4e Encounter Tips for Party

[HMS Invincible]

There is a group of 4 wizards lvl 9 and their Bard leader. They promptly kicked our butts with a combo of Web, 2 walls of fires and a fog spell, and then pushing various members of our party into said zones. The bard is a DM homebrew since I don't recall bards wielding artifact scimitars and having defender AC. We got a lvl 10 rogue, swordmage, druid/wizard, 2 barbarians and me the wizard/bloodmage. Since the best dailies are all zones, conjurations, or effects, they can dispel my dailies 4 times.

I don't think we can beat them now, but we will have to beat them in the future. Ideas? My idea was to take a page out of 3.5 and fire the rest of the party and get 4 more wizards and a fighter/meatshield. The party was not amused.

[AtwasAwamps]

There is a group of 4 wizards lvl 9 and their Bard leader. They promptly kicked our butts with a combo of Web, 2 walls of fires and a fog spell, and then pushing various members of our party into said zones. The bard is a DM homebrew since I don't recall bards wielding artifact scimitars and having defender AC. We got a lvl 10 rogue, swordmage, druid/wizard, 2 barbarians and me the wizard/bloodmage. Since the best dailies are all zones, conjurations, or effects, they can dispel my dailies 4 times.

I don't think we can beat them now, but we will have to beat them in the future. Ideas? My idea was to take a page out of 3.5 and fire the rest of the party and get 4 more wizards and a fighter/meatshield. The party was not amused.

Could you be more specific with the types of class your players are using (IE, which Aegis does the Swordmage use, what's the rogue's selected class features, and so on?)

[Oracle_Hunter]

Pretty sure focusing firing on the Wizards is the best idea. Unless they have Defender HP, they'll go down mighty quick.

Heck, just sic the two Barbarians on one of 'em at a time.

Oh, and invest in some Leader MCs. You guys need healing, badly.

[Tengu_temp]

1. Why is your DM making you fight NPCs with PC stats? That goes against the 4e design. You are on a daily power budget, they're not.
2. Yes, you really need more leaders in your group. You currently have none - no healing and no buffs.
3. I think your DM is going on a power trip, personally. From your previous threads on this matter I can't help but feel he wants to show you how much his 4e optimization rocks, and tell you this.
4. I can't help but feel that some rule misinterpreting is going on here, too. I'm away from my 4e books and can't check though.

[AtwasAwamps]

IMO (and please take this with a grain of salt, as I’m not the best tactician ever and don’t know 4.0 in and out):

Your party is actually fairly decent for this as long as you coordinate and bring down the wizards one by one.

Barbarians+Rogue: Get them all working together to surround and crack a wizard at a time, possibly pounding out encounters/dailies on the first one to really crush it asap. Every dead wizard leads to a marked drop in power on your opponent’s side and a large bonus to power on yours. Action Economy is utterly brutal in 4E and every enemy you drop increases it. Obviously, the Bard’s AC makes him difficult to attack, so your physical strikers should mostly focus on the presumably squishy wizards.

Swordmage: The swordmage has a few options depending on his Aegis. He can play merry hell with the bard, snatching him around the field with Aegis of Ensnarement or slapping him in the face with Aegis of Assault. A good trick would be to mark the bard and try and get away from other characters on the field, perhaps using something like Lightning Lure to pull a wizard out of direct combat and isolating him. Thus, the bard either makes his attacks on other characters and suffers the danger of eating the Swordmage’s aegis effects, plus the negative to hit, or focus his attacks on the swordmage…which is what a defender is for, anyways! If he has the defensive aegis, an interesting choice might be to have him mark the wizard being focused on by your strikers and try and negate a chunk of the damage while he goes after either another wizard or the bard.

Wizard/Druid and You: Control the fight. You are the ones who can hit non-AC defenses for big chunks, so do so on the bard…and if you’ve got them, try and nail him with a long duration debuff that will make him less of a danger to the rest of your party. Your strikers will be able to smash down individual wizards, but if those wizards try and escape, you can do a number of things to prevent that from happening. Your goal is to support the group that needs it most…whether its extra blasting on the strikers, extra damage/control to a different target, or controlling the bard. Eventually, you’ll be what drops that bard to the ground, so make sure to stay alive and stay away from it till you can unleash the big guns.

