So what IS going on with 4E these days.

[Swordslinger]

The same I expect from every power: that when you use it, people can look and say "Oh look, he used a power there!" For all any observer can tell, you punched the enemy and then everyone else also happened to hit.

Okay. Fair enough. Righteous brand really doesn't generate any kind of visible thing, but then again, most buff type effects rarely do, unless it's a size change buff.

The fact that the bonus is still small, and doesn't grow, does not help. +3 is embarrassing to spend an action doing.

Have to disagree here, your bonus doesn't have to grow to make it worthwhile. On a d20 roll, a +3 remains good throughout all levels. Having the bonus scale makes the power too good at higher levels or too weak at lower levels.

[DSMatticus]

It's a 15% chance increased to-hit. Unless it has a huge duration, +3 is boring and worthless.

[Josh_Kablack]

When I did get a chance to play a Righteous Brand cleric (pre-nerf) the +5 To hit was a big deal when there was a melee ranger in the party, but being able to layer it on top of a bunch of stacked feats and powers that increased to hit, damage and sometimes also dropped the opponent's AC was overall a bigger deal.

I mean this is 4e, the only options are to build a super nova or to make sure the At-wills you're spamming are actually worth spamming

[Swordslinger]

It's a 15% chance increased to-hit. Unless it has a huge duration, +3 is boring and worthless.

When you normally hit on a 7 or better, then hitting on a 4 or better is certainly significant. Almost half your misses are now hits.

[sake]

Whoops... spoke too soon. Looks like they snuck in a Divine Oracle nerf after all, they just didn't put it in the actual document. The Reroll feature is now Cleric only despite Clerics only having a grand total of like, three Will targeting powers.

[DSMatticus]

Not really - it just appears significant. Hitting on a 7 means you land hits 70% of the time. Hitting on a 4 means you land hits 85% of the time.

If your average damage per swing is 10, that means your to-hit adjusted damage goes from 7 to 8.5.

It's vaguely useful in the circumstances where you know another party member is about to use a heavy hitter, and everyone wants to stack bonuses on it to make sure it lands. But a 15% chance increase isn't much to write home about, especially not in a land where economy of action actually matters and the other classes are busy doing real damage while you're affecting someone else's damage by maybe 1.5-3.0.

[Ghostwheel]

Eh, a 21.4% increase in damage from an at-will (and you're also dealing damage) doesn't seem that minuscule to me considering 4e's combat paradigm.

[Doom]

Indeed, cutting your chance of missing in half is pretty good if you have a decent chance of missing.

The effective bonus to damage is meager if your ally is only using an at-will, but for the first 5 rounds of combat, that's pretty easy to avoid. Considering combats are designed to last 6 rounds, that's not a scenario likely to come up (and hey, the cleric has encounter powers too).

Astral Seal still has more to offer (assuming it wasn't nerfed at some point), since it grants a +2 bonus to the whole party AND heals...offsetting the damage of Righteous Brand, especially since it's vastly more likely to hit.

[Manxome]

When you normally hit on a 7 or better, then hitting on a 4 or better is certainly significant. Almost half your misses are now hits.

Seriously? "Half your misses are now hits, if you were already not missing much"? This is the caliber of analysis you use as ammunition in a debate?

Most people would look at, say, your average damage output. Or, you know, your number of hits. Or the number of rounds it takes you to deal a target damage number. By any of which, your proportional gain from a +3 to hit is maximized when you previously had a low chance to hit, not when you had a low chance to miss.

Going from hitting on a 7 to hitting on a 4 is a 21% proportional increase in the number of hits you land.

Going from hitting on an 18 to hitting on a 15 is a 100% proportional increase in the number of hits you land.

Of course, in either case, it's probably easier to think of it as adding an average of 15% of however much damage you do on a hit.

I can't imagine why you would care about the proportional change to your miss chance, unless you suffer some sort of horrible critical fumble whenever you miss.

Indeed, cutting your chance of missing in half is pretty good if you have a decent chance of missing.

Oh, the irony...

[Doom]

You're right, "increasing the chance to hit" and "decreasing the chance to miss" are completely unrelated concepts.

[Quantumboost]

You're right, "increasing the chance to hit" and "decreasing the chance to miss" are completely unrelated concepts.

