The Gaming Den

Okay. I'm imagining that sometime in the near future, I'm going to be invited to a 4e game. I don't really know anything about 4e, don't own any of the books, and don't want to spend 5 hours building a character. If anyone is feeling really charitable, could you possibly rattle off the stats/weapon/power selection that makes Orbizards, Muscle/Laser Clerics, and Rangers so great?

The point of muscle clerics is to spam Righteous Brand, and Lazer Clerics are the best healers in 4E. Go look at the Divine Power Review thread, it has lists of all the best spells for both Cleric options.

Orbizard builds, of both the Wizard of the Spiral Tower Cunning Weapon Whore and My DM is a Item Nazi so I'm Going Divine Oracle variety have been mentioned in several threads(not under those names of course), just search for them.

I am just going to give overviews because building 4e characters is actually more boring than 3.5, at least to me, mostly because your at wills suck and the only reason you can keep up at all is careful feat and item selection. I mostly know about Laser Clerics, so I will start with that.

Laser Clerics get talked about alot in my Divine Power Review, though I made a few mistakes and it can be better if I had regular access to more splatbooks. 4e power is hugely determined by splat books. But it basically comes down to this.

-You need Wisdom and items that add to healing. If you need to pick feats or items if you just take everything that says healer on it you should be okay. Cha is a secondary stat and you take the Kalashatar race because they have bumps to Wis and Cha. I don't have access to whatever book those things are in so I don't know what else they do.

-Your most damaging at will and your most accurate at will and your at will that heals the most are all Astral Sign. Astral Sign is freaky awesome and does better than a great many of your encounters. You use this all the time and feel great about it.

-You have freaky powered dailies that tend to win entire encounters. The best of these is consecrated ground, which provides just enough healing and area to work as a full team res. And you can use this multiple times a day with salves of power. Spirit of Healing, Stream of Healing, and Moment of Glory at early levels are other powers that win.
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Muscle Clerics I feel got left behind by the buff Wisdom Clerics got. Still, you have great fundamentals.

-Righteous brand gives one of the greatest to hit bonuses in the entire game and its your at will. A 20str character gives a plus 5 to hit and it only gets better from there to the point that the next action autohits. This gives you one of the most damaging dailies in the game if not the most damaging and you still have minor actions to throw heals off in addition to that.

-Your low level encounter powers are good, usually some damage and a heal. Invigorating strike is an actual surgeless heal, which was exciting when those weren't given out with at wills.

-You have lesser versions of the Laser Clerics rock your face off dailies. Spirit of healing kinda sucks for you but Consecrated Ground is still worth all the gold in China

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Orbizard

Wizards have generally bad everything except their dailies which are rock your face off awesome. The Orbizard takes your most face rockingest power, Sleep, and makes it even more awesome. You want Intelligence and Wisdom so you take Deva.

-The first thing to understand is stunlocking. In 4e, everyone saves on 11 or greater except things like solos. If you have plus 10 to saves you never fail, and if you have minus 10 to saves you never win. Your goal is to give an opponent -10 to save so they sleep forever.

-Take the orb power Orb of Imposition. That subtracts your Wis from their saving throws. Wear a Phrenic Crown to get another penalty. Lastly, you take the Wizard of the Spiral Tower paragon path to use Cunning Swords which cause another penalty. There are probably more things that I am forgetting here, but If you have a high Wis and advanced items you can seriously inflict like a -19 right there, which means enemies just never wake up.

-Lastly, you use items like Salves of Power or unerrated Veteran's Armor to do this multiple times.
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Rangers I am less good with, but their whole shtick is doing lots of damage and doing it extremely quickly. Not only do you have the most powerful at will in twinstrike but you also have awesome dailies and can generally do things like take 8 attacks in a round so every little bit of extra damage you can get goes far. Hiting twice means your weapons are really important and you dumpster dive for every bonus you can because its doubled for you. Archer rangers need Dex and Wis so they take elf for that and awesome mobility. Melee rangers are more complicated.

-Melee rangers are the DPR kings. I don't know exactly how to build one, but I would be surprised if you don't eventually do 200-300 damage with your at will. You also have one of the best collection of emergency nerfed abilities, like Blade Cascade which used to be able to do infinite damage. Kinda frail though unless you last long enough to be a Yogi hat ranger.