[DSCrankshaw]

Also look for feats/powers/items that let you resist forced movement.

For example, Mountain armor, Defiant boots items, Dwarven Greaves, Resolute, and Iron Ring of the Dwarf Lords.

For powers, there's Surfooted Retort (Rogue 5), Bending Branch (Ranger 2), Mountain Roots (Barbarian 10), and Rock Steady (Fighter 6).

And for feats, there's Steadfast Tactics (Dwarf warlords only, I'm afraid), Reactive Fey step (Eladrin), and Stonefoot Reprisal (dwarf fighter).

There are more, though they seem to be mostly beyond your level. Just do a search in the compendium, combining keywords such as forced, push, pull, and slide, with negate, reduce, ignore, resist. I just wish the compendium allowed boolean expressions, so you didn't need to go through all 16 combinations.

[Mando Knight]

Fighting wizards with wizards is somewhat stupid in 4e. You need a dedicated leader to keep your party alive instead. Defenders are slightly less useful against wizards than Strikers if they're focusing on AoE attacks.

Now, the Wizard's weakness is in his strength: a party of AoE wizards can't afford being flanked by heavy melee characters with selected-target ranged support. To make up for that, you've had to fight a tough melee leader who keeps them alive. Counter the leader by shutting him down first with every kind of effect you can throw at him. Once he's down, the Wizards don't get back up when they go down.

Your mistake here is assuming that all of the best Wizard dailies are conjurations and zones (the only two kinds of effect dispelled by Dispel Magic--if your DM says otherwise, crack open your PHB and show him). Thanks to the Spellbook feature, you can learn a spare daily at each level, so I recommend a single-target attack and either an area attack or a zone/conjuration/summon power. Prepare at least one single-target and one area attack power per day after you get your second daily attack.

[Jayabalard]

1. Why is your DM making you fight NPCs with PC stats? That goes against the 4e design. You are on a daily power budget, they're not.

I'm not entirely sure that's a safe assumption. It might be best to get just a little more confirmation from the OP. I mean, sure he's using terms like "wizard" and "bard" but it's possible that those are labels rather than classes, much like Miko is a "samuri".

I mean, it really sounds like the bard, at least, is not a bard as in the class, so it's possible that the wizards aren't either.

EDIT: Just to note, I think you're probably right, I'm just saying that it wouldn't hurt to be sure that you're correct.

[incubus5075]

IMO (and please take this with a grain of salt, as I’m not the best tactician ever and don’t know 4.0 in and out):

Your party is actually fairly decent for this as long as you coordinate and bring down the wizards one by one.

Barbarians+Rogue: Get them all working together to surround and crack a wizard at a time, possibly pounding out encounters/dailies on the first one to really crush it asap. Every dead wizard leads to a marked drop in power on your opponent’s side and a large bonus to power on yours. Action Economy is utterly brutal in 4E and every enemy you drop increases it. Obviously, the Bard’s AC makes him difficult to attack, so your physical strikers should mostly focus on the presumably squishy wizards.

Swordmage: The swordmage has a few options depending on his Aegis. He can play merry hell with the bard, snatching him around the field with Aegis of Ensnarement or slapping him in the face with Aegis of Assault. A good trick would be to mark the bard and try and get away from other characters on the field, perhaps using something like Lightning Lure to pull a wizard out of direct combat and isolating him. Thus, the bard either makes his attacks on other characters and suffers the danger of eating the Swordmage’s aegis effects, plus the negative to hit, or focus his attacks on the swordmage…which is what a defender is for, anyways! If he has the defensive aegis, an interesting choice might be to have him mark the wizard being focused on by your strikers and try and negate a chunk of the damage while he goes after either another wizard or the bard.

Wizard/Druid and You: Control the fight. You are the ones who can hit non-AC defenses for big chunks, so do so on the bard…and if you’ve got them, try and nail him with a long duration debuff that will make him less of a danger to the rest of your party. Your strikers will be able to smash down individual wizards, but if those wizards try and escape, you can do a number of things to prevent that from happening. Your goal is to support the group that needs it most…whether its extra blasting on the strikers, extra damage/control to a different target, or controlling the bard. Eventually, you’ll be what drops that bard to the ground, so make sure to stay alive and stay away from it till you can unleash the big guns.

