Distant Advantage gives a ranged character combat advantage as long as the target is being flanked by allies. Can we say ranged dagger rogues and DE X-bow rogues?
Melee Training - BENEFIT - Choose an ability other than Strength. When you make a melee basic attack using a weapon you are proficient with, you can use that ability instead of Strength for the attack roll and the damage roll.
Charidans, AD Rogues, Melee Bards, Swordmages, etc REJOICE!!! No longer is it a necessity to invest points into str and dex to get Heavy Blade Opporutunist. Sure it isnt QUITE as good, but considering that its at least close you no longer need to mix and match stats just to get a single necessary feat any longer.
Oh happy DAY!!!
Melee Training will help with future defender classes so they don't have to all be STR based and still have the attack chances of a fighter, or for any other role for that matter. Not every class has to focus on STR for their powers or have a power that they can use as a basic attack (like mm for wizards), so this lets them still do okay with basic attacks (for OA or whatever other reason) without having to worry if their str is high enough to give them a bonsu on their attack.
While it opens the door to 'overpower' a few builds I think it's a reasonable price to pay to bring other 'underpowered' classes up to an average, after all it's not like these are free bonuses since you do still have to give up another feat to take them.
Distant Advantage will help other class builds. Rogues aren't the only ones who have powers that get a bonus from having combat advantage.
Too true. It's good even without any benefits beyond the basic +2 to hit for CA, as any caster with the lasting frost/wintertouched combo will tell you.
Now we need a feat to allow rogues to use their powers with bows
I think either shurikens or the DE hand crossbow features would be somewhat bowlike in damage.
I don't care for efficiency here but rather for the character archetype of the archer rogue, at least as it is familiar to me and my friends.
Mechanically, they call that a Ranger now.
I'd just like to point out the fact that you're going off of the summarized description. Bad idea.
Yeah. The summary tends to state the benefit without describing the limitations. For example, the summarized description of Potent Challenge (from the Players Handbook) says:
Add Con modifier damage to target hit with opportunity attack
Sounds like a must have feat for any fighter with a descent CON. In fact, it only does this:
If you hit a foe with an attack granted by
your Combat Challenge class feature, add your Constitution
modifier to the damage roll.
Special: This benefit applies only to attacks made
with two-handed weapons.
I agree with SquareCircle (despite being logically impossible). We shouldn't read too much into the summarized description. It is likely to have unstated limitations.
I'm actually much more interested in Weapon and Implement Expertise. Those ones sounds pretty "Duh, take the feat already!"
Considering the Swordmage already has access to a feat that does the exact same thing (Intelligent Blademaster), I don't see much issue with it.
Though doesn't it make the Intelligent Blademaster feat a tad redundant? Why not just publish that one right off the bat??
Intellegent Blademasts is still better for swordmages because you don't need to be proficient with the weapon to gain the benefit. Small advantage sure, but it is still there.
-=Edit: And they probably didn't realize they were going to need this feat until it would be too late to add it to the PHBI, and they wanted to put it into a PHB rather than an alternative supplement in order to get it out to the highest number of people.=-