-Archer Rangers do almost as much damage but do it from up to 50 squares away. By comparison a Laser Cleric shoots people five squares away. The combination of range, great movement speed, and escape powers means that you will probably be the not only the most damaging character but also the most survivable one.

-Archer Rangers also have weird problem solving abilities. Elves (level 2 skirmisher) can stomp pretty much any 4e party that does not have a ranger by running and shooting with their 40 range bows. If you happen to get a mount the game pretty much breaks and the DM is forced to make every battle happen in an inescapable closet. A party beat the ultimate dungeon delve in two hours by playing a group of archer rangers and using a complex strategy called shooting everything in the face until it dies.

-Archers are one of the easiest classes to play. Pretty much every fight involves you being physically safe and spamming twin strike. 4e lovers hate this because they have actually bought the idea that giving a power push 2 means that it is interesting and that ranged characters should be well within charging range.

The other "good" build that shau didn't touch on is to just layer everything possible that gives a bonus to charging attacks.

You can basically do this with any Str-based class (fighter, paladin, str cleric, warlord, melee ranger etc) and the exact tricks are mildly different, but just grab every feat, item, racial special and mount ability you can that gives you better to-hit or damage on a charge and you effectively add a top-tier stirker level at-will to your character.

I'm actually surprised I haven't seen any half-elf bard builds that include Astral Sign yet. It seems like a natural choice with that feat that lets you use CHA for multiclass powers.

sake wrote:I'm actually surprised I haven't seen any half-elf bard builds that include Astral Sign yet. It seems like a natural choice with that feat that lets you use CHA for multiclass powers.

What feat is that and where is it from?

RandomCasualty2 wrote:
What feat is that and where is it from?

Combat Virtuoso from Arcane Power. You can use Cha for the attack roll for any powers gained from multiclassing, paragon multiclassing or the half elf racial thing. It only effects attack rolls though not the damage, but that's not quite that important for Astral Sign.

A few things I have noticed about 4e

EVERYBODY PLAYS A 3.E FIGHTER

Having a decent 4e character is like having a good 3e figther. Your basic options are terrible, especially in core, but if you dumpster dive through enough books and assemble the right feats and magic options you might make some significant gains. Currently, most 4e characters resemble an archer fighter, in which you have gather enough bonuses to make your long string of attacks good, or a charger fighter, in which you charge for surprising amounts of damage. I don't think there's anything as good as a Tripstar fighter, although a few things come kinda close to the Robilar's gambit type fighter.


THE DEFENDER AGREEMENT

Defenders either get attacked all the time or absolutely never. It depends on whether or not your DM agrees to go along with the idea that you are a MMO tank and have monsters attack you, or play the monsters like a non crazy person in which case they gang stop somebody in a robe. Knowing which type of DM you have determines how you should build your paladin or whether paladins are even relevant.

ENDURANCE: GOOD OR BAD?

Healing surges are supposed to be the thing that keep you from adventuring forever. However, with a little optimization you can last for a really long time. Swordmages have infinite out of combat healing from level six and up. Clerics have out of combat healing up to bloody available at level 1 and they can bring everyone but themselves up to full by combining that and Life Transfusion at level 2.

The question is whether or not there is any advantage to doing that. Somebody running out of healing surges is one of the easiest ways to argue for a rest. A ranger has 6 surges. If brought down to one or dying it takes him 4 surges to get back to full. You can seriously bring yourself down to a 2 encounter work day as long as you are wasteful enough.

That isn't quite true. It's more like a 3.5 Monk - you're tricked into thinking you have options, and the dumbfuck squad will regularly spout off lies to that effect. However your moves are for the most part anti synergistic and ineffective and the only reason you have any viability at all is because 'everyone is a 3.5 Monk' includes the MOBs. And even then the game breaks the moment they start spamming Ice 3 on your whole party instead of sometimes biting for piddly shit damage instead. Much less using any actual tactics or thought.

shau, I disagree with your assessment of the wizard encounter powers.

The wizard has Enlarge Spell, something they want even more than Implement Expertise. The encounter powers they grab are Orbmaster's Incendiary Detonation (best minion-killer power ever), Icy Terrain, Maze of Mirrors, Grasp of Shadows (another good minion-killer power, also does a wide-area slow), and Twist of Space (teleports + slows). Then they have the At-Wills Scorching Burst and Storm Pillar. That's just low-level stuff, too.

