, did this guy already take this damage this turn?")
> 
> ...




You are getting round and turn mixed up.
A turn is per creature a round is one full cycle of initiative. With wall of fire you get pushed into the wall, you take damage, when your turn comes up you take damage, on someone elses turn you get pushed back in you take damage again.
This is to stop someone with a massive slide effect moving someone in and out of the zone to do multiple damage on a turn.
It works exactly how you want it to.

The adjacent damage has not been changed. It has always been limited to once per round as it only works on starting your turn next to it.


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## mudbunny (Jul 15, 2011)

As has been said above, please send your feedback to WotC. It is the best way to make sure that what you have said is heard.

I will also be sending this up to WotC, but the surest way to make sure your feedback gets directly to the team working on it is to send it directly to WotC.


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## Riastlin (Jul 15, 2011)

I don't have a problem with them trying to keep wizards from doing striker level (or greater) damage.  After all, they're controllers, not strikers.  What I am more concerned about though is nerfing effects like stun, daze, etc.  From what it sounds like (I have not had a chance to read the article yet), this is in part what was done with the play test.

My problem with this is that while stunlocking solos leads to very boring and trivialized encounters, stunlocking a standard critter is not such a big deal.  Sure, it sucks for the bad guys but they can manage it if need be and this sort of thing _is exactly what controllers were supposed to do._  By reacting to the problem with solos with an across the board nerf, they've pretty much eliminated the appeal to these types of powers.

What's worse is that most DMs worth their salt (at least if they had even a modicum of time to prep encounters rather than being forced to run published encounters only, and only as they are written) are already taking care of the problem with stunlocking solos.  We are using a variety of methods from a) giving them an immediate saving throw when hit with the effect (even if a save would not normally end the effect) to b) giving them powers to remove one effect (even if they might not be able to otherwise act) to c) giving them saves at the start of their turns to d) having stun treat them as dazed and dazed cause them to lose 1 action to e) just flat out making them immune to stun and/or daze.  In other words, solos are getting better able to handle the stunlocking by DMs spending just a bit of time to give them an added trait or two.  

DMs who have done this have enabled the powers to retain their strength against standard (and even elite) critters while reducing (though not necessarily eliminating) their effect on solos.  It seems to me a pretty good compromise.  With as long as combats are anyway, and with as long as turns can take, I don't even really mind if that brute gets stunned for a round or two.  It just seems like good tactics.  Now it could be that I just have not yet seen how obscene these powers can get even against standard critters, but it just seems to me that if we give solos a defense against them then it should usually be fine for the rest.


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## Riastlin (Jul 15, 2011)

Klaus said:


> Just a reminder: this is a Playtest article. If you don't like something about it, send your feedback to WotC! That's the whole point of it being a playtest!




Don't you be bringing your logic in here.  How are we going to rant and rave with your logic staring us in the face??


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## MrMyth (Jul 15, 2011)

Neonchameleon said:


> You've never seen Stinking Cloud or Flaming Sphere be overpowered? Then all I can say is you've never seen them used properly and proactively.
> 
> And agreed that Class feats seem to be a thing of the past. I also think that the orbizard and staffizard (i.e. the best two IMO) are competative with the mage and the others aren't.




Yeah, I saw a wizard in an LFR mod completely solo the final encounter via an Enlarged Stinking Cloud. People keep mentioning that this was all done to save minions, but I think they might be overlooking the fact that encounter-long auto-damage to multiple enemies is effective whether minions are present or not. 

Overall, I'm fine with the approach they are taking. Many of these powers were in need of fixing - inasmuch as they were powers that often trumped many other options. Balancing that out does tone down the wizard's daily powers - but the wizard is getting boosts to encounter powers, which seems a decent trade-off. I think in the long run, wizards will remain about as effective, but won't quite have as much ability to just singlehandedly end a fight on their own.


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## MrMyth (Jul 15, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> I thought this was the whole purpose of the controller?




The purpose of the controller is to inflict status effects that hinder enemies, or to attack multiple enemies for average damage. Status effects that shut down a combat, or dealing striker-level damage to multiple enemies (via sticking them in auto-damage zones that can hit them multiple times) was a bit much. 

The concept of flaming sphere was very in keeping with the wizard's role: "We'll create a big ball of fire that hurts enemies, so they will be forced to keep moving away from it, thus letting the wizard influence their actions indirectly!"

But because of how it worked, it instead turned into, "It doesn't matter how the enemies react to the flaming sphere, since the wizard can move it next to them and it burns them at the start of their turn either way. So instead, they don't change their behavior at all, and instead multiple enemies just take lots of automatic damage throughout the encounter."

With the adjustment, it returns to the first concept, one actually in keeping with the wizard's role. It is absolutely less powerful, sure, and I get how some folks will be bothered by that. But it is also most definitely a more appropriate - and balanced - power for the wizard.


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## MrBeens (Jul 15, 2011)

MrMyth said:


> Yeah, I saw a wizard in an LFR mod completely solo the final encounter via an Enlarged Stinking Cloud. People keep mentioning that this was all done to save minions, but I think they might be overlooking the fact that encounter-long auto-damage to multiple enemies is effective whether minions are present or not.
> 
> Overall, I'm fine with the approach they are taking. Many of these powers were in need of fixing - inasmuch as they were powers that often trumped many other options. Balancing that out does tone down the wizard's daily powers - but the wizard is getting boosts to encounter powers, which seems a decent trade-off. I think in the long run, wizards will remain about as effective, but won't quite have as much ability to just singlehandedly end a fight on their own.




You can't enlarge dailies - it only works on encounters and at wills.


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## Peraion Graufalke (Jul 15, 2011)

IMO zones are a form of control: they force the monsters to scatter.


My Eberron wizard sadly agrees with MrBeens: the Enlarge Spell feat can't enlarge dailies. Did the PC multiclass into sorcerer to get access to Arcane Empowerment?


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## mneme (Jul 15, 2011)

It didn't really matter; you could totally near-solo an encounter with Flaming Sphere alone (certainly, a Genasi Blaster could; hell, at 5th level I was using a fire tome to be able to cast Flaming Sphere twice per day).

This is a big hit to the blaster build, but IMO it's warranted.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 16, 2011)

MrMyth said:


> Yeah, I saw a wizard in an LFR mod completely solo the final encounter via an Enlarged Stinking Cloud. People keep mentioning that this was all done to save minions, but I think they might be overlooking the fact that encounter-long auto-damage to multiple enemies is effective whether minions are present or not.
> 
> Overall, I'm fine with the approach they are taking. Many of these powers were in need of fixing - inasmuch as they were powers that often trumped many other options._* Balancing that out does tone down the wizard's daily powers*_ - but the wizard is getting boosts to encounter powers, which seems a decent trade-off. I think in the long run, wizards will remain about as effective, but won't quite have as much ability to just singlehandedly end a fight on their own.




Since when did the Wizard's daily powers need balancing?  It seems to me that the only time anyone talks about inbalance is when the designers change something and people try and justify those changes.  There were no balance issues with daily powers.  

Also, the controller is supposed to do more than just push, pull, and slide.  Control of the battlefield is just what that is.  The striker and the defender are not always supposed to be the ones that get in the killing blow, that is available for all classes.  The purpose of battlefield control is to set up zones to break up enemies that gather together in groups, or bring out enemies that are trying to stay away from the PC's so they don't get killed.  The whole entire reason for having damage in the beginning is so enemies won't stand there and take damage, you are exerting your battlefield control abilities and making them move.  Also, PC's with enemy moving powers can move those enemies into those zones so the enemies will take damage at the beginning of their turn and have to decide if they want to stand there and take damage, or get out and lose some actions.  

Right now with zones being at the end of their turn, they really lose no actions.  They can still attack and then move out of the zone. 

As I have stated before, a Wizard's zone effects all creatures so enemies can use a PC's own zone against them, so it is not a win win for the Wizard who uses Stinking Cloud of Flaming Sphere.  I have had to drop those spells and lose them because a clever creature kept moving my own people into my zones and hurting them.  That was two spells wasted because the creature used them against us.

There are no balance issues when it comes to a Wizard's dailies.  That's BS, just like it was BS when they tried to say that the Cleric was stepping on the toes of the Wizard.  Don't create balance issues where none exist.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 16, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> The whole entire reason for having damage in the beginning is so enemies won't stand there and take damage, you are exerting your battlefield control abilities and making them move.  Also, PC's with enemy moving powers can move those enemies into those zones so the enemies will take damage at the beginning of their turn and have to decide if they want to stand there and take damage, or get out and lose some actions.



But even if they get out, they have already taken the damage. So it's not really a choice for them.  



> Right now with zones being at the end of their turn, they really lose no actions.  They can still attack and then move out of the zone.



Now, with damage at end-of-turn, they do have choice. Remain and take damage or get out and avoid it.

I house-ruled Flaming Sphere to end-of-turn damage over a year ago, and I can tell you that it gives the wizards a lot more control over enemy positioning. That's the experience of me and my players from trying this in our games.


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## MrBeens (Jul 16, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Since when did the Wizard's daily powers need balancing?  It seems to me that the only time anyone talks about inbalance is when the designers change something and people try and justify those changes.  There were no balance issues with daily powers.
> 
> Also, the controller is supposed to do more than just push, pull, and slide.  Control of the battlefield is just what that is.  The striker and the defender are not always supposed to be the ones that get in the killing blow, that is available for all classes.  The purpose of battlefield control is to set up zones to break up enemies that gather together in groups, or bring out enemies that are trying to stay away from the PC's so they don't get killed.  The whole entire reason for having damage in the beginning is so enemies won't stand there and take damage, you are exerting your battlefield control abilities and making them move.  Also, PC's with enemy moving powers can move those enemies into those zones so the enemies will take damage at the beginning of their turn and have to decide if they want to stand there and take damage, or get out and lose some actions.
> 
> ...




Spot on. In most cases leaving the zone is not a loss of any kind to the monster.
If they do stick with the end of turn effects there needs to be an effect on leaving the zone, giving the enemy a choice to make other than not get effected and continue as though the zone is not there.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 16, 2011)

MrBeens said:


> Spot on. In most cases leaving the zone is not a loss of any kind to the monster.



Of course it's a loss. They need to move from that position.

That is what battlefield control is all about. Forcing the enemy out of their chosen positions.



MrBeens said:


> If they do stick with the end of turn effects there needs to be an effect on leaving the zone, giving the enemy a choice to make other than not get effected and continue as though the zone is not there.



This _is_ giving the enemy a choice. Stay put and take damage or give up your position and avoid the damage. It is start-of-turn damage that doesn't give you a choice.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 16, 2011)

Oldtimer said:


> Of course it's a loss. They need to move from that position.
> 
> That is what battlefield control is all about. Forcing the enemy out of their chosen positions.
> 
> ...




So what's wrong with an enemy taking damage and then deciding if it wants to take more or move?

This mess about striker damage is bogus unless you are talking about a specific build that has been proven viable by using any class.  The Wizard is supposed to to give enemies a taste of damage and then have them decide whether or not they want more, or they can go somewhere else.


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## Balesir (Jul 16, 2011)

I agree with those who say the 'end-of-turn-in-zone' damage model is much more controller-y (note that Warlock zones are still 'start-of-turn-in-zone' damage) and I consider this an overall positive change.

The problem, however, is that it does constitute a nerf to powers that didn't need it.  Add onto that that it often seems to fail in its purpose; the damage/effects that happen at the end of the turn need to constitute an actual incentive for the targets to move.  If a creature has a choice of move out and take an OA from a defender or stay put and take the zone effect, it should be a really hard choice.  Either the damage should be increased for the end-of-turn effect, or statuses should be added.  Stinking Cloud that does damage on entry and the same damage plus Daze if ending turn in the cloud might be effective, for example.  Difficult terrain zones that Slow or damaging zones that Immobilise might also be handy.  The choice would be either accept the area denial or take a really nasty penalty - sounds like good Control, to me.


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## DEFCON 1 (Jul 16, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> The Wizard is supposed to to give enemies a taste of damage and then have them decide whether or not they want more, or they can go somewhere else.




Well, the taste of damage is when the enemy is actually attacked by the sphere.  That's where the primary damage comes from.  Then the enemy on its turn decides whether staying next to the sphere (taking damage again at the end of its turn plus being adjacent to it to possibly get attacked by the sphere again during the wizards next turn), or loses its position by having to move elsewhere.

And let's not forget the fact that if by some chance the enemy is also adjacent to a wizard's ally as well as the sphere... if they choose to move in order to avoid sphere damage, they run the risk of taking Opportunity Attack damage.  So they still might occasionally take just as much damage as if they took sphere damage beginning of turn.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 16, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> So what's wrong with an enemy taking damage and then deciding if it wants to take more or move?



Because that decision is not influenced by the presence of the sphere. The damage has already been delivered. Staying or moving away will result in exactly the same amount of damage.

Remember that the sphere is mobile and it only costs a move action to follow the enemy. Basically, with start-of-turn damage, it's ongoing damage that you can't save against.

That's what's wrong with start-of-turn damage. It's a good blaster effect, but a bad controller effect.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 16, 2011)

Oldtimer said:


> Because that decision is not influenced by the presence of the sphere. The damage has already been delivered. Staying or moving away will result in exactly the same amount of damage.
> 
> Remember that the sphere is mobile and it only costs a move action to follow the enemy. Basically, with start-of-turn damage, it's ongoing damage that you can't save against.
> 
> That's what's wrong with start-of-turn damage. It's a good blaster effect, but a bad controller effect.




Ummmm no.  Start of the turn is a lot better at control because you actually get best of both worlds. Also with end of turn effects you are just drawing out combat.  It's nice to set up those combos but you are only delaying the  combat, wasting resources, and taking the chance of getting killed more.  

Let's take Flaming Sphere for example.  If you keep the end of turn effect and you move the sphere close to say three enemies.  At the beginning of their turn all they need to do is take a 5-foot step and do what they need to do.  If it remains beginning of their turn they take damage right off the bat, those that don't have enough HP are dead, the others are hurt and then they can decide to take that 5 footer.  

I don't think some people have seemed to grasp the concept on Controller.  Dragging out battles in order to actually make use of your abilities is not control I'm afraid.  I've been playing Wizards since day one so I do know a little bit about them.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 16, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Ummmm no.  Start of the turn is a lot better at control because you actually get best of both worlds.



Ummmm no. You only get damage. No control.



ForeverSlayer said:


> Let's take Flaming Sphere for example.  If you keep the end of turn effect and you move the sphere close to say three enemies.  At the beginning of their turn all they need to do is take a 5-foot step and do what they need to do.  If it remains beginning of their turn they take damage right off the bat, those that don't have enough HP are dead, the others are hurt and then they can decide to take that 5 footer.



But what if they can't take those 5-foot steps? What if they can't do what they need to do from their new positions? Just moving your sphere in a random way won't give you much control. You want to force the enemy into positions less favourable for them.



ForeverSlayer said:


> I don't think some people have seemed to grasp the concept on Controller.  Dragging out battles in order to actually make use of your abilities is not control I'm afraid.  I've been playing Wizards since day one so I do know a little bit about them.



Good for you. But please don't assume I don't know what I'm talking about.


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## mneme (Jul 16, 2011)

Oldtimer said:


> Ummmm no. You only get damage. No control.




NO.  Damage at EOT means the -monster- gets control.  Your control is greater with BOT damage.

BOT damage is greater control than EOT damage -- because BOT damage first hits the monster (making the next turn's BOT damage matter -more-) then presents the monster with the threat of even more damage next turn.  Sure; that threat is hard to avoid.  But it's not gaurunteed; if I've got too much to do, I might very well not have a move action to move the sphere (particularly if a monster is in my face).  

Lets look at the basics for a moment:

1. Dead is the best control.  This isn't hyperbole -- it's the core of why "move or I'll smack you" is control at all.  So you need this as a foundation or you might as well argue that fire wizards (and other damage-based types) don't work at all.

2. The monster always (within reason) does what is best for it.  And if it doesn't, that ok, because what's bad for it is good for the party.

3. To be effective control, the damage on damage based control must be better for the party than the control.  This is a natural result of #2 -- without this, the monster will always choose the damage, and no control will result.

4. 3+2 = It is better if the monster takes the damage.  If the monster is expected to choose the control, and it always chooses what is best for it, it is better for the -party- if it takes the damage.  It's ok if it takes the control; that's really what the effect is intended to do, but if it always takes the damage, that's actually better.

5. Therefore, old Flaming Sphere is simply a more powerful spell than new FS.  It does more damage, the damage matters more, and it exerts more control, as the future damage matters more and the damage is, itself control.

This doesn't mean, btw, that new FS is a worse spell for the -game- than old FS.  Just less powerful, and even a less powerful controller effect.  The thing about damage-based wizards is that as above, they need to have the "I'll just take the damage" option be the -worse- option.  This means that, all things being equal, sucking up a wizard's punishment damage should be worse than sitting there and sucking up a striker's damage -- the striker has unconditional damage; the wizard has conditional damage that might be, for instance, trying to convince the monsters not to mob the striker.  

So if you build a damage specced wizard, she should (if monsters completely ignore her as a controller) do more damage than a damage specced rogue.  This doesn't happen, but that's not important now; what's important is that in order for this to be the case, her damage needs to be -actually- conditional on monsters ignoring her control (or on clever player plans ignoring multiple characters working in concert, but that just means the monsters need to ignore -someone-'s control).  Otherwise, she can be a better-striker-than-a-striker all the time, and a controller when she absoluteley has to.

The problem with Flaming Sphere is that as a controller effect, it was much closer to a striker ability with a control rider.  This means that either it was doing too much damage (full controllery damage where the monsters desperately were trying to avoid it, but getting smacked anyway) or too little (other spells might have been like this, but not IMO Flaming Sphere, because it gets full bonuses to damage rolls).  So it was just sitting in the wrong place in the design continuum.

But it certainly wasn't being worse control than the playtest FS.  It was being better control -- but also too powerful as a striker ability.


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## Moorcrys (Jul 16, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Since when did the Wizard's daily powers need balancing?  It seems to me that the only time anyone talks about inbalance is when the designers change something and people try and justify those changes.  There were no balance issues with daily powers.




Meh. I have seen players challenged/mocked in LFR for NOT choosing flaming sphere or stinking cloud. Including myself. I agree with wizards design philosophy... if it's a no brainer for its level, it's probably overpowered.

Just because people aren't gnashing teeth and screaming at the top of their lungs about it all the time doesn't mean it's balanced.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 16, 2011)

mneme said:


> NO.  Damage at EOT means the -monster- gets control.  Your control is greater with BOT damage.
> 
> BOT damage is greater control than EOT damage -- because BOT damage first hits the monster (making the next turn's BOT damage matter -more-) then presents the monster with the threat of even more damage next turn.  Sure; that threat is hard to avoid.  But it's not gaurunteed; if I've got too much to do, I might very well not have a move action to move the sphere (particularly if a monster is in my face).



This is the same discussion I had last year in my original thread. I still don't understand it.

Maybe we just have a different definition of control. I don't consider damage to be control. Sure, a dead monster is very controlled, but control for me is managing how it spends its time before it dies.

Start-of-turn damage first wounds the monster and then presents a very weak threat. There is very little the monster can do to mitigate that threat. You say that the wizard might not have a move action to use on his turn - but that is not something the monster can control. How the monster spends his turn does not affect future damage to any great extent.

End-of-turn damage, on the other hand, presents a very clear choice for the monster - leave or take damage. There is nothing vague about that choice.

So I really don't understand your reasoning that start-of-turn damage gives more control to the wizard. End-of-turn damage doesn't give the monster control. It gives the monster a choice. It's not forced movement, but it's encouraged movement. With start-of-turn damage there is very little encouragement to move. It's just damage.


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## Raikun (Jul 16, 2011)

Oldtimer is exactly right here.

With Beginning of Turn, monsters have little reason to feel the need to move...the Sphere can just follow them around and keep damaging them no matter if they move or not.  Thus, monsters are usually better off just positioning themselves how they want to do what they can while taking the unavoidable damage.  

With End of Turn, the monsters have a vastly increased benefit to moving, thus making it actually a Controller-ish spell.


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## Xyrlove Woodsoul (Jul 16, 2011)

Moorcrys said:


> Meh. I have seen players challenged/mocked in LFR for NOT choosing flaming sphere or stinking cloud. Including myself. I agree with wizards design philosophy... if it's a no brainer for its level, it's probably overpowered.
> 
> Just because people aren't gnashing teeth and screaming at the top of their lungs about it all the time doesn't mean it's balanced.




I've yet to fully analyze the material, but a few powers that were nerfed are the ones that were pretty much "auto-takes," as cited on the optimization boards, and it's pretty boring when a power is an "auto-take," imo- I myself like having to make decisions when character building, especially for powers. And not "Yay, it's my turn to gain Flaming Sphere the Class Feature." Sometimes I make characters just for fun, and even then, it's still hard not to take the powers that significantly outdo the others. Thus, I'm happy about the change to Flaming Sphere and Prismatic Beams. I am curious to see if Flaming Sphere will be more controler-y as a result, and that will be an added change for the better as well.
I don't really know why they nerfed Cloud of Daggers though. i don't think I've ever seen anyone take that power. Again, even when I make characters for fun, I don't think I've ever taken that power still, even then.
I was hoping to see some sort of Buff for Wand of Accuracy (albeit, I also agree with the idea that there needs to be some better magical wands, in general). The whole WoA uses Dexterity kind of bothers me, I mean, there isn't much of a point for most wizards to invest in Intelligence and Dexterity other than for WoA itself, and that steems to be a steep price to pay in doing so.
All that said, I still wish they'd buff some powers that are rarely taken by any kind of build.


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## Balesir (Jul 16, 2011)

mneme said:


> Damage at EOT means the -monster- gets control.  Your control is greater with BOT damage.



Rubbish.  Especially if, as you darned well ought to be with 4E, you are acting as a coordinated party instead of some bunch of prima donna solo assassins.  What the monster should get "control" over is whether to get the heck out of your zone (preferably taking OA and/or CS strikes en route) or get hit.  On that last score I do agree with one of your points - but the answer isn't 'start-of-turn-in-zone' damage, either way.



mneme said:


> BOT damage is greater control than EOT damage -- because BOT damage first hits the monster (making the next turn's BOT damage matter -more-) then presents the monster with the threat of even more damage next turn.  Sure; that threat is hard to avoid.  But it's not gaurunteed; if I've got too much to do, I might very well not have a move action to move the sphere (particularly if a monster is in my face).



So, the monster is expected to spend a move action on the off-chance you won't have one next turn?  I know some monsters are pretty dumb, but not all of them are this stupid.

The original flaming sphere is a nice power, but it does damage, and that's all it does.



mneme said:


> 1. Dead is the best control.  This isn't hyperbole -- it's the core of why "move or I'll smack you" is control at all.  So you need this as a foundation or you might as well argue that fire wizards (and other damage-based types) don't work at all.



