Wizards still not versatile with feats?

[darkforest]

It seems odd the versatile wizard can't be persuaded to take GSF feats for the wizard bonus feats. What's the reason?

There are potential builds (i.e., melee vampires/wraiths) that exhaust all seven+ main feats and have no room for GSF feats, thus can't take higher tier AM/PM prestiges.

The current situation seems akin to fighters unable to take ITWF or GTWF for fighter feats. Are there balance concerns or carry-over rules from PnP?

[Jaid314]

It seems odd the versatile wizard can't be persuaded to take GSF feats for the wizard bonus feats. What's the reason?

There are potential builds (i.e., melee vampires/wraiths) that exhaust all seven+ main feats and have no room for GSF feats, thus can't take higher tier AM/PM prestiges.

The current situation seems akin to fighters unable to take ITWF or GTWF for fighter feats. Are there balance concerns or carry-over rules from PnP?

strictly speaking, they shouldn't even be able to take regular spell focus as bonus feats:

At 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th level, a wizard gains a bonus feat. At each such opportunity, she can choose a metamagic feat, an item creation feat, or Spell Mastery. The wizard must still meet all prerequisites for a bonus feat, including caster level minimums.

spell focus feats as an option was added because it was theoretically possible for a wizard in DDO to take all the metamagic feats early and not have any feats available at later levels (since item creation feats and spell mastery never made it into DDO, otherwise there would be enough feats to guarantee a choice for each level anyways). adding the regular spell focus feats was enough to ensure you always had something you could choose, so they didn't give us the added benefit of getting GSF as a possibility.

that said, almost every melee build for wizards i've seen includes classes that give bonus feats somewhere in the mix, and there are only 7 feats traditionally "required" for melee (well, higher level fighters need a few more, but they still have a net gain since they add 10 feats and only need iirc 5-6 more for proper DPS... maybe only 4?). with only a 2 level splash, you can gain 2 bonus feats, which should allow you to cover your melee needs while leaving 2 of your general feats available to spend on a pair of greater spell focus feats, if you so wish.

[darkforest]

strictly speaking, they shouldn't even be able to take regular spell focus as bonus feats:
spell focus feats as an option was added because it was theoretically possible for a wizard in DDO to take all the metamagic feats early and not have any feats available at later levels (since item creation feats and spell mastery never made it into DDO, otherwise there would be enough feats to guarantee a choice for each level anyways). adding the regular spell focus feats was enough to ensure you always had something you could choose, so they didn't give us the added benefit of getting GSF as a possibility.

I see your point.

that said, almost every melee build for wizards i've seen includes classes that give bonus feats somewhere in the mix, and there are only 7 feats traditionally "required" for melee (well, higher level fighters need a few more, but they still have a net gain since they add 10 feats and only need iirc 5-6 more for proper DPS... maybe only 4?). with only a 2 level splash, you can gain 2 bonus feats, which should allow you to cover your melee needs while leaving 2 of your general feats available to spend on a pair of greater spell focus feats, if you so wish.

DDO is and will be more different from PnP, so I presume the strictness to PnP isn't an issue. Then that leaves game balance.

The majorities of wizards would take all the useful meta-magic, SP, SF, and GSF feats. It probably matters little if the wizard feats were to allow GSF? Thus no upset to game balance?

Using the melee builds as example again, would there be some over-powered feats combinations if GSF were to allow GSF?

Another example that come up is the arcane archer wizard. For the class purists among us, there aren't enough feat slots for ranged feats with GSF spent on a main feat to qualify for complete PM or AM.

Similarly, among melee builds or any feat intensive build, players may or may not multi-class for various reasons, thus can always benefit from the inclusion of GSF to wizard bonus feats.

Hence is it reasonable to say expanding wizard feats selections to include GSF would create little problems for game balance, but expand build possibilities, thus increasing player satisfaction?