By mid-paragon, Wizards get the best toys. Level 13, wizards get a power (Mirror Sphere) that if it hits subjects an enemy to all the damage and effects of its own attack. They also get an auto-blind zone (Orbmaster's Umbral Assault) in burst 3 that doesn't affect allies. If you'd like to directly blind your enemies, Prismatic Burst is a burst 3 that does the job. Level 17, they have a Burst 3 (Furnace of Sand) in 20 squares encounter power that auto-blinds. They also have Crushing Titan's Fist which is a double-immobilize; first it immobilizes in a burst 3 then it creates terrain in the zone that costs 5 squares of movement to enter.

Of course, by level 7 the wizard should never be hurting for daily powers ever again. They should have a Mnemonic staff to convert their level 6 utility power into a level 5 daily attack power and another Mnemonic staff to convert their level 2 utility power into a level 1 daily attack power. I'm serious, the rules want you to do that--in the AV2 they published a bunch of tomes that have no effect other than converting utilities into dailies AND giving them an extra effect. For example, the Gossamer Tome explicitly lets you convert level 6 and up utility powers into Web, which is awesome. And in the process of conversion you get to Restrain enemies, too.


The verdict: Even if you don't want to be an orbizard the wizard class has more than enough toys to keep you entertained. I can't tell you the joy I've had seeing the party going 'holy fuck' when I drop an Orbmaster's Incendiary Assault and a Visions of Avarice in the same round, completely disabling an enemy's offense.

You also don't need to take the Wizard of the Spiral Tower prestige class paragon path anymore.

There's a feat in Arcane Power, Arcane Implement Proficiency, that lets you get the sword. If you're an Eladrin Wizard, you can even use your Wand power with it. Hell, by the RAW you can just get the enchantment on a regular quarterstaff; the character builder implements transparency between quarterstaves enchanted as implements and quarterstaves enchanted as weapons (except for the two-handed issue).

This lets you pursue another wizardly paragon path. Unfortunately, they aren't that great. Blood Mage has some nice powers and a great level 16 ability, but we can do better. The paragon path that you actually want, if you can spare a multiclass feat for it, is the Divine Oracle (cleric, PHB). Everything about the class is gold.

I thought that Blood Mage was a better PP for an Orbizard than Divine Oracle, in that you can incorporate ongoing damage into a Save Ends power?

Nope. The FAQ specifically nixes that use for it.

Divine Oracle lets you roll twice for initiative, gives you a storeable move action if you spend an action point, and lets you roll twice for will powers. It also has an encounter power with no stat that lets a buddy's attack becomes an automatic critical hit and another utility power that gives you and your buddies a +5 to attack rolls until the end of your next turn (be sure to delay until the end of the round next turn).

What more could you want?

mean_liar wrote:I thought that Blood Mage was a better PP for an Orbizard than Divine Oracle, in that you can incorporate ongoing damage into a Save Ends power?

The level 20 Daily given by Blood Mage is completely fucking ricockulous and totally unfair inherently. But honestly, most of the class is just damage. You're a Wizard, if you wanted to do damage you'd be a Ranger. Your job is to stunlock all your enemies forever. And frankly that means being an Orbizard with Divine Oracle.

1. None of your party members can be surprised. Also you get a slightly higher init. This adds up to you getting an action before one or two enemy actions would have gone off - it's like a free stunlock at the beginning of every combat.
2. You get a much better chance to hit with attacks versus Will. Many of your better stunlocks apply versus Will, so that's a win.
3. You get to arbitrarily designate attacks as crits for the expenditure of an Encounter power. Yes, for those keeping track at home this means that you can endlessly cycle Dailies if you put the right bullshit into a pile.

Does anyone know what happens when Good Omens and Prophecy of Doom are both active? Fucking 4e.

-Username17

Paragon-level and up wizards can do even better ranged damage than archer rangers, though. NOT epic-level beastmasters or melee rangers, though.

Wizards do need to be specced for it and it interferes a bit with their ability to 'control'. Not a whole lot--you can still have a super blaster wizard that still does their job as good as an orbizard--but it still requires an investment.

Though personally, I don't recommend actually using orbizard stuff. I recommend picking two of the five things from this pile and NO MORE: Orb of Imposition save penalty, Cunning/Earthroot quarterstaves, Spell Focus feat, any of the Orbs that inflict a save penalty, and Phrenic Crown. Using all five at once feels like cheating.