Yawn, yes I have heard this all ways to Christmas.  And it's true within its own bounds, of course - most especially if you are acting as a lone operator against the monsters.  But well coordinated parties in 4E should be greater than the sum of their parts.  The Wizard _should_ be working with Strikers and Defenders to give monsters in zones some _really_ killer (literally) choices.  Lone guns will always work on a basic level; one of the real joys of 4E, though, is rising above that through party synergies.



mneme said:


> 2. The monster always (within reason) does what is best for it.  And if it doesn't, that ok, because what's bad for it is good for the party.



Or should be - and this is where I think you have a point...



mneme said:


> 3. To be effective control, the damage on damage based control must be better for the party than the control.  This is a natural result of #2 -- without this, the monster will always choose the damage, and no control will result.



Right - absolutely.  Which is why the effects that are moved to the end-of-turn-in-zone should be boosted, either with more damage or, preferably, with statuses.

Flaming sphere zone damage, for example, could be ongoing.  This not only works well in a fluff sense - if you just stand next to a ball of fire you _catch_ fire - but it also gives a more serious incentive to move away, even if doing so will get you belted by a defender you are adjacent to.



mneme said:


> 5. Therefore, old Flaming Sphere is simply a more powerful spell than new FS.  It does more damage, the damage matters more, and it exerts more control, as the future damage matters more and the damage is, itself control.



The old Flaming Sphere does more damage, but almost no control.  The playtest version _almost_ manages control, but really needs a harsher penalty for ignoring it.

And, as a final comment on the suggestion that zones should be ally-friendly: heavens, no!  Allies have the option to move away, too, and if they are careless enough to get shoved into a zone they just need to look out more


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## Riastlin (Jul 17, 2011)

Forced and/or Encouraged movement are good forms of control.  My runepriest for example, loves it when the mage moves the monsters so that the fit into his Burst and Blast 3 zones (which they otherwise wouldn't).  

The old flaming sphere though didn't really encourage monsters to move.  Sure, they took damage, but the vast majority of the time they'd take the damage anyway because the sphere just follows them around.

Sure, dead is indeed the best control state.  But then, we don't call rangers controllers do we?


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## Aegeri (Jul 17, 2011)

Good riddance to Destructive Salutation. I do not regret that power getting nerfed into the ground one bit.


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## Marshall (Jul 17, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Give me a scenario where those two spells are overpowered.




Flaming Sphere was an autodamage attack with little to no investment. Its the equivalent of a 15th level SOR daily(Lightning Daggers) that doesnt require further attack rolls and hits multiple targets. The spell needs a rewrite, moreso AFTER the rewrite. It went from overpowered to garbage.

Stinking Cloud and damage-on-enter zones are infinitely abusable with forced move. 
Drop the cloud on something = 1 attack.
Move Cloud so Mob is adjacent to it.
AP Beguiling Strands or other forced move power.
Slide Mob in = Autodamage at Full Attack Value.
Slide mob out
Slide Mob in = Autodamage at Full Attack Value.
Slide mob out
Slide Mob in = Autodamage at Full Attack Value.
<repeat for every 2 more points of forced move>
Mob starts turn = Autodamage at Full Attack Value.

1 Round netted you 1 attack and 4 instances of Autodamage. Thats just the caster, what happens when his friends have forced move also?

All zones needed a nerf, What they are doing tho is death by a thousand paper cuts in nerfing individual powers. And since its WotC, they are using the meat cleaver to make the paper cuts. The way these spells were gutted.... to be kind, I'll just say that its going to take my PCs being dominated before I throw out buffs to team monster.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 17, 2011)

Here is the main problem with EOT effects.  You will start to see monsters become nothing but kamikazes. A DM will pretty much know the max damage that can be done, look at how much their monsters have and just go for whoever they can take down with them.  

With EOT effects you have creatures than can get off full attacks and full movement so they can take down a PC and still move to avoid the effect.  Creatures have a lot more chances to attack with minor actions as well as standard. 

We actually tried EOT and it didn't work.  Sure creatures were moving all over the place but it ended up leaving PC's open and battles ended up taking way to damn long.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 17, 2011)

I'm going to go ahead and call this the Voltron Theory.  What that means is you have one individual per part in order to make Voltron work and I think this is the direction the game is going.  I don't want this to happen.  Sure I like teamwork but I don't each role to be locked into one exact specific thing.  

It's almost like the designers want the leader's to heal, the defender's to shield, the controllers to set em up, and the strikers to kill.  In an abstract way that is what is supposed to happen but not so much literally. 

Bottom line is, the Wizard was actually fine just the way it was.  While not completely fixing the Orbizard they did manage to tone it down.  This is just change for the hell of it.


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## Raikun (Jul 17, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> We actually tried EOT and it didn't work.  Sure creatures were moving all over the place but it ended up leaving PC's open and battles ended up taking way to damn long.




Had the opposite effect here.  Players were able to more easily coerce monsters into getting out of position and getting themselves set up to be flanked, AoO'ed, etc.  It seemed to balance out quite well.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 17, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Here is the main problem with EOT effects.  You will start to see monsters become nothing but kamikazes. A DM will pretty much know the max damage that can be done, look at how much their monsters have and just go for whoever they can take down with them.



How is that relevant to start-of-turn or end-of-turn damage?



ForeverSlayer said:


> With EOT effects you have creatures than can get off full attacks and full movement so they can take down a PC and still move to avoid the effect.  Creatures have a lot more chances to attack with minor actions as well as standard.



Yes, they can attack and move away. End-of-turn doesn't prevent that. Neither does start-of-turn (unless it actually kills them). But end-of-turn encouraged them to move away, something start-of-turn was unable to do.



ForeverSlayer said:


> We actually tried EOT and it didn't work.  Sure creatures were moving all over the place but it ended up leaving PC's open and battles ended up taking way to damn long.



I house-ruled my Flaming Sphere to end-of-turn damage over a year ago. It worked so much better for what we wanted it to do. Forcing monsters to move "all over the place" is exactly what we wanted the controller to accomplish. Especially into places where the strikers could nuke them. Teamwork FTW!


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jul 17, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Here is the main problem with EOT effects.  You will start to see monsters become nothing but kamikazes. A DM will pretty much know the max damage that can be done, look at how much their monsters have and just go for whoever they can take down with them.
> 
> With EOT effects you have creatures than can get off full attacks and full movement so they can take down a PC and still move to avoid the effect.  Creatures have a lot more chances to attack with minor actions as well as standard.
> 
> We actually tried EOT and it didn't work.  Sure creatures were moving all over the place but it ended up leaving PC's open and battles ended up taking way to damn long.




You guys have it backwards. BOT damage from FS is neigh unavoidable. I've DMed 4e for its full run and run plenty of games. In no case have I yet seen the monsters avoid FS except a couple situations where the spell really shouldn't have been used. So my logic as a DM when that spell comes out is "Oh well, I'm taking the damage, so I'll just go crazy, pick up a few OAs or whatever and banzai charge." Best thing I can do in fact is get right in with the PCs where maybe the sphere won't dare follow. It is all my choice though, there's no control, no hard choice at all. Just go about your business and take your licks.

With EOT damage I'm likely to ACTUALLY think about moving. Unless that thought enters my head there's no control involved, just damage.

What you're really saying is "it was stronger before, so the PCs will suffer for it being weaker now." This may be true, but that's totally independent of whether it is control or not. Also, damage/death is not control. To say that it is is silly. You can argue it is BETTER than control, but that itself is not clear. If I as a controller reshape the battlefield such that my side wins and wins more easily than some striker that might theoretically be in my place then obviously my control was superior. This IME is often the case. Time and time again I've seen wizards drive the enemy out of an otherwise unassailable position, delay the arrival of a monster in an effective combat position by multiple rounds, etc. Not to even mention things like just tossing a BBEG off a bridge into a bottomless pit with Spectral Ram (yeah, flying BBEG, so what, it was knocked prone...). It may SEEM like damage is the best thing there is in the whole world, but quite often you'd just rather force the enemy to be HERE instead of THERE.


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## Incenjucar (Jul 17, 2011)

I find myself liking this change. Just a few threads from here you can see someone saying that pyromancer wizards>sorcerers in damage-dealing. Yeah. That's an issue.


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## The Human Target (Jul 17, 2011)

So wands are still lame and scorching burst is still worse than its new contemporaries.

Thats pretty sad.


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## DracoSuave (Jul 17, 2011)

The Human Target said:


> So wands are still lame and scorching burst is still worse than its new contemporaries.
> 
> Thats pretty sad.




The solution to wands is to print good wands.  wands are subpar for every class that uses them, except maybe bards.  Maybe.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 18, 2011)

Oldtimer said:


> How is that relevant to start-of-turn or end-of-turn damage?
> 
> 
> Yes, they can attack and move away. End-of-turn doesn't prevent that. Neither does start-of-turn (unless it actually kills them). But end-of-turn encouraged them to move away, something start-of-turn was unable to do.
> ...





Killing them is the whole entire point. Having the option to actually drop them before they even need to make a decision is what it's all about.  

Let's say you have a PC two squares away from the Flaming Sphere and you have a creature standing next to it.  Let's say that PC is close to dying and so is the creature.  If you have BOT that creature could actually die when his turn comes around.  With EOT all that creature would need to do is take a 5 footer, full attack that PC who is almost down and drop him into unconsciousness or death.  

Delaying the death of a creature can get you killed.  The Wizard is the best controller in the game and doing EOT makes him less.  Sure he may be able to shuffle people around a little bit more, but death is what you are wanting no matter which class deals it.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 18, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> What you're really saying is "it was stronger before, so the PCs will suffer for it being weaker now." This may be true, but that's totally independent of whether it is control or not. Also, damage/death is not control. To say that it is is silly. You can argue it is BETTER than control, but that itself is not clear. If I as a controller reshape the battlefield such that my side wins and wins more easily than some striker that might theoretically be in my place then obviously my control was superior. This IME is often the case. Time and time again I've seen wizards drive the enemy out of an otherwise unassailable position, delay the arrival of a monster in an effective combat position by multiple rounds, etc. Not to even mention things like just tossing a BBEG off a bridge into a bottomless pit with Spectral Ram (yeah, flying BBEG, so what, it was knocked prone...). It may SEEM like damage is the best thing there is in the whole world, but quite often you'd just rather force the enemy to be HERE instead of THERE.




Here is the problem.  You talk about death isn't control but it actually is.  Death is dealt in different ways but it's all done with damage.  What you are saying is that essentially the Wizard needs to do more controlling at the expense of anything else.  "Sure I could have killed that goblin over there, but I fulfilled my role better by shuffling him around the board some and enabled him to be killed next round by the rogue". 

I'm sorry but it's more about defeating the enemy than fulfilling the role.  No teamwork is lost with the original Wizard and he does his controller job just fine.


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## Neonchameleon (Jul 18, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> You guys have it backwards. BOT damage from FS is neigh unavoidable. I've DMed 4e for its full run and run plenty of games. In no case have I yet seen the monsters avoid FS except a couple situations where the spell really shouldn't have been used.




And the only exceptions I can think of are special cases - when my wizard wanted to secure a 5 foot corridor against overwhelming odds and was already using his storm pillar, his illusionary storm pillar, and his spirit companion to block corridors against what should be overwhelming odds.  The "Where were the reinforcements planning to come from?" approach.



> With EOT damage I'm likely to ACTUALLY think about moving. Unless that thought enters my head there's no control involved, just damage.




Absolutely with the sole exception of spreading out so the FS can only pick one target.  But it's mostly "Run and the sphere catches you.  Jackpot damage."


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## BobTheNob (Jul 18, 2011)

Changes sound good to me.

Especially the Bloodmage. Take that you encounter smashing, ill-considered paragon path!


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## Neverfate (Jul 18, 2011)

I think the community and WotC will just have differing ideas on what "control" is and what a Controller is. The community largely believes that control is spreading damage and increasing damage and that a Pyromancer is always going to be a better controller than the Enchanter. WotC believes that damage should be relegated to Strikers. And that their version of control remains on Controllers instead of Clerics. Personally I find both parties responsible. WotC for not giving more options to complete challenges and for the community for never thinking outside the damage box that WotC gift wrapped them in.


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## Neonchameleon (Jul 18, 2011)

Balesir said:


> The problem, however, is that it does constitute a nerf to powers that didn't need it.




Other than the daggers (which used to be a good power - highest single target damage wizard attack) which ones were nerfed?  Other than the two stand-out spells we are discussing (Flaming Sphere and Stinking cloud).  And if you're built for control, both are still more than viable.



Oldtimer said:


> Because that decision is not influenced by the presence of the sphere. The damage has already been delivered. Staying or moving away will result in exactly the same amount of damage.
> 
> Remember that the sphere is mobile and it only costs a move action to follow the enemy. Basically, with start-of-turn damage, it's ongoing damage that you can't save against.
> 
> That's what's wrong with start-of-turn damage. It's a good blaster effect, but a bad controller effect.




There is _nothing_ wrong with start of turn damage as a controller effect.  It's simply shaping the battlefield.  Where the problems lie is with _movable_ start of turn damage.  Where if the monsters try to run you just park the zone straight back on top of them.  With static start of turn damage, the problem is keeping the monsters in the zone.  With movable end of turn damage the challenge is keeping the monsters from leaving the zone without being penalised badly.  But with movable start of turn damage there is no problem either way.  It's just too easy unless the bad guys are specifically themed round forced movement.



DEFCON 1 said:


> Well, the taste of damage is when the enemy is actually attacked by the sphere.  That's where the primary damage comes from.




Other than casting the Sphere I have seldom attacked with it.  2d6+Int damage doesn't stand up to an enlarged freezing burst with orb expertise - bunch most targets in a burst 2 up then roll the sphere into the middle of them.  Multiple crispies.

And as for that being the "primary damage", no.  The primary attack hits 75% of the time (I'm being generous) for 2d6+statics against one target.  The autodamage used to hit automatically, 100% of the time for d4+statics.

d4+statics= .75*(2d6+statics).
d4+.25*statics=2d6*.75
2.5+.25*statics=21/4
10+statics = 21
statics = 11

So if the static damage is 11 or more, counting all bonusses (staff of ruin, int, implement focus, dual implement spellcaster, etc.), the minor action for the flaming sphere is doing as much damage per round to a single target as the standard action would.  And as enlarged freezing burst to set more targets for the sphere is pretty obvious, I don't see where the claim comes from at all.

And for the record I still consider Stinking Cloud a top tier wizard daily even post nerf.  Flaming Sphere I'm not so sure about due to the fact people can just run past it.  I'd add Int mod damage for people who try to run past.


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## WalterKovacs (Jul 18, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Here is the problem. You talk about death isn't control but it actually is. Death is dealt in different ways but it's all done with damage. What you are saying is that essentially the Wizard needs to do more controlling at the expense of anything else. "Sure I could have killed that goblin over there, but I fulfilled my role better by shuffling him around the board some and enabled him to be killed next round by the rogue".
> 
> I'm sorry but it's more about defeating the enemy than fulfilling the role. No teamwork is lost with the original Wizard and he does his controller job just fine.




True.

However, unless you can kill a goblin THIS TURN, a wizard that puts an enemy out of the fight for turn is better than a wizard that helps to make a monster dead a couple turns from now.

The roles are important. Strikers try to eliminate monsters fast. If they can get 1 monster out of the fight on the first turn, that's 1 less monster to fight the whole battle. 

The defender/controller try to make some monsters useless (in some cases). If you can make 1 or 2 monsters useless for a couple of turns, while the party kills off 1 or 2 of the other monsters, a 5 on 5 fight becoes more of a 3 on 5 for the whole battle.

The leader is mostly a force multiplier, giving the rest of the party extra actions or more effectiveness.

You do ultimately want to kill everything.

However, how many people have done a 'wave' encounter? Where you fight say half the baddies, and about 3 rounds in, the other half show up. Generally speaking, unless you are wasteful with encounter/dailies, it's much easier than a full encounter. The 'defenderih' controller powers can make that happen. Unless you are putting a control effect on a creature you could have killed, it's not a waste. As long as someone kills the monster before it gets a turn, it doesn't matter if the monster was killed by the first PC to act or the last. So, there ARE some situations where pure damage is better than control effects, but rarely is the controller the only person that can finish the job.

The flaming sphere example ... the damage is 1d4+Int mod. Even with all the extra bonuses you get, a monster still has to be VERY near death for that to kill them. So you are talking about an extremely small corner case. The original version was more like ongoing damage than a 'do what I want you to in order to avoid taking damage' effect. The latter is a control effect, the former is a striker effect if anything. The goal of the errata isn't to make the power better, but to have it fit the role better, which is does. 

Damage that you can control is 'better' than damage the enemy can decide to avoid, especially in the case of say, the Avenger's censures (since as a striker, you rather be a striker than a controller). BUT, damage the enemy can't avoid isn't going to cause the enemy to change it's actions, and thus, it isn't control. Yes, the 'last' turn, it's better to kill the enemy than to control it's actions. But for every other turn ... is making the enemy die in 4 more turns vs. 3 more turns better than making the enemy do nothing for a couple turns?


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## Raikun (Jul 18, 2011)

I've always seen Control as managing the battlefield to help keep your party alive long enough to make the bad guys dead first.  Damage of course is a part of that (according to the role description), but often it isn't.  

"Sleep" when used correctly can be nearly an auto-win for the party, and it does no damage on it's own at all.  That's control.


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## Balesir (Jul 18, 2011)

Neonchameleon said:


> Other than the daggers (which used to be a good power - highest single target damage wizard attack) which ones were nerfed?  Other than the two stand-out spells we are discussing (Flaming Sphere and Stinking cloud).  And if you're built for control, both are still more than viable.



All the powers that were changed from "creatures starting their turn in the zone/area/square/etc." to "creatures ending their turn in the zone/area/square/etc." were effectively nerfed because the damage becomes avoidable (most of the time).  I'm saying that to (a) reduce the nerf) and (b) make the control effect really convincing these end-of-turn effects should stay end-of-turn (because it's more controller-y) but be boosted, either with increased damage or with status effects and the like.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 18, 2011)

WalterKovacs said:


> The flaming sphere example ... the damage is 1d4+Int mod. Even with all the extra bonuses you get, a monster still has to be VERY near death for that to kill them. So you are talking about an extremely small corner case. The original version was more like ongoing damage than a 'do what I want you to in order to avoid taking damage' effect. The latter is a control effect, the former is a striker effect if anything. *The goal of the errata isn't to make the power better, but to have it fit the role better, which is does. *




I don't fully understand where this "striker" damage thing is coming from.  Wizards have never been crossing over into the striker territory. The Wizard plays it role to the "T", you don't need to change something for the sake of change and that is what was done.  

It's pure and simple:

Before: Initial damage + more damage(monsters turn) then monster decides what to do.

After: Initial damage + no damage + monster can do anything it wants + avoids any effects due to simple movement.  

Using the Flaming Sphere example.  Let's say your Wizard drops the Flaming Sphere on a group of enemies.  If you use the nerf the goblins take initial damage and most likely no damage at the end of their next turn because they move.  Okay your Wizard uses a minor action to sustain it and a move action to move it towards the enemies that moved.  Well their next turn comes around and they move again before the end of their turn and they take no damage.  All you are doing is just causing them to use a move action that they would normally take anyway.  

The old way. Same as above but each time their turn came up they would take damage.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 18, 2011)

I'll take one last stab at this, then I'll give up.



ForeverSlayer said:


> It's pure and simple:
> 
> Before: Initial damage + more damage(monsters turn) then monster decides what to do.
> 
> After: Initial damage + no damage + monster can do anything it wants + avoids any effects due to simple movement.



Or even purer and simpler:

Before: Initial damage + more damage(monsters turn) + monster can do anything it wants + monster doesn't need to move anywhere.

After: Initial damage + no damage + monster can do anything it wants + monster must move or receive more damage.



ForeverSlayer said:


> Using the Flaming Sphere example.  Let's say your Wizard drops the Flaming Sphere on a group of enemies.  If you use the nerf the goblins take initial damage and most likely no damage at the end of their next turn because they move.  Okay your Wizard uses a minor action to sustain it and a move action to move it towards the enemies that moved.  Well their next turn comes around and they move again before the end of their turn and they take no damage.  All you are doing is just causing them to use a move action that they would normally take anyway.



Is this wizard alone against these goblins on an infinite feature-less plain? Why would the goblins take that movement normally anyway?

Yes, the changed Flaming Sphere will likely do less damage _in itself_, but the wizard can now encourage those pesky goblins to move, something they wouldn't need to do otherwise. I feel that this gives the wizard more control over the goblins' actions. If he uses that control wisely, his side might win the battle quicker and with less hurt.

I don't really understand how you can argue against this? You might not want to give up damage to gain more control, but surely you see that the changed Flaming Sphere influences the enemies actions more?


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 18, 2011)

Oldtimer said:


> I'll take one last stab at this, then I'll give up.
> 
> 
> Or even purer and simpler:
> ...




It does need to move because it knows that it's going to take more damage at the beginning of it's next turn.  Sure you are moving the monsters more, but you are actually giving them more actions without the penalty.  

Goblin: Owwww singed by big bad hotball, (beginning of next turn), Owwww burned again, I need to move away. 

(steps away and then ball follows)

(beginning of next turn) Owwww hotball burn me again

(decides where to go)

Pure and simple: If the ball doesn't move and the goblin doesn't move then it takes damage.


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## DracoSuave (Jul 18, 2011)

Oldtimer said:


> Before: Initial damage + more damage(monsters turn) + monster can do anything it wants + monster doesn't need to move anywhere.
> 
> After: Initial damage + no damage + monster can do anything it wants + monster must move or receive more damage.




Only one monster?  Tut tut, for shame.

One monster can't avoid damage under the old power, but you don't only fight one monster do you?  Flaming Sphere forces monsters to spread out lest you set the thing where it's burning two or three of them.  The new version, not so much.


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## Neonchameleon (Jul 18, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> It does need to move because it knows that it's going to take more damage at the beginning of it's next turn. Sure you are moving the monsters more, but you are actually giving them more actions without the penalty.
> 
> Goblin: Owwww singed by big bad hotball, (beginning of next turn), Owwww burned again, I need to move away.
> 
> ...




The fact you are continually ignoring is that after the goblin has moved _so does the sphere_.  There is no point trying to move away from the sphere under the old rules - the sphere will just move after them and they will take the damage _whether or not they move_.  

Pure and simple: If the goblin moves, then the ball moves _and the goblin still takes damage_.  So moving _doesn't actually help the goblin._

The only point in moving is to force the wizard to use his own move action on the sphere - and back liners can normally readily afford to waste theirs.  When a pre-nerf flaming sphere is in play smart monsters "become nothing but kamikazes", intent on taking out the wizard at all costs because that is the _only_ way they can prevent the sphere burning them to a crisp (unless they either flee or fly).


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## Raikun (Jul 18, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Pure and simple: If the ball doesn't move and the goblin doesn't move then it takes damage.





