After studying up on the wizards forums and reading the class 'handbooks' (as well as getting pummeled to near death in the last few combat encounters in my group), I've begun to consider using the powers I have that have debilitating effects on enemies to give me a possible edge against them, versus the 'blaster' approach I've been using of going for high damage each turn. I've avoided using them so far as they don't do lots of damage compared to my fire attacks.
For a little background, I'm using a Level 7 Tiefling Mage (Pyromancer-style) with 20 Intelligence, and focusing on max accuracy by way of a +2 Accurate staff with the Accurate Staff and Staff Expertise feats, as well as the Infernal Prince theme and Hellfire Blood feat for my fire attacks, giving me +12/+14 atk roll bonuses. The powers I took that are status-inflicting are: Phantasmal Assault (At-Will), Charm of Misplaced Wrath, Grim Shadow and Fire Sea Travel (Encounter), Horrid Whispers, Sleep and Bigby's Icy Grasp [Immobilizes] (Daily Attack). I also Have a +2 Amulet of Elegy and am thinking of getting an Accurate Earthroot Staff. I'm also MC-ing into Sorcer and want to take the MC Paragon Sorcerer feat to add my +4 DEX mod as extra damage, as well as switch in Dazzling Ray (which I'll Arcane Admixture into Fire) and Deep Shroud for extra defense.
My question is: Are status-inflicting powers actually worth using, or would it be better to stick with the max damage approach?
To show my thinking, here's what's happened in the last two battles I've been in:
We're playing mostly within the Eberron setting, and the DM has a 'I just want everyone to have fun' approach to gaming and rulings, so he's pretty flexible. During the last two battles, we faced an evil Gnome bio-engineer using a giant brutish guy he could ride inside of like a battle-suit, and that guy hit me with a variation of Sleep that targeted my Fortitude. I got the kill shot, but only just before he put me to sleep. Then we had to fight a pair of assassins who planted a bomb on our airship, and the stronger bugbear one kept trying to kill me with strong melee attacks while I was trying to get the bomb out of the cargo hold so I could throw it overboard (I did, making me the hero :D ), and I then stood on the deck and shot down through a cargo hatch at him while the rest of the team (2 rangers - 1 twin sword melee and one archer, and our other wizard - general high damage attacks, our cleric couldn't attend that session) fought the monsters in the hold.
Basically, I want to be able to mess up the monsters using status effects to hinder them and make it harder for them to come after me. The DM has discovered that due to my max accuracy and high-damage fire spells, I'm the strongest attacker, thanks to my high DPR, so I think he's decided to try to take me out of action first, then pick on the rest of the party. He's not really singling me out, but seems to be beginning to prefer to give me a serious challenge in battle. As he said, laughing, when I successfully defended myself with Shield, "Damn. I really hoped that would've killed you."
I'm looking for advice from experienced players and appreciate any advice you can offer. 
Status effects are absolutely worth it. Look for effects that make the enemy unable to attack, such as stun or immobilize (on those without range attack).
Daze is a very versatile effect - you can use it on casters adjacent to your allies to ensure they can't shift away before attacking. A dazed melee opponent without reach can't attack if everyone ends their turn exactly one square away from it. It's even better against elites and solos since they often have minor actions they want to use.
Even something as simple as prone can make enemies skip a turn under the right circumstances.
I feel like you know which way is stronger if you've read the handbooks. Wizards simply are not blasters in 4e. Anything they can do damage-wise can be better accomplished with a sorcerer or invoker. Wizards are built for control, and they excel at it.
Powers in the wizard handbook are rated based on the assumption you want to be the best controller you can be. You really won't get any better power selection advice than what's already there. You can also post your build to CharOp if you want advice tailored to your specific build, but be prepared for most responses to just point you to the handbook unless you have specific questions over taking power X vs. power Y.
I'm also sensing there's an optimization imbalance here. The melee ranger in your party should be running circles around you damage-wise, and you mentioned there's another wizard who is also damage-focused. This sounds like a pretty low-op group with your character being a bit more optimized than the rest. I'd further recommend control in this case because weakening the enemies can help make your allies look better. I know it's fun to be the big-damage hero, but you should try to share the limelight.
Yeah, we're not the best balanced group. All are Lvl. 7 and they mostly had poor stat rolls during character creation. the other wizard only has 17 INT (with only a +10 atk bonus), the Cleric has +11 for Str-based powers and +8 for Implement powers (he has Bless, at least), the two-blade ranger has +11 to Str attacks and +9 to Ranged attacks, while the archer ranger has +11 to ranged attacks and +9 to str based attacks. I'm the most accurate of the team with +12 to my attack powers (+14 for fire spells), but my melee is kind of weak, being only +10 via a Mage's Weapon - Longsword. I don't ever make it all about... (spotlights illuminate my character as he rises up on an elevating platform while fiery exposions burst up behind him and rock music plays as he sings 'Meeeee', ...but as the most (on averate) damaging and accurate member of the group, I tend to inadvertently dominate most combat encounters, tying with the melee ranger, who gets some pretty good hits most of the time. The rest of the team suffer from lower accuracy, which I've already helped to counter somewhat with their permition when I used the DDI character creator to make them the detailed character sheets (Their accuracy was lower than what I listed above before the changes. The archer Ranger was using a utility power that let him shift up to his Wisdom modifier, which was zero, making that power useless to him - he's a very inexperienced d&d player).
Unless everyone's blasting, doing lots of damage as a Wizard isn't very useful (unless everyone's blasting) - all the monsters being dead a little sooner just means that all the monsters are alive to deal damage back. Whereas, if you Stun them, or KO them, they're out of the game for that round.
Status effects are what wizards are for.
Pyromancers can be pretty handy for positional control given their copious autodamage zones, however. And the bounses to hit that you can pick up as a tiefling flamer are super-good, so there is something to them.
One thing you should DEFINITELY not worry about is your melee attack. You have staff expertise, the only time your melee attacks will ever come into use are if thing provoke off you - and if they do that, you hit them with your staff, you really don't need to carry a sword.
Yeah. My original plan was to have a dual sword-wielding wizard by multiclassing into Swordmage, but then I learned that unless you have a two-weapon attack like the ones for Rangers, Fighters or Barbarians, having two swords is useless, so I abandoned the strategy. Maybe later on in Paragon, I'll multiclass into Sorcer for the extra damage boosts and dip into a few powers (love Dazzling Ray), and at Lvl. 10 I can take the Pyromancy school benefit of making my Fire spells into zones.
If you have access to powers that impose status effects, and you have the best accuracy in the group, you're in a good position to make things easier for the party by inflicting those effects on your enemies so your allies have unthreatened mobility and can whomp on their targets mercilessly.
(Rolling stats? Ewww.)
Winterleaf wrote:
samcifer wrote:
thespaceinvader wrote:
I'd advice everyone to just use the point system. More fair and more fun.
svendj wrote:
It's trivially easy to balance high-stat and low-stat characters, but a DM imposing those solutions unilaterally is asking for trouble. It's also trivially easy for a player to enjoy a low-stat character, or for a player to tone-down a high-stat character, but assuming they will is also asking for trouble.
you said you have an Airship, so look for some powers that can push or slide. Next time you get attacked on it, try to knock them off the ship.
Maller1978 wrote:
Yay! DM agreed to let me make aan Illusion version of the Lvl. 5 tomes such as Wailing Tome.
Wizards are really such craptastic characters in 4e, they need all the help they can get. Particularly with their dailies, those are just plain bad.
WOW
A subject for a different thread, in a different forum.