I've been wondering why the Planeshifter pp doesn't get more attention. I mean, it pretty much has Maze as a level 11 Encounter power. I know there's plenty of GM's that will go rule nazi and say you can't use OoI on it but still that seems extremely useful to me, especially since most games aren't going to get to the epic shenanigans levels

Speccing a wizard for damage.

This doesn't require a lot of resources. Here are some things to keep in mind.

Your encounter powers will never be good at DPR. Big fucking deal.
The Enlarge Spell feat hands out a -2 penalty to damage per die. That's bad. But you still want this goddamn feat anyway.
You need to find a way to snag a ton of daily powers. Again, big deal, wizards get more daily powers than anyone. A level 10 wizard can drop a daily on every encounter of the day.
Dual Implement Spellcaster feat. You want to use two implements anyway so big deal.
Weapon Focus feat: Weapon focus works with quarterstaves. It's in the FAQ and everything. For reals.
Siberys Shard of the Mage: This adds 2n-1 damage if you use a weapon as an implement, which means you stick this onto your quarterstaff and be happy.
Frost Quarterstaff: Even if you were a 'regular' orbizard you would want this and Lasting Frost/Wintertouched anyway for the sweet, sweet combat advantage. But this
Ankhmon's Bracers: Adds 1d10 damage to arcane powers when you attack with combat advantage, heals you the amount of damage you inflict. That is ridiculously good. Because you're using a Frost Quarterstaff that means you always get the damage and heal bonus.
Epic Destiny: Depending on the length of your workday, you either pick Archmage or Demigod. For a one-or-two encounter workday. Wizards have waaaaaay more daily powers than they can use.

Now here come some of the breakpoints.
Paragon Paths: Divine Oracle vs. Battle Engineer. Divine Oracle has all of the advantages Frank listed. But Battle Engineer gives you +INT damage of an elemental type you want to all of your attacks.

Powers: Flaming Sphere vs. Sleep is a wash at low levels, before the orbizard really gets their save penalties on. If you're speccing for damage you'll keep Flaming Sphere, though it'll eventually get replaced with Wizard's Fury, since Flaming Sphere is an action hog.

Stinking Cloud/Grasp of the Grave/Visions of Avarice: All three dailies are equally good and all three dailies will make your DM cry. Stinking Cloud adds much more damage than the other two, though, so once again...

Mordenkainen's Sword/Faithful Hound vs. Visions of Ruin/Face of Death: This is the first real breakoff in powers you have from the control wizard. Honestly, the former two powers kind of suck from any perspective but damage--Stinking Cloud rocked your face off from both a damage AND control standpoint. Note that after a few levels there's no reason to have Mordenkainen's Sword since you can jolly well just grab a Tome that gives you the spell. Visions of Ruin creates a Burst 2 where people can't target others outside of the zone and can't leave the zone. Face of Death works like sleep, only it renders foes Immobilized then Helpless (then slowed after they save). Helpless is not as good of a condition as unconscious, though, since helpless creatures can still act. The burst is also smaller, too. If you're playing a blaster wizard this is where you swap out Flaming Sphere for Wizard's Fury.

For my money, though, Wall of Fire is still awesome. It autodamages and blocks line of sight. If I was a blaster wizard I'd pick that over the Mordenkainen's stuff.

Evard's Dreadful Mist and Ball Lightning: Ahhhh, now we see damage and control converging again. Ball Lightning works like Flaming Sphere, except that it also slows people adjacent to, too. Evard's Dreadful Mist immobilizes in a burst 3, subjects people to an attack each round (not auto-damage, alas), and blocks line of sight for them. You can even sustain it.

Wall of Ice is like Wall of Fire except that it can be damaged. That's bad.

I've been wondering why the Planeshifter pp doesn't get more attention. I mean, it pretty much has Maze as a level 11 Encounter power. I know there's plenty of GM's that will go rule nazi and say you can't use OoI on it but still that seems extremely useful to me, especially since most games aren't going to get to the epic shenanigans levels.

You can't use OoI on it. Because OoI only works for wizard powers.

Planeshifter doesn't get a lot of attention because everything else about the class sucks. But the encounter power is enough to make it great if your game is going to end between levels 11 and 14.