Even more pure and simple...the ball will almost always move.  Thus the goblin takes the same amount of damage whether it moves or not, so it might as well accept the damage write the ball off as something it can do nothing about.

Nearly 2 years ago, our group assumed beginning of turn was a mistake in the power, and houseruled it to end of turn, and felt it worked better ever since, for that reason.


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## Zaphling (Jul 18, 2011)

Can someone here in this thread make a POLL for the Flaming Sphere to have two choices?: BOT or EOT. Then we will see which side will have more supporters. Supporters must be logical to which controllery EOT or damage and not controllery BOT. somthing like that.


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## Kinneus (Jul 18, 2011)

In my opinion, Flaming Sphere was balanced by the fact that it was party-unfriendly damage. On certain battlefields, it was difficult to deploy a Flaming Sphere without scorching your party, and monsters could seek refuge from the dreaded Sphere by pressing the attack and mixing things up in melee. Start of turn damage was the boon you got in exchange for party-unfriendly "collateral."

Fountain of Flame was the other option. It was end-of-turn damage, which is weaker, but it was a completely party-friendly option. You could lay it down on top of your frontline and never worry about it again. There are other differences between these two powers; Fountain of Flame is stationary, but the Sphere can be maneuvered about. The Fountain sticks around even if you're stunned, but Flaming Sphere is going to be sucking up minors and moves all combat to keep it active.

Now that Flaming Sphere is end-of-turn damage, but remains party unfriendly, it is (in my opinion, at least) the strictly inferior option. I know I'll personally be retraining FS for Fountain of Flame as soon as possible. Flaming Sphere is not, and never was, the perfect level 1 Daily. Sure, with good positionining, or versus a solo, it added up to encounter-long auto-damage, which is nice. But there were just so many ways around it... simplest involving stunnning or dazing the caster. Now, I think the fact that it's still ally-unfriendly damage will really hurt it. It'll be way too easy for monsters to use that to their advantage, shifting adjacent to a bunch of your allies and forcing you to choose between moving the FS next to your friends and endangering everybody, or just letting it go.

Anyway, I once considered Flaming Sphere and Fountain of Flame to be neck-and-neck, with different things going for each of them. Now, though, Fountain of Flame has pulled pretty firmly into the lead, at least in my opinion.


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## mneme (Jul 18, 2011)

Kinneus: Fountain of flame does a lot less damage, at least for a character that's optimized for it.  A Genasi blaster does 1d4+Int+Implement+Str damage -- 9.5 damage at first level, 13.5 at at 5th level with a +2 implement (or more with stuff like Gauntlets of blood), and it only goes up from there.  And that's on top of it upgrading your at will damage to 2d6+Int -- an amazing buff when you're best off playing single-target striker for a while.    Even a non-genasi starts out doing 7.5 damage with FS.

I do think that EOT is, any way you slice it, a big nerf.  But it's not unlikely that Flaming Sphere is good enough that it's still the best Wizard first level spell -after- the nerf (and, yes, more controllery-but unarguably weaker).


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## MrMyth (Jul 18, 2011)

MrBeens said:


> You can't enlarge dailies - it only works on encounters and at wills.




Yeah, this happened before that restriction was added in the errata. Which certainly helped, though there are other ways out there to increase the size of bursts. And even without them, some of those spells can easily shut down encounters on their own.


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## MrMyth (Jul 18, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Since when did the Wizard's daily powers need balancing? It seems to me that the only time anyone talks about inbalance is when the designers change something and people try and justify those changes. There were no balance issues with daily powers.




Do you really think the designers are just making changes abritrarily, without any sort of feedback from the community? From the very beginning, the wizard has been considered to have some of the most powerful dailies. Many folks have seen, firsthand, the ability for wizards to shut down encounters on their own - something most classes can't do, no matter how many dailies they bust out. 

And often it wasn't just the wizard's dailies being unbalanced compared to other classes. It was that one or two choices would just be better than other options. 

Look, you feel that it was balanced as it was, and that you prefer the previous version. I can understand that. But stop with insisting this was just 'change for the sake of change' - we have numerous folks in this thread reporting on their own experiences with these powers being unbalanced, or with having characters criticized for the lack of these choices. That means it was an issue. 

It is perfectly ok to disagree that it needed fixing, but dismissing the opposing viewpoint entirely, and insisting that their opinions either didn't exist or shouldn't matter to WotC... sorry, but that's just not cool.



ForeverSlayer said:


> So what's wrong with an enemy taking damage and then deciding if it wants to take more or move?




I think what you are missing is that the wizard can move these zones. If the enemy leaves the zone, the wizard just moves it back on top of him. Thus, there is no real reason for the enemy to react at all - all the power does is damage, and a good amount of it. 

If the damage happens at the end of the opponent's turn, then they actually have to make a choice. Stay in the zone and take damage, or get out of it. Getting out of it might involve provoking, it might involve being unable to flank, it might even prevent them from attacking at all depending on position. That's control.

Automatic damage that they can't avoid? Is not.


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## Kinneus (Jul 18, 2011)

mneme said:


> Kinneus: Fountain of flame does a lot less damage,



Indeed, that's one of its selling points. It does a bit less damage than the Sphere in Heroic (I admit, this gulf gets higher in Paragon, but why are you still using level 1 Dailies in Paragon?) to enemies, but it does much less damage to allies (that is to say, 0 damage), which is where the balance is.

In other words, sure, Flaming Sphere does more damage... but to who?

Targetting enemies only is a big boon. I'm of the (personal, private, subjective) opinion that this places Fountain of Flame ahead of the (current, End of Turn) Flaming Sphere.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jul 18, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> I don't fully understand where this "striker" damage thing is coming from.  Wizards have never been crossing over into the striker territory. The Wizard plays it role to the "T", you don't need to change something for the sake of change and that is what was done.
> 
> It's pure and simple:
> 
> ...




Yes, you are correct, but you are committing a fundamental error. You are theorycrafting. The situation you describe is a BLANK SLATE battlefield where there is no terrain, no circumstances which might make the goblins desire to be HERE instead of THERE, etc. This is simply not a useful line of reasoning. All you'll end up with is the conclusion that all controllers are crap and everyone should just play a striker instead. Again, this is correct for your 'marble world' theorycrafting scenario. No wizard will be worth squat compared to a striker who can just lay in the damage that has to be done anyway. (actually even in marble world this isn't ENTIRELY true, and some powers will still work relatively well, but they aren't generally movable zones). 

The point is that in the real world when the goblins are trying to crowd through the door that lets them flank the fighter in his covered position then dropping a flaming sphere in that area and chasing the goblins away ain't a bad idea and can be VASTLY more tactically advantageous than just trying to kill them outright. 

Now, consider a situation where a bunch of artillery monsters are bombing the party from a position you cannot get to. The old Flaming Sphere really does nothing here. The DM is going to just leave the monsters in their relatively secure location knowing that moving them is pointless. With the NEW Flaming Sphere the DM has a meaningful choice, stand around in the inaccessible location and take damage or move and risk being engaged by the party melee characters. In this case the NEW FS may actually perform better. It won't be much worse in any case. 

Notice that this also conforms with what Balesir is saying too, if you move damage to EOT and you WANT to keep the power at the same level then you'd be advised to increase the damage or add some other effect. In truth FS was rather awesome and a bit of a nerf probably won't hurt it. However the 2nd consideration still exists, the damage may simply not be enough to ever motivate the enemy to move at all, but there's no general way to determine that. FS is unlikely to exert much control at higher levels as 1d4+int damage may be trivial (even with some boosts), but then again it is a level 1 daily and isn't intended to be a go-to spell at higher levels. Chances are you'll swap it out at the first power swap and may even retrain it sooner than that.


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## Riastlin (Jul 18, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> I'm going to go ahead and call this the Voltron Theory. What that means is you have one individual per part in order to make Voltron work and I think this is the direction the game is going. I don't want this to happen. Sure I like teamwork but I don't each role to be locked into one exact specific thing.




No offense, but it really sounds like you should be playing 3.x or an even earlier edition of D&D.  4ed was designed as a "Voltron Theory" from the get go.  That was always the intent.  Its why players who had long played wizards bitched about the wizard class at 4ed's release.  The wizard was no longer able to "solo" the encounters.  They were no longer the gods that they used to be.  Their powers were greatly reduced in power from previous editions.

The idea in 4ed is that each PC plays his or her own little part in making the entire unit much more effective.  My runepriest for instance loves it when the Mage or the Warden moves a creature into a burst three zone with the rest of the monsters so that his level 1 daily is more effective.  Conversely, when I played a bard, the fighter loved it when I pushed a monster into him and allowed the fighter a swing (and thus another mark).  Those movement powers may not look as sexy as an extra die of damage, but overall they made the party much more effective -- which was the point.  Each class has a primary role and at least one secondary role, and the damage on the wizard spells makes sense since their secondary role is striker.  But they still should be more about control than about damage.

The old FS was a great DAMAGE power, but as is being pointed out, rarely introduced much control.  SOMETIMES, it worked as control, but usually not.  It was essentially ongoing damage (albeit quite a bit of it).  The monster was going to continue to take the damage whether it moved or not.  The only real exception was if there was one specific area that you did not want the monsters to be.  Sure, there will be occasions like that, but not real often (at least not if your DM knows what she is doing).  

So going back to your Voltron Theory, its true, that is how the game is designed.  Its also how the game has been since the beginning of 4ed.  Wizards were long thought to have the best dailies, but their encounters were often deemed a bit weak.  Well guess what, their encounters got beefed up a bit with half damage on misses on most of them.  Before, the great dailies with meh encounters was a balancing factor.  Now that the encounters are better though, the dailies were due for an adjustment.  I think its fair to argue whether or not FS does enough now to encourage a monster to move, but at least now it will ALWAYS be a consideration for the monster(s) since the damage is EOT.  Before, it was RARELY a consideration on whether to move or not since the sphere would just follow them around.  The thing is though, the wizard is supposed to rely on the rest of the party, just as the ranger needs the rest of the party, and the fighter needs the rest, etc.  Parties that work as a team will do much better than those that go for individual glory.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing inherently wrong with the earlier edition design style, it just didn't promote teamwork as much because most classes were able to hold up on their own -- at least past the first few levels anyway.  I loved 2ed and 3.x, but I also love 4ed and its really great when you start to see PC abilities tying together amongst the different PCs.  PC A does X because she knows PC B will then do Y, etc.  To me, its far more interesting than everyone going "Let's see how much damage I can do this time!"  However, this approach is not for everyone, which is perfectly fine.

BTW, for the record, I would have preferred it if the Wizard were a striker and the warlock or sorceror had been the controller (realizing of course the sorceror would have had to be put in PHB1 to be the controller if the warlock remained a striker).  That was just my personal opinion though.  Given that its not a striker though, its powers should definitely be much more about controlling the battlefield than about simply damaging the opponent.


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## MrMyth (Jul 18, 2011)

Kinneus said:


> Indeed, that's one of its selling points. It does a bit less damage than the Sphere in Heroic (I admit, this gulf gets higher in Paragon, but why are you still using level 1 Dailies in Paragon?) to enemies, but it does much less damage to allies (that is to say, 0 damage), which is where the balance is.
> 
> In other words, sure, Flaming Sphere does more damage... but to who?
> 
> Targetting enemies only is a big boon. I'm of the (personal, private, subjective) opinion that this places Fountain of Flame ahead of the (current, End of Turn) Flaming Sphere.




I'm not sure if they are really comparable, though. The ongoing zone of Fountain of Flame doesn't move and does almost no damage - it does establish some small battlefield control, but in a very different fashion than flaming sphere (whose mobility and significant damage makes it much more likely to influence enemy behavior - but whose damage to allies makes it influence the party behavior more as well.) 

Fountain of Flame gives you a solid, enemy only, area attack. Flaming Sphere gives you a single target attack you can use throughout the combat, and a battlefield obstacle you can use to influence enemies. 

One can certainly prefer one over another, but I don't see Fountain of Flame as any more directly comparable with Flaming Sphere than any of the other level 1 Wizard daily AoE spells.


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## Balesir (Jul 18, 2011)

Kinneus said:


> Now that Flaming Sphere is end-of-turn damage, but remains party unfriendly, it is (in my opinion, at least) the strictly inferior option. I know I'll personally be retraining FS for Fountain of Flame as soon as possible. Flaming Sphere is not, and never was, the perfect level 1 Daily. Sure, with good positionining, or versus a solo, it added up to encounter-long auto-damage, which is nice. But there were just so many ways around it... simplest involving stunnning or dazing the caster. Now, I think the fact that it's still ally-unfriendly damage will really hurt it. It'll be way too easy for monsters to use that to their advantage, shifting adjacent to a bunch of your allies and forcing you to choose between moving the FS next to your friends and endangering everybody, or just letting it go.
> 
> Anyway, I once considered Flaming Sphere and Fountain of Flame to be neck-and-neck, with different things going for each of them. Now, though, Fountain of Flame has pulled pretty firmly into the lead, at least in my opinion.



I roughly agree with your analysis, but disagree with your conclusion.  The remedy, to me, is to boost FS's end of turn effect - maybe by adding some ongoing fire damage to the end-of-turn effect _only_.

This gives the enemy next to the sphere more incentive to move away - and punishes not doing so.  You might say "a move action - so what", but if used in conjunction with a fighter that will mean getting targetted by a bonus attack - and risking an attack of its own if it has to actually move (i.e. go more than one square) to get away could mean taking the fighter's OA _and_ the flaming sphere EOT damage.  How this sort of thing can be seen as _less_ controllery baffles me.


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## BobTheNob (Jul 18, 2011)

Just to clarify since we cant seem to resolve this.

Just for arguments sake, lets call The Flaming sphere a flaming ball. Now lets say, for some reason, you are able to cast it twice...now you have flaming balls. Well that hurts no natter what, so you call out in pain "MY balls are on fire!"

So you try moving them around and someone comes into contact with your balls.

Now THATS battlefield control!


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## The Human Target (Jul 18, 2011)

DracoSuave said:


> The solution to wands is to print good wands.  wands are subpar for every class that uses them, except maybe bards.  Maybe.




That is partially true, but the advantage of gaining a bonus once an encounter before you make the attack roll is still pretty lame in comparison to the others.


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## keterys (Jul 18, 2011)

It's _after_ you make the attack roll. And it's extremely solid, likely turning a miss into a hit once every couple encounters (depends a bit on your Dex), or more often.


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## FireLance (Jul 18, 2011)

I'm in favor of end of turn damage, but I do agree that the currently planned approach for _flaming sphere_ seems rather lackluster. Perhaps a compromise? Retain the end of turn damage, but improve the initial and repeated attack as follows: attacks all creatures in a Close burst 1 (Intelligence vs. Reflex for 2d6 + Intelligence modifier fire damage) OR deals automatic 1d4 + Intelligence modifier fire damage to one creature adjacent to the sphere.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jul 19, 2011)

The Human Target said:


> That is partially true, but the advantage of gaining a bonus once an encounter before you make the attack roll is still pretty lame in comparison to the others.




I gotta agree, there's no reason why this one very common implement should have a sucky mastery. Just make it a free action and give it a trigger. You can still play around with better wands, but you won't need them so much.


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## Aegeri (Jul 19, 2011)

Personally I am for the Flaming Sphere change having tried it for myself. Flaming Sphere is arguably the only spell in 4E I've seen in every single campaign since I started playing the game. It's so efficient that I don't recall ever not seeing it being used. With the damage at the end of the turn, it's no longer an automatic choice and actually DOES change the way I think about it. I would usually ignore flaming sphere half the time or kamikaze monsters into the Wizard. There was simply no reason to actually bother trying to avoid the damage, because it was not possible (other than spreading out, but again its the important targets you want dead). Now I actually consider moving monsters away from the sphere more regularly because it's actually worth doing. 

Overall this is a change I rather like and I wish I had thought about doing this myself a lot earlier.


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## Gortle (Jul 23, 2011)

Peraion Graufalke said:


> Seeing that they nerfed several spells this way, I don't like this at all. The way I see it, this has been done to protect minions, but it reduces the wizard's damage output, which could lead to (more) combat grind. I'm going to ignore this change for my games.
> 
> Also, why didn't they just state that in general, walls and zones only deal damage once per round (or per turn, if you prefer) to a creature? That eliminates the ping-pong of death issue without having to nerf update multiple spells.
> 
> The Blood Mage got nerfed again? Oh dear. Destructive Salutation could have kept a stunned UENT plus the ongoing damage effect on a hit.





Minions have heaps of problems anyway. A wizard can have area burst 2 damage effects from level 1 -  at will and ally friendly. I have a Valorous Bard in the party. Adding minions makes the encounter easier, they are just nice pouches of temporary hit points. Virtually every class has a way to attack at lest 2 per turn. You should not consider the changes a protection for minions, they are not.

I agree with you on that the rule should be _walls and zones only deal damage once per round/turn_ The changes to the Flaming Sphere make it an appalling daily.

Destructive Salutation was very strong but so are a lot of other spells. Stunning until end of encounter was always a joke with the changes to the saving throws. A daze effect on a level 19 daily for a wizard is just not strong enough to be wroth taking. They should have reduced the damage or remove the enemy only instead if they wanted to weaken it.


*Come on WotC, balancing powers is OK but making powers useless just annoys the players!!!*


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## Gortle (Jul 23, 2011)

MrBeens said:


> Spot on. In most cases leaving the zone is not a loss of any kind to the monster.
> If they do stick with the end of turn effects there needs to be an effect on leaving the zone, giving the enemy a choice to make other than not get effected and continue as though the zone is not there.




Hey when are these forums going to get a *like *button or *voting *up and down like StackOverflow ???


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## Gortle (Jul 23, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yes, you are correct, but you are committing a fundamental error. You are theorycrafting. The situation you describe is a BLANK SLATE battlefield where there is no terrain, no circumstances which might make the goblins desire to be HERE instead of THERE, etc.
> ....
> The point is that in the real world when the goblins are trying to crowd through the door that lets them flank the fighter in his covered position then dropping a flaming sphere in that area and chasing the goblins away ain't a bad idea and can be VASTLY more tactically advantageous than just trying to kill them outright.





I'd argue that the blank slate battle field is much more common than a  battle field with a choke point. Sure regularly the game is played in a  confined space but 
1) more often than not the terrain that is there can be easily avoided by one side or the other. The inititive roll can do it half the time.
2) many parties are melee heavy and want to get every PC involved.  Having one defender hold a point while one ranged controller pings the  enemy is very slow and boring for the rest of the PCs. The players will simply refuse to play that way.

The the other key wizard  characteristic apart from controller is Area  Of Effect spells. Any number of the area at will spells will be awesome  if the goblins are packing into a corridor. The goblins won't keep doing  it against a wizard. Evaluating Flaming Sphere in this situation is  moot.




AbdulAlhazred said:


> Now, consider a situation where a bunch of artillery monsters are bombing the party from a position you cannot get to. The old Flaming Sphere really does nothing here. The DM is going to just leave the monsters in their relatively secure location knowing that moving them is pointless. With the NEW Flaming Sphere the DM has a meaningful choice, stand around in the inaccessible location and take damage or move and risk being engaged by the party melee characters. In this case the NEW FS may actually perform better. It won't be much worse in any case.




Not true the old Flaming Sphere forces them to move apart - which they should do anyway against a wizard. You are tripping over your own logic here.  You are assuming that the old flaming sphere always gets to do it's damage. Sometimes that is true for a single monster but regularly it is not, simply spread out the monsters, make use of walls, spread around the PCs (it's not party friendly), force the PCs to move quickly, stun the wizard etc.




AbdulAlhazred said:


> Notice that this also conforms with what Balesir is saying too, if you move damage to EOT and you WANT to keep the power at the same level then you'd be advised to increase the damage or add some other effect.




Agreed, especially important for some of the other zones that were more marginal in the first place.




AbdulAlhazred said:


> However the 2nd consideration still exists, the damage may simply not be enough to ever motivate the enemy to move at all, but there's no general way to determine that. FS is unlikely to exert much control at higher levels as 1d4+int damage may be trivial (even with some boosts), but then again it is a level 1 daily and isn't intended to be a go-to spell at higher levels. Chances are you'll swap it out at the first power swap and may even retrain it sooner than that.





Yep, some monsters can just soak up the damage. There are better things to do at higher levels.


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## Gortle (Jul 23, 2011)

Raikun said:


> I've always seen Control as managing the battlefield to help keep your party alive long enough to make the bad guys dead first.  Damage of course is a part of that (according to the role description), but often it isn't.
> 
> "Sleep" when used correctly can be nearly an auto-win for the party, and it does no damage on it's own at all.  That's control.




Yes but you need some items and specific build to get it to work well. It is not that good at 1st level because of that. 75% of monsters that you hit won't fall asleep. I only tend to use it when I am getting good tactical value from the slow affect.


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## Gortle (Jul 23, 2011)

Oldtimer said:


> How is that relevant to start-of-turn or end-of-turn damage?
> 
> 
> Yes, they can attack and move away. End-of-turn doesn't prevent that. Neither does start-of-turn (unless it actually kills them). But end-of-turn encouraged them to move away, something start-of-turn was unable to do.
> ...




I appreciate your points. Most of what you are saying has reasonable sense to it, but I'm going to disagree. 

Punting the monster into the wizards zone with pushes and slides is a fun part of 4th ed. If the damage is end of turn there is little damage value in that tactic anymore. There goes your teamwork. 

Strikers all have excellent movement powers they don't need the controller to help with their placement, just a sticky defender.

The damage from movable zones is far from automatic. You are wrong to assume otherwise. See above post. 

Forcing monsters to move is rarely worth a standard action for a PC.  

If the position is that key then the monsters will soak up the damage. Many of them have the hitpoints. Crank it up a notch if you want the damage to make them move. Add in 5 ongoing fire damage.


Blaster is a valid build for a wizard, pure controllers won't take many of these damaging zones anyway. Many PCs don't still strictly to their role. Leave them alone and let the blasters have their fun. Don't take away there fun for the sake of controller purity. Don't water down spells that aren't a problem. 

Compensate if you have to weaken powers. 

More generally making zones spells once per round and at the start of the turn would be a much simpler fix than erratering each one. It would make game play faster too.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jul 23, 2011)

Gizella said:


> I'd argue that the blank slate battle field is much more common than a  battle field with a choke point. Sure regularly the game is played in a  confined space but
> 1) more often than not the terrain that is there can be easily avoided by one side or the other. The inititive roll can do it half the time.
> 2) many parties are melee heavy and want to get every PC involved.  Having one defender hold a point while one ranged controller pings the  enemy is very slow and boring for the rest of the PCs. The players will simply refuse to play that way.
> 
> The the other key wizard  characteristic apart from controller is Area  Of Effect spells. Any number of the area at will spells will be awesome  if the goblins are packing into a corridor. The goblins won't keep doing  it against a wizard. Evaluating Flaming Sphere in this situation is  moot.