That's irrelevant. The chance to miss is not proportional to any number you directly care about - it only matters in the context of your chance to hit. A miss doesn't *do* anything, none of the game state is altered by the miss (the action is already spent before the miss occurs, and Manxome already made an exception for things like miss/fumble rules).

The chance to hit, however, actually is a number you directly care about. It's directly proportional to the damage you do, which is inversely proportional to your expected time to defeat the enemy - which in turn determines your likelihood of victory.

So, if you're (generic "you") discussing how something affects the proportion of misses, you are severely missing the point. It's the proportion of hits that propagates to damage, to time, to victory chance. Getting a +3 when you would otherwise hit on an 18 doubles your DPS, halves your time to defeat the enemy, and has a huge effect on your chance of victory. Getting a +3 when you would hit on a 6 halves your miss chance, but only has a ~21% increase of your effective DPS and a similarly lesser effect on your victory chance.

Swordslinger was looking at halving the chance to miss rather than doubling the chance to hit, which as Manxome correctly observed is looking at numbers that don't in themselves matter. Your comment was ironic because "have a decent chance of missing" was exactly the opposite situation than was being talked about, and would not happen with a +3 bonus in the situation you were talking about anyway.

[Manxome]

Swordslinger: "This halves your miss chance, IF your miss chance was exactly 30% and under no other circumstances ever."

Doom: "Halving your miss chance might be really good, depending on what your miss chance was!"

If you cannot see the problem with your remark, you are beyond hope.

[Kaelik]

The proportion of X is totally fucking unimportant no matter what X is. It's the actual change in likelihood as a percentage that determines how much you should care, and proportions are lies to make something seem cooler.

Whether you are missing 30% of the time, and then only missing 15% of the time, or Hitting 70% of the time, and then hitting 85% of the time, one of those sounds big, and the other doesn't.

But the actual fact of the matter is that 85% of the time, the ability has no effect, and the other 15% of the time, it does, so the ability is actually worth 15% of the attack it's boosting.

[DSMatticus]

Eh, a 21.4% increase in damage from an at-will (and you're also dealing damage) doesn't seem that minuscule to me considering 4e's combat paradigm.

You gave a turn to do at will damage + what is probably an average of 30% damage increase to one other person's power once over an average of many hits. I am rather out of date with 4e, but I can probably find better at-wills by the dozen. I may do so after posting this, just for reference. But we're seriously talking 5 -> 6.5, 10 -> 13, 15 -> 19.5, 20 -> 26. It's not that impressive. Adding a 1d6 is just about as impressive.

[DSMatticus]

It's a little more complex than that, Kaelik. If you hit on a 20, that's on average one hit per 20 swings. If this boost knocks you to hitting on 17, 18, 19, and 20, that's on average four hits per 20 swings. Similarly, if you only miss on a nat 1, it literally does nothing for you. In this case, the bonus is worth either 0% or 300% of the attack it boosted. Even at the middle value, where we expect people to hit on 11's, the actual increase in hits is from 10 -> 13, which is a 30% increase in attacks landed, not 15%. Even the average or median values for all this won't result in a 15% increase in actual landed hits.

Obviously, combats don't last 20-rounds and nobody spams righteous brand 24/7, and 20's and 1's are such extreme outliers nobody cares, but the point stands that over the average of its uses in all situations, its value is mathematically dependent on the recipient's to-hit chance, not just the attack they happened to use.

The fact that +3 happens to correspond to raising your chance of success on a single roll from (X*5)% to ((X+3)*5)% is actually very meaningless. The best way to measure the effect of the ability on your character really IS the proportion of (X*5)% to ((X+3)*5)%, because that proportion tells you, "whatever my character was doing before, he does it 1.5x or 2.0x or 2.5x better thanks to that buff."

A +3 to a d20 roll raises your chances of success by 15%. It does not improve your performance by 15%. And there is a difference.

[Kaelik]

No, the point is that it improves your performance by 15% of the ability used's damage.

That's what it actually does. Being twice as likely to hit but still missing 90% of the time is not a meaningful change. It's still increases damage by 5% of the power's damage.

Doing infinity times as much damage when you did zero damage before is not a meaningful statistic. Doing on average, 14 more damage over the course of a combat is a measure that is actually useful.

