Community

BlinkBlink wrote:

A small suggestion: the "Controller effectiveness vs. monster roles" may benefit from either a) being formatted into table form (everything won't be in seperate s-blocks, which makes it harder to compare among different roles), or b) being color coded a la the Handbook colors (e.g. red=bad, sky blue=great) since many of us are now used to things being evaluated this way.

Great suggestions! I've color coded the ratings, and it looks much better.

BlinkBlink wrote:

You should also note in the "weakened" section that, while it reduces the damage dealt, it does nothing to prevent the infliction of status effects. There are times when the status effects are far worse for you than the damage.

Added.

BlinkBlink wrote:

It should be noted that this limitation can be overcome with the very cheap (level 2) Boots of Adept Charging, which allows for a free shift after a charge.

This is one of my favorite items for Druids! I didn't include it in my description because I think that it goes a little too in-depth for a general controller guide, but I'm glad it was brought up in this thread.

Specifically, it's amazing in combination with Primal Wolf (level 9 Daily). Primal Wolf allows you to knock an enemy prone after they're hit w/ a beast form attack for the rest of the encounter. A good way to eliminate said foe's action is to use Savage Rend to slide them one square, and this way they can't charge you after getting up (beware: they may still be able to charge your allies!). If you either don't have Savage Rend or would rather use Pounce to debuff the enemy, you can still pull the same effective trick by shifting yourself instead of sliding the opponent.

It also increases your chances of setting opponents up into flanking positions, since you have a slide and a shift to work with, even after a charge.

BlinkBlink wrote:

Edited to add: you should also note that Walls (and to a lesser extent, Zones) don't require a to-hit role to be effective, which makes them especially attractive options for dealing with those enemies with really high defenses.

Added in the descriptions.

Andrelai wrote:

How can Blinded ever be considered less useful than Blocked Line of Sight?

When you are Blinded, you automatically lose line of sight to everything on the battlefield, in addition to the other associated penalties.

When something is merely in your way, you can often move to see around it.

Hmm, I actually hadn't considered that. Is the general consensus that this is how blinded works? In the description on pg 277 of the PHB it simply says "You can't see any target (your targets have total concealment)." Is blocked line of sight implied by not being able to see your target, or is Line of Sight a specific battlefield condition contingent upon having an unbroken line from your space to the target's, which is assumed to exist unless a power states otherwise?

Losing LoS from being blinded makes sense, but I had (perhaps falsely) assumed that they were two distinct conditions. Although, after re-reading PHB pg. 273, I have a feeling that I was making LoS out to be much more like LoE than it actually is.

Blinded specifically states that the target has total concealment, and PHB 273 states that "if you can see a target but at least one line passes through an obstruction, the target has cover or concealment." Is it safe to imply, then, that if LoS is blocked any targets have total concealment? I guess the source of my confusion was the fact that the blinded condition doesn't simply state "you don't have LoS," yet it DOES specifically state that targets have total concealment.

RandomChanze wrote:

I know it would be a major additional undertaking, but I would LOVE to see a list of spells that provide each condition.

As the discussion has pointed out, Blind/blinded is one of the best conditions to inflict on anything except for melee - but I've had a hard time finding (wizard) abilities that induce it.

I was actually messing around with Druid attack powers in a spreadsheet a few weekends ago. My intent was to eventually come up with some way of displaying controller powers/effects such that I could compare the different classes. Major undertaking indeed! What I ended up doing was making columns for all of the different conditions, and listing powers that granted those conditions (with green, red, or grey fill corresponding to at-will, encounter, and daily, respectively). Sunbeam (D9) and Blinding Blizzard (D29) were the only blinds from the Druid's list.

The spreadsheet is a bit cumbersome, and a lot of effects don't fit perfectly into categories. Furthermore, I found that it didn't provide much info for the amount of effort. I haven't actually moved forward with it since then, but I came up with an idea for a second tab where I list all of the levels that Druids gain encounter and/or daily attack powers. The rationale here was that comparison's between the different controllers may vary depending on what level you're looking at, and looking at a class as a whole isn't as practical (since you don't get to keep all of your powers). In each level's row, I was planning on listing every effect/condition that a Druid could inflict with a power that level. Unfortunately this format doesn't lend itself well to quick, visual analysis. I toyed with the idea of doing a matrix with an "x" wherever a condition appeared in a level's row, but I don't think that this will help much visually, either.

Unfortunately, controllers are just notoriously difficult to compare. Even a simple count of how many powers a Wizard has that inflict a given status effect vs. a Druid or Invoker is overly simplistic since many of these powers may have additional effects, may be AoE or single target, may be save ends or "until the end of your next turn," etc. And of course whether a power is an encounter or daily has an effect on tactics and resource management.

Because controllers are a complex role, I would be hesitant to try to present their powers in such a simplified way (especially given how unwieldy even the simplification is). Take, for example, the Bard Daily, Compulsion (I know Bards are only secondary controllers but it was the first spell to pop into my head). At its core it's a forced movement power (at least that's what category it would fit into). However, it also goes into effect on the opponent's turn and prevents them from taking a move action that round. Position them so they can't charge and it's an effective single target lockdown power, functionally more similar to prone or dazed than most forced movement powers (which are typically used to set up flanking, get more mileage out of zones, etc., which Compulsion can still do). I can lump Compulsion in the same category as the Druid's Battering Claws since they're both forced movement, but that doesn't really shed any light on the differences or practical functions of the two powers.

Sorry for all of that text, especially since what it boils down to is that I'm not sure how to best present the abilities of controllers in a user friendly manner.

IXBN wrote:

I did not read thruogh the entire blog, but I think you missed one condition.

I came across this one in PHB 2, page 106.

Power: Face of death,
providing your party with the sweet condition:
"helpless" after the first failed save!:D

Free crits (Coup de grace) for everybody without any reply from the enemy.

Thanks for pointing that out; I'd initially thought that "helpless" was so self explanatory that it didn't merit inclusion, but after taking another look at that Wizard power I noticed that it can lead to a somewhat interesting scenario (it would seem that, by RAW, Helpless does not necessarily mean that the enemy can't retaliate!). So I've updated the list of status effects to include Helpless (and I discuss this power specifically).

Kurald_Galain wrote:

That's strictly inferior to the level-1 wizard power, Sleep.

Face of Death has some other uses, though -- Immobilize (save ends) on miss is pretty awesome, and it's an Illusion (important for Illusionists, although it's pretty damned horrible against Duergar).