Most battlefields (and just considering all the various ones I've designed, many 100's certainly) I don't think it is easy to generalize. There are a few types. You will have some which are effectively tunnels, some with a choke point the PCs pass to enter some more open area (entering a room through a door), some with dispersed series of obstacles (like trees in a forest), those with disconnected or semi-disconnected areas linked by choke points or marked off by unfavorable terrain, and some rather uncatagorizable ones.

Most decent encounters will at least contain areas favorable to the enemy to occupy (cover, concealment, advantageous zones or terrain) and other areas of the map that act as transit points. Another common situation would be one where the opposition is tactically divided in some fashion and restricting their movement can allow them to be defeated in detail. 

Many of these situations present an opportunity to use something like FS purely to motivate the enemy to move. Simply restricting the places where they can safely end their move and occupying a square can be enough to cause a turn of delay, on top of getting in some attacks (and getting effectively a minor action MBA-like attack every round isn't shabby in and of itself, lets not forget that). Other zones and walls clearly are better suited to denying larger areas, but Stinking Cloud for example is still perfectly effective there, the enemy will probably go around it and if they dive in they're likely to cross in one round anyway regardless of when the damage happens. 



> Not true the old Flaming Sphere forces them to move apart - which they should do anyway against a wizard. You are tripping over your own logic here.  You are assuming that the old flaming sphere always gets to do it's damage. Sometimes that is true for a single monster but regularly it is not, simply spread out the monsters, make use of walls, spread around the PCs (it's not party friendly), force the PCs to move quickly, stun the wizard etc.




Possibly. The new FS also makes them want to move apart though. The point is moving is more advantageous with the new FS, and control in the case of FS is all about getting things to want to move. There are of course various other countermeasures, but what makes them more effective before than they are now. Stunning always made the FS go away. 



> Punting the monster into the wizards zone with pushes and slides is a  fun part of 4th ed. If the damage is end of turn there is little damage  value in that tactic anymore. There goes your teamwork.




I'm not seeing that. Sure, you can't yo-yo anymore. The damage from zones was already plenty good without that. You can still push a guy into a zone and he takes damage, it is once per turn on first entry. You just can't get the old slide 3 and double dip anymore. The general tactic is still highly valid.


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## Gortle (Jul 23, 2011)

A lot of that terrain is nice fluff but is really not that important in actually play. For example a group of monsters standing in a circle that gives out +2 to hit is a poor tactic against most parties. Apart from cliff and wallls terrain is rarely stronger than that.

Even fighters have plently of ways of moving the monsters around if it is important. Footwork Lure/Come and Get It. It is just not strong enough effect for a controller to gently encourage movement with an optional out and modest damage.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Sure, you can't yo-yo anymore. The damage from zones was already plenty good without that. You can still push a guy into a zone and he takes damage, it is once per turn on first entry. You just can't get the old slide 3 and double dip anymore. The general tactic is still highly valid.




Some of the zones do do damage on entering, but Flaming Sphere doesn't. Changing it to end of turn does negate this tactic.


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## keterys (Jul 23, 2011)

Flaming Sphere never dealt damage on entering.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 23, 2011)

keterys said:


> Flaming Sphere never dealt damage on entering.




BINGO!!  So if you move that guy into the range of a Flaming Sphere he can just step away on his turn if damage comes at the end of the creatures turn and it takes no damage.


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## keterys (Jul 23, 2011)

True. Which is a very good change to the power, and I thoroughly approve.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 23, 2011)

keterys said:


> True. Which is a very good change to the power, and I thoroughly approve.




That's not good!  Why do you want to have a power that is easily avoidable?  The whole point of the tactic is to have a class move the enemy into the zone, beginning of it's turn it takes X damage so it then decides to either move or stand there and take more damage.  If the creature is going to move anyway, then it has already taken some damage before it has the chance to move. 

The damage needs to stay at the beginning of the creatures turn in order to keep certain and effective tactics in the game.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 23, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> That's not good!  Why do you want to have a power that is easily avoidable?  The whole point of the tactic is to have a class move the enemy into the zone, beginning of it's turn it takes X damage so it then decides to either move or stand there and take more damage.  If the creature is going to move anyway, then it has already taken some damage before it has the chance to move.
> 
> The damage needs to stay at the beginning of the creatures turn in order to keep certain and effective tactics in the game.



Sliding enemies into zones is ONE tactic. Not the ONLY tactic. Agreed, that particular tactic using Flaming Sphere is mostly nullified by the change. Other tactics are strengthened.

Also, regarding a movable zone like Flaming Sphere, you are still wrong in what happens after the enemy has taken damage at the start of its turn. It has no decision to make that influences whether it will take more damage.

And that's the whole point of this change. Yes, the spell will cause less damage in the long run. Maybe the end-of-turn damage should be upped a bit to compensate (this is a playtest; you can still suggest that to them). But the change trades assured damage against battlefield influence for this spell. A good trade, IMO. I have been playing Flaming Sphere like this for a year. It does work very well at the table, I promise.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jul 23, 2011)

Gizella said:


> A lot of that terrain is nice fluff but is really not that important in actually play. For example a group of monsters standing in a circle that gives out +2 to hit is a poor tactic against most parties. Apart from cliff and wallls terrain is rarely stronger than that.




Mmmmm, I have to conclude that you misunderstand the nature of tactics. Tactics isn't about a +1 or a +2. Tactics is much more than that. It is about bringing into existence the situations which accrue advantages to you, and deny them to the other side. It also involves 'higher level' types of advantages such as concentration of firepower, and abstract advantages like initiative (in the tactical theoretical sense, not the game mechanics sense). In the real world it would also include concepts like morale, which in the game is hard to quantify since it is up to the DM.



> Even fighters have plently of ways of moving the monsters around if it is important. Footwork Lure/Come and Get It. It is just not strong enough effect for a controller to gently encourage movement with an optional out and modest damage.




Yeah, I think there's a whole other dimension to tactics that you're missing. In fact most of what people call 'tactics' in 4e is just bonus mongering anyway. It is tactics in the sense that doing A, B, and then C gives you more damage, but it doesn't relate all that much to the more interesting aspects of true tactics. 

So, for instance, using an FS to delay the arrival of one opponent in a spot where it can execute its plan could be a fine tactical objective and worth much more than the details of what square a monster is in, which a fighter could influence. If that extra turn gives the PCs on the spot a chance to make attacks on whatever monster they are concentrating on now without dealing with the other monster (say its OAs or conditions it might lay down if it were there) that is a real concrete tactical advantage that far outweighs a +2 somewhere. The best debuff is no attack at all for example. 



> Some of the zones do do damage on entering, but Flaming Sphere doesn't. Changing it to end of turn does negate this tactic.




I didn't actually claim it did, I was mentioning Stinking Cloud there IIRC. The point is none of this gets at the point, which is that the new FS motivates monsters to move, the old one doesn't in as many cases. New one is more about control, old one is more about damage. The point holds.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 23, 2011)

Oldtimer said:


> Sliding enemies into zones is ONE tactic. Not the ONLY tactic. Agreed, that particular tactic using Flaming Sphere is mostly nullified by the change. Other tactics are strengthened.
> 
> *Also, regarding a movable zone like Flaming Sphere, you are still wrong in what happens after the enemy has taken damage at the start of its turn. It has no decision to make that influences whether it will take more damage.*
> 
> *And that's the whole point of this change. Yes, the spell will cause less damage in the long run.* Maybe the end-of-turn damage should be upped a bit to compensate (this is a playtest; you can still suggest that to them). But the change trades assured damage against battlefield influence for this spell. A good trade, IMO. I have been playing Flaming Sphere like this for a year. It does work very well at the table, I promise.




How are you coming up with this?  The decision is either move or take more damage. You are the one that is wrong in this regard. 

Then adding end of turn to spells whose effect are damage is just plain wrong.  Making it at the end of turn could make more sense on effects with conditions, or increase the damage by a lot.

Also, another tactic that is virtually eliminated is the intercept tactic with moveable zones.  I used to use my zones to intercept enemies that I knew were hurting, or they were minions.  I have a DM that uses lots and lots of minions in their games and this was a great tactic that would stop them dead in their tracks.


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## keterys (Jul 23, 2011)

End of turn deals less damage than start of turn, certainly. If the power was underpowered to start, or only on par for power to start, then end of turn damage should be increased. If it was overpowered to start, then changing it to end of turn may be a much needed reduction in its power.

Regardless, end of turn is better for the health of the game overall, and I thoroughly approve of all damaging effects of that nature changing from start of turn to end of turn - and that applies to monsters as well as PCs, of course. I don't believe it's actually a "feature" that minions auto-die when they start their turn, nor that a PC can be at low health then start their turn and drop.

If they've overnerfed any of the powers (and I've no doubt that's true for some of them), then I would prefer that the "end of turn" change stick, but not necessarily some of the other reductions in power.


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## Raikun (Jul 23, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> How are you coming up with this?  The decision is either move or take more damage. You are the one that is wrong in this regard.




Except in many cases they take the exact same damage whether or not they move.

Putting damage at end of turn gives them the decision to move or take more damage.


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## keterys (Jul 23, 2011)

In fact, with the old flaming sphere, it's surprisingly common that _not moving_ lets you avoid the damage instead of the other way around, as the wizard moves it to a place with a greater concentration of foes, or to move it away from allies.

It's also not uncommon that because PCs can walk up to and stand next to a flaming sphere, they'll feel free to crowd around it to get their melee attacks in, and just tell the wizard to move it away before they go.


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## Raikun (Jul 23, 2011)

Yep, I've seen that too, and it bugged the heck outta me.  It just seems silly for people to run right up to a big ball of flame.

And really, what prompted us to change it ages ago, was the idea of this big ball of flame rolling around the room, with people and monsters jumping and diving to get out of the way of it.  Having damage at End of Turn fits that idea so much better.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 23, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> How are you coming up with this?  The decision is either move or take more damage. You are the one that is wrong in this regard.



I've explained this over and over. With start-of-turn damage, you take damage at the start of your turn. Then there is no more damage that turn. Moving or standing still will not change that. How is that so hard to comprehend?



ForeverSlayer said:


> Then adding end of turn to spells whose effect are damage is just plain wrong.  Making it at the end of turn could make more sense on effects with conditions, or increase the damage by a lot.



Why? True, the purpose of the spell changes, but "plain wrong"? Seriously?



ForeverSlayer said:


> Also, another tactic that is virtually eliminated is the intercept tactic with moveable zones.  I used to use my zones to intercept enemies that I knew were hurting, or they were minions.  I have a DM that uses lots and lots of minions in their games and this was a great tactic that would stop them dead in their tracks.



I have no idea what you mean by this. "intercept enemies"? Yes, the old Flaming Sphere was a great minion killer, if that's what you mean. Too, good in my view. Now it has been repurposed to a minion mover. Again, more control for less damage.

We have been over this for page after page now. The change to Flaming Sphere will make it less of a blaster spell and more of a control spell. Almost everyone can see that. Some might object to the change, some might like it, to each his own. But I don't understand why we are arguing as to the nature of the change.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 23, 2011)

Raikun said:


> Yep, I've seen that too, and it bugged the heck outta me.  It just seems silly for people to run right up to a big ball of flame.
> 
> And really, what prompted us to change it ages ago, was the idea of this big ball of flame rolling around the room, with people and monsters jumping and diving to get out of the way of it.  Having damage at End of Turn fits that idea so much better.




Sometimes you have to get burned in order to learn your lesson.  With the old Flaming Sphere you can have damage and control.  

All I am saying is in our games it has always worked with no problems what so ever.  I have played a Wizard since day one and my character is a control machine.  I can have two zones going at the same time and my team mates move the enemies into them. 

Ever moved a Flaming Sphere into a group of enemies and watch as they run because they got flamed? 

About too good for minions, well it is a Daily spell and it does less damage than a Scorching Burst spell, so what's the difference? 

About intercepting enemies, well it's just what I said.  I have had minions and enemies on their last leg attempt to gang up on me because I got moved all alone.  Well I knew it was their turn after mine and I needed to do something quick.  I already had my Flaming Sphere up so what I did was move the sphere to intercept them and when their turn came up they immediately took the damage which killed the minions in range and bloodied another non-minion.  Well instead of 4 guys coming at me, it was only one.

I understand that everyone's mileage will vary, but my group is the one that I have to look out for and these changes have proven to be a negative influence on our game.


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## Balesir (Jul 23, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Sometimes you have to get burned in order to learn your lesson.  With the old Flaming Sphere you can have damage and control.



Well, nope.  Damage, yes, definitely; control, not much.



ForeverSlayer said:


> I have played a Wizard since day one and my character is a control machine.  I can have two zones going at the same time and my team mates move the enemies into them.



That's not control, it's an attack boost.  More of a leader schtick than a controller one.



ForeverSlayer said:


> Ever moved a Flaming Sphere into a group of enemies and watch as they run because they got flamed?



Nope.  As DM I hardly ever bother moving monsters away from a FS because either it will be moved to get better advantage (in which case the monster needn't move) or the monster is considered an important target (in which case it will get hit whether it moves or not).  With the new version, I might very well move monsters away - they will definitely avoid damage, that way.  Of course, if the move away means ignoring a mark, the damage will likely not be enough to bother moving, but that just means the EoT effect should be stiffer, not that it should be SoT.



ForeverSlayer said:


> About intercepting enemies, well it's just what I said.  I have had minions and enemies on their last leg attempt to gang up on me because I got moved all alone.  Well I knew it was their turn after mine and I needed to do something quick.  I already had my Flaming Sphere up so what I did was move the sphere to intercept them and when their turn came up they immediately took the damage which killed the minions in range and bloodied another non-minion.  Well instead of 4 guys coming at me, it was only one.



So, just to be clear, you had screwed up your tactics so badly that the wizard was caught facing four enemies alone, and you were glad you had a blaster spell to sic on 'em?  Hm, yeah, I can see the utility, but not the justice of a free 'defender substitute' for the wizard.



ForeverSlayer said:


> I understand that everyone's mileage will vary, but my group is the one that I have to look out for and these changes have proven to be a negative influence on our game.



The changes have been in playtest, what, a week?  And already their "negative influence" is proven?  That must have been one intense session.


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## Gortle (Jul 23, 2011)

Balesir said:


> Nope.  As DM I hardly ever bother moving monsters away from a FS because either it will be moved to get better advantage (in which case the monster needn't move) or the monster is considered an important target (in which case it will get hit whether it moves or not).  With the new version, I might very well move monsters away - they will definitely avoid damage, that way.  Of course, if the move away means ignoring a mark, the damage will likely not be enough to bother moving, but that just means the EoT effect should be stiffer, not that it should be SoT.




Moving monsters away from a FS is almost always the best tactic. Moving 1 monster away from a FS is often pointless.

A group of monsters can't pack in and hold a corridor anyway against a party with 2 or more at will area or blast attacks. Most parties should be able to do that.


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## Gortle (Jul 24, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Mmmmm, I have to conclude that you misunderstand the nature of tactics. Tactics isn't about a +1 or a +2. Tactics is much more than that.




Please there  is no reason to get condescending just because I am disagreeing with you. There are multiple levels to tactics.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I didn't actually claim it did, I was mentioning Stinking Cloud there IIRC. The point is none of this gets at the point, which is that the new FS motivates monsters to move, the old one doesn't in as many cases. New one is more about control, old one is more about damage. The point holds.




I have already agreed there is more motivation for monsters to move away from the moveable zones if they do their damage at the end of turn. But were we disagree is that there is significant motivation for monsters to move anyway away from the original beginning of turn zones.

It is perfectly OK to give wizards a few daily powers that do moderate damage in an area. Players should be choosing the style of wizard they want to play not completely limited by having their damage options nullified. They shouldn't be forced to be pure controllers.

The changes to Flaming Sphere seriously downgrade its damage output for a minor increase in control. Also the fun tactic of punting monsters next to the sphere is gone.

The changes to Stinking Cloud seriously downgrade its damage output for a minor increase in control and a big loss in tactical flexibility.
My group used to use it as a moveable shield against ranged attacks as it blocked line of sight. Now it is only heavily obscured, sure this is 50% protection against ranged attacker but the cost of using the moveable zone is move actions on the wizard so you lose half your speed and may have to spend twice the time as a target. Suffering twice the attacks with 50% protection is roughly equal and another tactic has little value  and gets flushed down the errata hole. Lets not forget that it now of no value at shielding from area of effect attacks as they aren't affected by concealment.

If WotC feel the need to rebalance these powers fine. But they are also killing some of the fun tactics players used with these powers and that is bad for the game.



While we are rebalancing things can we please improve some of the marginal options.

Web would be really fun if it affected creatures that moved into it. No dashing through the web anymore but PCs and monster could be punted into it.

Wall of Fog would be much better if it was movable or larger in size. It is far too easy to move around.


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## Raikun (Jul 24, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Sometimes you have to get burned in order to learn your lesson.  With the old Flaming Sphere you can have damage and control. .




You have damage, but very little control with old Flaming Sphere.

And there's no "learning your lesson" with it either seeing as many times there simply is no way to avoid it.

Until now, that they've fixed it.

Old flaming sphere - Monster standing there, watching this ball of flame coming at him unable to move until it's hit him.

New flaming sphere - Monsters finally have the option to jump out of the way.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 24, 2011)

Gizella said:


> there is significant motivation for monsters to move anyway away from the original beginning of turn zones.



Incorrect. There is no motivation to move away.



Gizella said:


> The changes to Flaming Sphere seriously downgrade its damage output for a minor increase in control.



Incorrect. The increase in control is major.



Gizella said:


> Also the fun tactic of punting monsters next to the sphere is gone.



Correct. There are other zones better used for that now.


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## Gortle (Jul 24, 2011)

Oldtimer said:


> Incorrect. There is no motivation to move away.




I disagree it is only worth not moving if there is one monster and the wizard can afford to forgo his move action. For monster*S* it is often worthwhile moving.

If the wizard has to use 2 move action - giving up his other attack - to get the zone back on target then team monster should be OK with that.



Oldtimer said:


> Incorrect. The increase in control is major.



No I disagree it is minor. If the position is that important the monster will soak up the damage regardless. The damage is only equivalent to a hit from a typical basic attack. Many monster have 100+ hit points. The control effect is way weaker than a well placed slow.

If you are arguing that the spell is so strong to drive a group of monsters away from a fixed point then you aren't playing the rest of the wizard spells well enough. A group of monsters in a fixed point that won't maneuver is easy prey to any number of wizard spells.


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## Raikun (Jul 24, 2011)

Gizella said:


> I disagree it is only worth not moving if there is one monster and the wizard can afford to forgo his move action. For monster*S* it is often worthwhile moving.




And often it's only one or two monsters that the wizard wants/needs to move. 

The old flaming sphere, more often than not, was cast, did damage to multiple targets at first, with the wizard then just using it as a steady source of single target damage for the rest of the encounter.

The change makes it much more of a tactically interesting spell in my experience.  With the old flaming sphere, once the wizard chooses his victim after the first cast, really the best option as the DM was to just either write off the sphere as something that can't be avoided, or try and use the sphere against the players if the rare opportunity occured to do so.

Usually that led to the sphere being a rather static, uninteresting zone that slowly damaged one target.

After we'd changed it, it became a much more fun giant ball of flame rolling around the room with monsters jumping out of the way, which was much closer to how I envisioned the spell being intended.


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## brehobit (Jul 24, 2011)

My 2 cents (I'll send on to Wizards after I get others feedback):

I'm I missing something, or can a level 5 wizard prepare two level 5 dailies as the spellbook power now reads?  I'm assuming this is an error.
Wand of Accuracy needs to be made clear when you add the bonus.  Before you roll?  After you know if you hit?  
Force orb really needs a miss effect.  Half damage maybe?
Flaming sphere was too powerful, now it is too weak.  Perhaps have it cause damage to anyone that enters a square next to the sphere or ends their turn next to it?  That leads to push/pull abuse though (which could be fixed per Stinking cloud). But right now it will very (very) rarely cause damage.  Too much of a nuke.  Perhaps remove the sustain minor?  Perhaps keep the sustain but allow it to move the sphere 3 spaces? 
Fireball needs something more.  Big areas can be helpful, but for an "each creature" attack they are a mixed blessing.  I'd prefer 5d6  and 5 on-going fire damage (save ends).  
Scorching burst needs some love.  At it sits it's really weak compared to the mage's option (freezing burst).  Maybe dex mod damage on a miss?

Another problem is that this class is almost entirely weaker than the mage.  The mage class abilities are generally much better, they get a free at-will, and their spellbook applies to encounter powers (a non-trivial benefit). A Wizard gets ritual caster, which varies quite a bit in usefulness from table to table (and a mage can take it with a single feat in any case).  

So what makes sense to "pump up" the wizard without making it too much? I'd suggest two things:

My sense is that an arcanist is to be a generalist.  I'd just give them additional at-will selections.  Say at level 1, 5, 15, 25 an arcanist may select an additional at-will power.  You'd have to add a few more at-will choices to the "base" class, but that's trivial. 
Also, they should just be better at general magic stuff.  Give them a +2 bonus to arcana at level 1, increasing to +3 at 11 and +4 at 21.  

Neither bonus should have too much of an impact on the power of an arcanist, but it does make them look like a better option compared to a mage.


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## brehobit (Jul 24, 2011)

Gizella said:


> It has been nerf way harder than the updated Rain of Steel.



Humm, what update to rain of steel?


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## brehobit (Jul 24, 2011)

One more whine:

Arcane Riposte sucks.  It really does.  A level 11 wizard with a 22 int, 10 str and a +3 staff can expect to make an attack at +10 (5 for level, 2 for staff, 3 for magic) that does d8+3.  With this power I get an attack at +11 for d8+6.  Both attacks suck and the difference is minor at best.  If the wizard has combat training the staff is much better at +16/d8+6.

By level 21 (int 26, str 12, +5 staff) the staff is at +18 for d8+6 and the arcane riposte is at +18 for d8+8.

I'd suggest just making arcane riposte an at-will power (green text and everything), usable only as an opportunity attack and make it an implement power.  Or even better, just make it an at-will melee attack that counts as a basic attack that is an implement power.  

Arcane riposte -- Battle mage attack 11 
At-will * implement 
Standard Action  melee 1
target: One creature
Attack: Intelligence +4 vs. AC
Hit d8+Intelligence; Level 21: 2d8+Intelligence. When you hit, pick one of the following: cold, fire, force, or lightning.  This power deals that damage type and gains that keyword.

Special: This power may be used as a basic melee attack.


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## brehobit (Jul 24, 2011)

*And...*

Ok,
Looked at the PP changes.  They were way overkill for no obvious reason.  Action point powers getting really hosed badly for no clear reason is the worst offender, but Bolstering Blood's change is crazy.  PC hit points are more valuable than monster hit points.  This just kills the PP (well it, and the other nerfs in this update, though Destructive Salutation needed it.