Yeah, my wizard fu is weak. There are a bunch of things floating around that decrease saves, like a familiar and a tattoo, plus the feat you mentioned, that I did not really know about. Can't agree with you on the feels like cheating thing. I think if it feels like cheating, it must be good. Glad to see that Divine Oracle is ontop of the PPS though, I always liked that thing.

Actually, you know what? Forget the Cunning Weapon.

Get your ass a nice Earthroot Staff (AV, page 104). Now the Earthroot staff only works on powers that impose immoblize/restrained/petrified/restrained conditions, but:

1) It's at a saving throw penalty equal to the enhancement bonus, which is higher than the bonus to a Cunning staff.

2) You obviate the need to tell the DM that, yes, you can use staves enchanted as weapons as implements. You show him the Earthroot staff and them shove it up his or her ass.

3) It's a property that doesn't require you to cast it through the quarterstaff. The FAQ states you gain the properties of two implements that you hold. You can hold implements in one hand. Which means that it stacks very with, say, Frost Weaponry. Or other Cunning Quarterstaves/Longswords if your DM will let you pull this off.

4) There are already more than enough spells that have slow/immobilize/restrained as conditions. You know, the really bombass spells like sleep, web, Visions of Ruin, Visions of Avarice, Evard's Dreadful Mist, Evard's Black Tentacles, Blast of Cold, etc.

Another fun wizard toy, is a the Tome Caddy Familar feat from some Dragon thing that simply holds a Tome implement for you and counts as you wielding it. So that would let you hold three implements, and if you're a hybrid wizard/cleric (and why aren't you? You only lose out on free rituals and a spellbook feature you didn't really care about all that much, and if you're a Deva, which you will be, you can get that back with a feat anyway) you could also use holy symbols as a wizard implements so that's four slots of properties you could be stacking your spells with.

Of course my grasp of rules has never been that solid so there might be some rule that prevents this from all working like that.

No, you want to be a goddamn single-classed wizard.

If you don't have the spellbook feature then you can't use the bombass Mnemonic Staves and Tomes that let you swap utility powers for daily ones, since they depend on shit in your spellbook.

You can't use holy symbols as wizard implements without a feat, because wizards don't use holy symbols as implements. You can however use the properties from them if you can use holy symbols at all, which is a good enough argument for having some cleric/paladin/avenger in your feat list.

My big thing though is wondering why you would want to be hybrid classed with a cleric. Why? What do you gain from being a cleric? I can understand Invoker since they have a couple of really sweet At-Wills and their low-level encounter powers are better than a wizard's, but cleric?

I don't know the feat that lets Deva have spellbooks though. Which is it?

Why wouldn't you be a Gnome?

-Username17

... um, wow, how did I miss the gnome phantamist feat? A +1 feat bonus to attack rolls per tier?

Okay, forget what I said. Gnomes are now the gold standard for wizards.

Have I mentioned how much I hate 4E's wanking to racial feats?

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
You can't use holy symbols as wizard implements without a feat, because wizards don't use holy symbols as implements. You can however use the properties from them if you can use holy symbols at all, which is a good enough argument for having some cleric/paladin/avenger in your feat list.

They first hybrid play test stated a hybrid gains both classes’ implements and they could be used for either class's powers, did they ditch that in the later version of it?

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
My big thing though is wondering why you would want to be hybrid classed with a cleric. Why? What do you gain from being a cleric? I can understand Invoker since they have a couple of really sweet At-Wills and their low-level encounter powers are better than a wizard's, but cleric?

Access to Divine Oracle without wasting your multiclass slot (or using the dammed Ports background) Blade Barrier, the Care bear Cloud Car, and a few other surprisingly nice control powers. It really just comes down to you're getting way more options than you're losing.

Although I did overlook the Mnemonic stuff. The deva spell book thing is a rather grayish rule work around so it may or may not work for those. My last couple DMs have been rather tightfisted with the magic items so it has me in this mind set of not building characters around them.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
I don't know the feat that lets Deva have spellbooks though. Which is it?

Remembered Wizardry. It specifically says that you add another wizard daily and utility spell to your spell book, but doesn't actually have the spell book class feature as a prereq, So people kind of assume that you can just buy a spell book for 25g, and then copy the extra spells to it whether you have the actual class feature version or not. Yeah, it's a bit cheesy.