The Gaming Den

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/UpdateJuly2009.pdf

Takes care of some of the biggest issues - Rain of Blows is now three attacks and got a damage nerf, Tempest Fighters lose some of their striker-like ability, Battlerager temp HP no longer stacks, Guileful Switch can no longer grant an extra turn, and RRoT only grants crit damage and nothing else. In other news, horse archers, Demigods, and Orbizards still win D&D, and are untouched in this update.

And this was after months and months of these issues being pointed out.

Also, hi. Long time lurker, first time poster.

*watches all the people with nerfed FotMs go to the boards and /sub*

Guess they farmed out the endgame instances by now.

So they still haven't addressed orbizards.

Just when I think we're out of the days of padded sumo, they pull me back in!

Looks like my fighter is now going to become a ranger. Dumb shits.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Just when I think we're out of the days of padded sumo, they pull me back in!

Looks like my fighter is now going to become a ranger. Dumb shits.

I honestly did not expect this image search to yield results.

Psychic Robot wrote:So they still haven't addressed orbizards.

Yeah, which is fucking sad.

At least they nerfed the battlerager. Now he has to hit an enemy (as opposed to being hit by an enemy) to get his temp HP, which is a big nerf.

Why they refuse to fix the orbizard is beyond me though... I mean wtf. I hate WotC's policy towards just ignoring broken stuff instead of fixing it.

Yes! Now I know what the "optimal" 4E party will be for the game, Lord Marshall and 4 Orbizards.

And after they get through nerfing Orbizards, we'll... uh...

Wait, what happens then?

But anyway, this is the kind of bullshit change that makes me mad.

Now instead of seeing a good melee party being a tactical warlord, a melee ranger, a tempest fighter, a battlerager fighter, and a polearm fighter... a good melee party will be a tactical warlord and four melee rangers.

They haven't actually made things more balanced or reduced the power level of the game, they just reduced the number of viable builds.

This would be, like in 3.5E, celebrating if only the wizard and sorcerer got blammed while the divine classes were left as-is. It's a change that only stratifies play and doesn't make things more balanced.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:And after they get through nerfing Orbizards, we'll... uh...

Wait, what happens then?

You wait until Divine Power or Divine Power 2 when they finally release enough Avenger powers that you can do decent damage and still ht a ridiculous amount of the time. Possibly by stapling Ranger attacks onto it.

-Username17

They apparently aren't ever going to nerf Orbizards.

Literally people were complaining about Orbizards before the books were even released. It was shown that they could sleep rape people.

What was WotC's response? To release the adventurers vault with Phrenic Crown, Cunning Sword, and Orbs that make you roll twice for each save and take the low.

The response to "lol Orbizard wins once per encounter" was "lol, now he wins on every save ends spell."

It's not even a hard fix for the Orbizards. Someone on the WotC just has a gigantic hard-on for wizards, since they're the biggest SADsacks in the game (at least until Arcane Power, but even that's trivial) and they got the most powers printed for them out of any class in the core book.

Unlike the battlerager fighter and tempest fighter gutting, I do approve of doing something to the orbizard since 'I win, biatch' when everyone else has to slug through fights just makes people angry. But even so, that's because wizards in general have the best toys--maybe this will change when Divine Power comes out, but I really doubt it, since Visions of Avarice is so good that 3rd Edition Wizards would be tripping over themselves trying to get that spell. And the game is rife with that kind of nonsense.

Interesting note: did you know that there are only 3 core gaming products for 4th edition? It's true. While there are many "core books" for 4e, indeed practically all supplemental material has the word "core book" on it, only the first three books are considered Core Gaming Products. What the hell the PHB2 is a core book of is left to your imagination.

-Username17

Presumably it's like an apple core: you're meant to throw it in the bin.

And maybe they'll next fix the CR 3 monster with hundreds of hit points.

I still can't get over it. They completely eliminated the purpose of the tempest fighter and pretty much killed off a reason to be a battlerager fighter.

Dual Strike was the Tempest Fighters' sole reason for existing. If they don't have Dual Strike then the class is completely pointless, since they now dish out single-target damage comparable to a friggin' Warden and perform the 'role' just as well--and now they even get laughably outdamaged by Polearm fighters.

There is also no point to the Battlerager fighter now. That variant now has a time limit associated with it, which now happens at around level 11 or so. I have Martial Power in it, aside from Crushing Surge, an At-Will, the 'invigorating' powers suck. So they won't be using nor selecting them. Which means that at that point, for the first five rounds or so of combat they will be getting no use out of their class ability.

And guess what? STR/CON characters suck. Hammer Rhythm is horrible now since they're +2 proficiency weapons and we have the Weapon Expertise feats. There is no reason in the fucking universe anymore to grab any kind of axe with fullblades and talenta sharrashes around the corner. This is in addition to the inherent weakness of having a bad NAD.

How could they screw this up so bad? Fuck, I hate this edition!

It really looks like an MMOG now. Patches after patches to rebalance the system.

So basically melee classes got nice things (at least relative to the system's standards) and WotC decided to restore the wizard supremacy that is assumed to be the core of D&D. So I wonder if the 4e fanbase is complaining about this return to 3.5 dynamics or falling over themselves to justify it.

The latter I think.

But then, would anyone expect anything else than Wizard supremacy from a company named Wizards of the Coast? /wink

Fuchs wrote:It really looks like an MMOG now. Patches after patches to rebalance the system.

Patches are a good thing. We have the internet, might as well use it. That still doesn't excuse shipping a shitty product to begin with, but generally I approve of patches.

Unless the patches simply start a cycle of balance adjustments, responding to the latest class/power/tactic combo from the optimizer forums.

This is hardly MMO-style patching. Useless powers like Careful Strike aren't even being touched, and lots of the overpowered stuff is still untouched.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:They completely eliminated the purpose of the tempest fighter....

Well, I thought that the purpose of the tempest fighter was supposed to be a Defender that could dual-wield. The fact they outdamaged everyone else wasn't the intended purpose.

We're talking about a system where using an axe instead of a sword, or being tied to different but otherwise identical stats is a new class. So it's only natural that sort of Fail happens.

MartinHarper wrote:This is hardly MMO-style patching. Useless powers like Careful Strike aren't even being touched, and lots of the overpowered stuff is still untouched.

That sounds exactly like typical MMOG patching to me...

Lago PARANOIA wrote: There is also no point to the Battlerager fighter now.

Honestly, I don't see how the battlerager is killed off now. The original one was ridiculously powerful and he got nerfed heavily (for good reason). But you still have to remember that you're getting that battlerager power instead of a +1 to attack.

So you hit with one attack, and you gain like 4-5 temp HP. If you use invigorating powers, you miss and still gain that.

That's honestly not bad, because those temp HP add up so you can take 2-3 more hits in a combat.

The battlerager is still better than taking a +1 to hit, but he's no longer the unkillable god of padded sumo that he was.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:It's not even a hard fix for the Orbizards.

So what is your perfered fix for Orbizards then? The most common houserule one I've seen is 'it only applies to the first save' but that's so laughingly weak that it makes the staff power seem good by comparison.

sake wrote: So what is your perfered fix for Orbizards then? The most common houserule one I've seen is 'it only applies to the first save' but that's so laughingly weak that it makes the staff power seem good by comparison.

How is that weak?

You're getting a virtually guaranteed knock out for a monster for 2 rounds. Wand and staff don't even come close to that.