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## Gortle (Jul 24, 2011)

brehobit said:


> Humm, what update to rain of steel?




Apologies I was think of another power.

Rain of Steel wasn't touched when the fighter was and it does a whole lot more damage than Flaming Sphere and that for a defender not a striker.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/CC_Fighter.pdf

Are WotC going to make that an end of turn effect as well? Defenders are supposed to be better controllers than strikers anyway.


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## Raikun (Jul 24, 2011)

Gizella said:


> Are WotC going to make that an end of turn effect as well? Defenders are supposed to be better controllers than strikers anyway.




Fighters can be built either to emphasize control, or damage. 

Read PHB, Page 76, under "Great Weapon Fighter" for instance.


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## Al'Kelhar (Jul 24, 2011)

Player's Handbook said:
			
		

> *Controller (Wizard)*
> Controllers deal with large numbers of enemies at the same time. They favour offence over defence, using powers that deal damage to multiple foes at once, as well as subtler powers that weaken, confuse, or delay their foes.




(My emphasis)

The changes to zones that operate to reduce area damage to mass targets reduces control, by WoTC's very own inital definition of the role. EOT damage reduces control. If you choose to define "control" as "making enemies think about battlefield postioning", EOT damage _may_ affect control - but reducing the damage from the zone _as well_ (e.g. Stinking Cloud) just adds insult to injury.

Flaming Sphere has a range 10. It must always remain within 10 squares of its creator, who must also continually retain line of effect, and must have line of sight to move or sustain it. It is party-unfriendly. That is is largely more effective than any other 1st-level daily wizard spell merely reflects the general suckage of other 1st-level daily wizard spells. I have never seen Flaming Sphere break an encounter. I have seen it alter the flow of battle, particularly in confined spaces. I have also seen - from both sides of the screen - the conjuring wizard receive the almighty smackdown from every unmarked enemy on the battlefield as soon he or she rolls it rolls out, the best defence from a dangerous zone being to knock its creator unconscious.

The changes to the wizard (sorry, arcanist - ugh) that are proposed are to address (1) a systemic flaw with damage-on-entry zones; and (2) one-trick ponies and damage optimisers.

Problem (1) requires a system-wide fix that should have occurred years ago. Zone damage 1/turn appears to be the most widely adopted house rule ever. Problem (2) is a problem for organised play, not for home games (or at least well-managed home games). I will continue to use the PHB wizard in my own games, thanks.

Cheers, Al'Kelhar


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## Raikun (Jul 24, 2011)

Al'Kelhar said:


> (My emphasis)
> 
> The changes to zones that operate to reduce area damage to mass targets reduces control, by WoTC's very own inital definition of the role.




Except that same definition also includes "as well as subtler powers that weaken, confuse, or delay their foes."


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 24, 2011)

Raikun said:


> You have damage, but very little control with old Flaming Sphere.
> 
> And there's no "learning your lesson" with it either seeing as many times there simply is no way to avoid it.
> 
> ...




Actually with the old FS the monsters took damage and jumped out of the way.  It's not rocket science and I hate it when people leave out what obviously happens in order to try and win an argument.  

In our games and every other game I have played in, the monsters move away from the FS after they have taken the damage because they don't want to take the damage again when their next turn comes around.  We get damage and we get control.  

9 times out of 10 monsters are going to move anyway.  You really aren't giving them an alternative, so before they move they will be taking damage.  

I think who ever decided on this errata may be lacking in the various ways to use these spells in combat on a tactical level.  You don't burn away three types of tactics in order to, what they think is more control when it's actually not, and gain really nothing in return. 

We have done battle after battle after battle with the new changes and it doesn't work.  We can't figure out what in the hell the playtesters were doing in order to come up with these changes.  During our multiple playtests we even switched initiative order several times to where the monsters have been from 1st to last and we still come up with the same results.  The errata is a failure.


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## keterys (Jul 24, 2011)

It's not a failure. It works just fine for a daily of that level. In some cases you may also want to also use a defender and/or other control powers of your own, to ensure best results.

It's certainly less powerful. For some of the powers, _much_ less powerful. Which means that you're going to get far lower results than you've come to expect. The wizard has several dailies that outperform their level by quite a bit, to the extent that they dramatically shift the balance of a combat more than almost every other class. Now it has less of those. On the "plus" side, maybe some of their more neglected dailies like summons, will be more popular. I do wish they'd also improved some of their really neglected dailies, like Fireball.


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## Raikun (Jul 24, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Actually with the old FS the monsters took damage and jumped out of the way.  It's not rocket science and I hate it when people leave out what obviously happens in order to try and win an argument.




Except 1) With old FS the monster never has a chance to jump out of the way before being hit, and 

2) It's NOT obvious that he moves anyways.  It's been described why many times.  

3)  I did not leave out what might happen.  It's right there in my statement with a conditional modifier (until).


Undisputable fact remains:

Old flaming sphere - Monster standing there, watching this ball of flame coming at him unable to move until it's hit him.

New flaming sphere - Monsters finally have the option to jump out of the way before it hits him.

Subjective part:

I've played with the flaming sphere fix for some time now, and it plays much better.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 24, 2011)

Gizella said:


> The damage is only equivalent to a hit from a typical basic attack. Many monster have 100+ hit points.



So now the damage is trivial? Why is it then a minor disaster that it's not automatic anymore? 

And 100+ hit points? That would be a level 7 Brute or a level 9 Soldier. It's a freaking first level spell! Of course it's not going to scare the pants of monsters in high heroic. But against a group of level 2 Artillery it's going to look pretty intimidating.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 24, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Actually with the old FS the monsters took damage and jumped out of the way.  It's not rocket science and I hate it when people leave out what obviously happens in order to try and win an argument.
> 
> In our games and every other game I have played in, the monsters move away from the FS after they have taken the damage because they don't want to take the damage again when their next turn comes around.  We get damage and we get control.
> 
> 9 times out of 10 monsters are going to move anyway.  You really aren't giving them an alternative, so before they move they will be taking damage.



This is madness. Why on earth are your monsters moving? There is just no incentive. Not at all. They win nothing by moving. Your argument is faulty to the extreme.



ForeverSlayer said:


> We have done battle after battle after battle with the new changes and it doesn't work.  We can't figure out what in the hell the playtesters were doing in order to come up with these changes.  During our multiple playtests we even switched initiative order several times to where the monsters have been from 1st to last and we still come up with the same results.  The errata is a failure.



No, the failure is not in the errata. We changed Flaming Sphere to end-of-turn damage over a year ago and it plays so much better for us. In both campaigns I play. Of course it works. I can't think you're really serious anymore. This is way into trolling territory. I'm out of here.


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## Gortle (Jul 25, 2011)

Oldtimer said:


> So now the damage is trivial? Why is it then a minor disaster that it's not automatic anymore?
> 
> And 100+ hit points? That would be a level 7 Brute or a level 9 Soldier. It's a freaking first level spell! Of course it's not going to scare the pants of monsters in high heroic. But against a group of level 2 Artillery it's going to look pretty intimidating.




No the damage is not trivial. Wizards who take this spell obviously want to do extra damage. You have to compare the value of the control effect of moving to the damage. I said basic attack because it scales at low levels it is likely to be dice+5, at 11th it may well be dice+12.  It is still somewhere around 1/8 of the monsters hitpoints. 

The monster gets to make the call whether it is worthwhile to stay not the wizard. The control effect is weak. With a simple slow or wall the moster may get no choice.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 25, 2011)

Oldtimer said:


> This is madness. Why on earth are your monsters moving? There is just no incentive. Not at all. They win nothing by moving. Your argument is faulty to the extreme.
> 
> 
> No, the failure is not in the errata. We changed Flaming Sphere to end-of-turn damage over a year ago and it plays so much better for us. In both campaigns I play. Of course it works. I can't think you're really serious anymore. This is way into trolling territory. I'm out of here.




Are you playing 4th edition or some homebrew you made up?  What happens when you put your hand on a hot stove?  You move your hand because it is burning.  It's not complex logic here.  The incentive to move is getting their asses fried from the Flaming Sphere.  

There is no madness about it.  The sphere rolls up, it burns the enemies, they move away because they don't want to be burned again.  This is how it works in our games, I don't know what you are doing in your's and it puzzles me.


----------



## UngeheuerLich (Jul 25, 2011)

hmmh... they move because they were burnt when you hit them on your turn? 

You may not forget how turns work: Basically they all happen simultaneously... but they are spread out, because it is very complicated to go through several steps.

So actually end of turn makes more sense, because at the start of their turn, there may not have been a ball of fire at all next to them... complicated? yes! Argumenting with reality fails if you think to hard about the exact timing...

Older systems tried to emulate it better: they spread out turns into several phases:
ranged phase, moveing phase, melee phase etc...

Other systems try to emulate high initiative by forcing the lowest player to decide first what they like to do and resolve those actions in opposite order...

To go bak to the topic:
Both timings of the damage actually have controll effects:

-beginning of turn: spreading out is important

-end of turn: running away helps

I guess however, end of damage is more balanced.


----------



## FireLance (Jul 25, 2011)

UngeheuerLich said:


> To go bak to the topic:
> Both timings of the damage actually have controll effects:
> 
> -beginning of turn: spreading out is important
> ...



Good summary. 

Given that most monsters do not have abilities that allow them to move their allies efficiently (and the bull rush action normally would not be considered an efficient use of a standard action), start of turn damage might as well be dealt at the end of the wizard's turn. _After_ the enemies take damage on the first round, they can minimize the damage they take in future rounds by spreading out, moving faster than the sphere, or (if battlefield conditions happen to be _just_ right) moving so that wherever the wizard places the sphere, it will also damage one of his allies. I personally doubt that the last is likely to happen very often, though. Assuming the enemies move slower than the sphere, start of turn damage effectively works out to once per turn automatic damage with the expenditure of a move action and a minor action. There is simply no way for the enemy to avoid this. He might as well not move, especially if he already has some incentive not to move.

End of turn damage always gives the enemy an incentive to move, but is more difficult to use in a damaging manner. Usually, it involves giving the enemy a Hobson's choice between not moving and taking damage, and moving and running the chance of taking damage. 

As an example, consider an enemy marked by a fighter and adjacent to him. Start of turn damage gives him no incentive to move. If he moves, the fighter attacks him, and the wizard will move the sphere next to him anyway. If he does not move, he still takes damage from the sphere, but doesn't get attacked by the fighter. With end of turn damage, the enemy must choose between not moving and getting burned by the sphere, or moving and getting attacked by the fighter.


----------



## Gortle (Jul 25, 2011)

FireLance said:


> Good summary.
> 
> Given that most monsters do not have abilities that allow them to move their allies efficiently (and the bull rush action normally would not be considered an efficient use of a standard action), start of turn damage might as well be dealt at the end of the wizard's turn. _After_ the enemies take damage on the first round, they can minimize the damage they take in future rounds by spreading out, moving faster than the sphere, or (if battlefield conditions happen to be _just_ right) moving so that wherever the wizard places the sphere, it will also damage one of his allies. I personally doubt that the last is likely to happen very often, though. Assuming the enemies move slower than the sphere, start of turn damage effectively works out to once per turn automatic damage with the expenditure of a move action and a minor action. There is simply no way for the enemy to avoid this. He might as well not move, especially if he already has some incentive not to move.
> 
> ...




Your points are fine but you continue to consider the case where there is only one enemy, and the battle field is static. That is not a typical encounter, and not how a typical wizard plays. The large majority of wizard powers are area or have more than one target. With several monsters on the map they will normally move each turn to minimise the effect of the sphere. But yes the sphere will regularly get one of them. Often the wizard will have to give up his standard action to do it though.

The spell is fine as is.


----------



## keterys (Jul 25, 2011)

I've never seen a wizard have to give up their standard action to move a flaming sphere... and I've seen a lot of rounds of flaming sphere.


----------



## ForeverSlayer (Jul 25, 2011)

keterys said:


> I've never seen a wizard have to give up their standard action to move a flaming sphere... and I've seen a lot of rounds of flaming sphere.




I'm guessing he meant move-action.


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## FireLance (Jul 25, 2011)

Gizella said:


> Your points are fine but you continue to consider the case where there is only one enemy, and the battle field is static. That is not a typical encounter, and not how a typical wizard plays. The large majority of wizard powers are area or have more than one target. With several monsters on the map they will normally move each turn to minimise the effect of the sphere. But yes the sphere will regularly get one of them. Often the wizard will have to give up his standard action to do it though.
> 
> The spell is fine as is.



Frankly, a single enemy and a static battlefield is usually a worst case scenario for start of turn damage. If the wizard or his allies have powers that can push, pull, or slide enemies and make them bunch up together, start of turn can be much more effective. As I mentioned, you might as well be dealing the extra damage at the end of the wizard's turn. 

As for the wizard "having" to give up a standard action to move the sphere next to an enemy - the fact that it's considered a good use of a standard action is not helping the case that the original spell is balanced.


----------



## Raikun (Jul 25, 2011)

keterys said:


> I've never seen a wizard have to give up their standard action to move a flaming sphere... and I've seen a lot of rounds of flaming sphere.




This heh.  A wizard has a lot better things to do with his standard action than to double move a flaming sphere.  I've never seen it happen.


----------



## MrBeens (Jul 25, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Are you playing 4th edition or some homebrew you made up?  What happens when you put your hand on a hot stove?  You move your hand because it is burning.  It's not complex logic here.  The incentive to move is getting their asses fried from the Flaming Sphere.
> 
> There is no madness about it.  The sphere rolls up, it burns the enemies, they move away because they don't want to be burned again.  This is how it works in our games, I don't know what you are doing in your's and it puzzles me.




Quoting to lend my support to your side of the argument.

I've been looking at Invokers recently (as my wizard has MC into one and is thinking of picking up a power swap feat).
A lot of invoker zones do something on the enemy leaving the zone as well as the effect for staying in - this is how wizard zones should work.
Take the FS for instance - if you end your turn next to it you get ongoing 5 save ends, if you leave it you take D4+int
Cloud of daggers - if you stay in you grant CA, if you leave or enter you take the damage.

Choices regarding zones should be more than just "move to cancel the effect" as in most of the cases the move action doesn't cost the enemy anything (unless they are next to a fighter than can get a free attack on a shift).


----------



## Gortle (Jul 25, 2011)

Raikun said:


> This heh.  A wizard has a lot better things to do with his standard action than to double move a flaming sphere.  I've never seen it happen.




I do it once in around a third of the encounters FS comes out. I've even used a granted move action from a Warlord to push the sphere around.

Yes it is a strong spell. But most commentators seem to rate it 3rd or 4th amongst wizard 1st level dailies. It is mostly damage and only minor control. If it really needs to be rebalanced then there are a lot of other powers out there that need work .


----------



## FireLance (Jul 25, 2011)

MrBeens said:


> Choices regarding zones should be more than just "move to cancel the effect" as in most of the cases the move action doesn't cost the enemy anything (unless they are next to a fighter than can get a free attack on a shift).



That's a fair argument to make, and I think it's great that you're trying to make a positive contribution instead of just spreading negativity.

I do actually think that the revised _flaming sphere_ could use some powering up. I had earlier suggested making the initial and subsequent attacks against all creatures adjacent to the sphere. However, the alternative of an opportunity attack against any creature that leaves a square adjacent to the sphere might also be viable.


----------



## Kinneus (Jul 25, 2011)

MrBeens said:


> Quoting to lend my support to your side of the argument.
> 
> I've been looking at Invokers recently (as my wizard has MC into one and is thinking of picking up a power swap feat).
> A lot of invoker zones do something on the enemy leaving the zone as well as the effect for staying in - this is how wizard zones should work.
> ...



I wanted to give you XP, but I apparently need to spread it around. I'm in complete and total agreement.

The problem with Flaming Sphere, as it is now, is that it's way too easy to evade. If the monster simply takes a move action each round (and who doesn't, if able?), then the Wizard's Daily has no effect, unless he chooses to use all of his actions sustaining it, moving it, and attacking with it again.

Imagine, for a moment, a level 1 Wizard using this power against an encounter full of kobolds. Hardly an uncommon scenario. The kobolds, with their minor-action shifts, would dance around the Flaming Sphere like it was a bonfire on the beach, and the hapless Wizard would be more likely to burn his allies than the enemy. It's not difficult to imagine combats where Flaming Sphere's end-of-turn damage never happens.

I find it hard to swallow that end-of-turn damage is "better" control than start-of-turn damage. But I can perhaps buy an argument that Flaming Sphere was too good, in need of balance. If this is the case, though, then the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. The power now needs something, anything, to make it a contender. If it was too strong before, then it's definitely too weak now.


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## UngeheuerLich (Jul 25, 2011)

Actually the sphere should give ongoing 5 to everyone adjacent to it, who was hit. You may start making saves when you leave. If you end your turn adjacent, you are ignited again.

This way, you have the best of both worlds. the damage is at the beginning of the turn, but at the end of your turn you catch fire!


----------



## ForeverSlayer (Jul 25, 2011)

UngeheuerLich said:


> Actually the sphere should give ongoing 5 to everyone adjacent to it, who was hit. You may start making saves when you leave. If you end your turn adjacent, you are ignited again.
> 
> This way, you have the best of both worlds. the damage is at the beginning of the turn, but at the end of your turn you catch fire!




Now this would be a very good change to the spell.


----------



## Raikun (Jul 25, 2011)

UngeheuerLich said:


> This way, you have the best of both worlds. the damage is at the beginning of the turn, but at the end of your turn you catch fire!




If it's a very small amount of damage at beginning of turn, with the bulk of it at EoT, I could see that.

But if we're talking current damage amount at beginning of turn PLUS an ongoing fire damage, that would be well beyond absurd IMO.


----------



## UngeheuerLich (Jul 25, 2011)

You take damage because of ongoing at the beginning of the turn... not in addition to the current BoT damage... that would indeed be beyond absurd...  I don´t know how you even got the impression that we could have been talking about that...

(just curious, because I try to improve my English)


----------



## Raikun (Jul 25, 2011)

UngeheuerLich said:


> hmmh... they move because they were burnt when you hit them on your turn?
> 
> You may not forget how turns work: Basically they all happen simultaneously... but they are spread out, because it is very complicated to go through several steps.
> 
> So actually end of turn makes more sense, because at the start of their turn, there may not have been a ball of fire at all next to them... complicated? yes! Argumenting with reality fails if you think to hard about the exact timing...




This pretty much nailed it on the head.

When an entire round has gone, and everyone has taken their turn, all of those actions happened at the same time in a 6 second time frame.

This means that at the same time that ball of flame is rolling at the kobold, the kobold is already running away.

It's not perfect, which is one part of why we have defenses to try and adjudicate a person avoiding an axe blow from the barbarian charging at him, etc.  But when it comes to auto damage, having it at beginning of the turn simply makes zero sense when it comes to describing the events of that round.  

If a round is six seconds, and a FS can move six squares in that six seconds, that's 5 feet per second.  If I'm a kobold seeing a FS start rolling toward me at 5 feet per second, I'm NOT going to wait until it's rubbing up against me to start moving.  Which is why End of Turn, while still not perfect, makes a lot more sense than Beginning of Turn.

Now, if there was an attack roll at Beginning of Turn, so that the kobold's defenses could come into play to describe him trying to react in time to the FS, I could go for that too.


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## Essenti (Jul 25, 2011)

A creature in the zone takes any action other than a move at the begining of their turn, or ends their turn in the zone, takes x damage.

YAY.  We all win.


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## Raikun (Jul 25, 2011)

Essenti said:


> A creature in the zone takes any action other than a move at the begining of their turn, or ends their turn in the zone, takes x damage.
> 
> YAY.  We all win.




Hehe nice.  When we discussed this ages ago, that was pretty much exactly one of the ideas we'd talked about, but we complicated it too much.  Our idea was that instead of just having "Beginning" and "End" of turn, we'd have "After first action", etc, and FS would do damage after first action.  

We ended up scrapping the idea because we felt it potentially over-complicated things, but just putting that wording into the power itself would actually be quite simple, and be the best of both worlds.

I'm gonna pitch that to my group and give it a go.


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## brehobit (Jul 25, 2011)

Essenti said:


> A creature in the zone takes any action other than a move at the begining of their turn, or ends their turn in the zone, takes x damage.
> 
> YAY.  We all win.




Wording needs tightening.  By "move" do you mean move action?  Does a charge away work?  

Also, it's not a zone (yes, minor nit but still...)

Any creature that ends any action, or ends their turn, adjacent to the sphere takes d4+Int damage?​
I'd actually like to disallow shifts away too.  Too easy to get away.  Make them pick between provoking or burning perhaps?


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## DracoSuave (Jul 25, 2011)

Essenti said:


> A creature in the zone takes any action other than a move at the begining of their turn, or ends their turn in the zone, takes x damage.
> 
> YAY.  We all win.




There is no action called a 'move.'


----------



## Essenti (Jul 26, 2011)

I was stating it as a template for any zone like effects. Mainly, because the biggest problem with changing zone damage to end of turn damage, is that it allows those in the zone to get off attacks unscathed (they just move away after attacking). This isn't very controller like, afterall.



DracoSuave said:


> There is no action called a 'move.'





Move Actions (See PHB 267 or Rules compendium 236). I was assuming the second instance of the word "action" wasn't necessary, it just seemed too wordy, like full of the same word. Word!

What I didn't like about my template was that I left off damage for moving into a zone and out the other side (for something bigger than burst 1 zone, I'm looking at you Stinking Cloud)

New template:

A creature already in the zone takes an action other than a move action at the begining of their turn, enters the zone for the first time that round, or ends their turn in the zone, takes x damage.

For Flaming sphere the "enters the zone for the first time that round" from the template can be left out cleanly:

A creature adjacent to the sphere takes any action other than a move action at the begining of their turn, or ends their turn adjacent to the sphere, takes d4+Int damage.

I also fully disagree that FS isn't a zone making power.  Cordon of Bones for instance, is just more up front about it... but they are zones for sure.


----------



## DracoSuave (Jul 26, 2011)

You could probably shorten that then to 'makes an attack' which... for the purposes of most monsters... will pretty much do.


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## Essenti (Jul 26, 2011)

DracoSuave said:


> You could probably shorten that then to 'makes an attack' which... for the purposes of most monsters... will pretty much do.




Its fine if a creature moves out of the zone and then makes an attack.  No damage taken for them and they still got to make an attack, but the spell still did its job. It controlled the enemies movement.  If the creature attacks first and then moves out, they get punished for sticking around too long.

The point of the spell is to make creatures move out of the way, it doesn't care how they get out of the way.  If they don't get out fast, they get burned.

Nice and controllery.


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## Essenti (Jul 26, 2011)

brehobit said:


> Wording needs tightening. By "move" do you mean move action? Does a charge away work?
> 
> Also, it's not a zone (yes, minor nit but still...)
> Any creature that ends any action, or ends their turn, adjacent to the sphere takes d4+Int damage?​I'd actually like to disallow shifts away too. Too easy to get away. Make them pick between provoking or burning perhaps?