This looks good

[Lunix Vandal]

*cracks open DMGs*
... Well ... um ... damn.
Assuming he's using the class templates for this, the encounter (as you've described it) is bang-on for a 12th-level, 6-party-member fight. Conveniently, the low end of "hard-but-still-appropriate encounters" for a 10th-level party is (you guessed it) a 12th-level encounter.

That said, it's still four Level 9 Elite Artillery and a Level 9 Elite Skirmisher/Leader, which is dodgy. The "defender-level defenses" on the Bard could be due to applying the template to a Soldier ... maybe.

That said, from the description of the fight, what you may not have realized is that the wizards blew out a good chunk of their available powers in the first round -- below 11th level, the class templates only add one at-will, one encounter, one daily (reflagged as an encounter power), and one utility (ditto). Oh, and a handful of NADs, an AP, a bonus to saving throws, and 60-80 HP, dependent on Con score.

Other quirks:
-They can't slide you into hazardous terrain if you don't want them to. (Sorta.) You're entitled a saving throw against forced movement that would cause you to take damage. You fall prone if you take it and make it, but hey -- it makes it that much harder for them to hit you with the next phantom bolt.
-Dispel Magic takes a ranged attack roll. Against you. Which means it provokes OAs. Also, it hits your Will. Hint hint.
-As others have said, action economy is a bitch. Have the barbarians charge and gib one of the wizards on the first round if possible (including AP and Dailies on the first available chance) -- they can't make the sustain minors on wall of flame if they're dead. Web has no sustain, though.
-Wall of fog is a utility. So is dispel magic. They're even of the same level, and there's no way to get a second prepared L6 utility before L10. Ergo, even if they are statted out as full-blown PCs, the wizard that drops the fog can't dispel. Save him for last, if possible.
-Violation of any of the above is grounds for calling your DM out on it.

[Kurald Galain]

Okay.

You can counter Web by simply equipping the entire party with ranged weaponry. Web doesn't block line of sight, it only immobilizes you. If e.g. the barb has a heavy thrown whatever (or the ability to teleport), he's good.

You can counter Wall of Fire by casting Mass Resistance. Furthermore, whatever they can push you into, you can push them into as well.
(if you can't swap spells now, well, grab a bunch of fire resistant potions, or one of those cheap cheap resisting tattoos).

Fog spell doesn't particularly do much, I wouldn't worry about that. Yeah, it blocks line of sight, and fog + web is kind of sucky, but that's two standard actions right there. Blocked line of sight still doesn't do squat against area spells.

Dispel Magic is a highly ineffective neither a common nor a good strategy in 4E in general, so "they can dispel my dailies 4 times" doesn't sound right - at least, not unless your DM is homebrewing dispel magic. On the other hand, turn the tables: have everybody grab some dispelling bolts (you know, from AV2) and dispel their own stuff. This fits in nicely with the "use ranged weaponry" theme mentioned earlier.

Artifact scimitars? Yeah, can't help you there. Regardless, with a rogue, two barbs and a blood mage, your damage potential should be huge. Focus fire on one of the wizards, remember that conjurations go down when they do, and tick them off one by one. Also, go nova: use all your dailies in this fight, spam potions of clarity, use ping pong charges and blinding barrage, and so forth.

Unless your DM is heavy on the Fiat, this is eminently beatable. Yes, wizards rock in 4E. No, four wizards do not a good party make.

[Kurald Galain]

-They can't slide you into hazardous terrain if you don't want them to. (Sorta.) You're entitled a saving throw against forced movement that would cause you to take damage.

This is incorrect: you get a save if forced into hazardous terrain, but zones caused by spells aren't terrain unless the spell description says so. Icy Terrain is terrain, Wall of Fire is not.

-Dispel Magic ... hits your Will. Hint hint.

Yeah, but there isn't much you can do to effectively boost your will at heroic level.

-As others have said, action economy is a bitch.

That's a good point. A single Color Spray shuts them down hard because they only get a single action.

Your odds would be much better with a taclord, though. Boost to init, and huge boost to-hit with an action point.

[Shardan]

Any leader would be useful in this.

Your best bet is to gank the enemy leader as fast and as hard as possible.

Mountain Roots lvl 10 Barbarian utility... there is NO forced movement. stance so it doesn't interfere with rages
There is also 2 rages that give DR between those, you should be set.

Isolate one opponent at a time and focus fire.