You can tell that your measure of performance is wrong because it gives two contradictory results.

In one case, you are missing half as often, so according to you, you are therefore performing 200% what you were, but yet, it is equally as true that you are hitting 21.4% more often, so you are performing 121.4% as well.

Both of these cannot be true, in fact, you are doing 15% (X the damage of the power) more damage. That's the actual change in your ability.

[Quantumboost]

Regardless of the English mucking everything up, it comes down to:

DPS = onHitDPS * Hit + onMissDPS * (1-Hit)

With +3 bonus: newHit = ceiling(floor(Hit+.15, .05), .95)

newDPS = Damage * newHit + onMissDPS * (1-newHit)

if Hit >= .2 and Hit <= .8, newDPS - oldDPS = .15 * (onHitDPS-onMissDPS)

and in a 1-on-1 battle:

timeToKill = enemyHP / DPS
newTimeToKill = enemyHP / newDPS

old P(victory) = P(timeToKill < enemyTimeToKill)
new P(victory) = P(newTimeToKill < enemyTimeToKill)

With all things not in P() being discrete probability distributions rather than single numbers. And how the attack you use affects P(victory) is ultimately what matters, everything else is just a contributing variable.

Edit: Whoops got my less-than/greater-than mixed up
Edit2: Manxome has a good point, modding equations to include miss DPS

[Manxome]

But the actual fact of the matter is that 85% of the time, the ability has no effect, and the other 15% of the time, it does, so the ability is actually worth 15% of the attack it's boosting.

Actually, it's worth 15% of the difference between the effects of a hit and a miss on the attack it's boosting. Which in most cases is more than 15% of simply doing the attack an extra time (since that extra time has some miss chance), though it can also be less if the attack does something on a miss.

Converting that to a proportion of what you were doing before is often (though not always) a convenient way to compare the benefits of different options, especially if you're analyzing a general case rather than looking at a concrete example with actual specific numbers.

You can tell that your measure of performance is wrong because it gives two contradictory results.

In one case, you are missing half as often, so according to you, you are therefore performing 200% what you were, but yet, it is equally as true that you are hitting 21.4% more often, so you are performing 121.4% as well.

Don't be an idiot. The analysis assumes a logical and commonly-accepted method of measuring overall utility, such as "the number of enemies you can kill in X amount of time". Your average damage output is generally proportional to that metric when holding other variables constant. Your chance of missing is generally NOT, and therefore is not used.

Because we understand basic math, and therefore we know that cutting your miss chance in half is not the same as doubling your hit chance.

[Josh_Kablack]

Did I miss an errata, or are you guys ignoring that the Righteous Brand attack bonus applies to ALL of an allies attack rolls until the end of next turn just to be obtuse?

That kind of matters in a game with Multi-hit powers, Minor Action Attacks and Action Points.

[Doom]

Yes, just one ally, all that ally's melee attacks. Situationally, it still has good use, I suppose.

The intense mathematical confusion aside, I still feel that Astral Seal is still vastly better, since it's much more likely to actually hit (Ref is nearly always lower than AC, AND the damn ability gets a +2 to hit in addition), gives ALL allies an effective +2 to hit with ALL attacks, and gives some healing on top of that.

It does no damage, but Astral Seal still stands well above Righteous Brand in the vast majority of situations (eg, not real good against minions...but neither is Righteous Brand)....or did they finally get around to nerfing Astral Seal?

[sake]

did they finally get around to nerfing Astral Seal?

Well they they changed all healing bonus granting items/features/feats to only work on healing powers that require a healing surge (breaking all sorts of things in the process) So Astral Seal is only 2 plus the cleric's cha bonus in healing.

Of course it's still a standard action, still requires the cleric to succeed on the attack roll, still has no additional effect besides the dime a dozen -2 to defenses (that like twenty other at wills do), still only affects next ally, still requires said ally to hit to get the healing, still goes against the whole leader design concept they wanked over when 4E first came out by being a passive, healbot power... only now it scales right out of even being a noticeable source of healing by early paragon.

Also they broke the god awful Pacifist Healer build that AS was designed for, when they removed the divine keyword from Healing Word so they could just give it to all the leader classes, because making new, different powers is hard.