They way you stated your version is far superior to mine.  I like it!


----------



## keterys (Jul 26, 2011)

Nah, cause that makes opportunity and immediate actions, and even free actions for things like speech, trigger it...


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## Essenti (Jul 26, 2011)

keterys said:


> Nah, cause that makes opportunity and immediate actions, and even free actions for things like speech, trigger it...




Wow, yeah.  It defintely is even more broken that way.

Any creature adjacent to the sphere must make a move action at the begining of their turn or take 1d4+Intelligence fire damage.

how about that?

Move or suffer.


----------



## Incenjucar (Jul 26, 2011)

So, a move action like standing up from prone...?


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## Essenti (Jul 26, 2011)

Gah, there are really a whole ton of holes that can creep up... the wording has to be just right...

so... more simply, just change "end of its turn" to "after the first action of its turn"

Is this better?

Flaming Sphere:
Any creature adjacent to the sphere after the first action of its turn takes 1d4 + Intelligence fire damage.

Freezing Cloud:
Any creature that enters the zone or remains there after the first action of its turn takes 5 cold damage (a creature can take this damage only once per turn).


Basically, it won't actually matter what action they take, so long as that first action gets them away from the sphere or out of the zone. Otherwise, they take the damage.


----------



## ForeverSlayer (Jul 26, 2011)

How about just leave it the way it was?  It was fine to start with and has been fine for the past three years.


----------



## Balesir (Jul 26, 2011)

brehobit said:


> I'd actually like to disallow shifts away too.  Too easy to get away.  Make them pick between provoking or burning perhaps?



So, if next to a fighter and in a zone you are forced to move and risk not moving anyway?  That strikes me as way over the top.



Essenti said:


> Basically, it won't actually matter what action they take, so long as that first action gets them away from the sphere or out of the zone. Otherwise, they take the damage.



Breaking it down to individual actions is likely to add far more confusion than it's worth, I think.

I retain my view from upthread: the damage should be end of turn, but it should be beefed up with damage and/or conditions.  Ongoing fire damage (save ends - but no save is possible if adjacent to the sphere) seems good for FS.  Granting CA I like for Cloud of Daggers (whenever in the daggers).  Dazing (save ends, no save possible if in the zone) at end of turn would fit for Stinking Cloud.  Freezing Cloud should maybe be just higher cold damage, with Slowed (save ends).  Et cetera.


----------



## Raikun (Jul 26, 2011)

Hehe wait a sec, you say this now -



ForeverSlayer said:


> How about just leave it the way it was?  It was fine to start with and has been fine for the past three years.




But earlier you see a different change that you like and it's -



ForeverSlayer said:


> Now this would be a very good change to the spell.


----------



## ForeverSlayer (Jul 26, 2011)

Raikun said:


> Hehe wait a sec, you say this now -
> 
> 
> 
> But earlier you see a different change that you like and it's -




If there has to be a change then that was fine.  If I had a choice then I would just leave it the way it was.


----------



## MrBeens (Jul 26, 2011)

Balesir said:


> So, if next to a fighter and in a zone you are forced to move and risk not moving anyway?  That strikes me as way over the top.
> 
> Breaking it down to individual actions is likely to add far more confusion than it's worth, I think.
> 
> I retain my view from upthread: the damage should be end of turn, but it should be beefed up with damage and/or conditions.  Ongoing fire damage (save ends - but no save is possible if adjacent to the sphere) seems good for FS.  Granting CA I like for Cloud of Daggers (whenever in the daggers).  Dazing (save ends, no save possible if in the zone) at end of turn would fit for Stinking Cloud.  Freezing Cloud should maybe be just higher cold damage, with Slowed (save ends).  Et cetera.




re the fighter.
That is just one class out of how many? Making a wizard paired with a fighter a good combo. Fighters being able to stop movement (if they hit) shouldn't influence the whole design of the zone mechanics.

I'll re iterate, there has to be a valid choice for the creatures interaction with the zone. Just making the end of turn damage/effect nastier just makes the move away choice even more of a no brainer.
I stay in the zone X happens, I leave the zone Y happens. What is my best option?
The zone needs to function on it's own without having to rely on outside influences to make it work, but combining it with other outside influences can certainly make it better.

I agree though that making things happen on the first action they do is too fiddly


----------



## AbdulAlhazred (Jul 26, 2011)

MrBeens said:


> I stay in the zone X happens, I leave the zone Y happens. What is my best option?
> The zone needs to function on it's own without having to rely on outside influences to make it work, but combining it with other outside influences can certainly make it better.




Eh, except I am not so sure this is true in the case of a controller. Much like a leader really kinda needs someone to lead a controller needs a battlefield to control. Neither role really works on its own. I'd add that the same can be said for defender. Strikers to some extent can exist in a vacuum, but all other roles really DO rely on teamwork and don't function to any great degree outside of the context of what the other characters in the party are doing.

So, I don't have a problem with FS effectively not being very useful as a power standing alone. Considering that wizards always have a choice of daily powers to select it isn't really that troubling either. If a wizard is going to operate independently then he should really adjust his power selection to reflect that. If the player is worried about needing to adjust on the fly then there are options available to make that happen.


----------



## brehobit (Jul 26, 2011)

Balesir said:


> So, if next to a fighter and in a zone you are forced to move and risk not moving anyway?  That strikes me as way over the top.



Not really.  In that situation the baddy can just take the damage.  It's no worse for them than it is right now.


----------



## Balesir (Jul 27, 2011)

brehobit said:


> Not really.  In that situation the baddy can just take the damage.  It's no worse for them than it is right now.



OK, if the damage is low, sure.  But if the damage is low enough that it's not really a threat, that's not really control.  I would really like to see fair, but effective, control.  The best way to that seems to me to be boosted threat at the end of the turn.


----------



## mikebr99 (Jul 27, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> How about just leave it the way it was? It was fine to start with and has been fine for the past three years.




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----------



## MrGrenadine (Jul 27, 2011)

I just started playing a wizard (9th lvl) in my weekly 4e game, so I'm really interested in this conversation, but I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the benefits of EoT, especially in terms of whether or not the enemies will move.

Maybe a hypothetical will help me:

Say there are 2 enemies 8 squares north of a wizard (arcanist) with an empty square between them.  Init is Wizard, then enemies, and on her turn, the wizard drops a FS right in the empty square between the monsters.  (Assume that there are other allies and enemies on the battlefield, but these three foes are engaged for the next few rounds.)

[sblock="With SoT damage:"]
One of the targets will take initial damage.  The wizard's turn ends.

Enemy A takes damage on his turn, then can attack.  It seems plausible that the enemy will move toward the wizard to both avoid taking more damage at the start of his next turn, and to attack the source of the damage.  So, enemy A moves 6 squares toward the wizard, angling slightly to come up on the wizard's left side.

Enemy B takes damage on his turn, sees what A is doing, and runs 8 squares toward the wizard's right side to try to flank her.

Wizard's turn.  She sustains minor, then moves the FS south 6 squares adjacent to the only enemy she can reach:  enemy A.  Now the Wizard has a Standard left, if I'm correct, so she can move away from the approaching enemies, attack enemy A with the FS, or use any of her available powers.  Lets say she attacks B, and hits, but B is still up.

Enemy A takes damage, then moves to flank the Wizard and attacks.

Enemy B melee attacks as well.

On the Wizard's next turn, she sustains minor, and can move the FS closer to herself.  She can still only affect one of the monsters, however, so she moves it adjacent to B, since it seems more heavily wounded.

Enemy A melee attacks.

Enemy B takes damage, which kills it.

And then the battle continues...[/sblock]


[sblock="With EoT damage:"]
One of the targets will take initial damage.  The wizard's turn ends.

Enemy A takes NO damage on his turn.  It seems plausible that the enemy will move toward the wizard to both avoid taking ANY damage at the end of his turn, and to attack the source of the damage.  So, enemy A moves 6 squares toward the wizard, angling slightly to come up on the wizard's left side.

Enemy B takes NO damage on his turn, sees what A is doing, and runs 8 squares toward the wizard's right side to try to flank her.

Wizard's turn.  She sustains minor, then moves the FS south 6 squares adjacent to the only enemy she can reach:  enemy A.  Now the Wizard has a Standard left, if I'm correct, so she can move away from the approaching enemies, attack enemy A with the FS, or use any of her available powers.  Lets say she attacks B, and hits, but B is still up.

Enemy A takes NO damage, then moves to flank the Wizard and attacks.

Enemy B melee attacks as well.

On the Wizard's next turn, she sustains minor, and can move the FS closer to herself.  She can still only affect one of the monsters, however, so she moves it adjacent to B.

Enemy A melee attacks.

Enemy B shifts, takes NO damage, and attacks the wizard.

And then the battle continues...[/sblock]



Now, it seems to me that all things being equal, both SoT and EoT cause the targets to move to avoid the damage.  What I can't see, though, is how the EoT damage will EVER actually come into play if the enemies keep shifting away from it before attacking.

Now, this is a very specific case.  Terrain, choke points, other allies nearby to defend against or damage the enemies, ranged attacks, added enemies--all of these things will significantly change the tactics of every creature in the battle.

But I can't (yet) see how EoT is better at controlling, or more effective on the battlefield.


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## Raikun (Jul 27, 2011)

Trouble there is you're assuming the same tactics with both versions of the spell.  Which is understandable.  It took a couple of uses before the wizzies in our game started coming up with new tactics for the EoT version.

These included using the sphere  one square away from the wizard (with terrain/allies to cover elsewhere) so that enemies approaching to hit the wizard had to end their turn near the sphere to reach him.  Stuff like that.


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## keterys (Jul 27, 2011)

Yeah, a battle in which two enemies and a wizard are "solo-ing" each other isn't a very representative case. Have other party members, have a defender. Use other effects. Most wizards don't have many problems with enemies even getting adjacent to them at all, but the wizard chooses the time when it's easy to use the flaming sphere? Seems unlikely.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jul 27, 2011)

Yeah, with EOT in MrGrenadine's situation what you'd want to do is drop the FS in a spot that is in the direct line between the orcs and the wizard. In other words a spot where they would LIKE to end their turn. Another tactic there might be to ready an action to use the FS attack, though that generally won't be necessary. I guess a cunning player could ready a move action to move the sphere up to an orc too, lol. 

The upshot is that you're denying the enemy an area to move into vs denying them the ability to stay in an area they are already leaving. In the SOT example there is zero control, the orcs do exactly what they already wanted to do. In the EOT example there IS control, the wizard is just not understanding how to use it. He CAN stop the enemy from ending its turn in spots he wants them to avoid.

Note that this is the extreme case of FS, BUT it actually is a perfect illustration SOT = all damage, no control. EOT = all control, no damage. Reality will be more grey, but it reveals the nature of the difference perfectly.


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## Raikun (Jul 27, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Note that this is the extreme case of FS, BUT it actually is a perfect illustration SOT = all damage, no control. EOT = all control, no damage. Reality will be more grey, but it reveals the nature of the difference perfectly.




Yep.  It's also important to note on top of that, that Flaming Sphere, even without the extra damage, already does comparable damage to the other level 1 wizard dailies.  (2d6 + Int,  Same as Phantom Chasm, which has a different control ability, but less than Fountain of Flame which has no other effects).  

So, if you just want damage, something like Fountain of Flame is the way to go...if you want better control short term, Phantom Chasm works (immobilizes for a turn), and Flaming Sphere gives lesser control than Chasm but can persist throughout the encounter, with the potential for added damage.

Plus, wizards still have options to force that added damage if they really want to (readying spells to punt them into it after their move actions for one).

Flaming Sphere really is better balanced with this change.


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## Kinneus (Jul 27, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I guess a cunning player could ready a move action to move the sphere up to an orc too, lol.



That wouldn't be cunning, that'd be stupid. You'd be giving up your standard action to do 1d4+Int mod damage to the enemy. Sure, it's guaranteed to hit, but if you're concerned about auto-damage, Magic Missile is strictly better.


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## Raikun (Jul 27, 2011)

Kinneus said:


> That wouldn't be cunning, that'd be stupid. You'd be giving up your standard action to do 1d4+Int mod damage to the enemy. Sure, it's guaranteed to hit, but if you're concerned about auto-damage, Magic Missile is strictly better.




It's situational though.  I've seen a wizard on a turn where the party was positioned so that 3 enemies were likely to end up close, so held an action to move the sphere after their moves to hit all 3.  Can't do that with magic missile.


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## Kinneus (Jul 27, 2011)

Raikun said:


> It's also important to note on top of that, that Flaming Sphere, even without the extra damage, already does comparable damage to the other level 1 wizard dailies. (2d6 + Int, Same as Phantom Chasm, which has a different control ability, but less than Fountain of Flame which has no other effects).



Not a fair comparison at all. Fountain of Flame and Phantom Chasm are area burst powers; they can and should be used to hit more than one target, and therefore both do much, much more damage than Flaming Sphere's initial attack. They just don't do it to a single target.


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## Kinneus (Jul 27, 2011)

Raikun said:


> It's situational though. I've seen a wizard on a turn where the party was positioned so that 3 enemies were likely to end up close, so held an action to move the sphere after their moves to hit all 3. Can't do that with magic missile.



Problem with that is that monsters don't take their move actions simultaneously. They take their turns one at a time, like everybody else. I suppose it's theoretically possible, but I'm hard-pressed to think of an appropriate trigger for that readied action.

"I ready an action to move the sphere after Orc 3 takes his move action." What if Orc 3 moves first? Then Orc 1 and 2 are free to waltz around it. What if Orc 3 takes more than one move action on his turn? The DM might not even allow such a trigger.

I can see your point, but I honestly can't think of a play situation where readying an action to move the sphere is a good idea.


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## Raikun (Jul 27, 2011)

Yeah, minor mistake there, when we changed Flaming Sphere ages ago to End of Turn, making it do it's 2d6 upon casting to everyone near the sphere was one of our changes to compensate, and we've been playing it like that long enough that I'd forgotten it's original form only did it to one person.

Even so though, I still think it'd be viable, though it'd make the other dailies more appealing in comparison.  (Which is still preferable to the old days at our table when Flaming Sphere was the only level 1 daily ever used.)


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## Raikun (Jul 27, 2011)

Kinneus said:


> Problem with that is that monsters don't take their move actions simultaneously. They take their turns one at a time, like everybody else. I suppose it's theoretically possible, but I'm hard-pressed to think of an appropriate trigger for that readied action.




It still works.  Making up numbers for ease of demonstration:

Orc 1's initiative count: 21
Wizard's                   :  14
Orc 2                       :  12
Orc 3                       :   9

On wizard's turn, he'd just have to use Orc 1's move action as a trigger.

I haven't seen it done often, because it's awful situational, but there are other nice situational uses for it too.  It's a movable 9 square area that enemies *really* don't want to go into on their turn.


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## Kinneus (Jul 27, 2011)

It's worth noting that just because Flaming Sphere was the Daily 1 of choice at your table doesn't mean that's true at other tables. Other big contenders include Sleep, Arcane Whirlwind, Horrid Whispers, Phantom Chasm and Fountain of Flame. All of those could give Flaming Sphere a run for their money, even before this change. I know of players and groups that consider Flaming Sphere strictly inferior to some of these choices.

The perception that Flaming Sphere was the be all and end all of Wizard level 1 Dailies is honestly something I've only heard repeated in this thread. It's not dogma for the 4e community at large. I'm willing to grant that it was probably big dog for Level 1 Wizard Dailies in the original print of the Player's Handbook _if_ you weren't at all interested in optimizing for Sleep. But that's an awful lot of qualifiers.

That said, I'm willing to accept end-of-turn damage for Flaming Sphere. I'm simply of the opinion that it needs something more (_anything_ more) to keep it a contender. Your solution of making it a close burst 1, Raikun, is actually a pretty decent one.

Edited to add: in the example of the orcs, I was specifically thinking of 3 (statistically) identical orcs, which would roll initiative as one entity and would have the same initiative count.


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## MrGrenadine (Jul 27, 2011)

I see what you mean about this not being the best example of a situation where FS would come into play.  However...



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, with EOT in MrGrenadine's situation what you'd want to do is drop the FS in a spot that is in the direct line between the orcs and the wizard. In other words a spot where they would LIKE to end their turn.




This is an interesting idea.  But does that mean you'd lose out on the initial damage, and just use the sphere to influence positioning?



AbdulAlhazred said:


> The upshot is that you're denying the enemy an area to move into vs denying them the ability to stay in an area they are already leaving. In the SOT example there is zero control, the orcs do exactly what they already wanted to do. In the EOT example there IS control, the wizard is just not understanding how to use it. He CAN stop the enemy from ending its turn in spots he wants them to avoid.




Why isn't it equally an aspect of Control to force a monster to leave a square its already in, as opposed to deterring it from moving into a specific square?  Both result in forced movement to avoid damage.

And in both examples, the orcs do exactly what they want to do--they attack the wizard.  The only difference I can see is that the wizard has a better chance of living through the attack.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Note that this is the extreme case of FS, BUT it actually is a perfect illustration SOT = all damage, no control. EOT = all control, no damage. Reality will be more grey, but it reveals the nature of the difference perfectly.




So, yes, I see why in the EoT example, the wizard CAN stop the enemy from ending its turn in spots he wants them to avoid.

But I see the benefit in the SoT example, too, because the wizard CAN stop an enemy from staying in a spot he wants them to move away from.

I'm really not trying to be obtuse.  I just don't get it.


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## WalterKovacs (Jul 27, 2011)

MrGrenadine said:


> So, yes, I see why in the EoT example, the wizard CAN stop the enemy from ending its turn in spots he wants them to avoid.
> 
> But I see the benefit in the SoT example, too, because the wizard CAN stop an enemy from staying in a spot he wants them to move away from.
> 
> I'm really not trying to be obtuse. I just don't get it.




With EoT, the monster knows moving away will avoid the damage for that round.

With SoT, moving away means the wizard has to move the sphere on his turn, but unless the monster moves to a place where the sphere can't follow, he can't be guaranteed to avoid the sphere. You can move away from it, but you or the sphere can be moved before the next SoT, thus negating the attempt to avoid taking damage (and eventually, the inevitability of the damage would cause an enemy to just ignore the sphere and move where they want).

Now, as a group, monsters can spread out to avoid multiple being caught by the FS, or try to prevent the wizard from moving it by limiting his actions, etc ... it is much harder for a monster to avoid SoT damage then EoT. With EoT it's just "don't end your turn next to the sphere". With SoT it's "get away from the sphere AND not have the sphere follow you AND not have the party force move you back to the sphere". The former they can do reliably, the latter is dependent on stuff outside their control.


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## MrGrenadine (Jul 27, 2011)

WalterKovacs said:


> With EoT, the monster knows moving away will avoid the damage for that round.
> 
> With SoT, moving away means the wizard has to move the sphere on his turn, but unless the monster moves to a place where the sphere can't follow, he can't be guaranteed to avoid the sphere. You can move away from it, but you or the sphere can be moved before the next SoT, thus negating the attempt to avoid taking damage (and eventually, the inevitability of the damage would cause an enemy to just ignore the sphere and move where they want).
> 
> Now, as a group, monsters can spread out to avoid multiple being caught by the FS, or try to prevent the wizard from moving it by limiting his actions, etc ... it is much harder for a monster to avoid SoT damage then EoT. With EoT it's just "don't end your turn next to the sphere". With SoT it's "get away from the sphere AND not have the sphere follow you AND not have the party force move you back to the sphere". The former they can do reliably, the latter is dependent on stuff outside their control.




I see.  The monster has more of a chance to avoid the EoT damage, which doesn't necessarily seem like a better option than SoT to me, especially since FS only takes up one square, and the monster can just shift away every turn.  

On the other hand, thats if the target has room to move, or if its movement options are limited by even worse penalties than the small amount of damage from FS.

I guess what I'm (finally) wrapping my head around is that with EoT damage FS is still useful, but its no longer a spell that can really be effective on its own. Rather, it needs to be combined other powers, terrain features, party members, etc.

Good to know.


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## Kinneus (Jul 27, 2011)

MrGrenadine said:


> I guess what I'm (finally) wrapping my head around is that with EoT damage FS is still useful, but its no longer a spell that can really be effective on its own. Rather, it needs to be combined other powers, terrain features, party members, etc.
> 
> Good to know.



Or, you can take one of the many, many level 1 Wizard Daily powers that are fully capable of being awesome on their own, and simply allow your party to capitalize on it by deploying it intelligently.

Seriously, compare Flaming Sphere to Sleep, Fountain of Flame, Phantom Chasm, and the other big contenders. Flaming Sphere, as currently written, simply isn't competitive at all.


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## MrMyth (Jul 27, 2011)

MrGrenadine said:


> I just started playing a wizard (9th lvl) in my weekly 4e game, so I'm really interested in this conversation, but I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the benefits of EoT, especially in terms of whether or not the enemies will move.




To try and clarify: SoT is _just better_, and that is part of the problem. No one is claiming that End of Turn is more effective (simply more balanced).

The argument regarding control is that End of Turn is more likely to actually result in encouraging/discouraging monster behavior. If the enemy knows that they can avoid being burned by moving, it encourages movement. 

With Start of Turn effects, since the Wizard can 'chase' the monster with the flaming sphere even if the monster moves, there is no real encouragement to move. (Outside of rare cases where the monster can arrange for the wizard to be dazed or the like). 

But it is true that Flaming Sphere is no longer as powerful as it was before. Some feel it is no longer worth taking - I admit it probably could have used a bit of a buff to compensate for the changes. But it is still quite good in the right situations - crowded environments, or with parties that can take good advantage of it. (Which often takes no more than a single Fighter). 

That's why, honestly, I like the change - there are good reasons to take different level 1 dailies. None is an absolute must pick, and none is simply worse than all other choices, either. (I'd still likely rank Flaming Sphere as significantly above Fountain of Flame in any long-term encounter, for example.)


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## Nemesis Destiny (Jul 27, 2011)

MrMyth said:


> To try and clarify: SoT is _just better_, and that is part of the problem. No one is claiming that End of Turn is more effective (simply more balanced).



This is precisely it, in a nutshell. People are whining because nobody likes having their favourite powers nerfed. Fact remains that it needs to be done for balance reasons.


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## keterys (Jul 27, 2011)

I'd certainly be fine with changing flaming sphere to a burst 1, or making a sustain minor make it attack as it does now (instead of a standard), along with making it end of turn. Just because I'm certain that end of turn is better for the health of the game in auras, zones, powers, etc... doesn't mean I don't also want the powers to be of a valid power level with their peers


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## mneme (Jul 27, 2011)

Kinneus said:


> I'm willing to grant that it was probably big dog for Level 1 Wizard Dailies in the original print of the Player's Handbook _if_ you weren't at all interested in optimizing for Sleep. But that's an awful lot of qualifiers.




You can't really optimize Sleep at level 1.

Horrid Whispers doesn't have an ongoing effect beyond a tiny attack debuf.

