Quote Originally Posted by tbarrie View Post
Cloud of Daggers is pretty close to being strictly better than Magic Missile (assuming Wisdom 12 or higher, which should be easily doable). Missile's only advantages are range, basic status, and, if your Wisdom is 12 or 13, marginally higher expected damage against unusually easy-to-hit opponents. My experience with 4e so far (which, to be fair, consists of only DMing one run through Keep on the Shadowfell) suggests that needing to hit targets more than 10 squares out is pretty rare, and the other two advantages hardly seem worth mentioning.
For me, it's been the exact opposite (and I've played a lot of 4e Wizards, sadly). Range 20 > a couple extra points of damage, most of which is mitigated by the fact that it's a ranged basic attack (so it benefits from Bracers of the Perfect Shot, amongst other things). Also, many enemies have an annoying habit of leaving the cloud before their turn starts, due to other enemies using extra move-granting powers to get them out (or worse, those same enemies will start using similar powers to push/pull your allies through it).