[Doom]

Well they they changed all healing bonus granting items/features/feats to only work on healing powers that require a healing surge (breaking all sorts of things in the process) So Astral Seal is only 2 plus the cleric's cha bonus in healing.

Glad to see they toned down the healing, it was pretty nuts by paragon.

Of course it's still a standard action, still requires the cleric to succeed on the attack roll,

Agreed, but so far better than Righteous Brand, since it's so much more likely to hit.

still has no additional effect besides the dime a dozen -2 to defenses (that like twenty other at wills do),

I had no idea there were so many. But these things generally stack in 4e, so still ahead of Righteous Brand if you have more than one other party member attacking the mob...seeing as AS wears off at the end of the Cleric's next turn (i.e., he gets the benefit, too), that's not likely to come up much.

still only affects next ally, still requires said ally to hit to get the healing,

Agreed for the healing...but everyone gets the effective bonus to hit with every power (so still ahead of Righteous Brand's melee only, for one ally).

Granted, there are times you want to hit for piddly damage, and AS doesn't work well there. But there are lots of at-wills that hit for damage, and most characters will have two such powers.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Agreed, but so far better than Righteous Brand, since it's so much more likely to hit.

Healing for ~20 damage (best case scenario at high levels short of taking a silly ED like Saint) while doing no damage is a waste of time because monsters were errata'd to do around that much damage and it's quite possible that they're backing that ass up with some other side effect.

[DSMatticus]

In one case, you are missing half as often, so according to you, you are therefore performing 200% what you were, but yet, it is equally as true that you are hitting 21.4% more often, so you are performing 121.4% as well.

Yeah, that's not the math that's happening here. At all.

Going from 3 to 6 hits out of 20 (i.e. an accuracy of .15 to .3) is pretty big. If you were killing creatures before at .15 accuracy, you will now kill twice as many. Going from 15 to 18 hits out of 20 (i.e. an accuracy improvement of .75 to .9) isn't as impressive. If you were killing creatures before at .75 accuracy, you're only killing one more per every five you were killing before.

What we care about is the percentage increase in hits - not the percentage decrease in misses. You brought that up, not me (well, Swordslinger did, really). Misses are fuck-all who cares.

Both of these cannot be true, in fact, you are doing 15% (X the damage of the power) more damage. That's the actual change in your ability.

Except you literally mathematically aren't doing 15% more of your old damage output, you are doing 15% more of X per attack.

There is a value for the flat increase in damage, you are completely right. A +3 to-hit is effectively adding (.15)X damage to every attack. But that doesn't tell us anything, because it doesn't tell us how much damage every attack did before. At the median, you were previously doing (.5)X damage. And adding a flat (.15)X to (.5)X turns out to be a 30% increase in the amount of shit you will kill over a given period of time by eviscerating it.

+10 damage matters more when you do 1 damage, and matters less when you do 100. In the former case, it literally turns 1 hit into 11 hits, and in the latter case, it turns 1 hit into 1.1 hits.

[Doom]

Healing for ~20 damage (best case scenario at high levels short of taking a silly ED like Saint) while doing no damage is a waste of time because monsters were errata'd to do around that much damage and it's quite possible that they're backing that ass up with some other side effect.

Even if the healing was 0, AS still could easily come out ahead over RB, you have to look at the bigger picture.

Consider a 5 player party with a cleric, fighting with a base 50% chance to hit.

If the cleric hits with RB, he'll do 1W + mods damage, and add 30% to the expected damage of ONE other character, and then only if he can melee. This is a good deal if you've got one huge melee heavy hitter, in a position to melee the same monster the cleric is hitting, and the other three characters don't hit for much damage at all.

If the cleric hits with AS (and he's more likely to do so, often much more likely), he'll add 20% to the expected damage of FOUR characters if they attack the same monster. Even without healing, if they can even come close to concentrating fire (and hey, that IS the optimal strategy for all 4e), the AS comes out ahead, even after subtracting the fairly low expectred damage that could have been done with RB.

There certainly are scenarios where RB is a little better, but there are just plain lots more scenarios where AS comes out ahead, and healing isn't even part of the calculation. Use larger parties, or parties with more than one character that hits for lots of damage, and RB just falls further behind.