Phantom Chasm is competitive, but does need the party to work around it (although just standing in the middle of the chasm is good protection for the wizard).

And people analyzing things seem to keep forgetting that Flaming Sphere grants a very good single-target at will in addition to the EOT ability.  That's a huge power-up, especially since there's a point in every encounter where you cannot target more than one monster in a burst or blast.

So Flaming Sphere remained king for a long while (if the least controlling of the top wizard dailies).


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## Balesir (Jul 27, 2011)

MrMyth said:


> But it is true that Flaming Sphere is no longer as powerful as it was before. Some feel it is no longer worth taking - I admit it probably could have used a bit of a buff to compensate for the changes.



Well, it has been published as a playtest, so it could (and in my view should) get a buff - preferably a boost to the EoT effect.



MrMyth said:


> But it is still quite good in the right situations - crowded environments, or with parties that can take good advantage of it. (Which often takes no more than a single Fighter).



Actually I think any defender would work.  Place the sphere two squares from a Paladin that is marking an enemy to keep the enemy away.  Fighters (including knights) are the optimum, but most defenders should allow some nasty "gotchas".  Remember, too, that you can't go through the actual sphere square (it "occupies" its square).  Edit: putting the sphere just covering where the enemy could charge to seems to work a treat, too.  Charging has to be on an "always closer" basis and ends your turn, so it's quite possible to make FS really inconvenient, there.

On the "you lose the initial attack if you place the sphere to block" issue, just use a standard action to conjure the sphere and damage with it (as usual) and then a move to place it in the blocking position.  Nothing says you can't move it on the same turn as you conjure it.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 27, 2011)

Balesir said:


> Well, it has been published as a playtest, so it could (and in my view should) get a buff - preferably a boost to the EoT effect.
> 
> Actually I think any defender would work.  Place the sphere two squares from a Paladin that is marking an enemy to keep the enemy away.  Fighters (including knights) are the optimum, but most defenders should allow some nasty "gotchas".  Remember, too, that you can't go through the actual sphere square (it "occupies" its square).  Edit: putting the sphere just covering where the enemy could charge to seems to work a treat, too.  Charging has to be on an "always closer" basis and ends your turn, so it's quite possible to make FS really inconvenient, there.
> 
> On the "you lose the initial attack if you place the sphere to block" issue, just use a standard action to conjure the sphere and damage with it (as usual) and then a move to place it in the blocking position.  Nothing says you can't move it on the same turn as you conjure it.




The original FS gave you more mileage out of the spell because you could attack with it and then move it over to another group of enemies and they take damage when their turns came up.  They would then move because of the sphere and because they were probably going to move anyway. 

The main problem is you really don't know when a creature is moving because he has to or because he was going to anyway. Mostly from my experience they would move because they didn't want to get burned again and they were moving anyway.  With EOT to the FS the creatures aren't taking damage and thus the whole point of the spell isn't working.  

Damage spells should not be EOT because it pretty much makes the spell useless.  If you aren't damaging enemies then there is no point to the spell.


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## Raikun (Jul 28, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Damage spells should not be EOT because it pretty much makes the spell useless.  If you aren't damaging enemies then there is no point to the spell.




Lots of spells have a point without damaging the enemy.   As does Flaming Sphere with EoT damage...I see lots of use out if it.

It's a 9 square area that enemies REALLY don't want to move into.  I just can't see how anyone would be unable to find use for that.


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## keterys (Jul 28, 2011)

Status effects, like slow, can be SoT... but yeah, damage should always be EoT. If you're really not sure about that, imagine it from the reverse angle. Do you want to start your turn and take 20 (or 40, or 60) damage from enemy zones and auras... I've seen an adventure with 40hp people where a round go wrong could mean taking 40 autodamage at the start of a PC' turn, for example.

Or do you want to know that if you end your turn, you'll take that damage (or more) and have a choice in what to do about it?


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## Kinneus (Jul 28, 2011)

keterys said:


> Status effects, like slow, can be SoT... but yeah, damage should always be EoT. If you're really not sure about that, imagine it from the reverse angle. Do you want to start your turn and take 20 (or 40, or 60) damage from enemy zones and auras... I've seen an adventure with 40hp people where a round go wrong could mean taking 40 autodamage at the start of a PC' turn, for example.
> 
> Or do you want to know that if you end your turn, you'll take that damage (or more) and have a choice in what to do about it?



This would be a more compelling point if there weren't SO. FRICKIN'. MANY. monsters that already do this sort of thing. Often with auras, and not Daily powers they have to sutain. So we'll take away players' ability to do SoT damage, leave the monster's ability to do so intact, and then argue it's about fairness?


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## keterys (Jul 28, 2011)

Check out Monster Vault. They already errata-ed 57 monsters to end of turn... and I didn't see a whole lot of griping about that. But, Flaming Sphere?

Oh yeah, that's where it really mattered 

I'll lose any number of Flaming Spheres, and count it a blessing that I never have to deal with an autodazing and damaging Mad Wraith again, thanks.


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## Kinneus (Jul 28, 2011)

keterys said:


> Check out Monster Vault. They already errata-ed 57 monsters to end of turn... and I didn't see a whole lot of griping about that. But, Flaming Sphere?
> 
> Oh yeah, that's where it really mattered
> 
> I'll lose any number of Flaming Spheres, and count it a blessing that I never have to deal with an autodazing and damaging Mad Wraith again, thanks.



I'm in agreement with you on this, actually, but I just kind of think the ship has sailed. Are they going to change every single Zone power in the game?

I will also admit that I just plain don't like errata. Invalidating every Zone power in the game will just ensure that my hard copy of the PHB continues to collect even more dust. Besides, I don't think they intend on doing this any way (though I wouldn't be surprised if all future Zone-like powers are designed to be EoT). I mean, they left good ol' Wall of Fire SoT.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 28, 2011)

Well in our games the Wizard is going to stay the same.  We have already tried these changes that the designers apparently didn't playtest all the way through and they failed.  

My Wizard doesn't have to sacrifice anything because he already has outstanding control capabilities along side some decent damage.


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## keterys (Jul 28, 2011)

Kinneus said:


> I'm in agreement with you on this, actually, but I just kind of think the ship has sailed. Are they going to change every single Zone power in the game?



Is that more than like 40 powers? Most classes don't have more than a few of those.

*searches Compendium for zone, start(s), damage... and gets 105 powers* Looking closer, about half of them aren't actually even problematic (they trigger on the start of the PCs' next turn, or give a bonus to damage rolls, or deal damage, but create a zone that slows, that kinda thing)... so about 52 powers, many of which were already hit in the warlock and wizard playtest rollups.  

And people playing Essentials only, of course, already made that change


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## MrMyth (Jul 28, 2011)

Balesir said:


> Well, it has been published as a playtest, so it could (and in my view should) get a buff - preferably a boost to the EoT effect.




Oh yeah - and, honestly, is the sort of advice that is most useful to WotC. Not "I hate this change and you should ignore those asking for it!" but instead, "Hey, I feel like the power is now too easy to dismiss, and I think some sort of compensation might result in it becoming balanced but still appealing to take."

A







Balesir said:


> ctually I think any defender would work.




Yeah, I was pretty much using Fighter as short-hand for 'Defender'. Elements that let you make good use of the new version without it just automatically burning down encounters on its own: 
1) Defenders or anyone who can punish someone for moving;
2) Ranged characters in environments where you can position the sphere so that enemy's have to burn in order to engage in melee;
3) Any characters who can daze enemies or knock them prone.

All of those do what I feel 'control' should do - force the enemy to decide between two bad choices. "Do I take damage from the sphere or provoke from the defender?" "Do I engage the archer if it means I burn?" "Do I spend my one action getting away from the sphere or attacking my enemies?"

For me, all of that is far more interesting than simply, "All choices result in me automatically being burned by the sphere, so I might as well ignore it entirely."

 Place the sphere two squares from a Paladin that is marking an enemy to keep the enemy away. Fighters (including knights) are the optimum, but most defenders should allow some nasty "gotchas". Remember, too, that you can't go through the actual sphere square (it "occupies" its square). Edit: putting the sphere just covering where the enemy could charge to seems to work a treat, too. Charging has to be on an "always closer" basis and ends your turn, so it's quite possible to make FS really inconvenient, there.

On the "you lose the initial attack if you place the sphere to block" issue, just use a standard action to conjure the sphere and damage with it (as usual) and then a move to place it in the blocking position. Nothing says you can't move it on the same turn as you conjure it.[/QUOTE]


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## MrMyth (Jul 28, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Well in our games the Wizard is going to stay the same. We have already tried these changes that the designers apparently didn't playtest all the way through and they failed.
> 
> My Wizard doesn't have to sacrifice anything because he already has outstanding control capabilities along side some decent damage.




And that's totally your decision to make! And it is worth offering your feedback to WotC - that is how they can make informed decisions. 

I do still feel your dismissal of other folk's concerns is poor form - not just disagreeing with them (which is entirely your right to do), but this persistent outlook that if a problem didn't exist for you, it _could not _exist for others, and that any changes made that you disagree with isn't the result of addressing someone else's concerns, but instead simply 'bad playtesting'.

Similarly, the argument that changes don't need to be made because your wizard is really awesome at both control and damage... well, isn't really an argument that helps your side of the debate, honestly. Being a bit too good at bother categories was a large part of the rational behind the change!


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## Kinneus (Jul 28, 2011)

MrMyth said:


> I do still feel your dismissal of other folk's concerns is poor form - not just disagreeing with them (which is entirely your right to do), but this persistent outlook that if a problem didn't exist for you, it _could not _exist for others...



This is very true, but I think along the same vein people should remember that just because there was a problem for you and your group, that does not mean it was a problem for _every other group in existence_ or even a problem for a majority of groups. As I said before, I really haven't heard the argument that Flaming Sphere is overpowered anywhere else except for this thread.

You want to change Flaming Sphere to EoT? Fine. That's a perfectly viable choice. But the power, as it is written now, is simply not viable. Seriously, compare it to Sleep. Forget whatever your personal feelings or past history with the power is, and compare it to Arcane Whirlwind (why create soft control by encouraging an enemy to move when you can get hard control with a slide?) Consider it being used against monsters that have movement baked into their attacks, or monsters that have minor or out-of-turn moves (things that are not especially rare, even at level 1. See kobolds and goblins).

I also disagree with the premise that Flaming Sphere doing a lot of auto-damage is some sort of grevious violation of the Controller contract. Lots and lots of classes have lots and lots of powers that allow them to act "out of their role," at least temporarily. Strikers are Strikers because they do big damage _consistently_. This doesn't mean that other classes should be barred from doing big damage, period. Otherwise, why is the Fighter's (a Defender's) very Striker-like Rain of Steel intact?

My point is, changing this power didn't "bring it in line" with other powers. All it does is ensure that for those groups that "always' saw FS being used will now "always' see Sleep being used.


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## keterys (Jul 28, 2011)

I don't think Sleep will ever be the power that is always used. It's just a trick for certain builds.

And I absolutely agree that WotC should rebalance powers that they nerf excessively.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 28, 2011)

MrMyth said:


> And that's totally your decision to make! And it is worth offering your feedback to WotC - that is how they can make informed decisions.
> _*
> I do still feel your dismissal of other folk's concerns is poor form - not just disagreeing with them (which is entirely your right to do), but this persistent outlook that if a problem didn't exist for you, it could not exist for others, and that any changes made that you disagree with isn't the result of addressing someone else's concerns, but instead simply 'bad playtesting'.*_
> 
> Similarly, the argument that changes don't need to be made because your wizard is really awesome at both control and damage... well, isn't really an argument that helps your side of the debate, honestly. Being a bit too good at bother categories was a large part of the rational behind the change!




In all seriousness, please point me out a thread that has ever mentioned that Flaming Sphere was out of control and needed to be changed.  

There is no proof floating out there that there ever was a problem to begin with.  I do understand that other's out there like the change, but there is no proof that anything was ever broken to begin with.  Everything that Wizard's does is not always the right and correct thing.  Just because a few people out there made the same changes long before this doesn't make what Wizards did more right.  

The fact of the matter is the spell worked just fine before the change.  If Wizards had never even made the change then nobody would say anything about it.


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## keterys (Jul 28, 2011)

It's more of a philosophical change, than anything. For example - should you be able to kill minions without any roll whatsoever? One might argue yes, another no, while a 3rd says "Depends on the resource expenditure"

The 3rd, for example, might agree that killing all minions in an encounter with a vicious rod (possibly as a free action using an off-hand rod of corruption) was bad, and approved of that change to the game.

Was it okay for Firestorm to do so, blanketing an entire encounter in enemies only start of turn damage? Some would argue it's a daily, so sure... but others would disagree.

How about Pure Glow, an encounter power, that can do the same thing? Every encounter, all minions die... that's... more troubling.

So Flaming Sphere is on the lower end of that scale of a general movement to make damaging enemies require actual effort and/or expenditure. And that general movement is still a good thing, even if Flaming Sphere might need to be addressed to coexist in that new world.

For example, what if you changed flaming sphere to not just adacent, but anywhere in 2 squares. What if its attack was a close burst 2 from the conjuration? That'd be an amazing daily, with those increases, even with the end of turn change.


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## Kinneus (Jul 28, 2011)

I think that fretting over killing minions too easily is pointless. That ship sailed long, long ago. Minions stop being a viable threat in high heroic. This is just the way the game is.

Changing that would require either a fundamental change to what minions are ("Minions only die when an attack roll hits them" would be an okay house-rule fix if this is truly a concern to you) or huge, sweeping changes to what is probably at this point over a hundred powers, feats, paragon paths and epic destinies.

It's just not worth it. Also, pretty irrelevant to a discussion over whether or not Flaming Sphere needs a change and/or what that change should be. Arguing that Flaming Sphere needs a change because it killed minions too easily is not a compelling arugment; minions die to a stiff breeze. Every game I've ever played in, after level 10 or so, they're essentially treated as set-dressing. Sprinkle them into an encounter, and let your players feel like Hercules as they mow them down with area attacks, auto-damage, multi-attacks, zones, and the dozen other things that handily slay them.

Also, minion-clearing has historically been the Controller's shtick, one of things he contributes to a party. The only time I've really felt threatened by minions were in parties that lacked a Controller, allowing them to gang up. Complaining that a Controller kills minions too easily is like complaining that Defenders are too hard to kill or that Strikers do too much damage. Sure, an individual power or feat might be overpowered, but bending over backwards to protect minions is kind of missing out on the point of what minions are there to do (which is die).


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## MrMyth (Jul 28, 2011)

Just as a note - I definitely recognize some groups used the power and had no issues with it, and everyone does have different viewpoints. For our group, it was definitely in need of fixing. Like others have mentioned, I've seen folks chastised at LFR for not having it, Stinking Cloud, and other similar potent auto-damage attacks. 

Any power that gives out free bonus attacks is stronger. One that did so throughout a combat, without rolling to hit, against multiple enemies? Even with the limiting factors, it was pretty darn potent. 



Kinneus said:


> You want to change Flaming Sphere to EoT? Fine. That's a perfectly viable choice. But the power, as it is written now, is simply not viable.




I agree it could use a bit more tweaking - I think that is very different from not even being _viable_. 

To compare it with other powers: 

Sleep: Apples and Oranges, really. Sleep is a non-damaging power that can either shut-down an encounter or accomplish almost nothing. Those whose builds tended towards such things would prefer it over Flaming Sphere both before and after the change - the two accomplish very, very different things. 

Arcane Whirlwind: Good initial damage in a decent sized burst, and ok positioning control. Less useful for the previously mentioned 'bad choices' control. Being able to slide 1 enemy up to two squares, on your own turn, is very different from discouraging an enemy from approaching a ranged attacker, or encouraging an enemy to provoke opportunity attacks, etc. Arcane Whirlwind's initial effect is much, much stronger than flaming sphere. It's ongoing effect is much, much weaker - even compared to the new version. 

Phantom Chasm: Another very good power. Again, a solid burst damage up-front, and enemies only. Good initial control (prone/immobilized) and it makes an area largely off-limits for enemies for the encounter. But that area doesn't move, which is definitely a big difference. Against the right enemies - where you can stay in that safe zone and force enemies to come to you - it works just fine. Against others, the ongoing effect will largely be irrelevant. 

Fountain of Flame: Pretty much the same thing as Phantom Chasm, except it focuses on damage over control effects. Again, good up-front damage, a good zone effect, but lack of mobility makes it distinct from Flaming Sphere. 

Overall, I find the new Flaming Sphere to remain a viable choice. The other powers mentioned tend to be better for immediate damage to a cluster of enemies, but have less potent effects over the course of battle. Flaming Sphere provides more use over the course of the encounter. 

And that is really where daily powers _should _be. Some will be the best option for one encounter, while others will be ideal for a different fight. Rather than one choice remaining optimum for both circumstances - which Flaming Sphere was, previously, where it did more AoE damage than all of the good AoE spells, and was more useful over the course of the entire battle. 



Kinneus said:


> I also disagree with the premise that Flaming Sphere doing a lot of auto-damage is some sort of grevious violation of the Controller contract.




I think you are confusing two seperate points of argument. A class having powers that let them work out of role is fine (within reason). Wizards having a high damage power isn't a bad thing. The problem was that high damage, inflicted automatically, to multiple opponents, over every round of the entire combat? Wasn't especially balanced for anyone. Just like its cool for rangers to be strikers that deal lots of damage via multiple attacks, but that doesn't mean an infinite attack blade cascade is still balanced. 

In addition to this, folks have mentioned that they find the solution nice because it emphasizes the wizard's role. For myself, I would also have been fine with a solution that kept Flaming Sphere as a damage-based power but simply toned down the damage to a more reasonable level. 

Instead, they shifted it to work more like the Wizard normally works, and I'm fine with that two. But I don't think the power was fixed solely because Wizards shouldn't do damage. It was fixed because the amount of damage it did was potentially unbalanced. 



Kinneus said:


> Otherwise, why is the Fighter's (a Defender's) very Striker-like Rain of Steel intact?




I'll be honest - I've long felt Rain of Steel is an issue for much the same reasons., and remain hopeful it will one day be fixed as well. 



Kinneus said:


> My point is, changing this power didn't "bring it in line" with other powers. All it does is ensure that for those groups that "always' saw FS being used will now "always' see Sleep being used.




Seems unlikely, given how different those spells are. I'm sure some folks will switch to different options. I suspect others will still use Flaming Sphere - as I noted above, there are plenty of situations where it remains a viable choice, and we still really don't have any dailies that provide a similar ongoing effect throughout the entire encounter. The ones you offer as comparison tend to either lacking the ability to be moved (Phantom Chasm, Fountain of Flame) or have a very minor effect (Arcane Whirlwind, with a 2-square slide for a single enemy - or potentially two enemies if you don't need to move the zone, or are willing to give up your standard action.)


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## Kinneus (Jul 28, 2011)

keterys said:


> For example, what if you changed flaming sphere to not just adacent, but anywhere in 2 squares. What if its attack was a close burst 2 from the conjuration? That'd be an amazing daily, with those increases, even with the end of turn change.



That'd be a great change, and would go a long way in keeping Flaming Sphere competitive. While don't necessarily agree that Flaming Sphere required a change, I'm glad we agree that Flaming Sphere, in its current form, is too weak.
Another thing that might help is too loosen up the power's action economy. Currently, you're spending your Move and your Minor every turn to have this power _not_ do damage. Eliminating the sustain Minor might help this power out a bit.
I've noticed that fewer and fewer powers have sustain minors these days, most seeming content with "until the end of the encounter."


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## Psikus (Jul 28, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> In all seriousness, please point me out a thread that has ever mentioned that Flaming Sphere was out of control and needed to be changed.




A quick search yielded two threads mentioning that Flaming Sphere was out of control and needed to be changed (dating back to 2009).
Thread 1
Thread 2


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 28, 2011)

Psikus said:


> A quick search yielded two threads mentioning that Flaming Sphere was out of control and needed to be changed (dating back to 2009).
> Thread 1
> Thread 2




Fair enough, there are two threads.  But if you read them they don't really go anywhere because the majority feel that the spell was fine as it as, or they didn't take it because it hurt the fellow PC's.

The first thread spoke more about Sleep than it does FS.


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## keterys (Jul 28, 2011)

Kinneus said:


> That ship sailed long, long ago. Minions stop being a viable threat in high heroic. This is just the way the game is.



Is and will be are very different. WotC has already shown that "what the game is" can change. In fact, depending on what classes people bring to the table, autodamage is already a thing of the past.

It used to be...
That Battleragers were near indestructible, gaining more temp hp when hit than most enemies dealt. (Now they only gain temp when they attack, and enemies deal far more damage)
That you could trick out astral heal to completely nullify a solo. (Bunch of healing changes, and oh boy are solos working different now)

Minions used to all entirely explode from vicious rod + corruption rod.
People used to get lots of extra turns from guileful switch.
Bloodclaw and Reckless used to drastically increase melee damage.
Etc.

Play an Essentials only game, and a host of problems with the game literally evaporate. (Along, unfortunately, with an awful lot of good stuff too, but hey) Unsurprisingly, a lot has been learned about the system in the past couple years.

Zone ping pong currently works, where a "slide 9" power might reliably do 100 or more damage. But WotC has already said it soon won't... maybe they'll even tap down a bit of the over-chargey-ness of the system, too. Maybe fix Kulkor Arms Master. 

I've given up hope on +Stat to attack bonuses / -Stat to defense going away, sadly. That's a pretty big proud nail at the moment.

And at the end, it'll still be 4E, but a far more resilient 4E. If done right. Or it'll be a 4E with a bunch less viable options, but even that's not necessarily horrible since we've got thousands and thousands.


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## MrMyth (Jul 28, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> In all seriousness, please point me out a thread that has ever mentioned that Flaming Sphere was out of control and needed to be changed.




Well, I suppose if interested... here are some that popped up in a quick search. The first few from here on Enworld, some others from elsewhere focused on issues with minions, some on the power of the spell in general, etc. 

Toning Down Flaming Sphere "I have noticed, among a significant portion of the 4E players I know, that Flaming Sphere is seen as the *only* level one daily power for a wizard to take. Based entirely off the supposition that "if one option is reliably taken over any other, then it might be too good" what would you do to Flaming Sphere to make the other dailies more likely choices?"

House-ruled Flaming Sphere "One of my players has an Eladrin Wizard and I feel that Flaming Sphere is a little too powerful. It seems my opinion is shared by many GMs, so modified the text a little to make it a little better."

Flaming Sphere... again "Even if you just run flaming sphere without allowing flanking, OA and such like it is still a hugely powerful spell."

Flaming Sphere seems... overpoweredish? "God damn do I love flaming sphere. Using it, my wizard was able to work together with a fighter to basically carry an entire counter while the rest of the party was disabled."

Is Flaming Sphere too good at killing minions? "Personally, when I first read the "and anyone adjacent takes 1d4+IntMod" I immediately did a doudle-take. I still think they're eventually going to nerf this spell somehow. Auto-damage with no save or attack roll is pretty nasty." 

Do I think it was the most important issue in need of being fixed in the game? Of course not. But it was pretty commonly known that Flaming Sphere was very strong, and often a bit too much of an 'automatic choice' compared to other options.

Edit: Ninjad! Serves me right for going to lunch. But sounds like no amount of evidence will convince ForeverSlayer that some folks actually felt this was an issue. Which, again... feel free to disagree with others about what needs balancing, but insisting their views don't even exist just seems uncool.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 28, 2011)

MrMyth said:


> Well, I suppose if interested... here are some that popped up in a quick search. The first few from here on Enworld, some others from elsewhere focused on issues with minions, some on the power of the spell in general, etc.
> 
> Toning Down Flaming Sphere "I have noticed, among a significant portion of the 4E players I know, that Flaming Sphere is seen as the *only* level one daily power for a wizard to take. Based entirely off the supposition that "if one option is reliably taken over any other, then it might be too good" what would you do to Flaming Sphere to make the other dailies more likely choices?"
> 
> ...




So you really think that what you posted is enough to warrant a change to Flaming Sphere.  

There is always someone that feels something different from others, but it looks like it's only a minority. 

If you think it's uncool when someone doesn't agree with someone else then you have got a lot to learn.


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## Raikun (Jul 28, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> If you think it's uncool when someone doesn't agree with someone else then you have got a lot to learn.




Strawman there.  He's actually said more than once that it's fine to disagree, including the post you just quoted.


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## MrMyth (Jul 28, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> So you really think that what you posted is enough to warrant a change to Flaming Sphere.




The fact that a few minutes of searching turned up multiple threads on the topic, several of which involves folks mentioning it as a known issue in the community?

I don't think that is _reason _for WotC to make the change - input from the community is just one piece of information, not a mandate. But I think it is enough for them to examine the power to see if change is warranted. Which they apparently did, and came to the conclusion that it was. 

Which I approve of - not because of community discussion of it, but because of my own experiences with the power and its clear need to be balanced with other wizard powers of that level. 



ForeverSlayer said:


> There is always someone that feels something different from others, but it looks like it's only a minority.
> 
> If you think it's uncool when someone doesn't agree with someone else then you have got a lot to learn.




Just to be clear, again, I don't think that disagreeing is an issue at all! It's the comments about "it's only a minority" that feels this way (or, previously, no one at all), insisting that no one had ever commented or discussed issues with the power before, that all of this is the result of poor playtesting (rather than a response to community feedback), etc. 

Anyway, I don't want to start dragging this off into tangents, so if you feel otherwise, fair enough. I just wanted to clarify my point and encourage you to at least acknowledge the existence of these opinions, even if you disagree with them.


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## MrBeens (Jul 28, 2011)

MrMyth said:


> The fact that a few minutes of searching turned up multiple threads on the topic, several of which involves folks mentioning it as a known issue in the community?
> 
> I don't think that is _reason _for WotC to make the change - input from the community is just one piece of information, not a mandate. But I think it is enough for them to examine the power to see if change is warranted. Which they apparently did, and came to the conclusion that it was.
> 
> ...




The thread search results don't really prove anything one way or another, as people who have no problem with the spell are not going to start threads saying that they think it is fine.

Most of us in this thread agree that the current play test version needs tweaking. Personally I like it the way it was originally, but if they change it to something more reasonable then I will be fine.
The main problem is consistency - for instance wall of fire still does start of turn damage, before the FS change, FS was sort of a single square mobile Wall of fire (and cloud of daggers is similar). Fighters have recently been through the Rules Compendium review, and Reign of Steel was left intact as start of turn.

I have sent my feedback to WoTC about the changes (not just about FS), hopefully everyone else has too. Will be interesting to see what comes out at the end


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## MrMyth (Jul 28, 2011)

MrBeens said:


> The main problem is consistency - for instance wall of fire still does start of turn damage, before the FS change, FS was sort of a single square mobile Wall of fire (and cloud of daggers is similar). Fighters have recently been through the Rules Compendium review, and Reign of Steel was left intact as start of turn.




Yeah, I think the biggest deal was the combination of start of turn and ability to move the sphere - that is what made it inescapable. Rain of Steel is much the same (in that the Fighter can move himself), though monsters can interfere a bit more in that.


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## Gortle (Jul 29, 2011)

MrMyth said:


> Yeah, I think the biggest deal was the combination of start of turn and ability to move the sphere - that is what made it inescapable. Rain of Steel is much the same (in that the Fighter can move himself), though monsters can interfere a bit more in that.




Yes I agree. The existing Flaming Sphere, Stinking Cloud and Rain of Steel can do a lot of damage - they are all in effect movable zones that do a die + static damage mods.

If they need to be rebalanced then go ahead. But don't kill the power.

The problem is that the mechanic for Flaming Sphere is very different from these and the other zones that are being errated to end of turn. 

FS goes from doing a large amount of damage to doing no damage with the zone because it is now 90% avoidable and not combinable with forced movement tactics. Plus the damage of an average at wizard at will. But it is worse in that it has a sustain for a cost of a minor action as well as a standard action cost to use. 

In compensation it supposedly gains a control effect that will encourage monsters to move away from it. 

But that control effect is weak because in 80% of situations the monsters moved away from the existing Flaming sphere anyway. Yes I know many of you disagree about that, but it is definitely our local play experience.

The supposed value of making monster move away from a key point is narrow - it is much better achieved with existing at wills like Thunderwave, and the at wills of many other classes. At least with those powers the monsters never get the choice to stay.

The supposed value of breaking up enemy formations was never a problem for a wizard. Any area of effect spell can do that.

IMHO and that of most of the current users of the spell who like to blast with it - it becomes worse than an at will power, has no real value as a daily power, and will never be used again.

Weakening and rebalancing a power is fine, players will accept that. But completely neutering a power just makes players angry, it doesn't help the game.

A movable damaging zone is a fine concept for a wizard. The changes to flaming sphere means it play more like a summoned fire elemental. Both effects should be in the game.


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## WalterKovacs (Jul 31, 2011)

MrBeens said:


> The thread search results don't really prove anything one way or another, as people who have no problem with the spell are not going to start threads saying that they think it is fine.




It does prove one thing. It proves that there were threads that mentioned that Flaming Sphere was out of cotrol and needed to be changed. ForeverSlayer asked, and they delivered. It doesn't prove that it HAD to be changed ... but it did prove that there were threads asking for it to be changed, which was all that was asked for.

FS asked for examples, and examples were provides. Moving the goal posts after the fact that change the initial challenge. The challenge was not to show threads where the entire board collectively agreed to change Flaming Sphere, just to show that there was ANY thread where the issue was raised.



> Originally Posted by *ForeverSlayer*
> 
> 
> _In all seriousness, please point me out a thread that has ever mentioned that Flaming Sphere was out of control and needed to be changed._


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 31, 2011)

WalterKovacs said:


> It does prove one thing. It proves that there were threads that mentioned that Flaming Sphere was out of cotrol and needed to be changed. ForeverSlayer asked, and they delivered. It doesn't prove that it HAD to be changed ... but it did prove that there were threads asking for it to be changed, which was all that was asked for.
> 
> FS asked for examples, and examples were provides. Moving the goal posts after the fact that change the initial challenge. The challenge was not to show threads where the entire board collectively agreed to change Flaming Sphere, just to show that there was ANY thread where the issue was raised.
> 
> [/I]




That's fine and examples were given.  But if you actually read those threads you will see that the "Sleep" spell was mentioned more than the actual topic of the thread.  Another one was just a homebrew of the FS spell.  Also, if you look at the page count and who actually contributed the number is very small. 

I think it would have been better to actually rephrase what I asked for because there is a thread on everything, there is always someone out there who starts a thread or complains about something.  The fact is though, I don't have to move the goalposts because what I say still stands.  Compare the threads about Orbizards, Feychargers and any other broken thing out there and then look at the FS threads.  

If Wizards changed something everytime someone started a thread or two with a few responses then we wouldn't even have a game right now, just a bunch of stuff jumbled together. 

Not phrasing the question properly was my fault, but trying to hold on to that like it's proof that the spell needed to be changed holds no water for an argument. The fact of the matter is, there were hardly any complaints to warrant a change to the spell which shows the spell was actually fine as is.


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## Psikus (Jul 31, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Not phrasing the question properly was my fault, but trying to hold on to that like it's proof that the spell needed to be changed holds no water for an argument. The fact of the matter is, there were hardly any complaints to warrant a change to the spell *which shows the spell was actually fine as is*.




(Emphasis mine). I'd like to point out that it works both ways, though. Just like the existence of forum complaints does not automatically mean that something deserves errata, the absence of complaints (or rather, the fact that these complaints do not reach some magic number) is not _proof _that something is fine.

You may argue that there is a public perception that some issues (Orbizards, or whatever) are more pressing than others, but ultimately, forum noise is a very poor indicator of game balance. Actual arguments expressed in forums can hold much more weight.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 31, 2011)

Psikus said:


> (Emphasis mine). I'd like to point out that it works both ways, though. Just like the existence of forum complaints does not automatically mean that something deserves errata, the absence of complaints (or rather, the fact that these complaints do not reach some magic number) is not _proof _that something is fine.
> 
> You may argue that there is a public perception that some issues (Orbizards, or whatever) are more pressing than others, *but ultimately, forum noise is a very poor indicator of game balance.* Actual arguments expressed in forums can hold much more weight.




It can be! When the Cleric was nerfed there was a huge outcry from the community and the cleric ended up being changed because of it.  That is one of the reasons for the Community forums is feedback.  If there is a problem with the game and people post arguments and examples to show there is a problem then things could be changed. Everyone doesn't catch everything, but when you have thousands of people playing the game and looking over the details then more errors are noticed than 5 or 6 designers looking at the game.  

Thing is, most of the people who brought us 4th edition aren't around anymore and lot's of decisions are based off of how that particular group at Wizard's plays the game.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jul 31, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> That's fine and examples were given.  But if you actually read those threads you will see that the "Sleep" spell was mentioned more than the actual topic of the thread.  Another one was just a homebrew of the FS spell.  Also, if you look at the page count and who actually contributed the number is very small.
> 
> I think it would have been better to actually rephrase what I asked for because there is a thread on everything, there is always someone out there who starts a thread or complains about something.  The fact is though, I don't have to move the goalposts because what I say still stands.  Compare the threads about Orbizards, Feychargers and any other broken thing out there and then look at the FS threads.
> 
> ...




This is an apples and oranges comparison. Feycharging and orbizard lockdown tactics break THE ENTIRE GAME. You can build invincible characters around them which can exploit the relevant rules loopholes all day and all night every encounter.

Flaming Sphere is a single OP power. I mean you can optimize it a bit by being a flamesoul genasi and/or taking some feats etc, but the spell remains fundamentally just one very good spell that was somewhat better than the other choices at that level. It WAS mentioned, in fact it was fairly commonly mentioned as an OP power, and I suspect if you were to go through and look at every reference to FS you'd find lots of them and in every case they amount to "yeah, this is one of, if not THE, best low level daily out there." 

Not to attack you ForeverSlayer, but think about this. Most of us have been posting here at least since 4e started. Most of us have extensive play experience and also extensive discussion of these topics under our belts. I'm not saying people with 1000's of posts are any more likely to be right or wrong about things, but it is pretty safe to say they're more knowledgeable about what has and hasn't been discussed before than people who have been around for a couple months.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jul 31, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> This is an apples and oranges comparison. Feycharging and orbizard lockdown tactics break THE ENTIRE GAME. You can build invincible characters around them which can exploit the relevant rules loopholes all day and all night every encounter.
> 
> Flaming Sphere is a single OP power. I mean you can optimize it a bit by being a flamesoul genasi and/or taking some feats etc, but the spell remains fundamentally just one very good spell that was somewhat better than the other choices at that level. It WAS mentioned, in fact it was fairly commonly mentioned as an OP power, and I suspect if you were to go through and look at every reference to FS you'd find lots of them and in every case they amount to "yeah, this is one of, if not THE, best low level daily out there."
> 
> Not to attack you ForeverSlayer, but think about this. Most of us have been posting here at least since 4e started. Most of us have extensive play experience and also extensive discussion of these topics under our belts. I'm not saying people with 1000's of posts are any more likely to be right or wrong about things, but it is pretty safe to say they're more knowledgeable about what has and hasn't been discussed before than people who have been around for a couple months.




I've been gaming since 1985 so what's your point?  I've been playing 4th edition since it has started and I post under other forums as well and I have for many years, again what is your point?  Because you have been a member here longer than I that suddenly makes you more knowledgable of the game?  I don't think so, might want to try bringing yourself down off that high horse for a bit.  

The fact of the matter is, there is nothing mechanically wrong with Flaming Sphere.  I have been playing Wizards since 4th edition started and I still play Wizards up to this day.  I know lots of people who don't take Flaming Sphere and I know a lot of people who do.  The thing that Wizards never seems to do is adjust the powers that people don't pick. Also, are we to be afraid to pick powers because if they become too popular Wizards will down grade it.  

If we go the route of popularity then there are tons of things that need to be nerfed.  There are weapons out there that people don't take, do we need to nerf the ones that people do take in order to make the ones people don't choose more appealing?  That's like striping the paint from your house because your front door needs painting.  I read the boards over at Wizards.com and I rarely see any threads that talk about Flaming Sphere needing to be downgraded or changed.  It's simply change for the sake of change.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jul 31, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> I've been gaming since 1985 so what's your point?  I've been playing 4th edition since it has started and I post under other forums as well and I have for many years, again what is your point?  Because you have been a member here longer than I that suddenly makes you more knowledgable of the game?  I don't think so, might want to try bringing yourself down off that high horse for a bit.
> 
> The fact of the matter is, there is nothing mechanically wrong with Flaming Sphere.  I have been playing Wizards since 4th edition started and I still play Wizards up to this day.  I know lots of people who don't take Flaming Sphere and I know a lot of people who do.  The thing that Wizards never seems to do is adjust the powers that people don't pick. Also, are we to be afraid to pick powers because if they become too popular Wizards will down grade it.
> 
> If we go the route of popularity then there are tons of things that need to be nerfed.  There are weapons out there that people don't take, do we need to nerf the ones that people do take in order to make the ones people don't choose more appealing?  That's like striping the paint from your house because your front door needs painting.  I read the boards over at Wizards.com and I rarely see any threads that talk about Flaming Sphere needing to be downgraded or changed.  It's simply change for the sake of change.




See, this is one of the reasons why discussing things with you becomes frustrating, you don't seem to actually absorb what people are saying. There's no 'high horse' for me to get down from. As I said in my previous post, having 1000's of posts here doesn't indicate anything about whether or not people are right or wrong. LOGICALLY it does perhaps bear on whether or not we have a better sense of what has and hasn't been discussed in the past on this forum, and that is ALL I said.

And then when it comes to whether or not FS was actually OP before you are of course welcome to your opinion, it is no better or worse than any other. We've all explained our reasoning and it is up to people to decide what makes sense to them. This is simply normal discussion and debate. 

You are correct, Wizards doesn't GENERALLY improve elements that are less powerful. They've stated numerous times why that is. Essentially it boils down to it is easier to nerf a few OP things than to amp up EVERYTHING else to the same level. That would be a huge task, they would probably get numerous things wrong, and it would just be a big mess. You can go around playing your game worrying about what WotC MIGHT do in the future or just play and enjoy the game. Nobody makes anyone use any specific errata in their games anyway. 

Nobody is suggesting that WotC should make changes based on 'popularity'. You commented that YOU didn't think people were complaining about FS being overpowered. Some people disagreed with this. It happens to be a factual observation that can be verified. It was verified. You didn't seem to like the fact that evidence indicated you were incorrect. Then I stated that you might consider the testimony of people who have read the vast majority of all the threads on this forum for the past three years as more weighty than that of people who started reading it 3 months ago on that topic. You have then conflated that comment into something totally different.

Again, it works better when you carefully examine what people are saying. Perhaps my previous post was somehow not clear. It SEEMED perfectly clear to me. If it wasn't then I hope I have clarified it for you. Still, it works better to make sure you're really clear about what people are saying.


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## ForeverSlayer (Aug 1, 2011)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> _*See, this is one of the reasons why discussing things with you becomes frustrating, you don't seem to actually absorb what people are saying. There's no 'high horse' for me to get down from. As I said in my previous post, having 1000's of posts here doesn't indicate anything about whether or not people are right or wrong. LOGICALLY it does perhaps bear on whether or not we have a better sense of what has and hasn't been discussed in the past on this forum, and that is ALL I said.*_
> 
> And then when it comes to whether or not FS was actually OP before you are of course welcome to your opinion, it is no better or worse than any other. We've all explained our reasoning and it is up to people to decide what makes sense to them. This is simply normal discussion and debate.
> 
> ...




I have watched your posts and you get frustrated when someone doesn't agree with you.  You have put yourself on a high horse.  

_*"Not to attack you ForeverSlayer, but think about this. Most of us have  been posting here at least since 4e started. Most of us have extensive  play experience and also extensive discussion of these topics under our  belts. I'm not saying people with 1000's of posts are any more likely to  be right or wrong about things, but it is pretty safe to say they're  more knowledgeable about what has and hasn't been discussed before than  people who have been around for a couple months."


*_You contradict yourself here.  You moment you say that most of us have been posting here since 4e started like that is some badge that allows you to be right over others that haven't posted here as much, then you say your not saying people with 1000's of posts are any more likely to be right or wrong about things, which you have said actually. Then you say it's pretty safe to say they're more knowledgeable about what has and hasn't been discussed before than people who have been around for a couple of month's.  

You see you can't even admit that is what you said.  Now i you meant something different than what you actually wrote, fair enough, but I don't think so.  I think you meant what you wrote but now you are trying to turn it around into something else without doing a good job of it.  

Here is a little analogy I want you to sit down and think about.  A man that uses a machine gun, doesn't always have more kills under his belt than a man with a sniper rifle just because the machine gun can fire more bullets. 

I've been playing 4th edition the same amount of time as you have and we play test the game extensively.  Because you and a few others have posted here a lot doesn't suddenly give you a better view and more knowledge of the game. Enworld isn't the only forum that exists.  

Now on to the topic.  Let's look at the Wizard daily's for level one just from the PHB.  We have Acid Arrow, Flaming Sphere, Freezing Cloud, and Sleep.  Now each of these spells brings something different to the table.  

Level 1 Daily Spells
Acid Arrow Wizard Attack 1
A shimmering arrow of green, glowing liquid streaks to your target
and bursts in a spray of sizzling acid.
Daily ✦ Acid, Arcane, Implement
Standard Action Ranged 20
Primary Target: One creature
Attack: Intelligence vs. Reflex
Hit: 2d8 + Intelligence modifier acid damage, and ongoing
5 acid damage (save ends). Make a secondary attack.
Secondary Target: Each creature adjacent to the primary
target
Secondary Attack: Intelligence vs. Reflex
Hit: 1d8 + Intelligence modifier acid damage, and ongoing
5 acid damage (save ends).
Miss: Half damage, and ongoing 2 acid damage to primary
target (save ends), and no secondary attack.

First off it's an acid spell, it is 2d8 + Intell and ongoing 5 acid damage.  Now it has a secondary attack right off the bat and does 1d8 + Intell + 5 ongoing. Has good range and it is an all around good spell you just can't sustain it or move it around. 

Flaming Sphere Wizard Attack 1
You conjure a rolling ball of fire and control where it goes.
Daily ✦ Arcane, Conjuration, Fire, Implement
Standard Action Ranged 10
Target: One creature adjacent to the flaming sphere
Attack: Intelligence vs. Reflex
Hit: 2d6 + Intelligence modifier fire damage.
Effect: You conjure a Medium flaming sphere in an
unoccupied square within range, and the sphere attacks an
adjacent creature. Any creature that starts its turn next to
the flaming sphere takes 1d4 + Intelligence modifier fire
damage. As a move action, you can move the sphere up to
6 squares.
Sustain Minor: You can sustain this power until the end of
the encounter. As a standard action, you can make another
attack with the sphere.

Now here is Flaming Sphere which is a Fire spell. Now when the spell is first activated the spell only affects one creature period.  Now you can move it around with your move action if you didn't use it and move it somewhere else if you want but it won't effect anything else until the start of the creature's turn that's next to it.  Now if you want to lower the spell a bit then just remove the part about making another attack with the sphere. In all honesty, it isn't really worth it to burn up a standard action to attack with it again on a single creature.  It's actually best to just use your move action to roll it wherever you want and save your standard to use other spells. 

Freezing Cloud Wizard Attack 1
A pellet shoots from your hand and explodes into a cloud of icy
mist at the point of impact.
Daily ✦ Arcane, Cold, Implement
Standard Action Area burst 2 within 10 squares
Target: Each creature in burst
Attack: Intelligence vs. Fortitude
Hit: 1d8 + Intelligence modifier cold damage.
Miss: Half damage.
Effect: The cloud lasts until the end of your next turn. Any
creature that enters the cloud or starts its turn there is
subject to another attack. You can dismiss the cloud as a
minor action.

Freezing Cloud is a Cold spell.  It effects all creatures in a burst and the effects last until the end of the caster's next turn.  I like this spell but I would have added a sustain minor effect.  This is one of those spells where other PC's with movement effects can toss the creatures in.  I used to use Phantom Bolt with this, or Thunderwave. 

Sleep Wizard Attack 1
You exert your will against your foes, seeking to overwhelm them
with a tide of magical weariness.
Daily ✦ Arcane, Implement, Sleep
Standard Action Area burst 2 within 20 squares
Target: Each creature in burst
Attack: Intelligence vs. Will
Hit: The target is slowed (save ends). If the target fails its
first saving throw against this power, the target becomes
unconscious (save ends).
Miss: The target is slowed (save ends).

Now Sleep is totally a spell on it's own.  If you can get the creature to fail it's save then you are in good shape.  Being slowed sucks when you have PC's throwing you into zones. Then if that next save goes then we have a monster that is unconscious.  

Each of the spells have a little something different to bring to the table, but none really have to be changed in order to be useful.  Some people find spells to be cool and some find spells to be useful from just a numbers point of view.  Now the reasons that were given for the change to FS was because they wanted to make it more of a control spell, but that actually failed in my LTHPO (Long time honest professional opinion).  We have run scenarios with the changes to the end of turn and it eliminates several tactics that are very very very controlling. All for the sake of trying to make creatures move who 9 times out of 10 move anyway unless they have a fighter in their face which then the fighter becomes the reason and not Flaming Sphere's end of turn damage.  There are other factors that come into play such as your rank in the initiative order and the monster's rank in the order and I don't think the people who made these changes really playtested them beyond one game.


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## keterys (Aug 1, 2011)

At a certain point, it can be best to agree to disagree.

Especially when it seems as if your viewpoint is being consistently misunderstood or misapplied.


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